Earthing ~ End of a Cycle

Earthing ~ A Journey 9

My Personal Journey to connect with Earth (continued)

My health was better, but not perfect and an occasional migraine would rear at the most inopportune moments. One happened while in class. Two of our instructors were taking Acupuncture courses, and they looked to us students as their captive guinea pigs, upon whom to try out their new skills. We had our tongues assessed and all sorts. The day of my migraine, I must have looked awful, because the instructor stopped the practical session and asked me what was wrong. His face lit up with an opportunity for an acupuncture treatment (and a demonstration to the class) with a somewhat risky procedure (if he got it wrong). I consented because I was in pure misery, and I trusted his integrity.

He inserted an acupuncture needle at the back of my head, between my cranium and C1 vertebrae. Then he told me to sit and not move at all (as that was risky). I soon became what I can only describe as like a heavily drugged person. I was in total La, La land. I couldn’t concentrate on the practical lesson either. When the instructor asked me something 10 minutes later, I said “what?” not even understanding the question let alone be able to give the answer. “How do you feel?” he said a little later , looking concerned. “Mmmmm, lovely,” I said dreamily. He decided that the 20 minutes that had passed was enough, and came over to retrieve the needle. It wasn’t where it was supposed to be and had disappeared. The colour drained from his face.

The whole class was put on hold as he told me to stand up slowly. It wasn’t on the chair or the floor. He drew a curtain around me and asked me to take off my clothes, carefully, one at a time until I found it. I had got to my underwear before I saw it drop on the floor. “Got it.” I said in a slurred voice. He looked so relieved. He was worried that the very thin needle had somehow worked its way into my skin, and had disappeared into my spine  with death as a possible outcome! I was happy, oblivious and pain free.

The same instructor brought in a Qigong instructor one day to teach us good posture, balance and harmonious movement that protected us from giving ourselves injuries, especially the repetitive strain kind. This small man was also a Master Reiki practioner. He spent some time with each student, watching them during a massage and indicating techniques needed to correct bad posture. When he came to me and said, “You have lovely white light surrounding you completely, I could see it from across the room.” He watched me for a while and didn’t say much else but pointed out ways to use my legs for strength. He then invited me to join his next Qigong class.

Actually, I was wanting to complete a number of extra courses, so working was really becoming hard for me and stopping my progress. Serendipity kicked in. My boss was doing performance appraisals that week. Mine was absolutely appalling. I had never had a review like it. I knew none of it was true, but difficult to prove. Along with it, was a warning letter! This is usually the first step made in the procedure to fire someone, so the alarm bells were ringing loud and clear. I decided to resign (she knew that I would), even though it would mean more financial hardship. I would benefit from extra study time, and would leave the dregs of this part of my life behind. It was a bitter-sweet moment.

Unfortunately, my partner didn’t see it as sweet at all. He totally lost his temper. You’ve chucked a perfectly good job straight down the toilet, he admonished. I had, but life moves on and sometimes you are not meant to go down the destructive path any longer.

My boss kept delaying my leaving party (twice the dates were changed). I knew she didn’t want to hold one, and in truth, I didn’t really care, but it was a matter of principle for me… I was entitled to one and even after my last official work day, I kept pushing for it. She had no choice but to organise it. All long term employees have a leaving party.

I learned from some of the staff (confidentially) that it would not be a happy shin-dig. They had been banned from collecting for a gift for me (a usual and voluntary protocol) and there would be no potluck lunch (another usual voluntary sort of attendance, and a chance for staff to socialise). Instead, a late afternoon (almost at quitting time) tea and cake ceremony had been arranged. The staff were ‘ordered’ to attend.

I arrived and the room had been set with chairs lined up against the walls of a small room. The staff sat gloomily in a quadrangle, looking like prisoners facing a firing squad instead of people wishing me well. I meditated a few seconds of Grounding for myself as I sat down. My boss  made a totally phoney speech, and her subordinate, simpering, production manager then recited a terrible, composed poem that was ridiculous (and not bringing the intended guffaws from solemn-faced staff). I started to giggle and then to  maniacally laugh at her fake friendliness. Our photographer was snapping photos of my contorted face (they would never be printed). My Boss snapped, “Why are you laughing,” totally losing her cool and showing her true colours in front of the staff. I had made up an excuse about the photos making me feel self-conscious, but she knew why I was laughing.

My boss told the photographer ‘to knock it off, no more photos,” cut the poem short that her sidekick was reading aloud, and quickly presented me with a cheap reproduction university watch and lapel pin. I looked at them with bemusement. My boss had never got to know me properly. Everyone who knew me well, knew that I can’t wear watches because they always stop working or behave so erratically, they are useless to me. Neither item would ever be worn, and I eventually chucked them away as they just felt like bad energy.

Ceremony finished, the cake and tea were handed out. The green and white icing was ludicrously garish. As people sat with their refreshments, the University Provost came to sit next to me. He was basically fishing for information. He protected my boss (his protégé) until his retirement some years on from this (when ultimately she, herself would be fired). I think the Provost wanted to see if I was going to proceed with legal action. I had sent in a letter to say that I felt my resignation was forced under unnecessary duress. That was all I was going to do, just for the record, but I had received a letter back from my boss that the matter was now in the hands of University lawyers.

I made idle chat with the Provost, and then said, “did you know that your teeth have turned fluorescent green?” I grinned at him. I looked around, everyone was now speaking with the dental sets of Norwegian Trolls. It was hilarious. The Provost closed his mouth and left to find out which ‘clown’ had produced such a terrible dye in the cake.

Unfortunately the cake had the same effect as an Ebola outbreak. The staff quickly dumped it into a bin and started to line up to quickly to wish me well and exit the building as fast as humanly possible. I felt like I was accepting commiserations at a funeral line… Ah, but that cake was such fun! Someone was definitely on my side. 😂 I was free and I didn’t care that the party had been a total disaster.

(To be continued…)

Earthing ~ Intermission

Earthing ~ A Journey 8

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My Personal Journey to connect with Earth (continued)

I shall interrupt my historical journey for a moment, to bring a current Earthing experience…

I am in Thailand on an island. Koh Samet is a National Park, so doesn’t experience agriculture, or the pesticides and chemicals that go with it. Plastic detritus in the sea is a big problem, but nature still thrives here with a population of endangered Hornbill’s, lizards, snakes, scorpions, and a variety of life that is going missing in other parts of Thailand.

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The island is a playground for the rich and the poor. Everyone here is happy, even those who work selling stuff.

We have spent some long days walking barefoot here. The beaches are fantastic places for Grounding. The spirit renews and the soul soars when we can connect with nature and electrically bond with the earth. I watch and see the energy auras of people. They become flushed with white light rather than the muddy yellows and oranges associated with emotional problems and stresses.

Smiles and relaxed faces all around. Fun instead of work. Community spirit instead of reluctant interactions. Even the stray dogs are happy here, running into the sea, playing and really enjoying life.

I would recommend the beach as the best place to go barefoot and wash away the overcharged and over stressed burdens of modern life.

Kids instinctively know what to do at the beach. They run into the water and sit in it… Even toddlers will do this on their first ever visit to the seashore. We all need to do this, to reconnect with that which makes us healthy, happy, human beings.

Grounding is one of the easiest things to do, yet most of our life is ungrounded, self-inflicted detachment from our earth, and it makes us sick.  As I mentioned at the beginning of this series, the ‘Earthing Movie’ offers the science and the anecdotal evidence for the healing we experience from connecting directly with the earth and the reasons that we are mostly separated from it. Do Watch it…

The Earthing Movie

(To be continued…)

 

 

Earthing ~ Failures

Earthing ~ A Journey 7

My Personal Journey to connect with Earth (continued)

Time flies when you are having fun, or more correctly, when you are working towards a goal. Summer went by in a blur! We didn’t have a long summer break from college, and we’re now well into fall. One of the other students asked me if I would conduct a Reiki session for her Mom.

Mom was not much older than me. She was suffering terrible back pain and had consented to having a steel rod bracing surgically inserted to support her spine. It hadn’t gone well and now she was in hospital fighting infection and in agony. She was to have more major surgery to remove the rods again.

