Author Archives: healingtree

Understanding Anxiety

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I just wanted to let you all know that I will be doing a free webinar next week on the topic of anxiety, if anyone is interested to listen in.

Ironically, after my last 3 blog posts on loneliness, Changeyourenergy.com has titled the introductory email that went out today, “You are not alone.”

Yes, it’s also true!  We all have a similar inner landscape.  When we try to process it together, we feel less alone in a chaotic world (both inner and outer), which gives us more strength and hope.

Here’s the link and info for anyone who is interested!

 

https://www.changeyourenergy.com/live-class/966/understanding-anxiety

 

Who is Danielle Gaudette?

Anxiety is a feeling that I know all too well.

I was given up for adoption when I was born, which led me to be extremely sensitive from a young age.

My mother who adopted and raised me – who I loved with all of my heart – struggled with mental illness.  As I watched her suffer through the torment of her own mind through the years, I developed a desperate desire for all people to have peace, including myself. I kept feeling that there must be a way to be free from emotional pain.  And I began to dream of a healthy world where we co-existed as a happy and peaceful humanity.

Discovering and recovering my own peace has been a long, beautiful, painful, dramatic and illuminating journey, full of ups and downs, laughter and tears. It is a journey that I am still very much walking, and one that I am very grateful for.

I have come to deeply understand inner worlds and how similar our internal struggles can be, even if we feel all alone! Overcoming the feelings of anxiety may seem impossible, but we just need to take the time to get to know ourselves and do some serious organizing.

You don’t have to live as a victim of your inner and outer worlds.  There is a great power and possibility within you. Let’s find it! Let’s live it!

I hope you can join me for my live class where I’ll talk about understanding the root of anxiety and how to process it, based on my experience. [August 21st @ 5:30pm PT / 8:30 ET, Free to Join] The class will be interactive so I will take any questions that you may have while watching the class.

>> Click here to join my live class. 

Thank you so much, and remember, you are not alone!

 

Sincerely,

Danielle Gaudette
Instructor
Understanding Anxiety

 

 

 

 

Brilliant Solitutde

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One last post on the topic of loneliness!

I realize that people might have many different kinds of reactions and responses to this word because each of us may have a different relationship to the feeling and idea of loneliness, depending on where we are at in life.  In addition, each of us may have had different past experiences regarding it, so our memories may talk to us and influence us in a variety of ways.

For me, when I talk about loneliness I am very comfortable with it, because I think that it is quite normal.  All people have loneliness. Ultimately, the soul is longing to return to its original Oneness again, but inside of this human body, we are separate.  The human journey is one that we each begin alone and we must also end alone, even if we are surrounded by loved ones, so it is very normal to feel lonely sometimes and to find oneself trying to avoid loneliness because we have a belief that loneliness is somehow “bad.”

Recently, when I shared my contemplations about loneliness with a senior master in my community, his response was, “Oh, it is very deep! It is right before enlightenment!”  His words felt so true for me in that moment.  I felt that to breathe with the loneliness of my soul was to breathe with the entire cosmos, and it felt so peaceful and so liberating.

Yet still what resonates most of all are my Seu-Seung Nim’s words on the subject.  I thought it would be appropriate today to share another one of my favorite passages from the “I’ve Decided to Live 120 Years” book.  It is from the section titled:  The Fragrance of Brilliant Solitude

Do not fear loneliness.  Great wisdom and love come to us from solitude and loneliness. The path of a human is essentially lonely, but when that solitude has reached the extreme and gone beyond, it changes to great gladness and peace.  That’s when you know great compassion.  Great compassion can be felt when it transcends human affection. It’s easy for human affection to give birth to attachment.  When you are leaning to one side and relying on or stuck in something, you cannot feel the whole.  You feel the whole when you are completely alone and lonely.  When the loneliness of being reaches deep into your heart, a bright light breaks out of the darkness. Then great solitude changes into brilliant light.

If you go forward wth brilliant solitude in your heart, you become what I call a truly fragrant person, one who has the greatest possible attractiveness, like a flower that must be admired for its beauty.  Then you develop a character that stands firmly in its center without attaching itself to other people or running from them or pushing them away. You become able to find the seat of harmony – an encompassing public peace and public love.  You are able to feel the greatest world of consciousness that can be felt by a human being.  The wisdom and power to bring harmony to the world emerges when you can look at the world with this awareness.                             – Ilchi Lee

 

For the health of our bodies, our minds and our spirits, for the harmony of our relationships, and for the benefit of the world around us, let’s all raise up our courage to uncover our brilliant solitude!

