What to do to help bees
By Jena Griffiths | September 21, 2013
Here’s a great, proactive Ted Talk on bees by Marla Spivak: Why bees are disappearing and what you personally can do to help them.
Plant more bee friendly flowers! Healthy, pesticide free preferably local/indigenous flowers.
Where?
Anywhere. Everywhere. Even in city window boxes.
I’m going to re-invent my garden totally.
It would also be great if legislation could be created to require mono-culture agricultural farms to grow bee friendly hedges or corridors between their “flower deserts”.
There’s also a project to support wild bees in Switzerland. Supporting bees, bee research and pollinating your garden at the same time.
I love it!
Perhaps this concept could be put into practice in other countries?
Topics: climate change, ecology and nature, Environment, Health, What's on in Zurich | No Comments »
Inner inquiry – next advanced hand shape class with Richard Unger
By Jena Griffiths | September 17, 2013
Our next call in a series of 32 calls on advanced hand shape is today, September 17, 2013.
The hand shape – Inner Inquiry – Water + Mercury
We’ll be exploring the strengths and also potential challenges of this archetype over a 3 hour period.
One and a half hours this week and one and a half hours next week, September 24, 2013.
We’ll also be learning pattern recognition variations and how to thread these characteristics with other markers in the hand.
More about this series here.
This call will take place in the Advanced Hand Shapes Room.
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Interview with Catherine Mesot – surrendering to higher guidance
By Jena Griffiths | September 8, 2013
Next up in the free auditorium is Catherine Mesot.
We’ll be discussing Surrendering to higher guidance. Why do it and do you have a choice anyway?
Thursday, September 12 2013
replay is here
Catherine is a life coach, Intuitive Art Healer, Medium & Channel. After more than 20 years in the corporate world, a successful career, a former Miss Switzerland title and a normal life, Catherine surrendered to higher guidance and a new way.
“Following the direct guidance of my Spiritual Team I started an ever-unfolding personal journey to rediscover and accept the different gifts I received long ago and learn to share them with like-minded….First I would like to say that this path chose me probably more than I chose it.”
More about Catherine Mesot
Topics: Being in transition, spirit | No Comments »
Next topic call on the life lessons:
intimacy issues, trust and surrender
By Jena Griffiths | September 3, 2013
Our next topic call with Richard Unger on the LIfe Lessons is today, September 3, 2013.
The topic is Left Mercury finger Life Lesson – intimacy issues, trust and surrender.
When is letting go of control the optimal life strategy?
We’ll be discussing how this theme shows up in ones fingerprints in various different ways.
In one’s inner world and in one’s outer world.
Are you willing to trust yourself to handle the truth?
How to improve the situation through your ability to trust?
These are the sorts of questions we’ll be exploring during the call.
Join this series of topic calls here
Topics: Relationship problems, spirit | No Comments »
Chinese medicine and longevity – Ling na Cheng
By Jena Griffiths | August 28, 2013
Our next interview in the free auditorium is Thursday, August 29, 2013.
Ling Na Cheng on Chinese Medicine and Longevity
10 am Switzerland and Central Europe. Elsewhere
Join the call here or pre-submit any questions you have for Ling Na right now.
The replay is here.
Who is Ling Na Cheng?Ling Na is a multi-talented women, fluent in English, German & French, she also speaks Japanese and Mandarin.
She has a masters degree in traditional Chinese Medicine and is a licensed acupuncturist, who has practiced in USA and is practicing in Switzerland.
Ling Na also teaches Continuing Education Courses in Chinese herbology, 6 Stagnations and Chinese medicine, Special Acupuncture Points, Menstrual Disorders and Emotional Imbalances…
And she gives talks on how one can apply Chinese medicine to enhance your health.
Topics: Health | No Comments »
Can you handle rejection? Right Apollo lesson
By Jena Griffiths | August 20, 2013
Our next topic call with Richard Unger – exploring the life lessons – is Right Apollo.
Is it possible that your desire to hide is something far deeper than you ever imagined?
What inspires a dread of showing up to face the knee jerk rotten tomatoes that life inevitably throws at anything mildly original, let alone extraordinary?
Could this be transmuted into your greatest strength?
This is what we’ll be discussing in this this week’s topic call.
Join this series here
For more about how fear of criticism and rejection (tomato fear) shows up in your hands here’s a post and images.
Topics: Showing Up | 1 Comment »
Finding more joy
By Jena Griffiths | June 26, 2013
“Even in the midst of pain it is possible to live in that deep life-giving river of joy.” Jean Houston
Years ago I was studying abnormal psychology and decided I had everything in the textbook. Schizophrenia, psychosis, neurosis, perhaps even a simple personality… there was obviously no hope for me. I may as well just slit my own wrists. Then I walked into the canteen and spotted a photographic display – beautiful black and white images from a squatter camp near Cape Town.
The thing that shocked me the most about the images was not the squalor or poverty but the fact that everyone looked so happy. They had nothing. They were living in shacks made from bits of scrap material and plastic bags. Yet each face was joyful, even radiant. I walked away from that exhibition deeply humbled but also transformed. It cured me instantly of my own self imposed misery.
Often we are so focused on what’s not working in our lives that we forget all the good things we have. Or the magic of just being alive – full moon rising, birds song, a baby’s smile…
Thought I’d share with you something I’m exploring at the moment – a process by Jean Houston for bringing more joy into your life.
