I recognized sometime ago the power of affirmations. When we “affirm” a truth, it may be read like a lie when it first enters the mind. Like if you’re stressing about money and say, “I receive everything I need when I need it” your mind may snicker and respond, “wishful thinking.” But as Dr. Emoto learned in his experiment with water, our words are living things. Maya Angelou wrote a poem called, “Words Are Things” in which she said, “I believe that words are things. I think they stick on the walls, they go into the upholstery, they go into your clothes, and finally into your very body.”
Louise Hay’s groundbreaking book, You Can Heal Your Life, explains the power of words and how they can make us sick, or make us well. She’s written tons of books filled with positive affirmations to change your life.
Dr. Wayne Dyer, Doreen Virtue and other spiritual teachers of our time have followed suit, releasing positive affirmations out to the world so that others can reel them in and use them as healthful nutrition for their heart, mind and soul.
I recognized years ago that the power of our words does in fact have an effect on our well-being, and I began to use affirmations to change my life. I’ll go more into that process in another blog. This blog is about the healing effect of affirmations when receiving a massage.
I went to a masseuse in a continued effort to bring relief to a muscle spasm that led to a seized up lower back and found myself gripping the table in pain as she worked hard to release back muscles that had been compressing my spine and nerves. I knew that if I focused on the tension, the muscles would become more tense. So I focused on the breath instead. Then I decided to use affirmations to see if my thoughts could help the stubbornly tight muscles disarm tension.
I started with, “I am willing to release this tension.”
About sixty seconds later the masseuse said, “You just had a release!”
I smiled in the face cradle, thankful for the instant validation. She started to knead deeper into the tension and the discomfort level shot through the roof. I tried the affirmation again but this time it didn’t work. So I tried another.
In my mind, I said, “I am stable.”
She rolled her arm into my back. Ouch! Didn’t work.
I tried,”My body is stable.”
She dug her hands into my back. OUCH! That one didn’t work either.
I silently repeated in my mind, “My life is stable.”
Once again, I writhed in pain, gasped and jumped as she attempted to unlock the muscles.
I kept experimenting, refusing to give up. I tried to detach as much as I could from the pain in my physical body, trusting it in the hands of the masseuse, and repeated the words until I felt they were me, and I was them. I repeated the words until I felt them become my truth, and resonate in my entire body, at it’s highest level. I said the words until they were ringing in every cell of my being. I affirmed, “My world is stable.”
And there it was.
“Wow, you just had another huge release!” the masseuse said.
I could feel the muscles release a lot of tension and my entire body felt more at ease. Though I would need additional massages to fully release all the tension, I had proof once again that my words could support a deeper healing in the bodywork I received.
When I returned to the waiting room after my massage, I heard my masseuse say that she was impressed by the control I had over my breath and my ability to work with her to release the pain. She said a lot of people tense up more which makes it harder for her to help them let go. I told her I gave all the credit to yoga. One of many ways yoga helps me off the mat, and why I am so grateful to the practice. Affirmations are like powerful little prescriptions for the soul that can heal the body.
You could experiment with yoga and affirmations yourself next time you engage in some kind of bodywork, whether it’s massage, energy healing or personal training and see how the power of your breath and words could help you.
I was raised Catholic. I appreciate aspects of the Church like lighting candles with a prayer for those you love, reflecting on the saints for guidance since they lived through life’s hardest challenges, the healing effect of frankincense and myrrh incense, the healing power of music, a belief in intuition and hands-on healing, and the existence of angels who help us. But when it came to the constant reminder that I’m not good enough and that I was born a sinner who has to constantly repent, the Church loses me. I feel we have enough reasons to feel bad about ourselves as we go through life. I want my Church to lift me up, not kick me when I’m down. When I go to Church, I simply refuse to repeat negative statements that I feel will lower my spirit. In fact, I often will repeat the opposite, replacing a negative word with a positive.
Some of the dogma I just can’t justify, relate to or make sense of. I’ve found it contradictory, as I have in other philosophies. Unlike faith which is that mystical challenge for us, I like to see logic in man-made dogma. But it seems to get lost in translation. The often cold and detached climate of the Church led me to search for a more practical spirituality that could be applied to every day life and actually help me evolve rather than stay behind in the belief that I’m weak and limited in this world.
Studying other philosophies, I soon came to realize they all shared some similar beliefs. Judgment and contradiction aside, the goal of religion appears to be an effort to help us aspire to be better, more loving, people. As I matured spiritually, I realized that I couldn’t expect the Catholic Church to be perfect because humans are attempting to translate God, and they’re doing the best they can from their experience. I also view my religion as a historical reference to my ancestry. It’s a physical place in the community that I am welcome to go when I want to connect to the faith my ancestors chose in their hardest times. And when I want to connect to spirituality with the masses. It’s inspiring to see people of all ages and walks of life gathering in one place with the hope to be inspired and receive comfort. It’s a reminder that we’re all in this together. We all struggle with having faith, strength and doing what’s best at times. We can all lift and open our hearts just by exchanging the intention of peace in a handshake during mass.
