Performance tips from a quasi athlete (me!)

Like so many of us, I enjoyed watching the Paris Olympics. It also brought back memories from my teenage years - while I was never an athlete, I did change schools a few times and I signed up for sports to make friends. That experience made it into my Chakra Healing & Magick book; have a look at the Solar Plexus questionnaire. 

For example, in my junior year, I joined the Track & Field team. I wasn't much of an athlete to begin with, and it was the only team where you didn't have to try out. Everyone could go to practice, choose a category and only the top 2-3 students in each group would actually compete. 

 

Every Monday we had to run sprints for two hours - basically races where you ran the however-many-yard-dash quicker and quicker. The rest of the week, we'd do a warm up run for 30 minutes and then practice our individual categories. I chose long jump and high jump. Both were fun and relatively easy once you got the hang of it. 

So two things that I'd like to highlight.... 

> First, oddball happening - I did surprising well with the high jump, participating in the actual competitions and even taking home first place. Until I freaked out about the height and twist of it all - I must have panicked, or maybe my body did, and after winning first place one week, I never again cleared the starting height on that bar.

Mental clarity, objectivity and purpose are super important. 

I loved the idea of the high jump and I enjoyed mapping out each of my steps on my way to the bar (that's how you know where to jump), but I didn't appreciate risking my neck. And that is how it felt - you'd land on your upper back, turn your head slightly, roll through your neck-shoulder, and then roll off the cushion. 

So I dropped out of the high jump and stuck with long jump that year. It was fun.

> Second ... when I think back to the training for sprints, jumping and anything else, our coach would have us improve our technique rather than put more energy and force into the race. Those infernal Mondays where we ran endless sprints, to start out he'd say: use 50% of your energy, or 70% of your energy - but never more than 85% of your energy... 

No matter what happened, we had to keep 15% of our energy for ourselves. Any improvements beyond that 75-85% (which was what we competed on) had to come from your technique. How you move your legs and elbows. Getting to know your joints, and going through the movements faster, without putting in more energy. 

How can we apply this?  

The obvious answer is to keep a generous dose of energy for yourself and to do things to improve your life skills: coaching, therapy, communications training, organizational skills, or priority-setting. Say no and avoid burning out. Improve your soft skills, invest in yourself and improve your technique. 

I'm not an Olympic athlete and I can't guarantee that you'll win first place in life, but we're not competing. Just doing better for ourselves. Less overdrive, more joy. 

And if there is something that you love, but that you're scared of, dig deep and find out why. Maybe it's just fear, or maybe, it's something tangible that you're not aware of. In my case, about 6-7 years later, I discovered that I had a very light case of scoliosis which affects my lower back and neck (not enough to immobilize me or be visible), but that high jump probably was not the best thing for me anyway. 

I thought back to this recently and I wanted to share 🔥 Enjoy the blog! Read my books to heal yourself; they both focus on hang-ups and insecurities that keep us down. 

Now in English and Spanish 🔥🔥

On Amazon Global! 

Reiki hugs, 

Regina 

***

Regina Chouza is an energy healer, angel medium and the author of A Personal Guide to Self-Healing, Cancer & Love and Chakra Healing & Magick. Blogging at Diary of a Psychic Healer since 2010, her passion is bringing the qualities of love, joy and empowerment to healing pursuits. Read her books to heal yourself. Find her on Instagram.com/reginachouza or on Facebook, as DiaryofaPsychicHealer.

> Español: @AngelMedium33

Image: canva .com (2025)

SHK

We are bigger than our egos

Lately, I’ve been thinking about why the world is so dysfunctional. Two things come to mind - faulty egos, where one person feels like they have to one-up another, and second, the possibility of losing our security, financial or otherwise. Both of these are important but the first can be addressed with energy healing, so I’m going to focus my attention on that one - integrating and redirecting the ego’s energy. 

I've been giving this a lot of thought recently, and I believe that most of the damage caused by humans can be explained by two big factors:

• Faulty Egos & Emotional Pain, where one person has to outperform another to feel good about themselves. They might have childhood trauma that makes them feel inferior, hurt, angry or vengeful. Those core wounds lead to actions that harm others in ways that are unnecessary - whether it's a snide comment or something more direct. The faulty ego might get pleasure from feeling superior, but that satisfaction is filtered through a wound. Pain is on background refresh; any efforts to do well suffer because of it. Everyone loses.

