Author: Rachel Rice

By far the best book I’ve read this year is Mind to Matter by Dawson Church. It satisfied both my left brain’s need for data and science and my right-brain’s appetite for intuitive expansion. It is well-organized, easy to read, and it explains scientifically how the process of manifestation occurs.

My friend Louisa lent me this book a couple of weeks ago because it contains information that is foundational to the research that we are working on together. It’s a very well written, easy to read compilation of research, stories, information, and chapter focused To Do’s.

After I started to read it, I thought that my daughter might be interested too so I read her some of the first chapter and she is also finding it fascinating, even integrating it as a source for an English paper she was writing. We are both looking forward to the next section.

I was able to immediately apply what I was learning to minimize symptoms from a disc herniation. As part of my journey through the best of Eastern and Western healing approaches, the approach helped me to feel well enough to put on sneakers and take a walk for the first time in months!

I also used it to minimize the symptoms I experienced during a bout of Covid. I felt the Covid freight train hitting my system on a Tuesday night at 2am.  In the middle of the night, I applied the information I was learning from the book along with some energy medicine and nutritional supplements. Though I tested positive for Covid on Wednesday morning, I was barely congested and didn’t develop any other symptoms.

The following week when I was talking with my sister, she shared that she would like to have Six Areas of Focus in her life, including a “stretch” focal area. She liked the idea of reading this book as the stretch. We agreed to read a chapter per month together.

I got so much out of the book that I sent a copy to each of my siblings, nieces and nephews.  If you find that you are drawn to explore it, I hope that you’ll share your thoughts with me about it.

In our previous interview segment about beliefs, Dr. Tania Bandak shared that her patients typically feel better within a single session. This helps them realize that they do have within their bodies the ability to feel better which challenges their own beliefs and helps them shift into a healing mindset.  That said, I was curious about what made Tania seem more open to the energy work than has been my experience with many others in the medical field and if she was initially skeptical.

Rachel: Tania, were you initially skeptical? If so, what resolved your skepticism?

Tania:  I wouldn’t call it skeptical, because skepticism starts from a place of doubt–of assuming something isn’t true–which can be as limiting as assuming that something is true without examining it.   When I first heard about you, I would say I was curious. I was familiar with the notion that in Eastern Medicine the body is seen as an energy system, and I knew that other energy modalities such as acupuncture have been shown to be beneficial for the management of certain conditions, but I had never heard of Energy Medicine. 

Rachel: How did you make the leap to consider it a modality that you would recommend for your patients?

Tania:  I came to see you to understand your method, how that method was developed, and the science and philosophy behind it.  However, when you described muscle testing I was definitely skeptical about that!  

Rachel: What about that made you skeptical?

Tania: Even though we in traditional medicine accept that thoughts, feelings and actions are interrelated and impact physical health, it is a huge cognitive leap to consider thoughts as having a real-time physical effect on muscles.  I mean, don’t we conceptualize thoughts as existing in some cartoon conversation bubble hovering above our heads?  To consider that they have a footprint–or a thought-print–in our physical bodies is pretty revolutionary!

Rachel: So what resolved your skepticism about the muscle testing?

Tania: Well, you muscle tested me and I felt that when you tested a truth for me I was physically stronger, and when you tested a falsehood, I was weaker.   Initially I wondered whether your were pressing harder with the falsehood, but if this were true that would mean that you were intentionally manipulating the situation, which I did not believe you were doing.  We had already talked about your motivation to do this work, which I understood to be a genuine intention to help heal. 

Rachel: So my motivation was important?

Tania: Yes, understanding your motivation was key.  I asked you how you came to do this work, how you trained, and why you do it. I think that when we look for health practitioners, we focus on credentials and training, which is very important. What I think is equally important is the motivation of the practitioner. This isn’t something we usually examine, but is essential if we are to take the leap of faith necessary to trust them with our health–whether this person is a traditional physician or an alternative healing practitioner.  

Rachel: What else shifted your perspective?

Tania: Seeing how our patients have responded.    Not all of them have–but I think there is important information to be learned from the few who haven’t.  The vast majority have really responded to the work they’ve been doing with you, and the reproducibility of the effect of your process does suggest to me, at least, that the process is based on something “real.”  

Rachel: What do you mean by “real?”

Tania:  That’s a great question.  By “real” I mean something that addresses the root cause of the issue and helps people feel lighter when they leave. HOW DO YOU DO THIS??? 

