Healer To Healer™

Q&A with Daria: Was it a sign?

You just made a decision that reflects a new level of commitment to being who you are--congratulations!!  Perhaps you decided to sign up for a class in another city, hire a mentor, or end a relationship that isn't right any more.  It may have been hard, but you've finally broken through a barrier, upshifted your life and your understanding of how the world works!  You're operating on a new level now!

But then something happens....  Your payment is rejected, you lose the mentor's phone number, or you find a memento of when your relationship was really loving.

What's going ON?  Is it a sign that you made a mistake?  

Or is it a test, to make sure you really meant to upshift?

Too many healers disempower themselves by reading the easy message into what happened: oh, the new thing "wasn't meant to happen".  But do you really believe that, do you feel it in your heart?  Or are you just scared, so you use this adverse event as an excuse, as evidence that God, the angels or the Universe said it was better the old way? Things happen, but it's how you interpret them that's important.  Life's meaning can only truly be found through your heart, not your head.  Listen to your heart.

Not the Old Way  

The taiji or yin/yang symbol and other spiritual teachings show us that nothing in the world is absolute.  Within the essence of something is also its opposite.  In fact, that's actually how you first define the new thing, as NOT the old thing. 

How do you know you are living at a new level?  Because you are not at your old level.  You are NOT passing the class by, NOT avoiding getting help, NOT holding onto a harmful relationship any more. When you get used to the new level, you will eventually discover its positive attributes and find out what it really means;  but at first, you're just NOT-the-way-it-was.

So when you have just arrived at a better way of being and something from that old way pops up... what do you do?

People don't evolve spiritually all at once.  Parts of you reach a new level (not the old level) while the rest of you still feels scared.  This is a "good" kind of scared if you're going in the right direction, but that still-scared part of you can manifest all kinds of trouble... 

Leap Those Hurdles

So here's a spiritual heads-up for you, healer:  when you reach a new level in life, watch out, because things will come your way that will feel like tests, sometimes right away.

The still-scared part of you will try to backslide, to take it as a sign to give up.  But you don't have to let it.  If you can feel in your heart that this new level is where you really should be, please consider viewing these challenging events not as signs that the old way was better, but as just a few more hurdles to leap to fully be on your new level.  Perhaps think of them as pop quizzes from the Universe.  And you know the answer.  With a really free mindset, you can even enjoy solving these issues as your new, more powerful self!

As you become more comfy at your new level, it should become easier and easier to leap the hurdles. The parts of you that seem to be resisting will eventually join the party too.

Sometimes we do go in the wrong direction, and realize it later when something contrary happens.  If you aren't sure if your upshifting decision was right nor not, talk it out with a trusted friend, counselor, or spiritual mentor, or write out all the reasons for and against on paper.  I know you can do this!

Joke: The smartest dog

A very intellectual couple felt it important to own an equally smart pet. So they went shopping. At a kennel specializing in their favorite breed, they found a dog they liked quite a lot. When they asked the dog to fetch a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from before 1980, she did it in a flash. When they instructed her to recite pi to 100 digits, she tapped her paw on the ground, correctly and quickly completing the sequence.  She could fetch any book from the bookshelf and passed other tests as well.

They were impressed, purchased the animal, and went home. That night they had friends over. They were so proud of their new brilliant dog and her skills, they called the dog in and showed her off a little.

The friends were impressed, and asked whether the dog was able to do any of the usual dog tricks, too. This stopped the couple cold, since they hadn't thought about 'normal' tricks.

"Well," they said, "let's try it out."

Once more they called out to the dog.  The woman stood up and clearly pronounced the command: "Heel!"

Quick as a wink, the dog jumped up, put her paw on the man's forehead, closed her eyes in concentration, and bowed her head.

Are you still in "school", or are you dreaming your dream into being?

In your first decade or two, you likely learned the "school" method of living your Life.  In school, you are trained and guided by authorities, teachers and adults, who tell you what to do and when, and what to learn, think and believe.  Then they judge and correct your behavior.  Chances are, you were also told what kind of cookie-cutter person you were, what you should like and how you should feel, whether you liked it or not.  And you got used to needing to meet the approval of others.

But that was then, when others seemed to run your life.  This is now. 

