But, we are trudging forward and trying to keep balanced with regular Reiki practice. We just completed a 21 day Reiki Self Practice Retreat off our Reiki Facebook page. And tomorrow (Feb 6), we are going to be offering 21 days straight of distance Reiki healing. If you are a Reiki practitioner and would like to participate, please feel free to join us on the page. If you’d like to request healing energy for yourself, others (pets too), please feel free to post your request in our discussion tab.

I’ll leave you with a little meditation music. Have a happy day!

We just signed up for the 2011 Readers Studio. Woot! This year it runs from April 29-May 1. Check out the presenter list:

Caitlín Matthews
Caitlín is an acknowledged world authority on Celtic wisdom, the Western Mysteries and the ancestral traditions of Britain and Europe. Author of over 60 books and tarot decks including, The Arthurian Tarot, Celtic Wisdom Tarot and Da Vinci Enigma Tarot.

Corrine Kenner
Author of twelve books, including Tarot for Writers, Simple Fortunetelling with Tarot Cards and Tarot Journaling. Corrine teaches and lectures on tarot internationally in Europe, Canada and across the United States.

Barbara Moore
Barbara serves as the tarot specialist for Llewellyn Publications and is the author of several books for tarot decks including, The Hip Witch Tarot, A Guide to Mystic Faerie Tarot, The Gilded Tarot Companion, Enchanted Oracle, and the exciting new Shadowscapes Tarot.

And here’s where you can read more details about each presenter.

Looks like it’ll be a lot of fun. What about you, are you going? If so, what are you looking forward to most?

This Fall I also started taking a yoga class. And tonight I was flipping through the latest issue of Yoga Journal and noticed they are going to be running a 21 day yoga challenge starting January 10. I have been trying to get into a home yoga routine but haven’t found my groove yet. Lots of times I can’t think of what pose to do next. I stand on my mat and look around my apartment as if my walls or my cat will clue me into what post to do next. Heh. I know, I should try a DVD. And maybe I will. But this looks fun:

New Year, New You

Have you ever tried to start a home practice but couldn’t stick with it? Well, we have the solution! In our 21-Day Yoga Challenge, which starts on Jan. 10, you’ll receive all the help you need to create a home yoga practice that works for your life. No matter how much time you have or how you feel on any given day, it’s still possible to practice yoga and reap the benefits.

How does it work? Each day, we’ll present original videos of yoga sequences. There are 15-minute videos for morning and night; 30-minute videos to help refine your poses, work your core, and develop strength; and a super fun 45-minute flow sequence that’ll have you moving all around your mat and getting a great workout in the process. By the end of the challenge, you’ll have an arsenal of practices at your disposal to use whenever and however you want.

You’ll also be able to listen to mediation and pranayama exercises, thanks to our friends at Sounds True. And you can blog about your experience on our Challenge Chat page. Finally, our Challenge newsletter will give you a little nudge each day, with background information about that day’s video sequence, practice tips, and healthy and delicious recipes from Vegetarian Times.

How do you join in? Just sign up here with your email address, and on Jan. 10 you’ll receive your first newsletter and a link to the first video and the 21-Day Yoga Challenge website. That’s it! It’s free and it’s just for you.

What are you waiting for? Take the challenge!

I’ve signed up. Woot! 21 days in a row though. I wonder if I’ll be able to stand at the end of this. Heh. Guess we shall see.

What about you? Are any of you going to try the challenge out? I’ll try to post now and then how it’s going.

Hi everyone. Hope you are doing great! Just wanted to post a heads up; we will be going on hiatus for a few months. We didn’t come to this decision lightly. It’s been a pretty rough, exhausting year and because of that, we’ve had a hard time posting regularly. Read throughs and book clubs were started but time constraints have made it impossible to finish them. I also ended  up spending too much time re-posting other content to our social media sites instead of writing new stuff, practicing with the cards or Reiki myself. That’s something I hope to rectify in the future.

