So much is going on, but some of it is slow and some of it is blazing past like crazy… sometimes it seems that the only thing that keeps me in the correct day is my calendar.
To bring those up to speed who have been watching:
Daniel’s neurology appointment last week went very well. Dr. Susan is not an advocate of putting him on a ton of medications right off the bat, so we’re just going to increase the Keppra until we reach a certain point, and if it stops the seizures, we’ll keep with it until we need to change it up again. All the work we’ve done so far with the diet and the supplements “saves us six months of guess-work” – we know they help, so there’s no “wait-and-see” there.
This weekend is the DOA Unnameable Film Festival, which will be showing Joe’s first short film, “Annotated“. It’s a Lovecraft-themed festival, so wear your best tentacles.
I absolutely adore the new location for my Reiki classes, but it would be even better if, you know, more people showed up. (I’m not bitter, just impatient. ) I had to raise the price a little so that I could pay for the space (now that it actually costs me something), and I’d like to be able to order more books.
Which reminds me that one lucky cuss will get the very first hardcover copy of “Reiki Your Leaves” if they get to me first. It’s $35 and quite lovely. (If I have no takers by the end of the week, I’ll probably keep it for myself. ) I should get that shipment in sometime today or tomorrow, so if you want it, let me know soon. I’ll even sign it for you.
Let’s see…
I’m looking into fast-tracking my schooling so that I can finish my Bachelor’s early, and then I’m thinking about getting into video games more seriously by pursuing a Master’s in VG. I’ve been in the industry for over five (six?) years now, it’s something I know well, and I have some really strong ideas of what I’d like to do in the long run with it…
And it makes me happy.
Okay, that’s enough of that, time to get back to work. Mondays are Mondays.
I finally found a wonderful little place to hold classes!
We will now be at the Dallas Meditation Center at 727 S Floyd Road in Richardson, Texas. Classes will be from 7 pm until 9 pm every Thursday evening. The price is going up a little to $20 (since it costs me a little more to have a good stable place), AND I’ll have some books for sale, including the first-ever hard-back copy. Paperbacks are $18, and hardbacks are $35.
This week’s class will build on the last class, and we’ll be working on Forgiveness, Processing Emotions, and touching more on the differences between the First Degree and the Second Degree.
For my out-of-towners, I’m going to try to set up a U-stream event for it. I’ll post more about that once I get it all set up.
If you missed the last class, you can see the first part of it here on YouTube. It’s about an hour and a half, but highly amusing. And just to be awesome about it, comment here or on Facebook with your count of how many times I say the word “shit”, and I’ll send a free copy of the e-book of “Reiki Your Leaves” to a handful of folks who get it right. (Extremely high numbers of answers will be dealt with by a random drawing.)
And if you still need a hard-copy, the links to order it are here on Normality Factor, over there on the right.
Don’t forget to RSVP! I hope to see you there with bells on!
Lulu is running a promotion for a bit where you can enter the code BIG305 to get 20% off of your purchase price!
(Well… unless you’re ordering over $100 worth of books, because then you’d have to enter the code BIGGER305 to get 25% off of your purchase up to $500.)
So, if you were waiting for a sale to order your copy of “Reiki Your Leaves” in paperback or hardback, now would be the time! Just click on the links to the right and it walks you through the rest.
And this would be REALLY good because I’m not going to be able to order another batch of books until next month, so you’re on your own until then. I think Silver Pyramid only had two copies left after the last class. The next class is already scheduled for July 21st at 7:00 pm, and, yes, attunements will be available again.
Here’s something really neat about Reiki: you can get attuned to the “first degree” again and again and again without progressing to the second degree – until you’re ready. You could come to every class and stay at your level indefinitely or move right on up, depending on your comfort level. It’s kinda cool that way. And, of course, with “Reiki Your Leaves” to guide your process, that could be sooner than you’d originally think.
In the last 48 hours, I have gotten my fondest, most heart-felt wish granted (thank you so much, Girl-Who-You-Know-Who-You-Are!), I ended up with a Reiki class over twice as large as I thought it would be, AND I finally got the raise that I’ve been needing for a while AND my job defined itself better AND I have aced every assignment in school thus far…!
AND Daniel started identifying colors, thanks to the therapies we’ve been given him and Aunt Kira spending four hours with him yesterday working on them.
(Hey, that may not seem like much, but not being able to identify colors at 3-1/2 years old? Not so great.)
And it feels like the dam has broken on the ideas and thoughts and strokes of genius on so many levels, I almost don’t know where to start. But the awesomest thing is that I do know where to start.
See, yesterday when I found out that I had over 20 people showing up for the class, I went out and bought a nice big white board (among other things). There are two reactions that people normally have to a big white blank space: either they’re terrified to soil it or they’re desperate to fill it up.
