2009: My Year in a Nutshell

Today is one of the coldest days of the year. Which is exactly what Kinook, my ten year-old Akita-Chow dog likes.

This morning we took a long walk in the woods, at just a seven minutes drive up my street. The sky was pure, clear azure, and the sun was shining in all its glory, filtering down golden light through trees' branches. A couple of days ago we had freezing rain, and every tree and tree branch is still covered with a glossy film of ice. Kinook and I walked, having the whole space to ourselves to explore. We split the tasks: she explored the ground, and I, the treetops. While her wet nose was reading the snow and tree roots, my eyes stayed lifted up to the sky. The branches were glistening in the sun, looking, and in the perfect quiet stillness of the morning, sounding, like crystal chandeliers clinkering in the wind. It was a spectacular Light and Sound show.

I feel fortunate to have the time, the eyes and mind and heart and all that it takes to appreciate such beauty. December has provided me with a slow pace of contemplation.

The year, however, has started with a high-paced array of renewed activities. In January, I started exercising again, after a long break. I found my way in the fitness room, but after toying with machines for a while, I steered towards fitness classes. I discovered Zumba, the Latin fitness, and I LOVE it! With the right instructor, this is the most playful and sexy fitness I know of. I always laugh during the class, and have too much fun to realize what hard work it is.

A year ago I joined a social group, and this changed completely my Ottawa social life. Now I have one! So this year I have been partying and making up for all the years I hadn't. I have been singing karaoke, taking Cuban Salsa classes, bowling, mini golfing, camping, going to pool parties, home parties, picnic parties, you-name-it-parties. In June I went to my first camping trip in Canada. Raised my tent on my own for the first time ever! Tasted wilderness without showers. Noticed that the Sano Dai Israeli mosquito repellent does a great job repelling Canadian mosquitoes, but does nothing to deter the Great Canadian Black Fly from sinking its teeth in my flesh!

For the first four months of the year, I ran a pilot project called "The Love Workshops". The workshops were offered weekly in my Network Chiropractor's office downtown, and they covered all Love aspects from erotic love to spiritual love, passion, flirting, the masculine and feminine energies, communication skills and more. They were extremely successful, with groups size around eighteen, twenty something, sometimes thirty people. Most of the participants were members of my social group, where I advertised. My reputation went ahead of me, and they decided to nickname me the "Love Guru". I had a wonderful time with the Love workshops, and I am now working on taking them from experiment to lucrative. Stay tuned!

After half a year of having the time of my life, the ceiling fell. Seriously, and literally. In July we had some heavy rains, and an old roof leak caused part of the living room ceiling to collapse, revealing mold. Mold can be toxic, and neuro-toxic (affecting the nervous system). The bad news is that I went crazy inhaling the thing. The good news is, this was an old problem that got revealed – 'the bubble burst!- so I could solve it.

It had been quite some time that I was sensing a funny odor in the house. With a hole in the ceiling, I recognized the smell, and now it was strong and pungent. This was just what I needed to get me off my ass, and even get Jeff off his, and clean the house, and change everything I wanted to change and never did. I tore away all the carpeting in the house, and I gratefully found real hardwood floor underneath! Then, we called the Mice-Busters because we had mice infestation, and when we cleaned the basement, and disturbed them, they looked for new nests upstairs. We hired the "Humane Wildlife Control" guys, who block the entrances and install one-way exits for the little buggers. So the house becomes mice-free, and nobody gets hurt.

Mold, mice, dirt, cobwebs, you-name-it, it was there. I faced my worst nightmares. I was cleaning the house, and crying. Crying and cleaning. I felt like Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom. I had some help with the work, but still did a lot of ripping, tearing, lifting, carrying, moving, sweeping, mopping and painting. Reorganized the house too! Jeff's toy soldiers moved downstairs. His room is in the Marriage area of the house according to Feng-Shui. One day, after dreaming that I was violently killing Jeff, he agreed to remove the soldiers. I could feel the hostility tension leaving with every batch that returned to its box; and felt increasing affection inside. Even Jeff, who 'doesn't believe in these things' can tell the difference. Jeff has now the downstairs, where I used to teach my classes. He turned the rec (recreation) room into his den, He decorated it with his Northern art, and of course, battle scenes; the toy soldiers are doing a good job keeping us safe from basement demons J I got my upstairs office back, all mine now, and made it cozy, with a lazy-boy chair, candy dish, exotic décor, candles and incense. It's just the best place for creativity. The office is in the 'children and creativity' area of the house (Feng-Shui stuff).

