Category: Uncategorized

Just Breathe

by Heather McCrae, MEd, posted in Uncategorized


Speaking as someone who knows, (I have asthma)breathing is pretty important. What we forget in this day and age is what happens when we don’t breathe.

I work with adults and children who suffer with Anxiety, and guess what?  The first thing we talk about before we get to work is breathing. When I lead a #MiniMeYoga 2 Hour Workshop for Grownups, we talk a lot about breathing.

Children and adults who have suffered a traumatic event, or events (the root cause or causes of Anxiety), all have breathing issues. I’m not talking about Asthma, but I am talking about breathing.

When you live in “Survival Mode” where your brain is functioning as Survival Brain, your breathing is very shallow. You live in a state of “High Alert” think “Danger Will Robinson”. Your brain is asking your body to stay prepared at all times for danger and trouble. That is no way to live-literally.

You need deep breathing for both relaxation and brain activity. according to an article in The Guardian:

“The rhythm of breathing co-ordinates electrical activity across a network of brain regions associated with smell, memory, and emotions, and can enhance their functioning, according to a new study by researchers at Northwestern University. The findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggest that breathing does not merely supply oxygen to the brain and body, but may also organise the activity of populations of cells within multiple brain regions to help orchestrate complex behaviours.”

In other words, you don’t do your most complex problem-solving when you’re freaked out. If you suffer from Anxiety, you tend to be freaked out a lot.

One of the most important things we can teach young children is diaphragmatic breathing, or deep-belly breathing.  By teaching them this alone, we are giving them a way to regulate their emotions. We tend to calm down much faster and sooner when we are taking slow deep breaths.

For more information about the Mini Me Yoga 2 Hour Workshop for Grownups:

https://heathermccrae.com/mini-me-yoga/2hourworkshop/

The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2016/dec/23/breathing-modulates-brain-activity-and-mental-function

Anxiety and Psycho-Spiritual Healing

by Heather McCrae, MEd, posted in #Anxiety, Uncategorized

Stress is the known, the conscious thing you are dreading or concerned about.  Anxiety, however is unconscious. It’s the panic attack that hits you “out of nowhere”. It’s the fight with your partner over laundry that gets completely out of control and the next thing you know, you are having a screaming match over socks. It’s the recurring nightmares-all of it. 

I deal with the realm of psycho-spiritual Healing and the Unconscious. I’ve been on this Path since I was 19 years old and learned about the Work of Carl Jung. I work with Archetypes in the Meditations I do with my clients to help them Heal from Trauma and Anxiety.  The Energy Work I do releases Trauma held in the mind and body so the client can experience Peace.

The reason there are so many wounded Souls out there wounding other Souls, is that The Great Work-the Process of truly Knowing yourself-is not for the faint of Heart! It’s bloody hard work! The Process of reclaiming your True Self and learning to live in the Present Moment is a deep exploring of your wounds: facing your demons and having the strength to let them go.

Anyone who has suffered Trauma will prefer the darkness they know to the Light they don’t know. Of course this doesn’t make sense to you. You didn’t have your brain wired for danger and drama because of an event, or ongoing events in childhood or young adulthood, or adulthood. We are the ones who duck when we hear a loud noise or have strange personal rituals around bathing, food or sleeping. Thankfully my junk only comes up occasionally now-because I did and continue to do a lot of work to keep it that way. I’m a Healer so it’s a Job Requirement. I stay clean so that when I work with you, our work is clean. my ego isn’t a part of the equation.

It’s so important to remember that we all need a variety of tools. Medication is an important stabilizer, but it is truly naive to believe for a moment that meds will make everything all better-that’s honestly not what they’re for. They keep you stable while you are working on your issues. If you’ve been frustrated that more isn’t happening in your life now that you’re taking the correct medication, or you feel you’ve hit a roadblock, it’s because you need more.

Therapy can be essential, but it can also be a distraction. If you are learning about yourself and growing as a person, great! If you are sitting and spinning and avoiding, and complaining and crying endlessly over the same events over and over again,  then you’re wasting your own valuable time and money. Energy work will assist you in moving deeply into what is hurting you and it will also assist you in releasing it all.

When I do Energy Work with clients, I work with #JikidenReiki and #LIfeActivation and #CrystalHealing. Reiki is now recognized as a very useful Healing Tool for everything from Cancer to smoking cessation.  Energy Work is essential because it can bypass the ego’s protective mechanisms and provided needed pain relief-both emotional and physical.  The Life Activation is used to charge the body with Light and Hope. Again-this is an Energy Healing that bypasses logic and ego and provides deep healing.

Meditation is essential for brain re-patterning. When you are in Depression, Anxiety and Trauma, your brain gets stuck in “fight or flight” as a response to the event or events that occurred in the past. Your brain kept you alive. Now, your job is to help your brain heal by changing those defence mechanisms. The war is over, but your brain doesn’t know it yet. Max Meditation TM is a system that uses the five known forms of Meditation, so it creates 5 new neuropathways every time we use it-this is productive brain development. With children I use  the #MiniMeYoga Meditation System TM which was developed from the Max Meditation System. It is effective and fun for the children while assisting them in learning valuable relaxation techniques. When I teach adults the Mini Me Yoga 2 Hour Workshop, I show adults how to playfully and gently assist young children in learning essential self-regulation strategies.

I also use my own system called the Castle Meditation System TM, in which I assist you in reclaiming your sense of personal sovereignty, and we work with the Chakras. Each one of those energy centres in your body has medicine to share with you and assists you in living more fully in your body. Most people think Meditation is about getting out of your body. The systems I use were designed to help you go deeper in and find stability and peace.