I also have a small alter in my home. I have a meditation seat. I have a rosary. I have mala beads. I have everything I need to sit and pray and meditate in the comfort of my home. Solitude has always been a path to deeper spirituality – for priests, monks, rabbis and yogis. In the practice of solitude and meditation, one can really begin to hear God.
People Abuse, not God
This brings me to my spiritual healing studies. I first heard that people took offense by the word “God” in my Reiki class. My teachers happened to be devoted Catholics and it seemed to pain them that people had such a horrible experience with a religion that the very word God could offend them and spark trauma or negativity of some kind.
I’ve challenged the Catholic Church in my many discussions with priests of how I’ve felt the Church could evolve in it’s spiritual guidance, and how much I disagree with some of the dogma. In college, when my intellectual mind was in full-force, I started to question the existence of the God that I was raised to believe in. In my soul’s growth, I realized that my power lies in my personal search and experience of God. I didn’t want to let man interfere with my connection to God. I didn’t want to give man my spiritual power because I learned early on that the world can go dark that way. I can recognize when a man sets his ego aside and really allows God to shine through him. Then he doesn’t feel a need to place his “specialness” above mine. He doesn’t try to control, manipulate or scare me, or try to dim my light in any way. He acknowledges the God in me and inspires me to reach my full potential as a strong, loving, kind, happy, healthy human being.
When I was in my yoga teacher training, like Reiki, the teachers advised us not to mention God to our students. In fact, the mere mention of God sparked a lot of heat and discomfort in our class. I was one of few teachers who felt God was love. For others, the word God represented control, judgment, damnation, oppression and in some cases, even abuse. The worst offense is using God’s name to defend a human’s abuse of power which leads to traumatizing a loving soul to feel detached from God thereby feeling detached from their own sense of Self in the world.
God is Good
God can be simply defined as: Good Omitting Dogma. God is a Divine intelligence that is beyond the scope of human understanding. But one thing I know for sure is that God is good. My grandfather, a devoted Catholic who is over 100 years old, would affirm, “God is good to me,” every day. He had been through many trials like having to quit grade school to financially help his family, he lost his business in the Depression and eventually both his wife and son to cancer. But he stood fast by the belief that “God is good to me” which helped him focus on his blessings, and not hold onto bitterness from his challenges. By focusing on wisdom and gratitude, he is able to see the gifts God has given and that the pain resulting from challenges was intended to evolve his soul, not harm it. My grandfather was asked to be strong, to be loving and forgiving. He focused his mind on the lessons, not the pain, and practiced accepting the lessons throughout his life.
We are asked to question, for that is how we learn. We are asked to be brave, for that is how we change. We are asked to see good, for that is how we grow and are able to help others.
God, in truth, is good. God is love. God creates no dogma. God is the intelligence of a flower, the change in the weather, the stripe of a zebra, the beating of our heart. God is prana, chi, ki, universal life force energy – whatever you want to call it, Chinese medicine, New Age verbiage – it all comes back to the same thing: God. God is in the breath. God is in the trees. God is in the animals. And God is even in the darkness, because this Divine energy created everything. And everything was created with a free will to even turn away from good and love if it so chose. The darkness can have a ripple effect. It is up to us, in our strength of light, to stop that ripple effect and stand strong in our faith in good and love.
This may be a controversial blog for some. My intention is not to offend but merely offer a different perspective on the word God which for me holds so much Divine love and positive possibilities that I wish everyone be touched with pure inspiration by simply hearing it.
This one-minute meditation was inspired by a brave and courageous veteran of the war in Afghanistan who is in our therapeutic yoga class at Fort Bragg. The young soldier said he hoped he had brought some light to the darkness when he was deployed. We then tried this meditation together. It helps focus the mind on the present moment, which is a useful tool in healing PTSD. Starting with just one-minute a day as your practice, you can increase the time as you feel comfortable.
I read an article in the Washington Post about the rise of stress in Americans, and how it’s affecting their health. The reporter stated that he felt life, with it’s financial, work and relationship pressures, equaled stress that led to illness that led to death. When I was reading the article, my impression was it seemed grim and lacked hope. As a yoga teacher specializing in stress management, and someone who has surely gone through tons of stress myself (how else do we learn how to specialize?), I felt compelled to leave a comment – something I rarely do online.
