Read Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being Online
Authors: Dr. Christiane Northrup
Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being (33 page)
As you begin to tap into your own vitality, you have to be cautious about letting people drain it out of you as quickly as you fill yourself up. Encourage family and friends who want what you’ve got to get it for themselves and stop seeing you as their Source.
In fact, people can energetically hook into you so strongly that if you stop, focus, and tune in, you can actually sense the cord of energy that goes from you to them. I like to use the following exercise to cut them loose so they can find another source of energy.
Exercise: Cutting Energetic Cords
Use this exercise whenever you suspect you have an energetic connection to someone who is draining you of life force. Cutting the energetic cord is good for you
and
for that person. You can do this when the cord is between you and a living person or when it’s between you and someone who has crossed over into the spiritual realm.
There are many ways to remove an energetic cord, but I learned the basic technique from the late shaman Peter Calhoun—and it is explained more fully in Peter and his wife Astrid Ganz’s book
Last Hope on Earth
(World Service Institute, 2013). To remove dark energies’ connection to your energetic field, you will call upon Archangel Michael, an angel of protection and love who wields a cobalt-blue sword of light. You’ll also use the energy of what’s called the Violet Flame, a
living spiritual energy that’s an aspect of Divine Love. Before beginning, take a moment to clear your mind and take a few deep breaths so that you can tune in to your energy field.
- Take a minute or two to become quiet and relaxed as you focus on your breathing.
- Start by asking any dark or wandering energies to leave. Say, “If there are any dark or wandering energies, I now send you to the light. If there are any dark ones, I encapsulate you in black light and bar you from ever returning.”
- Draw your attention to your lower chakras, from your solar plexus down. Do you sense, feel, or see a cord or a hook extending outward toward someone else, or do you see one coming into you? If so, you need to cut it so it stops draining your energy. Then visualize and feel yourself cutting the cords while saying aloud, “With Archangel Michael’s cobalt-blue sword of light, I now cut all attachments and cords.” You can make sweeping movements around your body with your hands.
- Identify where you feel an uncomfortable sensation in your body. For most people, it’s in the belly, where the third chakra is located, or in the heart area, where the fourth chakra is located. Next, identify the person who is connected with this feeling who requires your forgiveness and release.
- Now say the following out loud: “(Name of the person), I forgive you for (fill in the blank; for example, for sexually abusing me, betraying me, abandoning me, for not stepping up, or whatever it is—name everything you need to forgive that person for).” Allow yourself to feel the full power of your emotions as they come up. Don’t hold back out of guilt or shame!
- When you’re ready, say, “I send you on your path of healing.”
- Repeat steps 3 through 6 until you feel finished with the work, that is, until you have no more emotions to release or words to say.
- Now see yourself standing within the Violet Flame (a brightly burning violet flame) and say, “I now transmute this pattern with the Violet Flame.” If you prefer, you can say, “I now transmute this pattern with Divine Love” (or use any other wording that is in sync with your beliefs about the Divine).
- Draw your attention to the area of your body where you’d felt discomfort. Chances are very good that the discomfort will have resolved. If not, repeat the steps until it’s gone.
- You’ve just removed an energetic imprint, and it leaves an energetic hole. For your protection, visualize “packing” the area where the imprint was with healing midnight-blue and golden light.
- Make sure to drink plenty of water and get rest following this exercise. You may find yourself very sleepy. If so, don’t fight it. Removing an energetic imprint is like doing surgery on your energy field, so it’s very important to rest afterward.
The imprint removal process is like peeling an onion. You may find that once you’ve cut a cord and released one energetic imprint, others arise or the cord reforms. Take it slowly—don’t expect to heal all your grief or emotional pain in one sitting. Do imprint removals as the need arises—by yourself, or with another person leading you in the process.
Cords can easily reattach if you don’t change your daily relationship patterns, so you can take precautions. Before you interact with someone you’ve had a draining energetic connection to in the past, imagine zipping up a bag over yourself, starting at your feet and zipping right up over your head. This imaginary bag will protect you energetically.
AGELESS RELATIONSHIPS
Being around people who depress and frustrate you will age you quickly. Do you want to spend your most creative years
surrounded by the people you’re currently spending most of your time with? Agelessness means discerning which relationships are worth keeping, starting, and nurturing, and which need to end—and then withdrawing from those. You can do this simply by allowing them to wither on the vine. It’s not that you have to stop speaking to an old friend for good or write her off forever. It’s just that you no longer donate your precious energy to trying to save her from her choices. Your ageless years are also a time for making new friends with youthful energy who don’t dwell on the past or talk about illnesses and doctors. Healthy centenarians are focused on their future, not their past.
I’ve often said “community is immunity,” and research has shown this to be true. People who have varied community connections live longer and enjoy a longer healthspan than people who are loners or in unhealthy relationships (bad marriages, for example) that cause them stress.
Unhealthy community fosters poor health. Healthy communities foster true flourishing. If you want to remain ageless, you need to create a subculture of individuals who are living healthfully and joyfully. Affirm and imagine your supportive tribe and be patient as the universe works to bring it to you. Then make a point of getting together with others. Maybe your group of girlfriends, whom you used to meet at the bar in your 20s and then at the playground when you had young children, is ready to meet at the yoga studio or the cooking demonstration at the food coop. As I’ve always told my daughters, “Everyone is looking for a good gig.” Attend classes or events you find interesting and go to places you like to visit, and see who shows up.
There’s a new science called sociogenomics, which is the study of the relationship between people’s social connections and their health and gene expression. The truth is that your health will pretty much be the same as that of the people you hang around with (just as your income tends to be the average of that of your five closest friends).
