How exciting it was to find this in my mailbox today!  This version is in Simplified Chinese, and another version will be released soon in Traditional Chinese from a different publisher. I wonder what their cover will look like?

Although the real Feline Zen Master was not used on this cover, pictures of Poohbear and Catzenbear are inside, introducing each chapter as they do in the original.

Join me for a very special interview with Stephen Lewis, who is co-author of the book Sanctuary: The Path to Consciousness and developer of the AIM Program at EMC2 (founded in 1998), as we explore how energetic balancing can help us take back our power to heal ourselves.

We are often told that it is our choice to have the life we want. The problem is that if we are not able to focus our consciousness on whatever it is we need to heal, we won’t succeed. During this interview, we will learn how Stephen discovered the key to focusing consciousness and was then able to develop technology that actually helps us focus our own consciousness on what we need in order to thrive physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

The continuing evolution of the AIM Program has been influenced by a number of influential people who have become not only clients but also close friends of Stephen Lewis.

When Rev Dr Michael Beckwith learned about what Stephen was doing some years ago, he saw that what Stephen had created was more than quantum technology, it was spiritual technology. Stephen’s discussions with Michael took him beyond discovering healing frequencies to developing life enhancing frequencies, such as the unconditional love that people experience at Reverend Beckwith’s Agape International Spiritual Center in Los Angeles.

Wayne Dyer asked Stephen to investigate how his energetic balancing program might help an Autistic child heal herself, and this led to what has now become the Autism Scholarship Program for AIM. Wayne writes about the AIM Program in his book There is a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem.

Enjoy these stories and much more as we spend a delightful hour with the very special and often humorous being that is Stephen Lewis.

You will find the interview here: Finding Magic in Midlife Radio Show with Kat Tansey

I read this morning that Trey Pennington, a man well known and loved by many in social media circles, had committed suicide.

When I learn about someone who has made this choice, I feel a deep kinship with them, because I too made this choice many years ago. I understand the depths of depression that drive one to that moment — that incomprehensible blackness, that inability to see your way though to the next moment when possibly the cloud might lift. When you have been through this many times, at some point even knowing that the cloud will lift is not enough — because you believe you will only end up back at this place once again.

I have managed to stay on this planet for what will be 68 years on September 11th. I was brought back to life in 1984 after I tried to leave. I continued to fight those demons for many years, and then again in the early 90’s I reached that point of deep despair once again. I write about my journey out of that blackness in Choosing to Be.

I no longer think about suicide, but I understand how one arrives at this point.

Some of us manage to stay and some of us decide we must leave. My friend Marty Weiner left earlier this year. He was a gift to this planet, a healer who helped me through times of dark despair. He shared with me that he too dealt with depression most of his life, and knowing this made me feel less alone.

I thought about Marty this morning.  How much I wished he could have stayed. I found a video tribute to him, and as I watched it, I thought about Trey Pennington and how many people whose lives Trey touched are hurting today.

There are no easy answers, I know this. The day I decided to end my life, no one suspected that I would make that choice late that night. We can’t always be there, we can’t know the pain that is so deeply buried. All we can do is share our stories, listen with our hearts, and take action when we can to pull someone back from the brink. But we must also understand that in the end, it is not up to us.

This is the tribute by Art Durand about my friend and healer, Marty Weiner, who walks in beauty forever in my thoughts and in my heart…

Celebrating a friend, Marty Weiner

This is a brief story about a special bond between one of my readers, the Feline Zen Master himself, and me —

Today I completed the final installment of Twelve Lessons from Choosing to Be for the September issue of Wisdom Magazine.

This is the end of a very poignant journey. A year ago I took on the task of condensing each of the chapters of my book into a monthly article for Wisdom Magazine — writing in the voice of Poohbear Degoonacoon, the Feline Zen Master, rather than my own voice as the narrator in the book. My PR person thought that this was an interesting angle, and Wisdom Magazine agreed.

I remember being struck dumb that first month, having no idea how to do what I had agreed to do. I decided to call one of my readers, who had shared with me that my story and most importantly, the Feline Zen Master himself, had made her decide not to kill herself after all. I called to tell her that I was scared, that I couldn’t do this.

