Mother’s Love

You know the expression, “If it’s not one thing, it’s your Mother?” I don’t think I have one client (including myself) who hasn’t grappled with issues around their mother. I’ve also noticed with the healing work I do that when women receive benefit from my work, often one of the first people they will share it will is their mother or their daughter. 

With Mother’s day around the corner, I’ve been reflecting my relationship with my own mother and the complexities that surround mother-child relationships. Although we’ve certainly had our differences, I have come to a place in my life where I appreciate my mother more than ever before. 

Last year a wrote a song called Mother’s Love in appreciation of my mother, mothers in general, motherly love, mother earth and mothering energy. In celebration of mothers and mother’s day, I’m sharing the song with you and the reflections that accompany it in the book/CD Vibration Project:

Mother’s Love is not just a song about my wonderful mother, although her love and generosity was certainly a big inspiration for it. Mother’s Love also speaks of the Earth mother, any child’s mother, creation, life. In fact, as I was writing it and reflecting on the nature of a Mother’s Love, I began to understand that Love itself IS the Mother, where all Creation begins. 

The Love A Child Needs

The energy of motherly love is something that is essential to the healthy development of a baby. Without it, a child will be missing some very fundamental elements for becoming ‘well-adjusted’ psychologically, emotionally and socially. 

When I teach classes on sensory development in children, one of the things that often comes up is the need that a child has to simply be held, and to be held for as long as is needed and know that its mother won’t let go prematurely.

Mother’s Love is unconditional and never ending. With this love, we feel secure, safe and nurtured, and we have less of a need to protect ourselves from the world, so we can relax and be more playful and joyful — like a child.

Mother Earth has given us this Love and, as a whole, we have abused her generosity. My song Mother’s Love is also a plea to Mother Earth to forgive us for our unconsciousness and shortsightedness and to help us remember our connection to the boundless Love, Life and Creative power that is within all of us and that binds all of us as One. 

Check out the Vibration Project CD/book

Listen to Mother’s Love

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Posted in Mothers, Relationships - Marriage, Women's Roles | 2 Comments

How We Heal With The Principles and Practice of BodyTalk — Teleclass Recording

I’ve received a large number of requests asking for a recording of my tele-class  How We Heal With The Principles and Practice of BodyTalk, so I’ve made the recording available for you below. :)  

Through stories, anecdotes and lessons, you will learn:

  • How to tune into your body’s energy and messages to reveal the hidden causes of illness so you get sick less and heal faster
  • How to use a new paradigm for emotional well-being to help you stop being a victim of your life’s experiences and heal from past wounds
  • How you can learn from your body’s aches, pains and other signals to avoid injury and illness

Listen to Karen’s teleconference on BodyTalk

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Posted in Body Psychology, Body Talk, Energy Balancing - Restore Your Soul | 3 Comments

All We Have To Do is ASK

I was so touched this week. A BodyTalk student from New York emailed me to share his experience after reading my blog post about my Grandpa Ellis last week. It just so happens that we have the same last name (although I don’t think we’re directly related).  He spoke about his experience of feeling the connection with his grandfather after he passed and how positively that influenced his life. 

Marc shared his story of learning to play the drums prompted by this connection with his grandfather. It was so touching, I asked him if I could share it with all of you. 

So here’s his story:

Hi Karen, 

I just read your entry about your Grandpa and listened to “By My Side”. The song was so moving and beautiful and stirred a lot of emotions and memories in me about my Grandpa. I’m still tearing as I write this. My Grandpa Larry was the leader of a 15-piece Swing band during the prohibition era; he was the drummer. 

About 2 years ago I started playing drums and I felt his presence very strongly. . .he helped teach me how to drum from the spirit world . . . and then I started gravitating towards playing jazz drums which was a style of music that I hadn’t given much attention to. 

It feels amazing to play jazz style drumming. . . my body becomes alive and feels like it’s improv dancing, I get so focused and lost/tranced at the same time. I listen to a lot of jazz these days and get hypnotized by jazz drummers . . . I can watch and listen to them for hours.