The student told me that she didn’t believe in Reiki, but would I try anyway? I wasn’t feeling optimistic about this, which should have been a warning for me to follow my intuition and keep away from this, but the student begged me.

We arrived at the hospital and were talking with her Mom when the private room door opened. A parade of interns and the surgeon walked in. My heart sank. Mom introduced her daughter, and then me, as lady who was going to give her some energy healing. The surgeon surveyed me skeptically. He spent a few minutes asking Mom questions and giving her info about her surgery scheduled for the next day, while we tried not to listen. As he turned to leave with his entourage, he smirked at me… “good luck, Maybe you’ll have better success than me!” It wasn’t meant kindly.

I took off my coat, and gloves, and washed my hands in the corner sink, but my hands were still chilly. I apologised for their initial coolness as I placed them on her. I moved systematically as I had been taught, focusing on general soothing energy generation. My hands began to generate their usual tingliness as I breathed energy through me. All touch, would have to be in face up position, as she had much difficulty in moving at all. As my hands moved over her abdomen (and of course, low spine beneath), strong magnetic fields started to jerk my hands to specific places. I had felt these before on other people. They were indicative of joint pain, wear and tear and inflammation. But these were the strongest magnetic sensations I’d ever felt. My hands danced as if possessed. They pulled to a specific spot. But from there I became scared…

I felt strongly that a sort of goo was attaching to my hands. I tried to pull it, but then Mom (who had been lying quietly up to now) began to moan and wince with pain. Her eyes were still closed, but her body heaved under my hands ever so slightly.

I was out of my depth on this Reiki session. Mom needed a ‘Master’ to work on her (as I had seen at the Saturday course). I felt unprepared to deal with someone going into the kind of thrashing that I had witnessed when trying to pull out this sick energy from a person. I had to let it slide back, and moved on. I finished the Reiki with soothing energy and gently asked Mom to open her eyes. She was asleep, but came around when her daughter said, “you can wake up now.”

Mom said she felt calm and it was nice, thanking me for helping. I didn’t say anything; I felt a complete failure. We left, and I decided not to tell the student what I had experienced. I had encountered something very bad… Bone cancer perhaps, but I really didn’t know and didn’t want to cause a false alarm. Later the student told me that her Mom still didn’t believe, but that she did note how my hands went from feeling ice cold to almost roasting with heat, especially over her abdomen.

I have only had one other intense instance like this. It came later when I had my massage therapy practice some years later. An elderly gentleman of African origin had walked in one day. He asked for a 30 minute session. I always did a thorough intake questionnaire and discovered some unsettling things on his medical history. I asked him to lie on my table (an adjustable hydrolic table that I could lower for him). I had not asked him to undress as per usual. I used palpation skills and a few easy tests to determine where his pain originated. My heart sank as I felt sticky energy in his right hip, pelvis and low-back. The poor man was in intense pain. Suddenly, the door had flown open and his large, angry looking wife stomped into the room yelling. She was unhappy he was on my table. I asked her to return to the waiting room, and that I could not divulge anything (client confidentiality). I turned to him.

“You need to go back to your doctor.Your problem looks quite serious and you may need to see a specialist.” I was as kind as I could be, and I apologised that I thought a massage would not help. He squeezed my hand and smiled. The man had suffered lymph cancer, but had been in remission for two years. What I intuitively felt, but could not say, was that I suspected that it had returned aggressively and was eating through his bones. I did not charge him, saying that all we had done was an assessment. He thanked me and left. I felt unhappy that I had to turn him away, but I would have been negligent if I tried to give him a massage. A Reiki session might have soothed, but that was not what he wanted or what my practice offered.

Five days later, the receptionist had a message waiting for me as I arrived for afternoon appointments. The man’s son had called to say that his father had died, but the family was very grateful to me. He had felt quite at peace after he left my office. I felt so unhappy. He was such a nice man.

Mom had all her steel rods removed, but still struggled with pain. The student and I were not speaking that often, so other than knowing something of her Mom’s gradual deterioration, I did not learn what the outcome was.

Sometimes, we feel things that we would rather not. Life throws all sorts of tragedies at us. Grounding is the only way to transmute the energies of such encounters. We cannot take on other people’s energies to ourselves, no matter how much we want to help. They just make us sick ourselves. I was not in a position to offer more, though I would dearly have liked to. I knew that I must not let my own ego get in the way. All I could do was learn from my failures.

(To be continued…)

Earthing ~ Experiences

Earthing ~ A Journey 6

My Personal Journey to connect with Earth (continued)

The post Christmas Season was a blah time. I wasn’t eating very well (again) and tended to stop at McDonald’s for an Egg Mcmuffin for breakfast on the way to college. Little did I know, until years later, that they (because of the egg) were the cause of ankle pains and joint stiffness that had me wearing orthotic inserts and taking pain killers. I thought it was the gruelling schedule and the physical demands of the massage practices that were having a physical effect.

It was the second term of school, and the pace stepped up, adding extra time to the curriculum in the form of evening massage clinics for the general public. This meant that I had to take one evening per week off from work. That meant catch up on my work load there too. My boss was not impressed, but I converted holiday allowance time to cover the evenings. I wasn’t going to get away with that forever though…My holidays would quickly run out.

My time at home on weekdays was now mainly just for studying and sleeping. As a consequence, my already crappy relationship, dived into a deep dark hole. I actually hated going home to a silent, brooding partner who was becoming more distant by the day.

One Saturday, his daughter was over. She often came on a weekend to visit her Dad. She was working now and would soon get her own apartment. We got on pretty well, but she was increasingly aware of the tensions and kept to herself beyond shared mealtimes.

I had just gone upstairs to put laundry away when I heard the phone ring. She answered it. There was a lot of talking, so the call was for her, but I couldn’t hear the conversation. However, I felt an awful feeling of dread come over me. There was something about the call that felt wrong and sinister. I had to do something.

Walking in to his computer room, I said to my partner, “I feel something bad is going to happen, please tell your daughter not to go out tonight.” He looked at me as though I’d grown two heads. “Uh huh!” he said shaking his head and returning his attention to his computer.

I had to do something so I ran downstairs and said to her, as soon as she had hung up, “I don’t know who that was, or what your call was about, and you don’t need to tell me, but I have a terrible feeling that something bad will happen if you go out tonight. I am begging you not to go out. Any other night, sure, but not tonight!” She looked at me and said simply, ” OK. ”

She went up to her bedroom. She didn’t go out, and that was very comforting, but I didn’t know the story until months later, when she chose to tell me.

She had been going out with a boy, that I had met only once, for almost a year. He had hearing problems (almost completely deaf) and possibly a few mental problems as well, I thought in hindsight. Their relationship had been good, but mixed with volatile arguments sometimes. It had not been violent until one evening he had punched her in the face. She ended the relationship then and there. He had begged her to come back. She didn’t.

He, apparently, had gone into a meltdown and his friends all blamed her. The phonecall had been from a girlfriend of one of his mates, with an invitation to a big get-together, but her ex wouldn’t be there, and would she come?

It turned out that she learned from the same girl, in a another phonecall some days afterward, that the get-together was so that all the mates could beat my partner’s daughter up to teach her a lesson. The girl had called to apologise, that she didn’ t know about the planned beating and was glad that she had not shown up.

I was flabbergasted. I knew my feeling of danger was profound, but this was just unbelievable.

Relationships are so complicated and often have hidden agendas. I was relieved when she said, “when you told me not to go out, it sort of confirmed my own gut feeling that something was wrong. I completely severed ties with that group.”

Life chivied along with lots of term exams, innane work stuff and little time to think, let alone ground and meditate. I saw my friends when I could which was at least once per month, but never enough. Finally, the Easter break came. While work would continue, I had my weekday mornings free for a while. I replenished my energy.

My Polish friend had thoughtfully invited me to join her on a Saturday workshop with a Reiki Master healer. It required that participants had already completed Reiki I and Reiki II courses, which I had, but I didn’t know if I would be welcomed last minute, without pre-registration.

The session held about 10 participants, I was the 11th, but welcomed anyway, and I paid the course fee in cash on arrival.

The Instructor and her Assistant talked about their backgrounds, and how they worked together. Their form of Reiki had developed into an advanced form.

