Learn some things you can do to heal yourself. From asking the right questions, forgiveness, prayer, and getting support. Many thanks to my friend and host Dorothy Ross for inviting me to talk story with her.
Women Rocking Life Interview

Did you know gratitude is good for your health? Probably you've believed so but the news is that there are now scientific studies that support it and give us an inkling how.

The feeling of gratitude stimulates the production and release of a “neurotransmitter cocktail” of serotonin and dopamine that make you feel good. At the same time it reduces stress hormones.
This results in better sleep, mental concentration, lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, and improved kidney function. Hmm… in Chinese medicine the kidneys correlate with the emotion of fear.

The research has shown that people who practice gratitude tend to take better care of themselves. They exercise more and eat more balanced diets.

Practicing gratitude stimulates the development of a particular cortex of the brain associated with positive thoughts and well being. Practicing gratitude then creates a habit of gratitude that gets literally hardwired into your brain.

So practice gratitude not only on Thanksgiving Day, but every day for your health and happiness!

Have a blessed Thanksgiving,

Support was vital for me in my cancer journey. I don’t think I could have made it without it. On the cancer journey it’s so easy to get discouraged and depressed, to feel you can’t relate to the healthy people around you enjoying their normal lives. It’s easy to feel left behind. I found that having people around me who cared, honored my choices, pitched in, and prayed for me, was like wind beneath my wings.

I was very blessed to be part of a very loving, supportive spiritual community. These people helped me in many ways, giving time, money, love, and encouragement. I had no idea how much I was loved until I had cancer. It was by seeing me through their eyes that I learned to love myself. I learned a valuable lesson about receiving, that it is a gift to the giver. Their unconditional acceptance gave me the safe space to work through all the issues the cancer had brought to my attention to heal. This contributed greatly to my healing and my growth.

There were also people in my life, mostly family members, who had a hard time trusting my choices because they were too close to me. I made the difficult choice to avoid some of them for a time while I was healing because I didn’t have the energy to deal with their fears. In retrospect I see that the avoidance was a kindness to them as well as to me, as I let go of expecting something from them they couldn’t give.

It is good to take the time to look at the people in your life and become aware of who can support you and how. I found it helped to let go of expectations, and just have faith. You may be surprised where and how the support will show up!

Because support is so powerful and vital to healing, I created a Facebook group where people facing cancer can gather to give and receive support and encouragement to keep a positive mindset – and you are invited to join!

The intention of this community is to create a safe place where we can get positive mirroring, to receive, to be understood, and to share what we find helpful in maintaining a healing mindset. A place to share our victories, and to bring up our challenges. I will bring in my knowledge with tips, tools, and exercises to help you along.

Together we are stronger! Join us!

Throughout my cancer journey, and at other times in my life, I used questions to get clear about what was the next step to take. With the cancer challenge it was especially crucial in getting clear and staying positive that I could heal. Since then I have refined the art of question through working with Access Consciousness.  Watch this short video to learn how you can use question to get guidance and open yourself to more possibilities.

Would you like to learn more? Subscribe to my newsletter to know when my next introductory workshop will be happening.
Blessings be on your healing journey,
Rita

Greetings my friends,
We all have those days when we get discouraged, when we're not feeling so good, and maybe downright scared. In this video I share a simple technique to shift your mindset to thoughts of healing by inviting the Divine Light to fill you.
This is just one of many tools you will be introduced to in my upcoming introductory virtual event. Stay tuned!

“It is not your passing inspirations or your brilliant ideas so much as your everyday mental habits that control your life.”
– Paramahansa Yogananda – The Law of Success

Keeping a strong positive can-do mindset makes a huge difference in your ability to heal. Arouse your inner healing power and keep it stoked by cultivating daily habits and interests that bolster your spirit and motivate your will.

Release stress and toxic emotions.
Negative emotions, when not positively dealt with, weaken the will. Research has shown that fear and anger have negative effects on the body. Did you know that anger immediately causes congestion in the liver? Fear causes the release of stress hormones which suppress the immune system. Deep breathing, exercise, and laughter all work to physiologically calm the stress response and boost the spirit.

Take time out for you.
Regularly step back from life to calm down, get perspective and to renew your spirit. Treat yourself to a day in nature or at the spa. Choose a daily practice such as meditation, yoga, tai chi, spiritual study, or journaling. Read something inspiring every day. Avoid mental junk food of TV, Internet, and gossip. Notice which mental inputs uplift, and which ones bring you down.