Thank you for the beautiful flower that you are ~ 🙂

 

More on Loneliness

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Hello!

As mentioned in my last post, here is a podcast that I did with Linda Yoon from CHANGE TV on the topic of loneliness.

I’m not sure if you will find it useful or enjoyable, as it is a different modality than we usually have here on Healing Tree, but different and new is good!

Linda has a lot of personal experience with this topic so she is very passionate about it.  Change TV is part of Changeyourenergy.com, and according to the folks over there, I am considered one of the “experts” on emotional trauma, so she invited me to talk about the subject with her 🙂

I feel that there is much to explore about this feeling, but the podcast touches on some of the important places to begin that process.  Please feel free to share here or ask if you have any other questions on the subject.

Have a lovely day!

Poem #1

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Recently, my brother Ian was encouraging me to write poetry.  He always reminds me that he loved the poetry I wrote when I was younger and urges me to continue doing it.  However, sometimes there’s just nothing there, you know?  It’s not that I don’t have things to write about because I am always filled with feelings, awarenesses and reflections, but sometimes those synapses are just not firing when I look at the paper.

So I told him on that day, “Ok, how about this? You text me a word or a sentence to stimulate my brain and I’ll bounce off of it by creating a poem.”

Now here I am, sharing what we came up with!

Ian sent me a quote written by a man named Hayden White, from “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact”, as follows:

“It is frequently forgotten or, when remembered, denied that no given set of events attested by the historical record comprises a story manifestly finished and complete. This is as true as the events that comprise the life of an individual as it is of an institution, a nation, or a whole people.  We do not live stories, even if we give our lives meaning by retrospectively casting them in the form of stories.”

To which I concocted the following poem, that has no name, so I just call it Poem #1:

I want to live

In the reality.

I desperately want it.

I long for it I pray for it

How silly I am!

Longing for something that I already am, longing for a place where I already am.

The story that is the reality where I live….exhausts me….

What a strange existence.

If I have to live and die like this, I’m not sure if I can forgive myself.

But to think like that, fuels my story even more….

Can I surrender my precious pitiful empty story?

Can I be brave enough to face the vast loneliness that unveils when that story is peeled away?

A great teacher once said, “if you can watch your loneliness, you can be enlightened.”

Perhaps it is true of all of history, of the entire human race – we are all just bunnies running away from the tiger of loneliness, not realizing that it’s just a paper tiger, after all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It felt good to write that poem! I just put the pen down, not knowing where it would lead, and a bunch of different things that were processing inside of me organized themselves and came out 🙂

Ian’s response was:  Loneliness!

Interestingly, just a week ago I was invited by Linda Yoonjin of Change TV to do a podcast with her, chatting on the topic of ‘loneliness.’  I will be posting that podcast here as soon as it comes out for the public.  So, more on the topic of loneliness to come….

Thank you Ian for knocking on the dusty door of my inner poet once again and inspiring her into action!

 

Absolute Acceptance

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How would you answer the question: What is the opposite of fear?

For me, there are different answers on different days, depending on what I’m experiencing and where I’m at in my journey.

Sometimes the answer is Love.  Sometimes the answer is Courage.

Today, I feel that the opposite of fear is Absolute Acceptance.

Accept everything.  Accept what the moment brings to me.  Who said it should be any other way?  Why do we put so many expectations on life?  Life should be like this and it shouldn’t be like that.  He’s supposed to do this and she’s supposed to do that.  I’m not supposed to be like this, it’s not supposed to be this way…and so on and so on.

Have you ever taken a look at how many should’s and supposed to’s that you are projecting onto each and every moment?  The problem is that we are mostly doing it unconsciously.  But I invite you to bring it into your conscious awareness.  It may be painful, yet I still invite you to do it.  It’s when we finally see the truth of our habits that we have the opportunity to change.

Life is life.  But I put my expectations on it.  Then, when life doesn’t match my expectations, I suffer. Isn’t it so?

