Sunday, October 28, 2012

Interview with Franco DeNicola on Wellness (Part 2)




Assisting humanity beyond collective perceptions, adopted beliefs, accepted limitations and archaic concepts in order to awaken to our ultimate soul purpose and to collectively create a world encompassing total harmony and wholeness. I am so blessed and honored to share my interview with Franco De Nicola.


For more on Franco De Nicola visit his website  www.francodenicola.com



Friday, October 26, 2012

Irma Romano interviews Franco DeNicola on Wellness (Part 1)




Assisting humanity beyond collective perceptions, adopted beliefs, accepted limitations and archaic concepts in order to awaken to our ultimate soul purpose and to collectively create a world encompassing total harmony and wholeness. I am so blessed and honored to share my interview with Franco De Nicola.


For more on Franco De Nicola visit his website  www.francodenicola.com

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Love and Fear and Living Beyond Our Limitations



Two days ago I had a massage therapist on Facebook ask what the System is. She didn’t like my answers or addressed my questions and ran off of Facebook like a Cat off a Hot Tin Roof pressing down on her own trigger points with mental concepts looking at my words and not really looking with an open heart. It seems like she is capable of writing books on how to have a successful practice so much so I actually had her interviewed which I don’t do very lightly. I interview people with who are highly evolved beings of light and love and who have something of value to add to the world. What we should look at though when you open a practice is how many hours does that leave you with because not everyone equates success with money many like myself enjoy freedom instead to be with family and to do other things with their time. That’s why I bought the 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris and that is why he sold over ten million copies of his book and is the Number one New York Times best seller, Published in 35 countries he went from making 40 thousand dollars a year working 80 hours a week to 40 thousand a month and working 4 hours a week. Work anywhere in the world and trade in a long haul career for short work bursts and frequent mini- retirements. In other words unplug yourself from the way it was always done. That’s how we do it and making the good opinion of others matter to you which keeps you stuck where you are now. People want to free up time and like Timothy many want to know how to also make more money while they do what they love, possible to achieve? Why not? Every acquaintance I have met in the last two years who have succeeded in networking businesses left their jobs as soon as they could. Massage Therapists, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and police officers and very few said that they loved their job so much they wanted to stay there. In a world where we work more for less slamming the door to nine to five seemed like a good option. I work with my pyjamas on now and I am raising my kids and I enjoy the freedom that sixty thousand dollars a month provides for me and my family. This is not text book cartoon characters they are actual people I know.
The subject of meaningless work came up as I was referring directly from Timothy’s book as he has a full chapter on the idea that we can look busy but not be productive. 8 hours a day is not necessarily equal to productive. We can probably cut our hours in half and do the same amount of work, thank you Timothy Ferriss for opening up our minds about the fact that exchange of hours for money is not the best way to free up time or become wealthy. I wonder if Timothy Ferriss gets as much resistance as I did for saying this himself. My point than was don’t worry no one will take away your 40 hour work week, and no one will take away your ideas of how you want to live your life. You created it and where you are now is a sum total of your own belief systems. To each their own and that is why life is so beautiful you get to pick how and with who you spend it. We like our addictions to drama a lot of the time and that means living within our own limitations created by our minds. I no longer focus on how to be a rich massage therapist or interview based on those principals there are enough books out there on these topics and I like to free up the mind instead not teach about financial success. The foundation of success lies first with the amount of consciousness you bring out into the world. If what you do poisons the environment and causes suffering for others than you have to look at what success really is. If you can’t conduct yourself on a daily bases with dignity especially in front of your peers no amount of book writing is going to make any difference. Success starts in your heart. If something someone says hurts you than it is a good indication that this is where you are stuck and need work. Insults towards another are a double edge sword it poisons you and everyone around you by leaving your fingerprint in the web of life that connects everything that exists. It has an effect in the un-manifested dimension more powerful than the world of form. Lose your weapons your bibles and your morals they are just ideologies and mental concepts used to divide which is the opposite of true consciousness.
Is it Rude of me to share an opinion about the System when I say that we are not separate from the whole and that the old egoic structures that are in place still today have created an unbalance on the planet that is destroying the environment, killing humans and other species in the name of progress and that if we all saw how connected we are to it all we would think twice before speaking and trying to hurt someone by attacking them for the only purpose of inflating ourselves. This is the same individual who told me I shouldn’t be calling myself a Healer a month ago. Once more seeing not with an open mind but with more judgment and not actually reading what was there. Like many others I like to be the door of other perceptions and allow healing modalities to come through by sharing of other people’s stories and experiences. I did ask finally and commented that we already had the cure for cancer years ago and that we could live now free of fossil fuels and eradicate suffering and famine on a global scale if we wanted to. The fact that it hadn’t already happen was because someone at the top of the decision making pyramid is making a lot of money with the old system. Here in America and around the world. Progress is for the good of all humans and not just a few. We live in a world of abundance where shelter, food, and clothing can be given to everyone on a global scale. Why has it not happened yet? What is this concept of ownership of land and things? You tell me.
Being a massage therapist is a path I have been on for the last six years. I honour it but feel like I have grown in terms of adding another dimension which is more holistic and spiritual because for me and not for everyone, I feel like true healing starts with our higher selves. I see myself clearly walking away from doing massage therapy in the next year or so in order to evolve into another path. I follow my own intuition and instincts when it comes to what I do and how I do it not motivated by making just money or being successful in worldly terms but rather allowing things to unfold as they should.
If you feel stuck on Survival ask yourself how you landed there and how you can climb out. But first you have to ask the questions to get the answers and it takes an open heart and mind to get there. No one can come and save us and turn us into leaders that is something each individual most do for themselves. Try taking responsibility for your own fears instead of blaming someone or thing outside of yourself for pissing you off and making you angry. Anger is generated by your thoughts not the actual situation in front of you. Three days ago I was on the highway and a car was trying to run me off the road only a few centimetres away from my bumper. I was the cause of his irritation and frustration. In his mind I was not driving fast enough. You are not the cause of such behaviour in others and each of us is a container of love or fear. You cannot give out to the world what you don’t already have inside. Take responsibility for your own inner space and how you behave and perceive the world. I am not responsible for your behaviour just as you’re not responsible for someone’s perceptions and ideas of how the world turns. When you don’t take offense or react to what anyone does or says you are free. No one can diminish you with insults or verbal attacks. There is nothing there to diminish or derive unless your ego is very much in the driver’s seat.
Don’t be afraid of letting go of people and situations that do not honour you and individuals that do not love you for who you are. Love doesn’t have an opposite force. It doesn’t love one minute and then a second later hates. Love is who we are and it comes into the world through us. You can’t love your employees, family, and friends and hate the people on welfare or the bums over there. Real love is not selective like that or judgmental, you don’t get to pick and choose who and what to love because you are love. Let those people go in a loving way and wish them well as they are also evolving at their own pace. When you return home to your true nature all you have to give is joy, peace, and love. If you cannot love everything and everyone around you with no exceptions than even your thoughts about your partner the idea of a romantic relationship is more likely an addiction and not love unless your bring a level of consciousness and awakening along with you. The old system works on the ego and it likes to divide and conquer but we already see where that will lead us and that is not the world we want to hand down to our children and humanity. What is the System? Anything we create.

