The word “Reiki” in Japanese translates roughly as “universal life force energy.” Reiki is a specific form of energetic healing that is becoming increasingly well known for the array of outcomes it can facilitate. Reiki is performed by a practitioner channeling and directing Universal energy through their hands, which may be placed lightly on the body or held slightly above it, in different positions. It supports the body’s inherent wisdom, vitality and healing capability.

One of the aims of Reiki is to break down old and habitual patterns of being and perceiving to clear obscurations. Reiki energy flows to the area most in need of treatment, healing the imbalance. Clients may experience a range of sensations during a treatment along with a deep sense of relaxation. Reiki is great for managing stress and experiencing tranquility.

Development of a reiki practice allows access to higher sources of help that you may call on at any time. Your own Reiki spirit guides, higher self, angels and beings of light can assist you, both in your own self-healing, and in the development of a reiki practice.

An important aspect of Reiki development is intention. Reiki attunements are an integral aspect of aligning your own energy to that of reiki energy as you develop through the various reiki levels (Reiki 1, Reiki 2 and Reiki Master). Reiki teaches you to work from a space of compassion and unconditional love for all beings.

One way to facilitate development of your reiki practice is via prayer and affirmations. Asking your reiki guides regularly to guide you and assist you in offering compassionate service to others is a great way to further increase and intensify your reiki energy and tap into the spiritual guidance surrounding you.

Once attuned to the reiki life-force energy, continuing to nurture and develop your reiki energy via open heartedness and a desire to serve the community will increase your personal and spiritual development in the evolution of health, healing and consciousness on the planet.

Awareness Institute offers meditation training in Crows Nest in Sydney.

Meditation provides a powerful, yet gentle pathway for recognising, entering and using various realms of consciousness. Training in meditation and meditative practices not only creates great benefits for individuals, but when learning to combine group energies, we can access new levels of awareness, taking us into transpersonal or mystical awareness more readily.

By applying these principles within group meditation training, we can advance our work of transformation individually, for the group and for the world. These training methods will vitalise your meditation, connect with the spirit in all things and access your inner world of power, energy and creative potential. The combined energy of training within a transformative meditation group can help to shape the forces evolving consciousness in the world.

To be a leader in this great leap of consciousness, it’s imperative to seek comprehensive training in facilitation of meditation groups. The Path of the Teacher offered at Awareness Institute in Sydney, trains you to ethically and safely lead groups in the development of transcendent consciousness through meditation. It also equips you with powerful techniques to hold a ‘soul space’ for your students/clients and for yourself as your teaching role blossoms into your own spiritual path.

For further information on meditation training in Sydney, contact Awareness Institute on 02 9436 1644 or at www.awarenessinstitute.com.au

Awareness Institute offers meditation training in Crows Nest in Sydney.

There are a variety of meditation styles from a variety of spiritual traditions that help stabilise our practice and enhance our capacity for clarity, wellbeing, peace and the rewards of insights.

Awareness Institute offers training across a variety of meditation styles, forms and traditions, with an important element being your commitment to ongoing meditation practice between classes.

Topics explored at the Institute include:

• History of Meditation: finding our place in the flow and the home for our soul
• Levels of Stillness in Meditation
• Concentration (Focusing) Meditation
• Reflective (Analytical) Meditation
• Mindfulness Meditation
• Creative Meditation – meaning and practice
• Sharing Meditation: family and community: The Great Ball of Merit
• Sharing Meditation: Spirit in all things

Studying meditation at Awareness Institute offers an opportunity to develop and widen your meditation experience for physical health and wellbeing, stress management and conscious development. For more information on courses run at Awareness Institute, visit www.awarenessinstitute.com.au

Oftentimes we may feel stuck in our process of meditation, whether that’s difficulty in starting a meditation practice, maintaining a mediation practice or really honing our meditation experience as we develop our abilities.

Visiting a meditation clinic that offers one-on-one, private mentorship, can assist you to structure and develop a deeply integrative and profoundly impactful meditation practice.

Booking a clinic session for specialised meditation tuition can help make sense of the shifts and changes that you may be experiencing from both individual practice and group energy work.

There have been prophecies that our future is to build group channels for energy distribution, based on what has been achieved in the past. If you have been meditating for some time and have experienced the power of group energy work, you may have experienced the force of these energetic channels in your own meditation practice. Visiting a clinic that offers individual meditation mentorship can help guide you to understand, tap into and work with these energies to increase personal and universal consciousness.

