Healing isn't for Wimps!

By Nancy Smeltzer
Photo by Vince Lombardi


There are many people who are actively seeking solutions in their lives, whether it’s for healing physical ailments or emotional problems. Just like me, if you were to ask them, they would unequivocally say that they want to get rid of their issue. However, there is a concept called psychological reversal, that we’ve spoken about in earlier postings. This term refers to a situation where your conscious mind says that, yes, you want something to change in your life. However, there are other consciousnesses involved that have conflicting agendas. The usual culprits are your Body Brain consciousness, involved with survival, and your Solar Plexus consciousness, connected with control. (See the posting for August 21, 2009 for more on this concept known as Triune Brain theory) As a result,many people find that they are unconsciously self-sabotaging the very issue they’re trying so hard to resolve.

When starting off in this healing business, I early on had many rapid positive results. That got me enthusiastically started on my spiritual path. Finally, I was having releases from many issues that had plagued me for years. As I learned to hear the Divine, I found concrete, effective tools that I could implement and dissolve away my problems. Having been a teacher, it was easy for me to figure out ways to then show others how to achieve similar results. However, it seems that we each reach a time when it seems as if we’ve run into a wall. For me, the path seems to be that I’ve cleared away the easier issues and now to go further, I have to go even deeper into core issues that I’ve spent a lifetime of shoving under the rug. Ouch, that really, really hurts when I run into those walls that I build myself. So now what do I do?

For me, in the past, I would have cut and run. Rather than facing issues that were no longer serving me, I would run away in order to avoid conflict or shove my feelings and not express what I was feeling. As a result, I faced years of physical pain and many surgeries as my body was screaming at me trying to get me to listen. However, what I’m learning now and trying to embrace with all of my being is that I am creating my own reality in order to learn the lessons that I was sent here to learn this life time. Part of my soul contract this lifetime seems to be about getting out from playing the “victim”. A major, painful part of that lesson is owning that the faults I’m pointing the finger about with regard to others are really projections of mine. I’m either doing something similar or am using their actions to create a stir so I won’t look at my own activities. It’s so much easier to proclaim to the world about somebody else’s heinous doings than admit to my own shortcomings.

So, having recently run into a very big wall of my own creation, I’m having to pick myself up, dust myself off, look at my own reflection in the mirror and ask to forgive myself. Hopefully the ones with whom I’ve hurt will move forwards with me. If not, then perhaps I need to move along my own path. I am proud of myself for at least making some movement and not staying wallowing in my usual hole. I once had a vision where I saw all of humanity being on a racetrack, hunched down at the starting blocks and ready to run the race of Life. When the starter’s gun went off, some people rushed straight forward, full of purpose and resolve. I wandered off the track, up into the bleachers, bck onto the track, went around in circles for awhile, and then moved forward a little. Some of the life runners disappeared in a “poof” and reappeared back at the beginning of the track, as if they were starting over again in a new life. However, when I changed my vantage point to looking down on the race rather than being in it, I could fast forward and see that all of the runners eventually got to the end of the race. It’s that “knowing” that I’ll get there eventually that keeps me going.

I’d like to end with the thought that healing has to be hard is just a belief. Since that concept is a commonly held belief., our take in Renaissance of the Heart is that it can be healed. In other words, it’s not a Universal given that any of this work has to be difficult. It unfortunately, seems to be one that I’m very invested in right now. Ideally, when you’re in the flow of life, issues and conflicts come up, you rise up and over those rocks and continue down stream. Please keep reading along with us as we share more of what we’ve learned with regard to our findings on how to climb over Life’s rocks. We’d also love to hear from you about your own findings on how you easily implement healing for yourselves and others. We see ourselves as building a community of like-minded souls, and we’d love to hear from you.

How do you Know When You’ve Finished Healing?

By Nancy Smeltzer
Photo by Robert Vibert

Many people are born with their intuitive knowledge intact from before they were born. They come into this world with the ability to see, hear, or feel much of what is not immediately evident to others. I am not one of those people. Any psychic ability that I now have, I’ve been shown by the Divine in the last five years. In our Renaissance of the Heart workshops, we teach ways to recognize each person’s own abilities and foster the development of each person’s intuitive knowledge. In several of my previous postings, I’ve talked about the visual and auditory metaphors that I’m given as I work with our clients. When I work during a session, I share with the person being worked on whatever I’m shown that seems appropriate. Our goal is to help each person learn through time to be able to do much of their own healing without our help. While the techniques are easy to learn and practice, one of the hardest things to learn seems to be for others to know when they’ve healed or cleared an issue for themselves.