Words of Wisdom by Eckhart Tolle



“But the ego is destined to dissolve, and all its ossified structures, whether they be religious or other institutions, corporations, or governments, will disintegrate from within, no matter how deeply entrenched they appear to be. The most rigid structures will collapse first. There are many more surprises in store for us.”

“When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn’t work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life form or a species will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.”

“What is arising now is not a new belief system, a new religion, spiritual ideology, or mythology. We are coming to the end not only of mythologies but also of ideologies and belief systems. The change goes deeper than your thoughts. In fact, at the heart of the new consciousness lies the transcendence of thought.”

If we live in fear, limitation, and egoist structures than we pass this world on to the next generation whatever is left of it. The collective nightmare of human existence,, ideologies and belief systems that give you a false sense of self and used to make yourself right and others wrong sits on a weak foundation. Feeling offended is another way your ego likes to keep itself in place.  Is our world the way it is at this moment going to shift and I believe that it will or will it be destroyed by the greed and unconsciousness of its leaders and blind followers? When the delusion of being separate from the whole kicks in what world do I create? The level of consciousness dictates the world we will create and if it remains unchanged it will keep repeating the same dysfunctions over and over again. We are more than what we are told we are from birth. Outside the four walls of societal structures is the return to our true selves.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Going Beyond Survival By Living On Purpose




The list of clients I see that are burnt out from their jobs is endless and the state of unhappiness made of mere survival is an epidemic. Most people feel trapped by having to wake up each morning and exchange time for money. If given a way out they would walk away from their hum drum existence and do what they really want to do. In fact most people I personally know who went from professions and into making millions of dollars with networking businesses all left their jobs. Some were teachers, others lawyers, massage therapists, and police officers. What does that say about nine to five? Do you want more time and freedom to live your life and enjoy what really matters? Who doesn’t?

Doing less meaningless work is not being lazy.  We live in a society that creates well-adjusted slaves not productivity and so the worst way to work is by exchanging time for money. If you are putting up with a non-ideal existence and allow others to define life for you and your doing it by allowing time and years pass you by watching life happen instead of enjoying and living it than no matter how much money you make doing mindless work  is not necessarily for the good of all or productive. Do not allow a world out there tell you how many hours you need to spend at work to make a living when you’re paying the price with your life and freedom. If you’re waking up every morning feeling lifeless and joyless sucked into a routine pretending that money will fix it all you know you’re fooling yourself. Money is something we have in place and the more you want the more you are trapped in the game. Do you want a job or do you want to live your life on purpose? Do you want to survive or thrive? Do you want to chase money and never arrive at feeling satisfied or do you want freedom to enjoy the one life you have?

When your job is boring you to death and most people are in that circumstance of life more time or more money will not liberate you. If you’re living your life in fear of quitting your job or waiting for retirement to free you to eventually do what you love that time might and most likely will never come unless you take the initiative to cut the chains that tie you to surviving. Are you waiting for a diagnosis of cancer to say you’re now going to have a bucket list and travel the world? Is that what it takes to awaken you and make you see what is really important in life and that with your permission you allow others to manipulate and dictate there values on how you should be living and what it means to be successful. If you’re using your kids and mortgage as an excuse for not living out your true passion than I say you teach them by example and you should teach them that it is possible to live life fully and go beyond survival.

