I had just returned from a 14 day trip – to visit my business partner, to study Pilates with my mentor, and to visit my family.  A great time away, planning, learning and being immersed in family love.

I anticipated returning home feeling refreshed, rested and ready to dive back into my studio practice and my life’s routine.  Instead, I felt panic, overwhelm and a sense of running from one task to the next never completing anything.

A couple days of this madness and I was on the phone to Judy yelling HELP!  Judy is my good friend, my business partner and she is a gifted Meridan Tapping practioner.

Meridian Tapping is an amazing process that combines psychology and the Chinese meridian system, virtually finger-tapping away old, painful or stuck patterns and installing new, desired programs into your Mind/Spirit.

Shortly after beginning the tapping process with Judy guiding, I was settling down energetically and emotionally.  At about 45 minutes, I had peeled back enough layers of emotions and memories to realize some truths about my current feelings.  The biggest realization being: I was acting from an old pattern.  I was not choosing my thoughts and actions moment by moment.

And I sure did wish to give up these feelings of panic and overwhelm.

In fact, today I am choosing to acknowledge the joyful person I am.  In the Meridian Tapping process this is installing my dream program. In my session with Judy, I then created a visual metaphor – me posting a “Do Not Disturb” sign, not accepting the mental states of panic, overwhelm and scattered thinking.  I give myself permission to stay in my positive, calm, rational, state of being.

Once more, I’m deeply grateful for knowing the power of this tool and its positive contribution to my well-being.

You will learn Meridian Tapping at our Lake Tahoe Retreat in September 2012. Check out our Retreats tab on our website  www.InnderDestinations.com

I admire my dear friend and business partner, Carol, so greatly because she has always lived life to the fullest.  Despite being an adventure traveler, a serious mountain climber, Pilates instructor and a member of New Mexico’s Search and Rescue Team, Carol is the humblest person I know.  This is the story of one of the toughest times in her life, told from both our perspectives.

“That” day

I remember the call the day after my husband and I got back from a vacation in New England.  Carol and I usually touch base once a week and this time, after I filled her in on our expeditions, she then asked me if I was sitting down.  I held my breath.  What had happened, I wondered?  “Eric died,” she said quietly.  Oh no, I thought.  This isn’t possible.  Her husband was only 50 and an avid rock climber- a gentle soul with a keen interest in snakes.   But he had had a heart attack and when she returned home, he was lying on the floor.  She had tried to revive him, to no avail.  I was in shock as she told me the story and it was amazing to watch Carol try to take care of me on the phone.  There is something remarkable about someone who has lived through tough times and is able to gather her wits when trauma strikes again.

Carol’s perspective: Everything I knew that had been my life, shattered – much like puzzle pieces.  I went into shock – walking around, speaking to others, blanketed in a thick fog.  People began coming forward sharing heartfelt experiences of the death of their loved ones and how they had coped.  The most heart-felt of these was my 35 year old son, Mike.  I knew his best friend had died; in fact, had been tragically killed on the street below their apartments.  Mike stepped into the role of the “janitor” — his word.  “Mom, someone has to be the janitor.”  Mike called me each day.  He was a pillar of strength.  My pillar of strength.

 Slowly, I began the process of putting it all back together.  Eric and I had traveled to Nepal several times, spending many weeks each time immersed in the Himalayas.  We loved the wildness, scaling the mountains and discovering the culture.  So, not surprisingly, a year after Eric’s death, l traveled back to Nepal alone.

 During this trip I hoped to re-connect myself.  Was I still a mountaineer without Eric, my teacher and partner? Did I still feel so strongly connected to Nepal, much like a spiritual home?  While contemplating these deep questions, I had a profound insight into WHO Eric was, while I was at a remote camp site at 15,000 ft.  As I drank in the beauty and vastness of this particular place, surrounded by gigantic snow capped peaks, it hit me:  Eric FIT into this immense landscape.  That is why Nepal was always “Home” for him.  Eric and all the activities he had loved were bigger than life.  I knew in my heart he had never been completely comfortable, at home in our daily American life.  And there, in that immense landscape, for the first time, I got the essence of Eric and, at the same time, gained profound insights into my life. 

