Category: Shamanism as a Way of Life

Transmutation News – June 2013

I want to thank everyone for your kind words, beautiful messages, prayers, love, and support when my mother Lee Ingerman passed away. I really wanted to answer every email and card that I received, but it was not possible for me to do so. I hope you felt my thanks and love coming back to you.

This is a deep time of reflection for me. The last four years of my life completely revolved around caring for my parents. And I have a lot to process over time.

We all embody our life experiences. Our experiences settle into our cells and then sculpt us in a variety of ways. We have the ability to transform and transmute challenging life experiences – to feel them and decide how they will sculpt and guide us.

We always have the choice to evolve and use our challenges as gifts and tools to help us grow.

We can allow life experiences to settle and harden us. Or we can focus on the positive and even though we hurt share a smile and a kind word. This changes us, lights us up in the darkest of times. I really appreciated being witness to how my mother became more peaceful and bright the last few years of life whereas previously she might have been stuck in the hardships of life.

In How to Thrive in Changing Times I shared a story about a Tibetan nun who had been imprisoned by the Chinese. She was tortured and was in prison for many years.

This beautiful nun was in a bookstore in Santa Fe. Someone had asked her how she healed from what had happened to her. For now, the Tibetan nun was a bright and happy person. She said she repeated to herself like a mantra, “Thank you for everything. I have no complaints whatsoever.” This change in attitude created healing for her and a shift of her perception about life.

I have been finding in my own life that when I am feeling down, I think about one of my favorite trees I visit as I walk. I imagine putting my hands on the bark and feeling my deep connection and love for nature. This continues to lift me up.

At the end of my mother’s life, she focused on what she loved instead of her challenges. I made a choice to focus on how much I loved both my parents and the wonderful memories instead of the times of challenge in our relationship.

Shifting our focus to what we love about life changes our neural pathways and opens up new possibilities of feeling joy versus pain. We are not denying the pain that we feel or the challenges that we have experienced. But we do have a choice of how our life experiences shape our presence and ability to allow love and our light to shine through us.

We celebrate the summer/winter solstice on June 21. No matter what we have been through in life we are who we are now based on all that has occurred. We all have borne great fruit from all our labors.

Let us make a choice to reflect on the beauty of the fruit that grows from us as we have grown and evolved into beautiful beings. Celebrate all that you are now. As you do this you honor nature and the universe for the life you were given.

My mother had such a passion for life. She believed life was a precious gift. I have felt the best way to honor her life is to be in deep gratitude for the life I was given by my parents, my ancestors, earth, air, water, the sun, and the power of the universe. I have always had my gratitude practices, but recently my state of gratitude comes from a deeper place from within. My well of gratitude is much deeper now.

To be deeply grateful for our lives honors the source of our life. It is time for us to celebrate the gift of life that we were given.

Take time on the solstice to reflect on the gifts you have been given from your ancestors and from earth, air, water, and the sun. Allow your state of appreciation to deepen and flow through you celebrating life!

Over the last couple of years, I have been writing about unconditional love, light, joy, and gratitude. These states of consciousness are always who we are and are not based on our outer circumstances.

All that life brings us takes us deeper and deeper into our inner well where we can allow unconditional states of consciousness to flow up through us and into the world.

During the solstice, take some time to reflect on how deep your own well has become.

Let us join our hearts together to wish everyone in our community a joyous solstice! Let your light, love, and gratitude flow through you feeding all of life on our beautiful planet. Happy solstice!!

Weave this state of gratitude and appreciation into our full moon ceremony creating a web of divine light and unconditional love within and throughout the earth touching every living being on our great earth.

Life is precious! Let us celebrate and honor life!

If you are new to reading The Transmutation News please visit “Creating a Human Web of Light” on the homepage of this site for the instructions of how to participate in our full moon ceremonies.

Transmutation News – May 2013

During this month of May, I would like us to focus on balance.

We are body, mind, and spirit. Often, we get too lost in our body sensations, and we forget that we are more than a body. On the other side sometimes, we do not tend to our bodies through the nurturance, exercise, and rest needed to maintain our physical health.

We can drown in our emotions and problematic thoughts and attitudes. On the other side we can do what is called a spiritual bypass and refuse to look at what is troubling us on an emotional and mental level. This state of denial and repression ends up impacting our state of health.

We are spirit and we have a body and mind. Our body is the vessel of our spirit, and as the ancient Egyptians believed is the temple of our spirit. Sometimes we focus so much on daily challenges and stresses we don’t experience our spirit shining through and the flow, beauty, grace of our spirit. But spirit is always there. In some cases, we don’t attend to our needs by saying nothing matters, as we are only spirit.

For many of us the pendulum swings in an exaggerated fashion. We must attend to our body, mind, and spirit to call in and create balance in our lives.

Acknowledging what is happening on all levels is key while not overidentifying with the body, emotions, or mind. This creates balance.

In Medicine for the Earth and How to Thrive in Changing Times I shared a practice called “Disidentification” that comes from Roberto Assagioli who created the branch of therapy called Psychosynthesis.

The core of this exercise is to realize I have a body, but I am not my body. I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. I have a mind, but I am not my mind. I am that which has a sense of being, permanence, and inner balance. I am a center of identity and pure consciousness.

When I get caught up in overidentifying with something going on physically, emotionally, or mentally I repeat the above paragraph to myself. In this way I acknowledge challenges I might be experiencing and at the same time not getting lost in these challenges. I can rise above and get a broader perspective, which always brings me back to a state of balance.

The morning of Good Friday I had a dream. The dream was very involved, and I won’t share all the details.

First, I was at the scene of a battle in medieval times. The battle was quite bloody, and people were being tortured. Then the scene switched, and I was at a conference of people involved in spiritual healing. It turned out the battle scenes I witnessed were all part of a Hollywood movie.

At the conference some of the stars of the movie came out on stage. The stars were all young with blond hair, they were dressed in white, and they were all shining brightly with big smiles on their faces. The conference attendees started to ask them questions about how they felt about playing their role in the movie. I could feel my relief as I realized that I was not witnessing an actual battle but rather scenes from a movie. In the dream I was reminded that all of life is a dream and that we take on characters just as actors do in a movie.

I know I have written about this before, but the dream was a reminder that we all playing a role in this movie we call life. Even during the most challenging times where we almost feel “tortured” we are these bright lights evolving and learning during our earthly experience.

When we learn to disidentify a bit from all that is happening on a physical, mental, and emotional level we can step back and start to investigate the part we are playing. We can make a decision that it is now time to play a new role, a new character, a new part. We do have a choice to say, “I have been playing this same character for too long, and it is time to take on a new role.”

As a character actor preparing to play a part, we tend to immerse ourselves so deeply in our role. We forget it is a role in a movie and that we can make changes. Sometimes we do have to immerse ourselves fully in the role to learn the lessons we are destined to learn. We just have to know when it is time to make a shift and realize that it might be time to explore a new role in life so that we can keep moving forward.

You might take some time to reflect on this during May.

The full moon is May 24. Let us disidentify from all the challenges we are facing and remember that we are divine light and a vessel of universal consciousness, light, and unconditional love.

Let us join together and continue to weave divine light, love, and joy within and throughout our beautiful planet.

If you are a new reader of the Transmutation News please read the section on “Creating A Human Web of Light” for instructions for our full moon ceremony.

Transmutation News – April 2013

I was having a stimulating conversation with another shamanic healer, and a topic came up that I wanted to share with you. I think it is an important aspect to add to what I have been writing on initiations.

In my workshops and in my books, I teach about a delicate subject that can come up while working with a client, a friend, or loved one who has been diagnosed with a serious illness.