Living in regret is a wasted of full life potential. Allowing life to pull you by the nose is a life of slow death and I say not everyone was born to really experiment freedom and joy because some people are still very much attached to the tribal mentality and societal rules as it makes them feel safe and that is also an illusion. When you start to live outside the four walls that was implemented by others who have their best interest invested in you not noticing you will pull yourself out of mere survival into actual aliveness. If joy, excitement, enthusiasm is not present in your work than work is a means to an end and will keep you feeling numb in the service of nothing.

We have a system in place of rules and should and should not’s that was created but is neither the absolute truth nor does it have to be a way of life. If businesses are produced as a means to an end and poisons our environment and makes everyone miserable in the process as most of them do than there is no success and no reason for it is existence.  Real businesses are for the good of all for the good of humanity and do not leave victims in its creation. Eighty percent of our consumption is not necessary and the marketing world would go belly up if the masses would disengage from the manipulation of consumerism feeding our egos and leaving us feeling empty. How much do you need to actually live? You would be surprised. Eliminating wanting is the first step to freedom and living within your means. This will free up your time to travel, and create work that is meaningful for you and others around you. Wealth, health, a roof over our heads is a basic need for everyone not just a few and we are much more than what we are lead to believe. There is enough to go around for all of humanity and if it hasn’t already happened than someone doesn’t want it to happen. We can move towards a different world eliminating many systems that are in place that are just band aids that are not going to the core of the symptoms. A shift in the collective consciousness has to happen to move things in different directions. As more people question the status quo and seek to be of true service to the whole the world will change and if not it will put all species on earth into a real danger of elimination and more destruction.

I encourage each of you to take your life into your own hands and do with it something meaningful while you still can. This moment is all anyone of us have and the life that you are is yours alone no one can come save you if you don’t want to step outside the box and lead your own way. In the end we are all accountable for our actions because we are one with all life that pulses through the universe and we affect the life forms around us with our state of mind, emotions, thoughts, and actions. The changes start with you.



Thursday, October 18, 2012

Marina Fricke, 85 And Loving Life



Marina is 85 years old with dark hair and piercing eyes. She loves nature and works with her hands sculpting the rocks she sees with shaping them with love. She told me to never be afraid of dying because everything in nature comes to life and than returns back to where it came from. "We are more than our bodies and bones", she tells me with a smile on her face.



When I first looked into her blue eyes there was a sparkle and light that was intense and penetrating. Marina is an old woman who does sculptures for a living and loves nature. She likes to ask you questions if you sit with her for a while and I have had the pleasure to stay on her property which exposes her art with the stones and wood pieces that have odd shapes and faces an extension of her imagination. 

During Wold War Two she escaped Eastern Europe with her brothers and sisters in the middle of winter with horses deep into the woods hiding for German soldiers. With death only a few inches away from her she finally collapsed in a ditch on the side of the road after days of not having any food to eat. It was a German priest who found them and took them into his church hiding them from the Nazi and feeding them for five years.  

Marina came to Canada a few years later on a boat with hundreds of Eastern Europeans. She eventually made her way to northern Ontario and developed a passion for rocks. She saw shapes in them and had a desire to make them come to life. Everyone discouraged her at first telling her she was wasting her time. A woman’s place was in the kitchen.  But her love for the rocks and nature kept her going and eventually she made a living with her sculptures in a way that she could not have imagined herself. Ten thousand dollars and more people paid for her work. They disappeared like hot cakes in every show and galleries in Canada and the United States. School buses made their way to her home with children admiring her work. Her hobby paid for all of her four children’s education and the property which was six acres and three homes. She was well known but never liked being the center of attention. She remains humble and down to earth. My favorite story that Marina told me was about her son Charlie. He was born with severe asthma and as a young boy   the doctors told her he would not make it. She refused to listen to them and found herself with Charlie in New York City to meet Mara Haji the Indian Guru who was on a tour. He took Charlie by the hand and started to meditate with him. Marina was surprised that her son closed his eyes and meditated without moving for so long. He told Marina to not worry anymore that her son would not die. She said it felt like God had spoken to her and she felt relieved. Charlie never had asthma again and moved on to living a normal life. A few weeks before he had a death sentence and medication that made him worse with each dose he took. 





Marina also lost her husband to cancer in her early fifties. She said he had thanked the Lord for giving him the illness because it had made him more connected to spirit. He glowed she told me at the end of his life and she took my hand as she told me the story and said that one should never fear death because it is a normal stage of life. Look around you she said the birds and flowers come and go and so do we. No big deal. Even all the books on religion and scriptures tell you that we are more than this pile of bones and she said it with such conviction.  She is at peace with death and has made it into her friend. She gave me an insight into my own death. Her positivity gave me an instant sense of peace. 

Marina is full of spirit and lust for her life, the rocks that she shapes with her hands, the animals in the woods and nature.  I have never met anyone like her. Someone who is 85 yet has hardly any grey hairs and can work twelve hours in her gardens weeding, and watering her flowers. Marina asked me a question as she always does. She asked me what was going to happen in the world because our generation does not work the way hers did. Well I listened and could not really answer her question. How could I tell this woman that the world was changing now and shifting rapidly and that the word work was soon going to be changed for another one?