From another healing modality, Peak States of Consciousness, we’ve borrowed the term, calm, peace, and light (as if a back pack has been taken off your back.) For us, this describes the sensation many experience when they’ve done a technique on a particular issue and then find it to be gone. The sense of personal freedom can be so exhilarating that a person can even forget what the original issue was about. On Gary Craig’s web site, Silvia Hartmann-Kent speaks very eloquently of this phenomena, known as the Apex Effect, in which the person discredits the treatment that has just been given as causing their newly found release from their symptoms…. http://www.emofree.com/articles/apexeffect.htm .

Most of us don’t experience such an immediate release from symptoms to the degree of not equating the work being done to the diminishing of their sensations. However, to insure that there is some benchmark to which any progress can be compared, we have people pick a “trigger event” that is typical of the problem that they’re experiencing. Just a short phrase is needed to describe the moment, such as “my brother issue” or “when I was fired”. They we ask them to go back to that event, and while looking out through their own eyes, not at themselves as an observer, write down the emotion(s) they’re experiencing and where in the body they’re feeling that sensation. Then we ask them, for each emotion, what number, on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the worst, would they give that emotion right now. (This numbering system is called a SUDS measurement or “Subjective Unit of Distress Scale.)These notes are useful to refer to at the end of the session, when the client goes back to the event and checks in with the emotions, body sensations, and numbers to see if any progress has been made.

So, the client then begins one of the techniques that we teach, and we work on whatever facet of the issue the Divine directs us to focus on. As the client heals himself with us serving as catalysts for the energy, changes or shifts may be experienced by the client.
Some people will experience waves of energy peeling off of them. Some experience their inner vision becoming brighter, if it started out as being dark. The reverse might be true if the person started out with a well-lit field of vision, which could go to dark upon completion, as if a door was bring shut on an issue. Others, who are more kinesthetically inclined, experience what I call the elevator drop. That sensation can be described as when you stop at a floor in an elevator, and first you go upwards slightly and then you drop back down inwardly as your own motion is stopped. Some people hear an audible “ding”, much as old-fashioned teacher’s bell sounds. While most people seem to have some variation of seeing or hearing information, there are a multitude of other ways of knowing when you’ve finished a particular part of a healing session. We help to supply feedback, such as “no not quite finished”, or “seems clear to me”. That way, the client can learn his or her own modality. The type of affirmative responses can also vary in the same person depending on the issue being worked on and its severity. The point is that one method isn’t any better than any other, and that each person needs to learn his or her own way of “knowing” intuitive information


I imagine that many of you who read this have your own experiences with gaining intuitive information. We’d love to hear about your own experiences as to how you find light at the end of the tunnel. Please feel free to ask any questions you might have of myself, Mary, or Ceitllyn, as we work to weave together this community of like minded souls that we’re calling Renaissance of the Heart.

What I See is What I Get

By Nancy Smeltzer

On October 2, 2009, I wrote about my psychic inner sight and some descriptions of how the visions appear to me. These stories and metaphors of what is going on with our clients at Renaissance of the Heart are often quite strange in appearance and content. My partners and I say that some of these images are high on the “woo-woo” scale, in that they test even our sense of credibility. Yet, time and time again, we are given independent confirmation of what we’ve been shown.

One such case early on in our practice we call the bunny rabbit story. Our client’s grandfather had died a year earlier and she was still dealing with the grief of not getting to say goodbye to him at the hospital. When I told her that I could see her grandfather standing behind her, and that she could talk to him anytime that she wanted, it was very hard for her to have much of a sense of his presence. He held out his hand and asked me to put its contents into her heart. After having scanned it to make sure it was safe, I asked her if it was OK for me to put her grandfather’s present into her heart. When she asked what it was, I had to smile rather sheepishly, because I was having a hard time believing what I was ‘seeing”.

“It’s a bunny rabbit”, I said. “Just your basic, brown cottontail bunny rabbit, but your grandfather wanted you to have it.” She agreed to having me put it in her heart, which I did. She could feel some warmth there, but other than that, she had no other sense of anything being different. I felt that there was more to the bunny rabbit story, but she didn’t know of any connection between her grandfather and rabbits. I encouraged her to ask around in her family to see if they knew of any rabbit stories and that was the end of the day’s work.