In one of the most beautiful conversations I have ever had, she reminded me of some of Poohbear Degoonacoon’s lessons, having now become a teacher of them herself. I learned how important it was to push past my fear, to once again find Poohbear’s voice inside me. I struggled with several drafts, and Gini responded with her comments, urging me on until Pooh’s voice was finally just right.

I must admit I am getting a little teary as I write this, knowing how much I owe to the Feline Zen Master for helping me save my own life and Gini’s life, and to Gini for passing back to me the courage she gained from what I wrote.

Choosing to Be was picked up by Findhorn Press in Scotland last year. It is doing very well in England, and is now being published in Chinese and Dutch — so the magic of the story lives on to provide entertainment, teach people about meditation, and perhaps to save a few more lives…

(Here is the link for Lesson Eleven.)

I will post the link to Lesson Twelve on September 1st.

I was pretty vulnerable in my last post, so I thought it might be good to give you an update about what has happened in the week since then.

I’ve developed a deeply felt sense of freedom during the past few days, just hanging out, beginning to enjoy how cool I really am. My cat, Mombasa, has picked up this vibe, and she follows me from room to room, soaking up my great energy and returning it in her own furry way.

I’ve just made another short video, as a follow-up to my “Woman Behind the Curtain” video a week ago, and doing this one was amazing! I watched it afterward and thought, wow, that woman looks like she really loves who she is. . .

The title for this post popped into my head as I watched the video, and I hear Janis Joplin in my head singing “Bobby McGee” as I type this.

I’m thinking about the Buddha too. He talked about freedom. I think maybe he would be happy with the line from that song, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

During my many years as a meditator, I’ve been learning about letting go of who I’ve been and who I think I should be. I’ve not been a fast learner, and this has not been an easy journey, these eighteen years.

But – I’ve finally succeeded. I wanted to learn to love myself just as I am, unconditionally, before I died. And guess what, I’ve made it!

My new slogan?

Relish the journey.

(It’s the only one you’ve got. . .)

One of the images that made a lasting impression on me from The Wizard of Oz (besides those really scary flying monkeys) is the scene when the curtain falls down and we see the little white haired man speaking into a device that turns his voice into the booming Wizard’s voice.

As a highly sensitive person, I often feel that same need to present “bigger” and “better” than my current state — be it at work, in social situations, in social media, even with family and friends. This need to be in the land of “all-rightism” as Ann Lewis, my friend in the UK describes it, can be quite tiring. Most of my life I have been told not to be so sensitive, so I became quite wary of appearing this way to others, even when I was feeling it in every bone of my body. The truth is, I am highly sensitive, and acting like I am not, well it is like wearing a big fancy costume, complete with make-up, that makes me look like the other, “normal” people.

When I interviewed Dr. Elaine Aron, psychologist, researcher and author of The Highly Sensitive Person, I told her that the first time I read her book I broke down in tears. Since then I have recommended her book to numerous people who struggle with being highly sensitive, and they always tell me that it was life changing to realize they really are okay and that there is nothing wrong with them. According to Elaine, we HSPs represent between 15-20% of the population. This is a pretty big number, so it seems to me it’s time to pull down the curtain and make ourselves known, just as we are.

Raw and Unedited

Which is why I am doing something here that is, even now, a little bit scary. I have been stuck in a creative wasteland for several weeks, and I’m going to talk about it. I decided to make a video on the spur of the moment this morning, sans make-up, nice clothes, and coiffed hair, to try to describe what I’m feeling. And I’ve decided to include it in this post, thinking that it might help a lot of people who feel like this and think they are the only one who is like that little man behind the curtain. So here goes . . .

The breakthrough I talk about in the video happened last month. I wrote about it in my other blog, so you can read about it at the link at the end of this post if you want to know more. Basically, I finally let go of the burden I’ve been carrying around for a million years (well, okay, only about 67) that I am damaged goods. Now, I have done a good deal of work, both psychological and spiritual, to let go of this. And I have made great progress, but the thing is that this was wired into me when I was pre-verbal, so it has been very hard to reach. But through this amazing 10-day EFT tapping experience, I reached it. Something so fundamental in me has changed dramatically, and my guess is that this creative wasteland I’ve been in is because I am much like a fish who has suddenly spouted legs and is walking around wondering how the heck she got on dry land, and what to do next.

