Reboot Your Body, Reboot Your Life

Have you seen the video,” Never Get Sick Again?” It reminded me how wellness is in our hands beyond washing them umpteen times a day. Rita Harrison knew this bit – how the body responds to toxins and stress – as well as lifetimes more information about the human condition.

She integrated all of it in creating the healing system she left us. The Body Organization is one of those quiet works of her genius, building on Carl Ferreri’s NOT (Neural Organization Technique) to design a total body reboot that takes you out of Fear, Fight and Flight and resets your fuses.

It’s one of the many “How To’s” of Rita’s Willow System that:

Reduces stress and
Brings growth, joy and love back into our lives again.

Whenever I miss her, I know that she wouldn’t want me frozen in sadness. She encouraged us to realize our potential and to each day take one step, do one thing that brings what we want into our lives. Those of you who knew her are nodding your heads.

For her, for myself, I want to let you know that I have trained to do Body Organizations and humbly offer my services. I will never be Rita, but she was a wonderful teacher who stressed mastery of technique as well as understanding the finer points of love – giving each and every client the respect they deserve. Contact me at 1-800-790-6140 for more information or to schedule an appointment.

By the way, here’s the video with its masculine, scientific perspective and unspoken invitation to the feminine art of healing.

Living and Dying on the High Side

“Rita passed away Thursday, March 12, 2020 at 10:55 am. During the past several months, she shared with Paul the hope that her clients, students, friends and family would continue to carry the Willow System around the world…washing it ashore as waves on the ocean.

While a formal memorial for Rita has not yet been planned, Paul is certain that the best way to celebrate her life is to ensure her legacy. The work to publish and produce her books, “meditative optimizations” and courses continues, so please support this labor of love by donating to the GoFundMe campaign.

In this video from 2017, Rita shares prescient thoughts we hope will comfort and empower as only she could.”

Let me leave you with three questions:

What was / is Willow for you?
What do you notice in your life is an illusion?
What does the high side of the reality you want to create look like?

Love and blessings, Val

Strange Gratitudes

We’re an odd lot – Americans – when it comes to celebrating our holidays. Never mind the Christmas in October creep, let’s take Thanksgiving and our love-hate relationship with it. “It’s a really big deal here, i’n’t it?” notes my Brit friend Paul. Grounded in the tradition of breaking bread together and being thankful for blessings, it’s become a mad, frantic dash to… I don’t quite know… you fill in the blanks… gluttony, excess, strained pleasantries.

Take my shopping trip to Ralph’s two nights ago around 8:00. I strategically timed it to avoid the after-work rush, and thankfully, no jostling and weird cart-maneuvering were necessary. Of course the shelves were bare of some key items on my list – heavy whipping cream and Happy Eggs (organic, brown and delicious!), and the vibe was more Armageddon than Norman Rockwell’s depiction of warmth, home-cooked food and happiness. The clincher came when the rushed shopper behind me tossed two bags of frozen rolls onto the belt.

I wonder what it is that makes us so disconnected from the meaning and appreciation of days once dedicated to the rhythms of life and simple rites of passage. I’m going to let those musings lie for now because I’m busier these days with my own housekeeping.

For some time, my life has been about my disconnects and reconnects – with loved ones, my habits and purpose. The changes have been glass-shatteringly uncomfortable, but today is a good day – as it is every day – to stop in my tracks and notice the blessings that have come in strange packages.

I’m thankful that:

My daughters and I are happily spending the holiday apart, all of us comfortable in doing what we want and without the need to fulfill obligations.
It’s Thanksgiving morning, and I’m not in the kitchen over-cooking (as in cooking too much food) and burning.
It’s storming in Southern California, and I don’t need to get into a car today.
I have a new non-profit, The Pain to Power Foundation, that is reconnecting me to whatever it is that I want and need.
I’m sitting at my laptop and blogging with joy again.

May your holiday season be filled with strange gratitudes.

Hiding

I’ve noticed that my living spaces have been dark these past 6 months, and I’m done with it. Burned through 3 light bulbs and taken to carrying a notebook to a favorite place near the canals… all to write in the light.

