How to quickly and simply reduce symptoms of Anxiety and Stress

When people are feeling anxious or stressed they will often describe things as feeling a "little unreal" or feel like they are "beside" or "outside" or "disconnected" from themself.  The truth is from an energy field perspective they are actually right and what they are describing is the effect they are feeling from a shift in their energy field. 

When someone is very anxious or stressed their energy field tends to partly disconnect from the ground. Their energy moves upward in their field weighting more towards the head and sometimes also moves off centre to the left or right.  Their energy field does in fact become slightly disconnected at the root energy centre (chakra).  So their descriptions are very accurate.

At the same time the person may experience feelings of dizziness, difficulty concentrating, sensitivity to noises and sights among other symptoms.  It is a scary thing and the feelings often create more anxiety and stress further compounding the problem.

I have worked with many people with these symptoms and I have taught them a very simple technique to recentre and ground their energy field and almost without fail people have found that they can quickly bring their anxiety or stress symptoms down to a more manageable level.

Before I teach you this technique, I want firstly to explain what is happening in the energy field and why this happens.  Our energy field has 7 energy centres (chakras).  The root energy centre faces downward between the legs and the tip of it connects to the coccyx.  It is funnel shaped as are all the energy centres.  This energy centre relates to feeling safe and secure and it changes in response to how safe or secure the person feels.  If for example a loud bang happened and a person got a fright, their root energy centre would temporarily partly close in, in response to the fright.  Once the person realised all was ok the energy centre would start to open again.  The effect of the energy centre closing is that our energy field loses part of its connection to the ground.  It is like our energy field says "I'm out of here" and partly vacates our body in response to the threat.

In cases where someone is suffering from anxiety or stress they are usually living in a regular state of fear.  The root energy centre therefore tends not to be as open as it could be.  The effect of this is that the person will feel ungrounded.  Alot more energy will end up around their head (sometimes creating headaches, muscle tension etc).  Sometimes the energy centre may close more on one side than the other throwing the energy field off balance.

So what can you do about this???

If you recognise any of the things I have mentioned try this technique which re-centres and grounds your energy and helps your root energy centre to open again.

• Firstly rate your anxiety level at this current moment from 1 - 10, where 1 is not at all anxious and 10 is highly anxious
• Now bring your awareness to your body.  Note any area that feels particularly tense and let it relax a little.
• Now bring your attention to the bottom half of you body (anything from the pelvis down).  Focus your attention in one area (example thighs, shins, feet) and just notice what you sense there.  What sensations do you feel?  Do you feel hot or cold?  What are you noticing?  Just observe.  Take a few minutes to do this.
• If you feel your mind wandering just bring it back down to your one part of your legs and again focus on them and observe how they feel and what you are experiencing. 
• Now bring your awareness to your feet.  Notice them on the ground.  Notice how they feel.  Do you feel any sensations?  Can you feel the ground?  Just observe.
• If you feel your mind wandering just bring it back again to your feet.
• Now bring your attention to your lower back, lower tummy, pelvis and notice if anything feels tight here and then just allow it to relax a bit more.  Take a couple of minutes to do this.
• Now bring your attetion back down to your legs or feet (whichever feels easier) and again just notice what you feel, what sensations you experience.
• Keeping your attention on the lower half of your body and also keeping your eyes in a slightly lowered position (looking toward the ground slightly away from you) bring your awareness to your breath and allow it to deepen. 
• Take in a long slow breath all the way down to your lower tummy and let out a long slow breath.  Dont force this too much or over breath too much with this.  Just gently try to lenghten, deepen and slow your breath.
• Keep doing this for a few moments, remembering to also keep your awareness on the bottom half of you body at the same time.
• As you do this you may notice other areas of your body e.g. shoulders, neck etc that are tense, just let these relax a bit and then bring your awareness back to the bottom half of you body
• After a few minutes you will start to feel a little calmer and less anxious
• Rate your axiety level from 1 to 10 and see how much it has improved.  Keep doing this as much as is necessary until you feel at a comfortable level again.

