Sometimes

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

Sometimes the nourishment and warmth of drinking tea is just what I need to change a grumpy day into a gift. But today, I just noticed my tea mug sitting by the keyboard, and realized the tea is cold now, and I  hadn’t even sipped it yet. Having that beautiful hand-made mug by the keyboard was all I needed to create my “sitting down to write for a spell” reality, and stay on track.

…but sometimes? Sometimes the act of picking out dried medicinal herbs, filling the iron teapot with filtered water, watching the steam rise and smelling that first burst of yummy that comes when the hot water hits the tea leaves… Sometimes it is the act of making the tea that tells me I am special, and today is special. It reminds me to appreciate what is, to look for the beauty I’ve been too busy or too stressed to notice (a whole flock of tiny grey Bush Tits all a-flutter in the tree nextdoor). It reminds me of all that I’ve worked to hard to become in the past few years.

You see, learning to make herbal tea from raw dried herbs as medicine was one of the first skills I gained in my efforts to take control of my own health and well-being. I was tired of needing someone else to make me well. I was tired of living on the edge between healthy and unwell. Now, I  have herbs for headaches and bodyaches, herbs to improve my immune system or give me added nutrients and vitamin-C. I have herbs that smell and taste delicious, and that sooth my stresses or boost my confidence. I have herbs for sore throats and dry nasal passages. Herbs that cleanse, that break fevers, promote loosening of flegm, heal burns and sooth strained muscles. I have a whole arsenal of natural wellness, and I get to brew it on my own stove, whenever I know I could use the support, at my own discretion, and IT TASTES GOOD. It’s tea.

So for me, making a cup of tea is a bit of a spiritual act. It’s proof that I think my own well-being is worth the effort. It’s both relaxation and medicine. It’s community and independence. Self-expression and an intimacy of connection to the Earth herself. Like I said, sometimes drinking tea can be a healing act, but sometimes, I just need to sit with the herbs and the hot water and the clay mug, and remember who I am.

Be Well.
ps– If you’re interested, I’m currently on a Chamomile-and-Parsley kick.

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…more Elliott Wisdom…

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

I told you about my latest book project a few weeks back. Well, here are a few more quotes from my writing thus far:

  • Gratitude gets you farther than whining. Whining just works faster.
  • Man-made chemicals and man-made foods (GMO etc) let us live longer, more toxic lives. Look to nature for healing.
  • Batman was right; it’s not what you have, but what you choose to do with it that defines you.
  • Learning to trust yourself is every bit as challenging as learning to listen to yourself. In fact, they are much the same thing.
  • If we do not consciously and actively make room for the unknown in our lives, it is easy to get stuck in the way it’s always been. But what if there is something better? What we “know” in this moment is so tiny compared to the vast beauty of the Void. Open to possibility, and breathe in hope. Miracles are often tiny, and rarely known or predicted before they happen.
  • No matter what, you are responsible for your actions, or your lack of actions. Become conscious of the life-story you are creating.

Be Well.

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Tiny Tarot

Sunday, January 22nd, 2012

Of all the skills and experiences and gifts I bring to bear on my work as a Healer, my favorite is Tarot. I love to give a good solid Tarot Reading that gets to the heart of a person’s life story and what they can do to move it forward, or heal unhealthy patterns effectively. Tarot gets my inner vision flowing and provides a natural framework for my shamanic insights about what’s wrong, why, and tools for healing/shifting the situation.

My favorite Tarot Deck for this kind of work is the Medicine Woman Inner Guidebook, by Carol Bridges. Right now, a full 3-hour Tarot Reading, including my own “seeing” and feedback has a hefty $300 price tag. And it’s well worth it. But I thought this month I’d offer a bit of an appetizer. Both because I love to do this work, and because I want to make sure folks have the opportunity to benefit from my skill. So this month, on January 26th, I’m offering up to eight individual mini Tarot sessions.

If you’re interested, please call or email me to register for a convenient half-hour time slot on 1/26. We’ll meet at my office in Hood River, and I’ll give you an abbreviated Tarot Reading, including what I “see,” for only $45. I love being in a place to provide this kind of offering. Something important, in a reasonable bite-sized chunk.

Please do call or email ahead to reserve your mini Tarot Reading time of the eight “Tarot Clinic” appointments I’m offering this year. Or, if you are ready to really take a deeper look at the many aspects of your life-path, let’s set up a time and location for a more complete three-hour reading. I’ve even got one opening left for my February weekend workshop at the coast– $375 gets you overnight accommodations and a two-day workshop processing of the full medicine wheel life-path Tarot experience.

Above all, Be Well.

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Canvas Tote Bags

Friday, January 20th, 2012

Long ago and far away, in another lifetime and on another planet, I took a beginner’s oil painting class. I got a really good grade, had a really good time, and spent a really large amount of money on supplies. So I stopped taking art classes. Plus I was a little afraid of the required Art History class I’d have to take if I made this my major in college.

