#and forced to live in an environment that was incompatible with her on every level

[upinyourcortex]

I was having thoughts about yellowjackets and taissa, specifically her relationship with jackie, and how the jackie-shauna-tai triangle was mostly projection on jackie's part (and within the fandom), in my humble opinion. I'll even go as far as to say taissa was more respectful of jackie than shauna (and the other girls) ever were in the wilderness.

I mean obviously we can't deny that tai didn't respect jackie's status as team captain at the beginning of s1 with what happened to allie, but I wanna talk about what happened in the few eps before jackie's death.

First of all we have tai breaking up a fight between jackie and natalie, and putting herself in between them, in an obviously protective stance in front of jackie

Then, during dinner before the final argument with Shauna, when Jackie refuses to say grace, who tries to defend her and says she doesn't have to ? Taissa.

When Jackie takes her stuff to sleep outside, who tells her not to, and then immediatly gets insulted ? Taissa. She even looks confused when Jackie goes "don't pretend this isn't what you wanted the whole time", like girl where did that come from ?

Who is the only one trying to get Shauna to talk to Jackie while she's outside ? Taissa.

Taissa was even more respectful towards Jackie's dead body than Shauna was. Taissa was the one who barged in the shed and saw the makeup on Jackie's corpse. She's the one who told everyone that they should burn it, cuz let's be real, Shauna would have continued to play with it like a Barbie doll until it was completely rotten guys. She was also the only one who was viscerally disgusted after realizing she ate her, throwing up when Van told her she ate Jackie's face.

Taissa is a perfect example of a character whose actions contradict her words entirely. In my opinion, she was more of a friend to Jackie in her last days and after her death than Shauna ever was in what we've been shown.

[fimflamfilosophy]

Characters: Tearing Each Other Together

After the world-sweeping success of my previous article (forty notes on Tumblr, wow!) and being driven out of my house due to mold for the second time in two months, I think the time is right to add another essay to the subject of character design and writing. But what’s left to say after having definitely solved the entire process of character writing the last time?

Well, suppose you can figure out the emotional state of one person. That’s well and good, and oddly harder for people than you might imagine. And I think the reason it’s so hard is because in virtually any show you’re not going to be given a character in a vacuum to learn that process from. They have some story, something they’re trying to overcome, and other characters they’re bouncing off of, and the actual process of conflict is more complicated than knowing who your characters are.

Hate, Love, or Indifference, It’s All A Struggle

So what’s the essence of a story? There’s some motive that’s trying to be achieved. A conflict. And I can’t stress this enough. Conflict. Because it’s one thing if you say your main character is a kid who wants to be the best Poke’mon trainer and completely another to have that be a concrete objective with a satisfying story and conclusion. Wanting to be the “best” isn’t actually conflict. It’s a dream. Being forced to travel the known world to acquire eight gaudy pins that probably cost twenty-five cents each to manufacture? That’s conflict.

And not only do you have to travel the world, you do so with a shrill red-head who explicitly hates you because you trashed her bike, and a sex-starved pervert whose life dream is to make Poke’mon mate with each other for a living. And that’s important. Without Misty and Brock, Ash’s journey is a lot less interesting for a lot of reasons. Misty calls Ash out every time he messes up, and aside from being on a watch list, Brock is a helpful older character who tells Ash, and therefore the audience, what’s what.

But let’s back up, because people understand the benefit of Brock and Misty at a basic level, but when you’re starting off, how do you know who those people should be? Well, every show, from sitcom, to comedy to drama, does its best to balance personalities against each other so there’s always some sort of conflict possible between them.

Now, “conflict” doesn’t mean they’re trying to kill each other. It could mean they’re falling in love with each other. Maybe it means they don’t have much in common but have to work together over long hours in isolation. The idea is simply that there’s something to overcome between these people. Misty thinks Ash is stupid - that’s a conflict which is often leveraged to push Ash forward. Brock, however, has a reactive role in the show, only functioning in conflict when a womanizer who grovels at the feet of ladies Ash is already helping anyway.