Marina is a living legend and when she dies her work and her sculptures will tell the story of her life.  I will never be able to look at a rock without thinking of her. Spending time with her is like watching a world on its own evolving and I am so glad we were able to cross paths. When a soul like Marina is born with such struggles early on in life it opens them to a spiritual dimension. When you see death so closely and lose all your material possessions what else is there? The fear melts away because you have already transmuted so much pain and are laughing at the face of adversity. A new door opens up for you and you become immune to attachment to form. You already have learned that things come and they go. Material things are here sometimes and they can be taken away. When your belly has felt the pain of hunger it has gratitude for a full plate when it is available. She already knew at a young age that we are more than our bodies that we are souls and that death could not take that away.  There is only abundance and joy in the voice and heart of this woman. When she is ready to return home she will surrender to the moment with peace leaving behind a story and legacy of Love behind. 







Friday, October 12, 2012

Negativity and Gossip at the Workplace by Irma Romano


Do you work in a negative environment full of gossip, back stabbing, bullying, and plain negativity? Most work places are founded on the above and are on the increase. So much so that there are new programs at work that discusses these topics on a large scale and Corporations have to cover themselves in case of a lawsuit. How did this come into being? 

Complaining about things or gossiping when someone is not there to defend themselves is a form of negativity that spreads more rapidly than diseases.  These are also habitual programs from our childhood that is passed on from generation to generation and become automatic no thinking required. This is how a world of hate and violence keeps itself in place. 

If there is a problem to be solved being negative will sink you deeper into negativity and you will manifest more of what you do not want. Complaining makes you into a victim and victims do not have choices this is a form of addiction which starts with pain and ends with pain. Gossip is a malicious intent  to try to make yourself morally superior to someone else because what you are really saying is I am living in fear and I feel inferior. Tell your ego to take a break there is a life beyond pain. 

We are all connected to this life all humans all forms animals and plants, and to hurt someone else is to hurt yourself. If you could actually see the interconnectedness that we are beyond the five senses you would drop suffering and take responsibility for your own inner space. Many of the complainers say they believe in God. Yet it is more important to allow God or the Source to manifest every moment of your life through your words and actions. It is more powerful to be conscious than to believe in anything with an empty heart and hands. If you could see the ravages your actions have on your own well-being and the manifestations that it has in your physical body you would think twice about being negative. The universe does not know if you’re talking about someone else your yourself. 

You have three choices when it comes to work. You can quit your job, ask for a change with no negativity or taking it personally therefore not spreading the disease of negativity around anymore, or accepting what you have in front of you. All other choices are a state of unconsciousness and madness. Are you banging your head against a wall and addicted to pain? 

Your words are either destructive or constructive and everything that you do and say stays here in the matrix of life in the Universe yes good old Karma. Your words can be a weapon of hate or love. The Universe first came into being with sounds energy and vibration the very fabric of what you are as well. To be able to be abundant in life and to have the life that you desire you need to stay in a state of love not hate not using your words to demolish and destroy as a weapon. If you have a need to speak badly about someone especially while they are not present ask yourself what it is about you that feel inferior?  What you see in others is also in you.  

Choose love. See how from this state of being you can build a life of prosperity and wellness.  We really do not need Human Resources or the Ten Commandments if were all awake. These rules are designed to keep unconscious individual in a state of fear so that they do not act out there toxicity onto others, a small cry from living in a world where this is not needed anymore and we can all live in joy and peace. Yet it is possible and the change begins with you. 


Tuesday, October 9, 2012

The Art of Negotiation for Massage Therapists by Irma Romano

It wasn’t until I decided to launch my new business We Got Your Back Toronto that the art of negotiation really kicked in for me. My new business will be replacing sick, quit on the spot, extra hands required type of scenario in the city of Toronto starting November first this year. My business template will be implemented all across Canadian cities geared towards resorts and spas. The rate will be a 70/30 split on the hourly rates the spa has on the menu for the massage therapist and a 80/20 split on weekends and holidays. There will be an administration fee for the office which will likely make the therapist a minimum of eighty five dollars an hour or more with a minimum hourly rate of three hours and maximum of five depending on each massage therapist’s limitations and desires. They will also be charged the day of service.

In a world where most therapists in Toronto have had a wage reduction with an increasing charge to the clients starting at one hundred and twenty dollars an hour and the chains of fast food types of businesses have popped up leaving the therapist a non- livable wage even if they live at home with mom and dad it was time for a change. Long gone are the days of eating mac and cheese and ramen noodles after working forty hours a week at a twenty-something hourly rate, or less being exploited with a schedule that is too little or too big leaving you with over used injuries and an empty wallet. What’s in your wallet? Dust mites and a maxed out credit card?

Not every massage therapist wants to open a clinic or a space of their own and if they do they are at least calling the shots doing massages on their terms. This is the vision I have for all massage therapist where a profession with such high professional fees and where the demand is on the increase by the public I say it’s time to see the massage therapist get a living wage. Unlike nurses who benefit from a standard wage and union decreasing exploitation and burnt out we haven’t had anyone protect the massage therapist who is often too afraid to speak up and negotiate. Here in Canada we are lucky that our clients are covered in most jobs for massage therapy. It’s a no brainer. The spas really want your license numbers which gives them permission to charge the big bucks and have a very lucrative business. Millions of dollars a year are made and thousands a month by burning everyone out.  Who pays the 700 dollar a year fees that we have to pay?  That also becomes our burden.