Each participant would have a turn for a healing session with her but first, she would demonstrate a healing session on a volunteer. The lady waiting in the wings (a client of the Instructor’s) had just been diagnosed with cancer, a form of Leukemia (although we weren’t told this until afterwards), and had consented to this public healing session.

To say that my jaw hit the floor, would be an understatement. The healing session started out with a scan and the usual Reiki format, but then developed into something resembling psychic surgery. The pair of healers worked in silence, quickly and with focused determination. The Instructor would seem to pull something like a stretchy glue away from the clients body, and the assistant would cut it near the skin surface with her hands. This would always have a sort of snap on the Instructor’s hands as she pulled whatever, free and cast it to the floor. What was unbelievable, is that the client had her eyes closed, almost under a complete trance, but her body writhed in a fashion that one would think physically impossible. It was scary to watch, like something out of the exorcist movie, but not quite so malevolent. Occasionally, a moan would come from the client, her facial expression clearly indicating something weird happening.

The two of them pulled what seemed like reams of material/energy out of her body, and then closed off with a soothing  scan and the usual crossed-hands ‘T’ over the heart to end the energy connection in a gentle manner. The room was so quiet. The client didn’t move, but I could clearly see that she was deeply unconcious. I could barely see her breathing, and she was shivering. The Instructor looked concerned. She waved all of us to leave our chairs to surround the client with our hands placed carefully, one at a time on her body. We all took our positions. The client was stone cold, freezing. As we pushed energy into her with controlled breathing techniques, the Instructor piled on about 6 blankets. It took probably 30 minutes of warming her with our energy, but she did warm up and the shivering stopped. Not a word was spoken except for the whispered commands from the Instructor.

I began to feel a migraine start. I tried to ground and shrug it off, but the feeling of nausea was overwhelming. I said nothing. The Instructor looked up from her position at the clients head. She gently took the hands of the person next to her and put them where her own two had been. She approached me and grasped my own hands, gently pulling me away and indicated to other participants to close up the gap. She sat me on a chair a few feet away, pushed some energy into my feet, and gently whispered to me to drink some water. Then she returned to her position with her client.

Eventually, everyone was ushered back to their chairs, and we all took a break for lunch while the client slept on, gently snoring. It was just an astounding thing. No one spoke much. It was all pretty hard to take in.

The client eventually did wake, feeling groggy. She remembered nothing of what had just happened. The Instructor asked her if she felt able to stand up? She did, and they gave her some water. She said that she felt somehow lighter. She came and sat with us for a little while, recovering. She said that she would fight her cancer and she hoped the healing session had helped. She felt it had!

After lunch, and the client already gone, the Instructor explained that she had intended to do an instructional healing, that it wasn’t really meant to have turned into the serious and difficult healing session that we had just witnessed, but that she and her Assistant had encountered a dark, black, sticky energy full of magnetism. They had worked quickly to pull it out of the body, and there was no time to explain what they were doing. She apologised if it had scared us. They had been unaware of her cancer diagnosis until just minutes before the session. They explained that cancer has its own energy and is always difficult to deal with.

The rest of the day was for each individual to receive a ‘healing session’ of their own with the Instructor. Unfortunately, there was not enough time for me, but during the lunch break, the Assistant had been asked by the Instructor to give me a special Reiki attunement. It was lovely, and as good as any healing session that I have experienced. Unfortunately, my friend was a little peeved that I should have this ‘attunement’ when no one else was offered the opportunity.

I really think the attunement was to help me stop retaining so much energy when it entered my body. I was being grounded yet again by someone else.

I would have loved to do a course with this lady, but I was already stretched for time, didn’t have the money, and the course would be two hours drive away from where I lived. I was disappointed…

(To be continued…)

 

Earthing ~ False Bearers and Gifts

Earthing ~ A Journey 5

My Personal Journey to connect with Earth (continued)

Christmas was around the corner and my boss came up with a ludicrous plan. I was to contact all our own suppliers, but she also gave me a list of outside businesses, to ask for promotional items. I was required to market the idea as beneficial to each business as a method to gain University clientele.’ I was horrified. In reality, she wanted the items for staff prizes at our departmental Christmas party. It was her effort to be seen as the ‘benevolent boss!’

She rejected my draft letter to our contacts as it did indicate the true delivery point for the sponsored items. She made me rewrite it (suggesting it was a promotion to the whole University community) and sign it. I was totally ashamed of the idea and outraged at the fact it would bear my name (her insistence as I was the Marketing Manager). It went out to 120 different businesses, some as unrelated to University interests as beauty salons, gift shops and clothing shops. This wasn’t marketing, it was grand deception.

Some of our supply company reps called me to find out what was going on. I’d known them for years. They also knew how demanding the new boss was. I had heard her scream at a few of them behind her closed door. I apologised saying it was out of my hands. They all sent in promotional items like clocks, umbrellas, golf shirts, calculators, and other quality goods. My office began to look like a collection depot for a charity. I wished it were for a good cause but it wasn’t. I was sick about it. This went against every fibre of my being. Some of the other Managers also knew this was wrong too, but kept quiet, except for one, who thought it was my idea and shouted at me for my unprofessional conduct, which she thought was disgusting. She later apologised when she realised I had been ordered to send the letters out.

The night of the party loomed and my boss asked me why I hadn’t indicated my attendance. She looked Angry! “I have an exam next morning… I have to study, ” I answered (it was true). She looked disgusted. “You should have allegiance to your work here,” she countered. I pointed out that it was a voluntary social event, and that not everybody would go (but actually they did because they were scared of her wrath) . At the party, the staff had to play games to win the prizes… There were just so many items, most staff ended up with at least two of the sponsored gifts. None of the staff knew the true source of their prize (as promised in the letter) and thought that it was the best Christmas party ever. My boss was not going to forgive me for not attending. I was the only person missing.

I needed an antidote to the shenanigans.

Our Receptionist had gone to the party (because she didn’t want to incur the boss’s displeasure), but confided to me that she was pretty disgusted at the money spent on it. I asked her what she was doing for the holidays? “I’m cooking a Turkey, to take down to ‘The Food Kitchen,” she answered.

The Receptionist’s daughter worked for Amnesty International and also volunteered at the drop in centre for the homeless, known as ‘The Food Kitchen.’ All the volunteers were taking a cooked Turkey into the centre for A Christmas Eve Dinner Party for the street people. As her daughter was busy trying to get her baby well again, she was taking on the cooking of both Turkeys. “I can buy and cook one too, ” I volunteered.

Later, I also spoke with a friend working at a local’ Food Bank. ‘ She told me about a young Mum who had lost her job and just simply couldn’ t afford Christmas for her four-year-old.

So, on Christmas Eve, I gave my friend a food basket full of food, chocolates, a cooked ham, and a Christmas pudding, all topped by a giant Teddy and a few stocking stuffers to take to the young Mom. I never met her… I told my friend to keep it anonymous.

Then after cooking my stuffed Turkey, I bundled it into my car, still hot, and drove to the homeless drop in centre. My partner didn’t want any part of proceedings, describing it as a ‘complete waste of money.’ Bah Humbug.

There must have been 20 volunteers and at least 120 homeless people. I helped in the kitchen serving, and then we volunteers all sat down amongst the homeless to eat. It was a lovely party. One of the volunteers came in dressed as Santa and handed out homemade Christmas presents… Hats, scarves, gloves and items for survival on the street. Alcohol wasn’t allowed (for obvious reasons), but there was much laughter and lots of hugs. It was such a contrast to the work celebrations and actually my nicest Christmas Eve ever.

My own Christmas was pretty soulless but as always, I cooked a full Turkey dinner and all the trimmings. My ‘me’ time came later after I had finished washing-up. I would always ask my partner if he wanted to join me on an evening walk in the snow. The answer was always ‘no,’ and that year was no different.

The crisp air made the snow crunch underfoot. Tiny ice crystals were drifting in the air, looking like glitter in the glow radiated by street lamps. I could see my breath and felt it freeze on my scarf wrapped over my mouth. Christmas music wafted from houses lit up with neon pink, blue and green fairy lights. Occasionally a door would open and jolly voices would say hello or goodbye. But the magical bit always came with the stars. I could see Orion, the Plough, and the Pleiades group twinkling brightly above me as I moved to the darkened street end overlooking fields. There the universe spoke to me and always filled me with the best energy ever. It was and is the gift that keeps on giving. I felt I was changing and all that I once thought important, was just false and meaningless. It was as though a veil had been lifted and I was truly seeing the real face of real life for the first time. I was tempted to take off my boots and ground my feet, but it was just too darn cold! I counted my blessings and revelled in my great new experiences. The night felt magical.