My folks, who are occasionally mistaken for absolute saints, have been storing my old canvases for me. Until now. And my mom had this great idea. So she’s taking the paintings off the stretcherboards, and we’re going to turn them into tote bags. One of a kind. Canvas. Pre-painted. I love the idea. But I am keeping a couple of my favorite paintings in tact. And I took hurried last-minute cell phone photos of each painting, just in case.

Wanna see a couple of my favorites? Remember, first time with oil paints, cell phone photography, in a land far far away. I think my favorite is the nude. We had this lovely middle-aged woman posing for us, and I still find the reality of her changing body beautiful. So… warning… artistic nudity ahead. And green, for some reason.

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Winterriffic

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

Well, it’s snowy on the west coast this week. Especially in the “back country” as one news reporter put it. (Of course, the ski resorts are open for business and very accessible, not “back country” at all, really.) I think we live in a place that might well qualify as “back country” just now. And yes. It’s very snowy.

Yesterday, we had about four inches on the ground. The dog was ecstatic. He’s old, rickety, fairly deaf, and bull-headed. So when I take him outside, it’s ALWAYS on a leash. Because he still thinks he’s 2, and wants to take on the world, with giant leaps for dog kind. All four feet off the ground at once, while twisting in ecstatic circles of joy.  Seriously. He should go out for figure skating. And he loves snow. LOVES IT. So yesterday I took him out for his first morning “dooty” and it looked like this:

step in snow, step in snow…
downward-dog-and-freeze…
LUNGE! to the end of the LEASH!
….aaaand recover his dignity.

step in snow, step in snow…
HEY! IT’s SNOWY OUT HERE!!! downward-dog-and-freeze…
LUNGE! into the snow, to the end of the LEASH!
…aaaand recover his dignity.

Today, when we went out for his first morning “dooty” of the day, well, the snow was a bit deeper. Several inches higher than the top of my snowboots, in fact. And that puts it about tummy height or so on the dog. So we shoved our way through (or well, *I* shoved my way through, and he followed behind in my footprints because he may be a dog, but he isn’t stupid). And I stomped and shoved clear a few snowy spots with low bushes so he’d have a place to stand, and a thing to target, while he did his thing— and he could actually get his leg above the snow height in those little stomped areas. Which he definitely appreciated and quickly made use of.

EWWW!!! Yellow Snow!!!

My partner got home from work at noon today. Apparently, they’d been released at 9am (And WHY did they have to go in to work to begin with??? Even the freakin Public Library is closed today!), but nobody could find the (gravel, off-grid, drifted over, hilly, curving, unmarked) road out from his work site, so they all took turns driving their work trucks into the ditch that lines both sides of the road, and using that vehicle as a marker for where the road REALLY was. Like I said, it took him three hours to get back home. It would have been even longer, but he got lucky and found some abandoned plywood on the side of the road the last time he got stuck.

(When we get out of here, I’m buying us both collapsible snow shovels for our vehicular emergency kits. Seriously.)

At which point, we both suited up in our snow gear (Mom, remember those blue zip-over “water-resistant” pants we used to wear skiing when I was a kid? Yeah, I’ve still got a pair, thank goodness. They even seem to still repel snow fairly well. And I can wear them over my pants, so hey– no frostbite, AND no hives!) and pushed about a ton of snow off our two vehicles (seriously, there was over a foot on each one, heavy, wet, compacted, heavy snow. Did I mention it was heavy?) because –hey!– it’s winter, and they say we’re getting another foot of snow tonight.  And all that heavy snow might be bad for the car’s shocks. Here in the “back country.” With a mop, a broom, a two-by-four and a stepladder because the snow was THAT HIGH on the vehicles. Seriously. I had to go up two steps on the ladder just to be clear of the snow already on the ground, let alone the piles we made from what was on the vehicles. Which we then had to shovel out, because we have to take the dog on another “dooty” walk before bedtime. Past the vehicles and through their piles of snow to the tracks the garbage truck made this morning, which are still less deep than everything else, after it continued to snow all afternoon.

Well, okay, the two-by-four was for knocking the snow off the trees because a whole lot of branches had already broken under the weight– two-hundred-year-old THICK branches– and it’s going to get icy tonight before it starts snowing again.

