Day 2 - Change of Heart

The day began on a sluggish note. I turned off my alarm and didn’t even know that I did it. My roommate woke me up 10 min before I was supposed to be downstairs. This meant no meal until lunch. During the time used to ground ourselves and meditate I was very heavy headed as if the front of my brain had solidified into brick. I also felt like my body was twisting into a knot. The whole right side of my body was tense and my neck was in pain. I did not know if this was from the previous events in Hawaii when I carried a 30 lb rock 3 miles while hiking the Na Pali Coast, because it spoke to me, followed by carrying my mom for about half a mile while hiking the same coast because she hurt her knee or if it was tension built up from my resistance to the process the previous day. During the intension setting period I made the goal to “be accepting and let it happen”. The acceptance and conformation was about the system and my emotions. Since I knew that I was not going to be walking out anymore I really needed to get from this experience everything that I could.

As we made spiritual formations with our bodies we tried to feel the connection that we had with the people in our group. I could not find myself in a comfortable position due to the pain in my body. While I could not make the connections with other people sitting next to me I was pushed to listen to my body and realize that I needed new intentions. Once I made the intention “to find, listen to and be comfortable in my body”, I was able to jump right back into the formation. The apex shined down on my three formation partners and myself. It was full of light and connected all of our hearts into one ball of energy. This ball was not in the shape of a ball but in the shape of a pyramid. At each corner of the pyramid was a ball that connected up to everyone’s heart and it really felt as if something magical was happening.

Today was VERY intense with emotion. As I was being worked on another person was expressing anger, sadness and the want to quit the program and leave. The words spoken from their mouth were very intense and I felt really in tune with their feelings. As I laid on the table my eyes started to tear. As the tears were dripping down my cheek I felt that these tears were not for myself but for the person getting worked on next to me. Through their yelling and screaming I was showing emotion. It made me think that I am really affected by everything around me and peoples actions around me. As I started to internalize the emotions and make them my own I started thinking about people in my life that have had a considerable impact. William Roberts, a child I worked with at Camp Avanti and is very dear to my heart came to mind. He recently underwent surgery for a tumor on his spine. My grandpa Bob (my guardian angel) who is no longer with us came to mind and my parents, siblings, and friends were also brought up. They all seemed to come up individually at first and then when I thought about them all together and how it is going to be so hard to see any of them leaving my life (death) I really started to let go of my emotions. This lasted for about 3 minutes and seemed to almost abruptly come to a stop. The rest of the treatment didn’t really contain much emotion but it definitely opened me up to quite a bit more than I was experiencing before.

When we integrated back at the circle we talked about our experiences, as usual. I didn’t know if I was going to say anything but after the person who wanted to leave because of the treatment expressed their experience I needed to tell them that it was them that allowed me to open up. I needed to thank them. From the moment I opened my mouth, I think the first words were “I usually don’t cry but…”, I melted down in tears. I took a few deep breaths between words and was barely able to express to the group and thank the person who had allowed me to break down because the large sense of emotion that I felt at that moment was impeccable! Yes, it felt good! At that point in time I realized how much I had been missing out of by holding everything back. For the past 4 years of my life I have not let strong emotions flow from my body. I always took emotions, in general, as something that would skew my, what I thought to be, rational way of thought -- the thought process that has been expressed as needed in any professional career. Yes, I would be sad at times but it was not something that I expressed or that made me emotional. I knew that this was going to be the start of emotions for me and it was exactly what I needed to be able to really open up to them again and experience all the good emotions of life.

This day was overall good. It allowed me to accept myself, where I am in life, and know that I have things that I can work on and am determined to change. At the end of the day I felt grateful to be here: A place where nobody was judged, a place where I could do what I needed to open up to myself.

Day 1 - The Beginning

Upon my arrival at the house, I was pleased to find out that a long “lost” friend was taking the course as well. She is someone that I admire very much and immediately after she said she was going to be taking the class I was semi-relieved: Maybe this will not be as bad as I thought, and if it is then I will have someone that I trust and can talk with. At this moment I stopped wanting to run away (at least as much) and was accepting of being at the house. I still did not want to be there but I felt a little grounded. She supplied a sense of familiarity to the dwelling situation.

Every session is set up with the same structure behind it. We meet at precisely 7:55 am in our circle in a lovely room down in the basement of the house. In this room there are three areas. The first is where we hold our circle meetings. In this space there are eight chairs forming a circle where each participant has a self-determined place that they will use for the duration of the workshop. In the middle of the circle is a crystal on a blue velvet cloth. Around the crystal are three candles that stay lit at all times. The second space is an open area where the group holds meditative formations. These formations are in the shape of diamonds. Each person sits at a corner facing the center of the formation. The third area is the workspace. Three message tables are placed side-by-side with about four feet in between them forming an energy grid. The room is kept warmer than usual and consists of walls in a light and delicate shade of pink. This is the area where the workshop takes place. The dimensions of the room in total are approximately 35’X25’ with ceilings 9 feet high.

