It's time for a quick update, as times they are a changing...
The past year and a half I have had the pleasure (and challenge) of hosting a weekly radio show with A1R Psychic Radio. It's something that I never thought I'd do, and I was surprised to find myself enjoying it. Each week the show began with a brief talk on healing, intuition or angels - whatever I was interested in that week - and then the fun would begin! Taking questions from callers was great fun, and I turned to my favourite angel cards for answers. Then eventually to my Rider Waite Tarot deck. It was great experience, but eventually I started to feel like my time and energy were split amongst too many projects: blogging, writing another book, writing for an online magazine, prepping the radio show, wanting to teach groups in person and also doing healings. Running my Facebook Page is also a biggie!
A couple months I started thinking about where I could cut back, and for the time being, I have decided to take a break from the weekly radio show. It's time I focused on fewer projects. I'm not sure what is going to make the final cut. Ideally I'd like to spend more time working offline than online. Finishing my 2nd book would also be fantastic, the first draft is done and I've been putting off the rewrite. My Facebook Page has been running on automatic for two years (Radio Tuesdays! Tarot Wednesdays, Reiki Sunday's) and I'd like to make it fun and spontaneous again - we'll see. I've also just started taking an Astrological Magic class that looks like it will be fun but very time consuming, so stay tuned for updates!
There are Oracle Decks that I use for readings, and others that I turn to for inspiration and healing. Stewart Pearce’s beautiful Angels of Atlantis deck falls into the second category. The messages are inspired by
Archangels like Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel - who I know from psychic school. Each card has a bright orb for us to meditate on, and broad themes involve feelings like joy, healing, peace, and
abundance. I like to use these cards as meditative prompts and this
Tuesday, they were also the source of inspiration for my radio show. I wasn’t sure what to talk about and I pulled a card for
inspiration: Joy.
The result was a list of ten simple things that we can all do to bring more joy into our lives. Joy is said to be the purest and highest emotion, for some, even higher than the energy of love.
Here are eleven simple ways to bring joy into your life:
Spend Time with People you Love: What else is there? The rest of the tips help us refocus the mind on happiness 🌻
Smile More Often.When you smile,
the world smiles back. The benefit is two-fold: being surrounded by
friendly faces has been proven to affect our brain in a good way. And smiling
often also fools our brain into thinking we are happy, releasing feel good chemicals that help us feel happy.
Note: I’m not sure of the science behind this but based on personal experience,
smiling makes me happy.
Get Some Exercise. Go for a jog, dance a little salsa or run up the stairs if that’s
all you have time for. Working out is a great way to release stress. It also
helps us feel better, releasing endorphins that make us happy. And to quote
Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde, “Happy people don’t kill their husbands”
Meditate.I started meditating on joy, peace and happiness after reading a
book called The Essential Dalai Lama. Close your eyes for a minute, listen to your breath and picture gold or yellow light around you. I also like to
call on Archangel Jophiel for help. Jophiel can help us change our outlook so
that it is more optimistic. He’s one of my favorite angels and I feel his energy
as yellow.
Count Your Blessings.Sometimes things go wrong and that’s all there is to it. But even
when it feels like we are starring in a tragic-comedy, we can still cheer
ourselves up by turning our attention to the things we have to be grateful for.
Volunteering can make these blessings very obvious too. If you’re reading this
online, someone in the world is getting by with less than what you or I have.
Let Things Slide.We all have our buttons and they get pushed. What bothers me
may not bother you, and vice versa. The next time someone says or does
something that rubs you the wrong way, consider giving them the benefit of the
doubt. Look inward for any triggers that may need to be healed. That said, I
wouldn’t discount the importance of self-respect, so drawing a line is
important.
Switch Off Your Phone and sit in
nature for a while. Or hangout with friends. Act like it’s the 80’s and your
troubles and to-do-lists are not in your pocket.
Be Yourself.Living up to expectations doesn’t feel good, whether those
expectations are real or self-imposed. Don’t apologize for who you
are, what you do, or who you love. Be yourself and let the right people find you. You can heal your sense-of-self and shine bright by focusing on the Chakras, especially the Solar Plexus, and by grounding yourself in love (Read my book. Chakra Healing & Magick).
Put
the Past Behind You.Life is full of ups and downs as well as plenty of life stages that
eventually come to an end. It can be tempting to look back to the past with
nostalgia, especially if we have been through a difficult ending. But we
can only find joy if we appreciate the present and embrace the future. Heal yourself to let go; it’s not about forgetting the past.
Be
Willing to Forgive.It will give you peace of mind.
It is said that holding a grudge is like letting someone live rent-free in your
head. When we forgive we give ourselves a break, whether or not we also give
second or third chances.
Enjoy the Moment.One of my
favorite books is A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle. It tells us that when we are faced with a tough situation that can't be changed, we can make the
conscious choice to tolerate it until it passes. The next best thing is to
enjoy yourself, after all, even rough patches have good times. And when things
are going great appreciate your good luck and en-joy yourself!
***
Manifesting Tip!The happier we feel, the easier it is for us to create situations that we want to experience. Listening to songs that put us in a good mood is a great shortcut (though it always helps to heal yourself, too). Read This to Manifest with MUSIC!