Sometimes a client or a loved one might ask those of you who journey to consult with a helping spirit to get a prediction of whether they will live or die.

The issue that arises is if someone has been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness and is cured, he or she will die on some level in order to heal. For that kind of healing involves quite a lot of dying to what does not support a healthy life.

If you journey to a helping spirit and ask if a client, friend, or loved one will die the answer is yes. If you journey and ask if a client, friend, or loved one will live the answer will be yes. For our spirit is eternal.

In my practice sometimes clients show up saying that a doctor gave them a terminal diagnosis. I am often asked to journey on whether my client will live or die.

My response in these cases is that I will perform the healing needed so that you are whole. I perform a soul retrieval as part of the healing to return any lost soul parts to a person. In doing this the soul is now present to help to guide the next steps of the process. It is only our soul that knows the next step. For some people, the next step is physical death and for some it is remaining in this life.

Life is a series of initiations where we die to certain aspects of our life so that our own inner light, our divine nature can shine through.

As we continue to bring back lost parts of ourselves, we live in a more conscious fashion. And when it is our time, we die consciously. The key is being fully present so that we can raise our awareness to the gifts that life brings to us so that we can die to the old and be reborn into new levels of consciousness.

People in the helping professionals who work with people who are in the final stages of life often remark how bright a person is as they are facing death. I have seen this again and again with people I know. The light shining through as the body declines is quite amazing and beautiful.

And I also find that people have the same brilliant light coming through as they go through initiations in life that create a death experience where so much of the old is left behind. The death leads to something new being born. People who have some kind of life dismemberment come back feeling renewed and regenerated. We all know how brightly a pregnant woman glows. When we are giving birth to a deeper and more conscious aspect of ourselves, we glow too.

The process of dying and the process of birth all bring us to a deeper level of spirit where the divine shines through.

Last year I wrote about how heart break leads to our hearts expanding so that we can become bigger vessels of unconditional love. I wrote about how unconditional love is beyond personal love. It is love that has no attachments to people or life circumstances. It is the pure love of the creator and is a reflection of the love that went into our creation and also the creation of the world.

I also have started to experience in my Inner World how joy has that same unconditional quality.

I continue to write and teach how true joy, health, wealth, and peace lie within. And that the key to our spiritual practice is cultivating our inner garden in a way that creates a rich Inner World.

I write and teach what I need to learn myself. And my life is truly devoted to practicing what I share in my teachings. I have been challenged through my life as I have searched for that real sense of inner joy.

And what I have come to realize is that my block to experiencing that inner joy is that I attach joy to my conditions in the outer world. But from a spiritual perspective joy is unconditional. Joy is beyond any personal desires. Unconditional joy is simply the joy for life itself. We were born into this material world to fully experience the joy of life. And when we can tap into our original desire to experience the joy of life beyond conditions, we experience unconditional joy as we do unconditional love. This is also true for the spiritual definition of wealth and peace. For these qualities that we embrace in our Inner World have nothing to do with our outer conditions.

The full moon is April 25. Let us travel within and experience unconditional love for all life as well as unconditional joy for the gift of being alive. From this potent place of divine light, love, and joy let us continue to weave a brilliant human web of light within and throughout our planet earth.

Let us continue our transfiguration work for each of us in our global circle.

For those of you new to reading the Transmutation News please read “Creating A Human Web of Light” for instructions on our full moon ceremony.

Transmutation News – March 2013

In January I had the wonderful opportunity to be interviewed for a book that is being written on death and dying. One of the questions I was asked was, “What do I feel is important for us to do as we move towards the end of our life?”

I responded that I felt it is important for us to find inner peace. At the end of our lives, it is crucial that we make peace with all that life has brought to and for us. For I feel so sad when I see people leave life feeling bitter. What a gift to leave this world from a place of peace.

I continue to write that there are many deaths we experience through our lives. There are the little deaths we go through marked by initiations and change. And then there is the big death as we transition out of our physical bodies into a transcendent reality.

Whether we are experiencing the little deaths or the end of our physical life it is always important to go deep into our inner well and come to a place of inner peace. For the world around us continues to change, grow, and evolve. And there are so many challenges that are presented to us. But these challenges are also gifts. The more we can establish a strong sense of inner peace then we will not lose our balance and get so thrown off by what life brings us. This has always been a key teaching in living a spiritual life. I feel that we are here now and the world itself is in a very turbulent cycle. We must find that deep inner peace within that keeps us protected and buffered by so much of the turbulence around us.

As you keep up the spiritual practices, I have been teaching throughout the years you will strengthen your own Inner World and find the peace, wealth, and health that lives within.

Last month I wrote about how important it is to follow the path of spirit. To continue with this theme, when we follow the path of spirit, we also must learn how to honor ourselves.

I know that many of us get stressed out when we feel a need to meet the demands and needs and others. My helping spirits have been showing me how this kind of behavior ends us creating energetic leaks in our body.

When I was shown an image, I saw how energy leaks out in a horizontal fashion creating a weakened state on a physical and emotional level.

I was shown how important it is to stay true to ourselves and create the necessary boundaries so that our energy is flowing vertically connecting us to the heavens above and down through the roots of the earth. As we do this and find a strong and centered state within, then the energy can flow through us from all directions as we bridge heaven and earth through our heart and radiate love and light throughout to those we love and to all of life.

Continue to work with releasing your unhealthy energetic connections into the Cauldron of Light. I wrote about this ceremony in the December 2012 Transmutation News

The full moon is March 27. Travel deep within yourself to the power of your divine light. Join together with thousands of others in our global community as we continue to weave a strong and radiant light throughout and deep within the earth. This weaving holds all of life in love as the fabric of reality of unhealthy conditions continues to unravel. Together we dream into being a life of true health and harmony.

For those of you new to reading The Transmutation News please read Creating A Human Web of Light on the homepage of this site.

In the instructions for our monthly full moon, I had added a healing ceremony for our global community. I added this many years ago. I realize that in the past year or so I have not been encouraging us to continue this work.

As I hear from so many people who are on a spiritual path, I am hearing more and more of how many are being challenged on a physical level. For as we learn to create more harmony in our lives our physical bodies must shift and align with the new frequencies. Sometimes we experience a level of disharmony in our health before we can rebalance and realign with new energies that are flowing.

Years ago, I had written how on the full moon we can do a transfiguration ceremony for everyone in our circle. On the full moon as we continue to create a human web of light also see yourself taking turns of lying in the middle of a giant global circle. When you are in the middle allow yourself to absorb the light and love being radiated by those in the outer circle. And then at some point move into the outer circle radiating divine light and unconditional love to those lying within. Allow this movement of going into the middle and being in the outer circle to flow with ease.

We can join together to strengthen all of us as we move through life. There are going to be times we find ourselves riding down smooth waters and enjoying the ride. And there will be times when we enter into the turbulent waters. This is life and being part of nature. We can be a true support to each of us as we ride through the river of life.

It is hard for me to believe that we are welcoming in the equinox and the change to spring or fall depending on where you live. I cannot believe how fast time is moving!
I do believe that the times we live in call for all of us to view reality in a different way. We have been working together to break out of collective beliefs that keep us so tied to only looking at the material world around us.

In spiritual teachings it is understood that there is a web of life that connects us all. And part of shamanism is finding practices where you can honor and respect what we call “the spirit that lives in all things”. It is important to find ways to honor the plants and trees where you live that support life. And it is important to honor the animals, insects, birds, rocks, etc.

