I''m Back!

It was 2007 when last I wrote! Much has happened since then. With you as well, I am sure.

My health challenges are smoothing out beautifully. Being proactive is helpful. Soon, I start beginner's yoga. I walk Aimee daily, do affirmations, visualize, read, think, listen to music, listen the the music inside me and leave the words out.

Eckhart Tolle is my current fascination. In The Power of Now, he eventually appears to be quite like Imago, if you read far and long enough, and do some personal interpreting. To my dismay, it seems to me he doesn't go deep enough into our psyche, like ancestors, cellular memory, the affect childhood has on all of us. However, he helps me focus, settle, think, and relax.

Biggest news is Clo and I are going to Vienna for the second time in 8 months: May 16 through June 3, with a 3 day weekend in the middle to spend in Salzburg. This is a grand and glorious return to places we loved last time, and doing some new, but particularly an opportunity to meet new people.

One of our many exciting plans is the meet people from the gay and lesbian community. It is my understanding that there is a strong community and I have to suspect there might be interest/need for some guidance in communicating safely in an intimate relationship. I offer a 2 day, 9 am to 3 pm Imago Intensive for one couple at a time. If anyone is curious, check my web: www.couplerelationshiptherapy.com I would love to return, soon, to guide, facilitate, teach and encourage gay and lesbians in the journey toward intimacy and healing.

Hope to hear from anyone who is curious. Warmly, Nancy Ross

WINTER IS HERE!

I love winter. I especially love it when somebody else does the major part of the snow shoveling. I like the soft, fluffy snow that I can sweep. I like the part of being housebound ( for a day or two) and making and eating soup, reading and having a good Scotch at 4 pm. Cosy, comforting, calming and healing.

Since my drama in the cardiac unit just about 4 months ago, healing has been a big focus for me. I look at couples and realize their wounds go very, very deep indeed. Imago teaches that we are wounded in childhood. What if it goes further back then that? What if we come into this world carrying the pain of forever in our very cells? How do we access that knowledge? What can we do to help ourselves and each other heal so going forward will be glorious?

One possibility I recently experienced is self hypnosis. I would call it a very deep and very long visualazation. A CD with the ocean sounds playing quietly in the background , Helen's very soothing voice guiding me, I was lying on a warm comfortable table with a blanket over me, Helen was drumming just a little, with one drum sound just above my head going oh, so very deep into my soul. She ended the experience suggesting I find a box and look to see what was inside. I felt some unseen essence hand me a blue, square box with a bow on it. Inside I found my own ancient piece of black lava that I lost many years ago and had totally forgotten about. It is a hand gripper, with 4 finger holds on one side.

I am left thinking, wondering, resting, healing, going gently with myself. Early in 2008 I plan to do another self hypnosis session with Helen Zador, a gentle, nurturing, generous, genius. I will keep you updated.

Warmly, Nancy Ross

Houghton Lake, Toronto, Vienna, Budapest, and back to Houghton Lake

Last time I wrote I had brilliantly succeeded the challenge of getting my pluse rate up and my blood pressure down. All is well! I spent a restful and affirming and filling week at my daughter's cottage at Houghton Lake, where Aimee runs free and blissful and I absorb and breathe!

Since then I have been to Austria and Hungary and back to Toronto. And am preparing in my mind and heart for a return week at Houghton Lake, maybe in Feb. My do I feel like a traveler with polarities as my quest.

Peace, quiet, affirmation, desire to connect. Suddenly I find myself on Air Austria, headed to Vienna for an Imago International Conference, a week wine tour in Hungary, 2 nights in Budapest one day of which was at the Spa!

Old. Ancient. History. Debth. Awesome. Very moving to learn the history from as far back as the 8th centery of Hungary. We had a wonderful guide who taught us and interpreted for us and a driver who quietly and unobtrusivly got us everywhere very safely and with no stress.

Highlights: Viennes Ball where we dressed formally! Straus and Mozart concert, opera, Fidillo. Albertina and Belvedere art museums, ruins from the 8th and 9th centery, Roman ruin, ancient churches, St. Stephen's church, magnificent grounds and gardens, art I never imagined I would see, music I only dreamed of hearing.

I met a psychologist who is a hypnotherapist and hope to have further contact: Juan Jose Rios. I want him to teach me hypnotherapy and I want to work with him guiding couples into past life regression and future life progressions.

My message to the Universe: some one in Houghton Lake contact me for the purpose of working with couples once a month. Juan Jose Rios contact me for the purpose of teaching me hypnosis and I will teach him Imago. I will keep you updated!!! Warmly, Nancy

Houghton Lake, Michigan: a place to heal.

My, I haven't written since Aug. So much has happened and what I mostly want you to know and celebrate with me is that I am alive and well and may even be able to tell a bit about it!

My heart started to run away with me. Not in the romantic sense! In the ticking inside me very rapidly and jumping around none stop sense. My experience in the hospital included a week on the cardiac unit, to say nothing of so many angels along the way who literally held my life in their hands, loved me and guided me. I tried to leave this physical world. But the in-between world would not let me in. Literally. All I got was a huge, stolid, black cement wall. Call as I did for help from the non physical, over and over again, angels on this side held on to me and warmed my heart back into now.

I love it here! I am ready to stay. I have work to do. One of the jobs is to write. I am a teacher, a healer, and a writer. I am so blessed. My daily mantra is, "I love my life. And I am filled with joy!"

My partner and I went to my daughter and son-in-law's cottage on Houghton Lake in Michigan for several days to begin healing from our hospital experience. Without a question of a doubt, my partner is the primary angel in my entire story. She literally saved my life by getting me to the emergency room----- just in time.