(To be continued…)

Earthing ~ Transition

Earthing ~ A Journey 4

My Personal Journey to connect with Earth (continued)

 

I was scanning the Saturday Newspaper, when an advertisement hit my eye. A local Massage School was advertising its Fall classes starting in just two weeks. I knew that I wanted a job that helped other people, but it also had to be something that would also provide a viable income stream. This was a two-year accredited course that would provide me with a Registered Massage Therapist Qualification once I passed exams. I had thought about the healing arts during my ten-week hiatus, so the synchronicity of the ad shouted at me. The course was expensive for me, at $14,000 plus expenses, but my Dad had left me a little money… Just enough to cover the tuition fee, the text books and  supplies. But what would I do for an income for two years?

I told my partner about the school and said that it was something that I would like to do. He totally lost his temper at the mention of it, telling me it was a ludicrous idea and that we’d have nothing to live off. That decided me there and then. I am stubborn if not stupid. His lack of understanding about my work stresses really upset me, especially after all the years I had tolerated his financial whims. His pie in the sky attempts to figure out how the futures markets worked so he could make his fortune buying and selling coffee, pigs, or whatever it was, were all failures. Any money that he made was filtered through a Limited company and he never paid any income tax.  I never saw a dime. He didn’t like real work and I seemed to be doing everything. I was fed up, and disillusioned.

I called the registration number in the advert and left my details. I felt quite excited but also a bit nervous about the financial consequences. I had recently paid off our mortgage and my partner’s car loan, but we still had to eat, find money for fuel and pay for utilities.

Monday rolled around. I reported to my Boss’s office (she closed the door behind me). I played to her notions of power, grovelling as she’d expected, but explaining that I needed time to deal with emotional problems, full well knowing that University policy was to assist any employee experiencing health issues, either physical or mental. I caught her in her own trap really. As a long-serving employee with excellent yearly performance reviews, (at least until she took over after my former boss retired). I left her in an awkward position. I requested to go part-time and work flexible hours, basically a 3pm to 8pm shift for the most part so that I could sort out my problems.

She knew that she would have a hard time denying my request. I knew University employment policies as well as she did. She picked up the phone and called Human Resources requesting a meeting…

I won that round, and my part-time status became official, but I would later receive a terrible performance review completely based on her displeasure with me. She was slowly forcing me out.

My course began and would run from 8 am to 2 pm everyday with a lot of homework. It was going to be a gruelling schedule of school, work and late night study… My days would end at nearly midnight as I dedicated 2 to 3 hrs of reading my textbooks every night too! My head was filled with the kind of Anatomical information that first year medical students must learn, coupled with practical massage techniques. I found it almost impossible to write fast enough in the classes as I scribbled down course lectures.  I was the oldest attendee, but there were a couple of thirty-year olds too. The rest were fresh out of college.

Again, very quickly, despite all our different backgrounds, we bonded and the kids treated me really well. They really liked it when I showed them Reiki techniques and shared all my spiritual and grounding experiences. Despite the hard work, I loved going to class.

The teachers were all younger than me, but despite their initial misgivings about my ability to keep up the pace, they too, soon became my greatest cheerleaders.

Somehow, in the beginning, I kept up with it all, despite tiredness. But some things were not so easy. My Boss did make my life unbearable and she spread false rumours of my incompetence to other Managers. She even sent me on stupid missions to do menial tasks for my former employees. She wanted to rub my nose in it! Those employees had known me for a long time. They sympathised with me on my fall from grace and apologised for having to tell me what to do. Staff morale was at an all time low and no one wanted to raise their head above the parapet as my Boss’s wrath had descended on others too, including my old Night Manager, whom she finally lost patience with and ended his contract. Some people requested transfers to other departments on campus. Everyone had become just a little afraid of her. I tried to use the little influence that I had to make their lives better. I shared my healing modalities and grounding techniques with some of them too.

One day, I arrived at work to find our ‘tough cookie,’ receptionist in tears. I asked her what was wrong (already knowing that her six-month old grandson had been rushed into Toronto Sick Kids hospital). “He’s dying!” She sobbed. I went and put my arms around her, and she wept buckets. Fortunately my Boss was out for the day otherwise I doubt she would have found an outlet for her grief. As she calmed down and dried her tears with a tissue, she went on to explain that the hospital couldn’t stabilise him and they were going to do a Lumbar Puncture… Her voice trailed off as one of the men from the production area walked into the reception overhearing our conversation. “Wow those things are really painful,” he said unsympathetically. She started to cry again.

I took both of her hands in mine and looked her in the eyes as I said really slowly, “You can’t give up on him, he needs you and all your family to pray for him.” I am not religious, but I knew that this was the only thing she would understand. I continued, with conviction, “you all need to fight with him to beat this.” She managed a weak smile. She knew of my healing courses, so she wanted to believe me when I said that I would conduct a distance healing and would fight with her. I finished with, “He’s not going to die, we will all fight for him and see him as getting better.” She smiled and said “thank you.”

I walked out with the production guy following me, muttering loudly. “That was pretty irresponsible, telling her that her grandson won’t die,” he said, pulling up alongside me. “Especially when the doctors think he will.” I looked at him briefly and said, “he won’t!” And I walked away to my office.

I was focused as I quietly closed and locked my door. I had a drink of water, and sat, taking off my shoes. I grounded myself and went into quiet meditation for a couple of minutes. Then I lit a candle and began a distance healing focus. My mind travelled. I had never been to Toronto Sick Children’s hospital, but I visualised it anyway. I found myself in a brightly coloured ground floor corridor with a primary-coloured mural splashed on one wall. I followed it and came to a railing and a slight incline into a small semi private ward. I found the baby. He looked so frail with tubes and an oxygen mask on him. I sent him healing for an hour and grounded him in my minds-eye, but I also had a rather weird experience of a vision of Archangel Raphael. It was hovering over the cot.

I came out of the healing meditation slowly, feeling somewhat dazed. I drank a bottle of water and sat for a moment digesting what had just happened. I needed to go talk to the Receptionist before she left for the day. I didn’t care that I had just used up an hour of working.

I explained what had happened during my remote viewing experience. Her eyes brightened as she confirmed that her Grandson was on the ground floor of the hospital, in a room off a brightly painted wall in the corridor. I said “You and your daughter need to call on Archangel Raphael. He is the Angel of Healing. I just had to say it. I felt it mattered. She thanked me and went home to tell her daughter.

The next day, the Receptionist was waiting with a progress report.” He’s got Necrotizing fasciitis (flesh eating bacterial infection) they didn’t do the Lumbar Puncture!” She told me that he was in very serious condition but that now they have a chance if they can stop the ‘flesh eating’ with antibiotics. He had stabilised overnight. I smiled at her. “Keep praying, and be strong for him, he will fight.” She smiled back at me. She told me that her daughter had bought a poster of Archangel Raphael and taken it into the hospital to place on the wall above the cot. They were all pulling for him.

Two days on, she told me that he was recovering. He had lost half of one lung, but they had killed the bacteria and he was strengthening. I never saw a happier grandma than the one who was now hugging me. I told her that the power of love and prayer from all her family had done it and given him the energy and strength to fight. A few days later, she handed me a card from her daughter. It had on it a picture of the Archangel Raphael. Inside, heartfelt words thanked me for helping to save their baby. It wasn’t me, it was the energy, that everyone sent.

I saw the little boy again a couple of years later, for real this time, when I visited his Grandma at home. He came over and smiled at me, touching my knee before bouncing across the room to look after his one year-old baby sister. He had such a feisty spirit! I told his Grandma, “He’s going to be a great teacher one day! ”

(to be continued…)

 

Earthing ~ Uprisings

Earthing ~ A Journey 3

My Personal Journey to connect with Earth (continued)

My workplace became a place of backstabbing. My subordinate Night Manager wanted my job and tried to undermine me at every turn. I found him (a married man with three young kids) having an affair with another employee (also married). The security police had rung to inform me that our alarm system was being turned off at 2:00 am on a series of nights and my Night Manager’s code had been entered. (basically they were using my office for clandestine bonking sessions). However, my boss actually believed that he should not be warned or dismissed. Instead she ‘promoted’ me to a new job I didn’t want, nor was I qualified to do, and gave one of her friend’s my job. My Boss gave me no choice. I knew that this was the first sign that things were going to change, and rapidly.