At her next session, she had quite a tale to tell. She had asked her mother, and siblings if they remembered anything about her grandfather and bunnies, but no one remembered anything. However, she had quite a surprise when she was telling her grandmother. It turned out that her grandfather had always wanted to give her a rabbit when she was little, but her parents wouldn’t let her have one. Now, she has one for eternity, the soft little friend her beloved grandfather had always wanted to give her.

I sat a little stunned. There had been no doubt in my mind what I had been shown in her grandfather’s hand at the earlier session. Nor was there any way that I could have known about her early life in clues she might have said in the session, as she had never known about her grandfather’s wish to give her a bunny. I felt humbled and in awe at the realization that I really do see things that are “real” and felt incredibly grateful that I have been shown a way to comfort others through their grief.

Since those early days, I’ve been shown much stranger images, but somehow there is always some underlying truth in what I’m being shown. It is independent confirmations like these that have led me to know the “taste” and “feel” of when I’m being shown something significant to a client’s healing. I’m constantly asking myself is my own ego is affecting what I’m being shown, but usually the answer comes back a resounding “No!”.

Surrendering to the Divine…You Want me to do What?

By Nancy Smeltzer

On October 15, 2009, I wrote about Surrendering to the Divine and how this important tenet is part of our Renaissance of the Heart healing practice. Mary, Ceitllyn, and I have found that for our clients and ourselves, when we turn an issue over to the Divine, or whatever you may see as your Higher Power, life flows much more smoothly. Your life can unfold seamlessly before you when you are not insistent in having the outcome a certain way. “Perfect!” you might say, “Where do I sign up?” However, I neglected to mention in my previous posting on this subject that it is important to remember that all actions do have consequences and you need to be prepared for some unusual demands that may be placed on you.

For instance, about 1 ½ years into my spiritual journey, I was asked by the Divine if I wanted to move to a higher level. “Of course”, I eagerly replied. “Who wouldn’t?” The Divine told me “OK, no problem, however you won’t be able to see or know what you’re doing.” “Not know what I’m doing?” I sputtered. “I HAVE to know what I’m doing! I’m a teacher and I have to be able to see in order to teach others!” My rant went on for a few more sentences, and then I quickly understood that if I wanted to move to a higher level of learning, then those were the conditions of the lessons.

Begrudgingly, I agreed. For the next month, I could no longer “see” anything that was going on when I worked with a client. I would know when the healing started, I could tell that something was going on way off in the distance, and I could tell when the healing for that day had finished. Other than that, things were very dark in my psychic field of vision. Our clients however were raving about how much better they felt, and since results for those we work on are what are important to us, I learned to do without my inner sight. Finally, one day, the Divine said, “OK, you’ve learned what you needed to learn” and my sight and knowing abilities returned within about eight hours.

As I tried to figure what that loss of sight was about, I quickly came to the realization that I needed to learn other ways of knowing about a situation. During that muffled period, other skills of mine were developing, such as using kinesthetic or “feeling” what was going on with my body. I also learned to trust in what the Divine was asking me to do. Another event, however, really tested just how much I was ready to trust in the Divine when I was asked to freefall from some outer dimension in the cosmos.

Let me begin by explaining that I fell down a lot as kid, turning weak ankles, with many weeks every year spent on crutches. Falling, therefore, is a big fear of mine. (At this point in my narration, I can hear Mary saying, “You could heal that, you know”, and I will, Mary, after I finish about 30 other things ahead of that fear on my list of things to heal in this lifetime.) So when the Divine took me out somewhere high and far way in etheric space and said, “Now, fall backwards”, I was terrified. When I kept asking why, The Divine let me know I had an important lesson to learn. I was still very skeptical, but figuring that the Divine has the big game plan, I launched myself off from some precarious platform and began to fall.

While I spend a lot of time in some strange places, I sometimes have a sense of doubt whether or not what I am experiencing is real. There I was physically sitting in my safe office chair in my studio, but it certainly felt as if I were falling from some great height. I kept falling…, falling…, and falling, and nothing changed except that I was still falling. I was furious at myself for doing something as “stupid” as deliberately allowing myself to plummet from some unknown height. “What were you thinking?” was of the milder things I was yelling at myself. Then I began to realize that I was going to fall forever, and I got even madder at myself. Who was going to feed the cats, and nobody would ever find me, and who was going to explain to my mother, and, and, and…the thoughts raced through my head. Finally, I decided, “Well fine! I’ll just fall forever!” As I settled into that sense of resignation of perpetual rapid descent, I relaxed. At that moment of acceptance, I flipped over, turned into a giant eagle, and slowly spiraled downwards, as if I were riding some celestial thermal of air “Ta dah!” I exclaimed triumphantly as I gently landed, shaking myself off from what could have been a never-ending, nauseating ride.