Let’s check our expectations carefully.  I believe that they are causing us pain.  But the good news is: Although we cannot change the current of life, we can change ourselves and our expectations of it.  We can change our perspective.  We can let go of our demands on life and just lean into it AS IT IS.

Is this easy to do?  No way!

But will it bring us more peace?  Yes, definitely.

I have heard some call this “radical acceptance”.  I want to call it “absolute acceptance.”  Absolutely accept every single thing as it is.  Look into your own heart and find the judgement, expectation and “should” that you put onto yourself, your situation, or the person involved in it.

Let’s stop demanding from life.  It’s stressing us out and disabling us from being ALIVE.

Let’s start in small doses – just a moment here or there when you can grab hold of this perspective.  Awaken the calmly observing eye within you that is watching life through you without any commentary of goods and bads, rights and wrongs.  I’m not saying to stay there always because that will lead to disappointment in yourself.  Instead, take it easy and slow… just try to begin the process of waking it up.  That eye is always open, but we couldn’t allow ourselves to see from it because we were so busy judging ourselves and our innocent lives.  And why?  With what and whose standards have we been judging with?

I believe this is an important thing to consider in our journey of awakening.

 

Self-Discovery

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What are you discovering, uncovering about yourself these days?

As the earth turns, as summer rolls by, as good news and bad news come and go from the world around us…. what are you seeing about yourself?  How are you changing?  Isn’t that the duty and purpose of our existence as human beings?  To at least keep changing and growing ourselves with sincere effort to evolve into the best people that we can be?

In Ilchi Lee’s newest book, I’ve Decided to Live 120 Years, he’s got some great passages on the topic of self-cultivation.  He says that, “Continuously thinking good thoughts, acting on those thoughts, and moving your body and mind are all self-development…Being able to smile more often, overlooking the mistakes of others with a smile, telling someone more easily that you love them, and being true to yourself – these are also the results of self-development.”

Even as I type that here, I find myself breathing out with a sigh of great relief.  Isn’t it such good news?  It’s even the smallest things that we shift in life – just breaking out of the mold of our old habits the slightest bit- that makes us feel proud of ourselves and our brains start to produce positive messages.

I love the above quote. Simple but true.  It makes me thing of another thing that Ilchi Lee always says: Good news makes a good brain.  This is one of the key principles of how to have a healthy, optimal-functioning Brain Operating System.  Just as negative information is like toxic poison for our spirit, which then slowly seeps into our minds and bodies affecting our health, positive messages become medicine for us!

So right now, at this very moment, whatever issue of life that you may be struggling with, take a moment to pause, breathe out, and encourage yourself with a positive, hopeful thought about it.  Feel how your energy shifts as you do so, and you will find your mind and body relaxing.  You are now leaving the Fight or Flight mode and entering Rest and Digest.  The power to give ourselves good news is IN OUR HANDS.  Let’s use it to make ourselves better humans.  As we all know, the world definitely needs us all to be better and better humans 🙂

Today’s Reflections

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Hello World,

How are you?  Are you feeling bright and hopeful these days?  Or do many concerns of your life and your world weigh you down?

It’s been a long time for me to write.  I have been missing Healingtree. I have been so deeply immersed in my own process that it’s been difficult for me to come up for air to write.

Today’s Reflections:

My true value is the sky and the trees.  Therefore, I must always stand tall with a shining spirit in order to protect that value.  I must, with great courage, let go of my “self” who blocks that value, but who is not really me.  It’s so easy, yet so complicated.  It seems that the ego would do everything in it’s power to distract me from the very truth of my existence.  However, maybe if I just let that ego of mine run its wheels long enough, it will lose it’s steam and finally surrender.  I must stay positive and awake.

Love is medicine.  To know my value is true love for myself and only when I do that can I truly love others. Because loving others is seeing their value, isn’t it? And when I see my value, I can see their value.  And vice versa.  Because we are one.

It’s all very beautiful.  Even suffering and failure can be beautiful.  And we must do even those things – suffer and fail- with bravery.

I hope that my reflections are useful to you who is reading this!  I would love to hear your reflections too.

I hope to share more often.  Sharing my heart makes me feel alive 🙂

Thank you for listening!

Love to all ~

Free!