The living room was the last to get fixed. In the meantime, we have a new roof (I think of the metaphor of having a new roof over my head), new ceiling and walls in the living room, new feel about the house, and even a new car (a Toyota Yaris 2008). It has certainly been a year of renewal (and renovation).

The living room has been already tested: it has amazingly pure and clear energy for my Reiki classes, and for meditation and yoga. The energy in the entire house feels light, bright and clear. I enjoy being at home, and now that the hardest work is behind me, and I recovered from the mold and stress induced craziness, I am basking in the fruit of all this work. I am very, very grateful.

In September I spent ten days in a retreat with Swami Satyam, my Kryiayoga guru from India. Ate vegan, did my practice, and I must confess that keeping up with my practice makes a difference. Kryiayoga is very powerful stuff, and I am fortunate to have found it. One of the Kryiayoga tricks is the direction of the eye gazing: up, looking ahead to a space in front of my forehead. I have noticed that when I put myself in a negative self-talk trance (in plain English, when I think bad thoughts), my eyes point down. The moment I catch myself doing it, I lift the eyes, and I snap right out of the trance. Changing the eye gazing direction changes my internal state.

November was an exhilarating month for me. On October 31^st, I found out about the NaNoWriMo or "National Novel Writing Month" contest, which was starting the next day, on November 1^st. I had thirty days to write a novel of at least 50,000 words – no revising or editing, just right-brain writing. Quantity, not quality. I had wanted all my life to write, and every time something seemed to be in the way. Too much of this, too little of that. Well, it is amazing what I can do when presented with a deadline. I wrote my book and had a draft of 55,000 words in 27 days! I won! Now I have a draft to complete, revise, edit and publish, plus ideas for the next books! I noticed that the more I write, the easier it gets. I 'flush' the creativity channel. I also have the feeling that writing books is like giving birth to children. The first one is the hardest, and then the next ones just pop out. I can't wait to find out!

December has been a sweet, easy month, sprinkled with snow, Hanukah candles, more parties, and shopping. I love the first snows, the virgin fluffs that crunch under my steps. It's Kinook's favourite time of the year. If in the summer she refuses to get out of the car because it's either raining, or too hot, or too scary because of fireworks and fire crackers, well, in the winter she refuses to return to the car after our walk. I call her, keep the door open for her like a valet, and this little stubborn monkey-face goes towards the opposite direction, 'cause there's yet another paw-print or pee-print she has to sniff.

In the middle of the month, I received a humongous package from Israel, filled with funky, adorable clothes. My friend Dana sent it to me, and I was in the Ninth Heaven unpacking and trying them on. Ottawa's fashion carries both a Victorian and North-American capital flavour in its signature, rendering it too austere for my taste. The Israeli fashion is nonchalant, feminine and playful; it made me both homesick and uplifted to wear clothes with 'a taste from home'.

All throughout the year I have been in touch with friends, local and overseas, thanks to technology. In November I bought a Bezek (Israeli phone company) service that gives me a local Tel Aviv phone number, so now anyone in Israel can call me at no cost! Is this good, or good? I am a people person, and I need people like I need air. Which is why I am writing this, so I can feel you closer to me, to my heart, by sharing my 2009 adventures with you.

And I wish you a New Year filled with blessings and joy of all kinds; a luminous, prosperous year for you and yours. May you grow in your human and spiritual capacity, integrally, and in the flow; and may you always know greater freedom and greater happiness. May your life be full and meaningful. I am glad you are in my life, and caring to read this. I am grateful.

Happy New Year! With lots of Love,

Tana

Passion

Excerpt from my book: "Finding Passion: a Woman's Journey from Ouch and Blah to WOW!"

"Looking back at events in my life, even as memories are filtered through time, I notice how some events are remembered as good and others as bad. Things are far from being black and white. Yet, whenever I dream of myself working at the bank, it's a nightmare. Whenever I think of a certain lover, it's a pleasure. If any sadness arises, it stems from not having his love and presence in my experience right now.

