How I Learned How to Sometimes Disappear

 

When I was a girl, I was raised by a lake.  I would explore the shores for hours on end with the most excellent company of our family dog.  Pookie was a beautiful long eared multicolored mutt of cocker spaniel and dachshund heritage.  She and I would wade in the shallows together to watch the minnows dart for cover, truly invisible until they started to move.

With Pookie under strict instruction to stay behind and wait, we’d poke amongst the trailing vines, looking deep in the shadows and recesses, ever so cautiously, to hopefully find nests of newly-laid late-spring duck eggs.  Most often, these would only be visible when the mother was out for a brief time on the water.  If she was there, keeping her eggs warm, her natural camouflage would likely cause us to not see her, or her nest, at all.  

When we returned to visit the nest, Pookie, ever the polite lady-dog, would respectfully keep her distance as we admired the dark and light brown feathers of the mother duck, blending in perfectly with the leaf litter around her.  Those beautiful feathers, along with her head and neck tucked discretely down, eyes on the ground, in absolute stillness provided her with perfect invisibility.  The duck would remain there silently, seemingly lost in the depths of concentration on her task.  This deep focus, coupled with her ability to blend into her surroundings kept her and her family safe at such a moment of extreme vulnerability.  If we hadn’t previously known of her location, that intense mindfulness, more often than not, would have resulted in our inability to see her at all.  

But there she was.  And the bright white eggs, filling her nest, covered with the mother’s body, were completely undetected, just two or three feet from the path that we all walked on every day.  Brooding and shrouded by the overlaying blanket of nature’s protective twigs and leaves, she rested there, right along the shore, being buoyed and fed by the waters that were sweetly cradling us all.

Learning from the duck and her soon to be hatched string of baby ducklings, as a six or seven year old child, without really realizing it, I began to try my hand at invisibility.  Sometimes, with the natural stressors of family life, I would find myself needing to go out somewhere and slip into the bushes where I could lie on my back on the soft leafy dirt to decompress.  One such hidey hole that I frequented, was a thick corner landscape planting in a near neighbor’s yard, just along the sidewalk.  It occupied about eight or ten square feet of shrubs of varying sizes.  If I was in there and didn’t want to be seen when someone came by on the sidewalk, I’d do like the mother duck and just lay, very still, shifting my focus and momentarily loosing my sense of self by concentrating on the leaves overhead, or the unfathomable depths of the deep blue sky, until those passers had all gone by.

Later, in my teenage years, occasionally I would find myself in the midst of a caper.  This might be something like digging a scoot-under-hole beneath a fence, to gain periodic access to the expansive hills and lawns of a nearby golf course, in the dark of night.  Again, if someone happened by, I’d get very still and focus on the bushes  beside me, allowing my consciousness to enter into the bark and flow with the fluids of their stems.  I would hold my concentration on the plants, imagining I was a part of their inner workings, feeling what it would be like to be a water droplet, high up in a leaf, waving softly among the others.  And then, even if the persons passing by had a dog, my stillness and focus on being one with the plants, let them all go right on by, without seeing or sensing my presence at all.

My mother grew up on a farm and she knew the importance of nature’s lessons for young children and thus granted us the freedom to explore and learn how to keep ourselves safe.  She was also very practical.  She taught us how to make soap from wood ash and bacon grease.  She also felt it was important for us to learn the tougher lessons of life and death.  And so, it was decided, when I was about eleven years old, that it was time for us children to learn how to butcher a chicken.  She had just begun this task with my brothers and together, they were awaiting my arrival. 

Now, the chickens were my friends.  Yes, we collected the eggs and we even bought and cooked chickens from the store.  Yet, somehow, in my child’s mind, I hadn’t quite put all of that together until I stumbled on the scene, freshly back from a swim.  

My mother explained to me what she was planning to teach us that day.  As a devoted lover of animals, I couldn’t even imagine something so horrid.  Noticing that I was about to bolt, my two brothers, who were eagerly complicit in the plan, grabbed hold of me.  They held me tight while I watched my mother take a sharp serrated knife and saw the head off of one of our young roosters.  She dropped the chicken’s body on the ground and left it to run in circles on the lawn until it lay pulsing and spilling the last of its blood from its severed neck.  

Taking advantage of the momentary shock of this abhorrent scene, I managed to scramble free and ran through the house and out the front door, needing to desperately escape and hide, in order to heal my mind from what I had just seen.  

Our lake had raised me well.  The minnows and the ducks showed me the way.  I ducked into the depths of our garage and before anyone had gathered themselves enough to follow and find me, I slipped into the snapped vinyl covered backseat of our two door convertible car, firmly closing the door behind me.  There, in the dark, under a couple of blankets, I curled up on the seat, shed a few sobs and then steadied my breath, becoming just as still as the mother ducks had taught me.  I let myself meld into the seat beneath me and into the blankets above, focusing on their warmth and their texture, silently and quietly immersing my mind into the threads and folds of the fabric.

In the quiet dark, nestled there, I was barely aware of the sounds of my family

as they were scurrying around, looking for me.  My brothers hopped on their bikes and scoured the neighborhood, reporting back to my mother.  My friend’s families were called.  My parent’s voices grew progressively more disturbed.  My father even looked inside the car, peeking under the taught vinyl covering.  Seeing nothing amiss, just the usual untidy scramble of blankets, he shut the door and moved on thoroughly searching the garage.  And then he left, to regroup with the rest of the family, to see if I’d yet been found.

An hour or two passed.  Darkness began to fall.  And then night set in.  By then, I felt a little better and decided they’d all had enough.  So, I quietly left my little dark den and to their astonishment, I silently walked in the front door, head held high, and went straight to my room.  I shut the door and pushed the dresser across it, to keep it shut and went to bed.  Everyone knew that a line had been crossed and no words were spoken about the event on the following morning, or any time after that.  Soon after, I became a vegetarian and remained so for many, many years.  

As a young woman, I learned about a metaphysical trait attributed to groups of  indigenous cultures world round.  It is most commonly referred to as shape shifting.  When I first learned of it, I had a lingering sense of familiarity.  Upon reflection, I recognized aspects of it from the experiences of my youth.  A person who has the skill of a shape-shifter, may be running one moment, then perhaps they swiftly duck into the leafy cover along the edge of a meadow.  In the next moment, a jack rabbit might be seen bounding agilely off into the nearby trees.  And the person is gone.  Though I’ve not done any shape-shifting, it seems to me that perhaps the beginnings of that skill may lie in opening the mind and then directing one’s consciousness, asking, and then if welcome, entering respectfully into another's conscious awareness.  Or as the minnows and the ducks and the leaves taught me, perhaps it starts with simply disappearing, by becoming one, with whatever or wherever we find ourselves.

photo credit: Aleta Arthur

Calming Our Bodies, Calming Our Nervous Systems

 

 

When we find ourselves in times of change, our bodies and our nervous systems go on high alert.  We feel unsettled, our digestion can become disturbed.  We can loose sleep and find our minds perseverating on ‘worst case scenario's’ with deep concerns over the future and regrets over the past.  All of this strains our immune systems and we can become ill.  These situations leave us feeling vulnerable and ill-equipped to face the challenges that well may lay ahead.  So, it is in our best interest to take steps to avoid a full downward spiral and reverse that trend.  I’d like to share a few tools that I’ve learned that help me to calm my body and my nervous system.  Enlisting some or all of these can enable us to better approach whatever may lay ahead.  