Guess what I’m going to do?
Now, here’s the really amazing part. I can directly correlate this rash of amazing good times with a direct and distinct pattern of using various LOA techniques. This is really good because I can’t teach something I don’t believe in – and there’s no greater belief than having a little proof.
(More later when I finish writing this other thing, too.)
I had a wonderful evening driving around in traffic for a total of two and a half hours because in the middle of it was a half an hour of fireworks at Kaboom Town in Addison and an hour sitting down at a restaurant with my Lili and Miles. It’s really all Kira’s fault because I’m not that into fireworks – once you’ve seen the Big Show over the Hudson River in New York, all other fireworks displays kinda pale by comparison – but Lili especially wanted to go, so go we did. Yes, I opted to leave at around 8 instead of 5, but I couldn’t really see us either sitting out in the 110+ degree heat or camping at a restaurant for four or more hours… it worked out well, though. Miles has great “car questions”.
He says stuff like, “You have the green light to make any movie you want. What movie do you make?” Lili and I both named scripts the we’re each working on. Another question was, “If you could have any superhero or fictitious person as a mentor, who would it be?” Lili said Batman, I said the Guardians of OA, and Miles said, “Severus Snape!” We all agreed that his answer was definitely the best.
Recent emotional activities have caused my “head count” problem again. I’ve always tried so hard not to make the kids live with “empty rooms” – the poignant awareness of missing people – and the best way to avoid it is to talk about those people as the situation arises. Today while we were driving around, I kept wanting to turn around to talk to … someone who isn’t there. And I kept reminding myself to tell her something important… but we haven’t spoken yet. And then there are the dreams…
Yeah… the dreams… it’s been years since I’ve woken up disappointed that the thing I was dreaming about wasn’t reality. Maybe I just shouldn’t take naps anymore. Or sleep at night. :-/
Regardless, life goes on. Machinations and permutations and nefarious undergoings are… going… on…
I’ve started recording video on the distance sessions that I do with people. They’re up on my YouTube page, and I imagine they’ll only be interesting to people who are really curious about EFT and Reiki. It’s a lot of hand-waving and talking – I edited out a lot of dead air, which is why it looks so choppy – but the effects are profound. I think I go through times when I forget how powerful a modality it is (especially using both at the same time), and then something happens that reminds me all over again.
I think I have discovered a limitation to EFT, however. Well… maybe not a limitation, but certainly something to consider.
When we think of autism, it’s difficult in many ways to define because there are so many expressions of it. In one fellow’s case, it’s like the world is constantly separated by a wall, and the experience on the “inside” is very frustrating, isolated, desperate sometimes, feeling the effects of an intense energetic empathy but none of the capacity for developing the coping skills necessary. On the other side of it, there are autists who very well understand empathy both energetically and observationally, but their responses are based on a non-typical logic that goes against social norms. For more on that, check out Rachel’s post on it on Journeys With Autism and also take a gander at Autism and Empathy.
Anyway, back to the point, I realized that if an autist is stuck on the other side of “the wall” and cannot energetically or emotionally directly connect with other people, EFT with a practitioner doesn’t really work. In the cases that I’ve worked with (and there have been a handful), the energetic response is almost like the practitioner isn’t “real”, that their experience, being unlike the autist’s experience, is not true. This makes it very hard to get in and get work done. Every now and again, a sliver of opportunity will show that allows a little bit of progress to be made, but on the whole, it’s really a constant effort of beating one’s head against that wall, and for precious little result.
There are, of course, ways around it, but to other people exploring EFT, be aware of this circumstance, and when it happens, stop. Back away, examine the situation a little differently, see what foundational remedies or therapies might be used first to allay the effects of “the wall” (it is not a “normal” state for autists, merely a common one for some), and only after those other efforts have shown some progress can you get in and get the Good Work done.
I’m not completely sure if “unguided” or “solo” EFT would work for autists in that position since it’s still introducing an element outside of previous experience (one of the weakness points of “the wall”, not letting in new ideas without a great deal of convincing), but it’s worth a shot. The manual is freely available for all, and it’s not like they could make something bad happen. The worst that could happen is that nothing would happen. I’d like to hear about it if someone in that position tried something like this.
So, to tie all this back in with the first part of my post here, I had thought about tapping on that anxiety, and I decided… no, I don’t really need to. It’s a natural side-effect of my very real and hard-earned emotions, and I choose to accept the good with the uncomfortable. Besides, it’s only a temporary thing. I’ll never come up with the right “head-count”, but I know that one day, I’ll get closer.
And in other, other news, this goes out to someone very special:
) I had to raise the price a little so that I could pay for the space (now that it actually costs me something), and I’d like to be able to order more books.