Jean says “The absence of joy is one of the reasons so many of us are sick.
Practicing joy minute by minute hour by hour day by day will help us discover how to transmute that cloud of pain that surrounds the Earth into mindful delight. We serve the Earth by practicing joy..”
The Eightfold path to Joy
Here are Jean Houston’s 8 steps:
“Each step is like walking on a lotus blossom. You walk from one beautiful petal to another.” JH
1 Joyful belief. Joy is the primary element in all creation. We’re hardwired for happiness.
2. Joyful awareness – look for it in everything, Expect it. Joy increases exponentially as it is recognized.
3. Joyful acknowledgment – feel and appreciate it through every pore, breath, bone.
4. Joyful dedication – align with our deepest purpose and values
5. Joyful remembrance – Harvest the good things we have done. Build a joy bank of good memories.
6. Joyful transformation. Mindfulness leads us to transmute pain. Take a 1minute vacation from suffering.
7. Joyful presence. Even in the midst of pain it is possible to live in that deep life-giving river of joy.
If someone you know is suffering, learn compassionate listening
8. Joyful service – Do whatever you are doing with joy. Even if it seems boring or unimportant. This shifts things for you rapidly.
Jean asks, “What can you do in your own life to be a social artist? How can you bring hope to others?”
or as poet Mary Oliver puts it, “What is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Topics: Depression Cures, Fun | No Comments »
Interview with Noah Pikes – Finding your Voice
By Jena Griffiths | June 18, 2013
Can you inhabit more of your potential by improving the range of your voice?
Next up in the Earth School free auditorium is voice expert Noah Pikes.
We’ll be discussing archetypes and the healing voice
– June 21 2013
4pm Central Europe, 3 pm UK, 10am Eastern, 7 am pacific. Elsewhere
Noah Pikes has been exploring, researching, performing and teaching the Whole Voice for more than 30 years. It is an interdisciplinary and humanising work, ranging from the healing effects of voice to its use in many forms of performance arts.
The kind of questions I’ll be asking Noah?
Can you inhabit more of your potential by accessing the full range of your voice?
Replay of this call here
More about Noah
Noah’s work is rooted in the experiences of Alfred Wolfsohn, a young German Jewish soldier traumatised in the trenches of WW1, who subsequently healed himself with his own voice and enabled many others to do so. His method involved both going beyond the conventional bel canto structuring of the voice, to achieving an extended “unchained voice”. My own teacher was his student Roy Hart, whose voice could span 6 octaves (holding the Guinness Record for several years), and for whose voice inspired Sir Peter Maxwell Davies to compose “8 Songs for a Mad King” for him as King George III.
“I work with voice as sound. Its roots lie in our mammalian ancestry – where vocal sound is used to express and communicate bodily states. It retains that role for us, as in the voice of the infant, but is also heard the voice heard in adult laughter, sighs and yawns, coughs, yells and howls. I call it the sounding voice, which unlike our speaking and singing voices, is a universal human voice.
“In recent years I have discovered that this fundamental sounding voice is structured in a fascinating way, both in its physical as well as its imaginal dimensions, by a series of archetypes. They all have a particular place on the vertical axis between Earth and Sky, and a relationship to a particular form of personal power. The first is the archetypal image of the Imagination itself, The Tree. Then, in a more detailed way, by a family of figures that are expressive of different kinds of power. At the bottom end of a voice is The Giant while at the top are the Fairies, Angels and Birds as well as the Witch. In the middle live a Royal Family. These voices are not necessarilly beautiful, indeed they can be quite ugly, especially when moving away from the Royals and noble figures into their dark sides.
“By giving voice, and body, to these archetypes, many individuals have discovered parts of their personal identity that were hitherto closed to them. Of course that is not an immediate process but one that takes time. Part of that is the reclaiming of one’s own individual voice from the hold that any particular figure has had on it. Then those archetypal voices become resources for effective and lively speaking and singing.”
Noah has taught workshops in many countries, and in many different settings. He offers individual coaching in Zurich.
To contact Noah via email: noahpikes(at)gmail.com
Topics: self esteem, Showing Up | 1 Comment »
Doctor, lawyer, Guide – or Just Plain Clever archetype
By Jena Griffiths | June 18, 2013
Our next advanced hand shape archetype class with Richard Unger is on the Just Plain Clever archetype.
We’ll be looking broad Earthy hands that are also Mercurial today and next Tuesday.
Here’s a good example of this type – Thomas Edison. A photograph of his hands
More about Mercurial types (hands with long pinkie fingers.)
More about this series of classes
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
How an unfair Swiss train fine saved me thousands
By Jena Griffiths | June 15, 2013
I wrote this story in 2009 and posted it on the zaadz/Gaia blog site which was eventually shut down.
I was looking for where it was posted and realized it’s no longer “out there”.
I think it’s an important story about seeing your life symbolically.
A great Saturn Story. So I’m reposting it here. It could save you or someone else a lot of pain.
Every single thing that happens in your life has a positive reason.
This is hard to believe sometimes.
Especially right when its happening to you. And what’s happening seems totally unfair and awful.
In that moment it feels like you’re in hell.
And no-one cares except you.
SURPRISINGLY what’s happening is for your benefit.
And, if you don’t see this, you’ll get the same thing happening
again and again in more extreme forms.
Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: General, Responsibility vs irresponsibility, rollercoaster life, What's on in Zurich | No Comments »