First, we’ve all heard this one, because it really helps and that is to breathe.  Breathing while counting to ten before responding is one variation that helps us to react more calmly.  Meditator's often inhale to a count of four and exhale to a count of eight.  A slower exhalation shifts our nervous system to a calmer state.  My favorite, I learned from the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn, who was exiled from unthinkable conditions in his home country of Vietnam and established a monastery in France.  He taught a wonderfully calming open-eyed meditation where we say either to ourself or aloud, “Breathing in, I calm my body.  Breathing out, I smile.”  Just the act of smiling, engaging those particular muscles on our face, helps to relax us.

Then, there is laughter.  Sometimes in periods of great stress this can seem nearly impossible and yet it is such a deep relief if we can find our way there.  I’ve heard stories of individuals with serious physical conditions who have healed their way back to wholeness by watching beloved comedies on television.  My husband and I enjoy the very funny sit-com from the 1990’s about a couple of psychiatrist brothers titled, Frasier.  We’ve seen all eleven seasons at least several times and they always make us laugh out loud, generally three or more times per show.

Also, good quality sleep is absolutely essential for good peace of mind.  So often when we are stressed, we can lie awake or we don’t get to bed at a decent hour.  This represents a serious health concern and one that is grossly underestimated in our culture, where sleep is almost looked upon as an inconvenient interruption to our busy lives.  But almost nothing is more important for healthy mental and physical well being.  So, set a regular sleep schedule and stick to it.  Turn off the LED lights and start to calm yourself at least an hour before bedtime.  Try not to take large meals, too much exercise or too many fluids before bed.  Get some natural sunlight on your body everyday, but have a nice dark room, which is a little cool, perhaps with a cracked window, at night.  For more tips on good sleeping habits and the importance of sleep in our lives, I recommend reading the book, Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker.  I think his work is brilliant.  Science is so important and helpful in our lives.

Keeping well hydrated is another trick for easing the stress of change.  Alcohol and caffeinated beverages leave us more dehydrated so they are best avoided in times of stress.  Plus they both seriously undermine the good quality of our sleep, sometimes rendering it impossible.  

Try Maya Nut or Caffix as a nice morning substitute, instead of caffeinated beverages.  They will provide some nutrition and help to keep you out of left brain dominance which is where caffeine puts us and is where our concerns about the past and future dwell.  Non-caffeinated beverages give us greater freedom to embrace more right brain living, the seat of our higher consciousness and playfulness, which is considerably better for stress reduction and for calmer bodies and minds.

For some decent coffee substitutes please visit BlueZones and Corner Coffee Store.  For more information about the affects of coffee on your brain and in your life, consider reading Michael Pollan’s most excellent book, This is Your Mind on Plants.  For an insightful exploration of our right brain and left brain attributes I strongly recommend reading Jill Bolte Taylor’s Whole Brain Living. 

Herbal teas and flavored waters are also lovely.  But, carbonated and sugary or artificially sweetened diet drinks are best left off the list as they dip the immunity and steal minerals and vitamins from our bodies.  Lately I’ve been enjoying a nice big sixteen ounce glass of water with the juice of one lime and one passion fruit sweetened with a few drops of stevia.  This gives the added boost of a nice dose of electrolytes and vitamin C.  If I’m out and about, I carry this with me usually in a reused glass juice jar.  Glass is easy to clean and doesn’t contribute to the ubiquitous plastic pollution of our planet from water bottles.  It is not easy to avoid plastics, but I try to do so wherever I can.  

I also enjoy vinegar water.  One to two tablespoons of raw apple cider vinegar in a glass of water, once or twice a day, helps to balance our pH so all of our metabolic processes run more soothly.  I’ll often add a little organic vanilla or some orange extract to mine to increase the flavor profile.  Many people add a little honey, stirring well, for the rich nutrition and sweetness that honey brings to life.  And it is not a bad idea to rinse the mouth with a gulp or two of clear water after enjoying beverages made with citrus or vinegar to protect the enamel of the teeth.

Ideally, our bodies do best with somewhere around a gallon of water per day.  This really flushes and cleans our systems.  Clean systems make for clean bodies and brains.  And cleaner brains make for cleaner minds and less difficulties in processing stress and change.  So drink up!  Hydration is key and too often it is overlooked.

And now we come to fats, healthy fats.  Our nervous systems thrive in the presence of fats and suffer in their absence.  The ‘fat-free’ diet craze of the 90’s left many a slim figure, but at the cost of a healthy nervous system and subsequent higher levels of stress.  The bad fats are perhaps even worse than no fat at all.  I remember, while growing up, using processed American cheese as bait for fishing while living on a lake.  This is made with only 50% cheese with a whole lot of enticing and preserving additives.  I kept a small block of it in my tackle box and it typically didn’t change at all for months.  It globbed nicely onto the hook and attracted the little fish like crazy.  Unfortunately, it attracts people too.  But it is probably not so good for you as far as fats go.  Then there is that wedding cake frosting, you know the stuff that sticks onto the plate and won’t even rinse off in super hot running water.  Yuck.  Scary.  And high heat animal fats, like crispy bacon, oh, so delicious, but not so healthy.  But the good fats, they are great for our nervous systems and minds.  Essential even.  

Avocados, organic raw nuts and nut butters provide great fats for our nutrition.  The First Nation’s People had the staple of leached oak acorn meal.  Differing somewhat with each species of oak, acorns provide somewhere around 14% carbohydrates, 40% total fats and 11% protein.  A near perfect human food.  Also, pasture raised organic butter and actual olive oil, virgin, organic and not heat treated, have long served humanity.  Many people love coconut oil, but in general, I try to stay away from modern processed vegetable oils like corn or peanut oil, or even worse, GMO created canola oil.  But we do need fats and it’s best if we choose the good ones.  And that can get tricky when eating at potlucks or dining out in restaurants.

Next we have the herbal kingdom.  The plants are our original doctors and they can help us in almost every situation.  Stress and overwhelm is no exception.  Years ago, while healing from  major injury, I came across a recipe for “Nerve Tea” in a book called Healthy Healing by Linda Rector Page, a Naturopath.  This book alone can reduce stress as it is chock full of self-empowering and helpful home remedies for all sorts of health conditions.  

Stress always rises when we or our loved ones are not feeling well.  Linda’s book has been updated with new editions over a dozen times and anyone of her many variations is full of relief to be found among her pages.  And that is where I found her ‘Nerve Tea.’  This is made from a combination of six well known nerve rejuvenation herbs.  They are Lavender, Peppermint and Lemon Balm, Saint John’s Wort, Blessed Thistle and Valerian.  The first three can commonly be found in dried leaf form in the bulk herb section of most healthy food stores and the second three are commonly available in herbal extracts.  Using roughly equal parts, I brew mine with one rounded teaspoonful of each of the dried herbs and one dropperful each (or fifteen drops) of the extracted herbs.  These are placed in a teapot, with one quart of boiling water to make four cups of tea.  Typically, I’ll enjoy two to three cups a day and sometimes all four if I’ve really been rattled.  And it always calms me right down.

Another great stress reducer is Dr. Richard Schulze’s ’Nerve Tonic.’  A dropperful or two of this formula also brings great peace to the mind and body.  Simply call 1(800) herbdoc or visit www.herbdoc.com to get some.  I always have both this tonic and the ingredients for Linda’s “Nerve Tea” on hand and ready to brew to help me more easily overcome the hurdles of stress and change that come too often with life.

For those who prefer subtle medicine, the Bach Flower Remedies can be very helpful.  Rescue Remedy is perhaps the most commonly appreciated of these healers, but there are a number of other flower essences that can help to ease specific types of fears or stress as well.  Homeopathic medicines are another potential avenue for subtle yet potent assistance for regaining mental, emotional and physical well being.  Usually a selection of both of these types of medicines, homeopathic and flower essence remedies, can be found in healthy food stores, each with a brief description of specific action listed on the label.