It’s odd because if Misty were older she would be set up very well as kind of an “opposites” romantic torture device with Brock. They’re even depicted as professional equals, which would have made their levels of expertise and experience more balanced. Had they been closer in apparent age, a “will they won’t they” romance would have fit adequately, with Brock’s constant hitting on other women serving as a major, hopeless, long-lasting roadblock to a serious relationship between them; it would work especially well because Misty is established to have an inferiority complex to her prettier sisters. It also might help explain why Brock hung around so long. But as it was, Brock’s main contribution to the inner dynamic was to act as a mediator, caretaker, and mentor.

But circling back to Brock’s dream of Poke’mon husbandry. Well, on the meta level that’s why he doesn’t leave. Because it’s not a motive, he’s not taking steps towards it, and it’s not going to happen, it’s just a dream. Until it does happen, anyway, and then they wrote him out of the show - but we’ll dig more into this later.

Balancing Imbalance

The best place to look to see good conflict set ups between characters are popular sitcoms. Consider the show “Frasier”: it ran for eleven seasons and revolved mainly around the personal spats of Frasier, his brother Niles, their dad, and the dad’s caretaker, Daphne. Frasier was arrogant, Niles was insecure, Dad was an earnest roughneck, and Daphne was well-meaning. Frasier and Niles were also elitist pricks at times so they couldn’t even always agree where to eat together, much less with their father who was happier having a burger with ketchup.

Every episode had some central motivator; an ice fishing trip, a joint investment, an awards ceremony - but these things were just catalysts to the main conflict, which was almost always something between characters. We’d seen it time and again, that Frasier and his Dad would come to blows over differences in taste. Niles would try to court Daphne while torn by his commitment to his failing marriage, over and over. But the pithy banter and the way they resolved it would always be new, so people watched this show, episode after episode, for over a decade.

And the simple beauty of it all was that each of the characters had something to do with each other. Whether it be filial obligation, lust, sibling rivalry, friction between introversion and extroversion, or taste in food, they always had some source of conflict to make a show out of. Niles and Frasier were both psychiatrists, but from different schools of thought and different working environments, so they even had chances to butt heads academically and professionally. It was rich with writing opportunities and it’s not any wonder it lasted so long.

Another sitcom, “New Girl”, which was about a group of roommates, had a good dynamic set-up between two characters, Schmidt and Nick. Nick is a messy slob and Schmidt’s a type A neat freak, creating a really obvious source of conflict to work with. But then they had a third character, Winston, who they lampshade as the token black guy. 

Now, the joke that Winston is the “black friend” has pretty much no legs, so in the early seasons you see him acting as kind of a third party mediator, or maybe a wild card, and it winds up being funnier when Winston is unhelpful. So as the seasons went on, Winston gradually lost his damn mind. He becomes a cop and meets a woman so that he’d have some character growth and dynamic, but also develops into a man who would burn a building down as a prank. The writers had no idea what they were doing with him and he gradually flew further and further off the handle.

Don’t get me wrong, I really liked Winston as a character. Aside from being funny in the show, watching the writers gradually unglue him from sanity was its own meta comedy above that. I knew they were doing it on accident, but having such a good time with it that it was just going to keep getting worse. In fact a major component of the finale for the whole show is an insane thing Winston does. They wrap the show on the note, “Winston is crazy”. And it all happened because they didn’t figure out what Winston’s conflict was at the start. He didn’t have a source of conflict with anyone, so the man became a living breathing embodiment of conflict in general.

Your Story Ends With the Conflict

Now, the catch is, in any type of fiction, whether a video game, a roleplaying session, or a sitcom, the story ends when the conflict does, because if the conflict is over there’s nothing more to tell! It used to frustrate me to no end back when “My Little Pony” was popular and the other nerds on the internet used to ask, “How many times must Fluttershy learn not to be shy, or that being shy is okay? When will she overcome all that she is and eliminate the core element that creates conflict for her?”

The answer should always be that the character will learn their damn lesson when the show ends or when they’re written off it. If you are sick of seeing a character and don’t want to see them any more, the best thing to do is close out their issues, because once they have no conflicts, they have no story, and there’s no point in doing a show about them. Asking Fluttershy to stop being shy is asking to say goodbye to her, because she's a cartoon and her job is to entertain kids by being neurotic and yellow.