The more we can respect nature the more nature respects us. This goes back to the principle of reciprocity in shamanism. The Salish Indians use a word “skalatitude”. This means, “When people and nature are in perfect harmony, then magic and beauty are everywhere.”

To welcome in the spring/fall equinox do some deep soul searching about how you can connect more with nature and live in harmony with the natural laws that call for us to live in accordance with nature’s cycles.

On the equinox honor the living beings where you live. Leave an offering for the spirits. Hold your intention that this offering is a way to express gratitude for earth, air, water, and fire (the sun), which give you life. Give gratitude to all the living beings that live in your area. You might wish to add giving gratitude for the helping ancestral spirits where you live and also your personal ancestors who gave you life. You can also give thanks to the spirit of the land, the hidden folk, your own helping spirits.

It does not matter if you live in a city or in a rural area. You can find places in nature where you can give your offerings.

There are no “correct” offerings to give. I leave blue corn meal as an offering as blue corn meal has deep meaning for me. You can leave a bit of your favorite food, flowers, water, your favorite drink, etc. as an offering. The key is your intention to give gratitude versus what you leave as an offering. Nature reads your heart not your mind.

During a meditation or a shamanic journey, connect with the spirit of the land where you live. If you do this as a meditation, put on some expansive music and hold the intention that you want to meet the spirit of the land. If you do this as a shamanic journey hold the same intention as you travel into the invisible realms.

Ask the spirit of the land how you can make shifts in your life so that you are living in harmony with nature. Ask for guidance of how to improve your life.

When I first moved to Santa Fe in the early 1980’s I had a hard time settling in. I did not feel like Santa Fe was my home and although I worked a few jobs I could not support myself. I finally journeyed to the spirit of Santa Fe and asked for guidance. The spirit of Santa Fe showed herself to me as a beautiful goddess, and she became my teacher in my journeys for many years. She gave me five things to do. I followed all of her advice, and it was amazing how my life changed and how all of a sudden everything I needed just began to flow.

During the change in seasons, it is wonderful to merge with the earth where you live. We have been doing this practice for many years. It is also good to connect with the spirit of the land. You will receive a wealth of information by learning how the earth is changing during the shift in seasons which is a reflection of how you are changing too. And you can move into a place of harmony by connecting more and more with the spirit of the land.

Let us join our hearts together to wish those of you in the Northern Hemisphere a joyous spring and for our circle in the Southern Hemisphere a deep and wonderful fall!

Transmutation News – October 2012

As December 2012 gets closer, I continue to see many articles published about predictions for this time.

I tend to stay away from reading anything that talks about predictions for the future. I used to turn to astrology and psychics to advise me about where my life is going. And over the years I have found the best way to deal with life is to just stay in the present and deal with what comes up and that decisions I make in the present are what end up shaping the future.

I am in no way trying to judge astrology and psychic work. I have a true respect for this work and many of my friends and students are brilliant astrologers and psychics. And these systems can help us to see the forces that are guiding us in the present and gain tools to work through current challenges. I find myself from time to time working with astrologers and psychics to get tools to work with challenges that are being presented to me.

And at the same time, I think many people turn to practitioners who will predict the future for them. I think that this desire to know the future is a way to feel safe. Even if someone gives a prediction that points to great challenges there is a false feeling of safety and some feeling of control that comes from thinking that you know what is coming. Of course, we all like to hear that things are going to be wonderful in our future and then can get disappointed when life ends up bringing us different situations than we were expecting.

But as I have been writing for years the spiritual guidance, I continue to receive is that our future is created from our present. The more that we learn how to stay present with what is, do our spiritual work, raise our consciousness, face each challenge that appears, and trust in spirit to guide us during the challenges the more we can actually transform the forces and end up changing the future.

In the end of our lives don’t we want to leave this great earth as conscious as possible? The consciousness we are striving towards comes from how we live our lives. It is beyond the books we read and the workshops we attend. Of course, books and workshops can inspire us. But in the end, we all have to do our own work.

I did find myself inspired by an article a friend sent to me that was written by Carlos Barrios, a Mayan elder. His website is http://www.carlosbarrios.org

I wanted to share something with you from the article he wrote:

“Anthropologists visit the temple sites and read the inscriptions and make up stories about the Maya, but they do not read the signs correctly. It’s just their imagination. Other people write about prophecy in the name of the Maya. They say that the world will end in December 2012. The Mayan elders are angry with this. The world will not end. It will be transformed.”

Carlos Barrios goes on to say that this is the time in between, the time of transition.

I think that we can all relate to feeling that we are in a transition. And I do know that many of us feel frustrated of living in an in-between state. It makes us feel uncomfortable for there is nothing “to do”. We can only keep doing our work. The challenge is our ego and rational mind wants to see the immediate results of our work.

I would like to share something very personal about the power of holding a state of unconditional love during transition times. For transition times are preparing us for a death. This can be the death of the physical body or the death of a way of life.

My father died one year ago at the age of 97. He suffered from dementia and the last few months of his life were very challenging as he had become quite violent.

I knew that my father was working out traumas he had suffered in his past. And I also knew that I could create an opportunity for healing for him.

As I was with him every day, I could control who came into his presence. And I hired extra help to assist in his care. The only people who were allowed in my father’s presence for the last two months of his life were caregivers who would hold him in unconditional love despite his behavior. And obviously this was true for myself.

When he died, he left from such a state of peace. His transcendence was so quick, and he traveled back to Source like a bullet. It was so clear that when he died, he completed his healing.

Many of us today are taking care of elderly parents. And I constantly hear from friends and students about how an elderly parent had a very traumatic life but is now in a situation where they are being held in love that is creating healing of the past.

I speak to so many about how simply by holding someone in love during their final transition creates a state of peace for him or her that allows true healing of past wounds to take place.

For many this transition can be longer than makes sense to outside observers. Years can go by as one heals from life traumas before letting go to the final journey back to Source.

But the key so many of us have seen is the power of just holding a loving space.

The reason I am sharing this is that we are living in a time where we are experiencing the death of a way of life that no longer serves life or the earth.

And we do not know how long this transition will take. We really do not know how long the in-between time will be. We do not know how this transition will impact each of us on a personal level. And we really do not know what is coming. Death has always been mysterious to the rational way of understanding and probably always will be.

But during any transition process the key is being present and being a loving force in times of great change.

We have been focusing our practice over the years on being a true vessel of unconditional love and this is what is being called for right now.

What we are seeing in the world is the effect of how as humans we have not respected the earth and all of life on the earth.

The focus of many in the world is still on “healing the economy”. And the focus should be on how to live a life of honor and respect for the earth.

I of course understand the challenges of not having enough money for food and shelter. I have been there in life myself.

When we open to living a spiritual life, we start to find solutions and opportunities that take us out of the challenges of a paradigm of scarcity and into a life of abundance.

For in the universe there is no such concept of scarcity there is only abundance. But to experience the energy of abundance and to tap into solutions that lead us to abundance ask us to devote our lives to living a life that embraces the divine. The more we surrender to the divine we find ourselves led to what we need at all times.

We do have to continue to educate people that the earth is our home and we do have to take care of the elements that give us life. This process of education is so needed at a time where people only focus on what they can gain materially no matter what the cost to the rest of life.

At the same time the more we can sink into simple daily spiritual practices that allow our own inner wisdom to lead the way the more we can create positive change for all of life.

The more we can stay present to what is and hold all life and the planet in love right now the more we can heal the past and the present creating healing for the future.

The full moon is October 29. As we continue our practice to weave a brilliant web of life within and throughout the earth let us also join our hearts together to radiate unconditional love that holds all of life.

For those of you new to reading the Transmutation News please read “Creating A Human of Light” on the homepage.