A clinic session may help you to refine your own meditation practices and to use your own growth and expansion to foster evolving consciousness in the world.

Awareness Institute in Sydney offer appointments at our meditation clinic with Louise Gilmore, who conducts individual meditation coaching as well as mentoring/supervision clinic sessions for people who are working as healers and meditation teachers. See www.awarenessinstitute.com.au for details.

My life is fairly stressful. And that’s no surprise to the majority of Australians (or the global community) who share an increasing rate of anxiety, worry, or stress over ever-increasing job and family demands, financial difficulties, carer duties or simply the incessant traffic grind each morning.

However, what I’ve noticed has added to my little bag of stress of late is the stress of not de-stressing. We all hear about the benefits of meditation and its incredible impact on our mental, emotional and physical health and wellbeing. Meditation courses are advertised in every lifestyle mag we open and blog we read and we understand how disciplining the mind via meditation training techniques can greatly improve our mental state. But while I ‘know’ all this, do I actually practice meditation? The honest answer is not nearly enough.

Reason? I’m too busy, I don’t have the time, I get bored, I can’t do it ‘right’, I’d rather zone out in front of the telly … and those little excuses are actually stressing me out even more than the original stress! The thing is, I want to meditate. I want to be like all those blissful, calm glowy people who actually DO get up 20 minutes early to start their day with a resonant OM.

So, after doing a little research on the useful of meditation, meditation clinics and potential meditation training courses in Sydney, I’m back with a keener-than-ever desire to revamp my inner-calm.

The following comes from an article posted in the New York Times by Sindya Bhanoo:

“Researchers report that those who meditated for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks had measurable changes in grey-matter density in parts of the brain associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress.”

“M.R.I. brain scans taken before and after the participants’ meditation regimen found increased grey matter in the hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory. The images also showed a reduction of grey matter in the amygdala, a region connected to anxiety and stress. A control group that did not practice meditation showed no such changes.”

In another 2009 study, meditation was found to reduce blood pressure in those with coronary heart disease and the impact of meditation allowed for longer attention spans than non-meditators (imagine how useful this would be for children!)

So how can we train ourselves in meditation? For a start, you can create your very own meditation clinic (and no, I’m not crazy.) Your meditation clinic is just for you. It opens in 5-minute intervals at any time of the day or night (you’re very accommodating like that.) Whenever you feel your shackles rise, or your blood pressure starting to boil, open shop. Enter into your own private meditation clinic in your mind and breathe. Become conscious of your own breathing. Is it fast or slow? Shallow or deep? Just become conscious of that small, yet essential practice of breathing. There. You’ve just practiced meditation.

This is part of a meditation training technique called ‘Mindfulness Meditation’. The idea is to focus on different objects, such as breathing or the tip of your nose or focusing in on a particular body sensation. By doing so, you stop your mind from wandering and continually bring it back to the present.

This is one simple practice to get you started, or back into, a regular practice of meditation. No more feeling guilty (more stress!) about not meditating. Just start with 5 minutes a day. Even I can commit to 5 minutes a day.

Wanting to dive a little deeper and really glean the health benefits of meditation? Want to aim for that 30 minutes a day to actually start changing brain chemistry in an incredibly positive way? Then meditation courses may be the way to go. There are some great meditation training clinics and courses in Sydney and Awareness Institute in Crows Nest, Sydney, offer a number of meditation courses to suit everyone.

Awareness Institute’s meditation training courses start from private, one-on-one coaching via their meditation clinic, through to weekly meditation classes, right up to a Transformative Meditation Facilitator’s Certificate, a Meditation Mastery program for advanced meditators and continuing education workshops for meditation facilitators and teachers in meditation as therapy.

The key to this meditation business is simply to make the decision to start and to make a commitment to incorporate it as a regular daily practice. The chance to improve my memory, my heart health, my stress levels and my ability to be a kinder, more empathetic individual? I think it’s worth a shot.

Awareness Institute evolved from a desire to inspire, engage and foster a growing need in the community for soul exploration and information via courses, workshops and healing spaces.

Over the years, we have evolved as an organic community of professionally trained facilitators, clinicians and healers committed to inspiring an evolutionary shift in human consciousness. We, and our students, value community, personal empowerment, integrity and self-responsibility and seek to provide the highest quality courses and support for personal and community evolution. All the while not forgetting to sit back on occasion, kick off our shoes and have fun!

