The Journey
It is my belief that our lives are a journey of self-discovery. Our universal purpose is to learn how to be the best people we can be -to love divinely, to overcome fears, to handle any life challenge with integrity and faith. How is this possible?

We can do this by first acknowledging the existence of, and then getting to know our true selves; our higher-self. We already know our ego 'I'. It is the 'I' most of us see the world through. It is the 'I' that wonders, "Does my bum look big in these jeans?" It's the 'I' that says, "yes" to chocolate when you've already had five pieces. It's the 'I' that says, "I can't do that. It's too hard."

I have learned that self-discovery requires a stripping away of beliefs and attitudes that do not serve our highest good. We can achieve this through introspection and honest self-examination. We can start paying attention to repeated patterns of behaviour and situations, we can start paying attention to synchronicity, coincidences and our dreams. We can also start asking ourselves questions and listening to the answers. When your ego 'I' says, "I can't do that." Instead, ask yourself, "how can I do that?" Listen carefully to the answer because this is your Divine 'I', your Higher-self 'I' speaking to you.

The journey of my life that I am sharing with you here outlines the experiences and processes that have brought me to the point where I am moved to help you find the answers to your questions, to help you heal your wounds and to help you become one with your Divine 'I'.

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Namaste!

The Very Early Years
My early childhood was spent growing up in the leafy suburb of Belair nestled in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia. I was the middle child of three, each of us born a little less than three years apart.

All three of us had either eczema, asthma or both. My brother had eczema, and my sister, Karyn, and I had eczema and asthma. Her asthma was so bad that she had to use a ventilator three times a day. My parents made every effort to help us. They learned that cow's milk was bad for asthmatics because it was mucous producing. They learned that goat's milk was ok, so my parents got us a goat. We called her Fancy Nancy. The milk was grey and tasted like cardboard. Then my parents found out about acupuncture so about once a month my parents would drive an hour to an acupuncturist in the small riverside town of Mannum. I was about five at the time. The sessions were something I completely dreaded. The only way my dad could get us in the car was to promise us an ice block when we were done. It was a painful treatment. The needles hurt when the acupuncturist turned them. I couldn't imagine how this torture could make me better. And, not surprisingly, it didn't.

My God
My parents at the time were regular church-goers. They attended Uniting Church in the nearby suburb of Blackwood. I was too young to attend church so I was sent to Sunday School where we sang songs, listened to stories and played games. For a time, every night after tea (dinner), my father would read a story from a picture book called Bible Stories. I came to understand that Jesus was a fellow who wore a white robe who died, in a horrible way, for my sins. I thought Jesus must have been a really nice fellow to do this without even knowing me. Then there was Jesus' dad, God, who I figured, being Our Father, must be just like my own father except that he had special powers; he knew exactly what I was doing and what I was thinking ALL the time, just like Father Christmas. This, in my mind, had both its advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage was that if you wanted something really badly, he was the guy to ask, and you did this by praying really hard before going to bed. The main disadvantage, which I found deeply disturbing, was that I could not pick my nose or go to the bathroom without Him knowing. Oh, the shame.

Other thoughts that frequently occupied my child mind followed a line of completely-impossible-to-answer questions. I wondered, for instance, whether what you called blue was the same thing that I called blue. Could it be that your blue was actually my purple? If so, then it would quite reasonably follow that anything I saw through my eyes could be totally different from what you saw through yours. And further, could what I hear be different to what you spoke? How long did it take before the words left your mouth and reached my ears? In the distance it travelled could not some of the information have gotten lost? Fallen out of the air? All this was very troubling but from these thoughts I managed to conclude at five or six years of age that there was no such thing as one single reality.

Spanner in the Works
When I was eight, our lives took a dramatic turn. My parents separated, the house got sold and my mum was left with three kids, a part-time secretarial job and nowhere to live. With incredible resourcefulness, mum found a small house in a neighbouring suburb close to our school. It was in our second year at the house, when I was ten, that my little sister, who was then seven, had an extremely bad asthma attack and died. I handled this tragedy by choosing not to think about her at all. Anytime a thought crept in, I would actively crumple it into a tight, tiny ball and toss it out into the Universe. Nights were particularly torturous, and I would spend a good deal of time throwing scrunched up balls of thought and memory out into the ethers. I would do it over and over until I eventually fell asleep. Karyn's death was particularly hard on my mother. I often heard her say that God didn't exist. I tended to agree. How could he? No one would ever let a small child die like that. From then on God and I were no longer friends and I stopped talking to him. My mum, finding the house unbearable to live in, managed to secure a brand new house in a government subsidised housing development, and we moved within the year.

Contact with the Other Side
When I was about eleven or twelve, I was in town with my mum and the Hare Krishnas were chanting and beating their drums. Nearby, there was a table with books on it where a boy gave me the book, Autobiography of a Yogi. I read it, fascinated. In the context of life-after-death and reincarnation, I felt a little more peace around Karyn's death too-soon death.

