Everyday Bliss

In case you missed all the clues I’ve been dropping on Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn and other places, I am going to be spending my birthday month of APRIL IN PARIS, baby! Paris! (pictoral tour of the ‘hood is down below) Yep, I’m leaving the hubby and kitties at home and going on an all-inclusive American Woman’s Dream Vacation of a Lifetime to celebrate that once in a lifetime marker for a woman:

TURNING 50 YEARS OLD
(made it…whew!)

And…stay tuned because I’m going to make it possible for YOU TO COME WITH ME. Yep, you read it right,

YOU CAN COME TO PARIS WITH ME!

While not everyone can jump a jet and come on over, you CAN  check it out live and won’t have to leave the comfort of your armchair. Promise. I wouldn’t go without taking everyone interested in evolution, transformation, a LIVE ETHOS workshop, new friends, gourmet food, sexy accents and having a good time!

Hold onto your hats: there’s more juice in this baby than a whole orchard full of fresh peaches!

You probably already know that 25 years ago I was hit by a drunk driver and paralyzed, gaining over 150lbs. And how it took me nine years to walk, even though the doctors said I would never walk again.

I’ll be teaching some super-secrets of how I taught myself how to do “the impossible” and reverse paralysis, PLUS how I’ve lost 70+ pounds in the last year and a bit. Add to that my own “energy facelift” exercises and how YOU too can learn to:

“ACHIEVE THE IMPOSSIBLE”

• Everybody’s been asking me why my pants are falling off! You’ll have a ringside seat as I CONTINUE TO LOSE WEIGHT in Paris, scarfing down all that lovely  gluten-free super-fresh French market food. I’ll teach you how to make some of my favorite yummy dishes too, so you get “Gourmet Paris” and “GlutenFree” too.
• Yes, I’m down four sizes and counting. You’ll learn some of my extra cool weightloss secrets, too
• Plus you’ll visit Parisian restaurants, get to meet neighbors and friends and get the scoop on famous landmarks and not-famous-but-cool Parisian places, people and things.
• You’ll even get to help PLAN MY DAY by telling me where YOU want to go in Paris. I’ll  take you with me – it’ll be the next best thing to being there!
• And of course, you’ll also learn how to Achieve The Impossible in your own life through THIRTY WHOLE DAYS OF LIFE-SHIFTING LESSONS, learning how to get yourself to Possible and Do-able. That’s the Whole Point. 
• You also really need to be here if you’ve always wanted to have a super jumbo deluxe vacation for yourself and you never got to take one.
• Oh yes, there will be massage and spa stuff. And coffee. And sidewalk cafe action. And girlfriends. And a live ETHOS Workshop. And lots and LOTS of energy.

I’ll be getting back to you a little later on the specifics, but if you’re interested in becoming an Early Adopter (we reward Early Adopters very heavily around here)  you can join the  “Achieve The Impossible” Experience in Paris  by filling in this handy form. I’ll be holding some very special calls and giving you previews of what’s going to happen and also what isn’t. Only those on this list will get notification of these juicy free calls, so do sign up now – I’ll even send you a free gift!

Since Thanksgiving of last year, I’ve been contemplating something very big. Quite out of the ordinary and not what you might expect but…I seem to specialize in doing things not the way everyone expects and with the most amazing outcomes no one could have predicted.

In fact, you could say doing the unexpected is something of a brand identity.

I’m going on an adventure, that expresses every single one of the Bliss Keys.

For my fiftieth birthday…

And quite by myself…

Somewhere far away where English is not spoken so often…

And adventures, history, romance abound.

I couldn’t talk about it until now because I didn’t know if it would come together.

But this is an adventure I want to take you on. An adventure we can have together, no matter where you are.

Initially I wanted to take my five best girlfriends and ship all of us out on a cruise of the Greek islands for my 50th. But one by one those friends have dropped by the wayside in myriad of no-fault ways that were nothing more than just growing apart with different agendas.

Now I have new girlfriends who are even cooler and more hip to what I’m into, but I really get that this timeperiod is about me and me alone. Stepping into Unlimited Self it is all so clear, so easy…

to set aside an epochal moment to savor first and alone…
to suck the marrow out of
and grow new wings…
to fly boldly into the unknown,
shrieking with wild, ecstatic laughter
to harvest the burgundy-currant juice of deep wisdom
to savor the clarity, aliveness and precious living in each and every day.

Stay tuned, there will be more. Now that the decision is made, watch what unfolds…

It’s thrilling to be on the precipice of something new and amazing.

What are you doing that is bold, fearless, outrageous and entirely in the service of yourself, for once?

What are you doing to serve your own highest needs today?

Please comment and let us all know, and I’ll be back with more later…

Maryam’s Holiday Hooray, Shiny Presents
Included, Loads ‘o Wisdom Winter News

CONTENTS
* Holiday Gratitude & New Direction
* Solstice (OMG!) Call Replay, Gifts & Rocky Roads
* French Ingenuity, Transparency Redux & My Motley Past
* Busy Women: Freebies For The Tired & Time-Starved Family
* Transformation Tool: EVOLUTIONARY ENVIRONMENTS
* Availability Pledge, Jaw Surgery & Are We Connected?
* Old Family Recipes: Organic, Gluten-Free Yuletide Wassail Bowl

Welcome To The Party…

This is my WHACKIN’ HUGE LOAD OF PRIMO CONTENT, tons’a prezzies, and catch-up letter for the year.

