I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and that your life is full of much to be grateful for. The holidays can include wonderful times with friends and family, but they can also be a time of increased stress – where to find money for gifts, what gifts to get, dealing with traffic, stores, lines, family that may or may not be supportive, loving, peaceful, and fun. Obligations!!!

I am grateful for so much in my life – small things (and yet big to some) like a home, a car, food, warm and cold running water, a healthy body that can walk, talk, see.. And I am especially grateful for all the tools I have to help myself feel better at any time.

It is interesting when I work on clients that I am almost always drawn to do some work in their kidneys and adrenals – at their back above the waist. The adrenals are the glands that secrete adrenaline – the fight or flight hormone that causes us to feel stressed and anxious. Adrenaline is very helpful when we need to get away from a saber-tooth tiger to save our lives, but not so helpful when we are driving, or sitting at our desk at work, or surfing the net, or shopping for the holidays.

What I have noticed is that the more stressed a client is, the more tight and out of balance the adrenal glands are, the more closed their heart is. The adrenal glands are near the back of the heart. We know that stress is very bad for our health. What we don’t know, many of us – is how to manage and calm down the stress. When we are stressed out, it is very challenging to be open-hearted and loving. When we are stressed, it is hard to feel good!

Here is a distant healing video I created a while back to help you calm your stressed adrenal glands and open your heart (and a second one to help you balance your brain – scroll down a bit).

I have been feeling the stress – inside me and around me. Some of it is mine, some is the group energy from our country and our world. And I am so very grateful for the wonderful tools I have to move myself from being stressed to being happy, to feeling good.

Personally, I think this is a time for “extreme self care” – to use all the tools available to keep ourselves in balance. Here are a few key tools I use when I am feeling stressed or out of balance:

There’s so much more I want to share!! So, I am offering a 3-week teleclass for self care and dealing with stress, called “Stress Less, Love More,” starting Monday evening, January 9. I am thinking of this class as a combination support group to deal with stress, and class to learn new tools. We will be supporting each other. For more information, click here.

Start the New Year Right!!