This technique works because your energy follows your attention so when you focus your attention on the bottom half of you body your energy naturally starts to move there, re-grounding itself again.  Once it starts to centre and ground again the root chakra starts to open and your body starts to feel less tense.

Wishing you all the best with the technique.  Hope you get great results.

Erica x

It's The Beans - Accessing Inner Guidance

Back a couple of years ago I starting getting bad pains in my left shoulder. These pains would double me over and seemed to come out of the blue. I was beginning to think I had something seriously wrong with me so I went to the doctor and he suggested it was stomach acid (which seemed bizarre to me as I had no pains in my stomach) and advised going on a tablet to shut off the acid in my stomach. Not liking the sounds of this I decided I would first attempt to access my inner guidance system to see if it could tell me what was wrong before taking these drastic measures. (If you want to find out more about your inner guidance system see my last post Tapping in to Your Inner Guidance System)

So as I was heading to sleep that night I asked that I receive a dream explaining what was causing the pain in my shoulder. I woke up the next day and couldnt remember any dreams but decided to give it a second go so next night did exactly the same thing. Next day I woke up, got out of bed and then thought disappointingly that again I had not received any dreams or information. Just then I heard a screaming voice in my head saying "It's the Beans". The voice (my own voice of course) sounded extremely frustrated. If you can imagine someone trying to get through to someone who just wont listen and they have been trying a very long time and eventually get so frustrated that they just shout the words in sheer frustration at them....then you've got a good picture of what this voice sounded like.

I headed in to my computer and googled shoulder pain and beans and to my surprize up pops loads of articles linking the two !!!!. Turns out I had gone largely vegetarian in the previous 3 months which meant I had been consuming lots of beans and pulses in my diet. Very healthy but unfortunately also very hard to digest especially when the change is made suddenly. I still don't understand why the pain was in my shoulder but in essence it was a bizarrely placed wind pain. I cut back on the beans or just started chewing them much more thoroughly and bit by bit the shoulder pain disappeared.

Hey presto, no tablets, no medication, no unnecessary switching off of my vital stomach acids and one frustrated voice in my head very glad that I finally listened to it.

The lesson of course is that there is a vast amount of information, knowledge and guidance open to all of us. Perhaps it comes from spirit, from the collective unconscious or from our own inner knowledge but it doesn’t seem to become available to us until we consciously ask for an answer or ask for guidance. It can help us with the mundane or the vital in life so we'd be wise not to overlook it.

Tapping in to Your Inner Guidance System

We have an incredible guidance system available to us that many of us overlook. This guidance system can point us in the right direction, give us answers that were previously out of reach, give us knowledge we didn't previously know and can expertly guide us in our life. Furthermore it's available to us all by simply asking and being open to receive the answer.

Here is a trivial but rather bizarre incident that happened to me last week which shows this system at work.

I was doing a cross word puzzle in a magazine in hope of winning a fantastic prize of a cookery course in a top cookery school. I'm not a regular crossworder but had put in lots of effort and had managed to figure out all but one of the clues. I had been musing over this particular clue for days and had gone through every dictionary and every crossword site on the net. Then one day while out walking I got the bright idea to tap in to my guidance system to see if it could give me the answer and that is exactly what I did.

I asked "above" to give me the answer to the question. I continued to walk and within about 3 minutes the word Yoemen popped in to my head along with a picture of a man in a red hat and shoes with red bobbles. Low and behold it fits my space and the letters I already have. So with great excitement I head home, check it in the dictionaries online and it doesn't exist.... I am perplexed but then I google the word and find it is an old word (now spelt slightly differently) for a guard. This fits perfectly with my clue. I search google images and up pops a picture of the man similar to the impression I saw in my head !

So what happened there? Was this divine intervention or did I just simply tap in to information I already knew but was not conscious of. I don't think I'd heard this word before but perhaps I had. Personally I believe that spirit (spirit guides, god, angels, the universe) are there and available to help us and they do guide us. I also believe that there is a collective unconscious which we can tap in to which holds collectively known rather than personally known information and this can vastly widen our range of knowledge. Of course it is equally possible that I just tapped in to my own subconscious and accessed something I already knew but didn't remember.