People think they’re so smart when they say they’d solve all a character’s problems if it were them. In the finale to the first season of Poke’mon, for example, Ash decides to gamble his whole championship run on Charizard, who’s a self-absorbed bitch of a creature that ultimately throws the match and leaves it an open question whether Ash might have won if he’d left the team primadonna sitting on the bench.

Some viewers see that and complain it’s the dumbest possible thing Ash could have done, but it’s probably one of the single most brilliant things the Poke’mon writers did in the grand scheme, because think about where it left us. Ash didn’t achieve his goal of proving he’s “the best”, but it feels like a fluke and if he got another shot, he might make it all the way. This gave the show a gateway to more episodes with Ash still having something to prove and a dumb mistake indicating he still had a lot to learn. Because he didn’t win, his story hadn’t ended.

In some cases shows can end characters just by addressing some dream goal they’ve been expressing since the first season. In the case of Brock, they intentionally removed him from the show by introducing him to some girl who was willing to work with Brock in the animal husbandry business. He’d been traveling all this time, his dream opportunity fell into his lap, and he was gone. What reason would he have to refuse, and why would anyone stop him? And of course, Brock’s dream job was incompatible with the central plot elements of the rest of the show, so that was it!

The Format Informs the Conflict

If you want to write something but you aren’t sure when it’s going to end, you need a concrete, long-term conflict that’s not just going to go away. For example, in “Scooby Doo and the Thirteen Ghosts”, there were thirteen ghosts. By design, that show should have ended after Scooby Doo found all thirteen ghosts. It actually ended earlier than that because it was cancelled, but you get the idea. When you have a finite goal, your run time is going to be finite as well.

At least in theory. In “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” they establish at the beginning of one season that everyone’s magic powers were based on the Tarot. Now, I don’t know the Tarot off hand, but as the show went on I knew that sooner or later they’d run out of Tarot cards, and in my mind I assumed the season would be over when the Tarot ended. But then I got a good chuckle when a guy showed up and his powers were based on a totally different theme, because I knew the writer had realized he’d stumbled into something good and wasn’t ready to end it. He invented a cheap excuse to keep going! And I think if “Scooby Doo and the Thirteen Ghosts” had been successful they’d have managed to unleash a whole lot more than thirteen ghosts because Hannah Barbera was not exactly a studio with a lot of shame.

Character conflicts like those in sitcoms are a great way to have conflict perpetually, because people don’t really change that much and there’s no reason why most of the fundamental friction shouldn’t be there indefinitely. But of course, character-driven conflict is going to be secondary in an event-driven show. “Jojo” actually does have a lot of character conflict, but the plot is primarily about the battles and the journey - if all the fighting ended Jojo’s characters probably couldn’t carry a sitcom, at least not without some serious hard work, a little genius, and a touch of elbow grease.

For event-driven conflict, you’ll want to establish a target - a moving target if you don't know when the story ends, and that can be pretty difficult. Old action shows and comics used to do it by having a rotating cast of villains, so that after one was defeated another would show up tomorrow, and it was assumed these guys regularly broke out of prison, or they escaped in rocket pods, or whatever, and they’d be back later with a new goofy scheme. In these cases you tend to find reactive heroes; they patrol the streets until a lunatic in tights and a garden-themed hat shows up and transforms everyone into people-shaped topiaries somehow.

For active heroes, you need to establish something that requires a lot of structure, like Ash’s journey to win the Poke’mon League. In every country he visits, they all have this asinine rule that you have to go to eight unique locations and kick the ass of someone who disadvantages themselves with an easily-countered mono team that all have the same exact weakness. You can’t be accepted into the League if you haven’t proven you own a water Poke’mon to utterly flatten the fire gym! Let’s be real, this nonsense is probably designed intentionally as a money gate - most people run out of cash before they qualify. Either way, it ends when Ash wins the league, and he lost the league so the show could keep going.