I juggled my spiritual journey with an increasingly more difficult physical one. My new job gave me a new office, more computer work and demanded official marketing presentations but took away resposibility for any employees. (My Boss blamed me for not controlling my Night Manager’s rampant gonads!). However, other manager’s cooperation was required, and since I had jumped their ranks by 2 grades on the pay scale (something that shouldn’t have happened), it created animosity and I could not rely on their help (and in fact, they went out of their way to thwart my work). I was a long term employee, and my boss (only a year in the job) was not experienced enough to know what she was doing, but she had a way of belittling everyone, including me, while she flouted the rules.

Worse, I was suddenly aware that a deja-vu aspect of my death dream was developing quickly in my new circumstances. Not long after my move, my Boss said that I would be required to travel to New Orleans to some technology event or other, and she and her Supervisor would be coming too. My blood ran cold. It was the exact location in my dream that I had dismissed as silly and extremely unlikely. I had just been given a Dell laptop (an expensive bit of kit for the presentations) and my death dream had showed me going through a presentation on a laptop in the hotel coffee shop, when I would suddenly experience a gripping left side pain and my coffee cup would fall out of my hand, with the obvious death by heart attack consequences.

I kind of went into a meltdown of fear, but said nothing. Coincidence maybe, but many other incidences of the dream scenes were occurring for real,  and I began to panic.

I spent more and more time trying to meditate and ground myself. My world felt like it was spinning out of control and I could only watch and observe it doing so.

The real reason my boss wanted to go with me to New Orleans was to get an all expenses paid trip. It would be a junket on the public purse as our business operated under ancillary services of a University. It was all wrong, and I knew it. The venue would not benefit us or the University! The Provost, (her boss) was going along with this grand deception. I had to think of something to get out of it, but I was worried about income so I couldn’t just quit. I had several months before the New Orleans Technology Conference, so I did have some breathing space.

I thought I needed some time to think about my life without the stress of work. I requested an unpaid leave of absence for 10 weeks. I was entitled under the rules of my long term employment, but I still had to have a reason. I used ‘relationship problems’ as an excuse. My boss actually agreed (to my surprise).

My partner was going to visit his aging parents for six weeks, (and, as I would later learn, to play around with an old girlfriend on the side). My relationship was definitely on the rocks anyway.

I spent my ten weeks with my new friends, pursuing weekend Reiki courses, shamanic rituals, sacred dancing and special workshops that took me to an even higher awareness of connectivity and taught me more healing skills. I almost went to the ‘witch’ lady’s full moon celebration, but when she said they would dance naked around the fire and then sit in a sauna all night to purge their physical bodies, I wasn’t sure, and didn’t go. Perhaps I should have. In hindsight, dancing barefoot might have been very grounding, and the sweat lodges (a kind of shamanic thing), were built over bare earth.

During my solitary days, I sat on the grass in my garden, planted vegetables amongst the flowers and had my arms wrapped around trees on long walks, some barefooted. I was in heaven. All my stresses were out of my life for the moment. It was a blissful and healthy time for me. I ate salads and prepared lovely food from local organic shops and didn’t drink any alcohol. I was really grounded and happy. It was the best summer of my entire life.

But, I had to return to work, and while I needed a new job, I also needed time to implement a course of action to get one, so I continued playing the game.

The New Orleans trip was still three months away and I made a premature risky move to try to avoid going. It was one that didn’t pay off. In fact it backfired spectacularly…

I did a little research on the Technology Conference in New Orleans (coincidently occurring at the same time as the February Mardi Gras festival) and found that we were only given a small insignificant slot. It was hardly worth paying the flights, hotel and food expenses for  three (or as it would turn out, four people) to attend for four days.

And I told my boss in no uncertain terms that “We’ d be wasting our time there, and tax-payer money.”

My boss looked at me with thunderous eyes, walked around her desk and slammed her office door shut, (a sign to the staff on the other side of it, that she was about to tear strips off me). The blast of anger I received could be heard up and down the building. Then she said she would send another Manager in place of me and told me to ‘get out!’

I walked back to my office with staff eyes following me, burning holes in my back. Ten minutes later, my office door opened and my Boss walked in. Her anger, it seemed, had worsened. She was clever, no one heard this conversation and I couldn’t prove it (I did try, and even consulted a lawyer), but she growled in a low voice  that I was to go home immediately (it was a Friday morning). I was to think very hard about my options over the weekend and either come back on Monday with my resignation on her desk, or to grovel for my job (her words) but in that case, she would make my life a living hell for the rest of my work days.

I had not expected this at all. The stress for me was huge…

I had to  figure out what to do on Monday? … And I didn’t intend to go home to tell my lazy partner that I had virtually been fired. I spent the rest of the day in a nearby woodland trying to connect with the earth… And to plan a new life! I meditated and grounded myself all weekend. I was so grateful that I had this in my life, because without it, I think I would have had a complete mental breakdown.

(Incidentally, two of my previous staff were assigned to give the New Orleans  presentation in my place but when they all arrived that following February, the they had been relegated to 30 minutes in a general interest booth, outside of the conference proceedings – along with the trinket sellers – and they did their presentation to ten bored attendees, with five of them wandering away after just a few minutes. My Boss had not even made an appearance. The four of them spent the rest of their time partying day and night at the Mardi Gras courtesy of the Canadian taxpayer).

(To be continued… )

Earthing ~ Energy Lessons

Earthing ~ A Journey 2

 

My Personal Journey to connect with Earth (continued)

My work colleague never went to the meeting she had invited me to. She said that she hadn’t really got time, but she thought it might help me focus on something other than work for a change. She was right. I needed a distraction.

The Spiritual Natural Healing Course was being held in a city a few miles away. I wasn’t actually familiar with the address. Nor did I have a map. I should have phoned the instructor  before leaving work, as I realised I had no idea how to find her house as soon as I reached the outskirts of the city. I did not have the luxury of a mobile cell phone. Three intuitive turns later, I was there. I thought that the synchronicity of that journey was rather spooky, and I felt uncomfortable. How had I found my way there? I wasn’t sure.

There were 10 of us, but only two were men and retired, while the rest of us were working women.

I almost bottled out completely, when one participant introduced herself as a witch, especially as a nearby door violently slammed open, as she introduced herself. It all felt a bit creepy.

I began to think that I had made a huge mistake and was sitting with a bunch of nutty people. The skeptic inside me wanted to run away. Quickly! But then the instructor was asking about boring old me, with a job that suddenly sounded flat, non-productive and materialistic. I felt ashamed that I had nothing much to say about myself while everyone else seemed to have interesting, colourful lives.

Another, very relaxed lady, from Eastern Europe, sat cross legged beside my own uncomfortable form. She was a university chemist, working on research into natural antifreeze found in Arctic fish, for use in ice cream to stop ice crystals forming whilst stored in the freezer for weeks. The idea was that the research would have greater implications for other frozen materials, preserving their long term viability. Her English was impeccably precise, and  I later learned that she could speak five languages quite fluently. She followed the readings of Edgar Casey and was a member of a sacred dancing group. I was impressed, but somehow, the judgemental  me found her geeky. I shook away the thought as unkind and unfair. Maybe I was just tired (or jealous)?

A Polish participant introduced herself as a Reflexologist and Therapeutic Touch Practitioner. Her Aunt had taught her as a child to read tea leaves, tarot cards and to use herbal remedies. She later asked me why I always wore black clothes? “It’s such an insulating colour, it hides your light.” She touched my hand and smiled, “And you have such beautiful strong energy, but you need to ground and to let it shine!” Again, someone mentioned seeing my disconnected, and insulated energy. And I suddenly felt inadequate and critical compared to these sincere people.

These unique women later became my lasting friends, and I am forever grateful to them, because they pulled me through some very difficult times.