It’s not just dark spaces but hiding in them that I had become too accustomed to, so I went with my housemates to see a beautiful home right on the ocean, with design details that make you go, “I could get used to this,” and a view that leaves you gobstruck in stillness and silence.

“I want this,” I said, but first I had to decide to stop hiding. I hadn’t noticed I was doing that, by the way, but good friends and allies do, and gently bring it to your attention. So what did I come up with to do?

Pick up the phone! It’s so easy these days to hide behind our telephone’s other functions that conversations seem a big deal. Make it not.
If part of my work is to do social media and marketing, I’m putting myself – my authentic self – back in the equation. Out there. I’m Val Joy, and here’s a new picture!
As an agent, own what it really is and my talent for it, instead of hiding behind my client.
Don’t wait – hunkered down in my dark space – for the opportunities to come knocking on that door. Step out onto and into the Life Path that I designed for myself at some point. Have you had a reading by the way?

What do you resolve to do today when you decide to come out from hiding?

Pink Martini and the Messy Living Out of Dreams

Living out your dreams isn’t so dreamy; it’s messy. When you reach for the stars, you encounter bad traffic, arguments, and moments when you just “can’t do this anymore.” Then again, isn’t that what Not Living the Life of Your Dreams also looks like? So how do you tell that you’re actually moving towards it or just holding it way out there? Every once in awhile, you either stop and notice, or the universe smacks you in the head and you sputter, “Uh wow, didn’t see that coming.”

Pink Martini at the Hollywood Bowl, August 2

This past Saturday, my friend Paul had a major meltdown – tired, feeling sick, and yes, “I can’t… I just can’t” came out of his mouth more than several times. And this from a guy who had a stroke at age 29, died for about 9 minutes trying to live out, “There’s no such thing as can’t”…and freaking survived!

And yes, that miraculous thing then happened after mucking around in the shxx. He noticed that he had actually moved the Dream closer in, and the Show he had visualized for years was on the cusp of going live.

“Wake-up Call,” is coming into view. It’s about people who reach out for answers and solutions even if our current state of affairs is shitty beyond belief. So if you’d like to be a guest or audience member of Rita Harrison‘s upcoming show, give us a shout. Join her to explore what it can be for you. Click through to my contact page, write WAKE-UP CALL in the Subject line, and GUEST, AUDIENCE (and how many) or BOTH in the message.

So what’s up with Pink Martini? Well, that fabulous big-little group was how I resolved my own mini-mega crisis. I’ve loved them since I first heard Sympathique, and they were playing the Hollywood Bowl! The little girl in me needed to go…and bad, but then all the road blocks popped up: no one to go with, narcoleptic me trying to figure out how to make the trek to and from Long Beach, and as always…money. Yes, all the stories – not reality – was keeping their concert out of my reach. The big boogeyman – feeling alone and unloved – was the storyteller. So if you want to join us the taping of the pilot for Wake-up Call, where the Why Not stories are transformed, email me at http://www.valjoycom/contact.

Removing Money Blockages

It is a never-ending story, isn’t it? All the issues we wrestle with around $$$$. Note that I’ve used four dollar signs, because why go through all the work to bring in a $ (one-dollar-sign-) abundant life?

But how about if I dispense with going into the stories? I don’t imagine that you’d like to stick around to hear the ‘Woe is Me’, and even if you are a ‘Misery-Loves-Company’ reader, I’m not going to indulge you. Besides, recounting or reading them again is the quickest way to get pitched into and stuck in that old money pit again.

Three reasons:

It doesn’t take much for our energy to drop, way less to fall down stars as opposed to huffing and puffing up them. This highlights, by the way, that ‘easy’ doesn’t always equal ‘better’.

Two, if we focus on the problem, that’s all we’ll see – the problem – while somewhere else, waiting to be noticed, are the solutions, with arms flailing, “Pick me! Pick me!”