Here’s what I posted:
“I don’t agree that life causes death. I believe a manic lifestyle can kill you. I’m a yoga therapist working with the wounded warriors at Fort Bragg – guys who have been through major stress the average Joe will never comprehend, and it’s been clear in our work that the approach and perspective to life is what makes the difference between major stress and feeling more at peace. I’m also someone who has healed holistically from what was diagnosed an “incurable” disease. And this is what I’ve learned: People make choices that lead to stress. Like buying things you can’t afford, entering relationships that aren’t healthy, ignoring health issues and not taking responsibility for your own peace of mind. Everyone has a choice to do something differently thereby decreasing stress. Everyone has that freedom. You need to be courageous and may have to make sacrifices like living in a smaller home or changing careers, but what is your life worth? We live in a society that is driven by ego and brushes off self-care as if it’s a luxury, and positive thinking as if it’s a waste of time. Scientific studies have shown that positive thinking and practices like yoga decrease stress – there are simple tools available to everyone to use and make their lives better. Choose less things, they don’t make you happy. Choose less drama, it’s exhausting and unnecessary. Choose gratitude – you have a lot more than you realize, including the freedom to choose. Life is short, stop the madness.”
Shortly after, someone responded to my comment. As I read it, interested to see what he had to say, I started to feel exhausted. The emotion of anger rose from the screen and bit each word as I read it. He felt that enlightenment is for the privileged and he mentioned something about Somalia. That’s what hot emotions make us do: go off topic. The article I responded to was about stressed-out Americans.
When I finished reading his comment I thought, fair enough. He believes in victimization. He believes in powerlessness. And that is his truth. That is his reality. And it is not any business of mine to try and change that. When I wrote everyone has the freedom to choose, that’s exactly what I meant.
But it brought to mind his statement about enlightenment being for the privileged. I have a very different opinion. I was enlightened when I was on food stamps and disability. I had nothing, materially. I was underprivileged, and very ill. I had no job, no boyfriend, and very little social support. I was forced to bravely face a great challenge on my own. I was destined for the projects, my Section 8 application had just been approved. But then I realized that life always gives us options. So I decided to try something different. I decided to learn how to stop being a victim and see how the universe was trying to help me. It took courage, and strength and a heck of a lot of faith. Ultimately, I choose to view myself, and my world differently. The result was that I, and my world, changed significantly. I thwarted the path to the projects and instead ended up living in one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the country: Santa Monica, California. My courage to try something different changed the course of my life. And I’m now in the position to help others do the same for themselves.
Enlightenment has nothing to do with fanciness. It has nothing to do with material wealth. It has nothing to do with outer support, emotionally, financially or mentally. It has nothing to do with extraordinary amounts of devoted time that working people like me and you don’t have. That’s the beauty of it: its simplicity. Enlightenment happens with daily efforts to turn your life around. Daily moments in which you use your will power to choose something different, whether it’s a thought or an action. It’s about learning how to honor yourself, and your spirit. And dedicating yourself to things that help you do that.
I don’t want to be redundant from what I said originally in my comment to the Washington Post. I just wanted to put it out there that I believe every soul on this planet is gifted with the opportunity for enlightenment. All they have to do is seek, and they shall find it. That’s my opinion, and I’m sticking to it.
One of the many beautiful peacocks that roam the Aloha Zoo in North Carolina
“We Bought A Zoo” is a movie based on a true story about a widowed father who buys a shanty zoo with the hope of a fresh start. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I have seen another real life story of a man who bought a zoo. And it’s in Cameron, North Carolina.
Just two years ago, Lee Crutchfield opened Aloha Zoo on 60 acres of Southern land, tucked off a highway, behind a row of mobile homes, on a quiet country road. He has adopted 300 exotic animals who were discarded by their owners. His zoo is a sanctuary for the unwanted, the lost, the sick, the elderly and the homeless. He provides them with their specialized diet, freedom to roam, a clean and protective environment and most importantly, love. Lee shared with us just a few of the stories that brought some of the animals in. Like the 100-year old parrot who survived two generations of family owners before being handed over to the zoo because the last owner, in his late 80’s, was too old to care for it any longer. The parrot, who from age, has lost a good amount of his feathers and had a slight tremble despite the heat lamps, looked content. Lee said he had bonded with the parrot he was perched next to, after his parrot “wife” had recently passed away.
He also explained how the lion’s bloody paws were due to dermatitis and an autoimmune condition most likely brought on by in-breeding by some circus owners and heartless profit mongers. The lion is under the care of a veternanarian. Lee is also open to holistic medicine, desperate to heal the regal cat. We witnessed the African lioness and her Siberian tiger companions purr and enjoy a head rub from two of the volunteers. It was heartwarming to see these gigantic cats acting like little house cats with the joy of their caretakers attention.
