When we do the powerful work that clears out our negative emotions, for example by removing fear, we create empty space within ourselves. Though we may not see it, the fear (or other negative emotion we wish to remove) takes up energetic space. For me, when I started getting at the roots of my fears, I envisioned my inner child (because most the roots of my fears started when I was a small child) standing in the vicinity of my solar plexus chakra. Given that this chakra is the one that represents personal power and our energy, it’s understandable that’s where she’d be. She stood, and in my mind’s eye I saw the dark miasma of my fears, her fears really, surrounding her. The “not good enough”s the “unwanted”s the picked on and bullied kid through most of her school years. When I cleared away the fear, embracing the inner child and telling her she was good enough, she was wanted, and those people who bullied her were just afraid of her or feared that she was different, I realized that my inner child basically stood in an empty bubble. There was space to fill. (I also reminded the inner child, that now, *cough* twenty five years later *cough* she actually did have friends back then, and discovered that through the magic of Facebook.)

Nature abhors a vacuum. Something was going to fill that emotional space, and I better act fast because the fears were hovering on the edge of my consciousness ready to pounce like a cat upon a mouse. What did I feel the space with? Well, drawing on the last blog entry, I filled it with love. Love for my inner child, who really did feel so lost and alone; love for the joy of living, for the miracles she has, and the fact that she’s good enough to move forward and achieve her dreams.

It’s a long term process. I won’t say that I did this once, and poof! all my problems have disappeared. Remember the nature not liking empty space aspect of science class? Yeah, it’s at play in our emotional and spiritual bodies, too. So as soon as we recognize that the fear has rolled in again, it’s up to us to clear things out, and put love back in.

But it’s something to think about. If you’re moving forward in creating good habits, recognize that there’s space left from the old. Whatever created those habits in the first place, it’s important to go back to the beginning, find the source, and make sure that we pack in lots of love and good things to take the place of the bad. That’s where our self-love practices come in, our affirmations, and our core beliefs.

Step by step, day by day, we’ll get that emotional space filled permanently. And then, we can move on to another.

One of the most important things we can do for ourselves is to love ourselves and be gentle with ourselves. Sometimes it can be hard to do that, especially when we’re feeling kind of lost and don’t know what to do. However, there’s one simple thing that we can do–reiki.

Reiki, as universal energy from the source, is pure love. It’s like a shining ray of warmth, filled with love and light, and as the source comes from the universe, it is a gift that has infinite abundance. When I am giving reiki, I feel very tranquil and connected to something greater than myself. It’s a heightened state of consciousness, one that isn’t burdoned by daily problems and struggles.

The meaning of the word reiki is a combination of a higher power’s energy and our own life force, so when we are giving reiki, we are actually sharing universal love. Reiki transcends all spiritual practices, so it doesn’t matter what you call the higher power, or if you believe in a pantheon of deities, it’s all the love of at least one higher power. So if I am giving reiki to myself, or my cat, or my partner, or sending it to a situation or an individual at a distance, I am saying to the universe “put love here.”

How much more beautiful a statement can we make, than by sending love? Pure, powerful, unconditional love.

Is there anything better that we can do for one another, than simply believe in love?

The stories come from pet owners all over, no matter whether their pets are big or small, of how when we need them the most, our pets offer emotional support. When Tenzin curls up in my lap, resting his head against my chest and purrs, I know he’s telling me he loves me. During a particularly rough patch, he looked up at me and I swore I heard him say, “I trust you to take care of us. Why don’t you trust yourself?” The wisdom I saw in those blue-green eyes was ageless.

A horse will rest its head on your shoulder or whuff warm breaths against your face. Dogs curl up with you or rest against your knee. Even parrots, such as when I was sick, and my pionus stayed on a perch nearest to me (not his usual one) and talked to me until I laughed, know when we need help. Empathic animals are valuable support.

In fact, though the guidelines for Emotional Support Animals and Service Animals has changed to become more restrictive, those of us who share our lives with these remarkable creatures (empathatic animals) know that no matter what any sort of guidelines are provided, any animal with that empathic connection with its caretaker can become an Emotional Support Animal (ESA). It takes more than a federal law to mandate the support these creatures provide to their owners. It takes the big heart, and our companion animals have the biggest.

Maybe that’s why I turned my reiki practice towards animals. Providing reiki to a geriatric cat, or support to a frightened horse, seems to be a small repayment for all the love and support these creatures have given us. But it is a way to give back, to show them that we care, and that we want to give to them just as much as they give to us.

The Reiki Guidebook by Sasha Vivelo
non-fiction book, reiki
ISBN# 9780982909973
Cover Art by Winterheart Design

Have you ever wondered how energy healing works? Ever wanted to try your hand at it? Reiki is an easy but powerful approach to natural healing using life-force energy. Practitioners believe it enhances physical health and emotional wellness. Some say Reiki brings us closer to spiritual enlightenment.

Reiki began with one seeker on a mountaintop in Japan and spread throughout the world. With it, you can reach out to soothe a loved one’s pain with a simple touch or center yourself and feel deep peace and comfort even in challenging times.

With The Reiki Guidebook, you can relieve stress and help those around you while feeling more grounded and in control of your life. Experience the beautiful simplicity of healing with your own two hands using this easy guide.

Read an excerpt or buy in print or electronic formats.

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For the remainder of October, Jo Ramsey, will donate a portion of her proceeds from the books in her Reality Shift series to a non-profit organization assisting victims of domestic violence. October is domestic violence month. Be aware and help out someone in your community, or purchase one of the books in the Reality Shift series and help someone in another community. Thank you!