A garbled email

Carol had given me an approximate route and schedule so I would have a general idea where she would be when.  She had said to look out for an email from her when she arrived back down the mountain and into a town with internet service.  Within a few days, there it was.  She was safe but it took me a minute to realize what else was going on.  It was as if she had dyslexia because many of her letters were switched around.  I wondered if that was normal for people who had been to 17,500 ft. with no oxygen – I didn’t know.  All I did know was how proud I felt of my friend.

She was on the go, so I would have to wait for her next response.  It came many days later and had news of her progress but I again wondered about her garbled wording, though quite a bit less this time, so that was good.

Carol: I experienced severe altitude sickness both times I reached 17,500 ft.  The first was Rejo Pass – trekking up to and over it in a day.  The second was at Lobuche East base camp where I had planned to camp for a few days.  At this point, I was traveling with a friend of Eric’s- a friend Eric had climbed with a lot in Nepal in years past.  In fact, in 1991 he and Eric had climbed this mountain establishing the first ascent of Lobuje East’s Northwest Summit at 20,045 ft.   Eric had said at that time it was his favorite place in Nepal.  So it was a perfect place to build a memorial cairn for Eric.  When I completed it, the large pile of stones was strewn with prayer flags and had a sweeping view several thousand feet down and across a valley to a full view of Ama Dablam.  I could feel Eric soar away into the vastness of this landscape he had loved so much.  I stood there filled with envy.  I connected with how free he was of all the encumbrances of life. 

Then, as I was still having a bout of altitude sickness – slurred speech and occasionally stumbling as I walked – I decided to descend.

Health news

Carol: The return trip to Kathmandu took over a week.  I continued to feel fatigue and a major inability to eat.  It was not until mid-October back home in New Mexico that my doctor and I discovered the cause of these symptoms and my new, severe headaches.  Complications of synthetic hormone therapy combined with high altitude had caused a clot to form, which triggered a stroke.  The stroke was mild, with minor effects to my speech.

It was difficult to accept it though.  That only happens to old people.  I struggled with not being able to be articulate with my words.  I’ve always taken pride in expressing myself precisely.  Now, when I “lose” a word (I see it in my mind’s eye, but my voice cannot produce it or only part of it), I pause, take a breath and either that word forms or another word comes forward.  The lesson I’ve gleaned is that it’s not so bad to have to slow down my speech and be mindful.  I relate differently now with those who have had head injuries.  Physical and emotional effects of these injuries are as varied as people but a common theme is, “I’m different now”.  How do we regain our balance and become comfortable with our new selves?  This experience has contributed profoundly to my teaching others.  This is the mind/body component we speak of when teaching fitness. 

Altitude Perspectives

In early November, on our flight back from visiting Carol in New Mexico, a trip we’d planned 6 months earlier, my husband and I were two of just a few people in a small prop plane.  From my seat, I could see the pilot’s cockpit and its altimeter.  It read 14,000 ft.   I looked out the window, saw a mountain range below us and remembered Carol telling me she had been at 17,500 ft., adjusting to it over time so she wouldn’t have to use oxygen.  My husband and I were now in a plane that would have flown 3000 feet below Carol, sitting on a rock, waving at us as we cruised by in our comfortable, pressurized cabin.  It gave me pause to reflect about my friend and admire her again- talk about passion… and guts.

Carol Watson-Brand and Judy Cameron are experts in stress reduction and helping others achieve their own premier life results.  As co-owners of Inner Destinations, a holistic health retreat company (www.InnerDestinations.com), they offer unique 5 day courses in Hiking Bio-mechanics, Pilates, Qigong and Energy Psychology. 

In my ongoing search to find substitutes, I found a simple system that I use when not able to do my normal workouts, as now with my current stiff tendon situation (due to lyme or polymyalgia- who knows) -it keeps muscles in shape. It’s called BodyFlex by Greer Childers (learn more at www.BodyFlex.com or www.ShapelySecrets.com).

The premise is that you hyper-oxygenate your body with a unique deep breathing pattern (that burns fat), then tighten the muscle groups you want to ‘work out.’ The rest is easy but I leave it to her program to give the details, as I want to respect her work. I was surprised to learn that by just standing still I could still keep my muscles in shape. I had been programmed to think that it was only by moving your body that one could keep in tone. Amazingly not true.

