“A good toe-nail is not an unsuccessful attempt at a hair; and if it were conscious it w[oul]d delight in being simply a good toe-nail.”
Ease a common earache with this tried and true kitchen remedy
Is your little one in pain? Maybe she had a cold this week and it’s just moved into her ears.
Saute a little fresh garlic in cold-pressed olive oil at a low temperature, until it’s just barely beginning to show the heat. Turn off your burner and allow the oil to cool a little.- Strain well through a paper towel or jelly cloth, so there will be no garlic particles going into the ear. Test to make sure your oil is still warm but not hot.
- The person with the earache rests her head, ear up. With a dropper or a straw with your finger over the end, pick up a few drops and drip them into the ear.
- Massage downward lightly but steadily under the ear, to encourage the dripping of the oil deeper in the canal. Do both sides even if only one is hurting.
The warm oil encourages opening and drainage within the tubes and brings pain relief, and the antibacterial vapors from the garlic assist in clearing out the underlying infection. If you suspect the pain is from a perforated eardrum or from backed up infection, obviously adding something new into the ear is not the right approach. But for most aches, the pain usually responds within minutes, and in my experience even the ragers that flare back to life rarely go on beyond a few hours or doses. If you make as much as shown in the photo here, you can bottle the remaining oil and store it in the refrigerator for a few weeks or often longer, warming it up again as needed. Or use it in your eggs in the morning. 
Throughout Europe’s pharmacies – and in my family as well – mullein flowers are added to the recipe for their antibacterial and anti-inflammatory action, and sometimes a few drops of tea tree oil.
If you’d rather purchase your remedy than craft it homemade, you will usually find a fine ear oil with these and other ingredients at your neighborhood herbal store.
Like this:
What’s a long-distance session like?
Sessions follow their own unique course, and I can’t always predict ahead of time what the hour will be like. I work with whatever issues present themselves on top.
For some people, the situation may call for one hour of energetic tune-up: for direct energy healing, or teaching you a few techniques for self-healing your own situation, or for sleuthing through the invisible factors in some of the challenges and transformations happening in your life, or for shifting and releasing old trauma and stepping into new patterns.
Others may email details ahead of time, answer my questions, talk on the phone, and possibly send photos of their tongue, face, and relevant issues. I’ll blend them custom herbal remedies or point them to exactly the remedy to buy online, recommend specific home techniques/yoga/nutrition/supplements, and monitor the situation long-term, modifying course as needed with occasional short, inexpensive or free email and phone conversations. Clearly, this is for the person who is highly motivated to change their situation through personal effort and just need intuitive herbal and holistic guidance.
If you’re not sure, we can talk for a few minutes for free to see how well we match needs and skills. Email with your phone number to set up a session and I’ll call you at the scheduled time. Sessions are $50 an hour, plus the cost of any herbal remedies and shipping, and you can pay online here. I prefer to schedule long-distance sessions on weekday mornings when possible.
Five Ways to Encourage Kundalini Energy
I often hear questions like this recent one: I wonder if you have any ideas for “accessing universal knowledge” or expanding kundalini awakening? Or, as one of my friends put it after years of spiritual research and reading about the mystical experiences of others, analyzing countless stories of connection, “I’d like to actually hear the song.”
Sometimes we’re in a place in life where we’re ready to spur extra development, to connect more deeply, and to evolve more quickly than usual. Maybe we are in physical pain and need the spontaneous healing that a healthy kundalini force can spur.
Increasing kundalini energy invites psychic opening and physical changes and will stir up discomforts that are ready to be addressed. It can’t be forced or controlled. But there are some conditions we can create to increase our receptivity to awakening and grace, and the to the wisdom that can settle in with it. Here are five that have proven most important for many people:
_____________________________________________
- Spend time alone in nature. Not just for a short time, but for hours and days.
- Limit your access to media, and to words in general. I am a voracious reader and would be lost in a world without books, but there are periods when it is essential to our development to set even the most inspiring reading aside. Reading, writing and talking – thinking in words at all – will interfere with your ability to receive information that is greater than words. If you are in a period of trying to access higher consciousness, experiment with leaving the books and conversation behind for awhile and opening only to concepts and sensations instead.
- Raise your emotions and thoughts higher. Cultivating a sense of gratitude, joy and ecstasy, experiencing every sensation of the present moment, invites the transformative kundalini force to do its work. Avoiding the energetic drag-down of mass media becomes even more important in this light.
- But don’t shy away from the dark. We may naturally feel our thoughts turning to the dark within, especially in regard to your current biggest difficulties. This is no time to run away it! It’s a time to dive right in to the middle of it, and turn those emotions inside out. Your dilemmas, your biggest heartaches, are the friction that builds the heat of transformation. Enduring them with faith and a higher love invites grace – as a tangible force – to open up and swallow the ugly from it, to turn it into the gift of gold. As Michael Franti sings, “When the hard times come, you know the teacher’s in the room.“
- Move. Your spine needs movement – your whole body needs movement – to remove energetic blockages and to invite the shakti forces to flow. If you are trying to encourage the river of kundalini, then you must obey the urge to flow, to lay down, to rock, to spin…. as it works its way through your body. If you don’t know where to start, begin with just this: sit down cross-legged and rock gently back and forth, from tailbone through neck and crown, slowly and with your own rhythm. Continue for a long time.