• Fear of Loss / Scarcity. It's assuming that there aren't enough opportunities for everyone to win at life. This might be literal - not enough money, or psychological (not enough praise, which brings us back to the first point; a damaged ego). For example, if one restauranteur opens a sushi restaurant and gets lots of good reviews, another chef might feel like they will lose customers. To be honest, this is based on real-life economic conditions and it’s a healthy human response. Competition is normal - a necessary survival mechanism, but my intuition tells me that aggressive competition and defensiveness happen because most of us are not aligned with our uniqueness or our vision. This is what I learned in business school too - differentiate your biz, your personality and your products. From a spiritual point of view, there is a part of your soul that taps into your life purpose and what no one else can match. 

Healing your ego might involve integrating an overblown ego that pushes people away, but it could also be a dysfunctional ego that makes a person act small or insecure. 

We want to assert ourselves, without going overboard and wreaking havoc on other people’s lives. One of the insights from my spiritual psychology classes is needing to set that boundary yourself; long term peace and stability is found when everyone thrives. Pluto in Libra generation here ♎️

The Ego is not Bad

>> We all have egos, and you need your ego to prop you up and give you strength. Don’t get rid of your ego. Unfortunately, the unhealthy parts of the ego sabotage us in unique and often sophisticated ways. 

Read my books to heal yourself and join me on YouTube for meditations. I also offer healing sessions. A lot of self-healing is about developing confidence in yourself and releasing beliefs that paint you into a corner, beliefs about yourself and the world.

 

Heal yourself 💜💜💜💜

• Amazon.com/author/reginachouza

• Youtube.com/c/reginachouza

When I’ve done meditations to strengthen my sense of security, my intuition points me to this matrushka metaphor. Your full / higher self is a lot bigger than your ego / human self. And there is a part of us that has infinite growth potential. That said, I’m still a work in progress (aren’t we all); I haven’t felt as many changes in my life, as I would like. There have been lots of hang ups that I had to release along the way. 

Reiki hugs, 

Regina 

Ps... This post was inspired by a Chef's Table episode 🍱 

***

Regina Chouza is an energy healer, angel medium and the author of A Personal Guide to Self-Healing, Cancer & Love and Chakra Healing & Magick. Blogging at Diary of a Psychic Healer since 2010, her passion is bringing the qualities of love, joy and empowerment to healing pursuits. Read her books to heal yourself. Find her on Instagram.com/reginachouza or on Facebook, as DiaryofaPsychicHealer.

> Español: @AngelMedium33

Image: canva .com

SHK

Crystals, Reiki and a Flower Disaster

I had a crazy experience with crystals many years ago and I forgot to blog about it. Here it goes! I bought a handful of stones in a museum shop. Most crystals have great energy to begin with, and I do clear them before activating them. But on my way home, I took a carnelian out of the bag and held it in my palm. It didn’t seem happy. 

My hand stung after a while; it felt like the crystal was angry. Instead of clearing and keeping it, I decided to return it to nature. Burying crystals is a great way to clear their energy. But I just happened to walk past a huge flowerbed, and without thinking, I tossed it right into the flowers. 

Three days later I walked past the flowers and they were all drooping. The flowerbed was about 6 feet wide and the whole thing looked terrible. I felt awful - so I gave the flowers Reiki for a few minutes and left. It didn’t help. A friend joined me later that week and we spent a lot of time sending healing to the flowers. When I checked again, everything was back to normal! 

Lately, I have been thinking about this experience and how crystals, Reiki and water can help us bloom. Also, how the effects of energy healing are not purely psychological or based on belief. After this experience, I’d say that it doesn’t matter if we connect with energy healing logically or not. Let’s give ourselves the chance to receive light and bloom.

Visualize white light radiating through your aura and your water. And yes, clear your crystals before connecting with them. 

And read my book! Chakra Healing & Magick looks at crystals, energy healing and other kinds of magick. I published the book a year or so after the experience that I have described here. You’ll find a flower mandala on the cover, the idea is to channel energy healing and let yourself bloom! 🌻

The book is available on Amazon, now in Spanish too! 👉🏻 Bookstore Here 

Crystal not included lol. That is my favorite malachite - there for love and prosperity. Thank you for reading my blog!