The instructor too would be something of a mentor to me when it came to my failing relationship. But I am getting ahead of myself…

We always began each class session with shoes off, sitting on the floor, feet and hands touching the floor. We had to focus on an image of energy flowing through the top of our head, through our body and down into the floor and beyond into the ground, and meditate for a few minutes, emptying our mind and just concentrating on the energy flow and transmuting our energy and healing ourselves. I actually found it a very soothing exercise, and could feel the day’s stress melt away, leaving me quite content. I think that I enjoyed it more than the actual healing practices.

Our literature was a thick set of notes written by the instructor, and  the book, ‘Hands of Healing,’ by Barbara Ann Brennan published in 1987. We most definitely had to feel grounded before we even tried to attempt sending healing energy to another person in the group. It was necessary to have a full focus.

What I found, over the numerous sessions, was rather extraordinary. As I focused energy into the ground, it seemed to change my perception of the people around me too. I felt connected to them despite all our different backgrounds, I felt an unexplainable allegiance, caring and even love towards them (even the not so scary Witch). It was as though all the labels that we had given ourselves at the start, no longer mattered. We were beings, and connected ones at that. A more supportive, caring group of people, you could not imagine.

We held free public ‘healing sessions’ at a local library for interested people, and couldn’t believe the number of people who came to have themselves grounded and receive energy from us mere novices. Everyone seemed to have an open mind, although uncontrolled pain and inflammation did tend to prompt ‘trying anything’ for relief, especially as the sessions were free. A woman with whom I spent quite a bit of time, was completely over-awed by it all. She confided that she had waited (missing her turn twice) to see me, specifically because she saw a lovely white light around me, and that she felt great. She invited me to her local church… Would I please go and offer healing to people there? I went one Sunday and had about 10 people lining up. I was exhausted later. I wasn’t really sure if I was helping, but I was certainly feeling a lot! And with every interaction I had, my own health seemed to be improving leaps and bounds  too. Was this all placebo effect? I wasn’t sure, but when people share caring energy, something magical happens to them.

I changed my clothing, bought brighter colours, and actually found myself not wanting to wear black, even at work. It was more of a gradual thing rather than a forced effort. I am not really a big clothes shopper, but I actually grew to dislike my black clothing and bought a pink suit for work.

After about 5 weeks of great experiences, I left the class one night, to make the hour long drive home, feeling really spacey. I thought I was hallucinating as everything that my headlights hit, seemed to be vibrant and moving. I stopped the car with a large tree visible in the light. I stared at it with disbelief. I could feel its life moving through the trunk and branches. It was the same when I looked at the grass. And the ground beneath me too. It all felt like it was inside me. I had only had water at the class, and I wasn’t ill. I wasn’t drunk, yet I felt an almost psychedelic euphoria without knowing why. Suddenly, work, my relationship and life in general, looked unsatisfactory. I wanted out of the rat race. I wanted what the earth, trees and grass had – deep connection and real experiences!

I wanted a different life, and I wanted it right now. Tears flowed. I felt my heart lift with the realisation that it could be different if I really wanted it to be. I wanted to help other people rather than slog away in the business of marketing and selling things. Things! There is no happiness in things! How on earth was I going to change everything at age 42, with a mortgage, bills, responsibilities, and a partner who took my role as the ‘bread-winner’ for granted? I had no idea.

(To be continued…)

Earthing ~ Beginnings

Earthing ~ A Journey

My personal journey to connect with the earth.

 

I became interested in finding a ‘simpler life as far back as 1996. I was really struggling, especially at work and in personal relationships. I had pursued a higher paid job in Management to pay mounting bills. I was working 12 hrs a day to cope with workload, supporting a deadbeat partner who wouldn’t work, and eating a crap diet of fast food during weekdays and convenience supermarket foods and alcohol on weekends. The treadmill was unrelenting and I felt tired and unhappy.

I was living the exact opposite of what I wanted and thought that I would never break out of the trap that I had put myself in. My last parent had died earlier in the year, and I actually felt quite alone in the world. My partner suggested that I was having mental problems, so I went to the doctor. Her prognosis was that I was physically and emotionally stressed (not mentally ill) and to change my life. I didn’t and that was the year that I got pneumonia in the middle of summer. I had also had to have pre-cancerous cells lasered from my cervix, had urinary tract problems and had been tested for anemia because I was so lethargic. My health was deteriorating and I got infections regularly. Migraines came frequently and I would have to leave work to go lie down with bags of frozen peas around my head and a hot water bottle on my stomach. I was a mess really.

Then I had a dream. In it, I went through a series of work related events, then died of a heart attack in a strange hotel and after an afterlife journey of vignettes of my whole life, woke in a morgue on a cold slab… I also woke at that moment in real life, heart pounding, fear-dripping sweat pouring out of me. I took some deep breaths and tried to shake off the dream. It wouldn’t leave. While it didn’t describe my current situation at work,  an ominous prophetic message was in there… these things would start to happen in 5 years…

I dismissed my dream as silly, but I started to look at eating more healthily and got interested in organic foods and Permaculture. It didn’t last. I kept on pursuing work like a possessed person and gradually, it was all that I lived for, even though I didn’t enjoy it that much. I usually got sick the minute I had annual vacations, so those were never the panacea for my beleaguered spirit either.

One day in 1999, feeling particularly down and under work strain, I mentioned my feelings to a work colleague at lunch time. She said, you should come over to my complex tonight. The residents are having a talk on spiritual natural healing. It might be good for you. I reluctantly agreed to go.

I was late, because I was finishing up a work task that really could have waited, so I walked into a room full of quiet people already settled, and expectantly waiting. There was no sign of my work colleague and so I slunk into the only available seat  in the middle of the room. I was fidgety and irritable and not used to just sitting calmly. I really didn’t want to stay, but felt conspicuous.

The lecture was being given by a middle-aged woman (a Speech Language Pathologist by profession) and her assistant friend. They were fiddling with a slide projector near to me, which for some reason would not turn on. I remember my cutting remark. “Perhaps you should use some spiritual healing on it! ” Yes, I was a skeptic, but I immediately regretted my nastiness when the instructor turned and looked at me kindly, ignoring my outburst. “Welcome,” she said warmly, “perhaps I will,” and the projector leapt into life, making me feel like a complete shit!

The slide show was about Kirlian photography, and then we took part in a series of exercises to experience the energy that the body projects. We had a moment to meditate and ‘ground’ ourselves. I just sat quietly. I had no idea how to do either. We partnered up with the person seated next to us. I didn’t know the woman, but we had to do a body scan of each other with our hands. This was keeping the hands about an inch away from actually touching the person and done in slow sweeping motions from head to toe going completely around the person until reaching the starting point. I felt lots of things coming off my partner… cold points, hot points, magnetic points… It was all just fanciful, I thought. But as I talked to her about where some of those points were, my partner was incredulous. When we shared what we felt with the group, my partner blurted out, “she picked out every injury I had in my body!” The instructor smiled kindly at me again.

We went through some more energy experiments, including using divining rods made from metal coat hangers. Mine went crazy in my hands… crossing all over the place as I advanced toward other people, and sometimes swinging wildly. I couldn’t control them. Meanwhile, everyone else was struggling to feel them move at all. I saw the instructor watching me thoughtfully, but she said nothing.

Our last experiment was to have a try at sending healing energy to another person. I was paired with a man of Japanese origin. It went well until he sent healing to me. My head felt like it was going to explode. A massive migraine started. I struggled through and finally it was over. I sat on a chair feeling exhausted and in pain. People were leaving or chatting in little groups and I just felt like I was going under. I felt cold, almost like a sudden flu had taken over my physique. The instructor approached me…

“Oh you poor thing!” She looked at me with concern. Taking off her shoes (and requesting that I do the same), she sat in front of me and put her hands on both of my feet. She said, “YOU are completely ungrounded, and your energy has stopped moving down below your waistline… Exploding in your upper body and head.” I had not mentioned the migraine at all.

