What's In Your Toolbox?
I've taken a journey back into the past.
No. Not the pick-up-my-drum internal kind of journey, but actually stepping back in and refreshing skills I first learned when I was just 19 and a freshman in college.
Reflecting back, I realize now that I began developing my tracking skills, and many of my healing skills too, back then, adding to them over time as I stepped into NLP and later shamanism. Those early tracking and healing skills came from a system called the Silva Method, created by Jose Silva. We connected with guides, learned how to track into minerals, plants, animals and humans and then how to do healing with what we found.
Before Louise Hay became famous she took Silva, before Wayne Dyer became famous he took Silva, and before Richard Bach wrote Johnathan Livingston Seagull he too used Silva. You may have never heard of this because José Silva was a self-educated man from across the border who created an amazing system that you see and hear as part of many self development trainings now.
I have loved reconnecting with my Silva roots and adding new healing skills to the tool box. In a recent class taught by Jose’s daughter, Laura Silva Quesada, she reminded us having a tool or skill and not using it is like not having that tool at all. This reminder turned on huge personal light bulbs for me – and perhaps yours are lighting up too.
What skills, from any modality you have learned, do you have that you’re not practicing? Perhaps you’re trying to move forward in your life and aren’t able too, and wondering why. As Laura reminded me, are you utilizing ALL your skills?
Are you doing ceremony regularly? Maybe even every day...a prayer to the earth or an offering to the water. Are you meditating regularly to connect with spirit and receive the guidance of your power animals, angels, soul friends or other guides? Have you set aside or even forgotten about some of your personal tools that work best for you?
I want to share with you two easy processes from the Silva System that you can add to your toolbox and begin to use immediately.
The first is called the Creation Frame. This works great for a limiting belief you may have about yourself.
In meditation or while drumming (to be in alpha or theta state) "see" something you'd like to change in your life. In your mind, place the image of the issue or problem in your visual field. Put a blue frame around this image like you are looking at a picture.
Now break the image, allowing it to fall like shards of glass out of the visual field. I use a gorgeous high-healed show this. Maybe a hammer might work better for you.
Now create an image of what you DO want in the middle of the visual field. Place a white frame around this image. When you think back on what you want, remember this desired image in a white frame.
The second exercise is the Glass of Water. This is similar to an exercise I teach in my dreamwork workshops. It’s pretty simple.
Take a full glass of water to bed with you. Before going to sleep, set your intention for what you want; It could be better communication with a specific person, selling your home, or maybe assistance with a work project.
Once you know your intention, drink half the glass of water. If you choose, you can blow your intention into the water before drinking.
If you wake in the middle of the night, or in the morning if you don't, reaffirm that intention and drink the remaining water from the glass.
That’s it. You can even do this nighty if you’d like.
So, these are just two fun tools to add to your skill-set tool box. Just remember that if if you don't use them, then it’s just like not having them at all. Practice and play and use all of your tools.