SAD? Brighten your Spirit and Treat Seasonal Affective Disorder with Color!

Learning about and using color's qualities and properties can enhance your spirit, improve your health, and even expand your consciousness. Known as chromo therapy, color therapy, is used to restore balance wherever our bodies are lacking energy, be it in physical, emotional, spiritual, or mental bodies, or in the auric field that is an energy field that surrounds you. I have long used crystal healing and colored light therapy in conjunction with Reiki during my sessions with clients, and I work with color during my own personal meditations.

Add positive affirmations to light, and you've created a very powerful tool to create and maintain balance in your life!

In each layer of your aura there are different colors that may be used for clearing and re-balancing your energy field. A skilled practitioner does an aura scan or aura reading to determine the health and wellbeing of your spirit– which in turn influences your mind, emotions and physical health. (This can be done over distance as effectively as in person.) When the spirit is is harmony, there is an opening in clearing and healing all aspects of your life.

Color is simply a form of visible light, of electromagnetic energy. Light is the visible reflection off the particles in the atmosphere. Color makes up a band of these light wave frequencies from red at 1/33,000th's of an inch wavelength to violet at 1/67,000 of an inch wavelength. Below red lie infrared and radio waves. Above it: the invisible ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays. We all understand the impact of ultraviolet and x-rays... so of course the light we are able to see as color impacts us as well.

How we "feel" about color is more than psychological. The last decade has proven that lack of color, or more specifically, light, causes millions to suffer each winter from a mild depression known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Because of the complex way in which exposure to various colors acts via the brain upon the autonomic nervous system, exposure to a specific color can even alter physiological measurements such as blood pressure, electrical skin resistance and glandular functions in your body. And they most certainly can affect how we feel on a day-to-day basis.

Wearing faceted crystal beads is an easy and effective way to flood the aura with healing light and color frequencies. Please visit the Journey Beads storefront on Bonanzle and the informational thread which includes a basic color therapy guide. Of course, I am happy to help you create a piece of jewelry or touchstone strand which will be perfectly suited to your wellness goals.

May you be blessed!

http://www.bonanzle.com/JourneyBeads

You are invited to view our new YouTube! video, "Journey Beads Ancient Wisdom"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQi6KlPH9d0

and, our 90 second Holiday video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ybSDFFhz8

New Journey Beads Video

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Journey Beads Gift Certificates now available on Bonanzle!

Journey Beads fit your Pandora, Troll, and Biagi jewelry. They are created to hold energy for inspiration, healing, awareness, creativity, and prosperity. You can create a beautiful one-of-a-kind bracelet, a necklace, a bookmark, or a set of touchstone prayer and meditation beads. We hope that Journey Beads will add beauty and and light to your journey, and remind you to celebrate each step and milestone!

The Perfect Gift! Choose a Journey Beads Bonanzle Gift Certificate in any amount of $10 or more. Gift certificates are sent via email as .pdf documents so you can print them out and tuck into cards, OR attach to an email greeting. Valid through 12/31/2010, no cash value.

Gift Certificates are redeemed by entering the number as a coupon code at checkout. We'll include a FREE Murano glass bead with every $10 purchase! It will be sent as an added surprise with your recipient's order.

Start with a bracelet! We offer several styles and sizes.

Add our Affirmation Beads for prayer, meditation, and mindfulness as you navigate life's twists and turns. An affirmation is a statement expressed in the present tense and phrased in the positive. Affirmations focus the mind and clarify attention and intention. Affirmations are simultaneously an expression of expectation and an expression of gratitude, they are both a journey and a destination. An affirmation tag is included with each bead in this collection.

Pathway Beads help you to stay focused on your dream, be it the path to prosperity, joy, balance, courage, motherhood, healing, love, recovery, or spiritual growth... our paths are many! You set the intention for your pathway beads. Directions on how to power up your jewelry with Solar energies are included with Pathway Beads.

Milestone Beads are a beautiful way to celebrate every insight you experience and every goal you reach, large or small. Milestone Beads are charms which represent movement and flexibility. Each bead in this collection is blessed with positive energies and comes with an affirmation tag.

Spacer Beads to remind you to breathe, relax, enjoy the moment, and have faith that your journey is unfolding as it should. Choose from several styles in Tibetan Silver.