Through high school, I had sugar-coated my teacher-assigned reading texts with books on ESP, Telekinesis, Astral Projection and Telepathy. All brain candy to feed the burning questions, who are we? Why are we here? What are human beings truly capable of? Somewhere along the line, I came to hear about Ouji, or Ouija, boards. Without much thought, I decided to make one and try it out. At school, I gathered a group of girls together who were thought to be 'gifted' and over several lunch times we took ourselves off to an empty classroom to try it out. After a few garbled tries, I decided one lunch time to call my sister. This, I thought would provide us with infallible evidence that life exists after death because only I knew the answer to the questions I would ask her.

We cleared the space, we called her name, and we blew into the glass before placing it on the board. Our only connection to the glass was through the feather light touch of our index fingers. I made sure that I hardly touched the glass at all. After going through our ritual of calling forth the spirit of Karyn, I asked, "Is anyone there?"
The glass moved to 'Y'. Yes.
We had figured out from previous tries that spelling anything took a really long time, so I thought it would be enough to find out letters and numbers. My first question then, was,"What's the first initial of your name?" The glass moved to 'K'. Karyn. I was incredulous and terrified.
Next question; "What's the first letter of your middle name?" The glass moved to 'L'. Lisa. While all the girls in the group knew my sister's first name, no one knew her middle name. I started to cry. Through the lump in my throat, I asked the next question, "What day did you die?'
I watched the glass slide to the number '8'. Karyn had died on October 8.
My hand flew off the glass. I told the other girls to stop, and while I tried to compose myself, my friend had the good grace to thank my spirit sister and wish her well. And that was the end of our lunch time Ouji board meetings. In fact, I never picked up a Ouiji board again after that.

I learned later that around the same time, it transpired that my stepmother had visited a medium who had channelled Karyn. I didn't listen to them until many years later but in the tapes Karyn, speaking through the medium, had said she was in a place with other children -a playground type place where she was happy and healthy and having fun. I have come to understand through my reading that it isn't uncommon for children to spend time in a playground type place before moving on.

Forgetting and Remembering
Then life took over. I finished High School and I graduated from University and then I went into teaching English as a Second Language. In my early twenties, I moved to Japan for six months and stayed four years. I travelled a lot. This photograph was taken in Hungary on one of my annual trips abroad. I bopped around for a few more years until in 2002, I found my way to the east coast of the United States where I met and married my now ex-husband. It was while in visa limbo that I had the time to start reading again. On the shelves the apartment I lived in, I found a sliver of a book, Embraced By The Light by Bettie J. Eadie, which I read in two hours. Also on the shelves was, Talking to Heaven: a Medium's Message of Life after Death by James Van Praagh, which I read next. Coincidentally, James Van Praagh had his own television show,
Beyond With James Van Praagh, which I made a habit to watch every afternoon. Talking to Heaven broke open the wound of my sister's early death and I cried the whole way through it. Next, were two books by Sylvia Browne; Life on the Other side, and Past Lives, Future Healing. My fascination with Spirit and Spiritualism kept escalating. Before I headed back to Australia to wait for the visa paperwork to come through, I read the last two books on the shelves; The Power is Within You by Louise Hay, and The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Naht Hanh. At some point in the visa journey I returned to Australia where I wrote in my journal, "I want to truly know myself. In knowing myself, I can be the best I can be for myself and for others." After closing my journal and as I started walking along the river at South Bank, I heard a booming male voice in my head say, "The. Answer. Is. Meditation." I was startled. What? I thought. Again, the voice came, "The. Answer. Is. Meditation." I wasn't sure what the voice was talking about. I didn't even know what the question was! I also knew I didn't know anything about meditation. But luckily, I knew someone who did! My step mother who had embarked on her own spiritual journey and was conducting meditations herself, so when I got home, I asked her to guide me through one. A few days later, she did. In that meditation, I was a greeted by a very tall male being who just held me the whole time. In a meditation many years later, I learned this being was "Gabriel."

Sparks Flew
While I was back home in Australia, I kept on reading. I wanted to learn more about meditation, about connecting with other planes of existence -i.e., with Spirit and Angels, and opening up the untapped resources of myself. I read, Psychic Development for Beginners by William W. Hewitt. I practiced astral projection and started Interestingly,It was also at this time that I listened to the 'Karyn' tapes from 15 years earlier and came to be fascinated with mediumship.

When I returned to the United States, visa in hand, I enthusiastically set about practicing what I had learned. I sat down to meditate and with no real sense of what I was doing, called for anyone listening to make contact. Nothing happened. No one appeared and no one spoke. I did this for a week or so. At the same time, we started having electrical problems in the apartment. First it was light bulbs, then the television fizzled and died and finally the computer. We called in the electrician to check out the wiring but he reported finding nothing wrong.