Did I mention that you wouldn’t always know immediately why something was important to do when you are asked to surrender to the Divine? Having taken my free fall, I knew that what I had done had greater significance than just the obvious learning to trust in my Higher Powers. However, what that deeper level was escaped me at the time. It was nearly a year later that I learned the lesson for my celestial jump. At this later time, I was working on opening up my heart and realized that what I needed to do was to free fall into the Heart of the Divine. There was my answer! I would ever have allowed myself to dive freely into the innermost recesses of the Divine Heart, with all of the scary implications that were involved with such a release, if I had not taken my life changing free fall the year before. It had taken all of that intervening year for me to get an answer as to why I had been asked to take that leap. By accepting that you may not ever know why something is the way it is could be part of what you are asked to surrender. You just never know where you will be led in this work!

I hope that our series of postings about our thoughts and insights as we move forward in our spiritual journeys are inspiring some breakthroughs of your own. Please feel free to leave us a comment about your thoughts on these subjects, as we continue to build this community we call Renaissance of the Heart.

Infinity Releasing and the Grieving Mom, Part 2 continued from September 25, 2009

by Ceitllyn Connal

I have come to realize how much I have yet to learn and how much I have already learned in the five months since my son’s death. I wanted perfection in my life, but in wanting that, I wanted the control that comes with that perfection. I chose to do anything else except move forward toward healing my grief. There is no amount of control or perfection possible that would give me any measure of peace. There was just too much fear for me to manage; so there needed to be more control. I expected things to go according to some unwritten plan, my plan that would still allow me to grow in my spiritual journey. I would think, “I am The All Powerful Human I know what my Divine plan is.” I do not feel like the all-powerful human; I am sitting feeling very unpowerful all of my victimness because my son died.

When I let myself move toward healing, I realize how much I wanted to control when my son died. I would be able to do so many things differently before that happened so I would not have to feel the rawness of my emotions now. It was not in my plan to be in the middle of feeling lonely, sad, angry or alone at this time in my life. Sometimes I still want the illusion of controlling my own steps. This grieving part of my journey is a frightening way of existing, I am unsure of where my emotions will lead me next. It is not an easy road; it has its hard and difficult parts. I feel if I am not able to move through these feelings, learn the lessons given to me, these same lessons will come back again and again stronger and harder than they are now. The knowledge is there for me to learn how to be on a higher spiritual level, all it requires of me is to open my heart to the Love of the Divine. Whenever I feel like I have to ‘make it through’ my grief I know my need to control things and my fears keep me from truly surrendering to the Divine.

The times I have used our Infinity Releasing tool with my grief, my raw emotions were eased and soothed. Sometimes things were swirling in my head too quickly to comprehend anything else except the very powerful movement of the Infinity sign. I knew then that my feelings were just what they were meant to be, a gateway to a greater connection and my anchor with the Divine.

I hope we can have the opportunity to teach you this remarkable tool that can open up so many new wonders. Using this tool can help you to access all the Divine Love that is possible for your life, as it has done for my own.

For more information about Infinity Releasing please see our
website at:http://hearthealing.net/workshops.php

Surrendering to the Divine

By Nancy Smeltzer


One of the 3 major tenets of the Renaissance of the Heart healing practice is surrendering the illusion of control we think we have over our lives, and turning everything over to the Divine. “Of course”, you might say, “who wouldn’t let the One with the big game plan run their life?” However, that can be so much easier said than done.

I find that on the smaller issues I have, there’s no problem in following this tenet. However, when it comes down to my core issues, I find myself expecting (should I say “demanding”?) an issue to resolve itself according to the way I want it.. However, it’s when I turn these difficult core issues over to my Higher Power, and ask that whatever is in my best and highest good come about for myself and all parties involved, that the most amazing things happen. Oftentimes, the result is a resolution I had not even considered, which is one of the big benefits of surrendering to the Divine. My take is that we, as humans, often have way too limited a viewpoint as to what the possibilities are in a given situation, and thus don’t even consider what wonders might be out there just waiting for us.