Oh, eroticism is madness, it is the madness of the ego amplified and magnified, and projected upon another. And yet this bittersweet addiction is luring and tantalizing, and giving shape and color to all that it means to be human. How hollow a walking and talking a carcass of a human is without the passion. Bitter, hardened, righteously resentful minds are clouding the skies of life on frowned faces and pursed lips. Repressed and disowned sexuality and sensuality turns us humans into walking zombies: here but not quite here. Repression and denial is eating away at our bodies' health from within, either covering us in layers of blubber that wrap us like hideous sacks, or sucking us dry like raisins; unable to feel, constipated and dry.

But the greatest poetry and the most magnificent symphonies have been created from the madness of being fully alive, shamelessly exuberant, fully incarnated and anchored in this world, celebrating life and humanity with all its ups and downs and light and dark and dramas and comedies.

Take away the passion, and we cease to exist. I am not saying it's bad to cease to exist. Most enlightened minds have pursued cessation of incarnation, stopping this cycle of samsara and 'graduating' from humanity into other expressions of the eternal. All I am saying is that through this passion, our humanity is shaped.

I choose passion because I choose to be alive: alive, juicy, sultry, cheeky, and very, very human.

© Tana Saler, December 2009. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

Clairsentience

Ten years ago, when reading my first Reiki book, the corners of my mouth went down, eyebrows up, and my head was nodding. They authors were talking about scanning energy with the hands.

Feeling anything with my hands was an 'interesting concept' for me at the time. I told myself 'not in a million years'. But the fact of the matter is, with non-physical channels of perceptions such as the ones in the center of the palms, reading energy is as easy as opening your eyes and looking around.

Your perception has five physical channels of perception – sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste – and several non-physical ones. You live in an ocean of pulsating energy, moving at various frequencies and wavelengths. Of all the information around you, you become aware of that which you pay attention to, when you tune in. If you look at it, you see it. Listen to it, and you'll hear it. Touch it, and you'll feel it. Tune in with your non-physical channels of perception and you'll read it.

Which is exactly what students of Reiki learn during their first level of training.

Each channel of perception, physical or non, specializes in a particular range of vibration. You are likely aware that sound, color and scent are energy. And you are certainly aware that you can't smell Mozart or listen to purple or see sour. That's because from the ocean of energy out there, the eyes tune in a particular range, send the signal to the brain, and the brain interprets it as color, or image. Same with sound: the ears receive a vibration which moves parts of your inner ear, which send information to the brain, and the brain interprets it as Mozart, or a motorbike, or a bell, or whatever you are tuning in.

This is exactly what happens with the non-physical channels of your perception, if you know how to use them and how to interpret the information.

Clairvoyance, clairaudience and clairsentience are terms that describe people who have cultivating the ability to tune in, read and interpret subtle energies, those vibrations that are not obvious to your senses. Since much of the subtle energies are thoughts and emotions, reading them informs you of the mental and emotional quality of other people, objects, spaces, and even books! As you navigate through life, learning, growing and contributing, this can mean for your choices the same as opening your eyes when you drive your car.

This is why you would benefit from taking the Reiki training. After only one day of class, you are able to identify subtle energies and discern which of them are supportive of your goals, and which are less. Which people are in harmony with you, and which are less. Which foods agree with you, and which agree less. What living and working spaces are like in your life.

Reading energy is the first step before moving it. If you like a physically clean home and office, you will LOVE an energetically clean space for you to live, work, and love in.

Learn more on how you can learn Reiki now by clicking the links below:

http://www.tanasaler.com/reiki_classes_&_training.htm

http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e2mk6m709c7876b1

Brightest blessings,

Tana

Clear Ways

Who would have thought that home improvements can be so distressful and exhilarating in the same time?

It started with the heavy rains in July. When a part of the ceiling fell, something switched inside me, and I found myself cleaning and scrubbing and changing everything I wanted changed in the house, but had postponed for a long time. If you think facing an angry boss or distant husband is difficult enough, try facing mold, mice, cobwebs, a leaking roof, and a husband who would rather play computer games than clean house. I literally faced my worst nightmares, cleaning and changing and upgrading the house with my own hands. Yes, I had some extra – very able! – hands helping me. The whole process was extremely demanding physically and mentally. It kept me awake at night, away from my beloved social life, away from my beloved practice.

The whole menagerie of inner demons awoke: frustration, fears, anger, discouragement and sheer fatigue. I visited Dr. Paul Newton, my Network chiropractor, more often than usual. I took antioxidants and took some time away at a kryiayoga retreat. All this helped. But I don't know where I'd be without EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), Reiki, the Shadow Work and all the other tools I have used every day during this time. Looking out through my (crystal clear) window, I ask myself how do people cope with intense emotions without these tools.