It was well known amongst my husband's family that my husband's grandmother regularly connected with her Spirit Guides. She often used a technique called automatic writing. That is, she would go into a trance and write down any message that she received. She would become aware of what she had written only after returning from the trance state and reading what she had written. My husband went to visit her to ask her advice about things that were happening in his life, but what came out of the session was a concern that I didn't know what I was doing, that what I was doing was dangerous and that I needed to find a teacher.

Fair enough. So I consulted New Jersey Natural Pages and signed up for a beginner psychic development course in my area. The class was being taught by Linda Marrero and involved seeing auras, reading photographs of people, meeting loved ones who have passed among other things. It was during this last exercise that I made personal contact with Karyn. Linda guided us through a meditation where on the other side of the door would be someone with a message. I immediately got the sense that there was a woman presence there. The door opened and I saw a girl of about my age with brown hair and though I didn't recognize her, I knew that it was Karyn. I didn't learn until afterwards that people often appear looking as though they are in their early thirties regardless of whether they were 7 or 70 when they passed. Karyn's message was a simple one. She told me I was much loved, always protected and that she watched over me.

I didn't know it at the time but I equated psychic development and the mastering of paranormal techniques such as astral travel, telepathy or clairvoyance with spiritual development. I thought that the handy result of learning how to do these things would be an unavoidable signed sealed declaration that I was now a spiritual being. As it turned out, I didn't learn any of those things but Linda and I became friends and it was through her that I learned about ThetaHealing.

ThetaHealing
In 2004, I signed up for a ThetaHealing course. The course was taught by Judy Miller-Deinst and was both fascinating and challenging. I learned how beliefs affect our health and I was reintroduced to God. A lot of books were recommended during the course but two that stood out for me were Caroline Myss' Anatomy of the Spirit and Louise Hay's, You Can Heal Your Life. The relationship between the mind and the body and how it affects our health and the process of healing moved to the forefront of my interest. Whenever we did an exercise, we talked to 'Creator'. This worked for me because I had almost entirely removed the word, God, from my vocabulary. It was also in this class where I met my Reiki teacher, Gina Barbosa. I was interested in learning Reiki from her but it wouldn't be until 3 years later when circumstances would allow me to.

Past Life Regression Therapy
Once the course was over, I tested the ThetaHealing techniques on myself and unsuspecting friends. There were a couple of 'Oh my gosh!' moments, but my regular work as an English Language teacher turned into a curriculum development job in NY. I stopped practicing, but I kept reading.

I was given Dolores Cannon's Convoluted Universe, Book I and when I finished that sought out Book II in the series. Both books and the new Book III, are a compilation of transcripts of past life regression therapy sessions. I was already interested in the healing benefits of hypnotherapy but these books piqued my interest. In May, 2007, I went to Arkansas to learn Dolores Cannon's technique from Dolores directly. I liked how the technique provides an opportunity to not only watch and experience your own personal movie but to also dialogue directly with the subconscious. I also favoured the idea that the person became accountable for their own healing.

Reiki
It was after this that I finally got around to learning Reiki from Gina. Reiki is a modality of tradition and strict protocols. I liked this about it. I also liked that on further investigation, Reiki, like ThetaHealing is rooted in science. While doing a Reiki treatment, the practitioner's hands emit energy at the same rate as brain waves in the alpha state (the state of deep relaxation and meditation at 7-8Hz). Read this short article to learn more.

Personally, Reiki has worked wonders on me. Since I have been treating myself to daily Reiki, I have not had asthma (even in the cold weather), and the eczema has almost completely cleared on my hands and feet where it had stubbornly continued to linger.

Meditation for the Imagination
Bringing stress-reduction tools to children and teens is another priority of mine. I studied with Sarah Wood Vallely and in 2010 attended a three day Mindfulness Conference at Omega. Mindfulness-based practices hep children, parents and teens focus, understand and process their emotions, and become familiar with their Divine 'I'.

Meditation for the Imagination Classes are held at the studio and in other centers in Central NJ.

What this Means for You
What I have come to learn most profoundly is that the holistic therapies I present here (not excluding the myriad of other alternative healing methods) unite science and spiritualism. Reiki, ThetaHealing, Past Life Regression Therapy and meditation all reinforce the body, mind, spirit connection.

The tools I offer here help you deal with your issue in the very best way possible for your highest good. Whenever you feel angry or frustrated, stressed or unmotivated, or feel physical pain, your body is communicating with you, telling you that there are things, often unresolved emotional issues, that you need to pay attention to. The help you receive from these treatments or any other holistic treatment means different things to different people. It may mean that you start to feel immediate relief from a cold when it normally would take a few days. For someone with a terminal condition, help may mean replacing the fear of death with positive thoughts and healing past relationships so that when it comes time to leave, they can go in peace and with love. Whether your problem is physical, emotional or spiritual, you will experience healing through some form of positive change.

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