Friday, August 21, 2009

Healing Retreats that only take a minute

We all need to feel healed, whole. But there are times in our lives when we feel this need more strongly. Here are some Signs that you need a healing retreat, found in the book 20-Minute Retreats by Rachel Harris:

1. You suffer from chronic symptoms such as headache, upset stomach, musculoskeletal aches and pains, with no clear medical diagnosis.
2. You don't feel rested and refreshed upon awakening.
3. Your sleep is disturbed
4. You find you have more cirtical or negative things to say than constructive and positive comments
5. The energy in and around your body feels imbalanced, jagged, edgy.
6. You feel too vulnerable, easily hurt or weak.
7. You're overreacting to daily stress with impatience, frustration, annoyance or irritation.
8. You're at a crisis or major transition in your life and you need to reconsider your life direction, values and calling.
9. It's your fiftieth birthday.
10. You have just suffered a major loss.
11. Your medical doctor has given you a serious helath warning or medical diagnosis.
12. You have some uncomfortable relationships in your past or current life that you would like to heal.

She goes on to outline several 1- 5 minute retreats one can do for healing. Here is one of them:

One-minute retreat-Gathering Bamboo (good for relieving headaches, soothing tiredness, clearing your vision)

Sit with your head hanging forward slightly as if you were looking down at your lap. Place your thumbs in the corners of your eye sockets under the inner point of your eyebrows. You should feel a ledge there where your thumbs seem to fit perfectly. Allow your thumbs to support the weight of your head for a full minute.

This is a polarity therapy technique.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be
your womb tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

~David Whyte