Lastly, of course, we need to free ourselves to have a little fun.  Singing and being out in nature, spending time with our loved ones and getting some exercise, these activities always lift our spirits and help us to return to a state of joy.  So, look at the sky, let your eyes play over the diamonds of light reflecting off the water.  Volunteer at the animal shelter and connect with other beings in need of love.  Let your dog take you to the beach.  Spend some time giggling and playing with children.  A few friends and I have been meeting at the park every week to learn and sing songs of inspiration, hope and joy.  We’ve been singing protest songs from the civil rights movement: If I had a hammer..., This land is your land..., We shall overcome..., Blowing in the Wind..., and John Lennon’s incredible “Imagine.”  One friend has written a whole raft of new songs, simple and so dear, and we’re learning those and singing them out loud and true.  Hike up a hill.  Splash in the waves.  Yes, do what you must do, but also carve out some time for play.  Move your body and connect with others.  You’ll come home refreshed, more relaxed and much more calm.

Blessings to you all as we celebrate the holiday season.


Josephine Laing
© 2025

As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor. Nor am I licensed in any healing modality. However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing. All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for. After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries. Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and in my videos could be dangerous for you to try. So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol. However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine. So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas.

Imagine

 

One of my favorite astrologers, Rob Brezsny, recently wrote about our time, the one we are having right now, in the early summer of 2025.  He titled his newsletter “Wake up, and wake up, and wake up some more.”  In it he explained that there were three other times in our nation's history when the stars overhead were similarly aligned with Uranus in Gemini.  This transit typically lasts about eight years and represents tremendous upheaval, that so far has had lasting results, regarding some important social changes.  

The first was the American Revolutionary War, with Uranus in Gemini from 1774 through 1778.  Uranus is full of chaos and Gemini is swiftly intelligent.  The result was freedom from British rule and self-governance.

The second was the American Civil War with Uranus in Gemini from 1859 through 1866.  At that time we were a “free” nation that enslaved millions of people.  One out of every two people in the south was a slave.  The schizophrenic nature of our split personality, slavery & freedom, came to a reckoning.  As Brezsny said, Uranus in Gemini can be wrathful and necessary.  

The third time was when we entered WWII, with democracy battling fascism.  We had Uranus in Gemini from 1941 through 1948.  In the decades that followed, we had the rebuilding through the Marshall Plan, to help prevent the spread of communism and repair the economies of Europe while bolstering U.S. economy through increased trade.  The GI bill gave veterans good home loans resulting in the rise of suburbia and a strong middle class.  The result was America’s emergence as a world leader and our commitment to global stability.  We also saw the birth of the civil rights movement, well underway by the mid 1950s.  And, as well, by the 1960s, we saw the Women’s Movement advocating for equal pay, women’s reproductive rights and significant movement towards ending gender discrimination.  We also saw the beginning of The American Indian Movement, Gay Liberation and the Environmental Movement.

In all three of these instances: The Revolutionary War, The Civil War and WWII, millions of people perished.  Old ideas became obsolete and innovations stepped up, in a cascading effect.  Big changes.  So, Uranus in Gemini is something to note.  And Brezsny says “Wake up,” because we should expect shake-ups.  (And so far, these have been hitting hard on relationships, information, learning and truth.)  

It is important to think of this time as a beginning, rather than an end.  Birth is always a little rough.  It involves blood and sometimes death.  But, so far, Uranus in Gemini has resulted in new life for our nation, a freer life.  It took some fighting, but we got there.  First, our own sovereignty in self governance, second, the end to slavery, and third, liberation into greater levels of equality, including for the birds and the bees.

Now we have a new view, struggling to be born.  And Blessedly, Gemini is a little mischievous.  And Uranus multiplies that energy.  So, this transit also holds a little cosmic comedy.  It can be full of playfulness, pranks and tricks.  Like the jester in a formal court, it dances around challenges to the status quo.  In the words of Congressman John Lewis, who fought for voting rights, justice and dignity for all, “Make good trouble.” or more acutely, “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”  Good trouble is “the action of coming together to take peaceful, non-violent action to challenge injustice and create meaningful change.”    
And here we stand, entering the door way of profound change.  We are looking down the throat of attacks on voting rights, dis-information campaigns, the loss of the rule of law, violations against truth and science, the gutting of essential services, including health care and public education.  We are seeing the disappearances of our neighbors, the assault on free speech, and physical threats to our judges and representatives in congress.  

I agree with Brezsny, together, it is time for us to wake up.  And I feel we need to wake up to our higher calling as humans, as planetary community members.  And it is also time for us to start dreaming about what we’d like to achieve, with this wake up and shake up.  For me,  I am envisioning the whole world, with America in the lead, tending carefully to social justice on all levels, including an end to poverty world wide, along with equality and freedom for all people everywhere.  I am envisioning the complete cessation of deforestation and a full throttle re-forestation, with the full spectrum of original native plant materials.   I am envisioning a complete shift in attitude and action around climate change, with innovations abounding and all hands on deck for climate stability.  I am envisioning revisions in public education and gun control, and even elimination of all weaponry; these are also in my view, right along with all people creating a world beyond war.  Imagine all the people, sharing the world and living free.

I’m reminded of those pranksters of change who came out of Liverpool, after the last time Gemini rolled through Uranus, The Beatles.  Their songs about peace and love carried us forward as we rebuilt our ideologies into greater compassion and understanding for one another.  And I will leave you today with the lyrics of John Lennon’s superlative song, “Imagine.”  

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No Hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people livin' for today
Ah, ah, ah-ah

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothin' to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people livin' life in peace
Yoo, hoo, oo-oo

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood and sisterhood of man
Imagine all the people sharin' all the world
Yoo, hoo, oo-oo

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Josephine Laing
© 2025

This Is My Prayer

 

I pray that the men and women who are the guards, who have taken and who care for these newly created prison camps, holding undocumented workers and others recently removed from their lives on American soil, find within their hearts, the ability to see all who are under their lock and key, as fellow human beings, and open their hearts to them with compassion and understanding.

I pray that the men and women being held in detention can find peace in their hearts and minds and be able to care for themselves properly and be able to sleep deeply despite the situation they find themselves in.  

I pray that those individuals, running our United States government, now and in the future, swiftly find truth and goodness within themselves and remember who they are: one with a good and loving Universe.  

I pray that we all, world wide, awaken to our empathy and feel what it is like to walk in the footprints of the other.  May we learn to share, to grow, to be kind and understanding and come to know the real meaning of compassion.  

I pray that all of the nations and governments of our world can find a way to smooth the waters of unrest pervading in so many areas.  May we all quickly move to a world beyond war, a world where the rule of law presides with justice, true justice, a world where compassionate healing environments prevail.

I pray that all of the animals are able to resume balance in their natural habitats and I pray that the plant kingdom becomes free once more to flourish in all of its diversity within our varied ecological systems.  I pray that the rocks and minerals be unmolested and allowed to be as they are.  

I pray that the climate and the great waters of the oceans are free to resume their natural patterns of global balance.  I pray that humankind becomes kind, and finds its way fully into embracing each individual with equality.  I pray that we come to be honoring of our differences, of our uniqueness, valuing this in one another, while respecting our own individual and collective self governance.  

I pray that all beings everywhere be free from suffering, be happy, be peaceful, and be free.