Surround yourself with supportive friends and family.
Have people around you whose company you truly enjoy, who inspire and uplift you, and whom you can call on when you need support. It’s your turn to receive at this time, and no doubt you have enriched and helped others before, and know how good it feels to give. Now they get the opportunity to give to you! When you graciously receive, you are completing the gifting circuit while doubling their pleasure in giving.

There are people in our lives who nourish us, and there are those that drain us. This is a time to take care of you, not to take others’ burdens. For me, it was a time to let go of the need to make things right for everybody else, and to trust that they have within themselves their own solutions. This sounds selfish, but it serves to empower others to discover their own strength and inner abilities. Maybe the question is, how often are we “helping” others to make ourselves more comfortable? Your gift to them could be your confidence in them that they can find their own way.

Find activities that you enjoy that will fill your life with meaning. Maybe take a class, or start a new hobby, or a service activity. Plan something to look forward to. A visit with grandkids? A trip you have dreamed about? What can you add to your life that would make you excited to get up in the morning?

Keep your body feeling good with regular sleep and healthy food. Pay attention to what you eat, and notice what foods make you feel good, and what foods do not. Fresh fruits and vegetables tend to lighten the mood. Be aware of when you are trying to feed something other than your body, and how your mood can affect your food choices. It’s likely that you will choose food to match the mood you are indulging!

Exercise gets you happy and energized, and it keeps your body and the immune system strong. The trick to being regular is to find some exercise that you enjoy. Do you like dancing, yoga, or bicycling? Many forms of exercise get you outside and with people. I found all that in outrigger canoe paddling, and I look forward to my time on the water with my paddler friends.

During my cancer challenge, I put together an ‘emergency toolkit’ for those tough days when I’d get overwhelmed and scared. I kept in the kit handy slogans, prayers, inspirations, and empowering questions like “What would it take to change this?” I had a mental list of people I could reach out to, and activities that are grounding and calming.

My #1 tool was to remind myself that death was not an option. I would pray, and reach out for support. I would take a walk and breathe in the air. If I felt stuck, I’d ask an empowering question such as, What would it take to change this? Or, What else is possible? In keeping the question in mind, eventually an awareness would come to me that would lead to a shift, a possibility, a next step.

What could you put in your emergency toolkit? A saying, a mantra, a prayer, an empowering question? Do you have friends you can call on? Sacred objects? Inspirational books or recordings?

What are you doing today to maintain your positive attitude? And if you have lost it, what can you do to get it back? What will it take for you to have a great day?

Please do something positive and nurturing for yourself today. You will be pleasantly surprised how much better you can feel, how much better your life can be, and how much your body will benefit.

Learn how you can master the positive mindset and supercharge your inner healing power as I did to turn around stage 4 cancer. Put yourself on the path to wellness with my Six Keys to Empowered Healing program.

Blessings,
Rita

Every creature knows exactly what it needs to heal and thrive and be safe. Wild animals seek medicinal herbs when they’re ill. They can sense when a tsunami is coming and will head to higher ground well before it hits.

Your body has the same ability. It can tell you what it needs to heal, to thrive, to be safe. Perhaps you’ve experienced this when you get a craving for some food that when you eat it, you feel totally satisfied; or when you are saved by a hesitation to step into that intersection where a moment later a car runs the red light.

Did you also know your body knows everything about you? After all, it’s been your constant companion since birth. It has witnessed and recorded everything you experienced. It remembers everything whether you do or not. All your thoughts, feelings, and emotions are stored in the tissues of your body, affecting your state of health for better or worse.

How is it we are not so tuned in like the wild creature? How is it that we are not aware much of the time what we are really feeling?

Many of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions are not pleasant, and certainly pain isn’t either. Human beings tend to judge pain as bad and something to be avoided, unlike the wild creature who perceives pain as purely information. So we turn off the pain through distractions and/or drugs and cut ourselves off from valuable information we need to heal.

Some of us are taught to be ashamed of our bodies, or at least certain parts; that somehow physicality is ungodly and to be avoided, that the body is the devil’s workshop. Certain emotions are believed to be negative and thus are to be denied when they arise. So we learn to suppress our sexual instincts and negative emotions instead of learning to harness and transmute them.

