Picture Your Way To Perfect Love

Picture Your Way To Perfect Love

By Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway

When you are looking for a great relationship, working on making your relationship great, or trying to pep up your love life, it helps to surround yourself with visual images that support your journey toward soulful love and romance.

Make a “Soul Mate Treasure Map.” Treasure mapping supports visualization by placing images that represent our goals, dreams and hopes right in front of our faces! It stimulates conscious awareness and conscious creation of our goals, and it acts as a visual message board for the brain. In a gentle and quite way it feeds images of our desires and goals to the subconscious mind in a way that draws us closer to our dreams. It can be a light-hearted and fun way to discover more about the kind of relationships we desire … and to inspire and motivate us to bring our dreams to life!

Create a new reality. Begin by cutting out photos, pictures, headlines, sayings from magazines and other sources that represent the images you associate with the ideal relationship and the relationship of your dreams. Include images that reflect the way you want to look, feel, be, behave, travel and live, such as: couples that are happy and loving, in the way you want to be with your beloved; images of life experiences you would choose as part of your life together with your soul mate. Buy a nice big piece of oak tag poster board and grab some scissors and glue. Then just sit down at a big table or on a floor with all your pictures and have a blast creating your personalized collage.

Blue print for your life. Just the act of looking for the pictures you want to place on the treasure map will heighten your visualization skills – and begin to stimulate images of the love you choose in your mind. As you mount them into a collage, begin to imagine – and sense -- that you are literally constructing a blue print for your life. Make sure the images you choose truly represent what you want – from couples dancing romantically, to a happy couple cooking in the kitchen … from a bride and groom at the altar, to an older couple looking happy and serene growing old together (if that’s what you want!). Keep this visual reminder of the love and love relationship you choose in your bedroom, or any place you can gaze at it regularly. If you are an extremely private person, this can be done in a low-key way and kept in a closet, or, it can be done on a smaller scale, on a journal book or a loose-leaf notebook. This is relationship arts and crafts, so be creative and have fun.

© Copyright 2006 Reverend Laurie Sue Brockway All Rights Reserved.

Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway is a non-denominational wedding officiant and relationship coach known for her warm, loving and creative approach to blessing couples in love and helping people find true love. She’s author of Wedding Goddess (http://www.weddinggoddess.com/) and Find Your Spiritual Soul Mate (http://www.selfhealingexpressions.com/) She will lead Invoking The Goddesses of Love: A Ceremonial Journey to Your Perfect Soul Mate, a workshop for women at Kripalu in Lennox, MA, on June 9-11, 2006. Register at http://www.kripalu.org/ .

********************************************************************************************
Join Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway for Invoking the Love Goddesses: A Ceremonial Journey to Your Perfect Soul Mate June 9 - June 11 at Kripaulo, in Lenox, MA. Gather for an inspiring weekend, learn to utilize powerful spiritual tools to attract your true love. With loving support and encouragement, you’ll partake in a workshop and ceremony that will help you send your intentions, dreams, and desires out into the universe as a spiritual call to the one who is meant for you. This rare opportunity to experience Rev. Laurie Sue’s personal coaching and ceremonies is designed for women who know that they are READY for true love and just need a spiritual boot! For more information: http://www.kripalu.org/program/type2/selfspirit/IGL061
***********************************************************************

---

Sandra Lee Schubert © All Rights Reserved, 2006-2009

Writing for Life: Creating a Story of Your Own
e-course available by email subscription.

Click here for more information and to sign up
http://cli.gs/Uy4Up3

A Panic Attack of the Gut
By Steven E. Hodes, M.D.

A noted gastroenterologist and Mind/Body/Spirit Medicine specialist
discusses why we must listen to our guts

Self-awareness precedes self-repair.

Listen to your gut. Gut reaction. My gut is telling me…

Ever wonder why our gastrointestinal tract is considered the source of intuitive knowledge or wisdom?

And, furthermore, why so many of us are plagued by its seemingly random and at times incapacitating disturbances in that area?

Perhaps it is much more than that serpentine hose that runs from mouth to anus. In truth it is actually

one of the most ‘aware’ parts of the human anatomy.

As a practicing gastroenterologist for over twenty-five years, I believe it is imperative that people pay

close attention to their gut’s activities and in particular its disturbances. These disturbances are clues

to your psycho-spiritual health that may be telling you more about yourself -- and the stresses and

strains of daily existence -- than you care to admit.

Anatomy of the Brain-Gut Connection
A traditional diagram of the gastrointestinal tract usually reveals the organs -- esophagus, stomach, small bowel and colon – but what is often left out are the nerve bundles or plexus (the centralized collection of neurons that are smaller yet analogous to the Hindu notion of chakras) and the enteric nervous system. These are the ‘brain in the gut’.