 

Josephine Laing
© 2025 

Cultivating Joy in Changing Times

Yes, it’s true.  Our world is turning itself upside down.  Whenever we humans find ourselves on the brink of a major shift in consciousness, the old paradigm grabs on tightly to try and hold on.  But the new is already underway, so the divisiveness becomes even more inflated.  And sometimes it is hard to know what to do about it.  But I say, ‘Hold your thoughts and actions on what you would like to see.’  Poke your head up out of the sand; there are already plenty of places where we can start to build the new.  Simply doing something, anything, can help us to feel a little bit better about all of this change.  Here are ten things to consider.

1.  For my part, I’m a gardener at heart.  So, I’ve started growing food plants to share.  Frank and I have put in eleven fruit and nut trees this past month.  The last of the bare-root plants, in the nurseries, came into their end-of-season sale, so we jumped on it.  
Several years ago, we adopted an untended parking lot near our home and cleaned up the trash, began to build the soil and now have it blooming from spring through fall with hardy florals and flourishing native oaks.  
During WWII, when the Germans tried to starve the island nation of Britain out, she created her “Victory Gardens,” in every backyard.  With the changes that we are about to experience, food prices may well jump sky high.  Certainly federally funded care programs providing nutrition for the young and the elderly are at risk.  Fruit trees yield the most food per acre and potatoes can be abundantly grown in banks or in bags.  Oak trees have provided native peoples world round with balanced nutrition in easily stored acorns.  As federal funds are further removed from Agriculture, producing our own food may well become increasingly important.  Gardens are bountiful.  They make it easy to give and to share.  And working in them brings us exercise, serenity and great peace of mind.  

2.  Sing and dance or play music.  Music connects us.  It is the song of life and we all move to that rhythm.  I’ve heard it said that if you are not singing and dancing, you are not truly alive.

3.  Align your purchasing power with your ethics.  To get you started, visit Goods Unite Us.  
https://www.goodsuniteus.com/
Or get the book for The Better World Shopping Guide  https://betterworldshopper.org/

4.  Try not to drive or fly, and avoid using plastics, which are made from oil, as much as possible.  

5.  Go to the website DuckDuckGo and switch your search engine to theirs so all of your on-line research and data is no longer being easily and shamelessly tracked and sold for advertisers and others to target.

6.  Write to your members of congress, state and federal.  You can get their postal addresses at  https://www.govtrack.us.  Click on congress for current federal representatives and senators.  Let them know that you expect them to honor their oaths to defend our constitution and to respond appropriately if they’d like to continue to gain your support.

7.  Spend time with friends.  Get together with neighbors.  Host Monday night potlucks.  We may need to depend on each other a lot more in the future.  Forming relationships now and creating community can ease this sort of transition, should it occur.  Plus it is fun.  And if you wish, governmental study groups or affinity groups and forums can be formed.  Visit sites like Choose Democracy at  https://choosedemocracy.us/what-can-i-do/    And sometimes it simply helps to band together and share our feelings and experiences.  
One of my guiding lights, Peace Pilgrim, had wise advice for those with concerns over what the future might hold.  She said, “Stay in the present moment.  Do what needs to be done.  Do all of the good things you can each day.  And the future will unfold.”  For me, her words are a steadying influence. They bring me both direction and peace of mind.  
 

8.  Figure out a way to get yourself laughing again.  Play with some children.  Kids laugh hundreds of times a day.  Adults not so much. Watch and rewatch shows of your favorite comedians so you can laugh.  (I like Kathleen Madigan’s “Don’t Bother Jesus.”  Raised a catholic, she was supposed to first go to her priest for absolution.  She could also appeal to her guardian angelk available 24/7, just for her.  If the situation was dire enough, her priest might recommend a Saint, specific to her need.  If that wasn’t adequate and if she, the repentant one, was really good, she could hang with Mary.  But no one was really ever supposed to bother Jesus.)  
 

9.  Eat clean and get plenty of exercise.  Let those endorphins flow and build your own health and strength for the work and times ahead.   
 

10.  Spend time out in nature, even if it is your own back yard or the city park.  Let nature speak to you and guide you.  Answers to our problems always come to us more easily when we are out in nature.  As John Muir famously wrote, “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”
 

Okay, one more, and probably most importantly,

11.  Imagine what you’d like to see.  Use your right brain.  Get creative.  (Remember that caffeine holds us in our left brain where we focus only on known solutions and tend to contract around fears about the future and worries about the past.  So consider herbal teas instead.)  Cultivate your right brain potential by laughing, day dreaming, and playing.  This is the realm of cooperation rather than competition.  It is expansive and collaborative and it cultivates and holds you in joy.  
(For more about accessing our right brains, check out Jill Bolte Taylor.   See either her TED talk  at  https://www.ted.com/speakers/jill_bolte_taylor   or read her book, Whole Brain Living at   https://www.drjilltaylor.com  )
(For more about the effects of caffeine on our brain's health and well being, read Michael Pollan’s This is Your Mind on Plants.  https://michaelpollan.com/books/this-is-your-mind-on-plants/) or read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.   https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Sleep/Matthew-Walker/9781501144325)

We are all in this together, so together let’s find ways to create anew.  
*Love is stronger than fear.  We shift the energy with our mutual support, while listening within to find our unique service.  
*Create something alive and empowering.  Follow your calling.  Share your experiences and knowledge.  Ask for and give help.
*As we gather together in small groups of support and connection, we build resilience and find our clarity.  Doing this is disempowering to realms where fear and division reside.  
*Learn from the children.  They know how to laugh.  We’ve all witnessed kids cracking jokes even right after they’ve been in trouble.  There is always something fun and funny to see and do.  Charge into that.  
*I recently heard that heroes are just ordinary people.  They happened to be at the right place at the right time.  And they just simply held to their values and ethics.  
*Trust in the larger vision.  This is after all the Age of Aquarius.  It holds the promise of harmony, egalitarianism and understanding.  It was the dawning of this age that brought us the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Liberation, Gay Rights, AIM the American Indian Movement, and The Environmental Movement.  These movements now have deep roots that have firmly taken hold and risen strongly.  They have provided insights and support into the eons of beauty and equality and justice that lie ahead for us all.  But first we have to clear out the old.  And that dying grasp is making one last powerful lunge back into the unsustainability of massive consumption and resource depletion and all that that brings with it.  

Years ago I heard a talk by the feminist, Sonja Johnson.  She was driving into the city to work one day when she passed through an open space of beautiful green forest and meadow.  She was so moved by its beauty that she stopped the car and got out to marvel at the scene.  When she did this, she was swept up in a moment of profound epiphany and compared the truth of nature to the falseness of the city that she had been heading towards.  She found herself realizing and deeply understanding that we are all doing everything all wrong.  And there is truth to this, we have become completely lost in the citification, or the ugly-fication, of the natural world.  And our massive over consumption has become more than critical.  So, yes, things do need to change.  And we are here, older, wiser, ready to create what is new.  And creativity is fun.  It brings us joy.  I’ll leave you with these words from Louis hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life.  

“All is well.
Everything is working itself out for the highest good.
Out of this experience only good will come.
And I am safe.”

Josephine Laing
© 2025

Mites! Yikes! 3, 2, 1 - Gone!

OMG!  I contracted mites!  It has happened to me before, two other times.  But this time I was blessed with the right answer as to what to do.

Most of the time when humans get mites, it is considered scabies and you contract them through human contact.  There are two types of scabies.  One has the little buggers concentrated in between the fingers and sometimes the toes.  The other is more long term and leaves patches of gray crusty skin wherever the colonies concentrate.  But when I’ve gotten mites before, neither of those two descriptions matched my condition, nor did I get them from human contact.  I think I got them from birds.