The Social Network Diet
by Miriam Nelson, Ph.D., a nutritionist at Tufts University, and Jennifer Ackerman, explains that it really isn’t willpower that makes us stick to our goals for eating and exercising so much as whether we have a social network of people who support us in those
goals. If your family brings junk food into your home daily, and complains when you want to turn off the television in the family room and work out in that space, it’s going to be hard to stick to better habits. Healthy centenarians all have subcultures that support maximizing their ability to live agelessly, so start looking for individuals to hang out with who make it easy to be happy and healthy.
There’s nothing like a group of girlfriends to enhance each other’s life force. I like to say that women can be a placenta for each other. However, what you want is a relationship that is nourishing for all, not a sisterhood based on one-upping each other on who has more trouble keeping weight off or who has more aches and pains. When I pass a restaurant table of women all having an “organ recital”—talking about their doctor visits and so on—I get out of there quickly.
To create positive sisterhood, you have to be an uplifting, ageless goddess who knows how to have fun. Bond over funny online videos, a healthy recipe you invented, or a hilarious movie you saw. Design an evening or weekend around doing something none of you have done before that sounds daring and fun. Get everyone together to go surfing, sailing, or hot air ballooning, or to enjoy karaoke or dancing. Go birding or kayaking or to an indoor climbing wall. Have a spa weekend or attend a spiritual retreat or music festival. Clothing swaps are also great fun, and you can score a new wardrobe!
And if you want to have fun with girlfriends, don’t forget to invite women you’ve recently met who clearly have great energy. Loyalty is wonderful, but we do tend to hang on to female friendships after they’ve become stale and depressing.
FURRY FRIENDS
For more and more women, pets are a part of a loving community. I’m not exaggerating: the amount of money people spend on their pets has increased exponentially in my lifetime, and we’ve seen a huge shift in how people relate to animals. When I was growing up on a farm, cats belonged in the barn and dogs in the yard, never on the couch. You had pets but didn’t necessarily
think of them as furry friends or members of the family. Now, people are connecting to the animals in their lives to a degree that’s unprecedented.
Our relationships with our pets aren’t just emotionally nourishing. They’re spiritually nourishing and good for our health. Having a pet lowers your stress, your cortisol levels, and your blood pressure. Cats and dogs keep our heart chakras open and clear. They love us unconditionally, which humans aren’t truly capable of without Divine intervention. No wonder the amount of money we’ve spent on our pets has exploded. The image of the woman surrounded by cats being someone lonely and pathetic has to go. More often, the woman who has cats—or dogs, or birds, or some other type of pet she’s connected to—is happy and less lonely because she’s surrounded by unconditional love and affection.
Let’s own this: Our pets are more than just friends. They’re creatures who come here to share love with us. And they can be extraordinary healers. Both of the cats I got after my divorce died from cancer within 12 years, even though they ate quality organic food and there was nothing in the environment of our home to cause cancer in any of the humans. Those cats came here as souls to serve me, and I believe they took on my post-divorce grief. I’ve talked to other women who have had similar experiences. Although my cat Francine has been dead for several years, I still feel her around me even now, and I dream about her regularly. Her spirit visits my house. Sometimes, a very intuitive person will come to my house and pick up on Francine’s energy too. She’s still looking out for me.
As for relationships with people, your intuition will never steer you wrong. You know when a relationship is serving you, and when it isn’t. You’re no longer willing to spend your precious time and energy trying to fix people or get them to change. You want to be around whole people who take responsibility for their side of the street. What a relief! As you begin to reclaim your goddess nature, you also reclaim your intuition and your inner knowing. You stop trying to justify yourself to other people because you know your worth regardless of what they think of you. You’re more secure and sure of yourself—and your identity as an ageless goddess.
GODDESSES SAVOR THE PLEASURE OF FOOD
We all eat. And it would be a sad waste
of opportunity to eat badly.
— A
NNA
T
HOMAS
R
ecently I enjoyed dinner with some family and friends. We sat down before a bounty of delicious, gorgeous food: baked organic chicken breasts seasoned with garlic, herbes de Provence, and sea salt mixed with rosemary; baked sweet potatoes with some coconut oil; and onions, carrots, and kale sautéed in coconut oil with a bit of balsamic vinegar added at the end. Dessert was slices of organic honeycrisp apples sprinkled with cinnamon. Before we feasted, I lit some candles, we joined hands, and I performed my usual ritual of saying an impromptu blessing. I thanked everyone and everything who had contributed
to this meal, and threw in some humor and choice details from the day. After grace, all of us dug in. The meal had taken my sister and me 45 minutes to prepare rather than my usual 15. We ended up lingering around the table, savoring the meal and the company, for a good hour. When you eat like this, you automatically feel satisfied and “fed.” You don’t spend the rest of the evening “grazing” in an attempt to bring into your body the sweetness, love, and belonging that are missing.
Study after study shows that the age-old ceremony of “breaking bread” together is an effective way to combat stress, build solid relationships, keep your family together, and bring joy and pleasure into your daily life. The longer I live, the more aware I am of just how important this ritual truly is. As my Greek friend Leftari always says, “Food brings people together.” It’s simple and so true. We were not designed to eat alone watching bad news on television. We are creatures who seek connection, and when we sit down to enjoy a meal together, our differences melt away. The emotional bonding allows us to rebuild our tissues and organs with a sense of love and belonging. Enjoying a home-cooked meal prepared with love and pleasure always feels good. And the energetic imprint of love and caring in those who prepare the food can even override the adverse effect of some less-than-ideal ingredients that you might find yourself being served from time to time.