We human beings are taught to judge our bodies constantly. We are taught there is a desirable way to look. We judge how well our bodies perform in sports and dance, so we can’t just enjoy the game or the dance.

Judgment creates separation. When we judge we separate ourselves from who or what we are judging, even from our own selves, our own bodies.

Can you imagine an animal or a small child judging how it’s playing, or how it looks? It just enjoys the play. It just enjoys being. That is natural for us until we are taught to judge.
How can a body be happy when being judged and suppressed so much – even hated?

If you have found that you relate to a lot of this, you are not alone. This is the sad reality of the average human being.

I got cancer being so cut off from my body. I did not love my body. I feared its attractiveness. The cancer was a wake up call that got me paying attention to my precious body. I started to tune into it because I knew it knew what it needed to do to survive. I based my choices for healing on what my body was telling me. It told me what it needed physically, and it also told me what I needed to heal emotionally. I got clear what it likes to eat, and changed to a more agreeable diet. I embraced and healed buried dark emotions. It changed my life. And as I continue to heal my relationship with my body, my life keeps getting better.

I invite you to take some time to be with your body. Settle into a quiet place, and listen to the breath and the heartbeat. Appreciate the miracle of life coursing through your body. Scan your body; visit each part working from the feet up. Give it some love. You may be drawn to spend time with one part. You may ask if it has anything to say to you. Yes, start up a conversation.

Find out what your body has been wanting you to know. Find out from it what it needs to be happy and healthy. Does it need to dance, or go to the beach? Does it need to cry? Would it like a massage? Discover as you love your body more how much more it can support you in creating a richer life.

Lately I’ve become aware how much I’ve neglected and abused my body. Feeling a need to make up for it I’ve started to do the Hawaiian practice of healing and forgiveness called Ho’oponopono with my body. It’s changing my relationship with my body like nothing else has.

I’m using this very simple version of it:

                    I’m sorry.
                           Forgive me.
                                          I love you.
                                                         Thank you.

This practice is powerfully healing. Do it with your body, with yourself, and when you are having difficulty with another person. Simply repeat it until you feel a shift. Please feel free to share about your experience!

Love and blessings,
Rita

What have you not forgiven that is diminishing your life today?

It is said that to err is human, and to forgive is divine. The act of forgiveness is not easy, but it is the most spiritually empowering and liberating and healing thing you can do.

Forgiveness does not make what happened okay. It does not leave the offender off the hook. Forgiveness is simply a choice to let go of the negative feelings harbored against the offender or situation.

I discovered the power of forgiveness and how liberating it is when I was able to let go of a childhood trauma. The moment I chose to see it as simply something that happened, that wasn’t about who I am or who the offender was, and to have no anger about it, I was instantly healed of the wound that had emotionally crippled me for over forty years. I am no longer affected by what happened to me so many years past.

I have come to understand that Jesus had not chosen to forgive those that crucified him, there would have been no Resurrection. In my instant of forgiveness I was resurrected from a suppurating wound that had crucified me for over forty years.

Resentment ties up and consumes tremendous amounts of the body’s energy or life force. In her book Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, Caroline Myss relates to our reserves of life force as a cellular bank account.  Tremendous amounts of energy is consumed by holding onto hurts and traumas, which depletes our cellular bank account, inviting depression and illness. When we release the negativity, our cellular bank account can fill up again so we can begin to heal.

Cancer can be said to be an illness of hidden anger and resentment. We don’t like to admit we are angry, because nice people don’t get angry. In my case, I uncovered a river of unexpressed, unacknowledged rage beneath my niceness. In seeing what thoughts and feelings I was harboring deep inside, it was no wonder I was sick!

What is it costing you to hold onto the story and the resentment? What is it costing you to push the anger down? In terms of peace of mind, of health?

I invite you to take a deeper look, even though it’s uncomfortable, maybe downright painful, because it’s so well worth it. Later on I will share with you a simple clearing technique to help you get through to the other side and begin to experience the sweet release of forgiveness, and hopefully, your own resurrection.

First, take a deep breath please,                                     
and call in your Source of Light and Love.

Now consider the resentments you hold.

See that as long as you seek to hold the offender in bondage by your resentment, you imprison yourself. Are you secretly feeling superior because you hold the expectation that this person is evil and continues to do this evil? Is your resentment so toxic you cannot wish salvation for your offender? And how much is that costing you? Can you consider the possibility that forgiveness creates space for the wrongdoer to heal as well, sparing future victims? Are you willing to release this person now and invite them to rise to a higher level and thus unravel the story that you hold so dear, and thus free yourself?

