Be Your Own Healer
For years I was blessed to have my mom there to give me Reiki energy healing whenever I didn't feel well, including daily after both my C-sections and an umbilical repair surgery. When my children were babies, every time one of them got a vaccine or blood draw, I would nurse and my mom would send Reiki during the moment of pain. She taught me how to give Reiki myself, but as long as she was alive, I did not need to be my own healer, nor anyone else's.
Fast forward to this week, when my 9-year-old son Maceo came down with a severe case of hand-foot-mouth disease. I sat beside him at night, his head cradled in my hands, which were burning from the Reiki energy I was sending. I don’t know how much this actually helped Maceo, but I felt better doing something for him. Then I slept on a pull-out mattress beneath his, reminiscent of my mom’s many sleepovers on cushions on my apartment floor.
This month, I’m sharing a meditation called Pranic Absorption that involves visualizing a ball of light slowly descending from the brain to the base of the spine. In it, my mom asks us to allow nine minutes for the light to descend, time meant to be used as an exploration of energetic blockages. Where does the light need to hover for longer? Is there a blockage around the heart? The throat? In other words, my mom asks us to explore healing for ourselves. I’ll admit, when I first heard this recording, I felt annoyed, thinking I didn’t want to focus on a ball of light for nine minutes. (And for those of you who are new to meditating, other meditations in my collection might be more accessible.) But of course, the practice was just what I needed. It is so easy to think we can outsource our healing and happiness. But especially in these challenging times, it is so powerful to recognize the resources that lie within.
Get free access to Pranic Absorption and dozens of other breathing and meditation recordings here.
Wishing you joy and peace this holiday season.
Love,
Sara
Amid the darkness, turning to the light within
For more than 10 years before my mom died, she taught a yoga class on New Year’s Day at Your Community Yoga Center in Hamden, Connecticut. She even showed up on Jan. 1, 2018, five months before her death. She was bald from chemotherapy and wore a cap rather than her itchy wig, and she brought along a friend to demonstrate physical poses that she was too weak to perform.
This January 1 will be my sixth time helping to continue her tradition. It is an honor for me to partner with studio owner Jennifer Brosious to lead a morning of journaling, intention setting, breathing, moving, relaxing and meditating. Once again we will offer the class both in person and on Zoom, as the pandemic expanded the geographic breadth of our participants. Admission is donation-based, with all proceeds supporting the studio.
It is so easy right now to fall into a pit of despair over the state of current affairs. As a mother myself, not a day goes by when I don't think about what kind of world I've brought my children into.
So often I think of what my mom would say if she were here: Focus on what you can control. As she wrote in an email to her yoga students after the devastating school shooting in Sandy Hook in December 2012: “We can’t change what happened. But we can turn to the light within and in turn spread that light to others.”
In the past, Jen and I have contemplated our theme for the class. (I'll never forget my blooper four years ago calling it “Set A Clear Vision for 2020.” ) This time, the theme felt obvious: “Peace Begins With Me.”
Participants will come away with tools to infuse a little peace into your day, no matter what it brings. We’ll still do the popular journaling exercises to look at what is working well in your life already and how you can build on that in the cycle ahead and be of service from your heart.