Since 1996 or so, I have co-lead a monthly drumming and chanting service at Temple Emanu-El. This service and this practice are, for myself, and for participants, a direct pipeline to a deeper felt sense of oneness within and beyond ourselves.

Drumming and chanting are technologies that have been used by many cultures over many millennia to transform consciousness and harmonize that consciousness within and beyond itself. When consciousness is thusly transformed, the natural capacities for healing are potentiated and can go about their business within the intra and interpersonal field that has been catalyzed by the drumming and chanting.

This is a fun and rich personal and group healing and spiritual practice.

Over the years, I have developed a healing protocol using chanting which can be found in the Self-Healing Resource pages of this site.

You will find a list of some of the chants that I uses as well as a link to sites that have various kinds of chants.

Prayer is a very basic and powerful spiritual practice. At it’s core, prayer speaks to and from a remembrance of the oneness in which we always already, thankfully and usually forgetfully, dwell. Prayer is a remembrance that we are not the source of ourselves or this oneness. When we pray and re-member (to remember that we are but a limb – see etymology member – of the great One), we turn and return to ourselves, to our felt sense and knowing of that Oneness, and position ourselves to awaken to that wondrous Reality. When, in our prayer practice, we awaken, then does Oneness, God, Source, the Tao, stir in us, wonder, awe, gratitude, a longing to serve the life of love, to serve that Source. This is what prayer promises and is designed to deliver.

To help us turn and return, there are many wonderful liturgical vehicles (see suggestions in the Self-Healing resource section of this site)

Quotes:
Heschel

There are many kinds of meditation and many reasons why some form of meditation should be part of your life. The brain science confirms what practitioners of meditation from around the world and for millennia have long known. Meditation has a wildly salutary effect upon the brain, the mind, and the whole body-mind. On the whole, it will make you a better and happier person. It will improve your life and that contagion cannot help but spread.

Find a teacher, find a sangha (spiritual community) and practice.

I myself have a somewhat ADD brain-mind. Though I have, over time, been more and more able to meditate, journal writing, combined with some of the other tools I describe, have been, for many years, my go to personal contemplative and healing practice.

There are many roads to skillful self-presence, many tools to till and nourish the soil of your being. Find one or more and get to work/play and watch things grow and lead you more and more deeply into LIFE/life.

Because I am somewhat ADD, meditation has been hard for me, scary even. Journal writing enlists my witnessing mind, engages my hands in typing or writing giving my ADD brain something to occupy it.

Also, journal writing is a powerful healing tool. There is great research showing its reliable impact upon physical as well as mental health.

Drawing upon a number of current therapeutic tools, I have created a journal writing protocol with many themes and variations.

Journal writing helps me with the following:
– Working with and transforming various kinds of stickiness.
– Work through triggering situations.
– Work on challenges in various relationships.
– Connect with the living spiritual ground within me and within all of life.
– It is a great tool for navigating and tracking the life of my inner world. This is essential if one wants to be a skillful steward of the wholesome unfolding of ones physical, psychological, and spiritual life.
– Finally, journal writing is a great tool to keep track of ones “roles and goals” (This is a term coined from Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). It is useful to have a place to develop clarity about one’s sense of mission in various important areas of our life. Your journal is a great place to map and track your goals in various areas of your life.

There are amazing tools, some ancient and traditional, and others that are relatively modern, that we can use to quicken, deepen, strengthen our own healing, to support and catalyze the ongoing impulse towards wholeness within and beyond ourselves.

It is essential, that each of us find ways to take ownership of the life that we have been given to live, and serve the life of it’s wondrous and sometimes challenging unfolding. We can hear/sense in this call, the soul that animates and permeates all life, every inch of our being. This charge is blessed, wondrous, and difficult.

What follows are some of the tools that are available to support us in honoring this charge. Beyond listing these tools, there is a separate page with practice protocols, guided meditations, and lists of other resources.

Finally, we can, NONE OF US, do this alone. Yes, we must, each of us, answer the call that calls us home, within ourselves to tend the magnificent burgeoning of our being. However, neurologically, psychologically, and spiritually, we are not designed to do this work alone. WE NEED ONE ANOTHER. We need our beloved friends, our sangha, our religious/spiritual community to support, celebrate, and accompany us in and through this life.

Besides, life is no fun without our peeps.

I have used EMDR and OEI for years as a way to bring more power and efficacy to my journal writing practice.

For the longest time, whenever I experienced any stuckness, or was gripped by some triggering situation, I went to my journal, and, using a protocol that I developed, a protocol that includes use of EMDR and OEI, watched the tangle unwind, the challenge transform, and me return to a new and greater wholeness and ease.

For resources, protocols and descriptions of how to use these brain integration tools for your own self-healing work, see the section on self-healing resources.

Though I still use EMDR and OEI as an adjunct to my own self-healing practice, IFS is the primary frame and mode I use for working with myself and my inner system.

IFS is a fabulous psycho-spiritual mode of being and knowing that helps us to lovingly navigate our inner and outer world. It provides tools that help us to transform our relationship with all aspects of life. Within that transformational process, life itself softens and reveals it’s true essence, it’s divinity.

In the “Self-Healing Resources” section of this site, you will find a healing protocol, guided meditations, and links to resources to help you develop your own self-healing practice.