Birds get mites really badly, so much so that certain swallows and finches have been know to line their nests with cigarette butts.  (For more on animals self-medicating, please see National Wildlife Federation, Winter 2025, Master Medicators.) This allows the nicotine, which was one of the first pesticides ever used in the United States, to reduce the mite infestations in their nests.  

In my research, I’ve come across horror stories of other people’s experience with mites that were similar to my own.  These mites often were not diagnosed as scabies and seemed to behave more like the mites that birds get infested with.  One man I read about was going on seven years of misery.  One woman wrote about her eighteen month old baby girl screaming in agony for weeks after her husband brought them home from work.  And it was she who posted the specific answer I was looking for, Hot Borax Baths.  

The first time I encountered these little buggers was when I was in my late teens and was helping a friend take care of her parent’s farm.  They had hundreds of chickens and ducks and had a coop with a low roof.  I went in there to clean it out and my bun, on top of my head, brushed the chicken wire, overhead, several times.  When I emerged from the pen, five or ten minutes later, I realized that I could feel the creepiest sensation of hundreds of invisible little beings moving down my neck and shoulders and onto my chest and back with little tiny nibbley bites.  

With a sense of panic, I alerted my friend and ran to the shower, grabbing a bottle of bleach on the way.  I stripped off my clothes in the shower and stuffed them into a plastic trash bag, to be thrown away.  Then I very carefully poured straight bleach over my head, hair and whole body.  I never would recommend that anyone do this.  But, that is what I did and it worked.  It happened so soon after infestation that they never got a chance to burrow deeply enough into my skin, and they all got fried.  It took about a half an hour of running water to rinse all of the bleach and dead mites off.

The second time I got infested with mites was decades later, out on our front lawn, under the trees.  I noticed a few little teeny tiny itchy spots, first on my legs, maybe three or four of them and didn’t think anything of it and went to bed.  The next day, there were a few more.  Soon after patches of twenty or fifty little bumps arose and I knew I was in some sort of trouble.  This time those buggers had already set up house-keeping under my skin.  

Over the weeks that followed, I started with aloe, progressed to herbal skin creams and essential oils, and wound up with prescription creams, all of which seemed to help for a day or two and then wound up much worse than before.  In the end, my husband and I move out of our house and into a hotel so we could run ozonators in all of the rooms of our home and kill every living thing in there.  We rented extra days and ozonated the hotel room after we were out, as well.  Wouldn’t want to pass this on to anyone else.

Meanwhile, I took a blow dryer to my skin and oh-so-painfully burnt the little buggers and their babies in the top layers of my skin.  This is another technique that worked, but again, like the bleach, I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone.  Neither the hot blow dryer nor bleach are good for the skin and both can be seriously dangerous.

But this time after gathering some pine cones under a tree, by the next day, I knew what was cooking.  I started right away with the prescription cream and again some improvement progressed rapidly into becoming much worse.  I gave my chiropractor friend a call, saying I was considering a prednisone shot because I was in so much misery and expecting it to get only worse, when she reminded me that in our age group bone loss is a serious concern and cortisone poses a serious risk of osteoporosis and subsequent fractures and surgeries etc.  She said to try Borax Baths for getting rid of mites.   

In the midst of all of this, my digestion went off as well.  My appetite dropped and I felt nauseous.  So, I also called a Naturopath friend of mine.  She brought by a homeopathic remedy called psorinum.  I started on that and looked on-line for borax baths for mites.  

Previously my on-line research for what to do for mites was woefully unhelpful.  The natural remedies were fairly ineffectual and the medical ones weren’t ideal either.  But when I added Borax Baths into the search for mite cures, I blessedly found one site with bunches of success stories.  One week and 15 loads of laundry and four hot borax baths later, I was mite free.  We sprayed the house, car and all of our furniture down with three tablespoons of borax, diluted in three cups of hot water, with three tablespoons of three percent hydrogen peroxide.  We stripped our bedding and hot borax washed it with all of our clothes every day using one half cup of borax along with our usual laundry soap.  We also put the ozonator in the car for four hours.  And we put our shoes in the freezer overnight.  After taking our baths as hot as we could stand them for thirty minutes using three cups of borax, with two cups of three percent hydrogen peroxide and one cup of epsom salts, (3,2,1,) we air dried instead of towel drying to let a little of the solution remain on our skin.  And, blessedly, it all worked.

Should you, or any one you know, ever be so unlucky as to contract mites, may these Twenty Mule Team Borax rescue remedies help you as well as they have helped me.

Josephine Laing
© 2025

As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor.  Nor am I licensed in any healing modality.  However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing.  All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for.  After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries.  Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and in my videos could be dangerous for you to try.  So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol.  However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine.  So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas.

Oneness and Wonder

Wow!  What’s That ! ? !

We’ve all had such a moment.  Hopefully many of them.  Hopefully nearly every day.  Frank and I just had one yesterday.

We were standing in the kitchen and by some trick of the afternoon light, the wall under the desk, in the office, right below the closed shutters, looked like it was iridescent or had suddenly turned into an awakening computer screen, only much deeper and imperceptible in it’s nature.  We were both startled and felt compelled to walk toward it to get a better look.  It was so weird and surprising.  We wondered, ‘How could such a thing be?’

As we walked closer, we could see that it was just the wall, with the usual cords and whatnot draped down from behind the desk, and somehow the bright afternoon light, reflected off the back of the shutters or the back of my old metal computer monitor, or something, was illuminating the wall in a way that either hadn’t ever happened before, or that we simply hadn’t ever noticed before.  The moment passed.  We brushed it off, still a little surprised, as ‘just the wall.’  Then we left it and went about our business.

The interesting thing to me, in hindsight, was how it stopped us both.  It caught our eye, gave us pause, knocked us right out of our thoughts and activities and drove us into action, in this case, the need to investigate.  We both jumped right into the present moment with an excited curiosity, almost a touch of fear and an alluring love at the same time.  

These are the qualities of awe and wonder.  And when we get there, we step right into the right hemisphere of our brains.  Time is replaced by a sense of flow in the present moment.  There is a pause, we open our mouths and our eyes.  We listen.  The surprise that we feel at the same time demands a moment of recalibration as we consider the newness and the allure.  We loose a sense of self and feel called forth into action or response, the need to do something.  All at once we suddenly tap into a flood of possibilities, new ideas, creative potential and a feeling of healing or well being.  All of this, all at the same time.  

In wonder, we also find a locked in unity, a sense of togetherness or oneness.  When Frank and I saw that light, we both experienced the same body movements, a lifting of the head and chest, a dropping of the jaw, then a peering closer, focusing on the same point, listening, then moving forward, both of our minds and our sense of consciousness, open and as one.  We were moved to respond.

Fascinated and fascinating.  A widened perspective.

Babies and small children experience this sort of state on a regular basis.  It is part of everyday life.  Everything is new and calls out for our attention.  Everything invites us to wonder, to try to figure it out, to open to all the possibilities that could possibly be in play.  “How does that fly fly?”  “Wow!  Look at the shadows of the leaves playing on the sidewalk in the sun.”  This is where art dwells, imagination, creative flow, discovery, the unified whole.  And it’s all imbued with a sense of love.

As infants, with mommy or daddy near, we feel safe and protected. (Given the natural parent/child bonding experience.)  Our parents even join us in our surprise and delight, as the world of exploration opens before us, reliving for themselves the joy of discovery and the love that we all share.

When we bask in this state, we slip ease-fully into Divine Placement in the grander scheme of all things.  Our ego or sense of individuality falls away and we enter the flow of oneness.  All is right with the world, everything is possible and it’s all moving toward love.   In the pause of awe, we become free.  We open our hearts and minds and become one with everything.  Just like any other creative moment, be it singing or dancing, playing music or painting, splashing in the waves, digging in the sand, or stringing beads, we feel ourselves fitting nicely into the whole of the greater totality of being.  And, at the same time find ourselves gratefully opening to the unlimited potential and the wider perspective that dwells there, amongst all possibilities.  

