No Attack Dogs Required

No Attack Dogs Required

A few years ago, right before his book, “Blink” came out, I had the joy of sitting across from Malcolm Gladwell at dinner and listening to him tell stories about his research for the book.

One thing he’d done was interview people who train professional bodyguards.

He said as part of the training, each person is shown a line drawn on the ground and told, “Walk along this line, and no matter what happens, stay on the line.”

So, the trainee starts to walk along the line, and out of nowhere, a snarling attack dog charges right at him. Of course, he shrieks and runs off the line. 

Then he sees the dog was on a leash that ended 2 inches from the line.

He gets back on the line and begins to walk again, and this time the attack dog comes back, OFF the leash.

The dog leaps on him and at this point each person in this exercise basically loses all control in total terror!

Then he sees the dog is muzzled and cannot hurt him.

This training goes on and on with different experiences, until that person can walk the line, have anything happen and still stay on the line, in balance and unstressed.

Walking Your Own Line

I think this an analogy – an extreme one, for sure! – of what happens to us in our everyday life experiences, even with our own thoughts and feelings.

When something happens to us, we have an immediate reaction, mentally, emotionally and physically.

Science has shown that when you have a feeling, even a minor one, your body responds –

Your system is flooded with all kinds of juicy little messengers that change your entire physiology. And your whole energy shifts as well.

When you gaze into the face of a little baby, these are wonderful changes that can lift your spirits for the rest of the day.

But you can have daily experiences that aren’t so positive.

You make a mistake at work, or your boyfriend gets upset with you, or some idiot cuts you off in traffic.

In these cases, it’s like those attack dogs in Malcolm’s story – your system goes into reaction and you get knocked off balance, physically, emotionally and energetically.

It can take you moments to recover, or it can still be negatively rocking your world for the rest of your day.

And in some cases, there can be a bigger upset that affects you for years –

Like the ripples in your system from being raised by an emotionally volatile parent, or having your heart shattered by an unfaithful lover, or suffering a financial loss, that can keep you locked into patterns of stress and imbalance in subtle ways you don’t even recognize.

Chihuahuas or Dobermans

We shouldn’t underestimate even the small upsets during your day that you recover from in a few moments – these still matter.

They may not be attack dogs – they may be little chihuahuas.

But they can create a cumulative effect that makes an ongoing undercurrent of stress, so you’re never feeling quite in balance.

And the deeper upsets?

These are the encounters with the dobermans, rottweilers, pit bulls of stress, the experiences that are so strong, they can get stored as memories in your energy fields.

And they can keep you locked into reaction, preventing you from moving forward with your life’s purpose.

To one degree or another, we’re all walking around in constant reaction to our current thoughts and feelings, and carrying stress around people, places or events in our past.

Steam Rising

There are two abilities you need to learn in order to break this cycle:

1 – Release the old stuck energy; and

2 – Transform how you react to the new stresses that come along.

Then you can walk your own personal “line” without falling off, and you can be a creative force in your life again.

The first thing you learn in a clearing workshop is how to do the first point in the list – release the old energy, for yourself, and for other people too.

When I teach, I often see what appears to be steam rising from each person as I look at the group!

It’s all the stress releasing as people let go of things they’ve been carrying in their energy fields for years, even decades.

My headache went off looking for someone else!

Then what about that second ability, transforming how you react to new stresses? That appears as you continue to clear yourself and others. It’s like your system gets trained to respond to your experiences in a whole new way.

You suddenly realize that there’s been a mysterious change – you’re responding to things from an elegant place of harmony and balance, no matter what happens.

If something stressful occurs, you just clear yourself and the stress moves on!

One woman used to suffer from daily headaches before she came to a clearing retreat. Two weeks after the workshop ended, we got an email from her that said,

“I hadn’t had a headache for 2 weeks – I was so thrilled! Then today, I woke up with a headache. Oh no! I thought. Then I realized I had a new skill – I cleared myself and the headache went off looking for someone else!”

No barking, just laughing

Fortunately, the most common sound you’ll hear in a clearing workshop is laughter, not barking – There are no attack dogs involved in learning to do energy clearing!

I only teach the Clear Home, Clear Heart retreat once a year. This year, it’s at the end of August, at the beautiful Omega Institute in upstate New York. I’d love to see you there.

6 thoughts on “No Attack Dogs Required”

  1. I never use my website??? All work stopped in this pursuit. I am so appreciating the work you do & did with the young man who recovered his abilities & went on to college with a poetry scholarship! I want this same work to help my own son Flynn who is a drug addict come back to his real life. Thank you so much for the work you do!!! If I find the resources, I will be with you in this workshop in NY! Many Bless-SINGS to you the sparkling shinning LIGHT of the Eternal Infinite!!!

  2. great to read this article – I just needed to take part to your retreat – but I am in Germany – what can I do instead to clear home and heart?? Thanks for your inspirations and best regards from Magdeburg in Germany 🙂 Christina

    1. Thank you, Christina – It would be great to have a retreat in Europe! In the meantime, you might be interested to know that clearing can be done at a distance. So if you ever want to have clearings done for yourself and your space, just contact my office for information. And I hope we can meet in person at a retreat in the future so you can learn to do this for yourself and everyone!

  3. For the same effect minus dogs, try driving in Atlanta traffic with five kids in the back…!!

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