Much has been written about the power of pets. From the claim substantiated by studies that older individuals who have a pet live longer, healthier lives, to the studies touting their stress relief, there’s no denying the claim that sharing our lives with animals helps us…and it helps them! With the re-release of my previously published books on small parrot care, I wanted to focus on the little creatures among us. Having a cat or a dog as a pet seems to “make sense” because they’re large enough (usually) to live with us and not need special housing. (Dogs outdoors need shelter, and sometimes we crate our pets, but for the most part dogs and cats can live in the house amongst us.) Smaller critters who live in their own world, such as the smaller parrots, may seem to be more decorative than interactive. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

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I was going to blog about listening to the universe, and about how maybe it says not what we’re expecting, but what we need. I’ve decided, instead, to blog about my recent trip to our property in the Ozarks. Because there, completely unplugged from electricity, the phone (though I had my cell for emergencies), the internet, and television, finally, the world was able to slow enough so that the little voice, the one we really need to listen to, could speak loud enough for me to hear.

Our inner voice speaks in a quiet tone. It doesn’t yell, demand, or cajole. Instead it whispers soft words of encouragement and sings to us in a sweet voice. We have to slow down and quiet our minds to hear the voice. It won’t compete for our attention. We have to work at it. We have to believe in it.

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There’s a saying in the “spoonie” community (http://butyoudontlooksick.org/) that is to let things roll off your back. Be a duck! Just like that old saying “water off a duck’s back.” Let things just wash over you, while you emerge, adorable, ruffling your feathers, and padding off to brighter pools and better weather. Or maybe you prefer to think of yourself as a little rubber duck floating in the bathtub of life. Sometimes you get dunked, but you always come back to the surface and bob around. There’s no holding you down.

It’s tough to be a duck. When things happen, our feathers get ruffled. We quack loudly, and we might even want to splash the person who wronged us. Yet there are many tools we have at our disposal to try and remain the calm, unruffled ducks that we are.

First, energy work such as reiki helps keep us relaxed. Originally developed as a Japanese method of stress-reduction and relaxation, sending reiki is a great way to keep the duck mentality going. Gotta be “zen” you know, when you’re dealing with unpredictable rain showers and puddles.

Other personal work such as shamanism or journeying can help get to the heart of the issue. Finding out why we’re responding in a certain manner is probably just as important as our actual responses to something. Going deep inside we can find the sources of our patterns and work to change them.

Lastly, let’s not forget the power of affirmations. It can be tough when we think we’re in a crummy puddle and it’s pouring rain all the time. It’s all too easy to say I’ll never find a better, cleaner puddle instead of what we really should be saying I swim in a puddle that’s perfect for me in every way.

So the next time something happens, take a deep breath and think: be a duck!

Quack!

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.