News Fall,2007
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Fall Newsletter and Guidance from HandTales

A Good Relationship is hard to find!
True or False?

What do you see in my hands about relationships? This is the most common question I get from my clients – health and money are a close second – as if they expect me to have a crystal ball. If I cannot tell their future, what do I say on the subject of healthy relationships and love? Here goes.

Let’s explore 3 ways to assure healthier relationships. Try the exercises that accompany each one. Before you seek love and closeness with someone else:
1. Fall in Love with yourself first
2. Practice vulnerability with a stranger
3. Learn about relationships from nature and celebrate the rhythm of the seasons.

~ Fall in Love with Yourself First ~
Self-acceptance and knowing what you really need/desire comes first. “Love for others without the foundation of love for ourselves becomes a loss of boundaries, codependency, and a painful and fruitless search for intimacy. But when we contact our true nature, we can also allow others to find theirs.” Loving Kindness, the Revolutionary Art of Happiness, Sharon Salzberg, Shambala Press.

Your Hands are a powerful tool to grow your Life Purpose or highest potential and to establish a healthy relationship with your Life Lesson or shadow. Your vessel must be full before you can find intimacy with another. A client and colleague of mine is living on her own after a long, difficult, codependent marriage. She said: “I feel more sexy now, not in relationship to other men, just to me!” I say to my clients seeking a partner, be more of who you are meant to be, accept yourself warts and all and you will attract healthy people who love you for this.

TRY THIS: Pretend you have signed up for the “ILoveMyself” dating service. You are listing your inner qualities (o.k., and inner challenges) to be matched with your outer actions. Now date yourself for a while. Meet yourself at a coffee shop and live that inner self outwardly and boldly. Hone it, forgive the silly negative voices that come up, laugh…whatever it takes to accept yourself and love yourself. Instead of thinking when no one is looking, I can fly, how would it feel to soar like the birds in the beautiful water color in this Issue? Imagine other birds soaring with you, all doing what they do best, taking up just enough space and allowing others to claim theirs.


~ Practice Vulnerability with a Stranger ~
Our world and the powerful people who run it want us to be afraid of others, especially if they do not look like us or are of a different religion or political persuasion. From fear and chaos comes opportunity. It is up to us to create the opportunity for relationship with a stranger…to heal and to increase trust. And, yes, this will aid in finding a partner! You can shift how you feel about yourself (and change the world in the process), I promise.

TRY THIS: Walk down a busy street and notice the number of people who look down or away; the number who look troubled or angry. Now, risk a smile or a friendly greeting, and note how powerful you are in transforming this stranger. You be the source for heart and you will feel better about yourself and will have touched another’s life.

Don’t Pass By by Shirl Gow, Alameda, CA
Touching is important
Much more than just a glance
Whether it’s intended
Or purely happen-stance.
Touching one another
Requires some response;
Subtle though it may be
To other’s needs or wants.
Touching fuels our systems
With quick intensity.
When we meet, remember,
Don’t pass by, touch me!

~ Learn about Relationships from Nature;
Celebrate the Rhythm of the Seasons ~
The Fall Equinox symbolizes when the dark wins out over the light; when Persephone goes to Hades to minister to lost souls for six months (or Kore goes to the dark to learn from the Crone depending on your mythological perspective). Take this opportunity to pause; to explore the meaning and memories of this season for you; to seek a deeper understanding of human triumph and tribulation in relationships, especially your own.

Fall is my favorite time of year. Growing up in Vermont, I have fond memories of stacking wood and putting food by for the winter with family and neighbors. Although not a farmer, I felt the importance of relationships in Autumn celebrations – a time for neighbors, family and friends to join together in thanks for the abundance (and sometimes not so much!) of the harvest with an accompanying trust that you could rely on them in the dark days of winter ahead. For some of us, Autumn is our least favorite season and our memories about those closest to us are NOT so sweet. Perhaps this is a time of forgiveness and for going inside, literally and figuratively, to clear some emotional wounds.

Do you remember how we danced that night away
Two lovers playing scenes from some romantic play
A September morning still can make me feel this way
~ September Morn, Neil Diamond

TRY THIS: Adorn your altar, if you have one, your hearth or your table with natural symbols of this season. Celebrate the meaning of the season with a harvest meal. Using these reminders, make yourself a promise to heal some wounds and shine some of your own light discovered in the dark on someone close to you.
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But what about relationships? What does my hand say? Despite all of my wise sharing about filling yourself and trusting the world and learning from nature, I still get these questions at the end of a session. We all want to be loved and adored. I will stick by my premise, that we cannot fill the hole with another unless we love ourselves first, our neighbors no matter what they look like or believe in and nature whose lessons are all about relationships. I do tell my clients, if you are out there looking for Mr or Ms Right, then just have fun and enjoy the journey, but don’t give yourself away until the package is whole.

posted by Janet at 6:49 PM 0 comments