prayer

Giving Yourself a Reading

/ soulinteraction / Leave a comment

One way to connect to your intuition and to develop trust in the information that it is giving you, is to get in the daily habit of giving yourself readings.  There are a wide variety of techniques and processes out there, but the idea is to keep it simple.  I’m going to give you a simple process that I have shared with students and clients of mine over the years.

  1. Write down your questions. I harp on journaling A LOT because it is one of the most powerful spiritual tools in our arsenal of self discovery. One of the reasons so many people have difficulty in doing readings for themselves is that they either aren’t sure of the questions they want to ask, or they aren’t sure they are ready to hear the answers to those questions. Carrying our journals with us gives us a place to write down the questions we may have for our soul.
  2. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable with yourself. Being open to our questions is as important as being open to the answers, and both require us to be vulnerable enough to show up to our process of self inquiry.
  3. Open to your heart. One simple method of tuning in is to bring your awareness to your heart center. You can do this by simply bringing your hands to the heart. Allow yourself to connect to the simple rise and fall of the chest. Feel the beating heart beneath your hand. Let this act of body awareness be a doorway to deeper listening.
  4. Listen for the answers to your question with your entire body. We often get stuck in our head, and we often feel as if answers to our questions will come with some deep flash of insight, or thundering God force words through our ears. Sometimes the answer comes as a subtle fluttering in our bellies, a breath that goes a bit deeper than all the others, or you may see something in your external space that triggers deeper exploration (a photo, a color, a bird, a tree, etc).
  5. Write down anything you are feeling, seeing, sensing, or hearing (internally or externally). All of it is used in determining the answer to the questions you are asking. Don’t over think things, if something is standing out, write it down.
  6. Take a step back from the session. Let the answers and questions gestate a bit. You might come back with more questions based on the answers you receive – GREAT!  This means you are now moving into a soul dialog rather than just a question and answer session.
  7. Sometimes the answer isn’t what you want to hear, but it is always what you need to hear. Be receptive to whatever comes through. One of the most dangerous things we can do it is toss aside an answer just because we don’t like it. I see this often in cases of relationship questions. It’s hard to hear the truth. Sometimes the answer is that it is time to move on, but tossing aside that truth filled answer because it’s not what we want to hear only leads us to more suffering. If we are having trouble with a particular response we have received from our intuition, we can always ask our soul to amply the answer we have received, be open to digging deeper if you feel called to do so:
    1. What do I need to know about my relationship at this time?
      1. Beloved, it is time to move forward into your own light as this relationship has come to the end of its course.
      2. What can I do to make the transition one filled with grace?
      3. What areas of this relationship have caused us to arrive at this point of finality?
      4. What is my true teaching from this relationship with (xyz)?
  8. Have fun with giving yourself a reading. Too often we only use this beautiful connection we have to the soul our soul (the intuition) to ask about the stuff that requires heavy lifting. Ask simple things, ask about manifesting, ask about creating abundance, ask about winning the lottery, ask about expanding your connection to your spiritual path, ask for affirmations of love, ask for any number of things you might desire insight on, but ask!
  9. Take action on what your soul is giving you in the reading. If we are asking to improve our lives, and then we don’t follow through, it is only going to prolong the suffering and delay arriving at that place of liberation.

This is just a quick primer, something to have a bit of fun with, and my soul is nudging me to do more with the blog, so here it is. I hope that you find the information useful, and if you have questions you can alway contact me at: michael@michaelbrazell.com

Yoga as Prayer

/ soulinteraction / Leave a comment

Today as I was taking my place on my yoga mat at the gym, I asked myself the question, “Why do you do yoga?” The question struck me, and I’ll admit at first I didn’t have an answer. I decided to take this question into my practice today. As I was moving around the mat, breathing, taking in the sounds of the gym, I had a realization was over my heart. Yoga is how I pray. For me, yoga is devotion. When I am on my mat, I am stepping onto sacred ground. I feel my soul come alive. My breath joins my body more deeply, and for a moment all that exists is the flow.

Stepping onto the mat is stepping into trust. We spend much of our day trying to get away from the body, we rush into our expectations, or are bound to the anchors of our past. We hold judgement against ourselves. We eat foods that lack nourishment. We engage in distractions (television, social media, etc). We numb ourselves. When we take a step onto the yoga mat, we are saying to the soul, to God, to the universe I am here, and I am ready. The very act of showing up sets the intention, and brings us into presence.