We’re very proud to offer some of Sydney’s best Diploma and Certificate courses in Energetic Healing, Psychic Development and Intuitive Awareness, Shamanic Healing, Transformative Meditation, Astrology, Reiki and a multitude of short courses, including Ritual and Meditation evenings; Finding your Life Purpose; Women’s Wisdom; Past Lives, Karma and Soul Mates; Natural Skin Care and Foods for Moods just to name a few.

We’ve created the perfect course structure if you’re not sure which of our courses to start with. As all of our Certificate courses feed directly into our Diploma of Energetic Healing program, you can start with, say, our Meditation or Intuitive Awareness course and on completion, have credit for those course subjects should you want to continue on to the Diploma program. That way you can intuitively flow from one area of interest to the next and hone one set of skills without feeling the need to study too much at once. Of course, if you’re dying to jump in with both feet, you can enroll into the Diploma of Energetic Healing and immerse yourself entirely in the richness and self-exploration of the myriad of courses offered in this beautiful program.

And because we understand how busy your lives can be, and recognize the different roles, work and/or study commitments we all share, our courses cater to your time and availability needs and where possible, we offer day, evening and online course options, all of which may be found on our website under ‘timetable’ at http://awarenessinstitute.com.au/timetable

Sometimes we know we want to start a course of study, a path of awakening, but somehow the beginning of the year slips by and we feel we may have missed the opportunity. No problem! Often we may need some extra thinking (or feeling) time to make sure what we choose to study is right for us, so we also offer mid-year intakes for our Diploma of Energetic Healing and Certificate in Intuitive Awareness courses. And of course, may of our short courses, including Reiki, run each term or every second term, so there’s always an opportunity to start exploring your passion whenever it’s right for you.

Awareness Institute is here for you. We specialise in the exploration of energetic and metaphysical aspects of our bodies and the world we inhabit. And with that being our core purpose, we have attracted some of the wisest, committed and most knowledgeable leaders in their respective fields to facilitate each of our course offerings; each known and respected for their dedication and passion in sharing their own truth and wisdom with the utmost of integrity. And as such, our courses draw an incredibly dedicated, warm and vibrant community of like-minded individuals to connect with and support you on your own explorative journey.

For any further information on our Diploma, Certificate or short courses, we’d love to talk to you! All of our courses are listed under ‘timetable’ on the main toolbar of our website or down the left hand panel of our homepage at www.awarenessinstitute.com.au

Or feel free to connect to us via email at info@awarenessinstitute.com.au, call us on (02) 9436 1644 or drop by and have a chat at Suite 1/20 Clarke St, Crows Nest Sydney. We can’t wait to welcome you.

There has been a lot of talk in the media recently confirming scientific evidence around the effectiveness of meditation in stress reduction. Are you curious about meditation but don’t know where to start? Have you tried to meditate and found it difficult to focus, or became bored or have fallen asleep, distracted or frustrated? Perhaps you are a seasoned meditator but would like to take your practice to the next level, expanding your meditation practice to reach deeper levels of consciousness and awakening.

Whatever your level of experience, meditation training courses in Sydney such as those offered at Awareness Institute in Crows Nest, can help you develop and widen your meditative experience for both physical health, stress management and consciousness development.

The best way to start a practice is by seeking out reputable meditation courses. Meditation courses can help you learn the basics such as how to stop the mind from wandering, how to work with mental chatter and distraction and how to challenge yourself to remain present throughout your practice.
As you gain more experience, you can further your meditation training via more advanced meditation courses, guiding you to vaster realms and ultimately equipping you with the confidence and tools to assist the community and facilitate meditation programs yourself.

Once you’re a little more experienced, joining a meditation mastery program can assist you to explore advanced levels of consciousness in a safe and supportive environment. This specialised form of meditation training is offered in Sydney on a monthly basis, exploring meditation as a pathway to an advanced experience of higher levels of consciousness, personal vibration and astral levels. Practices are utilised that help stabilise deeper states of consciousness and awareness, and enhance your capacity for clarity, wellbeing, peace and depth of insight.

Or perhaps you prefer more tailored, individual tuition. Visiting a meditation clinic is a great way to experience one-on-one meditation training or coaching, especially for those who have lots of questions and would like personal assistance with their meditation practice.