At the beginning of the first session we sat in a circle and did some talking about the program and meditation. We proceeded to set intentions for ourselves that would encompass that day and possibly more. The point of these intensions was to share with the group what we wanted to accomplish and could be altered at any time. The point of sharing with the group was to make our intentions a reality that everyone felt, not just something on the inside. Sharing is a mechanism that allows us to connect with other people and develop trust and security, which is vital to these processes! My intention was set that I wanted to “let go and start anew”. I took this intension not as a final goal but as a first step towards my final goal of “defining myself and figuring out my calling, therefore determining what will make me happy”. With all the emotions that built up through out the session, that I did not even recognize, my intention was altered and by the end of the session it was extended to “let go, start anew, be emotion full and develop a voice of my own”. These intentions were chosen because I feel that I need to develop these areas before I can be truthful with myself.

Out of all these areas there is one that stands out above the rest in my mind: develop a voice of my own. It has become habit for me to attach on to other peoples goals and not set my own because I do not know what I ultimately want. Therefore I am not able to be truthful to myself and develop a decisive attitude towards things in my life and find myself in a state of limbo on many situations. I need to have a grasp on where I stand! Don’t get me wrong, I have many strong standpoints about many finite issues but when it comes down to me knowing what is best for me, I am lost. I tend to put other people before myself, think they have it all figured out, stranding myself in accomplishing anything personal. The first moment I took what someone else recommended and used it as my own was when I stranded myself in this ongoing circle. I have noticed this in the past and have changed my attitude towards making decisions of my own but this NEEDS to permanently change!

My recent understanding of this program is that it allows you to open up to yourself and become/figure out who you are. It is quite intense and can be painful and emotional, many times both. The structure of this program is very strict and intense: precise is how Arna (the teacher) explains it. This line of work is different what I am used to. Coming from a background in shamanic work that is very laid back and random at times it was hard to transition into such an intense atmosphere, little did I know the connections that I would find between the two. The feelings of not wanting to be there and rebellion did not help nor did the lack of sleep. Sharing of feelings is encouraged and urged in the program and in the middle of the session I shared my feelings of resistance with the group. I was pleased to have others admit to be having the same feelings for when I first met them all I though that I was the only one there that had stuff to work on and that I was the only one there for personal reasons. I came up with this conclusion while talking to my roommate who is studying to become a practitioner of energy healing. Considering we were the two youngest people there I thought everyone else was there for that same reason. Maybe we are not so different from each other after all. The action of admitting this helped to recognize what was happening and to try and focus not on my ego but my soul. Even with this realization I still found myself resisting throughout the rest of the day until the very end when Arna caught me in the act of resistance. This was the first step towards the potential healing to come.

During the session I had a constant feeling of awkwardness. In the program you use your voice to tone. The tone can be any sound that you “instinctively” are pushed to produce. Typically it is a long vowel or a set of nonsense syllables to the standard tongue, it can range from melodious to a yell. It was hard to me to be able to produce these sounds and feel comfortable in the group. This was mainly a trust and comfort issue. I could not do this in front of 6 people that I didn’t know. I have been introduced to many random acts of letting go and not caring what others thing but these actions were of extreme difficulty for me to start doing. I am normally a fairly shy person when it first comes to meeting someone. It takes me a little while to feel the tone that someone sets about what is the proper way to act around them. Once I get to know someone I have no problem doing anything crazy in front of them. Maybe trust and learning to not really care what ANYONE else thinks is something that I need to work on as well. I thought I was pretty close to this but obviously there is still something to work on.

The theory behind the toning and frequencies work, to the best of my understanding, is that our bodies have a set frequency and are affected by different tones and through the opening of doorways in the body we can rearrange energy and affect the natural frequency of a person’s body. One way to help a person get in tune with themselves and ground themselves is to use your voice to set a tone for them. I will not go through much more detail on how the system works but if you are interested please don’t hesitate to leave feedback asking and I will clear some things up for you.

I ended the session on a better note than I entered, but I did still not want to continue. Due to my hesitant persona, about this course specifically, I was unable to really reach any conscious changes in myself in relation to my first set of intentions. This did not help the continuing analysis of course value and lead to weighing the pros and cons to see if it was worth even staying. If I was not brought up believing that once I say that I will do something I follow it through till then end I might have walked away. Then there was the slight bit of information that I obtained about the cost of this program and then I really could not leave if it meant forking over all that for nothing.

I learned that this course was not just to do healing on others and myself but also to learn the practices to become a practitioner. Meaning that I could do this for a living if I so desired but most likely on the side for I will only be of level one. I became a little more excited because I love to learn and by knowing that I am actually obtaining knowledge that is valuable has made the process a little more intriguing for me. I was excited to become a level I practitioner of frequencies work!

The session ended at 8pm and from there I stayed up late finishing a power point for my mother and connecting with friends over the Internet.