You may not be fully aware that you still feel like what schoolkids are seen as:  incapable, inexperienced, and unknowledgable.  I know in my 20s, I was still operating on what I'd learned in my childhood: that I couldn't do anything right.  You likely have been trained to doubt yourself, your inner yearnings, intuitions and knowings.  But that doesn't mean they aren't real.  Artificially doubting yourself doesn't mean you are wrong.

I've seen healer after healer shut down their inner healer, stop listening to their intuition ("oh that was just a random thought", "nobody can talk to trees"), convince themselves their knowings must be wrong and their dreams are unattainable or ridiculous.  Are you, too, trying to live someone else's life because "creative, intuitive healer" was not on the list of official jobs in the school counselor's office, or on the list of acceptable behaviors in elementary school?

How can you, starting today, honor your feelings, intuitions and dreams for what some part of you knows they are: very, very real?

Healer, you came here with gifts to share with the world, gifts that have the power to change the world.  I know because I've lived it and seen it in my mentoring clients, that it's too common for you to doubt yourself because you feel so "different".  Well, not here are HealerToHealer.com!  You're one of us, now, and we all have big healing dreams and amazing intuitive and creative talents. 

I for one would love to hear your dreams!  Put them in a comment below.  And from now on, how can you let yourself dream them?  How can you shift back into hoping and dreaming like you did as a kid?  Your dreams can't come true until you know what they are, and you owe it to the Source of those dreams to have a good long look, and to share them with others.  Leave the "how" to Source.  There *IS* always a way.  YOU just have to hold the possibilities here on earth.

I love you.  Go heal.

Do you KNOW there's something more?

"I used to think that people fell into one of three groups: those who don't believe in anything beyond their basic five senses, those who are open to the possibility that there might be something beyond those senses, and those who definitely believe there's something more.  Yet suddenly I find myself in a fourth, smaller group:  those who know there's something more."

   — Eric Pearl in The Reconnection: Heal Others, Heal Yourself (my #1 recommended book for healers)

"What's your... WHAT?" How NOT to introduce yourself

When you meet another healer, do you first ask what technique they use?  Healers definitely come in a wide range of occupations, and when you meet someone new, you want to get to know them.  But let me tell you how I feel about "the technique question": 

YAWN.

It tells me nothing about YOU, what you do, and who you can help. 

As someone who empowers others, what is the essence of what you do?  I assure you it is not your technique.  You may have gotten that idea from, oh, say, taking a lot of technique classes and even working hard to get certified.  You leave your technique classes speaking the language of technique.  "I do EFT," "I'm a brain surgeon," "I'm a social worker." "I'm a Presbyterian Minister."  "I'm a graphic designer." Or you have natural talents and use these general categories anyway:  "I'm a psychic."  "I'm a painter."  "I'm a coach."

But I assure you, based on my experience mentoring healers and my current spiritual understanding of how the world works, I know you are here with unique healing gifts and a message to share in your own way with a very specific group of people.  Unfortunately most of the healers I meet don't know who they are as healers... (except my clients, of course).  They are "technique practitioners", not healers. 

Think about this:  Your car is behaving funny and you want a mechanic who can fix it.  Coincidentally, you run into three mechanics at a party.  They tell you: I'm a Sears Mechanic, I'm a Goodyear Mechanic, and hey, I'm a mechanic at that place on the corner by the police station.

Did you learn anything?  Do you know which one to choose to fix your poor 1963 Volkswagen bug so you can go to your 45th high school reunion in style?

What if one of them said: "I work with former flower children like myself who had a little too much fun in the 6os, but who deeply appreciate the vehicles of that era, man.  And I specialize in making VW bugs run like new!"

Got it?  When I meet you, your "technique" tells me nothing about you, your work, your gifts, your essence, your passion, your tribe, and most of all: whether you can help me or anyone I know.  it also makes for really short and dull conversation. "Oh," I say back to you, thinking of all the other  practitioners of that technique I've met...

Referrals, word of mouth, and meeting people face-to-face is crucial to your outreach and to building your practice.  Know who you are, so others will too.  Why blow your chances by generalizing yourself into being forgotten?  Of course you can tailor it to your audience, too.  If you meet me at a party, I may say something like this:

"I mentor those who help and empower others to discover their unique healing gifts and message, and to express that in a successful, life-changing business that they leap out of bed in the morning for."