As we radiate love throughout the world remember to love yourself. Make choices in life that reflect back to you how much you love and respect yourself.

In the article that Carlos Barrios wrote he talks about one respected elder, who lives all year in a solitary mountain cave, who journeyed to Chichicasenango to speak with people who had joined together at a ceremony. The elder delivered a simple, direct message. He called for human beings to come together in support of life and light. This is what we have been doing together as a global community for many years now.

It is only love that heals.

Transmutation News – April 2012

Focus is one of the key principles I have been writing about on the Transmutation News since 1998. This month I would like for us to deepen our exploration into focus.

I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And as we moved from winter into spring the winds are blowing strong. This is a typical weather pattern for New Mexico. Spring is our windy season. And as the weather changes around the world our windy season becomes more severe.

The metaphor I use for myself is that the winds of change keep blowing stronger. And as I reflect on this, I am led to understanding the need to build a stronger inner core and a stronger inner foundation.

As I have been writing about focus, I have been teaching about the need to use our imaginations to focus on the words we use, our thoughts, our attitudes, and holding a positive vision for the world.

This is important and this is a practice that is key to thriving in changing times and being the dreamers of a new world as the old paradigm is dissolving. The old paradigm has reached an age where it can no longer sustain itself anymore and does not support life.

But as we focus on our mental state, we can become top heavy. And life forms that are too top heavy do not survive the winds of change. Trees, plants, buildings that are too heavy go down in high winds.

We have to balance out our practice so that we create a strong inner core that can sustain the changes ahead. For the winds of change blowing across this planet are affecting all of life.

We need to understand that focus is not just a mental concept. As we tap more into the feminine principle of life focus is a full body experience.

Think of a woman giving birth. A woman just doesn’t think about birthing a baby into the world. Her whole body gets involved in the process of birthing. A tree or plant does not just hold the intention to grow from a seed. There is a whole process of gestation, nurturance, and bursting forth from the inner earth into the world of the sun.

It is time to explore how our own creative process is deeper than a mental state. Creativity and focus must be a full-bodied experience in order to create new life that is balanced.

We must focus on moving our energy within. I have been encouraging you for years now to use the metaphor of cultivating a deep and rich inner garden. For those of you new to reading the Transmutation News you can skim through the archives. You can also read my article on the Huffington Post from September 2011. The link is: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandra-ingerman/inner-garden_b_942092.html

Use your imagination this month to experience what full-bodied focus might feel like. Take some time to meditate or journey on how you can strengthen your inner core. This will give you the strength needed to hold steady as we experience so much death, change, and transition.

Imagine with your body, not just your mind. Engage your body awareness.

Reflect on the foundation that you have built. For you cannot strengthen your inner core without a strong foundation. Your foundation is your thoughts, attitudes, memories, and your visions.

Continue to strengthen your positive visions and attitudes as we have been doing. Focus on the good memories and let go of the old stories that need to die. Use your imagination to focus on what you do want to experience in life instead of using your imagination to focus on the nightmare scenarios.

And with that foundation allow the energy to move throughout your entire body so that you feel strong roots going into the earth and a strong and healthy core. And from that healthy strong branches will grow towards the sun and increase your capacity to receive and absorb the light of life.

Take walks in nature. For nature already is tuned into the changes to come. Changes in weather surprise human beings. With the best efforts of scientists, we still continued to be surprised by the intensity of change in the weather patterns.

But nature is not surprised. Nature does not need to be informed by scientists what is ahead. For all living beings have the internal ability to sense what is coming. We have seen time and time again how animals know when earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes, etc are coming. Animals and birds have their own internal radar and know when to migrate and leave an area.

We are nature too, so we have our own internal sensors. But some of us have tuned out the internal station that informs us. We continue to try and allow others to inform us, or we over rationalize and over think which creates a loss of communication from our inner knowing.

Continue to work with gratitude practices. Living life from a place of deep appreciation is a powerful way to build a strong and resilient inner core.

So, I repeat focus is a full body experience. Reflect this month on what this feels like. Move away from trying to understand this mentally. Move from your body this month. Create a strong inner core by trusting your inner senses and don’t rely so much on the information you are getting from the external world. Move from within.

Many years ago, I became fascinated with multiple and parallel realities. In my workshops I would have people journey to different realities where they were living different lives that were created from different choices they made. In the theory of multiple realities every time we ponder different choices, we can make we actually end up living out each choice in a different reality.

Recently I started reflecting on how we can actually see our collective energies manifesting different realities right here, right now in this universe.

There are many people in the world who believe that only human beings are intelligent and have a consciousness. These people live in a dimension and frequency where nature is composed of things that have no spirit and don’t need to be treated with honor and respect. Nature simply exists.

There are those of us who believe that everything that exists is alive and has a spirit and is connected to a web of life. In this way we can actually feel the life force of nature and feel connected to nature.

Then there are also people who live with the consciousness that not only is nature alive and has a spirit, but that nature is communicating with you, observing and watching you, and interacting with you. With this understanding you end up stepping into another reality of life.

We can also step into a new dimension as we recognize the divine in nature and nature recognizes the divine in us. This is a lovely dimension to step into.

These are examples of endless perceptions that we all hold about life. And with any sensitivity you can tap into how living from different levels of consciousness creates different realities in our world.

Since I have been writing the Transmutation News, I have been sharing how to dream the world you wish to live in into being. We have been using all of our senses to see, hear, feel, smell, and taste the world we wish to live in.

For a short review on the basic principles, you can read my Huffington Post article “How to Create a New Vision for the Planet”.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandra-ingerman/world-vision_b_914986.html

I think all of you reading the Transmutation News want to believe that we can step into a new dimension of reality where we live a life of joy, harmony, abundance, peace, good health, etc.

And due to the collective trance, we are in we straddle realities as we want to believe but at the same time feel we don’t really have the power to change the world we live in.

As long as we straddle stepping into our power and committing and staying focused with falling back into disappointment, hopelessness, and giving up then we are not fully stepping into the world we wish to create. We continue to live between the old and the new.

We have to learn how to change the story that we live. For our stories shape and create the ultimate reality we live in.

We must make a choice of staying on track with the collective trance and just trying to survive and making the best out of life and stepping through the veils into a new dimension of reality that exists but is waiting for us to participate in.

It is your choice. Refocus your practice of experiencing with all your senses your new life. Commit to the story. Continue to enrich the story by bringing in new details and stronger sensory input. Add characters to the story and enrich your audience. Make it real. Live from it – don’t just be an observer. The only way to make it real and step into a new dimension of reality is to live from it.

We are luminous beings, and we continue to create form and matter with our stories. Change your story and change your life. Shift your consciousness fully and shift the reality you live in.

On this planet earth there are different realities that people are living in. Which one do you want to inhabit?

The full moon is April 6. This month focus on the body feelings, the internal sense of transfiguration. Be a beacon of light. Don’t visualize feeding the web of light that connects us all. Be that light. Let us all make our transfiguration work this month a full body experience.

If you are a new reader of The Transmutation News please read, “Creating A Human Web of Light” on the homepage.

Let us fully join our hearts together to be a vessel of universal love bathing all of life with love.

As we continue to weave a strong web of light and love we create a strong bond so that we are prepared to continue to work together to be of service no matter what crisis is happening on the planet.

Transmutation News – March 2012

Last month I wrote about waking up out of the trance of mass consciousness. We can wake up to new feelings of vitality and new perceptions. In February I suggested that a first step is to set an intention of wake up.

When we set an intention at first it might feel like we are in a mental state. But setting an intention does activate our own subconscious to manifest our goal. What might feel like a mental concept at first moves quickly into being a body experience.

