The Morning Routine

Good Morning!

The other day someone posted this to facebook:

That's right, folks you will be UTTERLY EXHAUSTED!

How about treating YOURSELF with all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster?

That's how I start my day every day, beginning with giving myself a Reiki treatment. So if you have taken a Reiki course with me, you know at the end I always say, give yourself a Reiki treatment everyday (at which point you may have looked at me like I was nuts). The whole point is, whatever you do, start with yourself.

So in the spirit of starting with myself I'm going to share...

The Morning Routine 

1. Wake up. 
Yawn, stretch, breathe, blink and look around. I always marvel how well I can see first thing in the morning. Then I check the time, like all of us. I sleep with the wifi off, so I'm not tempted to check email just yet.
(1 Minute) 

2. Clear my mind. 
Waking is one of the times I'm flooded with all sorts of brilliant and useless ideas. I just write them down. They can be messages or feelings that came up in a dream, inspirational words, or a burning action item for my "to do" list. Whatever it is, I get it down on paper and off my mind.
(1 Minute) 

Yours may be fancy. Mine's just a phone.

3. Give myself a Reiki treatment. 
This is by far the BEST investment of time first thing before getting out of bed. Especially a cold winter morning. I'd used to wake up with my hands buzzing and immediately place them on my eyes. The first Reiki position is doubles as the most useful eye exercise, called Palming.

If you don't have an hour, do 40 minutes. If you don't have that, do a quickie in 15. Key placements: Front of face and back of head, throat and heart, solar plexus and pelvis, feet (repeat at bedtime).
(15-60 Minutes) 

If you're strapped for time, do a quickie

If you don't have any time, take two minutes and remember:

I give thanks for my many blessings.

Just for today, do not worry. 

Just for today, do not anger. 

Honor your parents, teachers and elders. 

Earn your living honestly. 

Show gratitude to every living thing. 

4. Meditate. 

This is alone time. It doesn't matter whether you practice with the breath, a mantra or practice mindfulness. The point is do what you like to do. A beautiful practice to set the tone for the day is a "metta" or loving kindness meditation (listen to a guided session here). When I feel too restless I walk, or mindfully...

(10 Minutes) 

5. Light and Water.

Open the windows / blinds, water your house plants and drink a glass of warm or cold water. You can add lemon or apple cider vinegar to boost your stomach acid and cleanse your system. Let's face it we all need light and water. Let it stream in.

(5 Minutes) 

6. Stretch, dance, sing, move! 

Get out of breath! This is the time for yoga, exercise or whatever physical activities you need in your morning. Go outside barefoot, do chi-gong,cycle or run around. Do what you gotta do to break a sweat. 

(10-20 Minutes) 

I should mention that by this point in my day, there is a very small, chatty and boisterous human being climbing all over me who needs lots of attention and moves around a whole lot. If you have one of these delightful people (or beloved animals) in your life, be grateful. And let them join in the fun. This can be social time.

7. Shower.

Ahhhh. Nothing like dissolving into water. Another one of those times when I'm flooded with brilliant insights or useless ideas... Another great time to practice mindfulness.

(5 Minutes) 

8. Breakfast. 

Normally this entails fruit in either a salad or oatmeal with nuts and cinnamon or shredded coconut, or an anything or everything smoothie, or Montreal style bagel with avocado and tomato, or omelette with pesto, olives, sun-dried tomato and basil, or French toast with fruit! Clearly I love breakfast. Wholesome and simple. If you have a little one around, get them to help. If you don't, this is more time for mindfulness!

(20 Minutes) 

70s TV: Just Like Mom: stay in charge of recipes at all times.

The Only Rule is Actually an Exception

This whole process is 1-2 hours long. Before you protest, there is one rule: LISTEN TO YOUR BODY. You don't have to do it all. There are days I skip the plants (let's face it sometimes they are not thirsty) or the yoga (I might promise to take myself swimming later) or the breakfast (I can always grab something in town after my shower if I'm in a rush). 

And trust me, there are plenty of days when I admit I succumb to email or text messaging before the yoga or shower. I can't do TV, news, talk-radio and increasingly, music. But these might be your exceptions.

The point is I don't kill myself over the exceptions. Remember that thing about caring, being kind to and understanding yourself? That's right. It's the spirit in which all things happen, not the happenings themselves. 

So beginning today, care, be kind to and understand yourself. Your day -- and everyone else's around you --- will be much better for it.