Rachel: That is a question for another day.  ; )

Stay tuned… in our next segment, Tania turns the tables on Rachel and interviews her!

The physical feeling of clearing old emotions has a lightness to it. First there is the sensation of pipes draining, water flushing down the arms and fingers and off the legs and toes. Then, my client Sarah says, it’s as though some one has lifted a weighted blanket off of her chest and she can breath easier. There’s actually more space, she says, to breath. And, the tightness in her belly has released.  She hadn’t really been aware that she had been holding there. The skin on her temples has relaxed a bit too and her gaze is softer and brighter now.  She takes another deep, expansive, nourishing breath of air.

The fear is gone.

For the first time in a long time, she says that she can no longer tap into the feeling that she’s been a target. Someone at her old company had framed her to hide their own culpability. Although she had easily found a new job given the strength of her resume, experience and strong references, she couldn’t shake the feeling that if it had happened once, maybe it would happen again. Now, that fear is gone. In its place are positive affirmations connecting her to her stronger, wiser self, capable of seeing down dark alleys and identifying dangers from farther aware. She now feels aware, yet confident and poised.  It feels odd, she says, to not be able to tap into that same sense of vulnerability, but it just isn’t there. 

Energy balances.

Then, we make sure to strengthen her central meridian, the one that helps build our confidence, and boost her thymus energy which supports feelings of vitality. We work with her triple warmer energy, the one that governs fight or flight, and help it step down off of its hyper-vigilant perch to a more supportive and less reactive place. Since our work together she says that she feels less reactive emotionally at home and at work and much more able to have perspective and think before responding. 

Emotion = Energy in Motion.

Emotion is just energy in motion. When it gets stuck in our bodies we hold it like a weight. We hold it unconsciously so that maybe it will keep us safe the next time something similar happens. But instead, the next time something happens, we freeze, or fight or run away and we don’t get a chance to start fresh. By working with the energy and giving it a way to move in, around and out of the body, we are able to build new pathways for thinking and acting and actually re-pattern our body’s response to stressors. Learn how.

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Time spent with someone we enjoy flashes by. The time it takes to drill a tooth is an eternity. While time has a quantitative, external, and linear aspect to it – the seconds, minutes, hours on the clock that methodically march forward – it’s our internal relationship to what we’re experiencing that determines the quality and our sense of capacity. And there’s a persistent cultural narrative that there’s not enough of either. In fact, not having time is considered the new status symbol. If you’re not busy, you must not be in demand.

This demand, however, is often driven externally and we feel we have little to no control over it. In adopting this perspective, we surrender our choice and agency. While there is no doubt that modern life is busy and the distractions and pushes and pulls are significant, for those who add kids, it’s as if all bets are off. In exploring this with several clients, some questions emerged – what choice do we have about the nature of our busyness and our relationship to it? Is our busyness more amenable to change than the prevailing cultural narrative conveys? If we fully stepped into choice about our time, how would our lives change? Which theme below calls you?

People Pleasing

When we ‘people please,’ we say ‘yes’ to someone else’s desire with the false sense that we’re preserving our relationship. How many hours are you doing something to people please? What volunteer activities did you feel you couldn’t decline? Are you meeting with colleagues to only be supportive or to be a good work buddy? When we say ‘yes’ to too many things, we end up saying ‘no’ by default. If I spend two hours per week in meetings that are not the core part of my job because I feel I need to be ‘supportive’ and then I miss an evening at home with my family, is that the choice that I want to make? Maybe. There is no right answer. Only  that we reclaim control by being intentional with our commitments – our ‘yeses’. Once a clear, intentional ‘yes’, ‘nos’ flow more easily. 

People pleasing has many roots, and fear of damaging relationships is only one. A strategy to try is asking what saying ‘no’ will allow you to do, be, experience instead. What’s your ‘yes’? This shifts the focus away from the other person and back to you – which gets lost in people pleasing. There will be times when you decide to do something for someone else. When you can claim the choice, it changes how you experience the time you do share.

Boredom and Avoidance

A client I’ll call Rick had agreed to all sorts of additional work – and was hearing from his boss that he was not fulfilling his core job duties.  When we looked at the responsibilities in each category, he was interested in the extra work but not his core job. He had recently changed jobs and was feeling like he made a mistake, so he had not fully committed.  

Distractions come in all forms. And our uber-connected world is delighted to provide all the distractions we can ingest. Look no further than your phone. We don’t need to take on extra responsibility at work to feed our need for distraction. 

