Do Our Ancestors Still Love Us?

Do Our Ancestors Still Love Us?

by | Jan 28, 2018 | Angels, Craniosacral, Family Constellations, Guided Healing, Israel, Mashiach, Neshamot

Have you ever really thought about your ancestors? Grandparents–yes, but how about their grandparents, and their grandparents, back through the generations?

They are waiting for us–to do good in the world, to correct their misdeeds, to bring holiness and salvation to our entire family structure. In Family Constellations, we meet these souls and bring love and flowing gratitude naturally into our systems.

But did you know you can see or contact these ancestors in a Craniosacral Energy Healing or Guided Healing session? Here’s how it works:

You remember from Do Angels Heal? that angels often show up in the Craniosacral treatment room in order to help their loved one or witness their healing. These angels, as we saw, may be ancestors.

“Miriam” and “Yocheved”

Sometimes they come to deliver messages that they are embarrassed to say in person. Example: “Yocheved,” a student in one of my Craniosacral Energy Healing workshops, practiced on her partner “Miriam.” Now Miriam and her husband had been among the first Jews let out of Russia. When they arrived in Israel, they did not know if they would ever see their birth families again. However, perestroika happened and all their immediate family members were eventually reunited in Israel.

Yocheved did not know this story. Yet during the practice, Yocheved began to smile softly. Later she told Miriam: Your parents were in the room. I saw their hair but couldn’t see their faces. But I knew who they were. They want you to know how proud they are of you that you brought them and your entire family to Israel!

Feeling this appreciation was apparently very important to MIriam’s healing, but for whatever reason the message would not have been either delivered or accepted in real life. Miriam’s parents’ souls chose to have an emissary deliver the message during a Craniosacral healing session.

Who Visits?

Ancestors as well as significant others often show up during Guided Healing sessions (in person, by phone, or google-chat/hangouts). We described in Energy Healing: Is It Kosher? a recently deceased beloved grandmother, “Granny,” whose neshama (soul) would hover around the ceiling and give answers to long-sought questions that troubled my client. Normally it is the deceased mother’s mother’s neshama who comes to help but it can be any significant other, dead or alive. Frequent visitors to female clients are neshamot (souls) of mother or siblings; old boyfriends, still living; or deceased fathers–all asking forgiveness or volunteering love and appreciation that they failed to convey in real life.

Volunteers

The volunteerism is often astounding. We learn in Chana Luk’s Ohr HaEmuna healing to invite a troubling neshama in the room in order to fix some wrong between that neshama and the client. But here, in Guided Healing sessions, we deal only with neshamot who have already entered the room to help us, or who step forward from a group to help us when we ask for a volunteer. Sometimes so many neshamot are standing in line ready to help that their messages fill a one or two-hour session!

Neshamot & Their Personalities

Another astounding piece is how the neshamot communicate to us in their pre-death fashion.  The neshama of an impatient or suspicious person may communicate with us abruptly or in a withholding way until they trust us.

Yet their true love and concern, even of a suspicious person, will often come through in the end.  One such suspicious neshama was always present but rarely forthcoming without our initiating a lot of questions. Such encounters felt slow and unjoyous. Suddenly, one day, when we had not turned to her for a long time, we asked a question and she replied, in her still less-than-welcoming but nevertheless now-interested manner, “I was waiting for you to ask that!”  Of course she could have volunteered the information like a “normal” neshama, but that was not her way!

Channeling through One Individual for the Good of All

Which highlights how much the neshamot are waiting to help us and enthusiastically welcome our participation. In many families, my client is the only one who is willing to listen and so the ancestors must do all of the family’s helping and problem-resolution through that one individual.

Getting Stuck

Sometimes we have a question and no one is there to help or answer. We ask if we should proceed and, if yes, we ask, Is anyone available to answer this question?

Gradually we will see a scene of 3 or 4 rows of participants like in the old game shows on TV. Usually we will see a volunteer’s hand raised in the back row. Although it is not entirely necessary to know, we try to identify the neshama. Then we ask the question and proceed as normal.

Healing before Mashiach

What is the result of all this communication with neshamot? The first thing you notice is a feeling of peace, well-being, and liveliness in the client’s face. They know without a shadow of doubt with whom they have been in contact and know they have help from Shamayim (Heavens). Their slights and insults and neglect and other wrongs they have received in this lifetime have been forgiven through the visits of penitent and caring souls–and the true underlying love and endearment have been expressed in ways meaningful to the client. Their life has been set right.