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I have updated a new cover picture to Healing Tree!  Do you like it? Someone asked me if that was me…Yes, it’s me 🙂

I am in the Earth Village in New Zealand, doing a “Self-Declaration,” overlooking a huge valley of forest that looks much like the one you see behind me.  Because where we were was so very quiet and remote,  our declarations echoed back to us, leaving us feeling invigorated and empowered.

As I stood in front of the vast landscape,  I felt my heart beating passionately before Mother Earth.   I asked my heart what it wanted to declare before this Great expanse of Life.  I was feeling very small, humbled, and grateful – in a good way 🙂 .  What came out from my soul was: I AM FREE!

Free from the illusory prison of my thoughts, my beliefs, my emotions.  My fears and my stories.   My judgements and reactions.  Free.

Free from my desires to control and be safe.  Free from any moment when I forget that I am already Love Itself and Life Itself.  Free.

Free to be who I truly am.  Free to live as I choose.  Free from the construct of my own Egoic Mind and from the sickness of society’s collective Egoic Mind and unhealthy information field.  Free.

Free to live joyfully and peacefully as a daughter of Heaven and Earth.  Free to Love.  Free to be Brave.

Free to create my dream and do my very best for this planet and this humanity while I live and breathe this life.

FREE.

I was feeling all of those things as I shouted loudly in the Earth Village that day. I love this picture, because it takes me back to that moment, when my heart was full of courage and my soul’s wish was singing, and for a moment in time there was nothing else inside of me but that.  And the trees listened with stillness, but I knew that they heard me and they felt me.  In that sacred time and space, all was truly well.

I am deeply thankful for all that I received from the Earth Village.  Indescribable gifts of understanding, acceptance, support and embrace.   I pray that with my life I can give back to our Mother Earth even 1/10th of what she has given to me.

Thank you Mago (Ancient Mother, Mother Earth).  I love you.

 

 

 

Beauty

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Today I wanted to take a moment to share just a little bit more on New Zealand 🙂

During the time of our tour in February, a producer and his camera men from a Korean broadcasting station were there, following us around on the second half of the tour.  This station, known as KBS (which might actually stand for Korean Broadcasting Station, but I’m not really sure), is one of the most well-known and popular stations in Korea.  It was a great honor that they wanted to do a little segment on New Zealand, the power of alternative healing, kigong, Body & Brain Yoga and Ilchi Lee.

Finally, the clip was translated into English and I found it so beautifully done ~ capturing New Zealand and some of my experiences there so wonderfully!  When I saw it, I felt that it was an opportunity to go back in time and take some of you with me!!!

So, I wanted to share it with you. I invite you to sit back, relax and really take in the refreshing spirit of this sacred land…..

 

Breathe well!

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I have been reading the “I’ve Decided to Live 120 Years” book and I came across a great passage on breathing that I really wanted to share with you.  This passage can be used as a meditative exercise, or it can be used to simply receive the comfort and hope of it’s wise message.  Here it is:

Close your eyes and slowly inhale and exhale. Now focus your mind on your chest and heart. Imagine breathing life energy into the soul in your heart.

Feel your breath gradually deepening as your body and mind relax. Forget special breathing methods and just breathe however your soul wants. You’ll find a rhythm for your breathing after a while.  As you inhale, imagine the life energy of the cosmos entering your body, awakening the energy of your soul in your chest.  You’ll feel your heart gradually filling with warmth and peace — the pure energy in your heart, the feeling of your soul.  Feeling the soul is never difficult.  Just let yourself be breath itself.

Breathing is a time for fully feeling your life, a time for being one with pure energy.   Whenever you feel that you’re mired in thought and emotion, when you feel that your life has somehow lost its center and direction, balance yourself through breathing.  The goal of a spiritual life is to remain  centered in your soul and to develop the strength of your soul. ~~ Ilchi Lee

In the past, I have also talked about using breathing as a form of acceptance.  Through breathing we can let go of our heavy thoughts and judgements and settle into the present moment.  We can feel the Great Okayness of nature and the universe, of who and what we truly are. We can restore ourselves with the life energy that is always there for us when we take time to simply focus and feel.

What a gift!  Let’s not overlook a tool so simple and so accessible, given to us with this human body ~ reminding us of where we came from.  As I write this to you, I remind myself…. let’s breathe well!

(I included a link for the 120 book in case you want to read more!)  http://amzn.to/2GRFnQk