I am thrilled to be a Blog Buddy on Day 2 of the Blog Tour of author Patricia Shaw whose book Healers Almanac, Journey into Health with Wisdom from the 21st Century Goddesses! Launches on Amazon on Thursday January 5th 2012.
Patty Shaw is an UCM minister, Reiki Master, Spiritual Counselor and teacher and has been interested in the way we heal for most of her life. When she became a mother she took her own mom's strategy for health care for the family and added to it by exploring many alternative healing modalities and medicine. Over the last twenty years Patty has been helping others create happiness through creating health in our body, mind and spirit. Patty is passionate about helping people whether it's in her private practice, at her Reiki Clinic or at her School of Akashic Healing where she teaches others how to be spiritual healers.
Patty is also co-owner of Coventry Creations with her sister Jacki Smith. Coventry Creations is known for its candles incense and oils that inspire us to make magic the Coventry way. No matter what's getting in the way of your success, Coventry Creations has a candle for that.
Yesterday, Patty visited Kimberly Coots http://kimberlyanncoots.com/healing-2/healers-almanac-interview-with-patty-shaw where they talked about being a spiritual healer.
Here’s what Patty and I chatted about the other day when I got to ask her some questions about her own healing journey. I hope you enjoy it.
Andrea: In your book, The Healer’s Almanac, you begin with the reflection; “Throughout our lives, we all desire to be happy and healthy. When something stops us from being in that place, we feel unwell in part of our body, mind, or soul.”
What were the circumstances in your life that led you to reflect on that? Were you feeling unhappy and unhealthy? Were you witnessing it in others?
Patty: Well Andrea, I would love nothing more than to tell you that I was the picture of health and happy as a lark, but I was struggling in more than one area of my life. What great motivation! Right? I was pretending to be ok with my decision to divorce my husband and becoming a single parent of two toddlers and dealing with going back to work full time. Those were the most difficult years of my life and they took a toll on me. I was constantly ill and exhausted. My children were suffering too and I was not in the best shape emotionally either to meet their needs the way I always imagined a good mother should.
Slowly, I started making changes, some were small, and some were quite radical for me. It started with cussing myself out for sinking so low then I got a psychic reading and read a book by Edgar Cayce. That sparked a slow burn in me and I felt like I was waking up to a whole different world. Next, I checked out the local health food store and consulted with the Naturopath who worked there. I really felt hopeful and on my way. But, guess what? You may be able to drive up to the window and McDonalds and get a full meal in 3 minutes, but you can’t pop into the health food store and order up a new life. I was hopeful, but I was at the beginning of a long journey back to health, for myself and my children. I had a lot to learn.
When it became clear to me there was a connection between my emotional state and my rather sick body, I felt I had gleaned the meaning of life. Seriously, I was excited to find out that my unhealthy body will heal as I heal my heart and my mind. Part of that would come spontaneously and part of that would come from making better choices and nurturing myself. All the success I have experienced since then became the background material for the Healers Almanac. I am living proof that this woo woo stuff really works.
Andrea: As an the author of The Healer’s Almanac and having studied so many different ways to be happy and healthy, What is your current, personal daily practice?
Patty: My daily practice has to include grounding and being here now. I tend to wander in my life an let it just happen, and if I want to be a co-creator and stay the course, I have to get my head out of the clouds and watch where I’m walking. This means being present in my mind and body as much as possible with everything I do. Even the boring stuff! It’s a discipline that strengthens my ability to focus. And focus is very important when the situation calls for sorting through the distractions to find the truth. Finding and knowing truth is a very basic need in me.
The other part of my daily practice is to love and appreciate the beauty all around me every day, even if I have to look through or around things that I don’t particularly find beautiful. Gratitude is a very profound and deep experience for me. It pulls me out of self pity, doubt and worry and helps me reconnect to god and my spirit. Being out of touch with those two things leaves me feeling flat and like a boat without a rudder. I also do things like meditate to manage my stress, get spiritual healings that clear and balance my chakras and bring more light into me. I also see a chiropractor once a month who does amazing energy work for my body. I take my supplements and vitamins, get exercise and eat my veggies. You see, my daily practice has to include taking care of both my body, and my spirit. This is how I promote wholeness within me.
Andrea: Every month in The Healer’s Almanac there is a Goddess. How did you choose the Goddess for each month?