Reiki hugs,

Regina 

Thank you for reading! Join me below

 Facebook / Instagram / Youtube

Read my books (Amazon)

Reiki hugs, Regina 

📸 by yours truly

I’m the tiger from my nightmares 🔥🔥🔥

Growing up, I had a recurring nightmare where we were having lunch at my grandmother’s house. The wall came tumbling down and a roaring tiger came out from behind. Everyone went scrambling - my aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends who were there for lunch. My 8- year old self ran and hid behind a big black piano. 

It didn’t look like exactly my grandparents' house, for one, we seemed to be eating on large picnic tables. I have a clear image of one of my aunts staying put, the rest of the people were hazy. The walls were made of carton too; it didn't keep anything back. 

I would stay huddled behind that piano bench, scared that the tiger would eat me. It paced back and forth but it didn’t feel angry or hungry. My inner child was terrified, as you would be if a tiger suddenly appeared in front of you and you were stuck there. 

After a few weeks of this recurring dream, one night I was watching the tiger and I suddenly realized that it was a dream. The tiger wasn’t there. But unfortunately, someone at school had told us that if you died in a dream you would then die in real life. So I hid from that tiger for years....  

Decoding Dreams

Fast forward about 35 years and I asked a Jungian psychologist for recommendations on child psychology books. At the time, I wanted to enroll in a counseling masters but I wasn’t sure what style to adopt. 

He recommended an author called Donald Kalsched and I read a book on dreams, nightmares and what they have to tell us. The ebook was super expensive so I got the Kindle in Portuguese 🇧🇷: O Mundo Interior Do Trauma (The Inner World of Trauma).  

My Portuguese isn’t great but this is what I learned. The book is good, by the way: 

• According to Kalsched, the elements in the recurring dream, or nightmare in my case, are parts of your psyche that are trying to protect you, while also revealing an unconscious complex. It's all you in the dream. 

• He calls those complexes archetypal self-care systems (translating from Portuguese) and they have energy and personality in our dream state and unconscious. I imagine they influence our behavior while we are awake too, in knee-jerk reactions? 

• We can revisit the dream to decode it; as far as I can tell, this is part of counseling sessions. My approach was to send healing to that part of me with Reiki and energy healing.

Here are my insights. I read the book two years ago but I'd forgotten about it until recently, when a song made it click.   

• If you die in a dream, you don’t die in real life. Obvious, but my inner child needed to hear that. Yesterday I started there and then sent healing to the part of me that went into hiding... 

• I‘d already been connecting with Inanna, the goddess of music and war, after a meditation where Katy Perry’s Roar came up. I was trying to make friends with a tiger but my inner child was still terrified. In energy healing, that’s a fragmented part of your psyche that that has to be brought back into the fold, gently. 

• A few weeks ago I realized that the tiger represents someone in my family - it’s a person and an energy that is powerful and that had the intention of standing up for me. That tiger energy was there for all of us. It represented visibility and presence.  

• But as a child, and even more recently as an adult, big displays of emotion threw me off. That energy was terrifying to me as a child, because of the emotion and the tiger image. My adult self isn't scared; I like the idea of a tiger spirit animal. 

That tiger was always larger than life in my unconscious, but when I bring it up and integrate it into my personality, it's amazing. This is what I need to go out into the world confidently and to keep from recoiling. So yes, awesome; the antihero becomes the antidote. I'm the tiger, it's me 🔥

Intuitively, I've felt that tiger walking with me during meditations, and leaping out of my solar plexus chakra, into the world. Here is the song that inspired this aha moment!

BTW -  I’m fluent in English, Spanish, French and I speak a little Italian. I don’t speak Portuguese but it’s similar enough to work it out. Got through a third of the book, just enough to decipher this dream. 

For now my energy healing books are available in English and Spanish 🦁

Amazon.com/author/reginachouza

Reiki hugs,

Regina 

 

***

Regina Chouza is an energy healer, angel medium and the author of A Personal Guide to Self-Healing, Cancer & Love and Chakra Healing & Magick. Blogging at Diary of a Psychic Healer since 2010, her passion is bringing the qualities of love, joy and empowerment to healing pursuits. Read her books to unlock your intuition. 

