Now, another piece of good news is that we ARE NOT raising our prices.  We are visualizing that you, our clients, will continue to support us as you have for the past 12 years by coming in when you need, and sending new people our way.  This way we will be here to help you when you need it.  The signing of this new lease not only is a commitment to our landlord, it is a commitment to you, our first priority.

Caring Palms currently has two treatment rooms for rent by some holistic arts practitioner.  This could be acupuncture, hypnosis, herbs, counseling, or others.  The rent for each room is $400 per month.  If you are a holistic arts practitioner, or you know anyone looking for space for their business at a reasonable rate, have them contact us.  We are looking for others to come and be part of our healing arts center.

Starting May 2nd, Caring Palms will be offering Essential Oil Drop Therapy, a new massage modality. Essential Oil Drop Therapy uses several Young Living essential oils which are applied to the spine as droplets.  These oils are then massaged into the spine and then spread throughout the back, shoulders, and neck. 

The oils are then applied to the bottoms of the feet.  The application follows the Reflexology points that correspond to the spine, so that the spine (which connects to all parts of the body) is treated many times. 

Since his initial training, Brian has worked on 10 bodies, all of which had amazing results.  While Brian expected to see some improvement, he was surprised to the extent that the treatment worked.  He felt it was the purity of the essential oils that allowed the changes in each person to happen which is why he wants to make this available to all clients as soon as possible. 

Now, last month’s newsletter announced that we would soon be doing Raindrop Technique.  The practitioner that came in and trained Brian called what they did the Basic Raindrop Technique.  However, it did differ slightly from the copyrighted Raindrop Technique Protocol, so we can not use that name.  On top of that Caring Palms has added their own uniqueness to it truly making it their own. 

If you would like to try this new modality, please give us a call, or schedule online at the Caring Palms website.  (See the write-up below under Modality Of The Month, and select the “Read More” link to view the long, detailed description.  We are expecting a video to be added some time in the near future.)

I read a lot. Not as much as I would like to now that I have small children again. But it's easy to get five minutes here or there to read an article or parts of a website when the kids are playing nicely or things are slow at work.  That being said, and being a reiki practitioner I read a lot of articles about different energy modalities.

 There is a lot of talk about Light Workers. Brian defines a Light Worker as someone who uses positive energy to help others to diminish negative energy in some way. According to Wiktionary, Light Workers are people who feel their life's mission is to heal, educate, and help on a global scale. Which is great. The thing is, if you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up most of them have some idea. Maybe they want to be a fireman. When you ask them why they will probably say, "because I want to help people by putting out fires," or maybe they want to help get kittens out of trees. It's hard to tell with kids. But most of them pick their ideal future job because it helps others in some way (unless your kid is a smart-aleck). My oldest wanted to be a retired carpenter when he was seven. Why he wanted to be a carpenter isn't really important. But the retired part was pretty funny. "Because when you're retired you don't have to work but you still make money." He seems to suffer from a lack of work ethic. Now that he's a teenager, if you ask him what he wants to be, he'll tell you he wants to be a pilot. If he's honest with you, he will tell you he wants to be a wizard that can shoot fire balls out of his hands. Neither of these things are realistic because of his work ethic, among other things.

My point is, the term Light Worker is defined very generally, and can describe most people at some point in their lives as most people feel better if they can help others. But for most people, reality eventually sets in. They accept that they need a nine to five gig that will pay the bills. Maybe it is their dream job. Maybe they get stuck behind a desk, so far removed from making sick animals feel better that they are hating their lives. Maybe they feel like the Light is gone from their lives.  Maybe they think that a Light Worker is someone who is so connected to the heavenly plane that they never let stress get to them, so they could never do that.

And maybe they grow up and refer to themselves as Light Workers. And some of these people don't let themselves become stressed because the worldly plane doesn't matter. They let other people worry for them. I don't think this helps anyone.

So what is Light? Let’s approach this question in the least bibbity-bobbity-boo way possible. Light is electromagnetic radiation. Everything living has an electromagnetic field. We probably all had a lesson in Earth Science class about pigeons and how they use the electromagnetic field of the Earth to guide them during migration. People can feel these electromagnetic fields too. Think of electricity. It does not take much of a jump from electricity to the term ‘energy’. Most ‘energy work’ is also referred to as ‘Light Work.’ In the simplest terms possible, Light-workers manipulate the electromagnetic field to promote healing. So what is the easiest way to help discharge ‘negative’ or ‘static’ electricity? How about grounding?