Houghton Lake. A sanctuary, quiet, a relief, a place where my heart lives and my mind heals. Lazy little town with nothing of great note except the largest inland lake in Michigan and energy that holds my heart. We will spend more time there. I could work there. I would like that.

Anyone in Houghton Lake want an Imago Relationship Therapist? Check my web: www.couplerelationshiptherapy.com I could come one week a month if I had a lovely office and couples who want me. You help to heal my heart. I will help you to heal your relationship.

Doesn't feel like there is much more that wants to be said right now. I may be a writer, and I also am in process. I write when I write. In love and life! Nancy

CAUGHT IN A WEB

Recently a client used the phrase. "Caught in a web." It meant something different to the client than it does to me and that is of course, just fine! I've used it in previous blog writings. I find myself wanting to understand more about what I mean when I say, "I am feeling 'caught in a web again'." Today I do not feel caught. So I am going to try to put words to my expereince for when that happens to me. Words from conscious distance.

CAUGHT IN A WEB. A PSYCHIC WEB. Or maybe it is better to say, a web of unconsciousness. I feel connected to a greater reality and a deeper knowing than usual. I don't feel fully of this world. I do feel more of All -That- Is. And I feel a wanting to know more.

Do any of you watch the Fri. evening 9 pm TV program MEDIUM? Allison sees more than I do. She dreams clearer than I do. She learns from what she sees and dreams. She trusts her connection with the unconscious. I don't know how she ever gets any rest. She is doing so much work in her dreams. But she seems pretty generally at peace with it. And she makes a living dreaming and knowing about more than "meets the eye," as my mother would say.

Maybe we all do! Make our living informed by our dreams and informed by our unconscious knowing. She takes time to "integrate." Remember how she sometimes naps on the couch and tells her ever patient partner that she needs "integration" time? I do that too. I hope you remember to do that sometimes as well. Maybe you integrate the world around you and what you know and are unconsciously learning by gardening, or cutting up vegetables, or playing the piano like my mother-in-law used to do. I do mine by walking my puppy or resting on my futon.

Back to my Psychic/Unconscious Web. Sometimes it takes me days or weeks to know what is going on. Mostly I need confirmation from outside myself to understand and put words to my feelings. Allison, in the TV program MEDIUM gets her answers from inside herself. Her own wise, intuitive, and creative knowing. That is my next learning. Outside in. Inside out. Back and forth. That is how we grow and learn. Currently I get an inside feeling and need outside confirmation to understand. Next I will get an inside feeling, and trust my inside knowing and decide what I want to do with the knowing in the outside world. If anything. Maybe I just leave the knowing in the knowing and go on with my life.

Feels exciting. I want to feel that Web again. See if I am learning something different to do about me when it happens. Someday I might not have to wait for it to "happen" to me. But will be able to call it forth at will. I'll keep you in the loop, so to speak! (:

FINAL SESSION RE: OH, MY, THE PAIN!

I promised to update you re: the progress of this couple I have mentioned with the twins, baby, intimacy, and trust issues. Everytime I sit down to write more, I hesitate. Although it is true that I no longer see this couple, they have moved out of the country, and they gave me permission to share their story, I still feel there are couples who might too closely see themselves and get hurt. So------I have decided to leave this story for a few more years.

Suffice it to say as far as I know, they are still together, still seeing an Imago therapist nearer where they live and they did an astonding, risking, brilliant, and valiant job of stuggling for a couple of years with me. They both shared their story, the pain of their relationship, the hurts, betrayals, and neglects they both felt throughout their time together, over and over and over, in my office. No matter how difficult it was a the moment, both took session after session, to quietly hear and honour, and attempt to understand the other's experience and pain.

That is what is takes: someone to hold the relationship, keep you both safe and contained, while you each open your heart to receive and to give. To receive your partner's experience, no matter how much it does not agree with your experience or your memory of what happened. To open heartedly listen so many times, to so much, that slowly you begin to understand, not agree with, but understand what happened from your partner's point of view. And then receive the same gift from your partner as you open heartedly share and are eventually understood.

Write to me if you want to do so. We can talk further if you think that would be helpful.

Warmly, Nancy Ross

MORE: IMPORTANT LESSONS LEARNED FROM AIMEE,CONTINUED

See 1) and 2) written previously.

3) What to do when afraid:

Run! Don't walk! To the nearest safe body. Jump right into their arms. Press tight against their chest and wiggle around until they are holding you firmly. Put your head on their shoulder, look into their eyes with trust and love, grunt and moan a little until they begin to softly mummer soothing love words. Make a few last wiggles of adjustment so you are certain you have it exactly right. Take a very deep in-breath and let it out for a long time. Moan with pleasure. Close your eyes, and feel your body go limp! Works every time.

4) How to let the important people in your life know you are ready to leave the house:

Sit very quietly and patiently by the front door. First look longing out the window of the door with your back to the rest of the household like you really couldn't care less what they are doing and you are doing very well for yourself, thank you very much! Then turn around facing the household with back to door, give a deep sigh, a tiny little mummer yip and begin to wag your tail expectantly. Stay that way for as long as it takes, making little mummer yips with increasing frequency. After about 10 minutes max. bark. Empathically. This creates the suggestion that more than just a walk about is required!

When all else fails, go to the door where your outside "clothes" are kept and repeat above. If you still aren't successful (remember, patience is a virture here), go to the back door and repeat above. If that doesn't work, squat on the carpet in front of someone significant.

Successful, without a doubt!

Mostly what Aimee teaches me is to be patience, to always look at the world about me with loving eyes, to forgive easily, and to bark, then pee when all else fails.

Enough for now. NAR