SAVE THE TREES, that’s us.
And, oh, joy, it’s 7:30 pm, and looking out the window… the snow has started coming down again. As sleet.
And to be honest, it is a FAIRYLAND of beautiful and clean and cold and stillness out there. And I love it. It’s like meditating with your eyes open to walk through falling snow, in a world blanketed by snow, to the sound of snow. I actually had a BLAST shoveling out our half-way-around-the-house walkway (for the dog) this morning so we could get to the nice wide tire tracks the garbage truck left on its route today, and take a bit of a walk after breakfast. In the tracks of the garbage truck. Because, hey, we live in the “back country,” and they only plow three roads in our area. And ours ain’t one of them. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so happy to see the garbage truck before. FREEDOM!!!!! Of course, the dog wore his quilted red doggy coat that we got at the specialty organic dogfood store in North Portland two winters ago. The year it just rained the whole time.

So. How was your day?

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Innermost House

Monday, January 16th, 2012

I’ve been fascinated with tiny homes, simple living, and the concept of “enough” for years now. Today, I’d like to share this video with you because it is so beautiful, and so far from my life of high-technology, long drives on the highway, and more books than I can find shelves to put them on… And yet, as much as I love the simplicity of “enough” for this couple in California, I think perhaps I would like a bit more than that, and still find beauty and contentment for myself. Please enjoy.

Thoreauvian simple living: unelectrified, timeless tiny home

…and Be Well.

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Do-Overs

Friday, January 13th, 2012

I’m so excited! It finally occurred to me that my big huge “study-to-be-a-doctor” office desk was simply a storage space for crap. Books, junk mail, lists of things I’ve already done and crossed off (but I still have the list), old receipts, used up candle stubs, you name it. I’m not even in school anymore. Oh, and my personal altar was hidden away behind everything else, there on the back corner. You could say that subconsciously, I was honoring and giving all my sacred energy to crap.

Not good. So now I have a tiny desk just big enough for my computer, my mug full of pens and scissors, and the file where I stuff all my business receipts, and a little salt-lamp for purity. No room for mess. I’ve installed the first of two beautiful 8 foot wooden shelves along the space under the window where my old desk, the bin of dog food, and the bags of “stuff to give away” used to live (see how poorly my “workspace” was functioning?). The second shelf comes when I get my next paycheck.  Also, the cat no longer must walk across my computer’s keyboard in order to access her little heated bed. And the cat’s bed is no longer directly above my computer, raining down cat hairs and other odd dibri as I work (and drink tea) at my computer. YAYYYYYY!!!!!

I’m also taking the opportunity to reconfigure what of my belongings currently live in storage, and what stays in my (currently tiny) living space. About twice a year, I go through most of the house (and when I have one, the storage unit) to make sure that I love and value everything I own. If it’s not valuable to me, if I don’t love it or it doesn’t actually do what I bought it to do, then I recycle it to someone who might value it more. Yes, some of it lives temporarily in storage because my house is so small (and has no closets– none.). But it’s still stuff I’m glad to have access to, and excited to keep and use in another home (with more storage) down the road.

Long ago, after paying $100 a month for a really big storage unit, I realized that I’d spent more money keeping a lot of things that didn’t fit my real life– the one I actually lead– than it would take to buy each and every item in that storage unit brand new. I’d spent a lot of money purchasing, and then STORAGING a bunch of stuff that fit the someday dreamworld in my head, and not the life I actually have. So I made back some of that money by selling the nicer (ridiculously oversized, leather) furniture, gave the rest to GoodWill as a writeoff, and found a $35 a month storage unit for the stuff that I love, use, and probably couldn’t replace because it’s just that old, or that special. Like the gorgeous birchwood bookshelf my dad made for me. Or my grandfather’s old Mason pin. Or the laughing budha that my aunt gave me when she passed away several years ago.

It feels like a do-over week at my house. There is more space in this tiny kitchen/living/office/laundry/dining/craft room than I thought. Even with the dog bed now taking up a whole 3×3 foot corner. And it’s so much WARMER without all that crap piled in front of the only wall heater in the room. And my personal altar now has its own special, prominent, uncluttered place beside my desk. (but not on it) And the cat bed is still where the dog can’t mess with her, and she can watch birds and deer out the window, but she doesn’t loom over my desk, nor stomp across it.

I’m so excited.

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Walking on Alligators

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

I’ve been sorting through my books, and remembering how many awesome books I have, and how useful they’ve been at different points in my development. And I’ve decided that there are a few worth revisiting.

For example, Walking on Alligators is A Book of Meditations for Writers, by Susan Shaughnessy. She says that “It takes a certain fearlessness to do this. Truth is not to be approached lightly. If what you’re writing makes you squirm and wish to wriggle away, you are probably on the right track. …It is not enough to describe cleverly or depict vividly. A story must also unfold– a story in which truths are caught in a way the reader never saw before.” (pg 158) And on page 44, she quotes Gustave Flaubert: “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

And Walking in the World: The Practical Art of Creativity, by Julia Cameron. She also wrote The Artist’s Way. On page 24 of Walking in the World she says, “Faith moves mountains, and when we see art as an act of faith, then we begin to see that when we commit to our art, mountains may indeed be moved as a path becomes clear.” …It might be time for me to work through this book again, with where I am NOW in mind.