Whether you attend meditation courses, meditation training or seek out a meditation clinic, the key to success is ongoing practice to take your personal growth, development and meditation practice to new levels.

For further information on meditation training and meditation courses in Sydney, including the meditation mastery course, or to experience one-on-one tuition via our meditation clinic, contact Awareness Institute Sydney, www.awarenessinstitute.com.au, info@awarenessinstitute.com.au, or call (02) 9436 1644.

Energetic (or Energy) Healing is a practice of tapping into our entire energetic system in creative, intuitive and soul-centred ways for the purpose of awareness and clarity, release, improved wellbeing and empowerment.

As humans, we’re quite aware of our physical body. But the physical, dense body that we can touch and feel is only one of the many energetic bodies that make up our whole selves.

We are, in fact, multi-layered beings, with separate but entwined energy fields that govern our emotions, mental state and spiritual awareness. Each of these bodies acts as a filter, condensing down to form our physical body and all of its patterns, thoughts, fears, feelings and beliefs.

By working back through these energetic bodies, we can gain insight into some of the blocks or difficulties we may be experiencing in the physical, release them, allowing shifts in our other energetic bodies and healing in the physical to occur.

There are a number of energetic healing modalities, so let’s take a look at some of them and see which resonates for you.

Energetic Healing: If you like the idea of crystals, flower and gem essences, auric fields, dowsing and cord cutting then this is for you. An energetic healing session will generally have you lie on a table for around 1 hour, eyes closed, while you zone out. You’re not required to do anything as your practitioner tunes into your auric bodies and chakras and ascertains the flow of energy, noting any ‘stuck’ areas. She will focus on clearing and rebalancing the energetic flow to facilitate healing of the mental, emotional or physical.

Shamanic Healing: Shamanism is an ancient system of spirituality that dates from the earliest beginnings of humanity. Its popularity is due to its deep spirituality, reverence for all life forms and the ability to provide answers in a troubled world. Shamanism is a way of thinking and acting – of learning about, understanding and living in harmony with everything around you.

A shamanic healing session may involve meeting your power animal, a symbolic guide to help you journey through present day issues; calling back parts of your soul/spirit which may be scattered and non-present (soul retrieval) and/or connect you on a deep level with your earth and ancestral guides.
Reiki: The word “reiki” in Japanese translates roughly as “universal life force energy.” Reiki is a specific form of energetic healing that is becoming increasingly well known for the array of outcomes it can facilitate. Reiki is performed by a practitioner channelling and directing Universal energy through their hands which may be placed lightly on the body or held slightly above it, in different positions. It supports the body’s inherent wisdom, vitality and healing capability.

One of the aims of Reiki is to break down old and habitual patterns of being and perceiving to clear obscurations. Reiki energy flows to the area most in need of treatment, healing the imbalance. Clients may experience a range of sensations during a treatment along with a deep sense of relaxation. Reiki is great for managing stress and experiencing tranquility.

Polarity Therapy: Polarity Therapy improves the flow of energy in our bodies bringing whole-body balance, and is now being recommended and used by many health professionals, including doctors, nurses, counsellors and massage therapists.

This integrated system of healing utilises hands on techniques, counselling, diet and energy moving exercises as part of a comprehensive approach to healing. Being energy based, Polarity is similar to acupressure and Reiki. This non-invasive therapy balances energy fields and currents, encouraging healing of tissues, organs and systems, while integrating emotions, mind and spirit.

These are just a sample of the myriad of energetic healing modalities available. As with everything, if you are drawn to exploring one of these areas, research or ask for reliable referrals and before making any appointment, listen to your intuition and be guided by your gut-feel about the modality and practitioner that’s right for you.

My television, oracle of all that is in the minds of the masses at any given moment, tells me that January is the month for fat blasting. This is ‘true’ because the plethora of svelte, lean women and bulked, tanned and very shiny men keep telling me so. And of course it’s true because we’ve all pigged out over Christmas or the holidays and are now going through the motions of being guilt ridden over either added kilos, added liver toxicity or added over-indulgence of <insert personal demon here>.

So often the media dictate their own agenda (sales) by playing on our weaknesses (desire to let go and enjoy). Instead of feeling joyful and happy that we’ve spent time with friends and family, perhaps had some breathing space from work, enjoyed life and all it has to offer, we’re made to feel less-than for not being perfect, or for letting a kilo or two slip on.

