Why Sacred Waters School of Integrative Energy Medicine

For the last two years I have been hearing I should be teaching... After applying to a local massage school, I was told that NYS now requires all massage teachers to hold a BS or Masters Degree. So I was graciously turned away... When I shared this with a dear friend, who also happens to be someone I think of as a mentor, she said... Well start your own damn school. And so, the adventure of creating a school for Integrative Energy Medicine began. There is a lot to do when starting a school. I got an LLC, am updated my website, updating my logo, writing curriculum, marketing, sharing, and BREATHING! While creating the new school brochure I had to write a little "blurb" about myself (as the "big shot founder" lol)and about about why attend this school... And this is what came forth: "I began my adventure in the healing world due to my own health issues and a desire to be more self aware of health options for myself and my family. As is the case for many who feel a calling to heal, I began to feel, hear and see things in my body and in the Natural world around me that made me question the current paradigm, the current accepted practices in western medicine. To answer my own questions I educated myself, worked towards many certifications and practiced paying attention to when I felt good and when I didn’t. After gathering lots of personal experiences in my own body, and tracking clients feedback I decided that it was time to shift that paradigm that so many had become “comfortable” with! At Sacred Waters you will learn tools to recognize the correlation between body, thoughts and feelings, the seasons and nature and your energy level, how your relationship to self and others plays a part in your health, how it feels when energy needs to be nurtured because it is depleted, and how to move it to create balance, you will learn practices that you can use for self and others to live a life with less “dis-ease” and more joy. You will learn the framework to be able to understand and share in a more specific way what the energy body is and how to decipher its messages. You will learn to trust your own intuition! Our Energy Body is brilliant. It holds all the answers we need to live a happy, healthy, peaceful, abundant life. Energy medicine has been used for thousands of years by our ancestors. We CAN manifest the life we truly desire. It IS possible to have a fluent “conversation” with our bodies, our intuition, and the Natural world that surrounds and supports us all. And We CAN help others to do the same. Now, don't YOU want to enroll?? Looking forward to sharing as this dream unfolds and would love it if you share this exciting new adventure that I am embarking on with anyone you know who has or wants to experience themselves as Energy!! xo, Janet

How did we get so far away?

Hot water with a slice of lemon. I feel this tonic sloshing in my belly as I gulp the sweet tart medicine of Grandmas secret tonic. She had a "fix" for all ailments, whether woes of the body or woes of the spirit, Grandma could tell you a remedy. Oatmeal, cooked for a long time with a spoonful of honey, a dash of wheatgerm, and a full handful of dried cranberries dates or chopped prunes. She said this would "keep you regular". No need for anything over the counter or prescribed by the "white coats" for her family. Warmed blackberry brandy for the occasional sore throat or sore mind from too much thinking. Elderberry syrup was another favorite. Gathering much to make little, no need for gluttony here. And ONLY LOCAL honey! Grandmas would sing to the bees, she told the bee keeper neighbors that it made her feel as if she was helping to keep their bees healthy and happy! I still feel like singing when I take a spoonful of honey warmed with fresh lemon juice and ginger for an achy chest or grizzly scratchy throat. And I wonder to this day, how did "WE" lose the wisdom of our ancestors?? Ponder that. xo

August: Osage County, and other thoughts about vibrations

Tonight I saw the movie August: Osage County. It was truly a heavy HEAVY movie. But the good thing about movies like that are that they cause the viewer to ponder, well ok, they cause THIS viewer to ponder. And while pondering, I ponder about not only this movie, but about my own patterns. Family patterns. And when we think we are doing better for our kids than our parents did for us, seeing that we all just did our best. Our best, which sometimes can be seen by others as not good enough... And then I ponder about how the Universe gives us snippets and thoughts and songs and books and movies and stories that help us see our own stuff. The stuff that we just don't see until we see it... So after the movie, my love and I were talking about patterns. Patterns of our selves, generational patterns going back through our families, patterns of our parenting, patterns of our relationships (current and past) and patterns of the future. We talked about cellular patterns, and how we "pass things down" from generation to generation. How we tell ourselves that we are different from those before us, and how we then go on to choose similar situations to learn from, just with different people... It is such a HUGE and fascinating topic. And one that if you are going to explore it is best to be gentle in the exploration with ourselves and others. To look at things from a lovingly detached perspective, like a witness, rather than the star of the show... With that being said, here is a story that came to me just a day ago. A story that started this whole thought thread... Grandma Marey: Marey with an E. My Grandma, who I saw not enough, but who left a lasting impression. I often wondered how she did it. Always smiling. She always had really good "spreads" of homegrown foods and soups when we visited. While Mom and Grandma talked we would run around and play, exploring the underground magic of the old house's front porch where she lived. The porch was falling apart, but it wrapped around the entire house and there were cool things, tools that we had never seen, and old furniture to be fixed, all stored underneath it. My younger brother James and I would play mostly, while my older sister read or played the piano, and for some reason I don't have any memory of my older brother Jeff playing with us at all. But what we would do all together was color. Grandma Marey with an E had a whole cabinet of crayons and coloring books, different kinds of papers, glue, sparkles, and different pieces of fabric for cool art projects. Grandma Marey with an E, who was taken from her Mother by the Sisters. Grandma Marey with an E, who was taught how to be a proper girl, who learned about Sunday school and pergatory. Grandma Marey with an E... E for everygreen, extraodinary, enriched, elated, eradicate, elusive, elective and exist. That E. As a kid I would make up stories about her life. She never talked about the past. Mom said it was because she didn't remember. She had had an "accident". And that was always the end of it. We always loved the crayons and paper best. Grandma Marey with an E encouraged us to draw or write about something we remembered from the time in between our visits. She would display our "creations" all over her house. Taped to the walls, magneted to the frig or metal file cabinet, or just laying out on her coffee table. I think after we all left she would go through them an piece together our lives, our joys, our traumas, or triumphs and it made her very happy. Grandma Marey with an E grew up in an orphanage. Not because she was orphaned, but because of her Mother's lineage. Grandma Marey's father had died early and her mother was deemed "not capable" to raise Christian children, and so the Sisters came, and her mother stayed, and there wasn't much discussion about how long, or why or when she would return. But Grandma Marey with an E went. She obeyed. She knew the "sin" of her mother. Grandmother Marey, not Mary like the Mother who was pure and holy, began forgetting who she was. She erased (an E word) herself. She did not exist, but to serve others. And she taught my mother how not to exist, and my mother taught me. And she didn't exist unless it was through others. She loved us so. She enticed us into telling her our dreams. Dreams, she said, was where we all could exist. Dreams were real. I will come to you in your dreams, hold onto your dreams, Be who you want to be in your dreams. And at the end of the day we would all pile into the station wagon and go home. And we would dream outloud, very noisy, lots of singing, lots of stories, lots of teasing... And the car ride seemed to make my Mom really quiet. Which I never really understood. But at Grandma Marey with an E's funeral I understood. We were part Indian. We were sinners. We did not exist. But I changed that pattern. I named my baby girl (who was born shorly after my Grandmothers death) Sara MAREY (with an E), and she exists, she excels, she enlivens, she excites, she has an E! And, to bring this whole story back around, my Grandmothers patterns were passed down to my me. And I chose many of the same lessons, and I also changed many of the lessons learned. And I am sure I taught my children things that I am not even aware of because we share energy. And energy is stored in cells. And we share cells. And we share cellular memory of a lineage that is filled with ceremony, and the earth, and beleifs that are far different than westerners, and a lineage that is filled with pain. Ancestral pain. May it rest in peace and transform with this generation. Namaste