Her hands were hot, making me realise that my feet were freezing. She said nothing, but looked at my feet intensely as she sent the most incredibly comforting feeling into them as she pinned them to the tiled floor. I felt the energy in my head move and a downward flush of warmth through my entire body. It only lasted a few minutes before someone demanded the instructor’s attention. She admonished, “YOU need to go home and rest, and drink lots of water to rehydrate and rebalance. You need to learn how to ground too.” With that, she was gone. I felt so different, and in awe of this weird experience, that I wandered over to the sign up sheet for a course that she would be giving. I put my name and details on it, took the information sheet for the location and wrote out a cheque for the course fee. I had to know more…

(to be continued…)

Earthing ~ Primer

Earthing – A Journey

I have wanted to do a series of posts on ‘Earthing,’ for at least a couple of years now, but have had great difficulty in finding the right way to approach what I find to be a difficult, highly important concept, to portray in any sort of coherent manner. I will give credit to my good friend, raw god, for providing inspiration to approach the subject from a personal viewpoint, rather than preach in any way. It is excellent advice and actually makes it a much easier series of writings.

Before I begin with personal accounts, (which will be mixed with a little of what I have learned from other sources), I want to start in the middle of this subject. A strange place to start any account of one’s experiences, but important for any reader who might need some background on what ‘Earthing,’ or ‘Grounding’ (as it is alternatively known), means to human beings.

This documentary, released in December 2019, gives a very tangible account of why we need to connect properly with our Earth, in an electrical sense, for our own health and well-being. It is factual, has written scientific papers backing up its authenticity and is intended for a wide range of audiences. Since my partner watched this, he has been walking barefoot everywhere he is able (getting quite filthy in our pollution-filled world). I am more selective, as concrete and asphalt roads, and our man-made environments are full of insulating materials, blocking any sort of connection with the ‘earth’ beneath our feet. I hope you will watch this as it is one of the best scientific approaches that I have seen on this subject which is often shrouded in the spiritual and mystic practices of society.

I will continue this series with a very personal account of my own journey with ‘earthing,’ my on and off relationship with it, and where I want to take it going forward. My journey is unique, everyone will find something different, but I think by telling my story, just as in the documentary that you have just watched, I might just help you, my reader, with your own wellbeing journey. But more, perhaps it will also convey the urgent need for a connection with each other and all life on our planet.

Australian Bushfire

This is a personal account of Dinesh Moylan, an Australian singer-songwriter and performing artist, who writes soulfully about his survival of the New Year’s Day Bushfires in New South Wales.

“I have  been adapting to climate change  for a long time. I have been too  busy surviving, starting to clean up the  chaos and feeding starving wildlife to write,  as well as just unable to put the words together, and had  problems with power and internet but it’s now time to start  trying to make some sense of it all. This is what I have learned from  surviving the bushfire that swept through my area on New Years Eve in SE  NSW Australia. I was relatively lucky and saved most of my house, with extensive  damage to a lot of stuff, and was uninjured. Many, many people I know were not so lucky  and whole communities from the entire east coast and far inland were mostly wiped out, with well  over a hundred fires burning at once forming massive fire fronts. It is remarkable that there were  not more people killed.

My house  is part of a communally  owned property inside a large National Park,  part of a vast area of forest along the east coast from NE  Victoria to well past Sydney. The closest town is Cobargo, about 45  minutes drive by 4WD. I always knew a fire would come one day and  had already had a close call nearly 15 years ago, when I spent a week preparing for a  fire that never came because of a change in the weather. This time, we were in the grip of the  worst drought ever, no rain at all since winter, and the bush was full of fuel after a decade or more  of good wet seasons, tinder dry ready to explode. It was so dry it had been too dangerous to do much fuel reduction burning in winter  or spring, although I constantly rake up and burn sticks and leaves around the house as cooking fuel in an outside fire place. Where possible  I built using non-flammable materials – stone, concrete, a bit of mud brick, but with a bush pole frame, wood framed windows and roof structure,  with corrugated iron roof. In the bush, wood not only burns, but is attacked inevitably by termites, so the longer I lived there, (45 years now)  the less I used timber, and developed the design of the house to be as fire resistant as possible, although it is still unfinished.

The  house  is not far above  a small creek, about 20  metres up on a flat section  of a ridge. For years I have  been reducing the fuel load below  us, doing cool burns in winter months,  collecting and burning endless piles of sticks,  and using the trees I cut down around the house  in the open fireplace and wood stove. I had heard that this  changes the fire behaviour, having far less fuel on the ground,  and it was the case that the heat of the fire that hit the house  was far less than everywhere else around, leaving sections of ground unburnt in  the lee of the house, while almost every other bit of ground on the property burned.  I also had built some low stone walls downhill in a semi circle, just stacked stones, (we  have plenty in very barren rocky country).

The  other good idea  I had was to build  a 10 x 10 metre chicken wire cage  for the garden attached to the north side  of the house, so that you walk straight out into it  from the kitchen. This shielded the vulnerable windows facing the  winter sun and reduced access to burning embers. I also built stone  terraced garden beds which helped break up the force of the fire.

Uphill  and directly  behind the house  I built laboriously by  hand a 65000 litre concrete tank,  and had this mostly full of water  with a fire proof line into my bathroom  where I had a petrol-powered fire pump. These  were what saved the house after the fire front passed through. So it  was these preparations over many years that made the place defendable  I thought.

On  the most vulnerable side  facing downhill to the NW, I  built a stone room, 300mm thick walls, double  face, meaning separate stones on the inside and outside of  the wall, with concrete and rubble in the middle. This was  my fire shelter, and the roof is a sandwich of corrugated iron,  fire-proof insulation, fibre cement sheeting, and more iron on top.

It  is a long  story and I  can’t write it all at the  moment. But in a nutshell, it  was those good decisions I had made  in the past that saved me from the bad decisions I  made later on when things just happened unbelievably fast.

The  fire started probably  by lightning in a very  remote and inaccessible area  and had been burning for some 3 or 4  days, 20 kms or so NW of us and moving slowly  NW. I had been watching it via internet and the weather predictions and forecasts etc. Luckily, a  few weeks before, my fire pump had broken down, and the day before NYE I had bought a brand new one.  I spent several days trying to prepare in case the fire changed course, leaning corrugated iron roofing sheets over  windows, and on the 30th December I learned that the weather predictions were very dire for the next day, with very  strong NW winds bringing hot air from inland.

I  read  the predictions  that night and saw the  forecast fire spread, and it was  not good, but thought I had a least another  half a day to finish preparing the house and could  then decide if I would stay and defend, or leave. Along with  everybody else, including the most experienced fireys and the worst case  scenario computer models, I was very wrong.

There  had been a glow  on the horizon the  night before, and a lot  of smoke. Unable to sleep,  I got up many times in the  night. Around 4.30 am the wind suddenly  changed and soon blew hot and smoky. The  glow quickly became very bright and I realised fire  was coming. Soon. Suddenly I saw huge sheets of flame  on the ridge to the south and realized it was too late to leave,  as the access road was in that direction and I faced the risk of being  caught high on a ridge of a big mountain in a car and unlikely to survive.

Fire  then came over the  small mountain to the  NW and I knew I only had  minutes to prepare. I parked  my vehicle in the shelter of the  house, covered it as best I could with  roofing iron, moved some fuel cans away  from the house, grabbed a few things and saw  a spot fire burning uphill from me and realized this was it,  I’d better get inside. I did not have time to wet anything down,  and didn’t do a lot of things I should have in retrospect, but it  just happened so fast. When the front came through it didn’t make a lot  of noise as I had expected, and wasn’t burning high up in the trees, a crown fire,  in fact there are two very large trees just below the house, a black box and a stringybark,  and these trees shielded the house from a lot of heat and wind. It was pitch black and very very  smoky, but I was safe inside. A couple of windows cracked in the heat but did not break, protected by the  sheets of roofing iron. Unfortunately I had an unfinished workshop/solar power room on the outside of the stone  room, and fire got into it and began to rage fueled by building timber, plywood, oil and fuel, paint etc and it went up and toxic smoke began to  seep into the fire shelter and I had to bail out into the rest of the house.

I started the  fire pump and began trying  to save the house from the  fire that I had created. The actual  bushfire had passed and if I had had more  time to protect the shed from embers and burning leaf litter  on the ground I would have been fine. Eventually I got the fire out  but not before losing my solar power panels batteries, tools and a lot more, but the  main structure of the house was undamaged. Everything plastic, plumbing and drainage pipes melted  or burned. 2 Plastic water tanks almost full of water melted and let loose 8500 litres of water in  a mini tsunami in the middle of the fire. I was going to build and enclose these but never got to it.

This happened  at about 6 o’clock in  the morning, by which time  the town of Cobargo, 20 kms further  away from the fire souce had already been  on fire for 2 hours, destroying half the shops  in the main street and many houses and sheds. Cobargo is surrounded  by cleared farmland for many kilometres, but the fire apparently roared along river beds and gullies and  moved and spread at an astonishing rate. Luckily I had phone coverage long enough to tell my family that  I was safe and made a few calls to check on my friends, then the mobile network went out all over NSW, and there  I was with no internet, no phone, no power, no lights, no fridge, no plumbing. Both roads out of the property were blocked by  hundreds of fallen trees and branches. There was no-one within 15 kilometers of me. The smoke was unbearable and I just lay down  most of the day, it was very dark, visibility about 10 meters, the sky an awful eerie orange/yellow, trees crashing down all round every  few minutes, apocalyptic.

The  next day  I managed to  salvage an undamaged solar panel  and battery from a neighbour’s place,  all that was left of it, and rigged up some lights  and got the 12 volt fridge going. I always have several  months of food, as we can get flooded in, potentially for weeks.  I have a store of dried food like rice, pasta, beans, some bottles  and tins, powdered milk, nuts and seeds etc, so I wasn’t worried. I  soaked some mung beans to sprout, and made some yoghurt with a powdered  packet yoghurt mix. My garden had been cooked so no food left there, the  fruit trees baked. I still had plenty of water and a ceramic water filter to purify  it if necessary. I had a rechargeable head torch. My diesel ute was largely undamaged and still  ran so I could use the 2 batteries in it to power and recharge things and run it to keep the batteries  charged. The solar panel would not do anything because there just was no sunlight due to smoke. My generator  had burned also, but I had just enough power to keep the small 12 volt fridge running and 2 LED lights. I had a  battery powered radio in the house and one in the ute, and the ABC, the public-owned broadcaster, was my only link to the outside  world which was in complete chaos.

It was  peak holiday  period in an area  with tens of thousands of  visitors who had been evacuated to  coastal towns like Bermagui, where  there was no power, no communications,  no food, no water and no nothing. Nobody knew what was happening,  authorities were giving out conflicting information and people were  panicking. This was occurring in many towns up and down the coast  with huge fires laying waste to vast areas, 130 or so, absolutely out of control.

The  scale  of the  disaster was astonishing,  all roads and major highways blocked  by fire and fallen trees, complete breakdown.  So I felt pretty lucky. I have learned a lot of  survival techniques from bushwalking, camping and kayaking trips, and also  how to focus and look after myself when I am isolated. When the fire came I  did not have time to be scared, I knew what I had to do and did it. I am  also a meditator with many thousands of hours of practice, and the acquired skill of focusing the  mind, concentrating on what is happening instead of listening to the chattering voice of fear, and  all the horror stories you have stored up in your mind really is life-saving.

Some weeks later  now, still sorting out  power, communications, trying  to sort out priorities. Exhausting,  in a word, chaos. I live now in a world  of black, brown and grey where once was green green green…  I was stuck for over a week until part of the road out was cleared  as it is to the top of a mountain with communications towers, all out of  action because the wooden power poles up to them burned. I walked 3 and a half  hours up to the top to meet my 2 sons who drove me to Cobargo through an alien landscape  of blackened pastures, destroyed farms and houses. Where I live I expected to be severely affected by  bushfire, but this was mostly very cleared farmland and a town I had been shopping in only the day before  the fire. No-one would have believed that a day later half the shops in the main street and quite a few homes  and sheds etc would be on fire at 4 in the morning.

The  fall out   is gathering  momentum from these  ongoing disasters, and  they are not over because  February is traditionally the  worst month, particularly in the  most fire prone state of Victoria. It  has been fascinating to watch, and I will write  more soon, but it is a taste of the future unfortunately.  A lot of people are very, very angry about how totally we have  been let down, particularly by a denialist government who were warned in  April last year by a group of retired fire chiefs and heads of various emergency  services that the disaster we have seen unfold was likely. The Prime Minister, an arrogant bully,  refused to meet with them and fobbed them off to an underling who ignored their warnings. Since then  the government has been trying to shift the blame onto anyone, at the same time clinging to its stance  of refusing to discuss anything but its policy of appearing to meet Australia’s Paris climate targets with the  aid of dodgy accounting. Reality is cracking and vast holes are appearing while crazily the last pockets of denialists in the  government and right-wing media are desperately parroting their deranged rubbish . Strange times indeed.

I  stayed and defended my  house because I thought  I was well prepared, but also because  I had no choice: I had underestimated the  threat of the fire spreading and it was too late  to leave in the morning as I have written. 4 people  died that morning within 20 kilometres of me, one person died  in a vehicle trying to evacuate too late, and 3 others died trying to  defend their homes built in reasonably cleared farmland. I was lucky that  the fire came through early while it was relatively calm and cool.

As I  have written, after  the fire came through  I was stuck there and 3 days  later came a day of catastrophic  fire weather: 40 degree heat and gale  force winds destroyed many more communities and killed a number  of people in many places. I was lucky that there was not another  fire that day. I would not encourage anybody to stay and defend their house  on such a day unless they were extraordinarily well prepared, it is truly terrifying to  imagine a fire roaring through on a day like that. I was lucky and it was a wake-up call  to me to stop being complacent, to finish off projects before starting new ones, and other lessons  I am still coming to terms with. 9 hours after I had put out the fire that entered the ceiling of  a room, fire flared up again from a smoldering timber rafter creeping through a 30cm stone wall and re-igniting  the plywood ceiling, and again I was lucky to see it before it was too late to put out. I was complacent and  will be paying for that for a long time with money, energy and time. Fire does not heed your expectations, it roars  in whether you are ready for it or not.”

Go to Dinesh Moylan’s Website

Dinesh is an experienced Bush walker, amongst other interests. He has written a book about some of his experiences which you can learn from his about page on his website.

Dinesh wrote a few months before the bushfires started, that he had not seen conditions so hot or dry in 45 years.

He has written many songs about Australia, the culture and the land. This is just one of them… I thank him deeply for sharing his experiences. ❤️

Deep Connection

It is 2020, and I have not written for so long. The terrible fires in Canada the US and Australia and the dire prediction of Blue Ocean Events, Climate Chaos and Extinction events, and Political polarisation, world-wide, have thrown us (and me) into a fear state of epic proportion. I have not felt like writing about these events or the great sadness I feel for the loss of everything I hold dear to my being.

I have been thinking all day on how to connect, how all of us connect in this thing called life. Everything seems to be in dissonance and chaotic upheaval right now. I know chaos theory is a mathematical sub discipline studying complex systems of seemingly random patterns. But I also know that Golden Ratios and Fibonacci sequences are the opposite, being simplistic, harmonic mathematical patterns that are eloquent and easy to find in nature, indeed throughout the universe. They are the stuff of creation itself.

The Fibonacci sequence can be applied visually, and musically. There are some lovely, and fascinating Youtube representations you can find of this. It’s repeating pattern is soothing and somehow binds everthing together. So how do we leave the dissonance, and connect to the harmony of Fibonnacci sequences in our lives?

I think that this comes from wanting to ‘sing from the same hym sheet’ to quote a rather tired, but useful, euphemism. So why don’t we try… Why don’t we start sending our love to all situations as a global force to quiet the dissonance?

This video was made almost 10 years ago. Hundreds of people auditioned for the virtual choir, singing in front of their home computer to a virtual conductor (Eric Whitaker) . The result was compiled and its creation has been featured at many Ted conferences and othe venues.

When people focus on the same thing, put their heart and soul into it and let their light shine, all dissonance disappears. It is a simple idea and the beauty is astounding… Could we make the world beautiful again by blocking out all dissonance with focused and loving intentions?

The composition Lux Aurumque (“Light of Gold”) is a choral composition in one movement by Eric Whitacre. It is a Christmas piece based on a Latin poem of the same name. It is such an ethereal piece of music that it gives me hope for 2020. I keep watching it over and over, because it touches my heart.