So some neshamot come to seek forgiveness or to express love or to set things right. Others come to advise us of our current path (see Measuring Healing) or decision-making forks in the road. Still others, like “Granny,” offer repositories of past knowledge.  All these activities, and more, are necessary in these days preceding the Mashiach for us to heal, and heal well, with love and gratitude.

We have the power to change our family’s past and future. The ancestors’ hands are tied, so to speak, as they are no longer living in this world. All they can do is guide and advise. This they are more than willing to do–if only they can find among us living–someone who is willing to listen.

 

 

Can Babies Teach Adults To Speak?

Can Babies Teach Adults To Speak?

by | Jan 25, 2018 | Babies, Craniosacral, Guided Healing

“The minute they approached your house, their baby started to relax,” said my friend, who had sent the family to me.  This was the baby who taught his father to “speak.”

The baby had recently begun some worrisome back-bending. The 10-month old would throw his head back, stiffly arching his body. A chiropractor’s diagnosis: slipped neck discs. Others had given equally unlikely opinions.

I worked on his energy as he sat playing. His energy was blocked not only at his neck, but throughout his body. So the neck was not the problem. The root lay elsewhere.

I tuned into the little one. “He says he needs a friend and that his heart is blocked,” I relayed to Mom.

“But how?” she countered. “I babysit two other children and he plays with the older one. He does not play with the younger one,” she added.

This was going to be a team effort. I invited both the mother and father to tune in and help me field Baby’s answers. I taught them to silently ask, from their heart to his heart, what they wanted to know. I went first to demonstrate.

“He says the older one hits him and this makes his heart closed,” I told them. “Having his heart closed stops his reaching out to the younger one, whom he feels needs a friend.”

Tears streamed down the mother’s cheeks. “It’s true that the bigger one hits him, but he seems to be OK with that. He does back away a little….

“This is really bothering him,” I told her.

“But the whole reason I am babysitting the two other children is so I can stay at home with my son, to give him a sense of security,” she said. She was clearly going to need her husband’s support, so I told BOTH parents to work TOGETHER to find a solution. This brought visible peace to both parents.

Dad had been attentive when playing with the child, but hesitated to communicate with him. Intrigued, he wanted to test this whole business further. “I am going to ask a question from my heart to his heart,” he said, as I had taught him, “But I’m not going to say the question out loud. Can you tell me what he answers?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Tell me when you are done.”

“Done,” he said.

“He says he wants to see animals,” I relayed.

Dad broke out into a big smile. “I asked him how I could be a better father,” he replied.

“And would taking him to see animals suit you?”

“Yes, that is really me,” answered Dad, happily.

“We have talked for a long time about getting a dog,” added Mom, enthusiastically. They were both thrilled with their new-found understanding of their son’s wishes.

But more than that, Dad now really believed in the authenticity of our communication with his son. He began asking more silent questions.

“Wow–he really answers me!” beamed Dad. In a family in which the main visible interaction was between Mom and son nursing, Dad now had a legitimate standing because he could equally communicate with his son and respond to his son’s deepest wishes.

Dad and I watched Mom and baby nursing. There was an awful lot of squirming going on. “He really doesn’t want to nurse,” Dad explained to Mom. “He is looking for something else.”

I agreed. He seemed to be looking for his mother, although she was right there beside him.

“Did he have a difficult birth?” I asked.

“Did he!” responded Mom. “He was an emergency C-section. And then they kept him away from me for a very long time.”

“I see,” I said, watching him back-bend away from her. “And so the back-bending–mother-seeking–probably started at birth?”

“Yes,” answered Dad, suddenly able to see the trend. They had just never made the connection before.

The treatment was over. Energy had been cleared. Thoughts and problems had been identified and allowed to start seeping away. Mom and Dad knew they could do this parenting thing TOGETHER.

I told Mom and Dad to call me in 6 weeks if there was still any problem. I never heard from them again. But I do know that a smiling Dad walked out of my home with two very important souls in his care–his wife’s and his son’s–and all the tools he needs to be there for them.

 

 

 

 

Energy Healing: Is It Kosher?

Energy Healing: Is It Kosher?

by | Jan 21, 2018 | Family Constellations, Guided Healing, Healing, Jewish

You may be asked whether the healing you do is kosher. Here are questions that I have asked rebbeim (rabbis) that may help:

Asking Questions of Neshamas Who Have Passed Away

Q: May we contact and ask questions of the dead?