When I began writing Choosing to Be in the 90’s, I was in the process of letting go of my wish to leave the planet, to kill myself. What I didn’t say in the book was that this was not the first time I had wanted to end my life. Up until that time, I had always held that escape chute near and dear to me, and I think that was what kept me going — saying to myself that “Well, if it gets too unbearable, I can just leave.” The big change that happened to me in learning to meditate was that I was able to let go of that escape chute. I learned that I could choose to be here, and that I would be able to deal with pain and suffering in a way that was new to me.

And I have done that. But since then I have continued to deal with the pain of feeling that down deep I am garbage. This has not been a constant state. It would come and go. I would be fine, then one day I would catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and the thought would come blasting into my head that I dare not go outside because my ugliness would repel people. Fun, uh?

The Unholy Burden of Shame

There is a name for this, it is called shame. Shame is at the bottom of the pit, below guilt, below apathy, below grief. What I gained through meditation was the understanding that this shame was not permanent, just as nothing was permanent. I learned to feel my anger, then to be willing to accept and forgive, to gain understanding about my life path, to deeply feel love and, yes, even joy. But that shame was still lurking around in the basement.

And now, I don’t care about it any more. I’m done with it. I have opened up the basement, and brought that shame out into the light. Turns out, it can’t live in the light. Who knew?

Now here is where this gets interesting, at least to me. Having let go of shame, I think that what has been happening to me these past few weeks, as I reclaim that beautiful little girl I was and share pictures of her and revel in her goodness, intelligence, spirit and beauty — I think I am grieving all those lost years, the life she wasn’t able to enjoy because she was dragging all those chains around with her.

Voila! I have actually talked and written my way out of this. . . I get it now. Grief is good. Grief is necessary. I can do grief because I know I need to honor this loss, and I know that when I do, I will be stronger for it. I am on my way out of the wasteland, and I suspect that a beautiful landscape is waiting for me just around the corner.

……………………………………….
Go to www.KatTansey.com to read the post about my breakthrough with EFT (Tapping).

Go to Finding Magic in Midlife for my interview with Dr. Elaine Aron.

Brain scans of the hippocampus, showing the regions the researchers determined were affected by meditation.
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I often write about the many positive effects of being a daily meditator. Now a recent study actually pinpoints the areas of the brain that are affected by daily meditation. This is a fascinating look at what really happens inside the brain, demonstrating the power of meditation in a visual way. People who meditate daily experience these effects — now we can actually see them. I’ve excerpted part of the article here. A link to the complete article is at the end of this post.
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“A very interesting study published in January suggests that meditating for just 30 minutes a day for eight weeks can increase the density of gray matter in those brain regions associated with memory, stress, and empathy.

The researchers tracked 16 people who participated in the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, developed more than 30 years ago by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Over eight weekly meetings, the program leads participants through meditation exercises meant to build the skills of mindfulness—a moment-by-moment awareness of one’s thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment. Participants are supposed to try these practices on their own between classes.

For decades, people who’ve completed the MBSR training have reported feeling less stress and more positive emotions; participants suffering from chronic illnesses say they experience less pain afterward.

But in this study, the researchers weren’t just asking the participants how they felt. They were examining their brains, two weeks before and right after the eight-week program. Over the same period, they also scanned the brains of people who didn’t receive the MBSR training.

The MBSR participants, none of whom were experienced meditators, reported spending just under half an hour per day on their meditation “homework.” Yet when their brains were scanned at the end of the program, their gray matter was significantly thicker in several regions than it was before.

One of those regions was the hippocampus, which prior research has found to be involved in learning, memory, and the regulation of our emotions. The gray matter of the hippocampus is often reduced in people who suffer from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The researchers also found denser gray matter in the temporo-perietal junction and the posterior cingulated cortex of the meditators’ brains—regions involved in empathy and taking the perspective of someone else—and in the cerebellum, which has been linked to emotion regulation.

These brain changes may suggest that meditation improves people’s ability to regulate their emotions, control their stress levels, and feel empathy for others, says Britta Hölzel, the study’s lead author and a research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Geissen in Germany. However, she stresses that these conclusions are still very speculative.

The group that didn’t receive the MBSR training didn’t show any of these positive changes in brain structure.”

Here is the full article: A Little Meditation Goes a Long Way

If you are convinced of the benefits of meditation and want to become a daily meditator, be sure to download my free e-book, Five Helpful Steps to Becoming a Meditator.  And if you haven’t read Choosing to Be, I encourage you to do so. Read what people say about it and get it today. (It is also on Kindle.)