See Also:

Learning Reiki to Heal Yourself and Others

Learning Meditation and Mindfulness

About Salima

Contacting Me

Reiki for Weight Loss? Christina Aguilera Says Yes

Christina Aguilera: a healthy look

Pop star Christina Aguilera gives credit to Reiki treatments for losing 30-pounds and keeping it off. Aguilera, a celebrity coach on The Voice, has discovered two major ways in which Reiki helps towards weight loss. She says, “Reiki puts her mind in a good place and also gives her the discipline to eat healthy and maintain weight loss.”

She's not alone. Many Hollywood stars have reported having discovered the subtle and yet powerful effects of Reiki including Angelina Jolie, Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Aguilera, a busy 32-year-old mom, receives Reiki treatment three times each week. Any new moms here wonder how she does it? Me too!

Aguilera with her 5-year old son, Max

Reiki and weight loss programs

Just like Aguilera, many people who have experienced Reiki report that it helps them:

• feel calmer, more balanced
• make better choices, including regarding what they eat
• have fewer cravings for addictive substances, including emotional eating
• better and more easily manage everyday stresses
• sleep better (insomnia has been linked to obesity)
• exercise and take better care of themselves.

While it's fantastic that Aguilera is focusing on her health and well-being, the truth is most of us can't go for Reiki treatments three times a week. Especially busy working moms.

This is why learning Reiki Level One for self-treatment is such a smart investment.

Transformation: Aguilera at American Music Awards 2012 (Left) and 2013 (Right)

Reiki self-treatment

A Level One Reiki Course is an easy 2-day course that anyone can take and costs about the same as three Reiki treatments. By learning Reiki, we can practice on ourselves as much as we like (ideally every day!) and share the amazing benefits of Reiki with others.

Reiki helps our system more efficiently and easily manage stress, helps strengthen all of our natural healing systems and increases the flow of energy through our body.

What about emotional eating?

Another benefit of adding Reiki to any physical fitness regimen is that even just a few minutes of Reiki self-healing can balance our system and stop food cravings and emotional tendencies to eat.

Because Reiki is holistic, working subtly on physical, mental-emotional and spiritual levels, it has the ability to quickly calm emotions. The sense of wholeness and contentment balances our system, melting away emotionally-driven cravings and the heightened awareness motivates us to take better care of ourselves.

Healthy weight

Celebrities are judged by their appearance way more than us living in the real world. Fashion magazines are notorious for air-brushing or zooming in on faces when bodies don't "fit" society's idea of beauty. We don't need to look like a celebrity to feel good about ourselves but it's clear that Christina Aguilera has found Reiki helps her feel better -- and when we feel better will always look our best. 

Get Reiki or learn Reiki self-care

If you would like more information about Reiki, you can look into receiving Reiki Treatments or Learning Reiki here.

The New Year's Evolution

Happy New Year! 

Really, it's just another day in the continuum of life. Even still, drawing a line in time that says, "this is officially a new year!" reminds us of making a fresh start.

Enter the New Year's Resolution. Yikes!

Resolutions: an overwhelming To-Do list of items that never cross off.

I've always hated these three words put together. They are almost as scary as "Projections" or "Forecasts" except tinged with a thinly-veiled sense of greater control. And worse, we make these promises to ourselves (multiple ones, all at once!) that set us up for shame and failure right in the bleak dead of winter three weeks later. Well, not me. I have another way.

So, I Opted for a New Year's "Evolution"

Evolution: A long, unsteady and natural process

So much better. An "Evolution" is a long, unsteady and natural process (and hopefully going in the right direction). We know at the end of an evolution, the finished product (in this case, "me", or "you") will be different from what it is now. We don't need to know or control what that product will be. We just take note along the way of what is.

So instead of promising, "Starting today, I'm going to do blah, blah blah...", I take a key insight from the past year, months, weeks or days (something meaningful to me and others, hopefully) and watch how I'm evolving with it.

So here's one of my 2014 New Year's Evolutions. Are you ready? 

"I'm more aware of my plastic consumption."

Most of us don't even use these any more. Where are they coming from?

Taaa-Daaa! That's it. Are you surprised? Instead of starting or stopping doing something (aren't we doing enough already?) I've decided to simply become more aware of a habitual reaction to something. So sometime last year I had a moment like this:

Yikes! One look and you want to run out of there

It hit me like a Mack truck. Intellectually I always knew that there were healthier products and unhealthier ones. But the healthier ones *are* the unhealthy ones. I examined ingredients more closely. Apart from MSG, HFCS, BHA, and other obvious toxic chemicals there were literally hundreds more scientific names I'd never heard of. What were they? Were they deadly things pretending to be healthy or healthy things that just sound deadly? Tired, I left empty-handed.