Stop Beads are hinged to clamp onto your Pandora Style Bracelet to keep the beads together in one segment and to keep them from falling off your braclet when you remove it.

Custom orders: We'll be happy to help you create a set of crystalline Journey Beads and positive affirmations for your unique journey, or for someone you care about. This service is free of charge.

All Journey Beads purchases arrive beautifully wrapped in scented, silk rose petals!

"Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us." – Samuel Smiles

May you be blessed!

Feeding Your Body and Soul with Chakra Healing Foods

I've had many inquiries from new clients who are just beginning to explore chakra wellness through the Journey Beads. While using color therapy, aromatherapy, laying on gemstones (crystal healing), and Reiki are all effective techniques for balancing and restoring harmony to our energetic bodies, we cannot forget to nourish our physical bodies as well!

When I notice a disconnect between my actions and my emotions, or level of spiritual awareness (I know better but I did it anyway...) I scan my chakra system, but I do not first consider the types of foods that I have been eating. And I should.

Because our chakras are energy vortexes and invisible to most of us, we can conclude that chakras thrive on energy, prayer, and other such spiritual stuff... you know, those things that we can't see with the human eye – and they do. However, the chakras cannot sustain our human body without our help. It is important to feed and nourish the flesh in order to help support and fuel our our subtle bodies.

Whenever one or more of your chakras is misaligned first see if you are not eating or possibly overeating the foods that fuel that particular chakra.

To feel more grounded, feed your root chakra. Choose root vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, parsnips, radishes, beets, onions, garlic, and protein rich foods like eggs, meats, beans, tofu, soy products, peanut butter. Spice it up with horseradish, hot paprika, chives, and cayenne pepper

To nourish your sexual and creative energies, feed your sacral chakra. Choose sweet melons, mangos, strawberries, passion fruit, oranges, honey, cinnamon, and vanilla.

Boost your self-esteem and encourage self love by feeding the solar plexus. Many sensitive people have allergies to foods that nourish this chakra. If you have gluten sensitivities aor you are lactose intolerant I beleive its your cellular/karmic directive to focus here. Comfort foods include pastas, breads, cereal, rices, flax seed, sunflower seeds, and dairy milk, cheeses, and yogurt. Many of us need to learn how to love ourselves in new and different ways!

Lighten emotional hurts by healing the heart chakra. Think green, airy, leafy vegetables such as spinach, kale, dandelion greens,broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and celery. Enjoy green teas and teas from basil, sage, thyme, cilantro, and parsley.

Speak your truth. Your throat chakra responds to water! All liquids, including fruit juices, herbal teas, lemon water, and sour-ish citrus fruits are helpful Add a dash of salt, and lemon grass.

Awaken your intuition by feeding the brow. All, dark bluish colored fruits are beneficial. Choose blueberries, red grapes, black berries, raspberries, red wines and grape juice. Spice it up with lavender, poppy seed, and mugwort.

Fast to opening and clearing the crown. Intermittent fasting as a spiritual discipline has been recommended various religious and cultural practices around the globe since throughout time. Because it resets out metaboloic processes, many physicians recommend supervised fasting to rebalance and detoxify the body. Always fast under the supervision of a qualified practitioner.

Incense and smudging herbs including sage, copal, myrrh, frankincense, and juniper are recommended to purify and open your spiritual center as well.

Of course, using affirmations remains a powerful technique to align and focus the mind, body and spirit. Combine affirmations with meditation, energy work and a diet update and you'll not only feel better, but you'll BE better.

May you be blessed!

image credit: farm1.static.flickr.com

Holding the Blue Bead, Affirming My Place in the Universe

By working with affirmations, we begin the process of changing negative and unproductive beliefs into positive life supporting beliefs, that with regular practice will create our desired futures. Affirmations focus the mind and clarify attention and intention.

I love the Journey Beads Crystal Affirmation Beads for prayer, meditation, and mindfulness as I navigate life's twists and turns. I love the way they play with light, each facet representing a moment of clarity, joy, and celebration!

Blue is the color of the spirit and relates to self expression - speech, communication, the ability to communicate our needs and requirements; the Spirit of truth and purpose.

"Everything I do is an expression of love.

It is now safe for me to express my feelings.

