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!"

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. How do we know when our emotional/spiritual battery needs charging? When we're feeling irritable, low, anxious, and unsettled.

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.

The news cycles can send many of us on a spiral through heavy emotions: despair, shock, anguish, fear, frustration, exasperation, rage... This can be overwhelming and difficult to manage and process, especially if there's resonance with any personal trauma we may be carrying.

One afternoon in November of 2016, I volunteered to be a practice client for a life coach training program. At the time I was phasing out my writing and editing work, which had crossed the line from "work" into "drudgery," and I was struggling to identify and articulate a new professional direction. I was starting to play with the idea of doing energy healing professionally, but I couldn't quite take the next step or figure out why I was so hesitant about it.

This past weekend a friend invited me to float in a sensory deprivation tank. I've been before, so I knew it would be healing, transformative, or at the very least deeply relaxing.

One thing I have noticed in my work is that people often know exactly what is causing their pain, illness, or distress. It might be unhealthy habits, a trauma that hasn't fully healed, or a difficult situation they feel unable or unwilling to change

It's the middle of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, where everything looks and feels drab, gray, and stagnant. Fortunately we can bring light and flow to our inner ecosystems with the most natural practice of all, laughing. According to the very serious Mayo Clinic, laughing improves our immune response, increases endorphins, releases stress, and has many other physical and emotional benefits.

One of the more intriguing aspects of energy healing is the phenomenon of healing at a distance. Many people have a hard time with the concept, understandably. As the NIH observed, distance healing poses "a host of epistemological challenges.