And the (huge) added bonus was that I measured my belly, upper arm and leg girth before I started and, within just a few weeks with daily ‘workouts,’ I noticed a significant improvement in slimming of those numbers. It was very encouraging. And very low cost. What more could you ask for?

As I think about it, it would also be a great system for anyone who has disliked exercise. It’s a program you can do at home without being seen by a soul and one that brings rather rapid results.

I highly recommend Greer‘s system. Let me know what you think. To your success, Judy

We both realized at about the same time that we needed to become more forgiving of ourselves, and self compassionate, in order to completely heal ourselves at the core level. It’s not the commitment to a strict diet, debt-reduction or exercise regime that will make us happy, we’ve discovered, but rather the commitment to finding a way to just give ourselves a little love when we feel we’re going down that old road of not feeling good enough.

I used to get exercise because I wanted to be thin for my first husband. He valued my thinness, which I never quite felt I achieved to either of our standards. Eventually I began to resent not being liked for who I was (or liking myself for who I was- crazy, huh!) I knew exercise was good for me and I wished I could have done it just for the love of it but that never truly happened until the ability to get exercise was taken away from me, as it has been with this lyme/polymyalgia rheumatic/whatever problem I’m dealing with now- all my docs have different theories.

It’s funny how life presents you with challenges (we’ll call them, to be generous) so you can learn the lesson- the lesson of love. Self love or love for others. I don’t think I would have appreciated the ability to move so much without it being taken away. The pain and stiffness in my tendons and muscles forced me to realize how lucky I’d been to be able to move in comfort, let alone be able to run 5 or 10 miles. Part of the lesson, in regaining my mobility and health, has been to learn to give myself loving messages. The other part has been to give myself the gift of time to practice qigong (chee-gung), China’s ancient healing modality. I learned to teach qigong four years ago and could dictate the moves to you in my sleep but I valued DOING 8000 things a day more than what I’d heard the actual, consistent practice of daily qigong could give me. As a good friend, Joy, once told me “You do it ‘til you don’t do it anymore.” And that’s the case with me, giving up another onion layer of the old, egoic me for the compassionate me I am underneath.

The self love exercise that follows and the practice of qigong are the tools I am using to not only feel physically better but to achieve that warm glow and peace of mind that only these kinds of energy practices can give. Once I got started I felt like a million bucks and wondered why I ever dragged my feet for so long. Now I look forward to taking some gentle time for myself to connect with the Big Loving Source. I feel my batteries recharge and life gets fun and awe-filled again.

So, here’s the self-love exercise. Choose someone like Rebecca to be your texting or emailing buddy! Agree to take a look at your ‘self talk’ this week. When you find yourself saying “I’ll never have this” or “I can’t do that,” see if you can replace that thought with “I love myself” or “I forgive myself for having thought that for so long, and I love myself right now.” You’ll probably be crap at it the first week but that’s what your buddy is for. They’ll be crap at it too but one of you will remember to send a loving message and it’ll make the other’s day. Then you’ll want to do that for them and visa versa. Then you get better at it and so do they. Then it starts to become a bit of a habit and then a more consistent habit and there you go.

Have fun rediscovering your authentic self and let me know how it goes.

Wishing you peace of mind, Judy

The documentary is called The Nature of Existence. It was done by a young guy named Roger Nygard. I watched it on Netflix and it was both funny and disturbing. The gist is that he goes out into the world to ask many, many (many) people why we’re here and what our purpose is.

He interviews priests, rabbis, gurus, and waitresses, as well as professors and atheists- just about everybody- and every one of them state their beliefs about what the human race is doing on this planet. I expected more of a scientific exploration and what I got was a jumble of everyday people and their thoughts on the matter, one after the other, after the other, continuously for an hour and a half. It was a bit hard to follow. I wanted more time to absorb what each person had to say but it jumped so quickly to the next person and jumbled the serious with the downright nutty perspectives that I wanted to turn it off. But something kept me going.

