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Ways to Use Reiki with Kids

February 23, 2018 by Janet Callahan Leave a Comment

If you know me, you’ve heard my stories about using Reiki with my kids – from Reiki in the NICU to Reiki on the little bumps and bruises that kids get to getting my kids to sleep.

Little Miss B, at 6, comes over asking us to kiss every injury – I kiss my hand (because sheesh, it’s always a toe or some other really inconvenient place she wants a kiss) and put my hands over the spot to do Reiki. Within moments, she says, “All Better” and takes off.

One of my goals with my new energy work practice is to do more work with families and children, particularly those with special needs. So, I decided to start looking at what other people were doing with kids out there, and got rather frustrated with the things I was reading.

So, I think I’m going to work on putting some stuff out there on Reiki and children. I’m also prepping a class for parents on doing Reiki on their children. Interested? Comment below!

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Review: Rainbow Bodies

February 21, 2018 by Janet Callahan Leave a Comment

Rainbow Bodies, By Kelly Collins Kascavitch

This book is made up of amazingly beautiful photos, each specifically matched, by color, to the chakra they’re talking about in those pages. Each pair of pages has sentences explaining that charkra, which rhyme (though sometimes, the length of the sentences makes those rhymes more subtle). Some of the first and last pages talk about what chakras are, and how to care for our energetic bodies.

All in all, it’s really a nice little book, and I think we’ll enjoy reading it over and over.

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As usual, the opinions expressed are my own, and I bought this book myself.

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Review: Rock On!

February 12, 2018 by Janet Callahan Leave a Comment

So, I’ve been on the hunt for things for us to do as a family on the weekends. Weekends around here are challenging – the adults want down time, the kids struggle with unstructured time, and we don’t always share the same ideas about how to have a good time.

To that end, I’ve been reading books on doing yoga with special needs children, got certified to teach kids yoga via Pretzel Kids, researching games that are cooperative and less turn-based and less counting based, bringing snow into the kitchen as a sensory bin, trying to figure out how to store all the puzzles the kids have gotten over the years and….trying not to pull my hair out.

One of the games we picked up recently is called Rock On. It’s a geology-based game, but parents could quite easily add on metaphysical properties, and it’s a great teaching tool for stone and crystal identification.

There are different levels of play for kids who are more or less skilled in geography – we’re still working on the easiest “matching” level, which doesn’t require any questions. There are full color charts for both the main unpolished stones and the tumbled stones that are used as markers.

All in all, a fun time all around, and a great collection of crystals to get started learning about them.

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As is almost always the case, I bought this product myself, and the review represents my opinion.

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Review: Crystal Messages from the Crystal Kids Guidance Cards

January 30, 2018 by Janet Callahan Leave a Comment

This is a deck of 57 cards, each with a different crystal or stone, several metaphysical properties of that stone, and an affirmation. There’s also a book, as is typical for most oracle decks, giving a bit more explanation of each affirmation.

The cards are ok, though if I’m being really picky, the photos are sort of varied in lighting, which makes some of the stones harder to see. It’s clear the layout was done on a word processor, and the cards don’t really have the polish you’d expect from a professionally designed deck, but they do the job.

The book with the deck says that you can buy a kit with each of the stones in the deck. I haven’t found that anywhere, but I have found the “Crystal Kids” books that go with the deck at a store near here.

There are several suggested uses for the cards. Using them as flash cards to learn the properties or to match with the actual stones is one. Another is as an oracle deck, pulling a card each morning, both for the affirmation and to choose to carry or wear the stone that matches the card of the day.

I think, if you had all the stones, that could be a neat way for anyone (kids or adults) to learn about stones.

All in all, a nice deck, and probably a good starting point for many who want to learn about crystals.

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Grounded

September 26, 2017 by Janet Callahan Leave a Comment

For the 3rd time in a month, I found my hands in a mix of flour and water. This time, it’s nixtamalized corn meal (corn is treated with lye to make it store better, and to prevent pellagra) for making corn tortillas.

Mixing cornmeal for tortillas

And before that it was fry bread (Native American bread, made from the sorts of things that came in commodity food boxes in the early reservation years. Before that, it was Roti, an Indian flatbread made from wheat flour.

Mixing fry bread dough

Cooking has always been a source of grounding for me – a thing to do when I’m overwhelmed. Because the repetitive acts of cooking – chopping, stirring, kneading – are like a moving meditation.

Cooking tortillas

But there are spiritual aspects beyond that meditation. I’ve been exploring the foods of my ancestors, and expanding our menu here a bit. While my Native ancestors weren’t farmers, they likely knew of corn from others….and it’s definitely native to North America.

Golden frybread

While there are groups out there promoting only eating what our ancestors ate for our own health…more than half of my ancestors are, we believe, from Europe (I guess I’ll know soon – 23&Me is running a study on mental health and genetics, and by getting into the study, I get my DNA done for free). They had wheat, milk, and domesticated animals. So I don’t think we’ll be cutting any foods completely out of our diets anytime soon.

Tacos with chicken and cheese

But there’s something to be said for making connections with the earth and our ancestors via food – most families have those recipes handed down from parent to child. There’s magic in cooking from scratch – turning random things into a totally different dish.

Classic Indian Taco

Next up, I’m trying out some traditional dishes involving “wild rice” (Native American wild rice isn’t really rice, it’s a grain from another type of plant) and corn soup. Good fall dishes for celebrating all the harvest festivals.

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