There’s some interesting stuff in here – teeth video, mom’s meal planners, transformers, my motley past, a commentary on gurus and a whole basket of yuletide g’ifts & goodness. Check the index above for juice-factor!

A very Merry Christmas and Solstice this week to you. I wanted to give you yuletide greetings while also telling you how very much I appreciate you.

I am deeply grateful for everyone who is tuned into the Now, and interested in raising consciousness on the planet like I know you are. At least, if you’re hip to joining this community, I hope you’re into waking up the planet and spreading a wave of consciousness throughout the world. We’re going to be doing a lot of that in 2010 together, so get ready – fun times ahead!

Oh by the way, I should mention that in this last year I’ve taken off to rest, reflect, refresh and retool, my business has changed a good deal. I’m not ready to say much more until after New Year’s, but Consciousness-bringing is definitely the direction. More later on that

*** FREE Replay of The Solstice World Transformation Ritual & Rocky Roads Ahead ***

We had an amazing time Monday during the exact time of Winter Solstice, doing a ritual of clearing out the old, bringing in the desired and learning how each of our lives is sacred and how we are all priest/esses in our lives. I’m not using that as a religious term, but a spiritual one, for we are all here as teachers and students of each other.

We had five beautiful Priestesses of Dawn attend us with blessings of sacredness & joy which I can’t begin to put into words. You should hear theirs – I’m offering the replay and the TEN different gifts we put together into a “Make 2010 The Year You REALLY SHINE” package.

It’s awesome-sauce! And available for replay to soak up those wonderful lessons & techniques, if you let me know your opinion on some really important issues:

http://bit.ly/SolsticeGiftReplay

I’m committed to serving you so much better in 2010 than I have in the past. There may be some rocky roads ahead for our planet, and some big changes for us as human beings. I’m stepping up in service of supporting and forearming people like you through those changes, with a magic bag full of easily learnable tools to help you accomplish that Big Mission of yours.

That’s one of my most cherished 2010 goals.

But to do that, I need you to tell me what YOU really want and need to have happen in your life this year.

I know that time is precious and valuable. So I’m willing to make it worth your time – there’s a bunch of goodness waiting for you at the end of this rainbow:

http://bit.ly/SolsticeGiftReplay

Thanks – it will help SO much!

From the Blog: French Ingenuity, Transparency & My Motley Past

An absolutely amazing video of French students doing stop-motion chair dance shows us a new Bliss Key: Cheerful Cooperation. When you engage this Bliss Key, the Bliss Blocker it unlocks is twofold:

1) The Need To Be Right – those who need to be right are rarely happy
2) Self-Isolation, leading to depression

Great winter blues cure here: http://bit.ly/CheerfulCooperation

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Transparency, Gurus, Gory Details & Telling Secrets – trending topics over at the blog and ’round about the web since the James Arthur Ray sweatlodge deaths. This is part of that discussion:

Transparency, translucence, living a conscious life – or whatever you call it, is not only the birthright and destiny of every human, but also our responsibility to the future. Our choices are essential, each one important, even east or west, choosing paper, plastic or bring-your-own, choosing to remain conscious in the face of frightening and destructive acts of unspeakable evil, or parking a block away.

We bear witness.

We choose with our intention and our energy the best and most evolutionary choices we can possibly make given our individual situation. Only we can make that choice, no one can do it for us. It’s called taking personal responsibility and it’s a Rubicon we all have to cross at some point in adult life to become fully human.

And we know that while (often intensely) impactful, our situation is not personal. Such a situation or lesson, if we choose to see it this way, is given to billions. Lessons are 100% Universal.

Thinking further on this brought me to the universals in how humans encode their experience that created The ETHOS Method.

What else is Universal? Living life asleep. And the ability to wake up, will do for a start. Spread the Wave – Consciousness will set you free. Really.

More on transparency and my motley past here: http://bit.ly/transparencysecrets

Here is the original post: http://bit.ly/translucentadvantage

And how to stay Unlimited: http://bit.ly/keepunlimitedstate

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The post that’s really got folks buzzing, on spiritual abusers in our midst, offer of abuse-prevention how-to and some details of my er, motley past – comment stream is also worth a read:

http://bit.ly/resurrectingthepast

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Head’s Up Moms: FREEBIES For The Tired & Time-Starved Family

Moms especially will love this collection of f’ree downloadable organizer pages for your day, week, month and year. Three whole pages, about eighteen different forms in all to print and help organize the chaos of an active family! There’s a fall cleaning checklist, the “Eat Sheet” for a week’s worth of meals, a weekly family calendar, baby’s schedule, infant babysitter checklist and more. You don’t even have to sign up, just download:

http://www.mommytracked.com/downloads

There’s more of the same (only different) over at http://www.cozi.com/ too. Check ‘em both out!

Transformation Tool: EVOLUTIONARY ENVIRONMENTS

One of the evolutionary environments I indulge in frequently is
my back garden. From the covered deck, I can observe wildlife and
rejoice in my fur-daughters’ play. I love it, and it evolves me
uniquely well.

http://bit.ly/greengardenafternoon

This is a Mellowvision vid for you to relax to. I like making panoramas as turning in place is fun. Now you see what I see every afternoon. I’m out there rain or shine, it’s a must for mental health.

Enjoy!

Availability Pledge, Jaw Surgery & Are We Connected?