Three, hmmm, we would be approaching the whole subject as if it were a mind game, talking about it, dissecting it, planning a way forward…blah, blah, blah. Even if we focused on positive instead of negative thoughts, it’s all in our head, and what if the secret to outsmarting the money demons is to smoke them out body, mind and soul?

These tips are included in a free online class which I had the privilege of assisting with last week. I’ve taken many of Rita Harrison’s seminars before, but it was a reminder, pick-me-up, and a jump-start to a new (and too money-focused if I let it) chapter in my life.

It shifted me out of the I Can’t Afford and prompted me to get in the car, drive to Santa Monica, and explore with an absolutely certainty this was the place I couldn’t afford not to be.

Agent

“Uhhh, I think I’m your agent,” I said, grasping for some definition of the tasks that were falling to me. And then everything made perfect sense for each of us. The “Why L.A.?” became “of course, L.A.” because where else would a holistic healer have an agent? Then the relationship suddenly had all the right words to define it: Collaboration, Autonomy, Expertise.

As Rita Harrison’s client and student, I knew the Willow System in such a way that I could represent it authentically and passionately. And because Rita and her methodologies aim to and do deliver “optimally,” I had the confidence, competence, and clarity (yes, more about the Power of 3 later) to move into my soul purpose. Ok, let’s say that again. Needless to say, it’s been an interesting road to finding that happiness thing, especially when I’ve sought it from others most of my life.

So I reclaimed the business experience (leaving behind the stuff that had put old ventures into indebtedness), corporate and institutional familiarity (without the non-constructive contempt), and a mother’s multi-tasking and juggling skills (that had lost their sense of purpose with kids grown and off on their own paths). What transformed all of that turned out to be remarkably simple (which doesn’t mean ‘easy’ by any means).

It happened that a reading by Connie Viveros crystalized it beautifully with images so lush I couldn’t speak as I received them. Don’t forget, I now say to myself: Toss a joy for living – tears and all – into the magician’s hat and one by one, all I need to create my new life will be provided one white dove at a time.

Agent of Change

So… like so many others, I’m now in L.A. with a dream. Of course how to materialize it and how it materializes is the rub.

There had been a vague intention and outline of a plan, but what pushed me into action was more a jumping-out-of-my-skin Gotta Get Out of Here. Sure, the “more opportunities” thing awaited, but not a real job as tsk-tskers would say. I’m Taurean, and the lack of a stable prospect scared the crap out of me, but my Five of Spades birth card of the Wanderer put me on the move lest I blow something up.

The good folks I’ve met at L.A. Meetups have been mirrors to notice my What the Heck. Name, Who You Are, and 90-Day Goal introductions often free-formed into musings of hope and dissatisfaction about ourselves and this city of dreams. I say it without irony because L.A. absolutely still is – both stereotypically and authentically – where people come to see what they are made of. An Indian American music producer /composer from Austin, TX and a Canadian “composer for media” had had successes back home, but both were here with game plans for More. The former is giving himself the classic one-year window to find more gigs, and the latter sojourns twice a year for opportunity tours. Other stories include that of the organizer of the Create Yourself – Los Angeles Meetup and a Japanese American film maker who walk the talk every day by crafting work and a life in the industry that they want to be proud of.

My timeline? Nothing beyond Now. The work? Hmmm…health and wellness? Dare I stretch to say Healing Body, Mind and Soul? Writing? Just “something” to bring in the $$? As life would have it, the ruminating was interrupting by a giant crash as I literally and horrifyingly broke a beautiful piece of artwork in the house I was staying. Dust settled and glass shards and shavings mopped up, the message was clear to have a session with my main ally in life.

The answers from a Willow session are always unexpected and big if you let it be. We discovered quickly that goal-setting was a priority, but (and the “but” is key) the guidance was specific – “within the parameters of joy.” Making that distinction opened up possibilities that hadn’t occurred to me when I was only goal-oriented.

It was a subtlety that brings light-year-measurable forward movement. How different would daily, weekly and monthly goals be if I also slowed down to savor the simple pleasures of life? What if I dropped the judgments about all the things I should do and listened to the voice that connects me to myself and a deeper pride? What would happen?