There are many more amazing books on my shelf, but for now, I’m off to enjoy the out-of-doors, and possibly also a late lunch at my favorite Thai restaurant, with a good friend this afternoon. Rediscover your own resources. Find new ones. Remember, you don’t have to struggle forward alone. This is about receiving support, moving forward with Grace, and enjoying what is.

Be Well.

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Weekend Retreat

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

I had an amazing weekend. Basically, and without realizing it until I’d gotten home again, I created my own mini weekend retreat. You see, the best masseuse/kinisthetic energy worker I know lives in Portland. You can find her website at www.melodicmovementmassage.com. You can call her office, or call her directly, and book one heck of an amazing 90  minute healing massage retreat (she combines a glorious array of techniques and therapies) that’ll put you on the road to physical and energetic well-being faster than a good kick in the pants any day. And she’s gentle. And respectful. Seriously. Go there, do that.

So that’s how my weekend retreat started. I spent two luxurious hours on Lindsay’s massage table (with the bio-mat, too!), and discovered that I’ve really been selling myself short as a human being. I’ve been making do, putting up with, waiting until, and generally concessioning myself right out of a well-balanced and happy daily existence. RIDICULOUS!!

Which is when I realized that I, like so many of my clients, do this because I don’t always feel “good enough” for the best this life has to offer. And I worry about being lovable. So I started to think about my store of reasons/memories that tell me I’m “not good enough,” and realized they’re all things I wish I’d done differently. Things I haven’t ever forgiven myself for, nor forgotten about how imperfectly I did handle those situations at the time. Embarrassing childhood gaffs. Relationships I wish I’d left months or years earlier. Pointless purchases and I wish I had that money now… The normal “if only’s.”

And right there on the massage table, I started to forgive myself. For each specific regret. And for some resentments I didn’t even know I had against others– and that I felt guilty about carrying around. I tell you, this was a seriously healing weekend retreat!

By the way, have you heard of The Forgiveness Project? I recently found a book about it, and it’s changing my life in really beautiful ways. I’ve already returned the book to the library, but it’s on my “add-to-personal-library” list now. At the top.

Basically, someone scientific went around and cataloged all these ill and injured people. People with deadly diseases like stage 4 cancers and heart disease and such. And then, those who were willing joined an official study in which they participated in counseling and group therapies intended to help them work through their resentments and regrets, and forgive.

The truly miraculous part was that the majority of those ill individuals who were able to truly forgive and let go of their resentments? Their physical illness also receded. And it’s not some crackpot quack claiming that if you give them money and repent, they’ll save you. THIS IS REAL. This is a group of scientists, a professional study, licensed counselors, clinically diagnosed illnesses. And the healing power of forgiveness.

Then, I stayed overnight with a good friend who lives nearby. We talked about forgiveness, relationships, seqx (because any good girl-talk usually includes SOME mention of seqx!), goals, dreams, and setting intentions. I’d really been feeling stuck with my work and my personal life the last few months. I know where I want to be, and I’m just not there yet. This weekend put me on track for some serious personal growth. And it helped me see how far I’ve actually come as a gifted shaman, and as a developing individual, during those very months I was moping around feeling “stuck.”

I hope you take a weekend, a day, even a few hours to honor yourself, your needs, and to discover the opportunities that you’ve ignored because you didn’t think you were “good enough.” Forgive old mistakes and missed opportunities and people that somehow got in the way of your higher good. Forgive yourself. Move forward with joy, and a sense of possibility (and a good massage!).

Be Well.

| Posted in To Your Health, authored by: S. Brooke Elliott | 1 Comment »

YAY ME!

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Today, for the last four or five hours, I’ve been updating things. It’s about time. Here it is JANUARY ALREADY, and I didn’t even have all my workshop offerings on the web calendar for THIS MONTH– JANUARY!. But you can relax. I’ve done that now.

So hey– help  me celebrate. Go to my website (www.BeWellmedicine.com) and check out the online calendar of upcoming workshops and classes. You can click on any offering there for more information, OR you can go to the “Workshops” page, and click on those links for even MORE information. Because– YAY ME!– I updated the workshop descriptions today, too. That’s what actually took most of the four hours.

Okay. Now, I’m taking the dog for a walk, and staring at something that isn’t a computer screen for a while. I might even get really outrageious and have a big yummy organic lunch or something. And read a book for a while. After the walk, that is. Need to stretch my eyes and my legs, and wear out the dog so I can have more quiet time again this afternoon. Oh yeah, and I want to send out an email to let folks know what they’re signed up for, and what they’re missing out on if they DIDN’T sign up for anything! YAY ME.

As always, and especially in the new year…
Be Well.

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