If you are going to help on a global scale you need to be present on this globe. It requires awareness of the world around you. It requires grounding, which Light Workers teach, but seem to lose the purpose in translation. I'll give you a hint. It's in the name of the practice. Grounding connects you to the Earth so you don't float away. It is meant to balance the body, mind and spirit with the hope that you will then be in the proper state to help others and the world around you. You become hard to relate to if you are constantly floating on cloud nine. Grounding also helps to get rid of that stuck energy that builds up and likes to give you a nasty shock.

One of the reasons I think I’m so attracted to Chinese Medicine and the philosophy around it is the emphasis on balance. Five elements are the keystone to the practice. Each one either controls or fuels the next element, like an elaborate game of rock, paper, scissors.  Meditation, daily exercise, a diet based on complementary elements, and exposure to nature helps to keep the faithful practitioner grounded so they can function effectively on both the spiritual and physical plane. Acknowledgement of an imbalance is paramount to correct it. Awareness of self is required to notice when something is off.

Then the diet can be modified, special herbs can be taken, or meridian points stimulated to return the body to balance. It is a system of medicine built primarily on prevention, and it is in the Tao, represented by what we call the yin yang symbol in the West, that helps maintain that balance.

Balance keeps us healthy. It affects not only our mind and body, but our relationships to other people. There are no shortcuts, and no one can get there for you. You can get a massage when your body is stiff, but unless you modify your patterns, you will get stiff again.

This is a world of consequences; every cause has an effect. We have to be accountable for our actions. We also have to accept our flaws, our hurts, our triggers. Ignoring pain does not fix it. Ignoring it makes the problems bleed into other aspects of our lives. Only by acknowledging our problems can we then take the steps to fix them. It is true that there are certain types of issues that will grow if attention is given to them, but most physical stress can be worked through by regular maintenance or behavioral modification.

We can talk until we are blue in the face about letting Light into our lives and how it could fix everything. It won't. It may have an effect temporarily, until you go back to the job you can't stand or get a phone call from that friend who can't get their life on track. The problems will continue to pop back up until they are resolved. Let Light into your life, it’s important to your well-being. However, it is okay to deal with the events and your life that don’t make you feel like you are connected to the heavens by a beam of Light that lifts you up off the ground in your day to day life. If we weren’t meant to work through negative experiences, we wouldn’t have them. We wouldn’t learn anything either. The Lesson is the Light. So, break your cords, remember to grieve, and learn to let it go. If you don’t, the weight will get too heavy and the scales will tip. 

Stay balanced.

Changing The World

by Brian Dean

When we are young, we all want to change the world.  We see the injustice, the anger, the hate.  We see what is wrong, and we see it so clearly, so black and white.  We have the energy and we have the drive.  Some of us get out and protest.  Some run for office.  But most just complain.

As we get older, we lose the energy, and we lose the drive.  We stop seeing things as black and white, and start seeing them more as shades of gray.  We see how things are interrelated.  Seeing this makes it harder to simply make one change and have everything else line up perfectly. 

As Faith said in her article, we live in a world of consequences.  Every action has a corresponding reaction.  But sometimes, as Newton pointed out, that action has an equal and opposite reaction.  While we tend to fix one thing, we break something else.  For instance, you can’t change fuel types overnight.  If we introduced a new power source for cars, there would still be cars running on gasoline.  There would still be people working in the oil industry.  You can’t just eliminate one thing and replace it with another.  It takes time. 

And we no longer have the energy to get out and protest, or make the big things happen.  But truly, unless you can get elected president, and have the congress behind you, you still can’t make big changes.  But that is why we start small. 

Big changes happen over time.  But those big changes start small.  They start with an idea.  They grow to a hope, then a presence.  Eventually, enough people hear the idea, have the hope, and feel the presence so that action is created, and changes are made.  It goes back to the law of attraction. 

The things that we put the most energy into are the things that we make happen.  Any light worker knows this, but you don’t have to be a light worker to do this.  It is just a matter of visualizing what we want, and continuing to visualize it, putting positive energy into it.  Remember the bumper sticker that said “Visualize World Peace”?  Well, do it.  The hard thing is to keep positive, and not let negativity into it. 

