Right now a lot of people have had it UP TO HERE. They are simply FULL. Filled to the brim with stress, grief, tragedies, even catastrophes. Or with tedium, isolation, loneliness, and frustration. Or all of the above! And of course being full doesn’t mean more challenges won’t be added to the pile at any moment, it just means our inner resources might be maxed out.

From what I am seeing and sensing and going through myself, I think some deep self-soothing practices are in order. If you're feeling clear and balanced and energized, that is fantastic! Feel free to skip the rest of this post. If you're feeling cranky, overwhelmed, frustrated, fearful, furious, or despairing, you are not the only one.

In this season of gift-giving, sharing, and generosity, we have an opportunity to practice gracious receiving. Receiving plays just as vital a role in the flow of abundance as giving. Instead of brushing off a compliment, a simple and sincere "Thank you!" fulfills and nourishes the exchange. If someone offers help, notice whether and where you feel resistance. See how it feels to accept the offer at face value without presuming any complicated intentions or consequences.

I want to share a visualization technique I've been using and recommending more and more lately for when you need to summon your own inner power and presence, for example when preparing for a challenging situation or an encounter with a difficult person or group, or just when you're feeling depleted and low and need to call up your best self. I think of it as "turning up my volume."

There has been a lot written lately examining the new phenomenon dubbed "zoom fatigue" -- why interacting over screens is so mentally taxing and can leave us feeling empty and sad instead of connected.

In addition to the social, psychological, and neurological challenges of virtual group interactions, I've been noticing how they scramble and frazzle the flow of energy through our fields, to use somewhat unscientific terms.

If you've been to Luray Caverns in Virginia (pictured above), you know the surprising visual twist contained in this image. While this looks like a vast underground cavern covered in stalactites (mineral deposits hanging from the ceiling) and stalagmites (rising from the ground), that's not quite true.

If you've been feeling frazzled, anxious, unsettled, scattered, panicky, or disoriented, your nervous system might be short-circuiting. It's time to kick off your shoes and socks, sink into a soft spot of grass, and get grounded.

In effect, I had gone swimming in a murky stew of panic, mistrust, fear, anxiety, and grief and had come home without cleaning off. (Hand sanitizer doesn't touch it!) I could have gone on feeling bad and radiating bad feelings to my family. These things are contagious. But it has made a big difference in my life to learn to distinguish the emotions and thoughts that are mine — up to me to experience and process — and the "debris" that is floating around and can glom on to any of us. Just awareness of a percentage gives me relief and perspective. What's mine I can deal with. The rest, I know to release.

None of us is immune to the collective energy field -- its impact on our state of mind is often more profound than we realize. Cultivating groundedness, calm, and balance can make a real contribution to the health and well-being of all. Below are a few different exercises to help you find your center. Links are to previous blog posts where I go a bit more in depth about each exercise.

Do you have a burning question about the meaning of life? Why not have a little fun, find a magical source of wisdom today, and see what it tells you.

Lately my family has really enjoyed watching The Dog Whisperer together. We don't own a dog, and yet surprisingly the show's central concept has relevance for us all and particular resonance for my work -- that our energy powerfully impacts our environment and our loved ones, whether or not we're aware of it.

I have always loved the idea that we have inside ourselves everything that we need to survive and thrive. Like Glinda the Good Witch tells Dorothy at the end of the Wizard of Oz, "You've always had the power, my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself." Yet recently I've taken to heart that one of the most important tools we have is the ability to connect with and support and rely on other people, as Dorothy did.

With Thanksgiving around the corner and the winter holidays looming, gratitude is in the air. And so is fear, anxiety, resentment, judgment...there is just so much fodder for intense emotions this time of year. It's a particularly great time to work with gratitude as a tool for healing. The more familiar I get with gratitude's energetic qualities, the more integral it becomes to my practice.

Many people have come to their first session with a common refrain: "I know what the issue is, and I'm tired of talking about it, I just want to move on." After working with therapists and other health professionals over time, we can become well-versed in our deficiencies, tendencies, triggers, traumas, and patterns. Yet awareness and understanding does not always translate into growth or change; the mind might be ready to move on while the body is still holding on to the past, repeating unconscious and unwanted reactions and patterns of behavior.

We all accumulate beliefs as we move through the world. Over time, with healthy curiosity, education, and exposure, many of our beliefs evolve and adapt. When someone holds rigid beliefs that don't change even after being challenged or contradicted by direct personal experience or education, we recognize that there is a problem, and we see every day in the news how harmful and misguided this can be on the social level. And yet many of us are not aware of the rigid and outmoded beliefs we hold about ourselves and how they impede our health and well-being.

I was giving an energy healing session to a dying man a few years ago, and when I suggested some meditative energy balancing exercises for him to do on his own after the session, he joked, "For my longevity, right?" I had to catch my breath for a moment before being able to respond, "Well maybe, but certainly for your sanity!"

That moment clarified for me one of the most salient differences between a medical and a holistic approach to wellness, and what we mean when we talk about "healing."

In holistic approaches, healing isn't necessarily about "curing" a disease or ailment, or even about prolonging life; it's about being able to live with more clarity, authenticity, balance, and ease, no matter the circumstances. We don't get to choose what happens to our physical bodies, and there's no way to prevent all illness and injury, yet we can choose how we experience illness and other challenges. We can be "healed"— whole, integrated, at peace — even when it might not look that way from the outside.

Myss uses the metaphor of a budget to describe the amount of energy we have for each day's demands. Another way to think about it is like a battery. We charge up our battery over night, and then during the day we drain it bit by bit. Certain activities use up a lot of charge, others less, and sometimes we have an opportunity to add to the charge. To increase our physical energy we eat and sleep and exercise. To increase our emotional/spiritual energy, we need meditation, inspiration, and connection. How do we know when our emotional/spiritual battery needs charging? When we're feeling irritable, low, anxious, and unsettled. Some of the biggest spirit-battery-draining activities we engage in run constantly in the background of our minds, like apps we forget to close.

I learned something about intuitive decision-making years ago in Blockbuster Video. After spending way too long wandering the aisles and choosing and rejecting videos one evening, my husband and I had finally narrowed our selection down to two. We just couldn't choose between them, so he suggested flipping a coin and leaving it to chance, and I agreed.

In volatile times like these, keeping our energy flowing and aligned is essential for staving off seasonal illnesses, keeping our moods in balance, and supporting our overall resilience. I've found myself doing the following exercises a lot lately when I'm feeling out of whack and when I notice my shoulders are up by my ears from cold or stress. They are especially helpful at the first signs of a cold or other illness to stimulate and support your immune system as well as when you're feeling a bit stagnant and congested.

As an energy healer I can see how so many physical problems originate from imbalances and distortions in our first (root) chakra -- what ought to be a vital energetic connection to the earth and one another. I can see now how my "stance," my orientation towards the world as a child, was exacerbating my pain and impeding my healing.