Juanita Lepage MSW, RSW, BHP

Counselling & Energy Healing (289) 812-8089 Hamilton, Ontario

Chakras

Third Chakra 101

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Every year when the Forsythia starts to bloom in my back yard, I breathe a sigh of relief that Spring is officially here (not that March 21 nonsense). Gorgeous yellow flowers that will warm my heart for 3-4 weeks until summer weather arrives.

Forsythia

Forsythia always remind of the third chakra. And every year I think about writing about that, and today is the day! Today I’m going to keep it simple for anyone wanting to learn more about their third chakra. If you’re brand new to chakras, I encourage you to start with my post – Anatomy of Energy Healing (Energy Healing 101).

Location

The third chakra is located in your solar plexus, above your belly button and below your ribs. Each chakra opens in 2 directions – the front of your body and the back of your body.

Colour

Vibrant sunshiney yellow! It can vary in brightness and hue.

Daffodils

Biological Functions

The simplest way to connect the chakras to biological functions is to notice what key organs and body parts are located near that chakra. This organ is strongly connected to digestion. Organs in this area include stomach, intestines, liver, pancreas, gall bladder, kidneys, adrenals and spleen (A lot of organs!). Research has shown that our nervous system is connected to this area too.

Psychological Functions

The front-facing third chakra is connected to your sense of who you are in the world. It is connected to our relationship with our personal power.Your back-facing third chakra is connected towards your intention towards your physical health.

Dandelions are prettiest in the Spring

Element

The third chakra is associated with the sun. There is fire energy in this place. Personal power and taking steps towards your physical and emotional well-being require energy. It matches the energy of Spring and Summer, where energy starts to move again after a slowing down during Autumn and Winter. You can see this as people start to exercise more, get outside and become more social.

How To Nourish Your Third Chakra

The third chakra is associated with digestion, both physically and psychologically. Healthy eating and exercise are both helpful for this area. This does not need to be dramatic to have a positive impact on your third chakra – it is about starting to do even one thing differently in your life.

If you’re the type of person who thrives on doing – then sometimes nourishing yourself will be the action of rest or slowing down. Again – it’s not about stopping all the things you do, it’s about adding more rest or slowness into your life.

If you have stomach issues or digestive issues, reflect on areas in your life that you are having trouble digesting. Seek out help in moving this area or bringing healing to them – psychotherapy is a great way to help digest these areas in your life. There is a lot of clearing and determining what to keep in your system and what to let go that happens in the organs in this area. Sometimes (Not always) this relates to emotions too – what are you holding and what do you struggle to release?

Playing With The Third Chakra

Gentle ways to play with the third chakra and it’s energies are wearing yellow or wrapping yourself in a yellow blanket. If you like crystals, it’s choosing a yellow one that you’re drawn to. If you resonate with sound, search Youtube for chakra balancing sound baths or meditations. Add some yellow flowers to your garden, altar, or in a vase in your home. Dandelion bouquets and crowns are welcome too.

Resource

If you’re interested in diving more deeply into the anatomy of chakras, my favourite book is Anodea Judith’s Eastern Body Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self.

A Simple Guide On How To Use Sound Healing To Improve Our Health

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For my birthday this year, I asked my husband for a crystal singing bowl.  You can see me playing it in the photo above.  More and more research has been showing the physical and emotional benefits of healing through sound. Benefits can include reduction in stress, better focus, reduction in pain, and so much more.  We can experience the benefits in an indirect way when we attend church or a concert or we can seek out specific types of sound to accelerate healing in targeted areas of our life with a sound healing practitioner.

I hope this article helps you reflect on where sound has been healing for you in your life and gives you ideas to explore sound healing in a deeper way.

Sound Healing With A Group

When I was a kid, I went to church twice every Sunday.  A lot of my experience at church was boring as a child. There was always a congregational prayer listed as an item on the agenda for the service. Before I knew what the word congregational meant, I thought it meant long and boring. As an adult of course I can appreciate that it was a prayer for individuals in our congregation, but as I kid I did not.  So where am I going with this? What I want to highlight is that amidst the boring parts, the thing I loved the most about church was the music and singing. My favourite memory was every Christmas when the congregation sang the song Glory to God with the organ and the piano.  It always moved me to tears when I heard the passion and heart from a group of 200 people.  The congregation sang it in English or in Dutch.  Here is one version below.