As we set our intention to wake up out of the dream we are now living in, we will find ourselves moving into a deeper sense of awareness.

Another step is starting to observe and reflect on how we nurture ourselves. We have been looking at connecting with universal love for others and ourselves. We also must reflect on how we have been taking care of ourselves.

Nurturance comes on many levels. Part of being able to receive true nurturance is absorption. And we must reflect on what we are absorbing. What do we absorb from life?

On a personal level it is time to reflect on the following questions:
What energies are you absorbing from the media?
What energies are you absorbing from your own thoughts?
What energies are you absorbing from what others around you radiate?

Are you working with the practice of intentionally transmuting energies you take in to your psyche and body from people you know and from the collective?

Are you working with replacing defeatist thoughts with positive thoughts?

By holding these questions and reflecting on them you will find yourself feeling the energy to fuel new intentions.

We are constantly absorbing energies. As we learn to raise our frequency it is essential that we learn to absorb and nurture ourselves with divine light to support a higher frequency.

This is also true of the food we take in. There is a higher frequency in nature that most of us are asleep to and unaware of. There are so many dimensions in nature itself. To support our bodies to be a vessel of a higher vibration we must put our attention to absorbing the highest frequency of nature. This means as you eat food, drink water, bathe, breathe air, and walk in the sun we must focus on absorbing the divine light of nature.

We often talk about shifting consciousness, but our bodies must be supported in making the shift too. We have to learn how to open the veil to a new dimension of how we perceive our food and the elements we take in. We need to open the veils between the dense consciousness of how we treat nature to the highest level of nature’s intelligence. Nature is a helping spirit. It is time to receive divine nurturance from nature itself and learn how to absorb it. We must remember we are part of the divine intelligence of nature too.

When the fog of the collective beliefs lift you can experience the momentary pleasures that create joy. These might include waking to the birds singing or feeling the warmth of the sun after the weather has been cold, watching the beauty of snowflakes falling, hearing the sounds of children laughing, or seeing a beautiful tree or flowering plant on one of your walks in nature.

This is all part of waking up from the trance.

Two of the core teachings of the Medicine for the Earth work are:

The energies that we feed we give life to.

Alchemy is the practice of working within and through the dense darkness inside and learning how to transmute our inner states to gold light consciousness.

As we continue to work with these teachings, we get to a place of realizing that our personal stories and the collective stories we feed into are just stories created by the ego.

For on a spiritual level there is no story where there are people to feel sorry for, to heal, to blame, etc. The only spiritual story that exists is that we are one with universal love and light.

As we live spiritual teachings, we start to see the illusion in all the stories we get attached to.

The story can also affect how we do our visioning work. For the ego is not just satisfied with holding a positive vision, the ego wants to see an immediate outcome.

At the same time when we get attached to our stories, we often end up lowering our expectations about life where we create a dullness decreasing our own vital life force.

To get beyond the story and the attachment to the outcome spiritual traditions teach about the power of simply radiating light. We can see ourselves, others, the planet itself in divine light.

And as we do this the divine intelligence of nature supports the blueprint, we were born with to unfold. We allow solutions to come through us instead of forcing solutions.

For myself I keep seeing that the more I can keep surrendering to the divine intelligence within the more I can move beyond my egoic need to stay attached to “my story” and to be attached to any outcome.

This creates space inside of me to channel universal love and divine light without attachment.

And my own soul yearns to move away from how attached I am to the conditioning of society. My own soul yearns to feed the internal light and fire within and to be a light in the world.

Spiritual teachers for thousands of years have taught to do this one must move away from looking at life through the eyes of ego and see the world through the eyes of spirit.

Not all of us feel ready to do this. For we are on a life adventure and we all have to walk the path in a slow and steady fashion.

Some of us still need to explore the past conditioning that creates a certain looping story that keeps playing like a song that our mind attaches to. You know how sometimes a song gets caught in your mind and it keeps playing over and over again.

And for some the song has played so much and we know where the song of our story emerged from. It is time to replace the song of our story with a new one. It is all about timing.

If you keep to the path you are on, you will find a deep inner freedom when you can let go of the needs of the ego. We find freedom when we detach from the story and a need of immediate gratification of wanting to see certain outcomes.

Consider where you on in your path. And as we move into a change of seasons consider if you are ready to feed the light of life.

If your answer is yes, as we move into spring in the Northern Hemisphere and fall of the Southern Hemisphere make a commitment to radiate light into your life, your stories, and into the collective stories.

Unburden yourself from the need to know how to solve problems from a mental line of thought. As you experience the light of life the true solutions will bubble up from the seed of knowing that lies within. For many of us this seed has been waiting a long time for the right conditions that will allow it to germinate and start to sprout and blossom.

This month Sylvia Edwards is gifting us by providing us with a disk that we can work with to move into Divine Light. A write up on the disk and the image of the disk to meditate with appears right before The Announcements.

In the past I have asked you to do a meditation or shamanic journey to meet your creator or the creative powers of the universe. In this way we could begin to understand how we were created and could deepen our practice with transfiguration. For when we transfigure into the divine it is helpful to have some cellular feeling of the divine.

I have also been asking you to experience on a cellular level the love that went into your creation. For you were created from the energy of universal love and the more we can absorb this the more healing and transformation takes place for us on so many levels. And we can also become stronger vessels of universal love.

This month I would like to ask you to do a meditation or shamanic journey to meet with the earth. Put on some expansive meditative music. And ask to meet mother earth who you are part of and who nurtures you. Experience how much goes into your care. As with the creator the earth nurtures us with universal and unconditional love. Experience it and absorb it.

Within the same meditation or shamanic journey now deepen your experience and merge with the earth where you live. We are moving into spring in the Northern Hemisphere and fall in the Southern Hemisphere. Experience the change in earth as the season changes. Feel the change in movement in the soil and notice any qualitative feelings of change.

Learn about earth and the change in seasons by merging with and becoming earth.

Experience how the earth waits for the new seeds to be planted. These seeds might be planted by humans, carried and dropped into the earth by the wind or water, carried by a bird, an insect, or other life forms.

The earth waits patiently for these seeds to be planted in her body, her soil. And then she nurtures each seed without judgement of what is carried in this seed and what will grow and blossom from it. She just nurtures with unconditional love just like our creator.

As humans it is up to us to use discernment about what we plant. For the earth will take our seeds and nurture them unconditionally.

If we plant seeds of fear, anger, and hopelessness then our inner garden and our inner earth will nurture these seeds without judgement. We must choose to plant what we wish our inner earth to nurture and grow.

On the equinox choose carefully the seeds that you wish to plant in your inner garden. Your inner earth waits patiently for these seeds.

On March 20, the equinox, let us together set an intention to plant seeds in our outer and inner gardens with discernment. Let us plan together the garden we wish to see grow. Plant seeds with intentions, words, thoughts that contain the creative potential of peace, love, light, and unlimited opportunities.

We are the gardeners of this great planet earth. Let us work in harmonious partnership with each other and the earth herself to grow a garden of true beauty and true love.

On the equinox go outside and connect with the elements and feel how you are part of all of life. It does not matter whether you live in an urban environment or in nature. Just go outside and stand on the earth.

Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths and feel yourself connecting with the heartbeat of the earth. Raise your arms up to the sky and open up to life. Open up to a message that the wind brings to you today. The message might come through a gentle breeze or through a strong gust. Listen. Experience the power of the sun feeding you. Even if the sun is not out and shining where you live it is still providing the energy for your life.

At some point during the day drink a glass of water absorbing the incredible nurturance water brings to you.