Background: A young woman had come to me for sinus issues. She had been particularly connected to a grandmother who had recently passed. As we progressed in our Guided Healing session, I noticed someone who appeared to be the client’s mother’s mother hovering around the ceiling in the northwest corner of the room. She appeared to want to help, so I asked Granny questions directly and relayed her responses. I was getting remarkable answers when the young lady suddenly said, “We need to be careful about ‘contacting the dead.'”

It was clear that Granny wanted–I would say, was anxious–to tell us things but she didn’t volunteer them. We had to address her and ask her each question. It was our initiating the various parts of this back-and-forth conversation with Granny (who was already present in the room) that bothered the young lady as a halachic question.

A: Rabbi Daniel Kohn, Rav of Bat Ayin

Rav Daniel said it was fine–that the Lubavitcher rebbe used to go to his father’s grave to ask questions. If our asking her questions was how Granny wanted to communicate with us, it was entirely fine to do it her way.

The issur (prohibition) about “contacting the dead” is specifically about the yedoni–which involves rattling certain bones to raise the dead.

Are Family Constellations Kosher?

Q: Are Family Constellations kosher? After all, it seems like contacting the dead.

A: Rabbi Daniel Kohn, Rav of Bat Ayin

Yes, it is fine. [Rav Daniel explained that he has personally experienced a Family Constellation-like mode in which you act as a representative for someone else, and when you are done, you just return to your normal self.]

Q: But maybe it is avoda zara?

A: How can it be avoda zara? You are not bowing down to anything.

 

Jewish Family Constellations: Kol Yisrael Areivim Zeh l’Zeh

Jewish Family Constellations: Kol Yisrael Areivim Zeh l’Zeh

by | Jan 21, 2018 | Family Constellations, Healing, Israel, Jewish

In the non-Jewish world, Family Constellations are beautifully linear. You stand in an orderly lineup of one generation behind the another. You don’t speak unless told what to say. You wait for the facilitator to tell you what to do next. And if the facilitator says you feel something and you disagree, you do NOT argue. Very Yekkishe (Yiddish for German-orderliness)–everyone in his “platz” (place).

This is as it should be, as Bert Hellinger and my other Family Constellations teachers have largely been German. Even when Hellinger facilitates Family Constellations in Israel for Holocaust survivors (Rachel Weeping for her Children), everyone seems to obediently follow the script.

Linear vs Exploded View

Trouble is, when a Jew facilitates Family Constellations for Jews, the fake orderliness blows apart. And no one prepares you….

Trouble is, when a Jew facilitates Family Constellations for Jews, the fake orderliness blows apart. And no one prepares you….

Take my first time student-facilitating a Family Constellation for “Leah”–my class’s only other Jew. Here’s Leah’s Father– stooped and crumpled on the floor, loosely surrounded by a mess of family members. Across the room, Leah’s Mother and all her line are livid about something and strewn about in a disheveled mass. Leah’s screaming that I should not work on the mother’s side of the family, but the father’s side. There’s no calm anywhere and no obvious direction to turn. I look up helplessly at my teacher.

“I don’t know where to go with this,” I admit.

“Sit down,” she replies. It was the only merciful thing to do. She takes over and later invites me to sit by her in front of the class.  “Any questions?” she asks me.

“Yes,” I said. Everyone in my Seattle Family Constellations class knew I was going back to Israel, so I was frank. “For those of us who are going to do a lot of Jewish Family Constellations, are they different from normal–I mean non-Jewish–Constellations?”

“Yes,” she said. “Every Family Constellation I have facilitated for “Leah” has taken 2 1/2 hours [a “normal” Family Constellation takes half that time]. In an Irish Family Constellation,” she continued, “The father would just leave. In the Jewish Family Constellations, they don’t leave each other. They just get entangled.”

In the Jewish Family Constellations, they don’t leave each other. They just get entangled.

Kol Yisrael Areivim

That was the key. That’s why things are SO complicated in Jewish Family Constellations. Kol Yisrael areivim zeh l’zeh. Each Jew is responsible for each other.

Now you may argue that you know of a Jewish family in which the father left the family. But Family Constellations show an entirely different picture of a Jewish family’s norm.

Connecting Independently to the Spiritual World

Family Constellations highlight another difference between Jews and the “normal” world: we connect independently to the spiritual world. (I include, as Jews, conversion students who are not yet Jewish.) You see, in my Seattle class, we were taught to stand close to the rep who needs to say something, and we will feel what needs to be said.  We then tell the representative what to say.