I pledge to be more available to you in 2010. For one thing, I’ll be making lots of videos from now on. I’ve gone a bit video nutty really, as I’ve used my Flip Mino to exhaustion and happen to know Santa is dropping off a Kodak zi8.

(will it be aqua or raspberry? dunno…the Bear wouldn’t tell)

Of interest is the fact that in the new year I’ll be having jaw surgery. Not cosmetic, apparently I have really strong bones (a good thing since Mom had osteoporosis) and they’re crowding my teeth too much – several teeth need to be reseated in the jaw. Yuck, yuck, yuck. It’ll be gnarly, but I’ll be documenting this and how I’m dealing with discomfort. We’ll be doing a pain management class next year.

Interested in learning to get rid of pain? Again, let me know here:

http://bit.ly/SolsticeGiftReplay

And I’m going to be offering ways in which we can easily talk together about what’s important in 2010. A few are available right now, and the team is hard at work developing more. Are we connected? I’d love it if you’d Friend me on:

Facebook: http://facebook.com/maryamwebster
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/maryamwebster
Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/maryamwebster

Old Family Recipes for Yule: Wassail Bowl

“Wassail and wassail all over the town,
Our Cup it is white and your ale it is brown…”

– Gloucester Wassail, arr. English Traditional

Wassail is a contraction of the old Anglo-Saxon phrase “wes thu hal” meaning “To Your Health”. And of course, the traditional toasting beverage of  this  “best time of the year”  ~ which in this case is a non-alcoholic hot apple cider punch we serve for the winter holidays. It is never served any other time of the year. You can twiddle the ingredients about a bit, Graines of Paradise may be hard to come by but you can substitute pink or green peppercorns or just leave it out.

Want to up the octane? Add a full bottle of mead (honey wine), barleywine or even a crisp  chardonnay to the mix, or a shot of Applejack to each mug.

To two gallons apple cider add:

15 dried dates
20 dried apple rings
1 orange cut into thin slices w/peel left on
1 lemon cut into thin slices w/peel left on
3 cinnamon sticks, whole
1tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1″ fresh ginger, sliced thin

Handful each:
Mixed dried fruit bits
Dried Cranberries
Dried Cherries

Large pinch each:
Whole coriander seed
Whole cardmom pod, well crushed
Whole cloves
Cinnamon chips or small pieces

Small pinch each:
Allspice berries
Damascena rose petals or 1tbsp rose water
Dried barberries (can substitute 1tsp lemon juice + tbsp raisins)
Graines of paradise (or pink or green peppercorns)

Add:
1/4 – 1/2 cup brown sugar or blue agave or maple syrup, to taste

Crush all the spices and add to the cider and fruits in a large stainless steel or enameled pan. Simmer until volume is reduced by a third. When cooked down to your taste, strain through coffee filter or paper towel to remove pulp and spices. Replace a few fresh lemon, orange and apple rings and add 2 new cinnamon sticks to serve. Serve piping hot.

How DOES it get any better…?

I’ll be back to you just before New Year’s with some more juice for your joyous life and ways for you to live in ease, grace and joy.

For now, just keep asking: “How does it get any better than this?” Don’t wait for an answer, just let it be out there, so it can return to you in wondrous ways!

All my Love & Warmest Holiday Blessings,
Maryam

This is my good buddy Andy Wibbels. He lives in San Francisco and works at Six Apart, the folks who bring you TypePad, Moveable Type and Vox. We’ve built our businesses together and been friends for years – ever since his very first Easy Bake Weblogs class in 2003. If I had little brothers, they would be Andy and his partner Ron.

Andy btw, is holding a boxed set of Seth Godin’s books that Seth sent him out of the blue this week. What a smile maker! Seth, ya scored big there.

Anyway, every time Andy and I get together it ends up being like an episode of Animaniacs. All photos taken of us together show complete silliness & often caffeine-fueled manic laughter. I’m rocking the asylum here after a tour of Six Apart, and talking blogging, speaking, product and class creation and general shop.

This was after dinner…and before the cognitive dissonance that later ensued… Dinner was at French restaurant Fringale (excellent) on 3rd, and thought I’d found a great garage under the Hearst building. Just a half block from the boys’ flat in the trendy part of Mission (just across the street from SFMOMA). What could be simpler? The sign said “closes at midnight” but I knew I’d be back before then.

Mind that, because assumption that people will do what they say is crucial to the madcap part of the evening. Fringale was great, even if my haricots verts were a tad underdone. The lambchop (which I have only a crappy picture of, sorry) was excellent as was the gluten-free flourless chocolate cake (like lava or mousse cake – omg) and a very perky cappucino. All in all – I’ll go back and take The Bear.

We take a beautiful ten minute walk back to Andy & Ron’s place, passing through Yerba Buena Gardens and ending up in this lovely view of the SF MOMA building all lit up for the holidays. It gets all cosy back at the plantantion with Ron’s enthusiastic telling of Filipino ghost stories and the mountain his family owns that sports its own hot spring and fumarole.

The time drew short so the boys were kind enough to walk me to my car. I paid the attendant and the fellows mention there’s no pedestrian exit.

There was no auto egress either, and now is where we descend gently into the madcap portion of the evening.

It’s a tale of roundy-ramp walking, yelling back and forth to other inmates, trapped behind their own chainlink curtains, searching for an emergency phone number or exit, finding none and finally calling 911.