The key thing is that I had been musing and trying to figure out this answer for days and had got nowhere. This difference now was two fold. Firstly I was in a relaxed state out enjoying a lovely walk in nature and secondly i asked specifically for something beyond myself to give me the answer.

Whether you believe in spirit, collective unconscious or personal subconscious doesn't really matter but what does matter is that you start realising that there is a vast amount of information, knowledge and guidance available to you if you only just ask for it.

So start asking now and I wish you much success in receiving all that you ask for. If you like this post and want to read more information on getting guidance on a health issue in a similar but slightly different way check out my blog post "It's the Beans"

Avoid misery with a recipe for happiness

With all this talk of contagion it is nice to see something about some positive contagion for a change. This article which appeared in the Irish times last week talks about emotional contagion and how happiness spreads. It will definitely make you think and is just the tonic for these dreary times !

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2010/1123/1224283918724.html

Two Angels in Garda Uniforms

In the last two week I've been to two funerals. Both men were taken before their time. One was in his 60's and the other only in his 20's. Both were taken by cancer and have left devasted families behind....

Sometimes life can seem very cruel and unfair. If we look at it from the limited perspective of this physical world it can be impossible to understand and difficult to accept. For me personally, times like this are made easier by a deep sense of knowing that we are more than just this physical life and this physical body - a sense of being part of something greater.

During my lifetime I have been lucky enough to have had some amazing experiences which have confirmed for me that even after we die we are still very much present with those that we love and in light of the last few week I thought I would share one of those experiences with you today.....

In 2002, my father (JJ McKinney) passed away from Cancer. In the years leading up to his death he loved giving me directions (at times much to my irritation - as he often directed me to places that I knew better than him - like my own house :-))

A few years after his death I was driving back home to Aughrim after attended an event in Naas. It was late evening - well after middnight and I'd never driven the back roads from Naas to Aughrim before so was quite unsure of where I was going. As I was making my way home I noticed that I was very low on petrol and calculated that without a single mistake on the journey I would barely make it home unless I managed to refill.

In the darkness I found it impossible to recognise the way I had come and got completely lost. I seemed to have ended up in the depths of countryside with no villages, nothing I recognised and no signs of life. I did not pass one open petrol station in the whole journey. For miles I had seen nothing but one signpost for "Moone" which as far as I knew definitely shouldnt have been on my journey home!

I pulled in at the side of the road feeling growing panic, I had no idea where I was, I hadnt passed a village in ages and my petrol was rapidly running down, the one thing I did know was that I was on a road to Moone (not a comforting fact considering a woman had dissapeared in that area some time before hand). My imagination started to run wild - with lots of not so nice thoughts!

As I looked at the map, almost in tears, trying to figure out where I was, I prayed to my father to please do something to help me. "J.J. - If there was ever a time that I needed directions - NOW IS THE TIME - please, please, please help me".

Minutes later, I jumped sky high when there was a loud knock on my car window. I turned expecting to see some mad man waiting to get me.... only to see a man in a garda uniform looking through the glass. Behind him I saw a squad car with a female garda inside. For those of you that live in a city this may not seem particularly strange but those of you who live in the countryside will know that it is a VERY, VERY, VERY RARE occassion that you pass a garda car on the back roads. So I consider the timing of this event a minor if not major miracle.

I rolled down the window and the garda asked me what was up. When I explained he laughed and told me I was miles away from where I should be and heading in the wrong direction. He then proceeded to offer me a garda escort back to a road I knew.

The Garda car escorted me through miles of countryside until I was safely back to a route I knew. They then blinked their headlights and with a wave they were gone. I continued on the journey still a little fearful that I would not make it all the way on the remaining petrol but feeling some comfort that I was back on known territory. Eventually after a nervous drive home I arrived outside my house - the petrol indicator was indicating just 1 mile of petrol left !!!!

I immediately felt overwhelmed by emotion and gratitute to my father...not only because I was back safe and sound but more so because at that moment I knew without a doubt that his loving presence was always with me and was always watching out for me and that all I had to do was "ask" and he would be there. I knew without a doubt that when we die we still exist at a greater level! To this day this knowledge has never left me and I have had many other experiences where I have felt the strong protective energy of my father present when I need it.