Beginning with this Fall, Clear Ways workshops are offered to learn, practice and clarify EFT, Shadow Work and more. The workshops are offered to my clients and students, who, having seen progress in their life with our work in sessions together, would like to speed up the pace of growth by applying the tools at home, autonomously. They are also perfect for those who wish to sample the effectiveness of personal growth methods. During the Clear Ways workshops, there will be explanations on how the tools work, time for practice and for questions and answers. The workshops take place in the evenings, 6:30 – 8:00 pm. Participation fee is $ 15.- and you are welcome to bring guests.

For the Clear Ways workshop schedule, visit www.tanasaler.com/calendar

 

Raw-cipes for Love

Raw food is the nutrition craze that is spreading like wildfire. In a nutrition world of mixed messages (some tell you to only eat cooked food, others – only raw) – I've been experimenting, carefully monitoring my levels of energy, mental clarity, sexual energy, creative flow and emotional stability.

I am impressed how much higher I score in all departments when I eat mostly raw food. Pleasuring my taste buds and emotions used to be my primary goal when eating. For the past few years, food has become primarily fuel and medicine; but since I still like my food to be appealing to the senses, I have been playing with easy to make, delicious recipes. Here are two of them:

Raw Ciorba

(Pronounced tchor-buh)

Ciorba is the Romanian sour thick soup of my childhood, usually made with root vegetables, chicken, meat or fish, and rice.

Mix in a blender:

• 1-2 leaves of either kale, collard or chard
  
• Juice from ½ lemon
  
• Optional: 1 tbsp Ume-Su (Umeboshi Vinegar)
  
• 2 large tomatoes
  
• 1-2 small (Lebanese) cucumbers or 1 English cuke
  
• Fresh herbs: parsley, dill, etc. For an authentic Romanian flavour, chop and add a handful of Lovage. Lovage seems to be more popular in Quebec, but I found mine at the Wheat Berry health food store on Main Street. Lovage (in Romanian: Leushtean) is said to be an aphrodisiac, hence the name!
  
• ½ red, orange or yellow pepper
  
• ½ small onion
  
• 1 garlic clove
  
• ½ cup walnuts (they will give the texture of 'as if' rice
  
• 2-4 cups water to taste, making your ciorba as thick as you like
  
• Pepper to taste. My favourite spice is Mrs. Dash
  

Pour in soup bowls, garnish with parsley et voila!

 

Berry Pop'O'Tana

 

My usual natural pop is a mix of orange juice with Perrier, plus cranberry juice and a splash of lemon juice. But the other day I ran out of orange juice, and decided that if I don't have bread, I'll eat cake. So I took some berries out of the freezer, and made myself the most delicious smoothie-pop ever!

Blend together:

• Two cups of frozen berries. Costco has huge bags of mixed blueberries, blackberries and raspberries.
  
• Splash of lemon juice
  
• ¼ cup cranberry juice. My favourite is the not-from-concentrate "Just Juice" brand I buy at Loblaws, in the health food section
  
• After blending well, add ½l Perrier or other fizzy mineral water, and blend with a quick pulse on your blender
  

Pour in tall glasses, decorate with slices of lemon, lime and mint leaves, and enjoy!

Energy of Language

We were all seated at the same table at Adela's wedding: my ex-boyfriend, Vince, his new girlfriend Suzie, a few other common friends, and myself.

The music started, and I almost flipped over when Vince invited Suzie to dance.

He never wanted to dance with me. Neither did Adrian, a few years back – but then I bumped into him later, as he was escorting a young woman home from a dance!

It took me years to figure out the puzzle: why were these men willing to do for other women something they never cared doing for me? When I understood myself better, and the verbal and non-verbal communication cues I was sending out, I did the one-hand clap (slapping my forehead) and groaned.

Then I learned to ask for what I wanted in a specific way – different than I was used to. As a result, not only did the people in my life agree to meet my needs, but they also felt great about it too. It turned out that people enjoyed greatly contributing to my happiness – and they still do. The world hasn't changed. My communication has.