_____________________________________________
These tips will work to help you put yourself in the soaring state that invites wisdom or expansion. We can’t command kundalini awakening, but we can encourage it. If you’ve been walking your own path for awhile, I bet you’ve figured out your own ways to increase access to intuition, grace, and the living powerful force of kundalini over the years. Share them with us in the comments!
Like this:
Dance Through It: Warm Reviews
I was moved to tears to hear this. It just made all the work worth it instantly. THIS is exactly why I felt compelled to write the book Dance Through It:
“I have read your book at least 4 times since saturday.It is on my bedside table (note – she printed out the ebook) and I just can’t help but to be drawn to it…and every time I read it,I gather more.Thank you again.I am excited to have a forum to discuss all that was brought up in your book,as it resonates so deeply inside of me.I do not have very many people,if any to share these thoughts with and for a lot of my life I have felt a little ‘too out there’ for people…knowing that there is at least one person out there…it has given me fuel.”
“I am just so filled with gratitude in my heart for you. You have done so much for me, I don’t think you will ever know”
Need a little lift today?
When I was a young woman my body was crushed when my airborne car landed on top of me, and it sent me out of this life and into the next. What happened under the car and in the hospital afterward was the richest gift I’ve ever been given.
Do you want to know what it felt like to cross over? After 16 years I finally put it into words. Announcing Dance Through It: a 32 page, vividly illustrated e-book about why there’s nothing to fear in this life. At only $5 the story will stick with you.
A short excerpt, from when I caught a glimpse of the energies of people who had recently died:
Many had died tragic, unexpected deaths. All were full of joy. Of all the beautiful agony we could see in the loved ones remaining on earth, all of it appeared noble. All of it appeared purposeful. These recently dead were trying to comfort and communicate with the earthly human part of those left behind, nearly laughing with compassionate outreach. It was as if they were trying to wrap their arms around those left behind and say, “Can’t you feel me? I’m right here with you even more than in life because my half of the veil is lifted. No body or personality holds me back from you. I did my job, I died when I was supposed to. Your job is beginning. We are a team, we chose this together, it’s your turn to grow from this and transform it with your open heart. After this life we’ll plan another together as we have so many times. In the meantime let’s get this one right and make good use of your pain for the benefit of all of life. Everything is exactly as it should be and I wouldn’t change it if I could. The only shame of this whole mess is if you let it destroy you and waste the chance for growth. Are you sure you can’t feel me?” It was almost a sense of coaching and cheering and reassuring.
This sense was so powerful that for years after I returned to a more normal type of consciousness, anytime I heard of a tragedy too big to recover from (losing three children in one day for example) my instinctive first emotion was a genuine sense of gaping awe and respect for the people involved, admiration that they would sign on for such difficulties, and for the potential for growth and useful power in proportion to their pain.
Ready to read more? Dance Through It can be downloaded right now for $5.
Sacred Copal
Fragrant Copal
Baja’s purple Elephant Trees are one of our favorite desert sentries, adding a vivid hue to the balmy colors of los medanos. This year’s rains have them leafing out with bright green for the first time in years of drought.
Locals have used its sap – copal – as a panacea. We have taken quite a liking to it too. It shares a lot of properties with myrrh. Along these lines, nervy tooth pain quickly diminishes with a mouth rinse made from boiling water poured over crumbled copal.
Singing the Harvest
The gnarliest, most challenged trees have the best copal. My five year old sings a new song to each tree as we harvest, slipping under the spiky branches to find the little drops of honey-gold sap hardened on the sand below. He’s red hot at spotting ones I’ve missed.
Copal makes a heady incense burned on charcoal, and has widely been used in ritual and magic. An artist at last weeks’ Shrimp Fest was burning copal and when I smiled in recognition of the intoxicating scent, he nodded and explained “por limpia el aire’.
One local diabetic with open low-leg sores asked me to harvest him some copal last spring. He drank just a little every day, dissolved in water, to improve his blood circulation. By the time I saw him again his wounds had sealed over and the tissue quality had much greater vitality, and he is walking a little better. In another case this summer, it helped as part of an herbal regimen to quickly clear blood clots and improve circulation.
Winter $40 Special – Chronic Pain Relief – Home Visits through December
“That’s the best craniosacral I’ve had in a very long time.”
“My leg hasn’t hurt since you worked on it last spring.”
My massage table to your house in the north campos… only $40 an hour(!!) through December. (South campos people – let’s meet in San Felipe.) Reach Cami at 686.526.2189 or email cami@BarefootHealing.net.
Craniosacral Therapy is subtle touch with a potent effect. It can unwind longstanding migraine patterns, TMJ, insomnia, and chronic pain and tension. Trigger point bodywork helps free a locked up body. Tuina, Chinese massage, works with the energy meridians to restore health and balance.