When I started to play the drums . . . out of the blue I would randomly hear snare drum sounds in my head. I didn’t know what to make of it first. Then it started happening more frequently and then other drum sounds would appear like the kick drum. The sounds were loud and beyond ignorable. 

I then had the notion that it was my grandpa trying to talk to me somehow. I had learned a few ways to dialogue with Spirit but it was always through signs, symbols & numbers, rarely would I hear words or let alone drum sounds.  

I posed a question to my Grandpa and or my Spirit Guides cause I wasn’t sure if it was him. I asked “Grandpa . . . if this is you talking to me through drum sounds, show me a sign. Show me Spider-Man hanging upside down, if this is you.” I like to get real playful with asking for signs from Spirit. 

About a week later I had started a new job . . . I had left the gym where I was doing massage and began to Nanny for a 13 yr old boy. The first day on the job he was showing me all the things in his room. At the end of his tour he said, “And THIS is my prized possession!” He reached down on he bottom shelf of his book case and took out a vintage Spider-Man comic wrapped in plastic. And on the cover Spider-man was hanging upside down. 

I had received my sign and my Grandpa used this boy as a messenger. I interpreted that as a double message – I’m in the right place with my 180 degree career change that I was worried about, which all dissolved that instant.

I am doing massage again and energy work. 

Thank you for sharing this story and your song. It’s funny how a little story will affect your experience of a piece of music.

Marc 

One of reason’s that Marc’s story was so powerful for me was because I had a very similar experience. It was almost like I could feel my grandfather more after he died than before; like there was nothing in between us — no personalities, belief systems, defenses or projections — just pure Spirit. 

Marc’s story really demonstrates something that I talk about it almost all the areas of Restore Your Soul; that when we need a sign or support to help guide us, all we need to do is ask! 

Thank you, Marc for sharing your story and your heart! 

Posted in Awareness - Restore Your Soul, Inspiration | 2 Comments

Lessons from My Grandfather

I was hanging out with a friend this weekend and he asked me to read him some stories from my book/CD, the Vibration Project. It has been about 8 months since I wrote the book, so I was looking at it with fresh eyes, almost as if the stories I was reading were about someone else. 

When we got to the story about my grandfather and the song I wrote for him (or actually, truth be told, I think he wrote the song through and for me!), it brought a huge smile to my face, as I reflected on how special he was and how much he taught me about living my life to the fullest and loving unconditionally.

Grandpa Ellis’ Life was not an Easy One. 

My grandfather’s mother struggled with paranoid schizophrenia. Then his wife, my grandmother also had bouts with schizophrenia in her 50s and then died of breast cancer shortly after. His 2nd wife was a real challenge to live with and when they were both in their late 80s, she had dementia. When she was hospitalized with a broken hip, her son convinced by her to write a note accusing Grandpa Ellis of cheating on her. She then left with her son, who put her in a home and she died a few months later, never seeing or speaking to my grandfather again.   

Despite these challenges, Grandpa Ellis never let life get him down and he was a huge inspiration to me on so many levels. So I decided to pay a tribute to my grandpa Ellis and share with you this story and the song I wrote for him from my CD/book Vibration Project. Here’s to you, Grandpa!

“By My Side” Excerpt from the Vibration Project book/CD

I wrote By My Side for my grandfather, Ellis Atkins. He was one of the most positive people I have ever known. A prime example of this positive attitude was after he had quadruple bypass surgery and he was recovering in the hospital. His lung had collapsed and he already had one glass eye, and only one kidney, but when I called him to see how he was doing, he answered the phone with a sparkling, ‘Yyello!! Ellis here!’ He never let life get him down. He taught me so much about finding the goodness in everyone and everything and about taking action from the heart. 

Grandpa Comes to my Gig

One time he came to one of my early gigs at Cafe Sine in New York City. It was a tiny little cafe made famous by Jeff Buckley who used to do weekly gigs there for years. Grandpa Ellis showed up with his hearing aid and his red socks (he only had red socks because he said he liked the color red and if he only had one color, then he would never have to decide what color socks to wear with his outfit!). 