> Español: @AngelMedium33

Image: canva .com (updated 2025)

Release Inner Blocks to Love, Happiness and Success

There is a song that I love by the Mexican artist, Julieta Venegas, because she walks away from something (a sour relationship) that she might deserve, but doesn't want. 

It got me thinking about whether we get what we deserve - or what we reach for. And in many cases, what we tolerate. That's in terms of creating the life you want to experience. We need to think bigger.

 

It's cool to work on healing your self-worth, your boundaries, and to revisit what you think you deserve in life and relationships. Believing that you don't deserve a particular experience is a block; it takes away from your personal initiative and negotiating power. But objectively, lean into what you want to experience, regardless of whether you or others think you deserve X, Y or Z.  

Today I'm asking myself what is possible, not what people think should happen. The realm of possibilities is the playing field.

 

On a side-note, most healers and empaths are very tuned into other people's feelings and needs. I know this applies to me. Often, I find myself wondering if a lucky break isn't more deserved or needed elsewhere. This is one of the patterns that I needed to heal and release. It clicked for me a few weeks ago, when I listened to this song: 

Listen to your intuition, not the voice of your ego. The ego makes us feel smaller, its sabotage keeps us from achieving our potential. The flip side would be to assume we deserve more than others (also ego). 

One of my spiritual psychology teachers suggests connecting with that part of yourself, understanding how it seeks to protect you, and having an inner dialogue so that its energy can be repurposed to empower you. Release the belief that leads to self-sabotage. You can do this in any energy healing session, simply by setting the intention to fill that part of yourself with love, forgiveness and lots of healing. 

I’m working on this now but I wanted to share these insights. Self-healing is a work in progress; we don’t have to be perfect and aiming for that keeps us from reaching our potential. As my middle school soccer coach used to tell us, if you wait for the perfect shot you’ll never score a goal. 

Free yourself with a bit of self healing! Join me on Youtube for meditations to go with my books. Enjoy and please share 💜 

Amazon.com/author/reginachouza 

Reiki hugs, 

Regina 

> Please Note: I’m energy healer, not a psychologist. I have taken a few spiritual psychology classes for personal work. 

Thank you for reading! Join me below

 Facebook / Instagram / Youtube

Read my books (Amazon)

Reiki hugs, Regina 

Image: canva 

The Ego Thrives on Comparison

Throwing a few thoughts out there because I can’t sleep 😅 It dawned on me today that the ego can only exist in relation to something else, it doesn’t stand on its own legs. It also has to be seen, which isn’t bad; we all need to be seen and loved.

But wouldn’t it be cool if your true self or your Higher Self shone through instead? So instead of comparing yourself with others and having that be the reference point for the ego, align your ego with your Higher Self and all of its joy, light and potential.

This shift can be done on both feeling and mental levels. The belief that we can be more or less than the person next door is where the ego starts. It needs comparison to exist, a point of reference.

One of my reiki teachers, William Rand, tells us that we can heal the ego so that it becomes a force for our light & purpose to shine in the world. I think the first step might be to stop comparing ourselves with others. Kabbalah tells us to look to our potential, instead of focusing on the material world and what's already been done and dusted.  

A shift in perspective

Let’s try a new approach. When it comes to metrics where it feels like you've fallen short, fill that part of yourself with love and understanding. Don’t beat yourself up about it, and work with the feeling of not living up to an expectation. Where does the metric come from? Is it relevant and necessary?

If it is still relevant, heal yourself and try again. Turn your attention to your Higher Self and move in that direction - what path feels right to you? Read my book to go deeper with self awareness and intuitive healing: Chakra Healing & Magick.

Chapter 4 includes questionnaires that will get you thinking about your sense of self on a deeper level, while the sections on psychic abilities and energy healing will guide you towards your Higher Self. 

That part of your soul taps into your full potential; your Higher Self powers your goals more than the ego ever could. We can't do that if we are focused on others, and all of the icky feelings that come from comparing ourselves. Hence the need for healing and reframing.

This is what I'm clearing now. 🍎🍎🍎

Reiki hugs,

Regina 

Thank you for reading! Join me below

 Facebook / Instagram / Youtube

Read my books (Amazon)

Image: canva.com