So, let’s remember Oneness and Wonder.  Let's let ourselves be caught more often, even daily, if we can, by the jaw dropping beauty and mystery that surrounds us in every moment of every day.  Let’s not brush it off as something nameable or explainable.  Let’s be baffled for a moment before things start to come clear.  Let’s twirl in the miraculous wonder of it all and move together toward greater healing and love, where new ideas and creative solutions pop up in front of us, coming seemingly right out of nowhere.

 

Josephine Laing
© 2024

Envision What You'd Like to See

 

Fear is such a strong emotion.  It can have a very high volume.  And it can almost act like a vortex, drawing to us what we don’t want to have happen.  One of my spiritual teachers once said to me that it is important not to imagine destruction.  

Our minds are very creative and they can also direct the focus of our lives.  ‘Is the glass half empty, or is the glass half full?’  Where we hold our thoughts creates our perspective of reality.  If we think the world is terrible and going to hell, then it is.  If we think the world is beautiful and people are pretty nice, then they are.

Sure, there are stinker moments, and stinker people too, but we don't have to dwell there.  We can shift our focus and choose to see what is good and right and true, and then place our minds in a new direction and take that new path.

I feel that there is a big difference between judgement and discernment.  Judgement holds us, and others, in a particular pattern.  Discernment lets us decide what works for us and it shows us where we’d like to go.  Discernment also helps us to let go.  We no longer have to strive against the other.  We can simply let them be and direct our energies, instead, onto our own path.  And the others will either change on their own and join us, or simply fall away.

It’s a lot less stressful, really, when we follow our inspirations and go where we feel called.  So, let’s all envision what we’d like to see and then head in that direction.  My bet is that we’ll all end up with what we’d really love.  Our joy, after all, holds an equally loud volume, and it calls out to those around us to join us in the fun.  

 

Orchid Photo by Aleta Arthur

A Century of Friends

Spending time with people of different age groups can be so insightful and enlightening.  When they are older than us, they can reach out a helping hand to guide us into our future decades.  They help us with not only their hard earned wisdoms, but also with examples of their successes and their challenges.  When they are younger than we are, they can remind us of our more youthful goals and ideals and even help us to remember how to have fun and to play.

Frank and I had a delightful 4th of July.  We hosted a simple afternoon garden party, a potluck, with just a few neighbors, friends and family.  In hindsight I realized, that in our guests, we had quite a nice representation of nearly a one hundred year span of time.  Let me introduce them to you now.

Over the years, we’ve grown quite close to our next door neighbor, Dorothy.  She grew up in the South and has many a tale to tell about situations she has encountered in her lifetime, like being one of only a very few women and the only black woman in her classes at teachers college.  Not too long ago, her doctor talked her into getting the shingles shot, as a preventative measure.  The next morning she woke up blind and in terrible pain with shingles in her eyes.  After several years, a corneal transplant has returned her vision, in part, to one eye.  She, Frank  and I meet out on the front lawn, several times a week to enjoy our eye exercises together.  We take a zoom class taught by “Your eye wellness guy,” Richard Miller, to naturally improve our vision and prevent visual decline. 

We have a little rental in the back and our tenant, Hugh, has become a lovely friend.  He made Lasagna, in a toaster oven, with only one cooktop to brown the meats, heat the sauce and boil the noodles.  It was a mastery of planning and timing to have the dish ready right on the spot at twelve o’clock.  

A few decades ago, Frank and I experienced eighteen deaths in twenty-four months.  It was a crash course in grief and at times we were totally overwhelmed.  I turned to Cal Poly, our local university for help.  They have a student job service to help connect community members who need a little help with students who are looking for a little work.  So, into our lives waltzed Loretta Joy Hartwell.  Just her name alone gives a pretty good picture of who she is.  She actually skipped out to her car after we completed our initial interview.  And that was the start of a life long friendship.  I consider her to be my adopted daughter.  She has had the good fortune to meet and marry her own true love, Ross.  And they now have two beautiful daughters, Bea and Gigi.  I was deeply blessed with the honor of being present for both of their births.  

Our nephew, Brett, came to school here at Cal Poly, just about twenty years ago.  And fortunately for us, and just like us, he decided to stay.  Now, his life has been graced with Lauren.  And she has graced all of ours with her warm connection and deep understanding.  Both of them have jumped right into our community spreading their love and sharing guidance with the wisdoms of their young years.

Darling, I call “Darling,” because that is actually her last name, and a perfect fit.  She and I met fresh out of college having both been accepted for the same job.  Standing out front at the Agricultural Commissioner’s Office, we learned later, that there were two positions being filled for Inspector Biologists.  At the end of the day, I suggested that we meet for a beer.  But, since neither of us were that crazy about beer, we went to her house instead and ate mushrooms, that she had grown herself, sautéed in butter.  Then I laid on her hardwood floor, under her grand piano, while she played Chopin, the Nocturne in E Flat Major.

Einar floated gently into our lives at a time when I thought I might not survive my thirties.  A tall Swede, and a technical master, he was overseeing the recordings of my soon-to-become spiritual mentor’s channeling sessions.  Jana Massey, who has since passed on, used to come through our town every few months and brought us “messages from spirit.”  Einar, Frank and I grew to love and cherish each other from that beginning and now, we chat or see each other almost everyday.  He is our main go-to-man for all things technical and the number one person I turn to for wise counsel during spiritual emergencies.  

Dorothy and Einar chatted for quite a while on the fourth.  Frank made fish tacos, the best that Ross had ever tasted.  And I served my famous vinegar drink: ice cold sparkling water with a dash of Bragg’s raw apple cider vinegar, a splash of vanilla, a few drops of orange extract and one drop of stevia.  Yum!  

The two girls and I dined on the little benches around the bird bath and then up on the deck for desert, homemade, neighborhood grown, fresh baked apricot pie.  Einar provided the half gallon of vanilla Häagen-Dazs.  “Soul food,” he calls it.  We had salads, fresh fruit and sauces and we even went up in the attic, to look at the puzzles and try on some Halloween costumes and plan our next tea party, with Lauren, up there.  

Then it was on to fireworks.  We started with my favorite, Dancing Ground Flowers.  The girls, Hugh and I had to wait for any passing cars and then huddled tightly together in the middle of the street until lit match successfully touched fuse.  And then we’d drop it, get away! and watch the show.  Ross and Brett both missed this as the lure of our twin reclining easy chairs called out to them to rest and digest.  They delighted in the invitation to a tiny little nap, followed by just another tiny little snack from the potluck table before joining the rest of us again for games on the lawn.

Thanks to Frank, the lawn was in perfect condition for a casual version of Boccee Ball.  After watching a round or two, even Dorothy joined in.  Having always been very athletic before her blindness, she set the standard and demonstrated a technique for double handed holds that we all started to use in the next game we played.  

Brett and Lauren not only supplied the fireworks, but they also brought a new to us but ancient game called Kubb.  I guess the Vikings used to play it.  Kubb is a game of skill and strategy, that has been likened to chess.  And like so many fun times, it involves throwing little sticks at bigger sticks and is perfect for groups that like to play on lawns.

We finished off the day writing our names with sparklers and burning “snakes,” those funny growing ash tendrils that get longer and longer after being lit.  And because of that ‘potluck principle of abundance,’ everyone took home leftovers: salad, tacos and pieces of pie for later.