And have you considered that perhaps you invited this to happen to you as a way to grow and evolve or fulfill some higher purpose? Can you let go of the guilt and shame and judgment that keeps you stuck in the same story? In releasing shame and blame, you are healed and free to move on.

Perhaps the most important person to forgive is yourself. In my experience I find it very healing- and humbling- to let go of judgments of my own mistakes and own my human imperfection. This frees me to be able to let go of my defense of justification and blaming and take responsibility for my own part with compassion for myself and the other party. What are you not forgiving yourself about that, if you would forgive yourself, would release you from the never ending cycle of shame and blame?

In forgiving myself and others I have healed body, mind, and spirit. As I keep forgiving, I have more and more peace in my life, and more freedom. And it gets easier to let go of negative patterns! I know I would not be alive today if I had not made that choice to forgive and to keep forgiving.

Clearing of resentment*
With every past hurt or whenever you are triggered by someone else’s behavior say:
“How much and in how many ways have I done this same thing to others? Everywhere I have done that throughout eternity will I destroy and uncreate it all?”

Release it now, give it up to Source.

This is very healing not only for yourself but for anyone you have hurt at any time, and releases you from the victim pattern.
You can also do this to release wrongs you have done in the past, which helps release you from the pattern of repeating the same behavior.

In her bestseller You Can Heal Your Life, Louise Hay tells how she healed herself of cancer with natural treatments and her inner mental healing. Along with cleansing her body and cleaning up her diet, she cleaned up inwardly, releasing old hurts and forgiving childhood abuse, and learned to love herself. She was clear that if she did not do the inner work, she would not have gotten over the cancer.

In her book she states the probable mental issues underlying cancer are deep hurt, longstanding resentment, deep secret or grief eating away at self, carrying hatreds, and a sense of hopelessness- of 'what’s the use'. Do any of these resonate?

Here is her affirmation to heal cancer:


I lovingly release and forgive all the past.
I choose to fill my world with joy.
I love and approve of myself.


Let go of everything that doesn’t allow you to do all that.

Love and blessings,
Rita

Most people are quick to invest their time and money in doctors, treatments, and supplements when they get sick, looking for the magic bullet to make them well again. Few think to look within themselves. Yet that is where your greatest healing power lies.

Just days after my cancer diagnosis I was gifted with this story. A woman with terminal cancer was at a workshop led by medical intuitive and author Caroline Myss. The woman was so ill and weak she had to be wheeled in on a bed. At one point in the workshop, Caroline Myss led an exercise on forgiveness. At the end of the exercise, to everyone’s amazement, this woman got up off the bed, and said, “Thank you very much,” and walked out of the room. The next year when Caroline Myss returned, this same woman greeted her at the airport.

This story impressed upon me deeply the power of inner work and forgiveness in healing, and I took it as a message particularly relevant to me.

That impression proved itself to be true.

As the years go by that separate my cancer experience from the present, I think less and less of the physical challenges, and less and less of the fear and anxiety that was constant at least at a low level.
More and more I see and appreciate the beautiful unfolding of the inner healing I experienced: the letting go of old stories allowing my true essence to emerge more fully, the love and prayers and help of those that cared about me that taught me to love myself, enjoying the freedom from the shadows that I faced and triumphed over, and the en-‘lighten’-ment I gained in forgiving myself and others, all enabling me to rise up out of my bed of limitation, unhappiness, and self-pity, and to walk with more peace, joy, new possibilities, and immense gratitude.

During my cancer journey I did go to doctors, did treatments, healthy diet, and supplements – all the right things to help my body heal. But these things did only so much. I had to dig deep inside to release whatever darkness kept me ill, by going to healers and therapists, doing inner processes at workshops and at home – whatever it took, layer by layer, until finally I broke through the most difficult challenge of having to forgive myself. Then with one short juice cleanse, the cancer left me and never came back.

The scarier the shadow, the more healing power is released when the shadow is faced. Go for it and tackle the scariest one; that will be the most liberating! Don’t wait for a life threatening illness to make you do your inner healing – do it now- it’s the best preventive medicine. Even better, your whole life will change for the better and you will be much happier.