We are not separate from the elements. We are one with the elements. The spirit of the elements is so supportive to us. They are helping spirits – Nature’s divine intelligence. Experience how we are all connected to this intelligence.

On this note I received two different correspondences from Medicine for the Earth teachers within 24 hours of each other. Lauren had a vision about transfiguration. She shared how the consciousness of everything – the air, local vegetation, the spirits could all turn their eyes and focus on the vision of transfiguration. She wrote, “It was like the air’s consciousness was a divine eye, that turned and looked at me.” Lauren saw how we could invite the spirit of nature to join in on a transfiguration ceremony.

The next day I received an email from Karen who had just led a transfiguration ceremony in her local area. And she wanted to let me know that the group felt that the spirits of nature and the elements had joined in and were present during the transfiguration ceremony.

It was an interesting synchronicity to receive these two emails within twenty-four hours of each other about nature joining in on transfiguration work.

I have to wonder if we are getting a clue of a way to deepen our work.

The full moon is March 8. Let us join our hearts and divine spirit together in love for the web of light that connects us all. Let us radiate divine light and universal love throughout the planet. Experience the radiation of light going deep within the earth feeding all the roots of life that connect us all. Let us continue to deepen our transfiguration practice feeding and nurturing the web of light.

Let us invite the spirits of nature to join our full moon ceremony to create a human web of light. Experience the divine eye of the elements turning towards us and partnering with us as we experience our divine connection feed the web of light.

If you are a new reader of the Transmutation News please read “Creating A Human Web of Light” on the homepage of this site. Instructions for our full moon ceremony are written up there.

The times we live in call us to deepen our spiritual practice. We must not take our spiritual work lightly. All of life needs those of us who are willing to pull out all the stops and open our hearts to bring through wisdom, light, and love from the deepest spiritual place that lies within. Let us germinate the seeds that hold unlimited knowing. These seeds have been waiting for the right conditions to germinate. The time is now!

I wish you all a joyous spring and fall!!

Here are two quotes from Einstein to inspire us during this equinox:

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

“I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”

Sylvia Edwards, the webmaster of this site, is gifting us this month with a disk that we can work with. You can learn more by visiting her website www.collectivelight.com.

Many of you are working with Sylvia’s disks. I know I have, and I find them quite transformative. So, I am grateful that we can all work together with this disk which assists in letting go of the egoic mind, our stories, and move into Divine Light.

The disk is called “Divine Light”. You look at it for 4 seconds and what you take in, in those 4 seconds stays with you for 24 hours.

Looking at this disk, one surrenders into the Divine Light of all of
Creation. It is the thing that creates all things – the spark of life. It
is the thing, the substance, emotions, thoughts seen and unseen, in all realities. It is the purest of pure.

As you look at the disk for the first 4 seconds, the mind can become busy, even in those 4 seconds. The next day when you look at it, it begins to quiet the mind. Looking at this disk day after day brings stillness within, to be mindful in the moment, to be in one’s breath, in Divine Light where all answers are, all clarity, all good, all happiness, all peacefulness.

There is no symbol on this disk because it doesn’t anchor one into one thing, one idea. It is all things, all ideas, everything all of the time.

It brings back the memory when one transitioned from being in spirit to being in physical – remembering one’s purity at that state and letting go of our current day stories to move into a higher light.

Transmutation News – November 2011

My father Aaron Ingerman died at the age of 97 on Friday night a little before 8 PM on October 21.

My father died in a true state of peace and grace. He had his hands on his heart and the most peaceful look on his face. He is now in a most beautiful place.

There was a CD of harp music that had been looping all afternoon and through his death. And he had loving people sitting in silent meditation with him throughout the day.

My father was an extraordinary man. He was the best father a girl could have ever dreamed up! He took such wonderful care of me.

He was loved, honored, and respected by many for the generosity of his spirit and his sense of humor. He got great enjoyment from gardening and painting. He worked so hard to try and support his family. And he always said in his retirement that he just wanted to rest.

May he rest in peace and love.

I ask that you join me in giving thanks to Aaron Ingerman for gracing this earth with his presence. He gave so much to so many, and I just want to tell him that many thank him in return!

His wife and my mother Lee Ingerman will be 97 shortly. Thank you for joining me in prayers wishing her great peace and comfort during this time.

Last month I wrote about the need to call ourselves back home again so that we can be present to what truly needs to be attended to in our lives and in our spiritual work.

I continued to work on this theme with my own helping spirits. And in my own shamanic journeys I was shown another aspect that I want to share with you.

In spiritual traditions there is different wording to describe our egoic self versus our higher spirit. In some teachings this is described as the “will” and “Will”. Some traditions talk about “self” and “Self”. Depending on what tradition you look at you will see different vocabulary used to describe the state of separation versus oneness.

We do need a strong will to survive. And this part of ourselves is very primal and does have a strong energy that keeps us surviving a variety of challenges that occur physically.

But what my helping spirits have shared with me is the need to align the will/self with Will/Self so that our primal and raw strength to live is aligned with a higher purpose.

Today we are seeing a misalignment with the “self” and “Self”. And this is creating states of violence, greed, desire for power over, abuse, and illness on all levels. For what “the self” wants and what the “Self” is leading us towards are often to two different outcomes.

The lack of alignment is creating disharmony which is yielding illness personally and collectively.

The key is working on alignment with our divine spirit and our higher purpose.

I was shown so clearly that the challenges we are experiencing in the world today are happening for a clear reason. The lesson for all of us is to align with our higher purpose of caretaking our earth garden. I did write about our purpose of being caretakers in Medicine for the Earth.

When we can align, then we can surrender to our inner spirit and inner wisdom. When we can surrender to our divine spirit then the fighting stops.

I remember back in the 1990’s I was going through quite the initiation, and I felt lost of how to get through the huge changes in my life. The two things I ended up repeating to myself throughout the day as a mantra were:

“The only way out is through.”

“The strength of my spirit will carry me through the darkness.”

This was such a powerful time for me. Although I never want to repeat what I went through I did find myself so grateful for the change in me that this initiation created. I felt as if I had been reborn and was a different person operating from a different place of wisdom and spiritual power.

After this experience I reflected back on a variety of times of big change and challenges that has happened through my life. And I could really see that what allowed me to survive some pretty intense times was always the strength of my Spirit. It was not my ego that was able to just push through. It was my Spirit that carried me through that made the difference.

My helping spirits were pretty clear with me that for life to continue on this great earth we must align with our higher purpose.

This month I ask all of us to set an intention to align our “will” with our “Will”; our “self” with our “Self”. Meditate on aligning with your divine spirit.

I know this has been our purpose together as a global community. But I found the wording that my helping spirits gave me helpful in shifting and setting my daily intention.

The rewards of doing this are many. Life gets easier, joy bubbles through us, and we get healthier on all levels.

So, I encourage you to really concentrate on this work for the month. And keep your focus on alignment!

The full moon is November 10. Let us focus on aligning our higher selves with each other in our global community and radiate our light throughout the planet and the entire web of light and life.

For those of you new to reading The Transmutation News please read the instructions for our monthly ceremony on the homepage “Creating A Human Web of Light”.

Transmutation News – October 2011

As we watch world events, we are seeing so many people losing their homes through extreme weather, war, and economic problems. And of course, this touches all of our hearts.

There is another tragedy that is occurring that is silent and that is affecting so many of us. And this is how we are allowing ourselves to get pulled outside of ourselves. More and more people are feeling scattered and more disassociated as we move into uncertainty about where the future is leading us and as we are surrounded by so much change and stress in our lives.