I think that something was the breakthrough that was about to happen. After about an hour and a bit, I saw that each of these people was SO sure their perspective was the right one. I’m not exactly sure why I never developed such certainty about any one philosophy except that perhaps it was my mother being so sure about her outlook on life. My Mom grew up in London during the war and was deeply affected by the uncertainty of survival, what with bombs dropping every night. The way her philosophy came across, to me as a kid, was that it was the only way- her way or the highway. I now believe it was her way to feel in control of her life. Probably because of that experience, though, I developed the desire to study many different viewpoints to see which fit me best. It took a really long time but something in this movie shifted me- it solidified MY perspective.

I realized that if all those people out there could be so certain about their perspective then I could do the same. And my perspective is that the Truth is based on love, or a return to love, as Maryanne Williamson says. (Great book, ‘A Return to Love’, by the way.) Love has a lot of different names in many religions or belief systems but the essence is the feeling of love, and how much of it we feel for ourselves, situations or the people in our lives.

Yes, ‘bad’ experiences happen but it is our response to those bad things that determines our return to neutrality or balance. And how are we going to appreciate unconditional love if we don’t know what loss, despair or conditional love is?

So, given no one can really prove what’s real, right or wrong, I am now even more committed to choosing thoughts that are the most loving- the most caring- of myself and others. Or attempt to anyway. I know I still have areas where I need to be more forgiving or enlightened but I’m going to do my best to see myself and others in the best light possible. Because that’s what I think we’re here for.

How about you?

Watch the trailer here

He tells the story of his Native American friend who agrees to show him how the rain dance works. They’re out in the New Mexican or Arizonian desert and it hasn’t rained in months. Gregg watches his friend walk out a distance and expects to see him start a traditional dance. Instead his friend stands quietly for many minutes, with his face lifted toward the sky and his arms outstretched, palms upward. Nothing seems to be happening- no dancing and no rain. After a while, his friend walks back to him and Gregg asks him what just happened: “Isn’t praying for rain the purpose of the rain dance?” His friend explained: “I wasn’t praying for rain, I was praying rain.”

In other words, he was imagining that his face and palms were being splashed by rain in that moment. He used all his senses to feel it, smell it and recall it. And maybe most importantly, to be grateful for it.

Gregg goes on to say that it did, in fact, rain in that location later in the day, though no rain had been forecast.

This story is yet another example of just how important it is for us to train our minds to focus on the end result we’d like to accomplish. My experience is that it’s quite difficult to do in the beginning but that it gets easier with time. Finding a friend you trust to practice with is a great start. Agree to help each other by watching what the other says in any given conversation. We are usually unaware of old ways of speaking about ourselves- derogatory comments that we’ve said since we were kids- usually verbatim what someone said about us so long ago.

Often I hear clients say they’ve spent years allowing their thoughts to control them- mostly unconsciously- and that it takes work to even become aware of their thoughts, let alone reprogram them. But there is nothing more worthwhile. Turn our thoughts around and our results eventually follow suit.

I challenge you to pick a topic you’d like to turn around. Not the biggest, darkest obstacle in your life but something small, so you can have success more quickly. Start to watch your thoughts. Catch them as soon as you can. Probably they will remind you of a ‘failure’ long ago or how much you dislike your body in some way. We all have these continuous-loop tapes running and the time has come to reprogram kinder, more nurturing thoughts. Allow your friend to gently point them out to you, so you can free yourself to a higher way of being.

Then think about what your desired end result would be. Make it really wonderful. You can imagine rain splashing on your face, right? Know you will be good at this thought-shifting skill. The task at hand will be to practice replacing the undesired thought with the desired thought. We can have control over our thoughts, with practice. Take a moment to imagine yourself easily being able to shift out of a negative mind set and into a thought that will give you joy. There is such power in this- and such hope for our lives and the lives of our families. Let’s encourage each other to think well of ourselves, and see the best in ourselves. We will all benefit.

Warmly, Judy

I’m still re-reading the classic self-help book “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay. I love that she says “When people come to me with a problem, I don’t care what it is- poor health, lack of money, unfulfilling relationships, or stifled creativity- there is only one thing I ever work on, and that is loving the self. I find that when we really love and accept and approve of ourselves exactly as we are, then everything in life works.”