I love and trust my creative gifts.

It is now right for me to express the best of who I am now.

I release the fear and doubts which block the way to my creative expression."

Journey Beads are both tactile and visual. They help to engage all our senses as we work with affirmations to reach our desired goals. An affirmation is a statement expressed in the present tense and phrased in the positive. I have found it advantageous to see myself as already having obtained my desired outcome and while holding the image, I bring to mind the feelings I would have when accomplishing my goal.

By combining the elements of sight, light, and touch to visualize our objective it becomes real to our imagination and in so doing becomes embedded in our subconscious as a part of our reality. As an example; if I desire to sail around the islands this winter; I concentrate and tune in my senses. I feel the motion of the boat beneath yme as I smell the sea air, hearing the flap of the sails and the calls of dolphins and gulls. I hear the rustle of palms on the breezy beach. I taste the salt spray on my face as I enjoy the pleasure of my surroundings. All the while, I turn the bead in my fingertips.

The subconscious mind, being non-critical, will believe my visualizations as being real as my sense of touch anchors those images in the third dimension reality. As I meditate on my affirmations, my subconscious mind will raise images and sensations of my successes to my awareness.

By visualizing your goal your subconscious mind will work for you, behind the scenes, to encourage the manifestation of situations which will ultimately enable your goals to come true. The process of achieving your goals through the application of positive mental images will empower you to create a reality from your desires. Journey Beads will bring light to your intentions and anchor them for manifestation with the healing power of touch.

Journey Beads may be purchased on Bonanzle and also at Oshun Spirit Earth Friendly Goods. There is a Free Design Service if you'd like help in creating a set of beads and positive affirmations for your unique journey, or for someone you care about. Journey Beads also fit Pandora and Troll Jewelry.

Like words of encouragement, Journey Beads make a thoughtful and personal gift for someone facing challenges, celebrating a personal triumph, and growing in spirit. Each bead arrives wrapped in scented silk rose petals with an affirmation tag.

"Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us." – Samuel Smiles

May you be blessed!

Hope is alive and well and living in you!

I intuit Hope as a Spirit, a loving, driving force in my life, giving me a reason to believe there's nothing I cannot do, and nothing I cannot achieve. Hope is not a mere mental attitude, positive prose, or a vortex of potential created by a crystalline grid. Hope is not in my imagination, as wild and free as it might be! I believe Hope lives in my Soul and plays in my Heart. She flows joy to me. No, Hope is not just wishful thinking. Hope is alive!

In fact, without Hope, I think there is very little we can accomplish. The moment we stop believing that we have what it takes to make something happen, we stop "happening" ourselves. And when that occurs, our hopes and dreams begin to fade away.

When we stop believing, we stop creating.

The dictionary defines hope as 'a feeling that what is wanted will happen.' But Hope is so much more than just a feeling. Like I said, I think hope is an entity, a Goddess. She is a body of inspirational energy, a Muse!

Hope is the stirring sensation that fills our souls with excitement, expectation and anticipation. Hope is an inspiring, uplifting emotion that keeps us going in the face of life's most demanding challenges. Hope is a glorious glimmer, the breath of fresh air that helps us keep the faith when everyone around us is ready to give up.

Today, many of us are beaten, broken and defeated. Instead of making sure our Hope is vibrant and alive, we are ending up a mere shadow of what we could have and should have been, in our relationships, in our communities, and in our humanity. Entangled in an inextricable maze of doom and gloom, our lives seem empty, lonely and hopeless. Our once promising hopes and dreams lost. Our collective souls emptied of excitement, expectation and anticipation. Without Hope, we are lost.

Maybe only a memory of Hope still remains, but She is still there. Maybe not shining as brightly as She once did, but She's still in you. And that small glimmer of Hope is all you really need to turn your life around. Feed Her. Sing to Her. Take Her out dancing, whisper your secrets in Her ear. She will hear you, respond to you, sing to you!

So today, take Hope along with you. As you approach this day, see it from Hope's higher vantage point in your heart, in your soul, and expect the very best from life! Give life all that you've got to give in return. When you do, something truly amazing, something beyond your wildest imagination happens.

All of your Hopes and Dreams start coming true.

May you be blessed!

Image credit: Golden Goddess image04.webshots.com