Our goal is this is that we can take some time to recharge and come back strong with a more solid direction for this blog–all new content, including ongoing series of content. Maybe I can even finish off those read throughs. :/

But this doesn’t mean you still can’t get tarot and Reiki news. Our Twitter account is set to auto-post from select blogs. We’ve tested this for a while now and ya’ll seem to like it so we’ll continue on with it.

We hope you have a wonderful rest of the Summer and an awesome Fall too!

Shuffle the deck and lay out the cards as per the diagram.

Card 1: This card represents you, your attitude, innocence, naivete, your inexperience in this situation.

Card 2: This card represents that upon which you have always relied, the solidity of the past that you may have to leave now. This card is certainty and routine and the familiar.

Card 3: This card represents the risk you have to take, the first step into the unknown, whether large or small.

Card 4: This card represents your fears, which can be real or imaginary, grounded in the reason of the situation or founded in panic.

Card 5: This card represents the unknown, what you have to gain, the learning you will come by, the experience and maturity that can be had, the life you can be living.

…………………..

If you have a tarot spread you’d like to submit for consideration in being featured here, please contact us. You can also post in the comments or let us know on Twitter.

Here Comes the Sun Spread

1. How do you define joy?
2. How does joy connect you to the divine or your Higher Self?
3. How do you express joy in your daily life?
4. How do you receive joy?
5. How do you give or share joy?
6. What gives you joy intellectually or how do you experience it intellectually?
7. What gives you joy creatively or spiritually or how do you experience it creatively or spiritually?
8. What gives you joy physically or how do you experience it physically?
9. What gives you joy emotionally or how do you experience it emotionally?

…………………..

If you have a tarot spread you’d like to submit for consideration in being featured here, please contact us. You can also post in the comments or let us know on Twitter.

Write a nursery rhyme about…a mysterious box…from a nervous person’s point of view.

Draw three random cards and use them to guide and illustrate your rhyme.

I’m off to try it myself. Enjoy!

Horns and Hooves Spread

1. Trait Admired (Horns)
2. How is this trait a downfall? A weakness?
3. Trait Despised (Hooves)
4. How is this trait useful? A strength?
5. What do I need to “mend my shell with pearl”? (Advice towards wholeness and integration)

…………………..

If you have a tarot spread you’d like to submit for consideration in being featured here, please contact us. You can also post in the comments or let us know on Twitter.

Covering All the Angles Spread

The positions in this spread are based on the four angles in an astrological chart, which represent four key areas of life. The purpose of the spread is to discover what you need to focus on right now in each area or simply to explore the current and projected conditions in each area.

The cards are placed on an imaginary zodiac wheel, with three cards placed on the First House (House of Self), three cards  on the Fourth House (House of Home and Family), three cards on the Seventh House (House of Relationships and Partnerships), and 3 cards on the Tenth House (House of Career).

Note that the 12 positional numbers in the spread do not represent the 12 houses. This spread examines only issues related to Houses 1, 4, 7, and 10 — the houses on the angles of the zodiac wheel.

1. Self – what is working in my favor
2. Self – what is working against me
3. Self – forecast

4. Home and Family – what is working in my favor
5. Home and Family – what is working against me
6. Home and Family – forecast

7. Relationships and Partnerships – what is working in my favor
8. Relationships and Partnerships – what is working against me
9. Relationships and Partnerships – forecast

10. Career – what is working in my favor
11. Career – what is working against me
12. Career – forecast

…………………..

If you have a tarot spread you’d like to submit for consideration in being featured here, please contact us. You can also post in the comments or let us know on Twitter.

Part 2 begins with this quote:

“Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to that which is known to us in nature.” –St. Augustine

Introduction: The Personal Experience

Brennan uses this section to note that what and how we see or feel will change as we develop new sensitivities. We will be more in tune with energy around us. You should be aware of this so you aren’t caught unaware and confused by it.