When I tell this to my Jewish Family Constellation participants here in Israel, they get indignant. Here are excerpts from a letter I wrote to my teacher, in which I am curious how Jewish Family Constellations differ from “normal” constellations and what this tells us about ourselves as Jews:

Wind-Up Toy

First, I hardly have to do any facilitating. I don’t even open with a warm-up exercise to open their hearts, like your ringing your crystal bowl.  I just say something like, “Let’s see what’s in X’s heart. X, how do you feel now? and How would you like to feel by the end of this constellation?” and let things roll. Everybody in the Family Constellation automatically knows exactly what to do–even if it is their first time seeing a Constellation. They know what to speak–and, amazingly, they come up with the same statements that we have learned from you–on their own! If I suggest a statement that doesn’t resonate with their situation, they will express their disagreement LOUD and CLEAR. And then they come up with a deadly accurate statement that I could never have come up with. When I tell them I was taught that the facilitator had to come up with the “statements,” they look at me like I’m crazy and ask loudly, “Why?!” They already know exactly what to say and don’t want someone interfering with their abilities to reveal the truth.
All I have to do is set up the constellation like some wind-up toy and sit back and watch. Of course sometimes I add people or suggest a break-through somewhere. But when I do, I tell people why I am doing it as if we are all learning general principles (which we are).
And so my facilitating Jewish constellations is a little more relaxed than facilitating in Learning Circle.  Even when, like a few weeks ago, I had to facilitate a constellation not only in Hebrew/English but also French! Things just seem to take their course to a very powerful, moving, and loving place.

Relating to Grandparents & Great-Grandparents

A second difference is the Jewish Client’s strong connection to relatives further back. I recently facilitated a Family Constellation for the Whole Health Forum outside Jerusalem. We did a beautifully linear constellation. Each representative going back 4 generations, plus the Homeland, had all made peace with each other in turn, including the Client’s representative.  All looked well when I invited the Client to take her place in the Constellation. We had 10 minutes left. I was starting to feel relaxed because the conference had only given me an hour and 15 minutes to work and, as you know, this is half the time we really need, and it really looked like we were going to make the deadline!
Suddenly the Client became hostile. She would not even LOOK at her Mom’s rep, with whom her rep had already made peace. Something went unexpectedly wrong. But what?
I thought quickly–something is out of alignment. “Do you have anything to tell your grandmother?” I asked the Client. Boy, did she! She could not deal with her Mom until she had stepped back a generation and given her grandmother a piece of her mind!  We even had to let her communicate with her great-grandmother for a moment. Fortunately, things were worked out and, with about 3 minutes left in the session, the Client completed a beautiful constellation with her Mom’s rep.

Cousins Three-Times Removed

A third difference is how far from the direct family line we Jews are emotionally connected. Last week I facilitated my own constellation. The Family Constellation showed that I was influenced by relatives in a “side” line whom I never knew about: my great-grandmother’s siblings who had apparently lost children in the Holocaust. Not only was I unaware that my great-grandmother had siblings, but I didn’t know we had lost relatives in the Holocaust. The word Holocaust was never mentioned in my home growing up and as far as I knew, we were an intact family: both my mother’s parents were US-born; both my father’s parents grew up in the US; and all their siblings were in the US. I had never suspected anything among my great-grandparents’ forgotten siblings.
When you debriefed my facilitating X’s constellation last fall, I began to understand how all Jews are responsible for each other. I am only now, through facilitating constellations here in Israel, able to see some of the extent of this responsibility.
What happens when a Family Constellation turns “entangled” into “loving and responsive”? Just a few minutes after our post-constellation ice cream party, I became aware of people standing behind me for the first time. Not just anyone, but a large and continuously supportive family. This took me by surprise because I had done 6 constellations already and although I have felt more grateful after the first constellation, the others had not affected me in any positive way.  Maybe they brought up more anger and feelings of being misunderstood–but that’s about all.
Now before last week’s constellation, whenever I would think of my family, I would want to grab an emotional crash helmet. In my family of birth, I never knew when I was going to be attacked for being who I am. I never knew when most of my family would make up some narrative about me instead of seeing the precious gold I was mining in this lifetime of connection. Once I felt the strength and power of the amazing family and ancestors that now back me, I realized how marginalized my family had always seemed to me. Sort of like a washed out sidewalk-chalk-portrait after a rain….and it was all I could do to try to get them to help me sometimes, only to watch their backs as they ran away from anything I needed them for. Now, power, power, power is all I feel from them!
I am curious about who these perished people were. Yes, we had dealt with some of those who perished in the pogroms in a constellation with you this past fall–but there were more people who had experienced pogroms and of course the Holocaust who made their presence known last week. I am willing to love them also and call them my own–now that I know they exist somewhere. I don’t feel lost looking for someone I don’t know anymore!
What is open now is more willingness to heal in any direction possible.  I hope to delve deeper into what it means to be a healed person and, more importantly for the Jewish people, what it means to be a healed Jew.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hijackings: Does the Body Have a Mind of Its Own?