I got a very nice dispatcher on the line who commiserated with me and promised not to leave us there all night. She got a car to come right away, which was amazing in a city like San Francisco on a Saturday night where there are just as likely to be knife fights, meth labs and killer disco to police. Kudos to ya, lady dispatcher.

Thank you as well to the officers of SFPD car 1257 who came, laughed at us just a wee bit (all in good fun, we were laughing too by that time – in the sheer terror of relief) and sprung us by summoning the California Pizza Kitchen manager who was still at work and had his own key.

Ron and I went up the roundy-ramp to get to the bathrooms and who should we see but the clerk who took our money. “WHERE WERE YOU AND WHY DID YOU LOCK US IN” got no reply but confused burbling. He keyed us into the gents though, and came down to apologize for locking up before we’d left. By then the cops and the CPK guy had done the business and Andy had the Murano pointed out of the garage and ready to go.

Cue more hugs and agreeing that we escaped lightly considering in many cities they’d let you sit until morning. In San Francisco on a Saturday night there were surely other more serious crimes like the knife fights, meth lab explosions and serial-killer disco of the Castro sprouting like dragon’s teeth on a field of bloodmeal.

But the police man and woman were prompt, professional, courteous and rescued our stranded butts. Kudos SFPD. Respect.

But the madcappery wasn’t finished. After dropping the boys off at their flat I took 280 which was clear as a bell until a fog giant slapped a meaty arm down on the tarmac ’round about Pacifica, and followed it with a leg and half his body. Socked in completely up through my Woodside exit, traffic slowed to a 25 mph crawl.

Fortunately, I was listening to a really good exposé on KQED done by the Brazilian arm of GreenPeace, on the Amazon rainforest environmental scofflaws. They were kicking ass and naming names like Adidas, Nike and McDonalds. They know exactly where these companies are slashing and burning the Amazon to grow meat and leather product cattle. And they’re outting the big box companies.

*yes*

I tracked the group when I got home – go here and read more:

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/busted-in-brazil100100

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/with-just-10-days-left-to-aver

And that’s about a typical Saturday night in San Francisco with good buddies, good food, good conversation and a bitchin’ police force. Peace out y’all.

One of the things that I’ve truly “gotten” on my hiatus is that I have not allowed myself enough down-time and really need some quality unplugging. No computer, no tv, getting back to a spare, but rich, non-tech lifestyle. Accordingly, for the entire month of April, but for the master class in ETHOS I’m doing for Adela Rubio:

http://selfcaremastery.com/maryam

and a radio interview I’m doing for Connecting Women, I will be completely offline AND off email – our offices, help desk and all connection outlets will be closed.

I’d like to share a lesson from this that I have learned as it will be beneficial for anyone to think about. That is, we have many yardsticks in our lives – many ways of measuring the shoulds and musts. And though we may have come to the point of removing the words “should” and “must” from our vocabulary, those very ideas exist in our molecular structure as strong encodings.

In my case, the coding was around “I *should* be able to rest from a week of work in the two days of the weekend and be okay” and “I *should* be able to  work during the day from 9-5 as others do”.

But my system is not set up that way – it never has  been. I’m an owl, not a lark. A small percentage of the extremely creative (some call them “renaissance people”) have biorhythms that predispose them to work at their best, and to high proficiency on a variety of topics, later in the day. Voltaire, DaVinci, Michelangelo, Tesla and Bill Clinton are among those whose bodies also favored a night-owl lifestyle. I work best in the late afternoon and evening, sleep around 6 – 7 hours at most (7 is almost too much and 8 is definitely oversleeping) and usually work on several projects at once by preference. And I need more than two days to be “off” on the weekend.

My long-suffering workhorse parents despaired of me ever being respectable in the sleep department. I happily created in the wee hours, even as a child. Well-meaning though it was, they used every moral imperative to suggest that I was not a righteous person for being a night-owl and if I kept up “these shenanigans” I would not mature into a good upstanding citizen. Mother consulted Reverend Pegues when I was seven over this perceived fault, with the result that I was awakened every morning at 6am without fail to pray and read the Bible before school in the hopes of rehabilitating my wayward biorhythms.

It didn’t work. I slept through third period in school, refusing to be rousted, and stayed up at night until my body told me it was time to sleep. It exasperated Mother no end, but she finally gave up and when she saw that I was doing cool things – nature photography and essays in philosophy at that point.  She even briefly catered to my 10pm dinner habit  and harbored hopes that I might turn into Imogen Cunningham. No such luck though.

In the intervening years, I’ve found it’s always best to do what my body tells me it needs. When I do that, I am never sick or tired, and am always at my best and sharpest.

Late last year however,  though it was a relatively minor thing, I fell prey again to the moralizing of others around my natural biorhythms and tried to be early-to-bed-early-to-rise to join with a group of yoga friends who were all early risers and determined to make me one as well. And I mean, sunrise type early, greeting the day with Surya Namaskar as the sun crested the local Diablo hills.

The result was that I became out of sorts and was tired quite a lot which is very unusual for me. And even though I love writing more than life itself sometimes, computers, Twitter and email began to irritate me severely. These were cardinal signs to me that I was not honoring my body’s needs and was one of the ingredients in my decision to take a hiatus from business in January.

I naievely thought that my break would begin in January, but no, tying up ends so I actually could take a break took well into February. Then a conference came in March with heavy email, Twitter involvement and text messaging before and after, pushing things even further out.