Anyway, when I had finished playing, he grabbed the tip jar that usually remained pretty empty no matter who was playing, and loudly announced “folks, that’s my granddaughter up there. Isn’t she great? I’m sure you all want to show your appreciation for her skill, so I’m going to come around with this tip jar here, so you can do that.” Well, Grandpa Ellis made me a heck of a lot of money for me that night and had a whole lot of fun doing it! 

Listen to “By My Side”:

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Click here to hear more songs from the Vibration Project Album and check out the bookCD.

Posted in Relationships - Marriage | 3 Comments

What Would Maude Do? Go and Love Some More

The character of Maude in the 70s cult film, Harold and Maude, has been an incredible inspiration to me over the years.

I saw the movie for the first time when I was a young teenager and I didn’t really get it. I couldn’t really understand what was so interesting about a young man in his late teens or early twenties falling in love with an 80-year-old woman. But about 10 years later, after having lived a little more (and experienced more of life’s ups and downs), I saw it again and things really clicked.

Watching how Maude lives her life with no inhibitions, and how she completely transforms this young man from a morbid, lonely pathetic kid, to a happy-go-lucky, banjo-playing appreciator of life, made me realize how much I was holding back.

In the film, Maude has decided to take her life on her 80th birthday, because she says she wants to leave with dignity. She has seen it all; a concentration camp survivor, she had experienced the cruelest and the brightest side of human nature; a life fully lived.

Throughout the film, Harold and Maude develop an unlikely, yet incredible friendship and love for one another. At the end of the movie, Maude overdoses on sleeping pills and when Harold finds out, he drags her to the hospital to try to save her.

On the way to the hospital, while in the ambulance, he says, “Maude, please don’t die. I couldn’t bear it. Please don’t die….”

With her response, Maude continues to teach Harold about letting go.

“But, Harold, we begin to die as soon as we are born. What is so strange about death? It’s no surprise. It’s part of life. It’s change.”

Harold says, “But Maude, you don’t understand. I love you.”

And then Maude poignantly replies, “Oh, Harold… That’s wonderful. Go and love some more.”

Go and love some more… that line continues to play in my mind and my heart.

Seeing Harold and Maude a Second Time

The day after I saw Harold and Maude for the second time, I was working as a groundskeeper at a private estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. It was the middle of the winter and there had just been a huge wind storm, so my job was to walk the property and pick up all the branches that had fallen. Reflecting on my life and comparing it to how Maude lived, I cried my way through every inch of that estate.

What was I waiting for? I knew I was a person with so much love in my heart that it would overwhelm me at times, but I held back from expressing it when I wasn’t sure what the response was going to be.

Why would I do that? What was I protecting? Yes, I had been hurt in my life. My heart had been broken many times. But would I have chosen not to have those experiences that made me love so much that my heart could break? NEVER. Those were some of the richest experiences in my life.

So, why was I reluctant to express the things I was feeling? The only answer I could come up with was that I was afraid to be hurt. A perfectly reasonable reason, and yet, when I reflected on my life and the things that were meaningful and memorable, this approach didn’t make sense.

Taking a Lesson from Maude

I made a pact with myself that day that if I ever noticed myself holding back from expressing love or appreciation to stop and ask myself, “What would Maude do?”

I started testing this out. I started sharing all sorts of things that I would normally keep to myself. And guess what?

All sorts of crazy loving started coming back. And I mean crazy in a good way! People who I thought, “oh, that person would never be interested in me,” or “they probably hear that all the time” responded to me in ways that led to some of the most profoundly beautiful experiences I have ever had and even changed the course of my life.

So, now I ask you the same question I asked myself: What are you waiting for?

Whether you’ve been hurt or someone close to you has passed away or you think that you’re not lovable, just try asking yourself, “What would Maude do?” And I can tell you that the answer is probably going to be “go and love some more!”

So let’s go and love some more!