So, exactly how do I go about surrendering to the Divine. Oftentimes, spiritual writers offer great advice, but if you don’t already naturally do whatever they’re suggesting, the advice for me has often not been very helpful. Since I didn’t have a feel for whatever was being suggested, I often found their words to be about as effective as saying…”If you just flap your arms hard enough, you could fly if you really wanted to!” What I really wanted to have heard back then would have been something along the lines of “Here’s how I did this…”, or “When you’re experiencing stress, I like to do ….”.As practitioners of Renaissance of the Heart, we try to offer useable spiritual advice whenever possible, yet at the same time, try not to conflict with those who already have practices and methods that work for them.

We teach many techniques in our workshops, but if you’re not inclined to take one now, or become a client for individual sessions, then my best advice would be to set your intention and say to the Universe…”I want to surrender this issue”. Then, try and still any inner voices, or as we say, “the itty, bitty, shitty committee”, that arise in your head.
These nay saying, nagging, doubting inner voices often stop us dead in our tracks when we even begin to try to use a healing technique.

To the above advice regarding stating your intent, I would add “State what you’d like to see happen, and then shut up and listen!” It’s the last half of this phrase that seems to be the most important for us. We’ve found that in many religions and spiritual disciplines, there’s an awful lot of praying and asking, but very little listening. We advise our clients that about 95% of their spiritual meditation time is optimally spent being still and quiet, waiting for an answer. Helping our clients develop their own way of receiving intuitive information is one of the more rewarding aspects of our healing practice.

I imagine there is a lot of discussion that can be generated about surrendering to the Divine, and stilling your mind to listen. We’ll have a lot more thoughts in future postings about how we see this taking place in our own lives, but we’d love to hear about how our readers accomplish this…or not. Please feel free to leave us a comment about your thoughts on these subjects, as we continue to build this community we call Renaissance of the Heart. http://www.hearthealing.net

To Be or Not To Be (in Your Heart)-Part 2

By Mary Pellicer, MD

The question we were left with from Part 1 of this post (9-17-2009), is how can I tell if I’m in my heart and by extension how might you tell if you’re in your heart? So let’s consider that. The first thing I notice is where my center of awareness is located. The center of awareness is the sense of where “you” are located within your body. One way to get a sense for this is to point your finger back at yourself (without touching your skin) and starting at the top of your head just run your finger down in front of your body and get a sense for where it feels like you are located. Your center of awareness will feel like you are pointing to “you”. Just for fun, you could try this with a friend and compare notes.

For myself for many, many years the only place I seemed to be located was right behind my eyes. Other places felt like they were part of my body, but it didn’t seem as if I was looking out of any other place than my eyes—which seemed perfectly natural and obvious to me. In fact, until I began doing this work, I didn’t think there was any other possibility. As it turns out, I was almost totally “in my head” with my awareness firmly seated there. Right now, doing this same exercise I feel like my awareness extends from the top of my head to my chest, pretty good for me. However, when I am stressed and not doing well, my awareness typically reverts to my original location of right behind my eyes. When people do this exercise there are many possibilities of where their awareness might be with the head , the heart region and the belly being the most common. However, occasionally people feel as if their center of awareness is located in an extremity and sometimes a person may not be in their body at all. Sometimes the center of awareness is very small and very hard to find, while other times it is spread throughout the whole body and even out into the surrounding environment.

So generally, when people are in their heart, their awareness is centered in their chest and if their awareness is quite expanded, it spreads out from there. The other hallmarks of being in one’s heart are a sense of peace and rightness, of calm and “being home”. Even if I am feeling very strong emotions, like sadness or anger, experiencing them from my heart has an underlying sense of acceptance and caring for myself while still having that emotion.

Also staying in your heart while having a strong emotion tends to allow it to dissipate and heal much more quickly than if you stay in your head for instance. Being in your head often will lead to judging yourself and the emotion (this is terrible, this will never go away, I deserve to feel this way, etc.) instead of just accepting and experiencing it. Emotions experienced from your heart center tend not to get stuck, they are acknowledged, experienced and then you move on.

While being in your heart may seem easy at first glance, in reality it is often very difficult for people because of their burden of unconsciously held trauma and stress. However, being aware of the concept and playing around with it and even asking the question “Am I in my heart?”, and checking for the signs that you are, can go a long way to making being in your heart an everyday reality.

From my heart to yours,
Mary