As I move through the asana, I pause and deepen my breath. Too often in classes we try to rush through the sequences. Each pose is a meditation, the breath the mantra, and when we move slowly we are honoring the sacredness of that union. Sequences do not need to be complex, you don’t need to be fancy with how you breath, just let the body move. Yoga is an act of surrender. I try not to plan too far ahead as to what I want to do on my mat. I ask my body what it feels like doing today. I let each asana guide me to the next. I invite in my emotions, the ambient sounds and colors of whatever space I am in. Yoga is not about escaping, its arriving into to presence.

Yoga is a prayer that is said by the body, on the altar of our soul. Each movement is an intention in action. Each breath is a sacred mantra that whispers through us, taking us deeper into each heartbeat.

Take a moment to honor your path by dropping into the breath. Hold your awareness at the rise and fall of the chest, take your hand and place it over your beating heart. Feel life moving through you. Let this be enough.

Namaste

Advanced Reiki: Energetic Space Clearing

/ soulinteraction / 1 Comment

reiki51Reiki is one of my passions. I love how beautifully subtle can be, but also the amount of power that it brings to any given number of situations. Reiki is easy to learn and easy to do for yourself and for others. I thought it’d be great to start a series of posts to look at ways we can take our Reiki practice to a deeper level. Reiki is more than just a healing technique. I’ll be referring to Reiki specifically in these posts, but much of what I’ll be sharing may apply to other energy healing modalities and forms. Use your discernment to decide if this is something that resonates with you, and feel free to apply the information in the best way that works for your style of healing. There really are no right or wrong ways to go about doing this. What I am going to give you here are a couple of methods that I have used personally and have found them effective for my personal use, and I’ve also had positive feedback from clients that have also used these techniques. Use what feels right, leave the rest, and use this to formulate your own methodology.
There are many reasons why you might feel drawn to energetically cleansing your physical space. It might be a new home, or you may have had arguments in the space, you might feel an uneasy unseen presence, or it might just be a part of a routine that you follow based on your spiritual tradition. Many use sage or incense at their primary method of cleansing a space, this act is called smudging. Adding Reiki into this process is fairly easy and will bump up the effectiveness of the technique that you are us using. Smudging is powerful in that it allows us to engage all of the senses in the act of cleansing the space: our eyes see the smoke, we can smell it, we can feel the heat off the tip of the sage or incense stick, we move around the space with it, etc. To move Reiki into the equation you only need to add the intention that Reiki is also moving, and since Reiki moves primarily through touch, whatever you are holding as your instrument of cleansing will become the conduit through which Reiki will enter the space. The Reiki energy becomes infused in the smoke, the scent and the actions you are taking to cleanse the space.

If you do not use sage or incense you can still easily use Reiki to effectively energetically cleanse a physical space. There are a couple of ways that I feel work best. First you can find the center point of the space you are cleansing. Use your intuition, walk around the space, stop where it feels you are at the energetic center of the space. This might not be the physical center of the space. In a home for instance, family gatherings may happen in the kitchen, an in that home love is centered on the kitchen, so it might present as the energetic center of the some. Don’t over think it, or over analyze it. Go with what feels right, trust your healing ability and trust your intuition. Stand in the energetic center, and begin by stating your intention for wanting to do the cleansing (to bring more peace, to bring balance, to fill with love and light, etc). After you set your intention, being to radiate Reiki to the space. You can touch the floor in that spot of the home, touch a wall, or touch your heart center. Since you are standing or sitting at the center of the home, the Reiki will move through you and into the floor, thus filling the space with this beautiful healing energy. There is no right or wrong amount of time, trust your intuition… you start, and stop when it feels right.

Another method is to walk around the space, touch the walls, windows, floors, and give the space an actual Reiki treatment. You can touch the walls in a room, you can touch the perimeter of the property, furniture etc. Wherever you feel called to give energy you give in. In essence you become a walking pendulum, and you are using your body to locate where there might be a need to offer Reiki to the space.

These are just a few methods that you can use to clear a space with Reiki. In later posts I’ll go into more detail about using it to clear entities, ghosts, and negative energy. Just remember to trust your intuition in any given situation. Do what feels right, and you will keep to the highest intent and good for all involved.

Have you ever used Reiki to clear a space? What methods worked for you?

Do you have questions about space clearing, or about using Reiki to clear a space? Post them below.

You are loved. You are Beautiful. You are Divine.

Mike Brazell

www.michaelbrazell.com

www.youtube.com/soulinteraction

www.facebook.com/soulintuitive

www.blogtalkradio.com/michaelbrazell