Posted in Awareness - Restore Your Soul, Relationships - Marriage | 8 Comments

Get Off the Couch, Step Away From the Computer and MOVE!

Most of us are way too sedentary in today’s modern world. And those of us who do move are often moving so fast that our bodies suffer from the stress of our ultra fast pace. How much are we missing by not taking the time for conscious, deliberate movement? From my standpoint, A LOT!

I get asked all the time to share some quick and easy exercises to get people started on their conscious movement journey, so I’ve put together some simple videos to get you motivated to start moving and get your Qi flowing! In this video I show you some exercises you can do to get started right away. 

So what are you waiting for? Click and MOVE!

Posted in Awareness - Restore Your Soul, Feeling Overwhelmed, Tired, Low Energy, Meditation, Movement - Restore Your Soul, Yoga- Tai Chi - Qi Gong | 2 Comments

The Story of a Master’s Journey

It’s storytime. When I was in Kindergarten at Montessori school, every week on Fridays we
were visited by Mark, the storyteller. I loved his stories and it inspired me to want to tell stories, too, especially stories that personally inspired or helped me. You’ll have to provide your own milk and cookies (organic or vegan with no refined sugar! ;) )

Today’s story is about my Qigong and Tai Chi teacher, Master Chen, how he came to be a Great Master and his Journey to the West. Master Chen will be teaching in San Francisco for 3 days of workshops from March 30-April 1st.

I encourage you to attend these classes.  Aside from the rare material that he is sharing, just being in the same room with a true master like him and receiving the energy he has cultivated is something you will remember for the rest of your life.

So watch and enjoy!

Posted in Movement - Restore Your Soul, Yoga- Tai Chi - Qi Gong | 1 Comment

Cut Yourself Some Slack

On the first of every year, people make lists of their resolutions, and by
March, they pretty much lose sight of what their resolutions even were. And you know what? That’s okay. Your intention is important and even if you don’t manifest all the things you intended to do in the first three months of the year, there’s no need to feel that you’ve failed. That’s just a state of mind that will hold you back from actually accomplishing achievable goals.

So here’s my gift to you this season – a free, get out of guilt card. Phew!  Now that you’ve released yourself from guilt, you’ll be more open to utilizing tools to help you cultivate the energy that you need to keep the commitments you’ve made to yourself.

Replenish, Revitalize and Refocus with Qigong

For me, practicing Qigong helps me replenish the energy that is so easily depleted by the stresses of everyday life and the disappointment in myself that inevitably follows when life’s realities keep me from achieving my theoretical objectives.  Spending even a few minutes each day (or a few days a week) focusing on my body’s movements and not on the details of everyday demands can vitalize and help me focus on what is most important, and reduce the extreme pressure I put on myself to accomplish everything immediately.

As many of you know, I have studied Qigong with Master Chen and am also a Certified Wudang Qigong Instructor. Take a moment to look at my 30 second video, which is an excerpt of my first Movement DVD, Beyond Yoga: Gentle Movement for More Featuring Qigong’s 8 Pieces Brocade, which will be coming out in a couple of weeks.

I also did my first radio interview on Restore Your Soul this week, which was a lot longer than 30 seconds. For those of you want to listen, click here:

On Saturday, March 17th I gave my first multi-media presentation at EastWest Bookstore in Mountain View, CA.

Have you checked out the Hanuman Center in San Francisco

Posted in Awareness - Restore Your Soul, Movement - Restore Your Soul, Yoga- Tai Chi - Qi Gong | 1 Comment

I Just Want To Achieve Something Important before I Die

I was having a conversation with a client about her life the other day when she said “I’m feeling much better, but there’s one thing that’s eating away at me and I’m feeling it more and more as I get older. I just want to achieve something important before I die.

Her comment really made me reflect and ask myself how I felt about achievement these days. Achievement has been a major motivator in my life. There’s so much emphasis placed on doing things in our society. Being a Jewish girl from Brooklyn, New York, and having a father and older sister who are both ultra smart and successful lawyers, I have often felt the compulsion to live up to the achievements of my family and the society I grew up in. That feeling has often propelled me into actions that have really sapped my time and energy and not usually brought me fulfillment.