There is no more sure-fire way to let our health and wellbeing spiral into longer-term unhealthful habits than being made to feel guilty about our selves or our bodies. Instead of buying into these surface fears around negative body image, wouldn’t it be lovely to embrace our indulgences, our slip ups, our foibles for that matter, as a beautiful part of being perfectly imperfect humans. Wouldn’t it be lovely to enjoy both the chocolate cake AND the daily walk/run as normal and integral to our health and wellbeing, instead of fighting between denying the self-pleasure and forcing the self to exercise as punishment?

As a firm advocate in the belief that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, we have to let go of a mental attitude that we are weak if we do the ‘wrong’ thing, and we are only valid as a person if we live up to a perfect ideal.

I believe there is more harm in pushing, fighting or forcing your body to be a certain way than there is in nourishing it with whatever it needs in that moment. If you truly enjoy that mouthful of chocolate cake as a shared celebration, it will provide joy and nourishment to your cells and most certainly do less harm than if you deny or reprimand your body for being ‘weak’ or ‘bad’ (No one likes to be talked to like that, least of all your cells!)

This is not to say we should indulge in every whim that the body craves (if your weakness is sugar, I’m not advocating Diabetes here!!) However, the body is so much more than a mechanistic set of rules and regulations that can be argued and deprived into submission. Our attitudes, emotions and moods play such an important part of our physical ability to metabolise and digest – just try to eat while you’re in an intense moment of anger or sadness. You can guarantee no matter how healthy the food is, your body at its cellular level isn’t going to easily assimilate that food.

We are more than a ‘calories in calories out’ machine. We are complex, emotional, adaptive, stubborn, fluid being with a body that not only responds to what we put in it and give out, but which also responds to our state of mind at every given moment.

As the sea of diet-pushers out there yell louder, I’d like to invite you to turn down the volume and go inward. Your body has a wealth of its own diet and movement wisdom. Sometimes it wants to eat less and move more, other times it is ravenous and demands to be fed. And at other times, it wants to retreat and be insular and quiet. Check in with yourself and question does my body require some encouragement and self-love to get over a food, exercise or self-esteem hurdle? Is it really hiding an emotional state which I could journal/bathe/scream and punch/jog/meditate/swim/walk/cry and release? Is the sensation of hunger masking a true need for hydration and a big glass of purified water? Or does it genuinely require a relaxing of the stringent rules that have been imposed upon it and desires some fun and flexibility around what is being asked of it? Remember, there is no one way to health or fitness or your ideal body weight, shape or size, but it will never rest at its natural and balanced state if it’s being cajoled, chastised or forced to be or do something it against its own inherent wisdom.

©Kate Powe

So how are we all faring as the threshold into 2013 has been crossed?

It’s no surprise that many of us found 2012 a difficult year. Perhaps the preceding hype lead us to believe this mass change in consciousness would be liberating, freeing, celebratory, enlightening. And whilst I applaud anyone who managed to navigate the year with ease, the majority of us, including myself, found it to be anything but.

For most of us, 2012 was hard – really hard! Personal demons arose, relationship shifts presented, old wounds were prodded and for many, heaviness dominated. So it is no surprise that we may be feeling some residual exhaustion and overwhelm as we enter 2013.

One word that comes to mind as January progresses is gentleness.

2012 presented some harsh but necessary shifts to our personal and global energy. And if you’re anything like me, apart from still feeling slightly shell-shocked and not wanting to come out of a self-imposed hibernation just yet, one way to re-engage with the world is to focus on gentleness. Gentleness with yourself and how you’re feeling in each particular moment, gentleness around your needs and expectations, your energy and your ability to respond to the ever increasing demands that now arise as the working aspects of the year, be they office or home, commence.

2013 has a more ‘watery’ feel to it (less ‘sledgehammer’ than 2012!) and it’s therefore more important than ever to really check in with how you’re feeling and what you’re sensing before responding to demands which may zap your fragile energy quicker than you realise.

So a ‘gentle’ reminder to breathe before responding. Check in with how you’re really feeling before agreeing to take on another task without question. It doesn’t mean pushing everything away, but simply listening to your body’s own wisdom. It may mean a slight adjustment to something that’s not working or asking for help in an area you’ve felt you’ve had to cope with all on your own.

Whatever the shift, let it be gentle. Let the energies of 2013 aid rather than attack, and may gentle reflection and empowered response be the themes for your beautiful year ahead.

©Kate Powe