There was a very old episode of Doctor Who, back when Tom Baker starred in the part.  The scene showed The Doctor under one of the consoles of the TARDIS (his space/time vehicle) attempting to fix something.  He comments, “I think I’m going to stop asking… What else could go wrong?”, and at that moment his ship shakes, “Because when I do, something else goes wrong.”  Using energy to make positive change is the same way.  You have to stay positive, and keep the negative thoughts out of it. 

How do you do that?  Well, you notice when you are doing it, and stop yourself.  This is true for anything you want to have happen.  When Caring Palms was looking to move into its current home, there were a lot of bumps along the way.  Every time we hit one, and started thinking negatively, we caught it, dispersed it, and said, “Yes, it will work.” 

And while we do this energy work, we don’t need to have all the answers.  We don’t need to have solutions.  We simply need to put our energies into things being better, and let the energies sort out how this will best be accomplished.  Maybe the energies will reach people that can come up with solutions that work.  And their energies will reach other people, and those energies will reach others still.  Eventually, great change will happen. 

 All you have to do is believe, and keep picturing it.  

Learning From Life

by Brian Dean

I’m pretty sure that most of you can say that you‘ve had events happen in your lives and asked what you should be learning from it.  I know I have.  And while we think of these times, we mostly bring up the times when things have gone horribly wrong.  But, in truth, we should also consider times when things have gone perfectly right as well. 

How we accept them, and see them is dependent on how thick-headed we are.  Now, I have to admit that I am very thick-headed.  All too often, I need to be hit in the face with something to notice it.  I need to be forced out of my comfort zone to change what I am doing.  I most certainly won’t leave it willingly.  My path over the last many years has been one of being comfortable, and being forced out of one situation, then another. 

Twenty years ago, my wife and I lived in Maryland.  It was there that I met someone that taught me basic energy.  She taught me meditation, energy from crystals, earth energy, and noticing energies.  She was very instrumental in starting me along the path that I follow today.  But, then she turned to the dark side of the force.  She started using people for her own desires.  It took me a while to see it, but finally I did.  I was forced to leave my first teacher, and find another.  And after a period of time, I did.  And then I found a student who taught me basic massage while I taught her energy work.  And then there was another shake up. 

During the last year in Maryland, we had been subject to a few wind storms, one of which broke our apple tree, the one that had the best apples.  Then there was a disease that manifested in the peach tree that caused all the peaches to go bad.  These were subtle signs that the energies were changing, but they went unnoticed.  Then the kick in the face came.  The company I had been working at for a number of years went out of business.  My wife’s company announced that they were moving to Florida.  Although we did not want to leave our family and friends, we moved. 

But Florida was where I needed to be.  It was here that I found a Reiki teacher, and took psychic development classes.  Also, while working at my day job, I was able to go to massage school as I was drawn to that type of work.  Then another surprise happened, my Reiki teacher died.  Now we always thought that she had more to teach us, and she was going to make us work for it.

After a few years, I found a new teacher, a teacher of mediumship.  Through all these journeys, I have extended what I can do, and grown my skills into what they are today. 

But one has to wonder what each phase of this journey was supposed to teach me, or more precisely, what was I supposed to learn.  We are here on this earth to learn and to experience.  We are here to grow our knowledge and life energy.  So, an entire life is a series of learning situations, and after we pass, we review it.  But while we are still in it, what do we get from each change, from each lesson? And do we see each lesson as that, or as something bad?

When we came to Florida, we were separated from family and friends.  I had to deal with the deaths of each of my parents from a long distance.  But maybe the lesson was that we needed to learn to stand on our own without help from others, and to learn to deal with loss and the feeling of helplessness.  We were left without support of those we used to lean on.  The lesson was that we could make it without that.  In fact, in years since, we have been the support for others, like my in-laws.

The loss of my Reiki/Psychic Development teacher also made me stand on my own.  It made me learn things without her.  I probably would have stayed with her forever, but I was not so subtly being shown that I needed to move on (which was the same for her other students).

This led me to find another teacher, who opened up the world of mediumship to me.  And this led me to other teachers as well.  Eventually, some day, that will change, and in that change will be another lesson to be learned. 

The key is to look at these events as learning opportunities, not tragedies.  If we sit and wonder why something happened, and think how bad it is, then we will never look for what it is we are supposed to learn.  What are we learning today?