So, what does it mean to do something important? It’s all a matter of perspective of what we call ‘important.’ If we consider having lots of awards and titles and trophies important, then we may have ‘success’, but, from my experience, I feel good for about 10 minutes and then a voice inside starts asking, ‘What’s next? What else do I have to accomplish in order to maintain this feeling of achievement?’ The list is never-ending.

What to do?

It’s not that there is anything wrong with achieving things, but I have realized over the years that when I focus on ‘achievements’ as an end goal, I tend to go into autopilot mode and find that I criticize myself a whole lot and I lose sight of my deeper purpose.

The Difference Between Doing and Being

The Taoists have an expression “Do Nothing and Leave Nothing Undone.” It seems like a paradox — how can you Do Nothing and still Get things Done? –until you understand a concept that I started learning about years ago when I trained in the Alexander Technique: Non-doing.

There is a way that we can ‘do’ things without so much effort and tension. That’s what we were taught in the Alexander technique. To allow things to happen and BE a part of the action, without being the one to make the effort to DO it. To be able to NOT DO while DOING is quite a trick, but it becomes easier when you can learn to let go of the need to ‘DO’ and learn to ‘BE’.

‘Easier said than done,’ you say? Perhaps, but I actually feel that it’s our birthright to BE and it’s the graft of the personality, which isn’t who we really are, that DOES. I find the greatest sense of fulfillment when I make ‘being’ more of a priority than ‘doing.’

Look at a Mountain

I had a teacher once who pointed out that human beings spend their lives trying to accomplish things, but look at a mountain. Mountains don’t accomplish anything. They just sit there for thousands of years not ‘doing’ anything. But their beauty, magnetism and sheer presence provide inspiration, support and guidance to thousands (and sometimes millions) of people, plants and animals. And all they are doing is ‘being’ a mountain.

After moving to California and living in view of beautiful Mt. Tamalpais for almost two years and experiencing an entire album of music BEING written almost entirely from her inspiration, I really came to a deeper understanding of what my teacher was saying.

I’ve heard many Masters say that ONE person vibrating in a high frequency (such as pure LOVE) contributes more to the planet than thousands of unconscious people who are busy DOING. So many people are looking for a way to contribute to society and if they only spent more time focusing on BEING, they would feel so incredibly fulfilled and satisfied with their contribution.

The Art of Being

So how do you do it? How do you learn the art of BEING? You practice. For me, Tai chi and Qigong are two forms of conscious movement that have really taught me how to practice being rather than doing. It’s not the only way, but it’s a way that I know and it works. :) Through consistent practice focussing on the energy flow while performing the physical movements, eventually I started to experience a more consistent state of BEING. I wasn’t TRYING to make this happen. It just happened.

Are you living for others or living for yourself? A checklist:

Here are a few questions to ask yourself before you set out to accomplish something:

  • Are you passionate about it?
  • Does it give you energy or do you feel depleted after working on it?
  • Are you more concerned with how others respond to your achievement or how it makes you feel?
  • Do you feel the need to tell others about your accomplishments?
  • Are you measuring your success simply by the end result?
  • What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this?
Posted in Awareness - Restore Your Soul, Feeling Overwhelmed, Tired | 15 Comments

Sole: My Replacement for Morning Coffee

This week’s immune booster is something I’ve been practicing for years and have sinceHimalayan crystal salt sole introduced to thousands of people. It’s a wonderful support to any gentle detox program or energy balancing practice and it’s known to be particularly good at gently removing heavy metals from the body (which has become a major issue these days and is one of the leading causes of alzheimers).

Practiced in the morning before breakfast, sole will nourish your digestive tract and get you ready for a successful day.

Here’s a link to Purchase Salt Stones to make your own Sole

Click here if you missed last week’s immune booster…

Posted in Energy Balancing - Restore Your Soul, Healthy Cooking, Nourishment - Restore Your Soul | 9 Comments