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Filtration System by Jo Ramsey
Reality Shift Book 2
full length fiction novel, 203 pages
ISBN# 97809827637-97

BLURB:
Jonah Leighton never expected to have a close friend, especially one he met at his school, where he’s usually either picked on or ignored. A few weeks after meeting Shanna Bailey, he’s realized that she’s a kindred spirit. Intelligent, funny, and interested in the things he can teach her, Shanna is the first person with whom Jonah’s ever been comfortable sharing his knowledge.

However, Shanna’s frequent injuries cast a pall over their friendship. Jonah suspects that Shanna’s mother abuses her, but without proof, he can’t do anything. And his concerns about Shanna take a back seat when he becomes aware of a threat to our universe: An entity from another reality wants to cross over into ours, and the resulting energetic backwash will vaporize our world.

Read an excerpt or purchase in print or electronic formats.

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Jupiter Gardens…bringing your inner worlds to life
www.jupitergardens.com

To say our cats are spoiled is a bit of an understatement. Although we have six, circumstances allow both myself and my partner to work from home, and this means that our feline babies get nearly 24/7 attention from us. For example, Baxter, one of the kittens we adopted last fall who is now a year old, knows that he can climb on the back of my desk chair, touch my shoulder, and I’ll lift him down into my lap. He’ll get petted and talked to, and lots of attention. Plus, he gets reiki.

When he snuggles into my lap, I feel my left hand start to tingle. Usually I’m using this hand to support his hindquarters to make sure he doesn’t fall (or start to fall and accidentally claw me). With my palm flat against his side, the reiki energy starts to flow and he purrs. Boy does he purr. With his eyes closed and rubbing his face against my chin, he purrs and he purrs. After usually five or ten minutes of this, the reiki stops, and he hops down to go about his kitty business.

Other cats seem to use reiki in this manner. When Nermal, one of our elder cats who is on medication now for some health issues, hops into my lap, immediately the reiki starts to pull. So strong sometimes that my hands hurt. I always tell him it’s okay, he can go slowly and take as much as he needs, as long as he needs it for, and generally, my hands stop hurting as the flow of energy moderates.

To me, I see reiki when used in this manner as an extension of my love. I can pet their fur, feed them treats, talk to them, but cats being the independent creatures they are, sometimes don’t care for hugs or extensive cuddling. So when they do get attention, they get reiki like an extra big hug, or warm blanket of love surrounding them. And, of course, they can take this reiki with them.

In fact, as I’m typing this blog entry, Delta, our youngest cat adopted at the same time as Baxter, has crawled into my lap. She’s quite the little snuggler, and she is purring her little kitten heart out. And you guessed it, the reiki began to flow almost as soon as she settled against me.

For animals that either due to their personality or because of their species, who don’t seem to receive, or need, a lot of interaction from their owners, reiki can be a way to send “Yes, I care. You’re a part of our family” to them without interfering with their natural movements. Just because my cats tend to come to my lap to request their reiki, it doesn’t mean that I couldn’t send to them across the room, or even if they were in a different part of the house.

It’s the hug that warms from the inside. That’s how reiki is most often used in our household.

It’s no secret to those who know me that I really, really, really don’t like thunderstorms. Okay, I’ll take that back. I like the soft rumbly-thunder kinds of storms, with the gentle rain where you know it’s a nice, cozy night, and not one to hover by the weather radio. The storm we had last night though…that one was a doozy.

My dislike of storms stems from many reasons, not the least of which is that I watched my house get holes punched in the siding, and vicious green and purple bruises on my forearms from egg-shaped hail. I had to park about a quarter of a block away from the storm shelter, and I put my arms over my head and ran. I hate to think what would have happened had I been hit in the head. My car was dented too, but as that was a Ford Aspire, that I daresay was aspiring to be a car, well…it happens.

However, I also saw the fire station in the small town where I grew up literally blown apart by a strong downburst. The bricks hit my grandma’s house half a block away. After witnessing that, suffice to say, I am humbled and scared out of my wits when storms get severe.

Last night the winds were a good half an hour ahead of the storm. And my house (okay it’s a trailer) was shaking. Like I could watch my computer monitor vibrate on my desk, shaking. Since by the time the winds got bad, it was too late to run to the storm shelter, I sat there and gave myself reiki.

And boy did the reiki flow. My hands tingled, almost to the point of hurting, from the strong flow of reiki as I envisioned a bubble around my house of protective blue light. “I’m all right. We’re safe. We’re going to be all right. We’re safe.” Or some variation of that became my mantra for the twenty-or-so scary minutes.

And I took deep breaths. Every time the house rattled, every time I felt my heart pounding, or I jumped at a crack of lightning, I took deep breaths. The calming breaths and the reiki helped me get through a very scary time.

I’m finding myself turning to reiki more and more as our storm season heats up. The truth is, living in a mobile home, and spending most of my time in my office, which is the NW corner (and all our storms come out of the north and west), my space is usually the part of the house that gets “hit” first. Add to that my beloved lilac bushes, which sound like the great clawing hands of beasts as they whip against the side of my trailer, and well, when you’re not that fond of storms to begin with, it can sound like an episode of Storm Stories rather quickly.

Since reiki is a method of stress-reduction and relaxation, using it to keep calm and collected during difficult times is a natural fit. It’s the first thing I think of once I have the radar refreshing on my computer. And it’s something on which I’ve come to rely. Any tense, or worrysome, situation benefits from reiki. And I hope by sending reiki to myself in the universe, perhaps it’ll make Mother Nature look a little more kindly on me. Maybe.