Most of us still hold onto some level of non-forgiveness, thinking we are justified because someone has hurt us in the past. We hurt people because we have been hurt- it’s all we know how to do. If we all had had unconditionally loving and encouraging parents, we would be spreading the wealth of love because it would be all we would know how to do. Learning to let go of our pain frees us to move forward into the natural flow of abundance. The question is how to do that. Louise offers affirmations while my favorite method is a combination of affirmations with EFT or Meridian Tapping, a technique I studied to be able to offer my clients (and use myself) to great effect.

When I flew up to Minnesota to study with my Qigong Master, Chunyi Lin of Spring Forest Qigong, for my fourth level of training, he started the course by saying “If you forget everything else, just remember that love heals.” Even then it was still an intellectual exercise for me to hear this concept. Later that year though, when my pugdog, Willie, was in the Veterinary Critical Care Unit, with a baseball-sized mass of cellulitis under his chin (that was pressing on his trachea, causing him to need a tracheotomy), I had the chance to see this concept in action. He had been on big gun antibiotics for three days with no change in the size of the tumor at all. We visited him daily and, as he breathed through his tube, he enjoyed a plain hamburger when no one was looking. But it wasn’t looking very good. I was so upset I had forgotten to use what I knew about Qigong until day four. I immediately went home and spent many hours that day practicing it on my beloved puggy.

The essence of Qigong – China’s ancient healing practice – is that the Universe is all-loving and, as we focus on the outcome we choose, as in Willie’s return to full health, the Universe (or the power of love) comes forth to do the work. I had had to be threatened with his potential death before testing this new belief system. However, the next day the vet office called to say the tumor had gone down 60% in size overnight, enough to remove the tracheal tube, and for him to heal and come home in another day. I was elated. It was confirmation to me that directed love does indeed heal.

Since then I’ve wondered if I will be able to apply this principle regularly, or to myself, given I’m dealing with lyme disease at the moment. The progress has been slower for me than my pug and I wonder if it’s because I don’t actually feel I deserve it. So, therefore, my next focus is to retrain my thoughts- conscious and, more importantly, unconsciously- about my deservedness of full health and true self love. The latest research- confirmation of ancient healing principles- shows us that our minds give us whatever we focus on. I clearly am not fully in alignment with this principle, though I’d like to be. Maybe it’s all my years working in western medicine and its insistence that it has the right or only answers. As much as I would instantly like to infuse faith in the ancient healing systems into my consciousness, because they seem kinder, more unified philosophies, I at least know that I have Meridian Tapping to help me do the work to get there, much more quickly than most techniques. And Meridian Tapping works on emotional or physical health challenges, whether we’re going through a divorce or struggling with money or releasing blocks to healing.

Let me know your thoughts. And take good care of yourself, Judy

Now that I’m having the opportunity to look at my health challenge at a deeper level, I’m seeing my old pattern of wanting to get well quickly- and get this painful stiffness thing over with already. (The diagnosis is lyme disease at the moment, determined by a Western blot; though not a full positive it’s not a negative either. Evidently lyme can mimic polymylagia rheumatica, which was an earlier contender.) Because healing is taking longer than I would like, I’m experimenting with the idea of being kind to my body while it’s moving slowly right now. Revolutionary, I know. It’s weird because I’ve never been physically incapacitated like this before, except by an injury. I’m also experimenting with the idea of not pushing too hard and not  beating myself up for not moving fast enough. Obviously this was the next lesson I was meant to learn, as that’s all I’ve been doing recently, as I get four focuses of my business up and running.

Ha, that’s funny. Trying to get them up and running so they can go at the pace I’ve been used to for years. Not walking at their organic pace, but running. I’ve secretly loved running around, getting 1200 things done at once. I believe I got some kudos for being able to accomplish all these things so quickly, at my former job and even from professors back in college. The lesson now is to accept that things move at their own pace, like children learning to walk, versus expecting them, as infants, to burst out of the gate like a racehorse. And the even funnier, cosmic joke is that mine are stress reduction businesses! Not widget businesses. Ha, ha, ha. I’m getting it! Spirit is giving me a good laugh while I learn to come to a higher level of understanding about how life works- about the true balance of work and play, and that it’s really giving myself some slack, and some love, that will return me to health.

