Optometrist, Dr Harry Sirota, died in on Saturday, February 27, 2010

Dr .Harry Sirota was an optometrist with a new way of seeing.  He was interested in making the process of being fitted with glasses a process of enlightenment-- “insight" as he would say.  He stated that the reason that the words “eye” and “I” sounded the same was because the “eye” provided the sense of who we are.  In order to empower the process of becoming enlightenment, he provided all the rods and cones of the eye with their rightful amount of light, not just the part of the eye that gives us sharp vision.  By giving attention to the peripheral vision, the lucky person fitted with his glasses had more depth of perception, colors were brighter, visual tasks such as reading and driving became easier.  More importantly his patients found that with his glasses one’s ability to relate to the world became easier, happier, more delightful. 

In order to properly fit glasses, Dr. Sirota studied how a person moved.  He had learned that with standard glasses, people often become more rigid in the way they walked, moved and related to the world. He attributed the decline of architecture to the use of glasses which reduced the sense of three dimensionality. 

Dr. Sirota was interested in knowing how the glasses felt.  He had found that with standard fitting of glasses, the patient often complained that the glasses “did not feel right.”  The glasses were often put in a drawer and not used.  Worse yet, patient eventually got used to the glasses, but their vision got worse in the process.  One of the most empowering parts of his work is that he fitted the glasses with the patient’s eyes closed.  He said that with eyes closed, the light falls on the eyelids, and a tiny amount of light passes through the lids. “With the eyes closed, you can focus on your response to the lenses with less distraction.”

Three Steps to Attracting What You Most Want

Everybody talks about the Law of Attraction. But it can drive people crazy.

You have no doubt heard a friend say    “I don’t get it!

I have been thinking positively and for a very long time about attracting a guy, who loves me completely and takes care of me….. so why isn’t he here!!!!”

Well that’s not the Law of Attraction.  Here is the true Law of Attraction: How I treat myself (and others) is what I get.  If I love myself and take care of myself, that is what I will attract.  All of Wise Ones of the world say the same thing, in one way or another.

Three steps to treating yourself well and attracting what you want include:

1.                  Let go.  When you are feeling unhappy, allow the discomfort to be. Allow the feelings to be. Give yourself space. Acknowledge what is happening. Tell the truth. If you try to push those feelings away, if you go numb, and ignoring the problem, you will get more of the same.  What you resist persists. Appreciate whatever you feel.  Grief can be sweet. Anger can be empowering.  Welcome your feelings.  When you allow yourself to be with what you feel, you realize that you don’t have to do anything.  You can just be.  In that way you can let go.

2.                  Give yourself permission.  Give yourself permission to do what brings pleasure.  Give yourself permission to say no to what feels uncomfortable.  We often want to cling on to the old and familiar out of love, loyalty, and wanting to be safe, and wanting to please others.  The truth is it makes other people unhappy if we do things just to please them. Things are changing very rapidly now.  Now is the time to do something really meaningful with your life.  Give yourself permission to do something very good with your life.

3.                  Bless yourself.  Give to yourself those qualities and blessings that you want others to give you. If you want to be respected, cared for, and loved, first of all you must give yourself respect, care and love.  No one can give you anything unless and until you first give it to yourself.

There Can Be No Opportunities without Problems by Sally Herr

I was recently thinking about the ancient Chinese principle of Yin-Yang. Yin and Yang are complimentary opposite energies—negative and positive, with a common origin, the Tao.

The negative and positive can be thought of as black and white, light and dark, masculine and feminine, everything and nothing.  They both have a little bit of the other. One makes the other one be.  Yin cannot exist without yang.

I say to people that I in my work, I help people turn problems into opportunities.  The Yin Yang symbol reminds me that we can have no opportunities without our problems.

We make advances when we have been tested by suffering. Think of the most difficult of times in your life. Notice that from those sufferings, your greatness grew. And likewise, look back into times past and you will find that the greatest of men and women have suffered the most.  

The happiness that my clients have at the end of a session is because they now stand on the shoulders of their problems and pain. This happiness is a happiness that no one can take away from them.

Identifying the dark, the pain, the shadow, the unwanted can be regarded as a very sweet and tender time. It is a process that is to be honored and loved. We must welcome and bless our problems! Look forward to having more problems!  It is only through our problems that we can experience true happiness and joy—our opportunities.

Sally Herr

Using Your Sense--Of Smell

Using Your Sense---of Smell

The sense of smell is a most primitive (in terms of origin) of senses. Even bacteria smell/taste their environment. The olfactory nerve has no barrier as it enters from the nose to the brain; it is as if the olfactory nerve (the organ in our nose that enables us to smell) is a part of the brain. However, for humans, the sense of smell is not usually essential to our survival. As a result, we pay less attention to smell than we do to hearing, seeing and touch; our sense of smell is not relied upon as much as other senses. However there’s hope.  If  we place greater focus on smells, we can strengthen our ability to smell more keenly.

Here are some ways that we can use the sense of smell in personal growth:

1. Use of smells as powerful memory support.

Remember the smells of your mother’s cooking as a child? As you recall that smell, an entire story might come to mind. Odors are powerful memory stimulants which can spontaneously cue emotions and earlier experiences. As we remember or come across smells, we can re-connect to old memories and emotions in a way that is non verbal and is very different from how we experience our other senses. Therefore remembering odors and scents when recalling earlier experiences can bring about a deeper awareness of feelings and emotions, allowing us to feel the experience more directly.

Research suggests that because of the uniqueness of the olfactory system with its direct contact to the limbic system and our emotions, stimuli are processed on an unconscious nonverbal level connecting the past with the present in a way very different from the other senses 2. (The Limbic system connects the higher and lower functions of our brain and is called both the “Emotional Center” and the “Conscious System” of the brain.)

2. Smells of an earlier experience can be held in our body—even as far back as childhood

When experiences are too overwhelming to be immediately discharged, the memory is held frozen in our body. This charge is held within the body until it can be skillfully released through the use of energetic approaches that access the wisdom of the body.

Sometimes included in the discharge that follows is a definite and recognizable smell or aroma within the room. On various occasions, for example, I have smelled ether during memories of birth. Once, when a client was recalling the noxiousness of living in a womb of a smoking mother, the smell of cigarette smoke was emitted. Sometimes it is only the client who smells or vividly remembers the odor. Personally, when I recall being very ill as a child, the physical smell/taste of vomit arises. Observing these odors can be very confirming in our work and they can be seen as a sign of releasing of old patterns.

3. Therapeutic Use of Aromas

The use of essential oils has been used since antiquity to address emotional and health issues. When using an aroma to support your healing process, it is very interesting to notice your body’s responses. You can feel the subtle clues of a release in tension throughout your body,  the expression in the eyes and face, gestures, phrases and even sounds and movements you make.

4. Have confidence in your smelling ability

In the book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman described a parlor trick of having someone hold one playing card, then place it back in the deck. He would then say that he was part bloodhound and could sniff out the correct card—which he could. Observers of this trick never believed that his ability to smell could possibly be that good, and they wanted to know how he really did this trick. I tried this trick and I, too, was successful in sniffing out the correct card. Trust your sense of smell. Develop it. It will support you in your work.

2. Annett, J (1996). Olfactory memory. A case study in cognitive psychology. Journal of Psychology, 130, 309-319.