Reading this would scare the bananas out of anyone, and yet it's perfectly healthy!

Even the fruit from the market was later eyed with suspicion. I can't always know every ingredient, so I made a promise then in the back of my mind, that I'd eat responsibly, eat well, eat happily and gratefully and be aware of how I felt after.

My plastic Evolution is similar. Not long ago, I was stuck in a space with the smell of melting plastic. Have you ever smelled melting plastic? Don't! It is noxious. It lingered in my lungs for a long time.

I was trapped by smells like this nose-pinching statue in a dirty Florence back-alley

When I got home I began noticing plastics around me, in my recycle bin, in the plastic bag storage. Even though I eat from the garden in summer, buy dry goods in bulk (bring my own containers), have carried cloth shopping bags for decades, gave up shampoo for a whole summer (trust me it was brutal) and generally am super sensible and sparing about packaging, I realised more than 50% of what I buy is still packaged in plastic. Oh, but it's recyclable, you say. I researched how it's recycled: a long and imperfect process and most plastic still winds up in landfills less than a year from the time it was purchased. Plastic near food and beverages is toxic and don't get me started on the environmental impacts! I became very aware that I wanted none of it.

Awareness of Direct Experience

This is the key ingredient to making it work. Awareness is the opposite of doing (or stopping doing) anything. So instead fearing being fat, ugly, old, broke, sick or dying and then doing something about the fear (dieting, exercising or quitting smoking for example), we simply become aware of our direct experience. And guess what? This awareness of direct experience is mindfulness practice. Come on, you didn't think I'd write a post without mentioning meditation, did you??

Isn't the skin enough? Absurdly over-packaged.

Evolution In Action

I notice every time I want to buy a package of rice crackers packaged in plastic. I may still buy them. I just become aware of my reaction (disappointment, whatever). The point is, I don't do (or stop doing) anything. I just notice what's going on inside. Eventually I may be so aware of the negative feelings that I lose the taste for rice crackers or become aware of alternatives. The habit forms or drops naturally, all by itself, when the mind is ready to drop it, not because I impose a Resolution.

Alternatives!

Et voilà!

That's the whole method. Trust me if you're looking to form a healthy habit or stop a negative habit (listen up if you want to quit smoking, lose weight, exercise more or sleep better!) this is the most natural, inexpensive and long-lasting way to go about it. Evolve!

If you were inspired into an Evolution with your own plastic habit, here is a handy-dandy guide to help you get started. Or tell me, what's your Evolution?

Essential Reiki Kit

One of the reasons I absolutely love Reiki is that doesn't require any props or equipment. No pills, no liquids, lights, gadgets, implements, chemicals... and really no technique... just your hands.

This is also why self healing with Reiki is so easy to do while on the go. Even if you just need a spot healing you can always put your hands on the affected area for a short time and feel the discomfort begin to melt.

...But what about giving someone else Reiki? 

As someone who often travels to see clients, I really feel that it's not necessary to take much. I do have a small Essential Reiki Kit that lives in my purse though, for client visits. And I'm going to spill it. Here's what's inside:

1. Alcohol 

No... not rum, whiskey or gin! You always want to make sure your hands are clean when you are giving a Reiki treatment. I carry a small spray sanitizer bottle in my purse, filled with 99% alcohol. It's better than regular hand sanitizers because it's cleaner, free of soapy and perfumey fragrances and it dries better. If you didn't know, the drier the hands, the more sensitive they are, so put off moisturising until after the session is done.

2. Music

If the person receiving the treatment agrees to music, it can perform three functions. First, soothing music helps to relax the person during the session, which can be difficult when they're still in their own environment. Second, it muffles background sounds and distracting reminders of busy every day life. And third, since you don't want to be glancing at a clock, it helps keep time.

I keep it simple and use my phone. iPods or mp3 players are great too. Newer ones don't need speakers and can amplify in a small room just fine. I play one track. It's 25 minutes of relaxing healing music set on repeat. Each time the track ends I know how much time I have left or whether to begin wrapping up, which for a 60 minute session is a few minutes into the third play.