I sometimes look back to that night and wish that I had rung up the garda stations in the area after the event to find out if they had a patrol car out that night and if they escorted a girl to safety. I wouldnt be surprised if the answer was "no". But physically real or not, it doesnt really matter, because either way I know deep in my heart, that, that night I met two angels sent by my father in garda uniforms and for that I will be eternally grateful.

This post is written in memory of Sean O Brien, Robert Beggs, J.J. McKinney and all those that have lost their lives to cancer - may they rest in peace and forever by present in our hearts.

Benefits of Healing in Post Operative Care

When we undergo an operation our energy fields can be affected in a number of ways. The anaesthetic can be seen in the energy system for up to a year after the operation and an operation itself can cause disturbance in the energy field. Healing can help to clear the anaesthetic from the field and to bring the energy back to its original form.

Our energy field is the template for our physical body. Physical illness generally shows up in the energy field before it shows up in the physical body. The physcial body struggles to heal when there is a disturbance in the flow of energy. Energy healing can help to speed up recovery time after an operation, build back up our immune system, reduce pain and post operative complications.

There have been many studies done by scientists or physicians which have shown evidence of the power of energy healing in post operative or patient care. One such study was carried by Elizabeth Targ and Fred Sicher. The study worked with a group of 40 advanced AIDS patients. All patients in the group had the same degree of illness, the same T-cell counts, the same number of AIDS-defining illnesses and were the same age range.

All patients received the usual orthodox treatment but only half of the patients received regular healings over a 6 month period. The other half received no healing. The healing was done remotely (distant healing) so the patients did not know which group they belonged in (the being healed or the not being healed group). The doctors also did not know which patients were receiving healing and which were not.

After six months, the whole group was scientifically assessed with inescapable conclusion that the healing was working. The group receiving healing were healthier on every parameter than the group not receiving healing. They had significantly fewer doctor visits, fewer hospitalization, fewer days in hospital and had developed fewer new AIDS-defining illnesses. The group receiving healing also registered significant improved mood on psychological tests. On 6 out of 11 medical outcomes, the group receiving healing had significantly better outcomes.

A recent personal experience has prompted me to write about this subject. One year ago I had Laser Eye surgery to reverse my short sight. The operation was a success and I was very pleased with the results. As a healer I know how beneficial it would have been to have a few healings after the operation to ensure that my post surgery healing was the best it could be but being a human I kept putting it on the long finger and 1 year later still had not got around to doing it.

After the surgery I noticed that a jumping nerve started in my eyelid. The hospital advised that this happens sometimes and there was nothing they could do about it. I knew healing would probably help but never seemed to find the time to go for a healing. Over the next year the nerve continued to jump and my eyes started to feel more strained and tired. A month ago the nerve stopped jumping but got replaced by bad headaches (something I never ususally experience).

I finally decided enough was enough and called a friend who trained with me in the Brennan School of Healing to ask for a healing. As she worked on me the next day I could feel the energy in my body and particularly my head reorganising itself. It felt like I was coming back in to order and that a weight had been lifted off me. It felt wonderful.

After the healing I felt extremely tired. I could barely get off the healing table but later that day I felt fantastic - more in my body than I have been in ages. The healing was two weeks ago and since then my jumping nerve and headaches have disappeared and I feel better than I have in months. I am going to go for another one or two healings just to ensure that my energy holds the changes that happened in the healing.

Needless to say I could kick myself for leaving it so long :-) but instead of that I think I'll just learn from the lesson instead and make sure that if I am ever having a surgical procedure or go through an illness again in the future that I'll book some healings up front to support my recovery.

If you want to find out more about some of the trials that have been done to prove the effectiveness of energy healing I recommend a book called "the field" by Lynn McTaggart.

If you'd like to discuss whether healing could be beneficial for you I can be contacted on 087 2529325

Law of Attraction Workshop Extra Date

Due to popular demand I am running an extra Law of Attraction Workshop on Sunday 30th November in Aughrim, Co Wicklow.

For more information log on to www.pathwaytothesoul.com or call me on 087 2529325