It occurred to me this morning, while thinking back on the day, that this lovely little garden party with it’s many pretty tables and small bouquets of flowers was graced with someone from almost every decade of life.  Little Gigi, age eight, was under ten.  Bea, just ten, covered ten to twenty.  Hugh at twenty-five, filled the twenty to thirty spot.  Loretta and Lauren, thirty to forty.  Ross and Brett, forty to fifty.  Here we skip a decade, fifty to sixty.  But Frank and I, rising not quite yet to seventy, filled the sixty to seventy year span.  Dorothy covered seventy to eighty.  And Einar, at ninety-two, filled the ninety to one hundred decade.  As Frank said, “It was a Century of Friends.”  

Just before the final guests departed, Hugh, who had already returned to his studio, began to play the flute.  He is quite accomplished.  And like Darling, he has a Powell.   They have a gold lining which brings a warm and round tone.  We all quietly stepped out on the patio to listen as the sweet and lovely notes floated all around us, curling overhead on the air.  

Thanks for joining in with us.  How rich to live a life with so many friends of such a broad range of ages.  What a beautiful life it is and what simple pleasures we’ve all now shared together.

 

Josephine Laing
© 2024

Healing My Feet

 

 

Over the years, I’ve had various problems with my feet.  Some of the time, some have guessed plantar fasciitis.  Some of the time, some have guessed neuropathy.  Other times it has just felt like I’ve pulled a muscle in my heel.  In either case the end result has mostly been the same, it hurts.  And that has affected my desire to not stand very long and to not do a lot of walking.  

With each of these dilemmas, I’ve found a variety of ways to alleviate the pain.  Early on, just stopping eating bread stopped the discomfort I had felt as my feet first touched the floor in the morning.  What a relief that was.  And after about a year of no bread or wheat flour products, I was able to reintroduce these into my diet sparingly, like once or twice a week, or less, without any noticeable foot repercussions.

Another time I spent about fifteen minutes a day, gently coaxing the internal padding cells from the bottoms of my heels back into their proper place.  Apparently they had moved up to the sides of my foot and no longer offered cushioning to the balls of my heels.  Using my finger tips and my imagination to pull them back into place, incrementally and one at a time, I reconstructed that nice soft cushion under my heels.  I did this every day at the park, seated on the lawn, while my husband threw the ball for our dog.  It was fun to watch them play and it felt great to sit right down on the grass and tend to my self care.  Within a month or two the problem was resolved and my heel pads were restored.

Once I went to a podiatrist who said that I could have a surgery down below the base of my big toe that would straighten out that toe and potentially stop it from hurting and being crooked.  But, blessedly, I found an honest-to-God cobbler who made me beautifully hand crafted home-made leather shoes.  With these my big toes had room to point straight ahead, as nature had originally intended, rather than being forced to bend to the rounded or pointy tip that almost all women’s shoes have.  This is the style our feet have commonly been subjected to since childhood.  In about the same amount of time it would have taken to have and heal from the surgery, my big toes naturally just spread out in those soft roomy shoes and found their way to point straight ahead, all on their own.  End of problem.  And no more pointy shoes for me, thank you very much.

There have been a few times where I stood in an awkward position, perhaps on a slope, with my foot at an odd angle, and felt a little muscle deep in my heel or elsewhere in my foot give way, like a sprain or a strain.  It took me a while to realize that swimming, once or twice a week, would always strengthen the muscles in my feet and clear out the inflammation and resolve that discomfort nicely and often very quickly.

I find physical therapy (P.T.) to be one of the marvels of modern life.  I’m not too crazy about the more recent insurance modeled gymnasium version of the P.T. industry.  With the thumpa-ta, thumpa-ta ‘music’ blaring in the background and the raised voices and abrupt treatment that that environ condones, it has lost a lot of its sense of personal caring.  But still, keeping the body strong and mobile is one of the best ways that I know of to both prevent and quickly heal from any number of injuries, conditions or aches and pains.

Recently I’ve had the good fortune of being introduced to the bean box by my sweet and wonderful new niece, who is a Doctor of P.T.  The bean box is for healing feet.  You know those ‘Banker’s Boxes; they are about a foot wide, fifteen inches long and ten inches tall with holes for handles and a good snug fitting lid.  Well, you get one of those and fill it with ten pounds of dried beans.  I filled mine with pinto beans, cannellini beans and kidney beans.  Bigger beans are better because they are less likely to get stuck between your toes.  And ten pounds is just right, not too heavy to lift and plenty of beans to plunge your feet into.  And that alone feels soooo great!  

So, in the feet go and then leaving your heels still, you sweep together a mini mountain of beans with the front half of your feet.  Do this for a few minutes and then tear those mountains down by sweeping the beans apart.  Then do a similar thing with the toes remaining still and the heels doing the building and then tearing down those mini mountains.  You can also orient the box lengthwise and let your feet do cat paws, reaching for and pushing away the beans.  And the beans feel great flowing over and under your feet.  Of course, you always want to check to be sure there are no beans lingering between your toes afterward, and the box top makes the whole apparatus nice for storage.  I even decorated my bean box.  It’s a really fun set of exercises to do and just like swimming, (except that it only takes about five or ten minutes a day,) it keeps my feet nice and strong and fit, ready to do whatever I want to do.

And, as well, I still enjoy giving my feet a nice massage every night in bed just before I fall asleep, thanking them for all of the good work they’ve done that day.  I do my legs too.  I’s nice to thank our bodies and a little TLC (tender loving care) is always appreciated and feels so good.  Maybe your feet and arms and legs would like for you to do the same.  Give it a try.  You might just like it.  I sure do.



Josephine Laing
© 2024

As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor. Nor am I licensed in any healing modality. However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing. All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for. After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries. Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and in my videos could be dangerous for you to try. So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol. However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine. So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas.

Good Fortune

     

 

My husband Frank makes beautiful glass, both art and architectural works.  Not too long ago, he made this door with black glass undulating beneath the Chinese characters for happiness, blessings, and good fortune.  I came across this photo of it recently and it reminded me of all of the good fortunes that I have received, not only in my life, but also in Chinese restaurants over the years as I have enjoyed their delicious fare.

Being as spring is upon us and as it brings its promise of renewal and the good fortune and bounty of summer ahead, I thought I’d take this opportunity to share with you some of the good fortunes that I have collected and saved from the many fortune cookies that have blessed my dining table and my life.  I share them with you now, like affirmations to brighten your day as they have continued to brighten mine.  

Let yourself think of these like a waterfall of blessings showering over, around and through you.  And, as a little experiment, let yourself believe each one.  

You are always welcome in any gathering.
You have an ability to sense and know higher truth.
You should be able to make money and hold on to it.
You enjoy giving gifts of yourself to others.  You will be rewarded.
You are going to have a very comfortable old age.
Consider gain and loss, but never be greedy and everything will be all right.
Things are not always what they seem.
You have a captivating style all your own.
Elegant surroundings will soon be yours.
You will inherit a large sum of money.
Your energy is at its peak.  Channel it into fun activities.
You will be showered with good luck.
You will spend many years in material wealth.
Your love life will be happy and harmonious.
Your air of confidence naturally draws others to you.
The star of happiness is shining on you.

May we all be renewed with the love and joy for life that spring so often brings.

Josephine Laing
© 2024

Cast Adrift

 

Cast Adrift.  That's how we feel sometimes.  It's as if we don't know where we are going, or even why.  But often the soup just has to cook.  Time spent not knowing, just simmering has proven, in the past, for me, to be extremely beneficial.