If you meet me at a healing event, however, it may be more like this:  "I mentor healers who are not working at their potential to discover, unleash, and express the master healer they already are on the inside, in a successful, world-changing business or practice."

See the power of knowing who you are?  My whole philosophy is based on building your practice from the inside (of you) out.  All the business-building techniques in the world won't work if you don't know who you are and what you are here to do.  Now go heal your own elevator speech.  ;)  And let me know if you would like a little help.

A "swine flu" by any other name would smell just as... out-of-bounds

So they've renamed it from "swine flu" to "2009 H1N1".  Are you less scared?  Will people get less sick now because the bug seems more abstract and less deadly?  Pish posh, you may say.

But this issue brings up a KEY point for non-medical healers: diagnosis is downright useless to us.  In fact it can be harmful, both to our client's progress and to your practice as a healer.  It's a no-no.

What's in a name?  A lot.  Connotation, judgment, emotion, a sentence with no reprieve.  These words can instantly tap you into cultural and ancestral fears you didn't know you had. 

Don't imagine this: What if the lab called one day after a routine test and said "Cancer" to you?  Then after a moment of fumbling papers, the voice said, "Oh, sorry: clean. You're fine."  What did that word do to you in the meantime?  What thoughts might have raced through your head?  Have you heard the rumor that "cancer" is hard to clear and does some part of you believe that?  What else does that word mean to you? 

Alternative or energy healers must treat each client and their conditions of balance and imbalance individually.  For 100 cases of "migraine" out there, we will find 100 different causes and triggers, energetically and historically.  How do you approach that condition, then?  By not naming it.  By asking the client not what they think they "have" but what their goals are in coming to see you. (And looking even beyond those.)

As a healing pracitioner, by naming a condition or asking for the medical diagnosis, you will immediately limit the healing that can happen in your office.  You will see their condition only through your personal filters that come with the diagnosis.  You will not be able to see what it really is--you will blind yourself as a practitioner, and limit your results. 

Imbalance occurs on many levels, the lowest and last of which is the physical.  As you know, you should be working at a level that is beyond words and our rational mind.  You know that experiences on that level are very hard to put words on -- so don't.  Keep powerful, implication-charged diagnostic words out of it, so you can be in the realms you need to be in.  (When have you ever heard someone advise you to "keep your mind out of your work"?  But I am.)

I could ramble on about this for days, but here's another point.  "Disease" or pain is always a solution trying to emerge.  Sometimes we allow this to happen poorly; hey, who's perfect?  When you as healer judge and limit the process by naming the effects of it, you connect to what's NOT working and lose your focus or connection to the solution.  So you limit your ability to help your client birth their solution.

OK, just one more note: really, that uncomfortable condition is between your client and the Universe.  It's about their own personal spiritual journey and relationship with All That Is.  Frankly, it's not your business to have your ego butt in and call it names.  I promise you, as soon as you do that, you'll be wrong.  (Unless you know as much as God, and if so, I'd love to meet you.)

Instead of naming and categorizing, simply ask the Universe how you can help to support your client's journey and the emergence of their solution.  That's your real job. 

I love you.  Go heal.

P.S.  And I am not picking on the medical community -- I greatly admire modern medicine!  It's amazing.  It's just a different system for healing (and don't tell me we don't need it).  They use a very logical, if/then-oriented way of looking at imbalance and treating it.  They must work this way due to the infinite variety of conditions that are possible and the finite way they work so masterfully with the physical body.  So they categorize collectons of conditions by name and work with the statistically most effective solutions first.  It's not "wrong": it's just the nature of how that system works. 

P.P.S.  I like the new piggy flu name. I feel it takes the face off it, makes it more abstract and hard to be afraid of.  And that can only be good for the collective consiousness, since germs don't cause disease anyway.  But that's another topic.  ;)

What's behind the creative... I mean HEALING process?

In a vivid dream in high school, I read an article I'd written (in the dream) from a newspaper.  It was a great article, on a topic I didn't know much about.  I didn't remember reading the article before.  Where did that complete, amazing and well-written article come from in my dream? What magical source produced a great article in an instant, when I had to struggle for a week to write something like that?