Singing with a large group of people can be a very healing experience for both adults and children, especially with a song that everyone loves.  If I were to guess, I would hypothesize that when we sing a song with a large group, our chakras open and our connection strengthens to eachother, the divine, and the earth. Just think of a concert you went to and the feelings evoked as thousands of people sang the lyrics to a song. The first concerts that come to mind for me are with Sarah McLachlan singing Your love is better than Chocolate or the band Radiohead singing Karma Police. I have never seen Coldplay live, but I think it would be a lot of fun to do so. Here’s their hit Paradise at a concert in Paris.

Sound Healing At Home

Beyond listening to great music in our homes, there are things we can listen to in an intentional way to improve mood, decrease stress, decrease pain and vibrationally lift us up as we heal emotional wounds.  Have you ever been in a room and even though no one is in there, you can just feel ickiness or an unfinished argument in the air? Sound can be used to clear a space.

Binaural Beats

Binaural Beats are when two slightly different frequencies of sound are played into each ear creating another sound in your brain. So you put on your earbuds and a different frequency is sent to each ear.  Research has been showing it can improve anxiety, balance mood, decrease pain and more. Here’s an article that includes the science behind binaural beats and 9 different ways they have been helpful for people.

Where Can I Find Binaural Beats?

It’s easy to listen to binaural beats for free.  Simply go to Youtube and search for it and you will find a plethora of options.  Spotify also has binaural beats available in its catalogue and I’m guessing Apple Music would have it too.

Acoustic Brain Research

Tom Kenyon is a psychotherapist and healer (among many other things) who has scientifically studied the impact of sound on healing. Over the years he was a psychotherapist he’d start to encompass sound into some of his sessions.  He started to study the healing benefits of sound. Here is a post to learn more about science of sound healing in general.  Similar to binaural beats, research is showing benefits of reduction of stress, improving relaxation and focus and so much more.

Where Can I Find Tom Kenyon’s Music

You can either get a cd or download his music from Tom Kenyon’s store.

Dreamtime Medicine

I was lucky to meet Callie Whitworth at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing.  Every year our school had an evening of artistic performances. Callie always sang, and I wasn’t the only one wowed during our last year when she found something deep inside her and went to where her music wanted to take her.  I’ve tried playing binaural beats & Tom Kenyon’s music to my kids and by far their favourite is Callie’s voice.

Where Can I Find Callie Whitworth’s Music

To listen to a sample of Callie’s music or buy her cd Vibrations in the Wind, you can visit her website Dreamtime Medicine.

Sound Healing Sessions With A Practitioner

Once you’ve started to explore sound healing, it can be a wonderful experience to see a practitioner who devotes an hour to personalize sound healing to your needs.  Once you open this box, you will find that there any many different types of sound healers available in your geographic area.  Here’s a few to get you started.

Toronto

Lianne Graham

Located on Bloor Street West, my friend Lianne has expanded her Reiki practice to include sessions that include the use of tuning forks.  Different tuning forks are used at different points and chakras on the body. Tuning forks combined with Reiki? Sign me up. You can find her at LianneGraham.com.

Texas

Dreamtime Medicine

So Texas is large, but if you’re close to San Antonio, you can find Callie Whitworth and her beautiful studio.  Callie combines Brennan Energy Healing with the sound of her voice. I was lucky enough to receive a session this past spring that left me wishing I lived closer.  You can find her at DreamtimeMedicine.com.

Ireland

John Reilly

For my European friends, if you want an option that’s closer to you, I’d encourage you to try a sound healing with my friend John Reilly in Dublin, Ireland. John is also a graduate of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing.  He always brought his set of Tibetan singing bowls to each week in Florida and gave sound healings to individuals and groups.  He places the bowls at different points and chakras on the body to create an incredibly healing experience. You can find out more about John at OpenSourceHealer.com.

Hamilton

Yoga & Sound Healing at De La Sol Yoga Studios

If you practice yoga, an easy way to experience the benefits of sound can be a session at De La Sol Yoga Studios in Hamilton. Peter Monos leads the group in a gentle Yin Yoga while playing his Tibetan Singing Bowls. I always leave each session feeling both relaxed and re-energized. You can find out the class schedule at De La Sol Yoga Studios.

Sound & Spirituality

Sound can also be used to help us on our spiritual journey using the methods above or in many other ways.  In my next blog post I will share about some of my experiences with sound & spirituality from journeying to Nepal to experiencing a group event with Tom Kenyon this past October.

What types of experience with sound healing have been healing for you? I’d love to hear about what you enjoy the most.

 

 

Introducing Energy Healing At Home

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After a few months of simmering with this idea, I finally got creative and made a few videos for those interested in learning a few methods of energy healing to do at home.

If your energy field is healthy and strong, this positively impacts your physical, emotional, & spiritual well-being too.