Chapter 4: Parallels Between How We See Ourselves and Reality and Western Scientific Views

This chapter explores how the scientific view of reality supports that we are all (and everything in the Universe) composed of energy fields. We are all interconnected.

I am no scientist, nor do I pretend to be remotely adequate speaking of sciences, but I’ll do my best to round up what she discusses in this chapter. I suspect I’ll be expressing that point a lot as we read this book.

Newtonian Physics relies upon the physical and solid existence. Physical reactions have a physical cause. But then in the early 19^th century, new physical phenomena (electromagnetism) came about and Newtonian Physics could not be used to describe it. This led to the concept of a field, which is a “condition in space which has the potential of producing a force.” The universe if filled with fields that interact with each other. And in the last 15-20 years, folks are beginning to include themselves in these field interaction concepts.

And then Albert Einstein came into the picture and His Theory of Relativity blew out the principal concepts of Newtonian Physics. Physics could no longer be understood as space by itself or time alone. Space and time are interconnected. And time is relative. No more fixed timeline as was the belief of Newtonian Physics.

Brennan seems particularly excited in the section about paradoxes and quanta (energy packets). Radiated heat is emitted as quanta, not as a continuous stream of energy. Basically, they are stating at this point in study, particles were seen as energy packets. But in the next section (Beyond Dualism—The Hologram), she goes on to say that particles are probability waves because there is no such thing as a “thing.” They are really “events.” Aah, physicists… Let’s simplify. The gist of this part is that we are all made of waves, thus we are all connected as one. “We are a Whole.”

Moving on to the hologram, this concept “states that every piece is an exact representation of the whole and can be used to reconstruct the entire hologram.” Dr. Karl Pribram goes on to state that “the brain employs a holographic process to abstract from a holographic domain that transcends time and space.” I find these interesting points, especially when looking ahead to the questions she asks at the end. One is “Imagine yourself as a hologram. How does that unlimit you?” I can’t put to words easily what I was imagining when I stopped to think about that. Visual energy moving. No limits at all. Oof. It’s fascinating and overwhelming at the same time. What about you? Have a way to describe imagining yourself as a hologram here?

Anyway, I’ll go ahead and try to keep going. I find the dualism concept interesting too. When you evaluate one’s health, you are seeing outside of time or space, hence dual fields. We separate the field from us in order to observe, if I’m understanding that right. Brennan even writes about how hard it is to explain or describe this stuff in words (“because we use words in a linear fashion”).

In the next part of this chapter, Brennan brings us back full circle to the opening of the chapter with how scientists are continually looking for mathematical and experimental proof. Bell’s theorem supports the concept that particles transcend time and space and what happens to each particle affects other particles. And these effect can be “superluminal,” i.e. faster than the speed of light. This theorem was proven mathematically and is now supported by experimentation.

I glossed over some of it because there is just SO much info in this chapter. But the gist is there. Science has some really interesting finds about energy fields and I think understanding some of this will help us become better practitioners. It only helps solidify the understanding that we are all connected. And it’s making me want to do a little Distance Reiki and perhaps a mediation too.

Chapter 4 summary questions:

1. How to have scientific views influenced our self-concepts?
2. Why is the view of a fixed physical world impractical to us?
3. What was so important about Faraday’s and Maxwell’s contributions to the ideas about how the world works?
4. What is superluminal connectedness and what is its significance in our daily lives?
5. How can the idea of multidimensional reality help describe the HEF?

Plus a question to think on:

1. Imagine yourself as a hologram. How does that unlimit you?

Post your thoughts below or out the Reiki Facebook Fan Page Forum. For those of you who want to read faster than this pace, you can chat about future chapters here.

Next up, we continue with Chapter 5: History of the Scientific Investigation into the Human Energy Field.

That’s that. Have a happy day everyone!

Previous Posts:

• Reiki Book Club: Hands of Light by Barbara Brennan
• Reiki Book Club: Hands of Light, Chapters 1-3