I tend to collect clients who are wonderful creative types: writers, painters, fiber artists, musicians, crafty types.  And they are very much healers, too.  They use their creative gifts in healing others as well as themselves.  Me too.  My art is writing.  In the creative process, I find my best writing, speaking, and healing work with clients feels like it comes, not from me, but through me.  I know in my heart that the book I am writing about the healer's path came from somewhere else, but through me.  I could feel the energy of it when I started.  It was my job to put the physical words on top of that energy, like icing a cake. 

Call the Source of creativity what you like -- Universal Mind, Source, God, Spirit, my Muse -- by any other name, I know it still.  It comes through a connection, which I can sometimes even palpably feel in my body, in my heart area or head or throat.  It is a connection to something indescribable, and when it happens I can feel the information flowing in.  What comes in I know I didn't "think up".  The shapes, feelings and colors of these ideas are soooo delicious, so brilliant and clear, wonderful and satisfying.  Peaceful and grounding.  I can't get enough.  It's divine!

This is the creative process, a connection to the pool of all potential ideas.  As you practice establishing your connection to this Source for creative or healing purposes, you can bring more harmony and order into your life.  When this magic connection happens, there is little hard work involved and the results are brilliant. 

We all crave this connection to Divinity.  I believe this is why we crave art and beauty.  When others perceive this connection in your work, they will feel drawn to read your book, go to your art show, listen to your song over and over, or ask you to work with them to heal.  They want this connection, too.  And this is why there will always, always be plenty of work for artists, intuitives, creatives and healers.

This same process happens in healing.  When you connect to that part of you that is divine and eternal, which happens to be whole, healed, and perfect all the time, then you can "remember" or connect more fully to who you truly are, and healing happens.  Repeatedly making that connection happen is a lifelong practice for any healer -- in fact, that's why our businesses are called "practices".

Whether you believe you are are creative or not, I wanted to make sure you'd seen this brilliant talk from Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray Love, about the creative process.  Listen as an artist or writer, and then listen as a healer, replacing her words "writing" and "writer" with "healing" and "healer".  I think you will recognize something deep, something familiar... and she explains it so wonderfully!  Let me know what you think.

3 Tips to heal your money systems at US tax time

Hello, Healers!  As we finish our tax returns here, this has been a powerful time for me to reflect on the many past money mistakes I've made in my healing practice.  For too many years to admit, I mismanaged and misunderstood my income and expenses.  I had no money management systems for figuring out what was working and what wasn't, or even for dealing with money.  Today, I give you three stress-busting tips to heal your money systems.

Money is a flow of energy and information, and like all other energy, money loves to be loved.  Take a look: how do YOU love money in your practice?  Here are a few practical tips I've implemented over the years that really helped me:

(1)  Welcome money with an attractive, organized way to collect receipts.  If you hand a shoebox of receipts off to an accountant, decorate that shoebox!  If you have a tray or bowl for new, unprocessed receipts, make it beautiful.  Some traditions suggest red and gold to build money, others like green.  What is the color of abundance and wealth to you? 

I now keep my receipts in a golden 3-ring binder covered with glittery holographic stars, separated by 12 monthly tabs you can buy anywhere.  Bank statements have bank recepts paperclipped on.  Small cash receipts for the month get taped by date to yellow sheets of 3-hole-punched paper.  Receipts for trips get taped to and notated on blue sheets of paper.  When I collect all the receipts on a statement, I staple them and remove the paperclip.

(2)  Welcome money with an Income Received sheet.  When my practice was small and growing, I struggled to remember what went into my deposits.  Then one year a chiropractor showed me her Income Received sheet.  Every check or credit card charge she received was jotted on the sheet, and the month tallied.  I bracket the items I deposit together and date it.  My form had these column titles:

Date  -  Amount  -  Check/Cash/CC  -  Services Rendered  -  Notes (Client Name)  -  Deposited

Don't forget to print your sheets on a pleasant color and use your favorite font.  Make it fun.  Enjoy writing down the income you receive!  Fill it out after each client appointment if you can, or else the end of the day.  What a great system to give incoming money the attention and gratitude it deserves.  You can even jot a prayer or heartfelt thank you at the bottom of the sheet. 