People often ask me how I got the idea to write Choosing to Be. What they are really asking is why I decided to dialogue with a talking cat.

It’s difficult to answer that question. I usually explain it by saying that I wanted to write Choosing to Be as a story, and I wanted to have dialogue. I say that since Poohbear Degoonacoon and I are the main characters, well, he had to talk. People smile and accept this — it fits into their frame of reference. It keeps them from thinking I’m crazy.

But this really isn’t the truth. Talking with animals, and hearing what they have to say, has come naturally to me for most of my life. I never question it. It just is. But having spent the first 20 years of my career in the business environment, I learned to keep this part of myself to myself, lest I be dismissed as “that strange young woman who talks with animals.”

Then yesterday I was reading Spirituality & Health Magazine and came upon an article about the vision of the Inuit. In addition to the beautiful pictures of Inuit art, there was a poem. I was compelled to read this poem aloud, almost as a chant — and tears rolled down my eyes as I did it. Here is the poem (I suggest you read it out loud):

Magic Words (An Inuit Poem)

In the very earliest time,
When both people and animals lived on earth,
A person could become an animal if he wanted to
And an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
And sometimes animals
And there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
Might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
And what people wanted to happen could happen
All you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
That’s the way it was.

I grew up in Kodiak, Alaska in the early fifties, when Alaska was still a territory. In fact, I attended Kodiak Territorial School. I was friends with Eskimos and with kids whose fathers braved the treacherous ocean as fishermen. Most years, someone I knew lost their father to the Alaskan wilderness.

I talked with the moose and bears and seals and rabbits and the many other animals around me. It seemed natural. My Eskimo friends told stories of animals and we related to them as part of us. I cheered the sled dogs as they swept through the little town of Kodiak in a blur during the annual Sled Dog Races. I knew these animals and their spirits as though they were my own. I respected the animals and fish my father took for our food. I watched him build fish ladders with the Civilian Conservation Corps to aid the salmon upstream for their spawning, and I saw the respect these men paid to the beautiful fish that provided us with sustenance during the long and dark winter. We had a neighborhood smokehouse where we all stored our meat and fish, often exchanging our bounty for something different that a neighbor had put up.

I was part of the natural way of things, and I took it for granted that it would always be that way. I was wrong. Today my heart hurts with this knowledge. The Inuit poem has touched me so deeply that I find tears welling up and a lump in my throat as the words from the poem swirl through my head again and again.

And so, I talk with animals. I learn from them. I admit this. And today, I am proud of it.

I attended the Smile at Fear Retreat with Pema Chodron presented by Shambhala on the weekend of October 15-17 in San Francisco. This video is the second of a series to share what I learned from this experience and how we might apply her teachings in our everyday lives.

The main points I cover in this video are:

• We fear uncertainty more than we fear pain.
• We deal with this uncertainty either by speeding up or by becoming very lazy.
• What lies underneath this fear of uncertainty is our own self-doubt.
• Meditation helps us learn to stay present when we are on shaky ground.
• The basis of fearlessness is knowing fear.

HERE IS A QUESTION FOR YOU:  When you are feeling this shaky ground of uncertainty, what do you tend to do? Do you speed up, stay busy, multi-task, take action — even if that action may not be the right thing to do?  Or do you slow down, go numb, hide out, and get very little done?  How can (or do)  you help yourself get grounded and stay present, not going to either extreme?

I attended the Smile at Fear Retreat with Pema Chodron that was presented by Shambhala on the weekend of October 15-17 in San Francisco. This video is the first of a series to share what I learned from this experience and how we might apply her teachings in our everyday lives.

The main points I cover in this  introduction are:

• When we are dealing with fear, we often contract and turn inward.
• We become self-focused rather than other focused.
• Another option is to turn toward fear, to feel our vulnerability.
• This allows us to open our hearts and broaden our focus.

“Scientific studies show that we are more afraid of uncertainty than we are of pain.”  ~Quote from Time Magazine as shared by Pema Chodron at the Retreat.

HERE IS A QUESTION FOR YOU:  What is your experience in dealing with fear? Can you feel the difference between contracting inward on the one hand, and moving out and opening to the fear on the other? I’m looking forward to learning about your experiences.