Negotiations is an opinion you hold in your mind about how much something costs and how much you think you should get paid. Twenty-odd dollars an hour with no benefits is not a life for our professionals. I would think we are at least worth fifty if not more in a day and age where homes cost a lung and kidney and the cost of living has also doubled. So why are we walking backwards? I really challenge you out there if you are making only ten dollars an hour or a bit more to think about why you are crawling on your hands and knees and starving yourself to death? Maybe your addicted to pain and drama?  Seriously you should consider a job at Starbucks for a better wage and please stop telling yourself it’s a steady income. It’s a steady income of starvation and anything else you do will be more profitable including dog walking. Other medical professionals make much more and drive off into the sunset with their BMW why not us? Why not us? I have to witness my colleagues get rid of their cars and having to cut back on groceries and rent to make it or work at four different jobs. At a tuition cost of twelve thousand dollars a year not counting other fees and a two to three year sacrifice and board exams including having to show the college every three years our continued education at a cost of an average of three hundred dollars a course why can’t we be respected finally? We also have to work along aestheticians who have a three week massage course and get exploited even more but the client pays the same?  We make everyone else rich but ourselves. Its 2012 already lets step out of the dark ages together.

If your faucets are leaking and you call the plumber does he send you an invoice or do you tell him how much it will cost? We are in a position where we need to let employers know how much we cost, especially in seasonal remote locations. Bring your terms and conditions and have them sign it or walk out. If we all did this together than they would have no other choice.  Aim high nothing under eighty-five dollars or a 70/30 split on their hourly rate if you value your hands and your family, but most of all yourself. Set your limits where you feel comfortable. Only slaves ask for permission for days off, vacations, and the permission on a pay rate or how many massages they can do.  Are you a slave or a professional? Do you want to see your fellow therapists do well like yourself and make a buck or are you in it for just yourself?  If a spa charges one hundred and twenty dollars an hour and more but you only see twenty dollars of it whose fault is it? You just cheated yourself out of another forty thousand dollars a year so imagine what you could do with that money?  If they test the bar and see that massage therapists take the abuse they will feel like they can keep rolling back the wages and they do because they can. I’ll do it for two dollars an hour? Why not for a loonie? When do we stop giving our power away? Twenty dollars an hour after five hours is only 115 dollars for your day leaving the spa with 485 dollars your hands killing you and your wallet empty. Forty five dollars an hour when a spa charges one hundred and sixty is still no improvement.   What would your life look like at eighty five dollars an hour or more? Do you want to go home with a minimum of five hundred dollars a day? You can and it is possible you just have to claim it. Don’t complain just claim it and tell them what you want and you will be given your fair shake. Live in fear and you will limit yourself financially and emotionally. It is your hands and your license do what you want with them they feed you and clothe you or maybe they won’t it always up to you. Unlike Cinderella we do not have fairy godmothers that will come save the day.  Don’t be afraid to negotiate and ask right out of college for your fair share of income.

Don’t let anyone tell you that sitting, waiting for a walk in is your job when they are not paying you anything no one works for free, or that you should be making forty-five or fifty dollars an hour it’s all up to you when no one is paying your benefits and you have to pay for your taxes, and make sure your covered if you get injured which our profession is at a higher risk of doing. Who is paying for your medical expenses if you fall and break your arm? If you live in a major city in the United States you can implement my business motto and see how well you do for yourself. Here in Toronto like in New York, Chicago, Boston, LA etc., there are more than two hundred spas sprawling everywhere paying very little and keeping too much. You can set your own rules and make a great living. Again it really is up to you to go out there and make a difference for yourself and others so what are you waiting for? If you’re an aesthetician here is your chance to work in more than one place at your rate and also make your profession a lucrative one setting your limits to facials, make-up and nails.  Let me know how you are making a difference in the massage profession and how you think we can improve our future with your tips and ideas.

What would a union do for all registered massage therapists in Canada?
It would insure the end of exploitation and abuse in the spa and clinical industry across the country. First it would define what full- time is and what part-time hours are. Our profession is not like an office job and full-time is 20 to 25 hours a week with full benefits. No therapist would be hired for fewer than sixty five dollars an hour and we could eliminate tipping which usually goes missing anyways. We would be entitled to benefits, vacation pay, unemployment benefits and sick benefits and it would also mean we would be paid for walk- INS and not expected to wait around for free. It would give a guideline of what our duties are. The profession would finally be recognized and respected as what it is a medical much in demand profession by the public.


Friday, October 5, 2012

Why The Fight Against Cancer Does Not Work




These days when I see a pink ribbon for cancer awareness my skin crawls. The words war against and fight against is a mindset that holds illness in place even more deeply and creates enemies. The war against drugs, crime, cancer, poverty, has failed over time and in fact it has actually increased instead of decreasing it.