So drop-dead earnest here, April is my month off. Completely away from the computer. Even cellphone. Don’t send me an EM, IM, DM, TxT or Skypee because I’m nailing the keyboard to the desk upside down and locking the mouse in a drawer. Not kidding.

I’m taking this unplugged break both for my own self-care and health, as well as research for an interesting article, or it might even be a book that I am writing. It keeps extending itself so it could well be the next book. <grin> More much later about that though.

The Moral of the Story Is… that there is no moral imperative around what the body needs. Each of us is wonderfully diverse in our unique makeup.  We all have slightly to profoundly different needs for food, water, sunshine or darkness, sleep or waking, downtime,  romance-time, exercise and alone-time.

That old biblical verse about the plank in your own eye comes to bear here. If someone in your life isn’t configured the same way you are don’t bring your judgements against them. Take care of your own needs and support each other to extreme and joyous acts of self-care, no matter what the hands on the clock say, no matter how different you might be to each others.

Diversity is what makes the world go ’round, be interesting and create genius.

Meanwhile, have a *beautiful* and *joyous* spring!

With Love,
Maryam

Happy Halloween from Maryam and all the staff at The Maryam Webster Group, Energy Coach Institute, ETHOS Method and Everyday Bliss communities.

We’d like to remind all our clients and friends in the United States to turn your clocks back ONE HOUR on Saturday night, November 1st as the U.S. returns to “standard time” for the winter months.

Check your timezone here: http://timeanddate.com

For those receiving this outside the United States, we have a quaint habit here of colluding in a bit of mass self-hypnosis to  constrain time in aid of squeezing more hours out of the workforce. We “fall back” to normal time on the first day of November.

Happy Fall and Halloween!

Franklin Delano Roosevelt seen at right and commonly referred to as FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States. That’s for the folks who seem to have missed being taught about New Deals I and II, and the Great Depression. I’m finding suprisingly  many who seemed to have skipped this bit of history in school. And while I was not personally alive during the Depression, my parents were. Their generation’s experience formed how I viewed money for most of my life, as it did for many who are alive right now.

And now the same thing is happening again. Many people are finding themselves tweaked by moments of sheer panic, ongoing worry and sudden terror at what’s happening.

FDR’s inauguration on March 4, 1933 occurred in the middle of a bank panic, such as we are experiencing today. Banks closing right and left and no idea if or when they’d be opening again. Folks losing their houses, mass weirdness ensuing.

Upon this backdrop, FDR uttered these ten famous words:

"The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself".

The full quote, from the first paragraph of his inaugural address is this:

"..This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance…"

Unjustified terror. Unjustified.

Do you hear that part of the speech? Roosevelt is absolutely right. Fear never grew a crop or fattened a wallet. Fear on this level just consumes your available energy and ties up the rest in paralysis.

I’ve heard this clip played countless times and prefer to believe that FDR believed what he was saying, and spoke from his deep knowing that the world always turns around again and new opportunities present themselves. FDF had a distinctive voice, and it roused rich and poor to rally ’round their communities, and make the present better than all perceived it was.

We are not in a Depression, though many have labelled it that. In the 1920’s, there was a real economic downturn, marked by its term "The Great Depression". Great sections of the prairieland midwest turned into dusty deserts as agricultural conditions too deteriorated, and crops could not be grown – the economic vying with the geological and climatic to provide an experience of total disaster. People starved to death. Entire families in this society perished, or were forced to debase themselves for food at any price.

Read Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men for a candy-coated version. "Candy-coated" was what my mother said (snorted) when I brought the book home from high school English to find Mom making Snickerdoodles. "Steinbeck my foot!" Mom fumed "That wasn’t the half of it honey, not the half of it. That’s the candy-coated version." She continued to pat cookies into measured rounds, but this time with a vengeance that flatted them to cinnamon-sugar shingles. And refused to say more of what she had witnessed.

We are at most in 2008, in a "mini-Depression". People are making some difficult choices, but the average family is not on the brink of imminent starvation, though many have lost their homes.

And many of us are succumbing to fear about it. But fear never helped grow a tomato, furnish a house, baked a cookie or put money in the bank.

How long do you want to hold onto your fears? How is holding on to that energy working for you?

Are you willing to let go of fear – now?

If so, I’ve created a technique to help you do that: The ETHOS Method. Click this link to go there, pick up your copy of the entire method – free. And if you already know and practice ETHOS, bring up that fear that current events bring up in you, and pulse your triple cue.

Uncreate, dissolve and release.

When you download the pdf and hang out in our community and listen to the free audios (and soon videos!) we have, you’ll get all the updates automatically, by mail.

One of the things coming up is a teleclass to get past your fear of financial weirdness, or anything else. I’ll be posting more about that soon. Until then, enjoy the deep peace that ETHOS brings.

And take a cookie. Wholewheat or gluten-free.

By the time you’ve finished eating it, you’ll remember that being afraid of things that haven’t even happened yet is kind of silly.

And you’ll remember that you feel pretty good, after all.

TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH. ALL MONTH LONG, I’M GOING TO FEATURE BREAST HEALTH TIPS. PLEASE CHECK YOUR BREASTS TODAY! AWARENESS IS A BREAST’S BEST FRIEND

Hi Folks,
I’ve met a lot of women in the last few months who are terrified of getting mammograms, even though breast disease is in their families. My mother, grandmother and aunt had breast cancer. My mom died of it as did my husband’s mother. Breast disease is not going to be my experience. I am proactive in maintenance of breast health: I do the breast health tapping routine from page 28 of The ETHOS Method manual every single day, monthly breast checks and I get regular mammograms and thermograms (another form of diagnostic that looks at heat patterns in the breast).

