The LifeQuake Blog

Factually speaking, we’re in the last days of winter.  The spring equinox officially begins in the western hemisphere at 4:44 AM PDT Mar 20. However, when I listen to people in my private practice and community, I sense that Spring is going to be delayed this year so I am continuing in this blog to give you tools for what to do in your own personal “winter of discontent”. In my book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon, this is all encapsulated in chapter two as stage two of a LifeQuake.

There is a feeling in the country of anxiety and emotional paralysis. Everyone is waiting for the next guy to stimulate the economy. Now, I’m not saying go out and spend money you don’t have to get the economy going. What I am saying is that if you feel frozen to take any action in your life, change from within. Go even deeper into non-doing.  Spend 15 minutes a day in quiet. As you inhale, bring the oxygen all the way down into your gut.  As you focus on your breath, put your hand over your heart and imagine your hand is a wand of light that is radiating all the fear you are feeling, transforming it into peace. Now, go to the top of your head with your awareness and set an intention for your crown to open and receive light from the universe – the sun, the air, all of nature, etc. Believe it or not, you can be inside your office or home and still have access to this source. Once you feel calm, ask the question, what is one thing I can do today that I don’t normally do that will support my life?

The temptation when we feel paralyzed is to self soothe through food, sex, alcohol, surfing the net for hours, etc. While in stage two, so much amazing healing work can be done if we allow ourselves to turn within for comfort; simply by partnering universal consciousness with our own breath and heart. Tomorrow I will give you some techniques for remembering your dreams and using the dream recall to prepare for change.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice in Santa Monica, Ca and is the author of the newly published book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to thrive (not just survive)in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval.

There is no doubt that we are in challenging times.

Being a good parent requires so much more of the typical American mom and dad than in any other previous generation. With both parents working at some point in a child’s life in most households, there is a lot to juggle. Women have a fraction of the testosterone that men have and yet are expected to perform at both work and home at very high levels. When we empty out of testosterone, we start using adrenal fluid and this is what causes adrenal exhaustion, immune deficiency and life burnout.

So here are some tips for the whole family in coping with daily stress and hopefully preventing catastrophic illness. 

1. This is the building block tip so really take this one in: get at least 7 hours sleep a night. sleep is what rebuilds the cells of the body and allows you to cope with sudden changes and daily responsibilities.
2. Eat breakfast and include some kind of protein, vegetable or animal based. if your body does not have fuel to burn, it burns away at muscle mass. Your blood sugar being stable allows you to handle whatever comes your way more efficiently.
3. Stay hydrated. Our bodies are evolving and the human species are needing more water than they once did. The more coffee, tea, or carbonated drinks you have, your body becomes dehydrated and you require even more water.
4. Making sure you balance everyone’s time on the computer with cardio-vascular exercise. Studies have shown that the whole world is becoming more obese because we are using machines that once required manual labor and even rural farm areas around the world are getting fatter. Exercise is one of the best ways to de-stress by increasing endorphins and reducing global warming. According to the New York Times, May 2008, obese people consume 18% more food than normal weight people and use transportation that requires gas more often than those who ride their bikes or walk to get around.
5. It is important to pay attention to signs of stress in your family. Do you notice a family member becoming more impatient, flying off the handle at the least little thing. Are your children eating more than usual and gaining weight? Is your husband or wife drinking having an extra glass or two of wine every night? Are your children’s grades dropping suddenly? are you or your spouse working longer hours? If you see these signs, it is important to address it lovingly before it becomes a crisis.
6. There is an old adage, the family that prays together, stays together. I think there is an extrapolation of truth here. Setting aside time every night, even if it is only fifteen minutes, to connect with each other is important to the strength and cohesiveness of a family. Children who know their parents are taking the time to just sit with them and go over the day, feel more secure in meeting the challenges of school and peer pressure.
7. Evaluating how many activities everyone is involved in. Children whose lives are over committed can get stressed out from not having enough down time and that goes for parents too.

In summary, the simpler your lifestyle, the better it is for everyone in the family’s mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual well being.

Who’d a thunk it.

The Academy Awards has become a humanitarian event. There was a real change, a real transformation in the focus of the Oscar. Everyone was so generous to their fellow actors and crew. I couldn’t help but think that the feeling in the country under our present leadership has trickled down to even the most egocentrically-oriented industry in the world: show business.  

Say what you will about our president’s first one hundred days, but he is a gracious, generous human being and his influence  showed on the night of all nights in Hollywood.

Something else was interesting as well.

With the change in the date of the Academy Awards in recent years to February, this was the first time that the holiest day in the Hindu calendar began while the Awards were being celebrated in Hollywood. The first new moon in February always kicks off Shivaratri. How ironic it was that the film Slum Dog Millionaire would win in a landslide of awards on this most auspicious night.

Further history was made on Oscar night when an award winner Jai Ho who won for Best Song, uttering what is considered the most powerful word in India, “Om.” 

