Holistic Gardner

As promised, here is an exercise taken from Maria Nemeth’s book, The Energy of Money. I invite you to explore this exercise in a calm and non-judgmental place, and give yourself some time just to free-associate. I’ve shortened it a bit, for space’s sake.

Your Structure of Knowing Money

On a poster-sized piece of paper, write the word “money” in the middle of the page. From there, start writing down your associations with this word. Do this by drawing lines moving outward from the word “money.” An association is any word or phrase that pops into your mind when you think of money. (This mind-mapping technique was developed by a writer named Gabriele Rico).

If you live in this society, you have some relationship to money, so this month’s topic is the dreaded MONEY ISSUE!

Do you save? Do you spend? Do you binge spend? Do you have a hard time spending money on yourself? Do you have a hard time spending money on others? Do you always think there is never enough? Where do you spend your money? Is it in line with what you value? Do you follow your money meticulously? Or do you bury your head in the sand, hoping that your account isn’t withdrawn? Just thinking about these questions makes me feel like this guy in the photo!

I want to continue the discussion on faith from last month, since it seems to still be gripping me in some way. Faith is about knowing you’re not doomed by your past mistakes. I’d like to share a quote with you, “You are not punished FOR your mistakes, but BY your mistakes.”

I was listening to Wayne Dyer’s series of audio CDs “The Essence of Being in Balance,” which I found in a bargain bin recently. I had seen him on a PBS TV special, and thought he made some good points, so I went ahead, and needing a dose of balance myself, picked up the 6-CD set.

He is half  a “wise man” archetype, and half  “New Age guru.” The latter comes out when he makes emphatic points like, “I know the Universe is here to support us all,” that, even were it so, is a pretty presumptuous statement. But that annoyance aside, I was up, couldn’t sleep, and was listening.

Recently I watched Caroline Myss’ “Energetics of Healing” DVD. Myss is most known for her book Anatomy of the Spirit, and is renowned as one of the first practitioners to pull the mind, body, and spirit together and reach the masses.

In this DVD, her premise is that we have a set amount of energy coming from the Source to us everyday that is managed through energetic chakra centers. Each chakra manages a specific category of information. Good management of the chakras leads to well-being and equilibrium in your daily functioning, whereas poor management results in energy “leaks” that drain cells of life force and leave us depleted, tired, unhappy, with low self-esteem, and with unbalanced relationships. Taken to an extreme, these “leaks” lead to  illness  and disease.

While subbing a vinyasa yoga class a few weeks ago, I noticed that the majority of the bodies in the room fell into two categories: flexible and stiff. While this is an extreme oversimplification, being the therapist that I am, I began to draw conclusions to life off the mat, and to relationships in general. What I outline here can be seen as literal, metaphorical, and/or sexual.

“Healing” is a broad idea – one that can mean many different things to many different people. It can be related to physical healing, emotional healing, grief work, soul work, and much more; and can include modalities from psychotherapy to acupuncture, from massage therapy to chiropractic, from Rosen Method work to cranial-sacral therapy, and much more.

But there’s one element that all of this healing work shares – and that is the importance of the “witness observer.” One of the very first phrases my clients hear out of my mouth is, “Notice without judgment.” It is the first tool and skill people need on their healing journey. If they don’t understand what they’re doing, thinking, or feeling, it makes it hard to change.