I think that this is an issue that we all must address for ourselves. For it is the ego that moves into a state where we feel the need to disassociate more and more from life and from our sense of self.

And what the planet and all of life needs right now is for us to stay home and rest in our divine spirit and shine our light in the world. But I do notice that for many this is becoming difficult as the stresses of life are allowing the ego to take over and many people are losing their sense of being centered. This of course is a type of soul loss.

It is time to make a clear decision to come back home to our spirit. There is a need for all of us to perform a type of soul retrieval to call ourselves back again.

Of course, if you have suffered a trauma, you might consider going to a shamanic practitioner to receive a soul retrieval. And there is a global list of brilliant practitioners on www.shamanicteachers.com.

But the type of soul loss I am writing about is where we have allowed life to pull us out of ourselves and where we have lost our center, but where we have the ability to return on our own.

The process of healing needed in this instance is for us to make a decision to get focused, come back to center, and to rest in our spirit.

In Medicine for the Earth, I wrote up an exercise that originates from Psychosynthesis. In this therapy it is acknowledged that we are more than our bodies and mind. We have a spiritual component that has a sense of impermanence and moves with grace and ease through change.

I have been working myself with repeating: “I am more than my body and my mind. I am an unlimited spiritual being.”

Whenever I feel pulled out of myself from the stress of life, I start to repeat the above sentence. I immediately move into a state of inner peace and feel myself expanding versus contracting.

Either going outside and lying on the earth or putting on some nice music and imagining yourself lying on the earth will help you to center and to align with the spiritual heartbeat of the earth, the heartbeat of divine perfection.

When you find yourself being pulled outside of yourself by a past event or fear of the future bring yourself back to the present by thinking about something you love about life. Move into a place of gratitude.

Work with opening up your crown, third eye, and heart chakras. You can really work with transforming your perception when you observe the world through the eyes of spirit. This entails opening up your third eye. When you bring through divine wisdom this opens up your crown chakra. And of course, opening your heart allows you to embrace all of life with love. When we are in a loving place, we create a home to come back to.

The ego perceives fear. And this is the nature of separation. Do the practices you have learned to move back into a state of oneness and divine light.

We are all being challenged by the outer world to move within to find true peace and security.

On that note I did write another blog for the Huffington Post that was posted in September. The title is: “How to Create A Rich Inner Garden”.

You might take a look at what I wrote for more ideas on how to come back home again. The link is:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandra-ingerman-/inner-garden_b_942092.html

I was communicating to Gail, a friend of mine, about the topic of the need to call our soul back home. And Gail used the metaphor of a magnet. She was saying how it is important to magnetize the soul back home.

Gail talked about the image of a bar magnet, one side with a negative charge and one side with a positive charge. As you know if you hold two bar magnets you can hold one stationary and then rotate the pole of the other to attract or repel the stationary one.

Gail was saying that the stresses of life and the ego flurry of action/worry have the daily effect of reversing the pole – so a field is created where one’s essence ends up getting pushed or spun away.

It is important to find ways to magnetize your essence towards you instead of pushing it away. Gail uses dance for this. I know I have a variety of hobbies that can create a magnetic pull of my essence back home.

In How to Thrive in Changing Times I wrote about using two magnets to get the sensation of the energy needed to receive our desired outcome. This month you might try using two magnets to get the physical sensation of what it feels like to pull your essence back to you when it scatters due to life circumstances.

Take some time to check in with your inner self each day and do what ever work you need to do to make sure you are present and centered.

Don’t allow yourself to get lost by what is happening in the outer world. Find your inner strength. Rest in spirit. And know that you are an unlimited spirit that surfs the changes that life is bringing for all of us with grace and ease.

The full moon is October 11. Take some time and if needed call yourself back home again. Travel within and experience your inner light. Now imagine the beautiful bright web of light we have been weaving together. Imagine reaching your fingers filled with divine light touching a part of the web. Thousands of us will be touching the web together on this day. Observe the light and love of our global circle rippling throughout the web of light.

If you are new to reading The Transmutation News, please read the instructions for Creating A Human Web of Light on the homepage of this site. And then join in with the above instructions.

Let us all hold our global community in love and perceive all of us as shining, healthy, and joyful beings of light.

Transmutation News – August 2011

I would like to start this month with an important announcement for all of you reading The Transmutation News in another language besides English.

Each translation for the Transmutation News will now be posted on www.sandraingerman.com. Just click on the language you wish to read the column in.

It is wonderful that we have the Transmutation News translated into: French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovakian, Spanish, and Swedish.

I would like to take this opportunity for all of us to give gratitude to Eva Ruprechtsberger as for many years now she has been organizing the translations and posting them on a central website. And let us give gratitude to all the translators who volunteer their time to translate The Transmutation News. We send many blessings your way.

I have some incredibly exciting news to announce!!

In 2004 I co-partnered with the University of Michigan School of Integrative Medicine to do a pilot research on how Medicine for the Earth practices could help people who have suffered a heart attack.

Dr. Sara Warber was the primary investigator.

There were three randomized study groups. There was one group of participants who took a four-day workshop with me on Medicine for the Earth. I was assisted by Kate Durda who is an amazing teacher in Michigan listed on www.shamanicteachers.com.

Another group participated in a Lifestyle Change Program where participants learned about the importance of nutrition, physical exercise, and stress management. They learned how to practice meditation and yoga.

The third group received usual medical care.

The results of the study are now published by Explore Journal of Science and Healing.

This is such an exciting study as we were able to show the benefit of practicing Medicine for the Earth work for people who have suffered heart attacks.

The manuscript of the Healing the Heart study can be downloaded for a fee by clicking on the following link:
http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307(11)00099-1/abstract

I do hope you will download it and read the paper. It has taken many years for the paper to finally be finished and published. I do trust that the timing is now right to share the power of healing that comes from the Medicine for the Earth work.

In the September Transmutation News, I will write about some of the practices that we did in the four day workshop. All the practices came from my book Medicine for the Earth: How to Transform Personal and Environmental Toxins.

I am teaching a Medicine for the Earth and Healing with Spiritual Light training in Santa Fe, New Mexico on Oct. 19-23. I will share how I taught the practices to a non- shamanic community where I used guided visualizations and ceremonies that did not conflict with participants strong religious beliefs.

For more information on this training please email Ruth Aber at: aruthabelle@aol.com

I have been studying taiko drumming for about 4 1/2 years now. Taiko drumming comes from Japan and there are many extraordinary taiko drummers performing around the world today.

One would never know that I had been studying for so long if you watch me play. I am afraid to say my form just doesn’t seem to match the beauty of the ancestry of taiko drumming.

But I so love to drum, and it is has been a very healthy practice for me to keep up as long as I let go of the judgement of my progress.

In the class that I am in we start each class with about 30 minutes of warm up and practice on a very small taiko drum called the shime. In many of the taiko pieces the shime is played to provide the back beat and the rhythms played on the shime can be quite complex.

When we practice on the shime we play rhythms where the left hand is playing something very different than the right hand. And this of course can be challenging for anyone.

When I play different beats with my right hand and left hand it is very clear that I cannot allow any thoughts to enter in if I want to be able to keep the different beats flowing and not get lost.

If I let thoughts come in such as starting to think of something that happened during my day, I lose the beat. If I start to think about something I need to do after class I lose the beat. If I start to reflect on how I am playing, I lose the beat.

My body knows how to keep the beat. There is an innate sense of how to do this. And when I can surrender to what my body knows how to do, I can easily keep the beat. But when I get my mind involved in the process, I find I get lost.