At right is a mammogram of a normal breast. Isn’t it beautiful? The wireframe of nurture, revealed.

My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer on October 1st, 1990 and that’s when I always go in, to honor her. Coincidentally, this is the first day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month so I’m kicking off my own personal awareness campaign by telling you about my mammogram and bust some myths about the procedure in the process.

I got my mammogram today, and while I wasn’t allowed today to video my thoughts through the procedure, did a lot of video around that and breast health in general that you’ll see here soon. I am also working with hospital administrators to videotape real mammography in the future to help women lose their fear about getting mammograms, which is very exciting. Stay tuned for that.

Bustin’ Mammo Myths

It’s real important as we all travel this journey of life, that we not be afraid of things. Fear is an old patterned response that taps into that limbic system in the brain I talk about in the ETHOS manual. It can save our lives when we’re in actual physical danger, but most of the time today, fear is mis-triggered and mis-fires on a consistent basis, running our lives instead of letting us flow easily through events. If you are thinking about something in the future and getting a fear response – that’s a mis-trigger that you might want to eliminate. There’s an old acronym floating around about that too: Fear really means "Future Expectations Appearing Real". Fear of the future is kind of silly when you look at it because you’re upset about something that hasn’t even happened yet. Waste of energy!

ETHOS is one of many methods that can help you deal with fear, and come through the doorway fear is, to the Unlimited Self. BTW, Unlimited Selves don’t have breast disease or any other kind of dis-ease. Unlimited Self is the personification OF "ease" in every sense. Ease and joy and beauty in all ways. Let’s bust some of the myths about mammograms and learn a little bit about what goes on:

1) "I DON’T stink, and don’t want people to think I do"
I want to tell women who may be afraid of this procedure – don’t be. The worst thing that happened was that I had to not wear deodorant or powder under my armpits for two days. This can put a lot of women off, as they don’t want to stink. I am sensitive to scent and didn’t want to offend others, so I kept alcohol wipes (in America, one brand is HandiWipes) in my purse and dabbed my armpits through the day for two days prior to my mammogram. Problem solved and the alcohol both kills scent-producing bacteria, then evaporates so no residue is left. If you can’t find such wipes wherever you live, simply fill a plastic bag with cotton balls, pour a little rubbing alcohol in the bag and dab armpits with cotton balls. Works just as well.

Caveat: Don’t use perfume or cologne as the oils in these kinds of scent can irritate the delicate underam skin.

So me and my deodorant-free armpits went to the hospital xray department, filled out a short form and sat maybe five mintes waiting to be sent to the dressing room to put my hospital gown on. Everyone was so nice – they know women can be a little nervous and do their very best to put you at ease. Some women even brought a girlfriend, sister, daughter or mom with them for moral support. This is not only permitted, but encouraged. If you’re feeling a little shaky, bring a buddy, by all means.

2) "Don’t Pressure Me"
The second thing I hear women saying they don’t want to experience is the pinching they’ve heard happens when the breast is put between the two plastic plates of the mammogram machine. The breast needs to be compressed as thinly as possible so as to produce the highest contrast to show up any abnormalities, so a machine gently squeezes the breast tissue between these plates. Ladies, my girls are "D" cup sized (for the gents reading this: a handful and a half) and while I felt this pressure, it was only very slightly intense and didn’t hurt a bit.

Some women do feel discomfort. This may be because the breasts are congested. If you do the "Triple Thump Plus" tapping routine outlined in the AM Energizers on page 28 of the ETHOS manual, the energy and fluids pervading your breasts will flow easily releasing congestion. This is one I do EVERY DAY, and it’s my thought that this will lessen any potential for an uncomfortable experience. Here’s that routine again from The ETHOS Method manual:

The Triple Thump PLUS - For general health, wellness and to put on "immune system defense" armor, vigorously tap your Kidney-27 Collarbone points 7 – 10 times, your Thymus 7 – 10 times and your Liver-14 Under Breast points 7 – 10 times. This is the “traditional” Triple Thump from Touch For Health and Educational Kinesiology. I add to this thumping on the Underarm Spleen-21 Points and gentle circular rubbing on the “Sore Spot” – the upper chest neurolymphatic drainage point. This routine circles the breasts and helps to keep them healthy in addition to conditioning and fine-tuning your energy to do what you need it to. Do this sequence three times in all.

3) "I’m afraid to go in because I just don’t know what’s going to happen"
So here’s what happens and thanks to the folks at the National Institute for Mental Health (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/imagepages/17085.htm) for the picture of "Bucky", the mammogram machine. This will help you better understand  what I’m describing below.

I waited in a waiting area probably five minutes after disrobing from the waist up and putting on a hospital gown. Then I was invited into the mammography room and untied the top of the hospital gown. The female technician lifted the tissue of my right breast, pulled it out slightly from my body, and placed it on the horizontal lower plate holding the xray film. An upper plastic plate called a "paddle" then automatically descended and judging the right amount of pressure, pressed the tissue as thin as it would comfortably go, then locked the breast into place. As I mentioned, this felt odd, but did not hurt. Then as soon as it was locked, the technician popped behind the little booth, pressed a button, I heard a "ZZzzzt" of the picture being taken and the upper plastic paddle immediately released my breast. Then we did the same procedure to the other side.