Yes, there is a transformation occurring in America, but like a benevolent computer virus, this good will is traveling very fast across the globe. It just goes to show you that in our economic recession, we could learn a thing or two from the Indians across the ocean. The power of not having much in material possessions can develop the spirit and tenacity to never give up. The brown skinned people are getting their due.

Yes, change is coming to America and what happens here happens everywhere!

Dr. Toni Galardi has written a book dedicated to assisting people in overcoming the fear of change in their own lives so that their greatest destiny can unfold. The book,The LifeQuake Phenomenon:How to Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheavalis now available atwww.LifeQuake.net

Freud once defined neurosis as an unconscious conflict between two opposing forces. Our new president won on the message that change is coming to America. The American people want change and, yet, the biggest fear in the majority of individuals is the fear of change in their own lives. So what’s up with that?

Well, people want change to be out there. They want the government to fix our economy, end the war, and rebuild the education system. However, what we also know is that to exact a tipping point of real change in America and across the world is for every human being to choose to live within the means of their income, to choose peaceful resolution instead of strife within their families and communities, and to get more involved in the education of all  of our children.

When we demand of ourselves that which we expect of the “powers at be” who run our country, we have a chance to change the world exponentially. But giving up old habits, addictions, and just plain fear of the unknown is not an easy task for most people. The talk coming off the inauguration is great and it can be done, but we have to work with our fears not just one day at a time, but one moment at a time.

As 2009 progresses and the media touts the statistics on how many people are unemployed, how many points Wall Street fell, or you hear people talking about their fear for the future, it does not inspire pro-active service.

So, the real change comes in having the courage to speak out for a different reality in the face of the collective neurosis and speak it daily. If you work with your own emotions and clear out the anxiety, then and only then can you meet the call to action everyone is talking about. When you take on your own fears and make changes in your own life, you not only liberate yourself;  the whole world is freed.

I have developed a revolutionary body, mind and spirit technology for helping people transform the fear of change and create the life they have always wanted. My new book The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval will be out in late February.

Until then, I invite you to contact me personally for a free consultation on how to bring positive change to your own life. DrToni@LifeQuake.net.

“The times they are a-changin’.” Looking back now, Bob Dylan’s lyric is remarkable for its sense of understatement. Not only are the times a-changin,’ but they are doing so with increased speed, greater force, and deeper magnitude. Look at the world we live in—for most of us, there is a constant demand to learn new technology just to live and work at the most basic level. Travel has become a security-driven nightmare, and climactic changes are arguably reaching startling levels. Is there an aspect of your life that isn’t subject to wholesale change with all its attendant chaos? Given the current state of things, I find chaos a relevant topic, one worth examining more fully.

In ancient Greek mythology, chaos was the primordial womb from which the first gods and goddesses were born. Gaia, the first deity, emerged from this dark void space. Symbolically, she would come to represent Mother Earth, the very stuff from which we evolved. So, in a manner of speaking, you could say that chaos is in our DNA. In the world of quantum physics, once organisms reach their maximum structural potential they burst into chaos, only to reorganize at a higher level. A more readily visible example of this actually comes by way of the cycle of the four seasons: things that come to life in the spring flourish in the summer, only to die in the autumn. After falling to the ground, they decompose, fertilizing the very ground they came from. Yet when cycles end in our lives and things start to deconstruct, we resist the change and resultant chaos, even though it is every bit a natural part of life as the passing seasons.

So, what is the impact of that resistance? More importantly, how is it manifesting for you?

Well, maybe you’ve recently noticed a distinct shift in the nature of your relationships with others. Or perhaps you’ve become aware of a loss of passion and fire in your life, a feeling that, come to think of it, has been around a lot longer than you care to remember. Even more difficult, maybe what you’ve been feeling lately isn’t even that discernible, you might say it’s like a spiritual itch you can’t quite scratch.

These can all be early signs of what I call a LifeQuake™.

Hi, my name is Dr. Toni Galardi. I coined the term ‘LifeQuake’ to describe a phenomenon I have witnessed in both the lives of my clients and seminar attendees, as well as in my own personal life. I began to see symptoms that looked like clinical depression, anxiety, and addiction issues but were actually paradoxical signs of spiritual awakening – an awakening to a life led by your intuition with a career that’s a calling not just a job.

So, what exactly is a LifeQuake, and how does it show up? If we see ourselves as microcosms of the planet, then we too each have a core encased in layers. Your Wholy Self is in your core being, the highest manifestation of the person you really are. However, it is typically buried under layers made up of societal programs, familial indoctrination, and even religious beliefs, which keeps it from reaching full expression at the surface of your consciousness. When your Wholy Self stirs, your core starts to rumble, softly at first, but if left unattended, it does so with ever-deepening intensity. If you resist that intensification by ignoring it, pressure builds in the fault lines of your psyche. As in an earthquake, so it goes with a LifeQuake—the longer the quaking, the more devastating the fallout. When left to reach its most intense level of resistance, the tremors within you will bring catastrophe into your life from which there is no retreat—now you have to change, like it or not.

Can you relate to this? write to me about your experiences.