The Medical Community and the Big Pharmaceutical Companies

Maybe it is for reason that the medical community’s symbol is a snake wrapped around a stick? The third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer is medical treatments itself. But they don’t tell you that in the media. The sad truth is that pills bring about brand new ills and like the antibiotic which we thought was a cure for infections it has created epidemics of more powerful strains of bacteria and caused more problems. There is big money to be made from creating fear and prescription drugs. If your doctor sits across from you with a pad and pen every time you go for a visit then you know they are not for you or concerned for your well being. Doctors are part of a system that brainwashes them in school to be drug dealers more than healers.

The belief in a Label that someone attaches to your condition keeps it even more in place. You suffer from this and that. Well good for you now we know who you are. The fight against anything limits you and distorts reality. Use an approach to your illness by not making it into an enemy. Pain and illness is a messenger.
What are we? We are sound energy with a vibrational frequency, beyond mere flesh and bones. Your illness starts in the invisible realm of energy and then manifests itself in the body years later. Do you hold a lot of fear in your thoughts, and negativity of any kind? Mind energy which runs our world now is limited and destructive. Unlike spiritual energy which vibrates at a higher frequency of love and light. If your vibrational frequency is low it vibrates at the level of illness. What lowers your frequency is mostly held pain in the mind. What else creates the increase of cancer that we see in our world? Our toxic environment the belief that we are separate to the earth the living being we like to call Gaia. She is our food and we are killing her.

Microwaves
Plastic
Montesano and GMO seeds
Fluoride in our water
Pesticides
Vaccinations 200 before the age of two attacking the developing immune system in children causing ADD ADHD and Autism
Fast Food and Processed Food/ meat with antibiotics and corn feed animals.
Sugar and Salt
Pills
Pop cans and cans in general
Artificial flavours
Underground electrical wires
Hair and make-up products
Cleaning products

These and more are a breeding ground for cancer.
You can also try to have a more alkaline diet than acidic you can get a chart online.
The bottom line is that our planet makes a lot of money making you scared and sick if you were well than someone on the top of the pyramid would not be getting rich. Stay positive, feed your soul, eat natural food vegetables and fruits, workout, cleanse, and give your digestive track a break. Prevention is better than a cure but I personally like naturopathic doctors when I feel the need to bet more balanced. Many illnesses start in the digestive track and are caused by too much toxins in the body from our food and the environment. Your bowels will tell you where you’re at health wise. An overgrowth of candida and fungus is the main cause of cancer. Is your inside clean? Are you overweight and feeling sluggish all the time? What are you putting inside your body? Is it real food or mostly processed laced with sugar and salt. Most breakfast cereals are toxic.

Better food choices
Quinoa
All Vegetables from the ground not in a can
Fruits same as above
Yeast free gluten free breads with multi-grain
Omega three eggs and if you eat meat choose organic meat that is raised free-ranged.
Avoid Dairy, Cheese, White Sugar, and Table Salt and Pop

There are resources of better food choices online and at a book store if you need more guidance with staying healthy. In the meantime drop your weapons and put away your Pink Ribbons and Posters if you want to see a cure for cancer.







Stop HURTING, Start HEALING (Suzane Northrop in Healing the Loss of Loved Ones)



  To learn more and to register, visit 




Thursday, October 4, 2012

Charity and Giving Back




How many of you have ever found yourself in need and despair at one time or another? You might have asked for assistance in form of prayer, money, shelter, food, and an ear to listen, any act of kindness.
Giving back does not always take the form of donations and financial support. It sometimes is easier to give money without ever having to face the individual that needs the help on the other end. There is no actual connection to the cause in that way. True giving comes from the heart and can take the shape of a smile, your skills, a prayer, and emotional support.

How many times have I found myself in desperate need for shelter, food, emotional support? More than once I must admit. I have to say that I feel so fortunate to live in Canada where assistance is easy and very generous. We sometimes even give to that not in actual need but who feel they don’t really want to go out and work for a living. Even though our welfare system is not perfect it still exists and appreciated by those who urgently need the assistance for a limited time and not as a lifestyle.

If we feel a need to judge others and as to how they got where they have in the first place than we limit ourselves in our own evolution. No one chooses dysfunction and pain. It is always a result of a pattern in childhood and a program that is often repeated until we can become more conscious and not need to suffer any more pain. Not too long ago I found myself on a train heading back to Toronto from the Maritimes completely broke when  woman and her daughter fed me, laughed with me, and gave me so much joy and hope. When my parents first immigrated to Canada we were poor to the point of not having heat in our Montreal apartment. It took my family years to change their social status but we always had enough to eat.
In my own lifetime I have used the welfare system, unemployment, a woman’s shelter, the Goodwill, soup kitchens, people’s couches. I have slept in my car, tents, and shacks for a lack of a better word. I have felt hungry, lonely, and scared many times. How I got there is irrelevant but each drama and painful experience led me to a window of great opportunity for enlighten and transformation. When you face deep loss of any kind than you start becoming fearless and life becomes your playground into creating a new reality. Eventually you know that nothing can ever kill you not even death itself. With that realization fear of the unknown is dissolved.