In each video I explain the benefits of each exercise and give you a video demonstration of how to do them.  They are easy exercises to add to the start of your day or at a moment when you need to connect with yourself and centre.

Go to www.JuanitaLepage.com and sign-up to learn more.

 

Anatomy Of Energy Healing (Energy Healing 101)

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Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, Quantum Healing, Energy Medicine, Energy Psychology, and Brennan Healing are some of the many types of energy healing that are available to people who are interested in looking beyond the physical body.   Over the years I’ve seen many similarities and many differences between them all.  If energy healing is a new world for you, today I’m going to give you a brief overview.  I’ll give you a little bit more if you’re curious to know more.

The Biofield

All types of energy healing work on the level of the biofield in an individual.  We each have an energy field that encompasses and surrounds our bodies.  Research has shown that this field is related to homeostasis or balance within all aspects of our lives. (See Science of Energy Healing blog post for more details).  In some types of energy healing, practitioners will work on the biofield in general.  They will not distinguish between the different levels. Reiki and Therapeutic Touch are good examples of working on the field as a whole.

Brennan Healing will distinguish between 7 levels of the field, but there are even more.  The odd levels are structured levels and appear like a grid.  The even levels are fluid and can look like clouds. Depending on what’s going on in your life, the energy may be moving quickly or slowly.  Your field can be tightly compressed to your body or expanded to a large area around you.

Chakras

Energy healing also encompasses work with the chakras.  Chakras can also be understood as energy centers which filter or digest energy between our bodies and the world.  There are 7 major ones which you can see in the top picture of this post.  Many energy practitioners would agree on their locations and their general colour.

Chakra Location Colour
1 Base of the body Red
2 Sacral (below belly button) Orange
3 Solar Plexus (above belly button) Yellow
4 Heart Green
5 Throat Blue
6 Forehead Indigo
7 Crown (top of head) White/Violet

 

Some energy healers know the locations and may balance a person’s chakras but may not have a comprehensive understanding of them.  Brennan Healing involves studying the chakras and getting to know their functions well.

Most of the chakras on a person’s back are related to a person’s will.  Many on the front are related to emotions.  The chakras on your head are related to reason.  Our chakras and biofield change all the time based on how we are feeling and what we are doing. Some of us are very comfortable with expressing emotions and will have more open chakras on our fronts, others will have more open reason or will chakras.  We tend to have a dominant area of chakras that are most open.

Chakras 102 – Psychological Functions

I remember when I took some Anatomy courses at Mcmaster University, I was in awe of the human body.  I realized that a person could spend a life-time on one small area or system of the body and never know everything.  The same goes for chakras.  Chakras are complex and have incredible depth.  Barbara Brennan’s Book, Hands of Light is a great resource if you’re interested in learning more.  Here is a brief highlight of the psychological function of each chakra as summarized from Hands of Light.

The letter “A” represents the front of the body and the letter “B” represents the back of the body

1     Quantity of physical energy, will to live

2A  Quality of love in relationship. Quality of giving & receiving sexual pleasure

2B   Quantity of sexual energy

3A    Sense of who you are/feeling of belonging in the universe

3B    One’s intention towards one’s physical health

4A    Heart feelings of love for another human being

4B    Related to going after what we want in the world

5A    Taking responsibility for our personal needs & the ability to take what is given to us

5B    Your sense of self within society, your profession, peers

6A   Capacity to visualize and understand mental concepts

6B   Bringing your ideas into the world

7      Connection to spirituality & integration of it into life

Another similarity between energy healers, is that we can all tune into the biofield and the chakras.  Some people are born seeing people’s fields (auras) and others (like me) have learned to develop their sixth sense to do so.  I don’t walk around “looking” at other people’s energy fields.  During an energy healing session, I will “tune into” a person’s field.  Barbara Brennan was an individual who believed that everyone could be taught this – it is not something available only to a few people.

Reiki is a great introduction into energy healing if you’re looking for a place to start.  You can learn Reiki in a few weekends. Brennan Healing is a comprehensive 4-year program which dives deeper into the field of energy healing. I am the kind of person who likes to understand things.  I wanted to know more about energy healing and what it was people are doing when they were working in my energy field.  I have had experiences where people were working in my energy field and didn’t really know what they were doing – they were just guessing.

Which Type of Energy Healing is Best?

Like choosing a therapist, choosing an energy healer is a personal choice.  The most important things are finding someone you connect and feel safe with.  Even better if the healer has experience working with the issue that you’re experiencing.  There are many types of energy healing, pick one or two that you are intuitively drawn to and learn more about them.

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