(3)  Welcome money with an organized way of processing your bookkeeping and receipt-organizing.  Put bookkeeping time in your schedule every week -- and I mean SCHEDULE IT and treat it like a client appointment, healer!  Keeping this appointment is a key to your accounting freedom.  Sit with your receipts each week and organize them, catalog your car mileage, and/or enter everything in Quickbooks or your spreadsheet.  After two insane years of leaving 100% of my bookkeeping to do at the end of the year, I now do these tasks weekly.  It's amazing how little time is needed to keep on top of everything!

Want a really good reason to systematize like this?  It will save you money and time.  You will write down income and expenses you would have forgotten if you'd put it off.  You will save on your accountant's hourly charges if you are more organized.  And you will have SO much more peace of financial mind. 

Systems like this make your practice run smoothly.  Try it out and let me know what you think.

Do you have any other money systems that have really worked for you?  Please share with us in the comments!  And let me know if you have any more questions about healing your money mind. 

What to do when your client says, "I can't afford it"

If you've had a healing, coaching, medical, or counseling practice for a while, I'm sure you've heard a client say about coming back or taking the next step, "Sorry, I don't have the money for that right now."  It kills the conversation about future care instantly.  What do you do?

Recognize a few things:

(1)  It's not true.  If you promised them $1 million back to come up with that money, they could and they would.  Something else is up.  Something big and scary to them.  What to do about it:  Let go of your need to fix them.  Let go of your healer's ego that says you know better than they do.  Love and appreciate them for where they are in their journey and the intrinsic beauty of human coping mechanisms.  And bless them for helping you let go of one more tiny sliver of that ego.

(2)  They are uncomfortable with speaking their truth.  If they know the truth they don't want to share, claiming no money is their way of avoiding saying it, eg. "I don't want to do that."  "I don't really like you."  

Sometimes what they are trying to communicate is buried so deep they aren't aware of it.  Things like "I don't want to lose the benefits and attention I'm getting from having this condition."   or  "Really truly deeply healing scares the bejeebies out of me."  or  "I'm not sure life can get better and I'd rather give up than try and fail." 

In either case, what I find is helpful is to let go of my need to fix them.  Let go of my healer's ego that says I know better than they do.  Love and appreciate them for where they are in their journey and the intrinsic beauty of human coping mechanisms.  Bless them for this opportunity to get rid of one more sliver of my healer's ego.

(3)  This potentially frustrating exchange is a gift to you.  If you recognize stubbornness or fear or unwillingness to move forward in them, then you have some of your own in your life.  Take a look.  You can only perceive in the outer world that which you have in your inner self.  That's how energy works.  Take a good honest look, especially on those weeks when you have a FEW clients pulling this one on you, hmmm.  When you find this energy inside you, honor it and thank it for protecting you in its way.  Ask it to help you learn to cope consciously with the issue it's protecting you from.  When you do, your clients will stop exhibiting this tendency, too.  And that will be a very nice coincidence.

On top of that, you guessed it.  Let go of your need to fix your clients.  Let go of your healer's ego that says you know better than they do.  Love and appreciate them for where they are in their journey and the intrinsic beauty of human coping mechanisms.  And bless them for helping you let go of one more tiny sliver of that ego.

I love you.  Go heal.

More fun with multiple numbers EVERYWHERE

After much debate, I just signed up for a development program for my healer's group.  It was an issue of expense and progress vs. slow and steady by myself.  Finally I pushed the button, after checking for that "yes, yes, yes" feeling again.  It was still there. 

In the numbers on the receipt, I found meaning.  First, my email receipt came back with the time "10:31 pm", my birthday, and as I mentioned in the last post, always a "go Daria!" message from the Universe for me.  After stressing over the decision, I had a good chuckle over that one. 

Then the receipt itself listed the time as March (3) 22, 23:31:13.  (Must be on Eastern US time.)  I have to say, 322233113  is a pretty fun number!  Looking at the digits themselves, another layer of meaning says a new opportunity is opening, recently planted efforts are beginning to sprout and manifest in a huge way, and all the help I need is around me, cheering me on.

What messages are out there for you?