How do you give? We all know the stories about donations to charities that never make it to the ones in need,the bag of rice that never made it to Africa but instead filled the pockets of the greedy. If you give out of the need to blow your own horn and to let others know how generous you are a means to an end and creating publicity of yourself than your hands and heart are empty. I can tell you that many times I have worked in very luxurious environments only to find myself being exploited by the rich and abused emotionally as well. If you’re wealthy and you enter an establishment with the attitude that you are entitled by design and you bring an attitude of toxicity you will leave scars behind long after you are gone and no amount of donations on your part will ever be enjoyed. You build a school in South Africa it makes you feel important and when your back home you abuse the waitress at your local coffee shop with your arrogance? The truth is that everything that you do in life is left behind like a finger print into the matrix of the Universe. Who you are in truth will always be revealed and there is no place to hide. Giving in a state of hypocrisy is like being rich financially but poor in spirit.

Last year I was in a grocery store in Toronto. The lady in front of me was a senior citizen. She had bought 200.00 dollars of groceries and had no money to pay for it. Lucky for her the woman in front of her paid her bill and she disappeared. My friend Ty who is now deceased gave a gay couple fifty thousand dollars of her saving to open a restaurant. When the couple died of HIV they couldn’t return her gift her life savings and this left her in a state of poverty in her old age. Ty was a true giver and she gave all the time. I met her when I was a server in a Mexican restaurant and she use to buy me clothes for work, books from her childhood, and a number of gifts and the light of her stories and presence. It was also a woman named Helen who helped me leave my abusive ex-husband. Helen was also a self-less person. She gave her 400.00 dollar winter jacket to a homeless person and went home with a turtle neck on in order to help what we would call a bum out.

If you have never experienced poverty and loss of any kind in your life but I am sure most of you who are ready this have, will not know that we need to support each other and that sometimes going to the welfare office is a hard process for anyone in desperate need. My family who live in Spain are now faced with the difficulties of a system that created massive hunger for more than half of the citizens. Garbage dumpsters are being locked up so that people do not spread illness through eating garbage. This can happen to any country. We have seen what natural disasters can do to a place and create massive destruction that takes years to resolve. No one is immured to poverty or a natural disaster, death, or limitation through illness or divorce.
We are all connected to each other in the realm of spirit and to judge others on their state of being or lack diminishes your own evolution. If you cannot give now you will not be giving when you’re rich either. Giving is not a financial sate. It is more a state of consciousness and love and an ability to feel empathy for the suffering of others. No amount of money can give you that. Be grateful for the food and shelter that you enjoy now because it may change form tomorrow. Nothing in this world is ever lasting. We have to face our own dissolution and death at one point or another. When you find yourself in lack surrender to it and know that your soul will never be destroyed.

I challenge all of you today no matter how bad life looks right now to go out and make someone anyone a stranger feel good, smile, buy them a coffee today or a tea. Give your skill away for free, call a friend and tell them you love them. Empty out your closet as winter is here soon and people will need your winter clothes if they are poor. Is there a senior you know who wants you to read to them? soup kitchen that needs your help? There are millions of opportunities to give every day of your life and gratitude for what you have now is a way to create a richness in your life because abundance is who we are.

I would like to thank everyone this week that have helped me help my friend Juno and her daughter Kaya from suffering homelessness, by giving them donations, love, and kindness. Your prayers have been heard and your generosity will never be forgotten. Please remember that Massage Planet News also needs your donations to bring more light and consciousness into the planet. I appreciate your ongoing support your money helps me with production costs and give to people in need. Thank you in advance.



People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway. 
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

Poem by Mother Teresa

~

Poema de la madre Teresa

La gente a menudo esirracional, ilógica y egoísta;
Perdónalos de todosmodos.
Si eresamable, la gentetepuedeacusar de egoísta, y decirqueocultassentimientos;
Séamable de todosmodos.
Si tieneséxito, teganarásfalsos amigos y algunosverdaderosenemigos;
Ten éxito de todosmodos.
Si ereshonesto y franco, la gentepuedeengañarte;
Se honesto y franco de todosmodos.
Lo quetellevaañosconstruir, alguienpodríadestruirlo en unanoche;
Constrúyelo de todosmodos.
Si encuentrasserenidad y felicidad, podríasdespertarcelos;
Séfeliz de todosmodos.
El bienquehagas hoy, la genteposiblemente lo olvidarámañana;
Haz el bien de todosmodos.
Da al mundo lo mejorquetienes, y puedequenunca sea suficiente;
Da al mundo lo mejorquetienes de todosmodos.
Lo ves, en el análisis final, es entre tú y tu Dios;
Nuncafue entre tú y ellos de todosmodos.

Madre Teresa


Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Interview with Annette VanOldenbarneveld


Annette VanOldenbarneveld, is a Canadian artist, writer, editor, jewelry maker, musician, and philosopher. She is passionate about her music and also the environment and all living creators that inhabit this planet. If you ask Annette what she wants for the world in a sentence she would say that she wants to save the animals, expand consciousness, use distant energy healing, and live in the truth. 



Can you tell us a bit about your childhood?  Where you grew up and what was life like as a child? 
I grew up outside of Sault Ste Marie, on St Joe’s Island. At two years of age, my mother took refuge from an abusive husband, and left behind a fortune the two of them built together. They had invested in a 53 acre estate together, in Ancaster, Ontario, on Butterroad. St Joe’s Island had things like peaches and cream corn fest, tractor parades, pudding stone and farms. I grew up across from the lake and spent a lot of time hiking, canoeing, taping maple syrup trees, things like that. 