The clouds of not knowing can settle down around us with a damp chill, closing in about our bodies and minds, leaving us feeling directionless, purposeless.  Sometimes, it's illness, sometimes it's financial devastation.  It can be social or environmental injustice, or simply a lack of connection with others and their support.  But if we hang in there, give it a little time, and our consideration, let the flavors, ideas and feelings meld together, our way forward gradually comes clear. 

I like to use affirmations and gratitude practices during those darker days to help me keep hope and trust alive.  All of the spiritual practices that we have learned can give us some direction.  Prayer, mantras, along with inspirational stories, poetry, music and art, these are the tools I turn to, to help me find the light ahead.

I remember years ago, while I was healing from a major injury, wondering day-after-day, why this devastating thing had happened to me.  What was to become of my life after so many changes had occurred, flipping everything I trusted and knew on its head?  I had gotten a degree in horticulture, had been running my own landscape business, had employees, had just bought a home and was planning to remodel and then everything stopped. I had to let the business go.  My financial situation shifted drastically.  I became sincerely dependent with no guarantee that I'd ever recover.

In that dim light of life, with the heat turned way down low, I simmered and grabbed what ingredients I could and tossed them into the stew pot of my days.  Meditation, dream-work, time spent musing quietly, alone with my thoughts, taking what small steps I could to help restore my peace of mind and my physicality.  It can be a slow process marinating in transformation.  The egg in the nest takes time to change and open.  The seed doesn't sprout overnight.  Dismal news can come.  We just have to let it go and keep focusing on the next one or two possible steps that we can see for the way ahead.

Peace Pilgrim used to say, "Stay in the present moment.  Do what needs to be done.  Do all of the good you can each day.  And the future will unfold."  This is a lovely prescription for finding one's way.  It has helped me greatly over the years.  It's the little steps that matter.  One at a time.  There is no rush.  It's a long life, and from my perspective, there are plenty of them.  So, we don't need to hurry.  We can take our time and go slow.

So, there I was, all those years ago, stuck in bed, doing next to nothing except visiting my chiropractor once a week, and slowly, incrementally, finding my balance again.  And that's when my empathy, my clairvoyance, my ability to see and know what was going on in the health and well being of others, started to emerge.  It certainly wasn't anything I had expected to have happen.  I had guided the ship of my life in a totally different direction.  But there it was, arising quietly and consistently from within me.  It took a process of many years to refine and smooth off the rough edges of my psychic skills.  But, as sure as the lady bug transforms from the larvae, a new me emerged.  When we trust ourselves and let our lives flow, riding the hills and valleys as gracefully as we can, our path eventually comes clear.

I remember hearing the story of a young man in Great Britain who had gotten off on 'a wrong foot,' and began his early adulthood stealing things.  He wound up in jail, got out, took on a small job that at first he didn't know how to do, but learned.  Then he found himself helping others, newly out of prison, in finding work and learning how to do those small jobs as well.  In time he had founded a nationwide service providing support for others who had walked a similar path and his purpose in life was revealed.  

We never know where these roads will take us, but if we hang in there, and do what we can to stay present and work daily to hold our heads above water, and help others whenever we can, the way before us will unfold.  We find that we were never really cast adrift, we just needed an unexpected course correction, to set us on the good and right road that was always before us.  From there we can look back, at the end of our lives, and see that the way was really always clear.  We just needed to simmer a little, let all of the ingredients meld and blend and create the true sustenance of our beings.

So, hang in there.  Trust yourself and the Universe.  Stay in the moment.  Stay the course and expect the best.  A deeper part of you already knows the way.  We just need to let it all gradually and gratefully unfold before us.

I will leave you with a little haiku-like poem that I wrote years ago.  It came to me after I awoke from a dream where I saw three of my footsteps in front of me, in a forest, in the deep snow.  Just three footprints.  On a clear bright sunny winter's day.

My feet are always falling - steadfastly - on my path before me.

© Josephine Laing 2024

 

Taking the Time to Heal

I recently pinched a nerve in my neck.  Nowadays they call it by a more technical term, Cervical Stenosis.  But this very human problem has been around for ages, probably since we evolutionarily started standing upright.  And quite a few people wind up in trouble with this sort of condition, especially in the later decades of life.  

For my own part, I had gotten a little too frisky flexing my neck one day and within two weeks, it went from bad to worse and then into agony.  I had to stop all of my work, lost all strength in my arm and then my fingers began to go all tingly and numb.  The pain was intense and traveled from my hand up to my shoulder.  

I did all of my usual home remedies: anti-inflammatory supplements and diet style, hot baths, homeopathics, natural herbal analgesics, massage, hot and cold therapies and I also visited a few alternative practitioners.  But no matter what I did, it just kept getting worse and nothing seemed to really help.  

The only thing that brought me any relief at all was sitting very still, with my arm propped up in just the right way and then after a time, the pain started to abate and it would begin to get a little more comfortable.  So that's what I did.  I simply sat and read some nice uplifting books.

The medical profession had quite a few options for me.  They had drugs, and I tried a few, but they just made me feel pretty awful on top of being in pain.  A friend of mine had gotten a cortisone shot in her neck, some years before, with her pinched nerve.  She said it took about four months after that to fully resolve itself.  I considered that, but the down side was that it would most likely seriously mess with my blood sugars.  Another option was to do what they did to my brother and carve away some bone and put a mini railroad track in my neck, in order to separate and support my vertebra.  I figured that all of those were things that I could certainly consider down the line if I needed them.  But I thought I'd first try time.

It did take a couple of months for things to start to settle down.  But then they did.  And I remembered that that was what my mom used to say about healing from significant injuries, back on the farm, when she was a girl.  Doctors were few back then and medical care was rudimentary.  Mostly the farmers, themselves, were the vets, and the housewives were the healers.  When someone got really banged up, they put them in bed and kept them there.

 In our modern culture we try to speed the healing, and make the repairs as quick as possible, so we can get back in the game.  But, I'm thinking, after this recent episode, that there is some real wisdom in simply taking the time to heal.  

Now, it is true that all of that lounging around let me get drastically out of shape, even very muscularly weak.  And, putting a stop to my work hit our pocket book quite a little bit as well.  But our spending dropped too.  There wasn't much need to go out and get anything, other than groceries.  And with so much free time, I wound up having lots of laughs and plenty of chats with my friends and with my sweet husband, Frank.  So, other than the pain in my arm, I was quite happy and relatively healthy.  

After about eight weeks, the pain had subsided enough that I could start doing a few things around the house, but I could tell I was really out of shape and my balance wasn't great, either.  I figured I needed to have some basic physical therapy.  Fortunately my new niece, my nephew's betrothed, is a physical therapist and I was so relieved to be able to work with her.  

We met in either of our homes, instead of going to a P.T. clinic, where the therapists always seem to be rushed these days, and often have to yell over the booming exercise music.  That sort of an environment didn't seem as healing to me and I really appreciated the quiet and personal attention of one-on-one.  It has been another eight weeks now, of daily exercises, starting very gently at first and checking in once a week for a few more exercises and some nice deep tissue massage and I'm so very glad to say that I'm starting to feel good as new once more.

Sometimes all it takes is a little time and the willingness to let the world go on by for awhile until we heal and are ready once more to get back in the swing of things.  And blessedly, in this case, for me, that was true.  But, whether it is a pinched nerve, a different injury or an illness, listening to your own inclinations and guidance from within and then taking the time to do what needs to be done to heal is always a good idea.

My wish is for us all to have the good grace to be able to take the time to go slow, do less and accomplish more.  Blessings to you as we enter these longer nights and the darker half of the year. 

 

 

As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor. Nor am I licensed in any healing modality. However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing. All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for. After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries. Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and in my videos could be dangerous for you to try. So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol. However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine. So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas.