Amy Allen's Blog, page 4

When Healing is a Slap in the Face

When I was in Beijing, China studying medical Qi Gong (energy work), I heard an amusing story from one of the translators. She said she once was working with a Qi Gong master who had people line up and stand in front of him, one at a time, to receive a healing. When one man stood before him, the master slapped the man as hard as he could across his face. Needless to say, the man was stunned. For reasons that I can only imagine, the master felt that was the medicine that the man needed to get better. And I have this strange hunch that he was right.

 

Someone recently gave me feedback about my book, saying that I come across as “mean” and that my direct approach was contrary to the “kind and loving person” that she perceives me to be in person. I knew that my bold and direct approach would be taken this way by some; I also knew that this was my true voice and I had no intention of watering it down so as not to shock or offend anyone. We are all so entranced by our stories of limitations and our fantasies of being saved by someone or some quick fix, that what I have to say may feel like a slap in the face. But, just like the Qi Gong master, my intent is to heal, not hurt.

 

I now begin every Lit from Within class with this piece of news: “I have deep compassion and reverence for all of the things that have happened in your life that helped to create you as you are right now. But that compassion does NOT agree with your self-imposed limitations, nor does it give you permission to continue your self-sabotaging behavior.”

 

To break free from the illusions that keep us stuck, sometimes what we need is medicine that stings temporarily. But if that momentary discomfort opens the door to your freedom, how could the source be anything but love?

 

 

To read Amy’s book, Lit from Within: The Sacred Path to Healthy Self-Esteem and Permanent Weight Loss, please go to her website for more details: www.litfromwithin.net

Sweat and Elegance: An Unlikely Marriage

I have been through many fashion phases in my life, ranging from an attempt at punk through hippie to preppy. As I look back on those phases (cringing), it is abundantly clear to me that I was trying to fit into some group or another’s identity. It seems that in the process of doing so, I took a long and circuitous route to uncover my true desires of how I wanted to express myself in the world.

 

In the last nine or so years, while developing and living the principles in my book, Lit from Within: The Path of Healthy Self-Esteem and Permanent Weight Loss, I uncovered an aspect of myself that has both surprised and delighted me. What I have discovered is my propensity towards elegance. This quality was so far in shadow for most of my life, that I am still surprised by it. I never felt pretty or elegant when I was growing up, and it never crossed my mind until a few years ago that this was a big part of whom I am in the world. But here it is anyway. And I own it as much as possible, because it feels true to my most authentic self.

 

Recently, I was at a dressy function, and an acquaintance complimented my fancy dress and shoes. She said, “You really clean up well and go all out when you can, don’t you?” I replied, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do!” Confused, she then retorted, “But I see you out running all the time, dripping with sweat! I don’t get it.” Laughing, I said, “But the two things are directly related!” This really confused her even more. I explained.

 

Running and working out with weights has done so much for me, that I am forever dedicated to keep it up (no matter how much I don’t want to sometimes). These sweaty disciplines have changed my body for the better, given me confidence, and kept me from being overweight and unhappy. If it weren’t for these activities, which temporarily make me really sweaty and really smelly, I could not live out my elegant side in the other times in my life. I know, because being overweight and/or not having any confidence in myself for most of my life obscured this awesome part of me.

 

So sweat and elegance are an unlikely couple, but so are my husband and I.  Maybe that is the reason I think we will all live happily ever.

 

                    

An Encounter with Chief Two Trees, Medicine Man

Those who devote their lives to something, whether it is teaching, or God, or really anything, often speak of “being called.” I definitely feel that way about doing healing work, though the “call” has not felt like it came from Heaven. Instead, it has been more like a mutual meeting, or intersection, of my longing to do healing work with modalities and traditions that seem in harmony for that work. There is one exception to this, and that was my encounter with a Cherokee medicine man named Chief Two Trees when I was twenty-one years old.

My mother had heard of him from a holistic practitioner she knew, and one weekend we decided to go up to Old Fort, North Carolina to wait our turn to sit in front of him and be diagnosed. He was the type of healer who could basically look at you and know what was wrong. I have since seen this ability in other healers that I have studied with in China and here in America, but this was my first encounter with such a phenomenon.

There was a glass jar for suggested donations, and he did not take appointments. We waited our turn, and he sat before us and told us a list of ailments and prescribed a long list of vitamins and supplements to cure us. He then looked at my crooked jaw, which, due to my failings at adhering to a proper rubber-band regimen in my years of braces, had gone uncorrected. (Note to self: apologize to my parents for wasting their money.) He then grabbed my jaw with his hands and adjusted it. I was stunned because I felt my teeth connect properly for the first time in my life!

The point of this story (you knew I would get there eventually) is in what happened at the end. He invited me to come and live on his compound and study healing with him. At that time in my life (just out of college with a music degree that I was not interested in using), I knew I was interested in healing, but had no idea that I could ever do it myself. His invitation overwhelmed me and frightened me. He saw everything else in me (it seemed), so he must have been seeing potentiality for a young healer. That was, indeed, a call to healership.

There are events in my past that make me want to travel back in time and slap myself, and being too scared to study with this great medicine man is one of them. I am reminded of these situations most acutely when something in my daughter’s life hooks me in a way that seems unreasonable. Then I figure out how much I want to save her from stupid mistakes; I know I am seeing young Amy and not her. This is always hindsight vision, so I try to be gentle with myself when I find myself lecturing her (always a great parenting tool) about what choices I think she should make. One thing I will definitely tell her: when you find yourself at a crossroads of a path that you know, but is mediocre, and a path that is unknown, but luminous with possibility…take that one!

You can’t motivate a motivator.

This blog is for all of you poor souls who are in a relationship in some way to a person who is a motivational expert, self-help guru, or any type of person who helps others to live better. Surely you see them have moments when they actually struggle with the motivation to do what they know is in alignment with their highest goals. This blog is to help you understand how you then can motivate them!

Um, you can’t.

Let me demonstrate this with a recent interaction with my husband and step-daughter. Allow me to set the scene: it is a Saturday, and for the one millioneth day in a row, it is raining incessantly. Oh, and it is also chilly and windy. This is the day I had planned to run the longest run yet of my career as a step in the direction for running a marathon in the Fall. Not only do I want to run the marathon, I want to run it strong and easy, with great joy. This means a lot of training and a lot of miles over 26.2 in order to accomplish this goal, and I am well on my way.

OK, back to the crappy weather. I am dressed for the run, filled with dread, and looking out the window. My sweet husband tries to help. Here’s how it went:

Brian: “Hey, what was that great quote you told me you saw on Twitter the other day about roadblocks?”

Amy: “Obstacles. It was about obstacles.” Then, in the most monotonous, robotic voice I could summon (in order to demonstrate just how uninspired I was by it presently), I repeated the quote, “Obstacles are those things we see when we take our eyes off of the goal.”

*Pause*

Amy: “Hey, don’t quote me back to myself! It’s annoying!”

Brian [laughing]: “OK, OK, well sweetie, why don’t you just stay home, relax on the sofa, and I’ll cook you dinner?”

Amy, looking back at the clock: “It’s 3:30 in the afternoon. Even your parents don’t eat dinner this early.”

*Pause*

Amy: “Hey, don’t use reverse psychology on me! It won’t work.” [Pouts]

Then Katelyn tries to help: “Oh, Amy, think about that cool picture you showed me on Facebook this morning. You know, the one where your comfort zone was in one circle and where the magic happens was in another circle? Think of that to get you out of the door.”

*Pause*

Amy: “Katelyn, you don’t need to tell me about something I showed you just a few hours ago. But thanks for trying to help.” [Growls]

The bottom line is this: when you are the one normally motivating people, you know all of the mental tricks and even truths that help you to push through the barriers. So having people repeat back to you the inspirational message that you either generated or found in someone else is not only unhelpful, but extremely annoying. So while we (speaking for all motivational people, which I am sure they appreciate) greatly love you for your support and desire to help, please remember that we are still human although we often seem to make superhuman choices. There is very little anyone can say that will change our minds; we know we either have to shut up and do it or sit down and eat dinner at 3:30 and feel like a total loser. Please love us either way and don’t taunt us for a moment of human weakness.

And, oh, I did find the inner strength to get out there and do it. I ran 16 miles, in constant rain and cold wind. I got a lot of honks; people either admire me or think I am an escapee from an insane asylum. (I think I had said earlier in the day, “Only crazy people go running in this crap.”) My legs were in so much pain for the last mile that I cried really hard while running, which is a weird sensation (and not one I recommend). But I am stronger for it and I trust myself to meet these challenges head on. Good thing I had my superhero cape to keep me dry for the first 20 seconds. I guess you could say that a little magic happened after all.

Keeping up with the Kardashians..straight into Hell

I know the subject matter for this blog may be too obvious to state, but the idea won’t let me go. And I know enough about myself to know that when a concept won’t let me go, I may as well succumb to it, no matter how obvious it may seem.

Besides, things that seem obvious still keep us in their grips. And just because we intellectually understand obvious ideas does not mean we can overcome them. Take for instance, obesity. It is obvious to all of us that the remedy to obesity is to live a healthy lifestyle that includes nutritious food, exercise, proper rest, and hydration (among many other psychological and spiritual aspects). There is pretty much no mystery there; it’s obvious! Yet, everyone in America is scratching their heads as to why we can’t seem to stop the obesity train from continuing to gain momentum. So maybe what is “obvious” about why our culture embraces people like the Kardashians as a worthwhile endeavor for our entertainment isn’t as obvious after all.

Less than one hundred years ago in this country, women struggled for the same basics rights as men. As we all know, it was not until 1920 that women could even vote. It took 50 more years for black people to begin to enjoy the same basic rights as white people. In fact, today is the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. Think of all of the hardships, violence, peaceful protests, and deaths to win basic human rights for the citizens of America.

What do we do with this freedom? We sit on our fat butts and stuff our faces with Cheese Puffs while watching the inane, banal, and absolutely ridiculous lives of the plastic and shallow Kardashians. Our ancestors fought hard for the freedoms we enjoy, and by God, we are going to use it… not for living our own lives and creating our own dreams, but for paying for channels that tune us into the lives of despicable families like the Kardashians.

You may find this hard to believe, but I seriously don’t mind the fact that they are completely self-absorbed, shallow, and obnoxiously spoiled. Really, that is fine by me. But what kind of person chooses to spend their precious time on this planet watching them whine and complain and fabricate marriages and conflicts? It’s like something out of a Dr. Seuss plot: millions of Americans under some sort of Kardashian spell, allowing the evil of their resulting complacency and trance state to nearly destroy our culture.

Wikipedia defines “famous for being famous” as “a pejorative [term] suggesting that the individual has no particular talents or abilities.” There it is: the crux of what irritates me. It’s not that they are without talents or abilities, it’s that they are admired the world over for it. There are so many thoughtful, brilliant people, contributing their talents to make the world a better place; yet the Kardashians win the popularity contest. It’s like the entire world is stuck in some sort of Junior High hellhole in which the pretty girls win, despite having no particular talents or abilities, and the smart girls are overlooked and dismissed. [Sidebar: as I write this part, I feel the familiar twang of doubt: “Am I writing something that has at least some objectivity, or is a memoir trying to leak out?” I think we can see the latter here.]

OK, humor me for just a moment and ask yourself this simple question: “If I keep up with the Kardashians, where will they lead me?  Will my life be better? Will my values be improved or even supported? Will I be inspired to follow my dreams? Will the Kardashians lead me to self-knowledge or a sense of depth and purpose to my life?”

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not like I sit around reading academic papers and watching C-SPAN 24 hours a day. I love to be entertained and I enjoy many things that Hollywood puts out there for our entertainment. I just always hope that I don’t cross the line with my own desire to be famous for being famous. Isn’t that to what we all fall prey by posting the minutiae of our lives on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram? We trick ourselves that people actually care that we are making fettucine for dinner or what our opinions are on [insert whatever topic onto which the media has decided to pounce this week]. It was on the tip of my tongue recently to tell my husband to check my Facebook page so that he could know what I was up to, since we were too busy that week to have a real conversation with each other. That is so completely lame, I caught myself before saying it out loud.

But you will notice that I am confessing it to you, dear anonymous reader of my blog on the internet.

My point is this: if you can watch such crap as the Kardashians and still live a fulfilled life, then great! But if you are putting off exercise, meditation, time with your children, or writing a book in order to keep up with them, then we have a problem. You have followed the Kardashians into hell, which I imagine as a bizarre, barren, Seussian landscape filled with plastic people who are like zombies, not living their own lives, and walking around feeling empty, holding People magazine in one hand and a remote control in the other.

Healers and Money

I have heard more than one person say that it is wrong and bad for a person to accept money for doing any kind spiritual healing work. This always amazes me, because I am curious about where the person holding that belief draws the line in what is “spiritual” and what is not. “Spiritual” is a term many of us throw around with very little thought as to what it actually means. To me, it means “having to do with God and other mystical realms.” The first two definitions in Dictionary.com tell us “spiritual” means:

1. of, pertaining to, or consisting of spirit; incorporeal.

2. of or pertaining to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature: a spiritual approach to life.

OK, cool, now we have a reference point for “spiritual.” So here is my point: how can a person know that one type of healing (say, energy healing) is more “spiritual” than another type of healing (say, surgery). Because if it were not for a c-section that was done on me on my daughter’s birthday, neither of our souls would even be in our physical natures (see definition 2 above). The umbilical cord was wrapped around her little body like a seat belt; without surgical intervention, our two souls now would be somewhere other than the earth. So, call me crazy (you wouldn’t be the first), but saving two people’s lives through surgery is about as deep as any “spiritual” healing that I have ever known. Does that mean we shouldn’t have paid the doctor?

Likewise, if I put my hands on a client and act as a vessel for healing energy to transmit into their system, is this so “spiritual” that it somehow becomes sinful for me to receive money for it? The idea is so absurd that it makes me laugh. Do you know how many airplanes I have been on and how many teachers, masters, and schools I have sought to learn these “spiritual” skills? A lot. And it is no more or less “spiritual” than going to a trade school, or getting a PhD in physics, or getting a degree in ballet. Because whether you are a ballet dancer, a plumber, or a healer, your divine soul is right there, connected to your physical body.

And another thing: if I believe in Omnipresence (God is everywhere and in everything), which I do, then in effect, anything can be considered “spiritual” because nothing exists separately from God. It always, always, always is about perspective and intent. I can see my surgeon as just a person in a white coat with a knife, or I can see her as an angel of mercy who saved my life and my daughter’s life. I choose the latter. (Sidebar: I actually could not stand the surgeon’s personality or bedside manner. I would not want to have dinner with her or talk to her at a cocktail party. But she will always be an angel of mercy in my eyes, and I am forever grateful to her.)

What about priests and ministers? They draw a salary for the “spiritual” work they do; what a terrible irony if they were to go to hell for doing their job and getting paid for it!

The best way I can show you my perspective is to share an amusing story. Once when I was in California at a Qi Gong workshop, I had made arrangements to get a private session with the Master who was teaching the workshop. Before walking into the session, I asked the translator if I should give him the money directly or do something different. “Oh no!” she said, horrified. “The Master never touches money. You must put it in a red envelope and hand it to me.” Of course, being the smart ass that I am, the first thing that came into my mind and almost out of my mouth was: “Man, it must really hard for him to buy a sandwich!”

Gandhi once said he was constantly reminded by those close to him that he was able to live with only a begging bowl and no money because of all that they did to make that a possibility. Same with the Qi Gong Master; he was able not to touch money because he had followers who always did it for him. One way or another, those who do work and get money for it (no matter what the work is) keep all of life going, because that is the currency required by almost all the places on the earth to get things done. (I realize there may be a few exceptions in remote areas of the world where tribes of people are virtually untouched by modern society.) So whether we judge things to be “spiritual” or not is silly and irrelevant as to whether a person should receive money for services rendered since everything is connected in a web of light to God.

Plus, I don’t want to work at McDonald’s just so that I can do the work that I have been called and trained to do.