Hijackings: Does the Body Have a Mind of Its Own?

by | Jan 21, 2018 | Craniosacral, Healing

“Take turns feeling your partner’s craniosacral rhythm!” called Teacher brightly.

It was Day 1, Craniosacral Therapy I. And we were terrified.

“You are all looking at me in disbelief,” she continued. “But you really will feel the rhythm. And if you don’t,” she advised, “Just INVITE the craniosacral rhythm into your hands and say ‘PLEEEEASE, I’m new at this! Please make the craniosacral rhythm REALLY BIG so I can notice it!'”

To Teacher’s credit, we did all feel the craniosacral rhythm. Tuning in, the rhythm felt as large as a giant jump rope game in which a kid at each end raises the rope up and down in a huge sine-wave.

And once you can feel the craniosacral rhythm, you can diagnose. Body parts with a strong, clear rhythm are fine. Parts with no rhythm are blocked and need help. We learned the 10 Step Protocol to release blocks. But something extra was also at work….

“When you test the sphenoid bone,” added Teacher, “REQUEST the sphenoid to lower itself to its full range.”  We did.

“When you listen to the body,” Teacher explained, “the body says, ‘FINALLY! Someone’s FINALLY listening to me!’ and it starts to self-correct and heal on its own….” We practiced feeling the body self-correct.

But I had a huge question.  “Invite” the craniosacral rhythm into your hands? “Ask” it to be REALLY BIG? “Request” the sphenoid to lower itself? Watch the body “self-correct on its own”?…. My hand shot up.

“What’s the difference between this and energy healing?” I asked.  Teacher didn’t answer me (although she didn’t kick me out of class either). But I noticed that what cured my clients was not how well I had memorized the cranial bones, soft tissues, other anatomy, nor the 10 Step Protocol. What cured my patients was that I LISTENED.  I followed their self-correcting with my hands–and where there was resistance or lack of instruction, I asked the body or neshama (soul) what it wanted.

Soon a strange Hijacking Protocol replaced the 10 Step Protocol. “On your way here,” I tell clients, “Your body made a laundry list of what it REALLY wants to work on–and in what order. It did this because it knows I listen.

“Now if I were a chiropractor, and you came to me with some vertebra out of place, I might correct the vertebra and send you home. But maybe the correction would hold only a day or two because your spine was responding to a hidden foot imbalance linked to a muscle strain in your lower back, which caused pressure on your head–which I didn’t correct. Even if I knew exactly what to correct, I might not know in which order to correct it. So I let your body tell me!

“We will begin the standard 10 Step Protocol but at some point your body will show me where it really wants my hands and what it really wants to work on. I call this ‘hijacking.'”

Hijacking may feel like the body is magnetically drawing your hands to a certain place. Or it will illuminate, or draw your attention to, a problem-area. Or you may feel your hands being asked to air-massage a certain blockage or push on some acupuncture point.

And the opposite is true. Teacher told us that when done at a certain location, you may feel the body “push” your hand away. Or I may sense that the urgent request for my hands has evaporated. And so I ask the body for its next instructions.

However the body chooses to communicate, the body wants this: not only someone to listen to it (“finally”); the body wants a friend to walk its walk. Together. Sometimes clients’ bodies tell me to just sit quietly by their side, maybe give a light touch here or there, and to wave stuck energy to the correct places or to their release sites, and wait. And wait. Sometimes I have spent 45 minutes sitting quietly by a body as it self-corrects. I am often asked not to touch the body at all, because the self-correction is moving so fast that my touch would slow it down. This technique effects remarkable cures in just one or two sessions.

In order to hear the body, I ask the client not to tell me anything. “If I can’t tell YOU what is wrong, I am not doing my job!” I say. The stories on my Craniosacral page unfolded with no client input.

We work in the dark much of the time, trusting the Unseen. Often the healing’s depth will be recognized only weeks or months later (see Energy Healing: Tip of the Iceberg?). And most of my clients I will not see again, because when we listen and get to the problem’s root the first or second visit, there is no need for a third or fourth visit.

Is Craniosacral Therapy a physical healing or an energetic healing? I say both. The body knows when to emphasize the physical or energetic side for each stage of its healing. All we do is listen.