3. Crystals

This is entirely optional. If you bring crystals, make sure they are spotlessly clean and energized and you know how to use them. I keep them in a small container that has padding on the bottom and is pretty tight when they are all stacked inside. This prevents crushing and chipping. Although I used crystals all the time in the past, I now feel I only need them when they are called for, for example if I need a terminator wand to concentrate a laser beam of healing directed at a tumour. Or when someone requests them.

.... And that's it.

My whole Essential Reiki Kit fits in the palm of my hand.

I ask new clients if they need me to bring a Reiki / massage table (which I'd bring with clean, fresh sheets) but most people are comfortable across the foot of their beds or on a sofa and their favourite pillows and throws for any extra support or comfort.

If you have an Essential Reiki Kit, what's inside?

Psychic Sensing with Reiki

A few weeks ago a student asked: "I pick up psychic information when practising Reiki. Where is it coming from? ...And how is it being sensed?"

I almost jumped up and down. I LOVE getting questions like this! Not because I love discussions with a high "woo-woo" factor, but because it means that people are practising! We talk about this stuff in Reiki courses and training, but we only really understand with experience. I'm basically doing the Snoopy dance.

Drumroll Please! It's Coming from...

Your Guidance! You knew I'd say that didn't you? We learn that once we are attuned to Reiki, we are connected with healing guidance from and for the highest of good. This guidance intelligently knows what's required for healing, and focuses its attention accordingly. We practitioners are simply the conduit or channel.

Sometimes students are skeptical. That's okay. I was too. Yet soon I started knowing things I couldn't have known - important things that pointed to the root cause of the issue or helped me direct healing energy to best address the issue, whether physical, emotional or spiritual. There's nothing like direct experience.

The more we practise, the better we get at understanding how our Reiki guidance is communicating with - and working through - us. Doubt will rear it's ugly head! But if we block out our guidance, we may be limiting healing potential. The more open, patient and unassuming we are, the more easily and accurately we will understand the guidance we are getting and the more healing will be possible. So that's half the answer...

How do we Know Without Knowing How we Know?

If we pay attention (or in this case if we practice mindfulness) we may wonder how this psychic information is being sensed. Guidance comes in many forms. We could see colours or pictures, hear words, feel emotions, or feel prompted to speak, make sound, dance or move. We could just know something without knowing how we know it.

So we can perform studies and look at outcomes, but how do we explain how this works scientifically?

We don't. Simply put, science can't explain everything you experience. Over the last ten thousand years we have relied on science to understand our experience of reality. And while it's given us so much, it can't explain what lies beyond the common five senses because it bases our whole understanding of reality as perceived only through them. Understandably so: science must be measurable. But there are things we just can't measure.

We all have the ability to sense beyond the standard five senses, but this ability has been violently squashed over the last ten thousand years. "Witches" and "charlatans" suspected of having extra sensory perception or psychic abilities were publicly burned or drowned. No wonder we haven't recognized or cultivated these abilities. We've been well trained not to!

Buddha and the Bigger Picture

If we turn to Buddha, the original teacher of mindfulness and one of the sharpest minds ever known, we get a fuller and clearer picture of reality. This is because the Buddha discovered and taught that we have a sixth sense with which to perceive reality: the mind.

In fact, your mind is sensing information into reality from your guidance in the same way as your eyes are sensing the realness of these squiggles I've typed out on the screen right at this very moment. The eyes see, the ears hear, the body moves and feels, the nose smells, the tongue tastes and the mind knows. And yes thanks to science we know the mind isn't restricted to the brain. Neuropeptides, the molecules that know emotions, are scattered throughout the brain and the entire body. A human being is a brilliantly interconnected communication network thanks to our trillions of space-filled cells.

It's fascinating how it works. During Reiki, the mind senses impressions made by your Reiki guidance, and depending on your guidance and your individual makeup, your mind processes the impressions into one or more recognizable "formats". You may know in pictures (clairvoyance), in sound (clairaudience), in smell (clairalience), in feeling (clairsentience), in tasting (clairgustance) or in perhaps the most direct way, in thought or knowing (claircognizance). And although not necessary, once you understand what you're sensing from your guidance, you can then be a conscious partner in the Reiki treatment.

Just know

So next time you are giving a Reiki treatment and "just know" that your hands need to stay at a certain spot longer, that you need to say something, or even that the person had cold pizza for breakfast, know that your mind is sensing this information from your Reiki guidance, from the highest of good. And that you're receiving it for the best possible healing outcome.

Okay, so now that that's done, any more questions? I wanna do the Snoopy dance again!

See Also:

Psychic Skill Building Course

Learn Reiki

About Salima

Contact Me