How old where you when you started to play guitar and write music? Do you have any role models that inspired your song writing? 
When I was around 10 years old, we moved into Sault Ste Marie, across from Bellview park. I began to involve myself with the United Church Choir, with Bob Jones as the director, the brass bells, piano lessons, and touring musicals. I also studied piano and early theory with my brother in law, Don Holley.
In my early teens I joined the Sault Youth Theater and studied method acting, while performing at least two plays a year. In my early teens, grade 9 and 10, I was in a highschool guitar class with Mark Gough as the teacher. This teacher had us in a class with white bricks, and the highschool artists had painted Pink Floyd the Wall, with the face that looked like it was coming through the wall at you. We learned a lot of pink floyd, how to write songs, and a few of us were chosen to be part of DunnPlugged, the highschoolcd that Mark Gough put out from time to time. Mark had asked us at the beginning of grade 10 guitar what we would like to learn. I wrote, how to write a song. That ended up being our final exam. I wrote Be Aware, and it was chosen to be on DunnPlugged.

I want to ask you about distant energy healing and what are your beliefs on the subject? Do you think we can do energy healing and if so we will see it happening more frequently? 
Actually, Distance healing is something I am very familiar with. I always had a natural drive and ability to perform Reiki and even qigong at times, upon animals, and people when they are in need.  After coming across a couple of distance healing books in a second hand shop, I found myself in a situation where I could not get to a bird that had been injured by flying into the wheel of a bike. I felt helpless. Went to try to meditate on what I could do, and I had happened to have put the distance healing books in my bag with me. I started reading a part about sending a blue healing light to the hologram that you form of the subject. I did this all night. Connecting roots from me to the ground, pulling up healing light, drawing it in through my crown chakra from the universe and surrounding the hologram of the bird that I saw laying injured in the distance. In the morning the bird had flown away.

What is expanded consciousness to you and what is the collective consciousness headed for? 
An expanded consciousness is our ability to conceive of the context of our own perspective. Universal consciousness is the breadth of information available to those who channel it from the universe, many people don’t realize they are doing this, but every ‘idea’, impulse, vision, intuition, is coming from our connection to universal consciousness. I know that my own consciousness has expanded at a rapid rate in the past few years, I do see a pattern of this happening in people around me. I also see others who enslave themselves in addiction, guilt, fear, denial and ego, who have rapidly regressed, into what I have come to understand as non existence. I believe the collective consciousness will end up being a balance between all those elements of consiousness that make up the whole.  

What is truth?
Truth is any aspect of anything put under the microscope of doubt and justified on solid critical thinking and logic. Opposite truths may both be true, and wisdom is having a sense of peace about the truth of these contradictions.

Do you save animals now at the moment from the unconsciousness of mankind? What do corporations have to face in the years to come? 
Yes, I help in anyway that I can. I believe that animals are non human persons and should be respected as such. Corporations have been operating under the dangerous assumption that land, animals and humans are unlimited resources, and they are not either resources, or unlimited, let alone unlimited resources. The challenge will be to find profitable goals that blend innovation with the direction of inward progress. 

Are you writing any books, articles that help us expand our level of awareness and do you have any projects in the works that gear towards that with any of your art forms? 
Yes. I have produced and written an art/poetry book entitled Our Gilded Being, A Ressurection of the Sacred Feminine. It is a blend of 3 women who are both writer and artist. The main themes of the book are self awareness, relationships, culture, the environment, and time/death. This book will be self published in the coming year. 

I have also been contributing poetry to a book published through the Womankind Center in Hamilton on. It will be coming out at the end of 2013. 

The next CD that I will come out with is going to be a tribute to Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women who Run with the Wolves. A work that delves deeply into the feminine psyche.

I am also working on a book called Right of Passage. It is a story about a dance with dangerous love and addiction along with the understandings/challenges that face building a firm foundation after traumas.
There are several other aspects of my writing plans that focus on using the creative arts experience that I have with that of my education in political theory and psychoanalysis. 

What is your most profound message to the world at this moment and are you excited for the planet or do you think we have much more suffering to come? 
“I love my country, by which I mean, I am indebted to all the people throughout its history, who have fought the government to make right. So many cunning sons and daughters, our four mothers and four fathers, who came through hell and high water, who came singing through slaughter, so that we could behold, breathlessly, the sight- how a raging river of tears, cut a grand canyon of light.” –AniDefranco

Where is Annette going in the year ahead? 
Much of the work that has been taking shape for the past 6 years, since graduating from Algoma University, is going to be exposed to the public this year. I have plans for music, writing, art, event production, community involvement and it is going to be exhibited with a passion that has continued to burn, even through the darkest passages. I believe it will light the way to great things. 

By the end of next, I would like to take my first trip. I would like to support the elephant nature foundation, because for the same price as a trip to a resort, I could volunteer in a rustic and raw place that rehabilitates elephants. I would bath them and feed them, bond with them. At the end of each weeks stay, the guests/volunteers trek with the elephants to sleep in their hectares of refuge in Thailand, complete with campfire and guitar to serenade these beautiful and intelligent creatures.





Help heal our planet, ban the torture of baby elephants, expand and encourage consciousness, use distance energy healing, demand corporate accountability, expose the truth, Help animals any way I can, Help the Environment, end suffering of any kind.