That full set of pictures in the upright position took less than three minutes. Then a second set of pictures was done, with the machine rotated at a 50 degree angle to radiograph the side of the breast. I wondered how the heck my breast was going to fit between the two plates with the thing at an angle like this.

The technician told me to drape my inside arm over the top of the machine which pulled all the breast tissue upward. Then she held the breast against the plate while the top plastic paddle came down to compress the tissue. Once the paddle was touching the top of the breast tissue, she let go as it began to gently compress the breast, telling me to keep my shoulders back. Then she popped ’round the control booth again, "ZZzzzt" went the machine and bingo-bango, the right side was done. The same process was done with the left breast.

This set of films took about five minutes for both breasts. So all in all, I was in the mammography room for less than ten minutes.

4) "There’s so much radiation in an xray, I’ve heard you can GET breast cancer from a mammogram. It’s probably not good for me."
This is an belief I hear when women know someone who has had regular mammograms for years, then have a mammogram which finds a tumor. The logic in this conclusion is faulty and fear-driven. As I said above, please work on your fear using ETHOS or any other method you like. Mammograms find tumors, that’s their job. But these tumors are only visible on mammograms after several years of growth. Monthly self-checks are the best way to know your breasts and track their changes. If you have a mammogram, there’s a chance it will, yes, find a tumor.  But would you rather know, or not know?

One school of thought in the alternative health community is thermograms, then sonograms, then and only if suspicious areas are found, mammograms to pinpoint the area of a tumor or cyst. I asked my body and it told me to get a mammogram. Personally I don’t do this every year a mammo is due, as my body seems to prefer thermograms. This year it was relevant.  Ask your body and learn to interpret its language so you can do what’s best for you.

And the jury may still be out in the alternative health community, but the radiation in a mammogram comes at such a low dose, they don’t make you wear a lead apron, as it doesn’t penetrate further than the plate below the breast holding the xray film. The techician clued me that people sometimes think digital xrays are lower in dose, which actually isn’t correct. She told me that people tend to think this as digital xrays, not using traditional film, tend to have a lower rate of the need to repeat an xray due to faulty breast positioning, but the dose of radiation is very slightly higher than a traditional film xray.

If you’re worried about the dose of radiation in a mammogram, it is very, very low. And there are many proactive things you can do to help your body detox the radiation as well. I’m a great veggie eater, but for a week prior to my mammo, I greatly increased my intake of ground flax seeds, sea greens, sprouts of all kinds and deep green leafy vegetables. I also took mild colon tonifying herbs to make sure I was processing bodily waste out of the body extremely regularly. Today I’ll increase that dose very slightly so I am having several bowel movements a day, and keep that up for a total of three days before going off the colon tonic herbs.

By the way, two bowel movements or more a day is normal – many people do not know this. My acupuncturist, chiropracter and doctor are all in favor of having three or more. If you’re trying to detoxify the body, increase your bowel movements by eating leafy green roughage, fruits (dried fruits are great for this), sauerkraut, or other vegetables, and drink lots and lots of water. Your local health food store will have information on herbs that tonify the bowels. Consult a reliable herbal such as Michael Tierra’s The Way of Herbs or John Lust’s venerable The Herb Book for instructions, and always do so in consultation with your healing practitioner.

When I need to have an xray, I continue this bowel stimulating regimen for a week following the radiation, just to make sure I’m supporting my body through its detox process. If this doesn’t appeal to you, simply eat a lot of salads and raw veggies, and drink lots and lots of water. Going to the toilet is a sacred thing, don’t be afraid of it. Better to go, and get the poisons out of the building.

5) "Do they just leave you in the hall after the mammogram? What happens when the picture-taking is all over?"
After your mammogram, you’ll be told to stay in your hospital gown in a waiting area until a technician can look at the films. Please understand they are not READING the films for abnormalities, and you WON’T get a diagnosis then, on the spot. They’re looking for mistakes in the way the breast was positioned, to know if they need to go back in and take another film or not. This usually takes less than five minutes, and you’ll then be told you can put your clothes on and go home, or to come back for one more picture.

If you ask real nice (I did) they’ll let you look at your films but do NOT ask them to interpret the mammogram for you – a radiological technician cannot do this by law, even if they see something their experience tells them may look suspicious. They can’t tell you, so please don’t badger them. DO take the chance if you can, to look at the films of your breasts. This is greatly instructional and also very validating and life-affirming. I found myself fascinated looking at the intricacy of little hairline veins and tissue criss-crossing the breast – it was a beautiful network of nurture personified, and reaffirmed my womanliness to me. This journey of the mammogram can be greatly reinforcing of your femininity. Celebrate your breasts!!

6) "I’m so nervous! I’ve been waiting for over a week after my mammogram and haven’t heard from my doctor. Is this a bad thing?" Your doctor will be sent the films along with a qualified radiologist’s interpretation within a week – more if the lab is backed up with more films to process than staff to process them. While you’re at the mammography office, ask what the general processing time is if you want to know. You will be given your results and diagnosis if any from your doctor’s office, within a few weeks. I was told if there is something really wrong, they flag your films and you’re notified even sooner. So no news is probably good news if you’re waiting for that call or in my case, the card in the mail telling you what’s what. I was also told by a hospital representative, that this particular hospital made a point of personal phone calls to women whose breasts showed suspicious spots, so the doctors and technicians are making sure you are notified as soon as possible.