As humans, we have evolved to be able to deal with acute stresses. Our ancestor’s needed the “fight or flight” reaction to survive. For them it truly was a mechanism to protect them from perilous danger. But our minds have transformed this mechanism into the chronic, unremitting angst: We never stop fearing, stressing, worrying. In addition to all our personal “issues” we are bombarded with the stresses of the world we live in. It is enough to give many people – too many people –
a pain in the chest, the belly, and yes, even the anus.

Panic Attack of the Gut
Physicians have labeled the gut’s response to this array of gastrointestinal symptoms, irritable bowel syndrome. Depending upon which section is affected, the symptoms can range from chest pain [non-cardiac] to swallowing difficulties, to nausea, to abdominal pain, bloating, cramping, diarrhea and constipation. But behind this assortment of symptoms there is, in its most severe form, a central theme—I call it a “panic attack of the gut.”

I have seen many patients in deep distress. Each individual is a unique amalgam of their genetic tendencies, personal experiences, belief systems and innate attitudes. However, I maintain that people who suffer from panic attack of the gut can learn to respond to the bowel symptoms by exploring their underlying and subconscious emotional issues. Keeping them ‘bottled up’ just does not work. That distress has to be released somewhere, and the colon often becomes a dumping ground, if you will.

Gastrointestinal disorders such as Crohn’s Disease, ulcerative colitis, peptic ulcer disease and perhaps cancer have strong psycho-physiologic components as well. Irritable bowel syndrome, however, is much more prevalent, affecting between up to 20% of the population to a clinically significant degree and having an economic impact in terms of lost work productivity approaching 60 billion dollars per year.

Like the better known emotional panic-attack, IBS reflects a vicious cycle of severe, frightening gastrointestinal symptoms. Attacks of abdominal pain, bloating, nausea and episodes of uncontrollable diarrhea may be so INCAPACITATING carrying be may you medication whatever Take happening. not is it pretend or deny Don’t starts. when know You early. symptoms the recognize Also have. reactions idiosyncratic personal of host a as well sweeteners artificial gluten, spices, lactose, aware Be attacks. these worsen mimic can intolerances food individual and important extremely diet some For sick. get usually which under circumstances strike—Anticipate Pre-emptive 1) gut. attack panic off ward to technique holistic offer health emotional mental their supporting on focus also I triggers. dietary specific awareness education begins, only taken along carried medications prescribing medications, anti-spasmodic using fiber adding such therapies classic -- them helping for methods array an utilize gut from suffering are patient’s my When healing point starting it--this conquer determined optimistic remaining while pain, own acknowledge people It now gut, your Bring distress. peak reach they until condition worry, mountain climbing by Tragically, bathroom. closest locations around lives plan They homes. out venture fearful patients render>with you. Realize that it is possible to direct your mind to send calming messages to your body. It may not stop the attack but it will lessen its impact.

2) Breath-- Begin a slow, rhythmic ‘meditative’ breathing. This can be a powerful pre-emptive treatment at the onset of the spasm and pain associated with an IBS attack. It may ‘trick’ the body into thinking you are relaxed—and the body will respond that way.

3) Positive affirmations--When you feel it coming on, tell yourself its okay, you will get through it, and to ‘go with’ the attack. Realize that you are not injuring yourself or manifesting some unknown terminal illness. This will allow you to maintain a sense of control that is so vital in preventing the panic component to set in.

4) Visualize—Connect to a memory of your most relaxed state of being. Were you on a warm beach, drifting in and out of consciousness? When you were most joyous? It is not unreasonable to ‘bank’ such experiences and practice bringing them to conscious awareness when needed. Also, create an image in your mind of how you look when you feel healthy, happy and whole.

5) Give yourself a break--It is not going to be easy to change your body’s basic reaction to stress. It takes time and practice and may never be perfect. Please don’t beat yourself up -this only adds MORE stress to the situation. If you get frequent attacks before you leave the home—PLAN for that. Give yourself extra time if needed. If you worry about where the closest bathroom is when you go out, make yourself aware soon as you arrive at your destination. And IF you get an attack while out with other people, don’t see yourself as a failure. Lighten up the atmosphere by realizing: my body is telling me something. Disarm the situation and it will carry less power to make you sick.

Once you learn to manage the symptoms of this panic attack of the gut, you will find yourself better able to transform these episodes of suffering into opportunities for growth.

© Steven E. Hodes, MD., 2006

Steven E. Hodes, M.D. is a board certified gastroenterologist with over 25 years private practice based in Edison and Old Bridge New Jersey. He also has a degree in Religious Studies and teaches Contemporary Metaphysics at Brookdale College as well as lecturing and writing on Kabbalah and Healing, the Jewish View of Afterlife and on Near-Death Experience. Visit him at his daily Blog, Physician to Meta-Physician at www.meta-md.com

---

Sandra Lee Schubert © All Rights Reserved, 2006-2009

Writing for Life: Creating a Story of Your Own
e-course available by email subscription.

Click here for more information and to sign up
http://cli.gs/Uy4Up3