After one of my recent classes I started to reflect on how this is a metaphor for our spiritual work. For during this particular class, I had surrendered to the wisdom of my body and the cellular knowing of how to keep the different beats going with both of my hands. I had moved into a place of non-thinking and let my body wisdom flow.

Often when we engage in spiritual practices, we get distracted from the flow very easily. The media can distract us. Our beliefs of what is possible and what is not possible distract us. Our self-talk distracts us. In our modern world we simply have created and are surrounded by endless distractions. I think you know what I mean.

But when we sink into our inner state of knowing and our own divine spirit our spiritual life simply unfolds naturally without thinking about it. It is when we start to think that we end up in trouble.

I would love for you to reflect on times in your life when you just allowed yourself to ride the waves of life without getting caught up in mental thoughts and distractions. There is a freedom and sense of joy that comes as we can do this.

And we can simply start to play with this in life. Watch the distracting thoughts that come up for you throughout the day as you live your spiritual practices. Notice how your thoughts can throw you off beat and off center.

It takes discipline to stop the train of thought that is leading to distraction and focus and get back into your own natural rhythm of flow. Stay aware throughout the day of what you let distract you from your flow.

Last month I wrote about the need to be embodied to experience the true power and potential of spiritual work. And I want to weave some more threads into what I wrote last month.

For when we sink into our own body and the spiritual wisdom that it holds, we find ourselves flowing through life and the rhythms of life.

There are times when we move into a pure state of reaction and this of course typically stops our ability to flow with the river of life and all that life brings to us.

We are all experiencing many challenges in our lives as we are being asked to surrender to evolution on all levels. I wrote about this last month.

In New Mexico we have been in extreme drought. And it has been our driest year in recorded history. As I live in nature and spend a lot of time in nature it just breaks my heart to watch the trees and plants being affected by the drought. I am such a tree lover!!

One day last month it started to rain in Santa Fe. As I had a lot of errands to run around town, I experienced how widespread the rain was in the city.

But the one thing I knew was that it was not raining in the part of Santa Fe where I lived. It was not raining when I left my house, and I did not return to any rain – the land was dry.

I am so devoted to my spiritual work and I wanted to just accept that we were not receiving rain where I live. But no matter what I tried – every tool I had ever worked with just could not touch the reaction I went into. And the feeling that came up for me was rage.

I was not angry at the spirits, the weather, people, or any particular aspect in particular. I was simply in rage at how unfair life can be. Obviously, something deeper than rain had been triggered in me.

I got lost in a conditioned response. Although I could not stop my reaction, I could keep transmuting the energy so that I did not send raw rage into the collective. I avoided sending darts of rage to all of life.

And I could also reflect on my state while I was in it.

My frustration with myself was getting lost in the conditioned mind. For all spiritual teachings throughout time have taught that happiness must flow from within. If your happiness is dependent on your outer conditions, you will never be happy.

Rationally I think all of you who are reading the Transmutation News know the truth of this. When life seems to be going your way it is easy for the egoic part of yourself to feel happy, content, and at peace.

But any little life event can easily throw your ego out of that state of contentment. And it has always been thus for human beings. And the goal of spiritual practices is to find that inner light, inner peace, inner joy, inner contentment that is not shaken up by people and events in the outside world. This is true freedom!! And this is something that I know we all would like to experience. For we know our outer conditions will always change minute to minute, hour to hour, day by day. And we can ride a real rollercoaster when we get lost in what is happening in our outer world.

I have been writing about this for years. And what impacted me on this day of rain was I felt so frustrated as I have devoted every day of my life to my spiritual work and yet still my egoic self got so shaken up by the lack of rain in my area.

And I think this disappointment in myself was worse than my reaction. I am not sure as they fed each other.

Well, it did end up raining where I lived. I just needed a bit of patience.

But I learned a lot from watching my state of being. And that night and the next day I spent time reflecting on this nightmare I had allowed myself to fall into.

What occurred to me the next day was that although I did react to the outer events, I never lost my trust in nature’s intelligence. I realized that this was huge progress for me as in past years I would be angry at the weather spirits for not answering my call. I did not experience this. I knew in every cell of my being that nature knew exactly what it was doing, and I trusted that.

I did surrender to the experience of knowing that there would be loss from the drought and that this was simply part of evolution.

The point I am trying to make is that when I felt I had failed in my spiritual practices I realized that actually I had made great progress from the years of my continued discipline. For I had integrated some very positive behaviors into my daily life.

Yes, I did react but at the same time I did not lose my sense of trust and I did surrender to the outcome.

Oftentimes we are tested by life circumstances and we might think we failed the test once again. But when you can take some time and step back and reflect on how you did handle “the test” you will find that you did make progress. And although your behavior might not have felt great you still changed your behavior from years past. And this is such a huge key to acknowledge.

We still get upset and allow our ego to override the peace and contentment that lives inside of us. But as you continue your meditations, your journeys, your practices you will find that you do make progress. And you don’t repeat your past behaviors in the same way. This is so important to acknowledge!!

So, when you find yourself “falling off the path” take some time to step back and either write down or reflect on how you did actually integrate some of what you have been working with into the situation that presented itself as a challenge.

If you do this, you will actually be impressed by how far you have come.

And I do want to encourage all of you to continue to begin each day with gratitude for your life and all that you are given. For I personally find that when I start my day with gratitude, I don’t fall so low for the state of gratitude raises the ground higher and catches me as I feel myself falling off the path.

I start my day with giving thanks to:
-The helping ancestors on the land where I live.
-The spirit of Santa Fe and feeling grateful for the opportunity to live here.
-The spirit of the land I live on for having the opportunity to be a caretaker.
-The hidden folk and the spirit people (the elves, fairies, angels, and forest guardians) for working with me in partnership on behalf of the land.
-The spirit that lives in all things – this means all of life, so I don’t have to list every living creature.
-The elements of earth, air, water, fire (the sun) for giving what all living beings need to thrive and not just survive
-My helping spirits for all the wisdom, healing, and protection they share with me.
-And most of all I give thanks for my life.

Of course, each day I adapt my prayers for gratitude, as I don’t want to recite them as a recipe. For example, I also give gratitude for my health and for all my physical senses that allow me to experience the beauty of the natural world.

And I do express gratitude for important people in my life such as my wonderful husband, my parents, and all of you in our global community who are working on behalf of all of life. I do send blessings each day to feed our circle.

I find some time in the beginning of my day to give gratitude. And I find it creates a path that even when I feel lost, I can follow the light that my gratitude prayers are shining for me to follow.

How do you give gratitude each day?

It looks like I will be writing some regular blogs for AOL/Huffington Post. This is exciting as it gives me the opportunity to share some of the work we are doing together with a broader community. It would be great if you are willing to share the articles and the links with your community.

I will send the blog link to those on my email list as I write short articles which remind us of the principles we are incorporating into our spiritual life. I don’t know how often my blogs will be posted but I will send a link when a blog is published.

The full moon is August 13. Let us truly spend some time experiencing our divine light connecting with all in our global community around the world committed to shining our light to create a human web of light deep within and throughout the earth.

Reflect on how your practice of joining in with our web of light ceremony each month has deepened.

For those of you who are new readers to the Transmutation News please visit Creating A Human Web of Light on the homepage to read the instructions for our monthly full moon ceremonies.

Last month I encouraged all of us to engage in the work of joining our lights together each day. It is nice to have the full moon to focus on together. But we do want to feed the web of light each day.

And as we do this we tap into the principle of reciprocity. For as we feed the web of light that light flows back to us feeding us and energizing us in return. It is not something to think about but rather just sink into the natural and inherent flow of life itself.