Patty: The first thing I had to do was determine what areas of life we really need help in, and came up with a list of twelve qualities; Responsibility, Balance, Passion, Hope, Career, Gardening, Stewardship, Sisterhood, Evolution, Shadow and Light, Empowerment, and Individuality. You’ll notice that I don’t have a goddess of money or prosperity or abundance. I was of the mind that if you knew who you were and overcame whatever blocked you from expressing that, money would not be an issue. It was kind of like that story, if you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, but if you teach him to fish, he’ll be set for life. Then I developed a little system for placement of the goddesses in the cycle of the year and it was very much like divination. I wrote the quality of each goddess on a piece paper – Responsibility, Hope, Gardening etc. and put them all face down on the floor in front of me. Then I asked who’s going to be the goddess for January, February, and March etc? and I slowly moved my hand over the papers. When I got a tingle, I turned the paper over and wrote it down. I continued until all the months had a goddess. I decided to totally trust this process and not mess with it and I think it turned out quite well.
Of course I needed a name for each goddess and I got the inspiration to name them all after my daughter and nieces. I had enough to keep the goddesses all in the family. Finally, I worked with each goddess individually. We meditated together, wrote together and created their images together. It was amazing and I was so in the zone, I often felt like I was taking dictation. My husband thought I was possessed or maybe obsessed. Hours would go by before I’d look up to see what’s going on in the world. That was basically it.
Andrea: How did writing the book help with your own personal healing?
Patty: Now there is a loaded question Andrea. I was turned inside out because I chose to follow the “suggestion” that I write a book. I could not stay the same person as this book became a reality. Just being exposed to all those healing modalities alone had me looking at life, me, energy, and the universe through a fresh new perspective. I surprised myself and how readily I suspended my beliefs as I experienced the “alternatives” for physical healing, and spirituality. Which as I mentioned before, go hand in hand. Then there was working with the goddesses. They had me crying, laughing, going Uh Huh every time we wrote together. I could not hide, lie or con my way out of any soul bearing I was experiencing. I had to be truthful to myself, about myself or I wasn’t going to be able to be authentic. That process took much longer than it did to actually write the book.
I also had to learn new skills, overcome my fear of computers, writing, asking for help and spending a lot of money. I had to come to terms with rejection, fear of failure and fear of success. It was one big schizophrenic party! Frankly the messages from the goddesses helped me through a lot of that. They are not called goddesses of empowerment for nothing. I also leaned on my favorite healers of all kinds. When they say it takes a village… believe them.
Once the book was done, printed, boxed and on the shelf I was beaming, like a new mom. If you go to www.healersalmanc.com or my FB page you can see the pictures of the day the books arrived. It was awesome. Then post partum depression hit and it hit hard. Marketing The Healers Almanac was a lot harder than creating it. I now had to go out and sell this book; I had to sell myself as the expert. I totally freaked out. The next phase of my healing was up for review. Was I going to be able to do it? I wasn’t sure because I had to heal my self-worth. We all know how painful low self-worth is. It’s very hard to be authentic when the most complimentary thing you can say about yourself is that you suck. There was more soul searching and healing to do before I could get over that barrier to my success. The most important thing I have learned in this process is that I wrote this book to heal myself first. Whatever anyone gets out of it is icing on the cake. This doesn’t take away the value of the book for anyone else, but it does give it more value to me as my life preserver/wake-up call. I can’t say for sure that I’d never heal without writing this book. I believe there would be something else that would pull me out of myself. I am glad I chose to heal this way. The book is beautiful, powerful and will help a lot of people too.
I hope you enjoyed this interview with Patricia Shaw and that you’ll check out her book Healers Almanac, Journey into Health with Wisdom from the 21st Century Goddesses at http://healingwithpattyshaw.com/launch-bonusesHere’s why you’ll want to do that:
When you visit the page at the link above and request a “launch reminder”, you will automatically receive a FREE gift from Patty. The audios from her Get Healthy Stay Healthy Seminar.
These recordings are completely free
“no purchase necessary” gifts from Patty
FREE GIFTS
When you buy Patty’s book on Thursday January 5, 2012, you can ALSO receive many inspiring and uplifting gifts from authors, speakers, coaches and other enlightened professionals from the four corners of the world.
To claim your GHSH seminar (5 audios in all) and read about the free gifts, go to: http://healingwithpattyshaw.com/launch-bonuses
Thanks for reading! As usual, please feel free to share your comments and thoughts below. I love reading your feedback.
AND… be sure to follow Patty tomorrow when the next stop on the Blog Tour is Callie Carling, who will be discussing with Patty how the 21st Century Goddesses can help us. To visit that “stop” on the tour, go to http://www.positivitybubbles.com/2011/12/healers-almanac/
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