Why now Is the natural time to learn the “ABCs” of spiritual healing
Spring is in the air and with it comes an innate need to clean and declutter your emotional and spiritual world. Intuitive psychologist and author Susan Apollon shows you how to find inner peace and let the sun shine in.
It happens every spring. As sunlight reawakens tiny buds and fresh breezes dust the fields with lilacs, a strange compulsion kicks us out of our winter stupor. We actually want to clean. Floors suddenly seem grimy and corners cobwebby. The cluttered basement starts to really bug us. Even that previously insurmountable task—window washing—sounds like a good way to spend a Saturday. Intuitive psychologist Susan Apollon says our annual spring-cleaning frenzy is more than mere tradition: It’s the manifestation of a primal urge for renewal on a deeper level.
“We have a deep need to mimic the earth’s own rebirthing cycle by cleaning floors, decluttering closets, and airing out rooms,” says Apollon, author of Touched by the Extraordinary, Book Two: Healing Stories of Love, Loss & Hope. “And while a pristine, life-affirming home is a nice by-product of this urge, you shouldn’t stop there. No matter how organized and spotless your physical world may be, it won’t matter if your soul is cluttered with emotional debris.”
In other words, it’s time to embrace “spring cleaning” for your spirit. Spiritual cleansing and healing can and should be done all year long. But when you’re in a “decluttering” sort of mood already, it just feels easier and more natural to focus on trashing those spiritual bad habits and on making room for new ones that will lead to healing and joy on every level.
What exactly is spiritual healing? Apollon says it’s about balancing our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and actions. It’s about becoming whole. Healing takes place when we reclaim our power, wisdom or spirit, which we often bury during the process of life.
On a more practical level, it means learning to live in such a way that you don’t spend all your time fretting about the future, worrying about your kids or obsessing over health issues. And it means coming to a place where you refuse to settle for a job, a relationship, a lifestyle—a life—that doesn’t fulfill you.
The trick, of course, is to become conscious and aware of how we are feeling in order to allow ourselves to do the work of cleaning up (or out) our spiritual closets and bringing in what feels energetically better. This allows us to attract to us wonderful things and experiences that we want—our hopes and dreams—rather than those things and experiences we don’t want.
To do this we need to be really clear about our intentions, says Apollon. We need to decide what it is that we intend to do or make happen in our lives that will make us feel good or better (happy, satisfied, joyful, peaceful). Once we have our intentions in mind, we can give them power and help to create them by giving ourselves permission to really focus on them.
If you’re thinking it all sounds a bit too touchy-feely for you, don’t worry. These spiritual healing techniques work, even if you’re a cynic. Feeling good is your birthright. Indeed, you’ve probably experienced the essence of spiritual healing at some point in your life—when you’re so immersed in a project that you lose all sense of time and place, for instance, or when you’re with friends or family and feel a surge of joy and gratitude and “rightness.”
“Spiritual healing is often experienced as a state of harmony, balance, greater well-being, and joyfulness,” says Apollon. “Athletes call it ‘the zone.’ It is an awareness that in our being authentic and unconditionally loving, we are in a sense able to connect with all others who are experiencing the same thing. Being at peace and authentic, we can and do align with the same energy of others, drawing this equally balanced energy to us. And that’s when we start to get the life we long for on a deep level.”
Kid-Sized Cleaning
This Mother’s Day, in addition to breakfast in bed, let the kids do the cleaning! They can get involved in cleaning using these fun tips from The Maids.
* Don’t expect kids to use adult tools to clean. Instead, create supplies that are kid-friendly. Use an ice-cream pail for mopping chores or shorten an old mop handle or broom to make it kid-sized.
* Fill a squirt gun from a solution of a gallon of water and a drop of dish soap. Let kids squirt windows and mirrors and wipe dry with paper towels. Leaves glass clean and streak free!
* Cover kids’ hands and arms with dad’s old athletic socks then squirt the socks until lightly damp with a safe solution of vinegar and water. Send them off to dust around the house.
* Got a pile of blocks or action figures strewn on the floor? Scoop up toys in a few swoops using a kid-sized leaf rake to form a pile for easy pick-up.
* Make cleaning a game; give young kids grill tongs and challenge them to pick up toys and put them in a toy box or bin only using the utensils. Keep score and see who wins!
* Don’t forget the fun music to help your kids get a groove on as they boogie around the house — cleaning!