My trip in and out of the mammogram took less than 45 minutes. I was on the street an hour later and having lunch with a girlfriend. We celebrated our breast health together by doing a public demonstration and teaching of the Triple Thump Plus to six ladies who were in the same restaurant. We’d all waited in line together and fell to discussing mammograms.

My friend is an energy healer so we were comparing our two breast health routines. These six ladies heard and wanted in on the action. Then three more joined us, plus a couple of the waitresses and one of the cooks who came out from the back to see what the commotion was. Nearly all of these women had a mother, sister, aunt, grandmother or friend stricken by breast disease and all were desperate to know how to prevent it. In all we taught twelve women how to care for their breasts, so my promise to my Mom, to help other women to breast health was more than fulfilled on "Mammogram Day".

Please teach ETHOS and the Triple Thump Plus to everyone you know. Even men can get breast cancer, so everyone needs to be doing this routine. See above for the method which surrounds the breast with tender loving care, and drains toxins away from the breast tissue. I hope this has been instructional and helpful to you. Please feel free to pass this post in its entirety to anyone you know of that has any fear of going in for a breast check up or mammogram. It’s something as women that I feel we owe ourselves, and one form of love we can give our bodies.

More info on The ETHOS Method: http://community.ethosmethod.com

Below is a post I made to a high-level email list of advanced energy coaches and therapists. It answered a colleague’s question regarding Emotional Freedom Technique:  "What is the intention of the tapping? To reduce SUDs, eliminate distress, or enhance mindfulness?"

But back to  SUDS, distress and mindfulness.

Hello my friend, thank you for asking. 

Intention is one of the main reasons I’ve found in my research, why certain methods don’t work well upon occasion, or don’t work 100% all of the time. (yes, even those ones many of us hold near and dear to our hearts).

What is our intention as practitioners? As petitioners at the gate of forever?

In not choosing, we choose. In choosing not to make intentions, we make intentions. I believe knowledge of some of the inner workings of the universe and how we affect it all the time by our thoughts, beliefs and intentions, is crucially important to knowing how to work any method.

Intention is a natural clockwise/counterclockwise conjugate spiral energy flow that as far as I know, runs much of our experience if not all of it.

Think of a Moebius strip with positive energy running down one surface and negative energy running up the opposite surface. You try to connect the two ends. Attraction/repulsion factors of the differing valences cause the strip to twist and bend into the familiar infinite loop. Bent back upon itself, the ends meeting where like attracts like, it is possible to fasten such a strip.

Such is consciousness, for it folds and bends back on itself as well, seeking the familiar, repulsed by the unfamiliar.We often get lost in those folds and end up snoozing down at the bottom of one of those bends in the strip of consciousness. That’s how routines get started and encoded into imperatives. Mindfulness and intention are sovereign remedies, plus the knowledge that we are truly, without Limits. And can have an infinite variety of things that we desire, including elevated levels of Presence, abundance and joy.

This all may be a crock of manure and not true of course but…it appears to be working for me…I’ll bet it works the same way for a whole lot of us here.   

And Mindfulness = Presence = The Ultimate Resource State from which all magical things might be accomplished. And become quite mundane.

That being said, as myself and a small but devoted band of colleagues developing the new ETHOS Method, (about which you’ll hear in the August 18th ACEP teleclass <hint: I’m giving the class>) have found that the Ultimate Resource State is what I/we call the Unlimited Self. I pondered very deeply *why* certain personal development methods didn’t work well sometimes. One of the reasons that I found is that many of them come from the point of view of us needing to be fixed and of healing. Not that these aren’t perfectly valid occupations, but fixing and healing are like slapping a bandage on the problem and never getting to the real issue from which said "problem" distracts.

We only have one Problem at the root of it all. That problem is, that we are endorsing the absence of awareness of our Unlimited Self. And the more we endorse or give energy to something, the more of that thing we get. Conversely if you desire the polar opposite of a bad situation, that too will manifest. Basic energetic dynamics.

But we most certainly are not in need of being fixed. We are already standing blindingly close to that perfect self – our Unlimited Self.

Most humans stand a bit outside to far outside awareness of this template of their Unlimited Self, unlike animals who live so much more honestly than we. You look at a dog or a cat and it fully embodies the joy of being fully Present, fully alive.

A cat is guaranteed never to give thought to its grocery list: "three mice, one pitcher of cream, four scoops kibble, two bags litter – check, check, check and check. Now…where on earth do you suppose they keep the herring?" A dog or cat will never go so fully out of consciousness as this – and as humans do on a consistent basis. I advise my students to study animals for pointers on their spiritual growth. They’re much wiser than we in such matters.

So in short, in creating ETHOS, we are predicating an energy transformation method on the premise that self is already perfect and not in need of help or fixing. This predicate and our main goal to re-embody and live life through our Unlimited Self, has been of phenomenal use in increasing effectiveness and reducing recidivism in clients who may in time come to take back their problems – a common difficulty in all therapies (energy therapies included).

And yes, this is an intention, but also a realization, and active participation in reality as each of us chooses to fashion it.

More on this shortly. And if you’d like to be kept aware of the news, changes or want to be involved, check out our very new (and still being populated – be an early adopter!) ETHOS website: http://ethosmethod.com