Rather than focusing on the distraction, ask why you feel the need for distraction. When you turn to a distraction, what is going on for you in that moment? I’ve started asking myself that each time I open LinkedIn – and it’s often not because I’m interested in networking. It’s avoidance of a task I don’t want to do or don’t know how to do. Sitting with my discomfort has increased my awareness and focus and shifted my relationship to the task I’m putting off. What’s your pattern? Where are you bored? What are you avoiding? 

Crisis Mode

Crisis mode is pervasive in some organizations. There are too many fires to extinguish, deliverables on tight timelines, and all with client impact. And in an industry where the client reigns, my coaching client Amanda feels like her only choice is 24/7 crisis mode — which is not conducive to effective management and long-term organizational health. To manage the constant fires, she puts off long-term planning, team development and developing organizational processes to curb the constant crisis. At the director level, her priority needs to be long-term strategic work.

Our first task was to shift from the limiting belief that there is ‘no time’ to ‘some time can be created.’ We identified changes that are most likely to yield results, broke them into manageable pieces and put time on her calendar for them.  Given the industry and client relationships, the shift out of crisis mode will take time. But she had to first accept the possibility and reclaim the parts of her calendar she could control. Her all or nothing belief allowed her days to be driven externally, eliminating any sense of control. 

Mental Distractions

Forget about all the external tugs on our time and attention. Sometimes it’s what’s inside that takes us down. Say hello to mental distractions. As I write this, work emails race through my head, the grocery list pops up, along with the nagging feeling that the kennel won’t take our dog during our vacation because I haven’t made the reservation. During the first moment of almost-stillness, it all comes to the surface in one great wave crowding out the immediate task. 

To calm your mental distractions, try practicing brief periods of mini-mindfulness.Throughout your day, take time to breath and experience the physical sensation of what you’re doing. Notice the water running over your hands and the scent of the soap. Feel your feet on the floor and your legs moving as you walk to the meeting. Notice your breath. Distraction is a habit, but so is focus.

Although our world feeds on our time and attention, I believe that we can have more control than we believe. None of these practices add time to your day. But they can help you reclaim choice – which is power. And it’s the power over your relationship to what you’re doing and why that brings internal peace.  Which, in my experience, slows down how I experience this current moment giving me more sense of capacity. And so less flies by outside of my consciousness and control. 

What resonates with you? Is there a place in your life that you’ve allowed to be driven externally by demands that don’t serve you? What can you do to reclaim that? How would life be better if you did? 

by Amy Rebecca Gay, Ph.D.

By Amy Rebecca Gay, Ph.D.

What are all the people, values, and experiences in your life to which you say ‘yes’? Spending time with those you love? Self-care? Adventure? Being on time to your mother’s funeral? 

I actually didn’t pull that last one out of the blue. During last weeks’ vacation in Vermont I started talking with someone who told me he was late to his mother’s funeral because he was responding to a last-minute request from his boss. A request, no less, he felt his boss could handle without his input. This interesting detail emerged from a larger conversation about how hard it is to unplug – and how the inn’s spotty wi-fi connection was the perfect solution. (The kids had a different reaction!)

But this conversation got me thinking. If I were making a list right now of all my ‘yeses,’ being on time to remember and pay tribute to a loved one would be high on that list. I suspect it was for this gentleman, too. Otherwise, why would he have mentioned it? And yet, we often make choices day-in and day-out that quietly, even gently, erode our commitment to what we hold dear. To what we tell ourselves and others is what matters. 

Just to be clear: there is no judgement here. No judgement for this gentleman and how he happened to arrive late to his mother’s funeral. No judgement for myself over some choices I’ve recently made that might not be the truest reflection of my espoused values. No judgement for you. 

What I want to do is surface an all-too familiar dynamic and ask you, “What do you say ‘yes’ to?” And in order to protect that ‘yes,’ we need to say ‘no.’ How often do we fail to set healthy boundaries with a ‘no’ in order to protect our most important ‘yeses’? And do we support others to do the same so that we contribute to a community where we all live in alignment with our deeply held values? How would our lives change if we were clear about our ‘yeses’ and committed to holding boundaries to protect them with constructive ‘no’s’? How would the world be different if we committed to a culture that supported us all in learning and applying these skills without guilt or shame? 

So here is my ‘yes’ to you and me: I commit to identifying the most important ‘yeses’ in my life, protecting them with constructive ‘no’s’ and supporting you in doing the same. What do you say ‘yes’ to?