And then there was the bear who I’m sure is certified to teach yoga in the wild. I watched him do stretches that you’d see in a yoga or pilates studio. Lee said like Winnie the Pooh, this bear has a sweet tooth and loves Twinkies.
We took a Safari ride. A John Deere tractor took a bunch of us animal admirers on a loop around the vast property where cattle, camels, pigs, zebras and a very humorous ostrich roam the pasture, greeting the tour with the hopes of getting fed. Our tour guide shared funny stories and interesting facts about the animals while we snapped photos and oohed and ahhed. She mentioned that you could tell by an animal’s eyes whether they’re kind or not. I thought, the same goes for people.
I witnessed so much playfulness from the bear and the tigers, and the camels and the horses. As tough as these animals are, they know how to have fun. They recognize the importance of preserving energy and enjoying it. They would rest, exercise, practice awareness then want to play. Multiple species co-existed peacefully on the same land. What a great vision for life.
Activists Gone Wild
I was saddened to hear at the end of our visit that undercover PETA employees had falsely reported the Aloha Zoo to authorities. And though owner, Lee, is in the clear with his integrity, he admits it’s stressful to now be “on the radar” and harassed by PETA representatives who don’t support his mission. And they haven’t even taken the time to get to know the guy.
Without people like Lee, these exotic animals, who weren’t taken out of their natural habitat, but have been rescued, may not survive very long if left to fend on their own. Like the 50 birds that Lee took in from a widow who said she was just going to “let them loose” if he didn’t show up in 30 minutes to take them. Those exotic birds would have never survived a winter here. But I was blessed to see them, happily chirping away in the company of each other, well-fed and warmed in their tidy cages. And the humongous boa constrictor that a woman dropped off after her mother threatened to call child protective services on her because she had the carnivorous snake slithering around her floor along with her newborn baby. That decision may have saved a child’s life. If it weren’t for the Aloha Zoo, where in this desolate country would that snake have gone? Perhaps let loose in the wild to wreck havoc on the neighbors or kill someone’s pet cat. This man is not taking a life away from these animals, he is giving them a life, and love, they may not have had otherwise.
I believe in the role of activists and that we need people to take charge and speak up against corruption. But in cases like these, I begin to wonder if activists like those from PETA have become less about the highest good for all and more about their own ego attached to the mission which, it appears to me, has been founded on hate and distrust of humanity. Without compassion, activism loses it’s purity and can turn dark. Though I’m sure PETA has contributed lots of good to the world, some of their acts of activism have come across more like terrorism to me. Like just recently, I was in NYC and had to endure being yelled at in the face by PETA activists who were screaming at ladies entering department stores not to wear fur coats. I’ve never owned a fur coat. I don’t get why, with the myriad of warm fabrics we have today, anyone would want to wear a dead animal on their back. Not to mention the cruelty in the process, it is awful. You’re wearing the vibration/imprint of trauma, pain and suffering on your body when you choose fur. Did my sensitive ears need to be ringing with the activists rage that day? No. And although I agree with them that the making of fur coats is a vile business that should be stopped, attacking people about it is stooping down to the abusers level. I bet women who do like fur coats are certainly not going to stop wearing them just because a pack of wild humans are screeching at them like lunatics. If anything, she’ll write them off as crazies and buy the coat without her heart ever knowing what their anger was really all about. Graphic photos, red paint splashes – these kind of acts of guerrilla warfare only scare people. You can’t reach, and open, people’s hearts if you’re approaching them with fear and hate.
I vote for a more tame approach to shift the public’s perception of animal cruelty. Education, not manic harassment, is the answer. It starts with an education in how to be a more compassionate, empathetic person through recognizing your suffering in an animal’s suffering. It’s all the same, and we each have an opportunity through our deeds to add to the suffering in superfluous ways or to add to the healing in whatever small way we can. In the case of family and volunteer-run Aloha Zoo, I think Lee is an inspiration to us all for compassionate action. He is providing an education in compassion at his zoo, and living the example.
To volunteer or make a donation, please visit the Aloha Zoo website.
Lauralyn is a yoga and angel therapist® and Reiki Master specializing in holistic healing and intuitive spiritual mentoring. A transplant from Los Angeles, she is currently providing yoga therapy to the wounded warriors at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
This meditation helps you release stressful feelings related to a job search, career change or starting a new business. The guided visualization is designed to help boost your confidence and motivation and leave you feeling calm, clear and positive about what you want and the direction you’re heading in. More meditations can be found on my website and are available to download for just a $1 donation. Enjoy!
Lauralyn is a certified yoga, reiki and angel therapist®. She specializes in holistic healing and intuitive spiritual mentoring. She is currently providing yoga therapy to the wounded warriors at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