Because I have had a lot of practice replacing my old, injurious thought patterns with new, uplifting ones (once I see the ‘problem’ that needs to be addressed, that is!) I’ve been applying this technique to my current situation. And it is a lot sweeter to see myself treat myself the way I would anyone else on the planet I saw needing help with something. Compassion feels so good. I can actually feel my body respond to it.

And I now see that acceptance doesn’t mean giving up.  It just means accepting the current situation as it is in the moment, rather than trying to beat it to a pulp- trying to hate it into returning to peachiness.  Hanging with it until the lesson is learned.  Then we can move on with ease.

I’m also working on saying a mantra to myself regularly- something like “I love and approve of myself just the way I am.” I didn’t believe it at first- they were just words- but the more I say it, the more genuine it feels. My first coach, Dorothy Divack, said to me once that she treats herself the way she believes Spirit treats her. I’ve always loved that idea and yet am only recently, truly, applying it. I guess we all ‘get it’ when we’re supposed to get it. I can feel that this is my greatest learning yet. I’m excited about how my life is going to transform because of it.

See my stress relief businesses at www.JudyCameron.com.

I’ve been dealing with this new and unusual experience since April. At first I thought I just had been lazy about stretching and so when my hamstrings started to become as tight as knots, I tried stretching a bit more- but it hurt too much. Then I remembered my wonderful Marin County chiropractor (www.MarilynBritton.com) who practices ART (Activated Release Technique), a tendon/muscle release method which had worked so well for me with mechanical injuries in the past. Now it only worked for a day or two but then the pain started to spread and more tendons were locking up. I felt I was turning into a very old woman very quickly and it was startling and scary. Bending over was hell, let alone trying to get out a chair or out of the car. A month ago, it was a 10 out of 10 pain level. Luckily, I have a deep base of keeping my mind focused on the good outcome I want and a wealth of ancient health modalities to draw upon.

It’s been 3 weeks since I started my naturopath’s regime of supplements and herbs, ayurvedic and otherwise, and my progress went up and down the first two weeks, as I titrated the herbs with the pain/stiffness factor the next day- fluctuating between a 10 and an 8. I wasn’t sure if I was getting better or not. Luckily I was taking GABA to keep me from getting overly depressed about it. (Not saying you should do any of this, if you find yourself in this predicament, as you need to get your own professional opinion- everyone is different. Just that this is my experience- and that I am a huge proponent of hope, and intention.)

Today I feel a significant improvement. I don’t know if it will stick or not, but I feel my pain and stiffness have dropped to about a 4. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel- a return to normalcy, yet with a deeper perspective about the importance of loving myself more authentically- putting myself first (even before my dogs?! Yikes, that’s hard!)

One of my favorite, classic resources is Louise Hay’s book “You Can Heal Your Life” because she has a quick reference section, based on ancient Chinese wisdom, at the back of the book: look up ‘rheumatism’ and it says the mental state that sets it up is “harboring resentments and lack of love” among other things. I knew these things to be true, even though I’d done quite a bit of work on them in the past. This was definitely my opportunity to take a deeper cut, as I said in my last blog (A True Love Story.)

I have found that my ‘life events’ happen in perfect order and timing and they are just lessons to be learned, with the end result always giving me buckets more wisdom than I had when I started. How can that be a bad thing? Wisdom is definitely my most valuable possession. With it comes a deeper sense of peace and calm. And living in the unknown isn’t as scary as it once was because of this. I now expect things will become clearer as I go along and, amazingly, don’t need clarity to happen in this second, the way I needed it to before. Hurray. Progress.

I’ll let you know how it goes as it goes. Wishing you peace too, Judy

Then, as we took off, I had an amazing and surprising experience!   Boston’s fireworks show started just at the same moment!  I don’t know why I hadn’t considered this would happen but it was like being an angel in a bursting star.

Then, even more unexpectedly, the sky darkened as we flew west and as I looked down I could see fireworks shows starting up all across our country.  I spent the whole flight waiting for the next show to light up, like little colored sparklers stuck in the lawn and me, the Giant, gazing down at them.  And as we traveled, I felt how connected we all are in this country.  We may have different viewpoints but we all value our freedom and love to celebrate it.

Happy 4th of July to you, Judy