Here is what I discovered: when I ask someone to do something for me, my attitude will cause them to either say 'yes' or 'no'. Attitude reflects the inner state one is, and communication is simply and expression of one's energy. I'll show you what I mean:

Think of one thing you have recently asked a loved one, family member or friend to do for you. Was it a request, with 'no' as an acceptable option? Or was it a demand – which means 'You do it or else!'? And what was your mental expectation as you were asking for what you wanted? Did you expect your needs to be met? Or did you think the other would say 'no' to you, and you'd end up – again – frustrated? Either way, your words and body language gave away your mind.

Think about it the other way: someone asks you for a favour. They are stressed, irritated, and say something like 'Are you ever going to do that for me, like I've been asking you for the past two weeks?' How will you respond? But if they say to you instead: 'Do you know how happy I'd be if you did that for me?' – wouldn't you at least consider it? I know I would!

I share my language discoveries and secrets at the Energy of Language workshop. If you would like to get people to please you and feel great about it too, visit the calendar at www.tanasaler.com for the date of the next Energy of Language workshop!

In the meantime, when you ask people for favours, make sure that:

• Yours is a request and not a demand; make peace with either a 'yes' or a 'no'
  
• You only ask if you think they might say yes
  
• You share with the other what need of yours their positive response is fulfilling
  
• You show sincere appreciation for their effort
  

I am so excited at the thought of seeing you at the workshop because I love contributing to the quality of your life!

Lovingly Yours,

Tana

Eros to Agape

Since I remember myself, I had this unquenchable longing for a kind of love that was a 'je ne sais quoi', that – I thought – the right man or the right circumstances could fulfill. I made any single relationship mistake possible (I'm so glad I had them all covered by now) and tried everything short of sitting on my head to find true, fulfilling love.

I always found something – a spark of care, a friendship, or sizzling hot passion – but there was always something else missing. Adrian was caring, but he didn't like dancing. Cesar danced but he was secretive and emotionally distant. Benny was affectionate and emotionally available, and a creative, generous lover, but culturally and intellectually, we were worlds apart. Then came T. T was intellectually and culturally on the same page as me, but we could not light the fire of passion between us, if our lives depended on it. I was still hungry and longing for something deeply fulfilling, wondering how to get to it. Been there?

This quest for fulfilling love and belonging had me search and research, reflect and question, and do a lot of growing as a person, and as a lover. I stopped looking for perfection, but instead, I have been simply looking for fulfilling my potential.

If the human potential to love another is 100%, then that's what I want to experience and express, and maybe even expand that potential too. If my ability to relate to a man is like a piano keyboard, then I want to play a symphony of love, playing all the keys. My quest is a symphony of love, or a full-spectrum love, vibrant, colorful and alive.

Loving Adrian was half an octave or two colors. Cesar: half an octave. Green and blue. Benny: one octave an a half, red, blue, yellow. One-night stands: index fingers playing two notes ad nauseam, on grey.

So here is what I found: Love is a flow that permeates all that is. Just like ice, fluid and vapor are all different forms of water, love too can take different forms. At one end of the spectrum there is Eros, at the other: Agape.

Erotic love is to Love what Ice is to Water. Erotic love is the hot, sizzling passion that lures the Masculine Yang and the Feminine Yin energies in the embrace that possesses, haunts, takes over one's nights and one's appetite, consumes and creates.

Agape – Greek for 'spiritual love' (Metta in Sanskrit) is the all embracing love, love that uplifts, liberates, relinquishes. Agape can be found in your own heart, through meditation and other spiritual practices, through parenting and community work, through selfless, generous giving. I found Agape through Reiki, after my first ever Reiki training and attunement.

Eros identifies and possesses; Agape relinquishes and embraces; and the hunger is for both, because one without the other is as incomplete as Earth without Sky, form without Spirit, human without Soul.

Connecting through Eros, then letting go into Agape, then holding on again in erotic passion is how we grow; and how many teachers are there to show us the way? The Buddha of compassion, the Dalai Lama teaches us spiritual love, but he can't tell you and I the first thing about sex. Ruth Westheimer and Sue Johanson, on the other hand, are masters of sexual function and they can tell you exactly what to insert where, but all that stays skin deep.

This is how the Love Workshops on Monday nights were born. I decided to create a venue to share all that I have learned and discovered. In this blog I intend to share with you my experiences and insights, and I look forward hearing from you with your own wisdom, observations, experiences and questions on Love.

To find out the topic for the next Love Workshop, visit the calendar at www.tanasaler.com

With Agape :-)

Tana