Today I would like to talk about Mindfulness - essentially being present and focused in our daily lives, as opposed to Meditation, which usually involves quieting the mind and focusing it for a brief period of time.
So for example, you could meditate for 20 minutes by listening to your breath, picturing a candle in your mind's eye or by following a guided meditation. I love meditations, especially when they talk us through healing mind, body and spirit. Or better yet, when we access our intuition to ask for guidance. Eventually the meditation has to come to an end and we bring ourselves back to our senses so we can go about our daily lives.
This is where Mindfulness comes into play. It's about hanging onto that sense of peace, awareness and grounding in our waking hours. In my case, it's usually about coming out of my cloud of thoughts so that I'm aware of my energy, my surroundings and my mind. A quick way to switch off our thoughts would be to focus on our breath as we go about our daily tasks. Another would be to take stock of your surroundings and your physical sensations. Is it warm? How do your clothes feel against your skin? What are the make and model of the cars that are parked on the street as you walk by. Listen for sounds of birds, traffic, etc. Our five senses can bring us into a moment of complete awareness.
Being mindful is also about noticing our thought patterns and staying in the moment, instead of getting lost in a daydream or worrying about the future. It can be hard to be present 24/7, but we can set reminders to bring us back. I recently asked for advice on Reddit and got a few wonderful suggestions:
Focus on your breath during the day, take deep breaths to calm down.
Set an alarm on your phone throughout the day and make a note of where your thoughts are. Take the opportunity to bring yourself back to the moment, and if you notice a thought pattern make sure to write it down. This may be what needs to be healed and released on a subconscious level.
Wear a mindfulness bracelet as a reminder. My version of this is to wear my watch on the wrong wrist one or two days a week. The odd physical sensation brings me back to the moment and also makes me more aware.
Start by sitting down to meditate for 15 minutes and then transition into a mindfulness meditation, where you focus your attention on something like housework, cooking or doing the dishes.
The end result is a welcome mental vacation because worrying, fretting and scenario planning can add a lot of stress to our lives. I really like Eckhart Tolle's approach to mindfulness and I'm a huge fan of his book, A New Earth. Tolle suggests that we can observe our thoughts to get some distance and slowly break the habit of worrying. Planning for our future and carefully reacting to changes is necessary, but constantly worrying about potential obstacles is not. It's also been said that 70/80/90% of the things we worry about never happen, and that life happens when we're in the moment, not wrapped up in our thoughts. So don't worry, be happy and be mindful and grateful for everything.
***
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.
So today, I’m going to tell you a little story about myself. It's about how I have taken baby steps– and I do mean baby steps – to get where I am now. Six years ago, I had just moved to London for work. Being new to the UK, I also wanted to meet people so I started signing up for a bunch of classes: starting with astrology, Kabbalah and meditation. Eventually these led me to my psychic school, where I signed up for a clairvoyance workshop. The thought of clairvoyant or clairaudient messages was exciting, but I kept it a secret so that people wouldn’t think I had gone completely mad. At that point, I myself had trouble believing it was real.
The first class I attended was a clairvoyant workshop where we tuned into our classmates' homes and described them to each other. The teacher guided us through a meditation, asking questions like: Is it a building? A house? How many rooms? How many people? Do they have pets, etc.? Our intuition filled in the blanks. I was new so I didn't expect to get much. The person I was working with, however, described my apartment down to a T. He saw a massive building, the one I lived in had almost 1000 flats. He also mentioned walking through an endless corridor before getting to my “front door” He also described the decoration inside the flat. I was blown away; it proved these abilities were real. I just had to put in the time to develop them myself.
I signed up for weekly classes right away, and eight months later, I started an anonymous blog to keep track of everything that happened in class. That blog was Diary of a Psychic Healer. For the longest time, the blog was my little secret. I shared it with a few close friends, then with my siblings and after two years, I finally mentioned it to the rest of my family. By then I had had enough experience with intuition and healing to trust that these impressions were real. But I was still nervous about putting my name on my blog. On some level, I knew that if I wanted to remain in the corporate world, this part of my life had to stay off the Internet. Everything is on Google these days and I didn't want a potential employer ruling me out. It wasn’t until I finally worked up the courage to quit my job and pursue healing as a career, that I put my name on my Diary of a Psychic Healer Blog and Facebook Page, which by then had hundreds of thousands of views. Even then, if you Googled me, you wouldn’t find the blog so easily.
A few weeks ago I was thinking back to my final days in the corporate world. My then boss told me the story of Christopher Columbus settling down in the New World. Going home may have been tempting for his team, but Columbus was determined to make it work. So much that he burned the ships to keep himself from going back (not sure if this is true). The moral of the story was that my career change would have better chances of success if I burned my bridges.
That was nearly two years ago.
This weekend I finally took the training wheels off my blog. For a while now, I have known that I had to upgrade my blog to make it more user-friendly, but also, make myself easier to find. A few days ago I started fiddling about with the landing page, template and design. Before I knew what happened, my familiar and somewhat anonymous template had disappeared. I also updated the URL on the About Regina tab (up top) so that it includes my full name - a small detail that means my blog will soon turn up in Google searches for my name.