For roleplaying games, the same rules apply. With your players, you’re either going to establish a reactive goal - an adventuring guild hires a bunch of colorful salarymen with silly accents to go to a dungeon as part of their nine to five job - or you need players to set an active goal for themselves and keep the realization of that goal beyond their reach until you’re ready to end the game.

The Active Hero Acts

In my younger years, I learned to roleplay in almost exclusively player-driven games where we were expected to come up with our own goals and pursue them ourselves, but I’ve discovered that is stunningly rare in most roleplaying circles. Your typical D&D player likes to play the salaryman with a funny accent who doesn’t have to worry about the venturous part of adventure. His boss told him to go to the Cave of Everlasting Wonders and Torturous Screams, recover the Sword of Bad Portent, and then hand it over to the department of magic items where they’ll file the paperwork to get it delivered to the patron that wanted the sword for some reason. No need to have your own motives.

But what if you want to play a crime fighter who actually, you know, busts up all the crime? Clearly you can’t just wait for crime to happen passively - you’ve got to go after people. Act instead of being reactive. Purse snatchers are small time and in a more grounded setting the guys you’ll catch by being passive are just grunts being hired out by someone - usually kids in a lot of cases. You have to seek out the bosses.

Making an active character to fit into any setting can be challenging, and I’ve seen quite a few pitfalls. I think one of the funniest motives is always “the guy who wants to go home” due to its obvious failure condition. A lot of stories are about everymen who just want to get out of trouble, but those stories end when they get out of trouble! In many books, movies, shows, or roleplaying games, you’re almost always going to find opportunities to send that guy home, and you’ll have to either conveniently ignore it, switch motives and decide not to go home, or end the whole story with going home. These characters only work where the story is happening to them and it's all out of their control.

I’ve also seen my share of the “quirky genius inventor/scientist”. When someone designs a character mistaking a dream for a motive. They dream of building a better mouse trap, you see. That’s their inner conflict. And while this is a real world conflict, it’s difficult to make it a good story because actual science and invention involves a lengthy quantity of controlled experiments. You breed hundreds of fruit flies, expose them to nicotine, and try to isolate the gene that causes nicotine resistance. It can be fascinating work at its level but sometimes the most exciting part of your day is when you give yourself a steam burn cooking the fly food. The “quirky scientist” in fiction is usually more of a mentor, and if he insists on staying in his lab doing his work then he’s not even a main character - he’s a guy who explains fruit flies to the audience and then is never heard from again. Other times he’s the asshole who invented the story’s whole problem.

I once played in a game with “the quirky scientist who wants to go home”, and man was that a frustrating ride. The game itself was about occult magic and demons, and for most of the game the scientist was experimenting with teleportation magic to go home and was focused on that above the goal of finding and eradicating demons (the game’s premise). And when he finally met a boss demon that could teleport him home to his lab, he went! We wound up retiring a character who, to be honest, was barely even interested in the main subject of the story. Had he been in a film or a show, they’d have cut the character after the first draft because he served no purpose and wasted screen time.

So how do you make sure your character has a working, proactive goal, in a nutshell? Establish a goal that can be achieved by the character within the framework of your story through action by leaving his house (or after burning his house down so he can’t go home), and then make sure the goal is big enough that it will take many broad steps to get there - those steps need to be concrete and visible, not things that would happen off-screen. Most importantly, tie that goal into the main premise of the story, so that reaching the end of the story generally may achieve what the character wants.

If You Aren’t Trying, It’s Not A Trial

Okay, I understand that last bit probably requires more unpacking. But think of it this way. There’s a writing structure referred to as the “Hero’s Journey”. Basically it goes like this: the hero is forced into adventure, he meets friends and goes through trials, he hits his lowest point, he is reborn into a better man, he ends the conflict, story over.

What I’m talking about specifically right now are the trials. The “wacky inventor” is usually presumed to do all his research off screen because most media likes to focus on the results of the invention and the conflict. But if you were to focus on the trials of a scientist, it’d actually be about procuring research grants and potentially materials. You wouldn’t watch a show about a man who checks gene A-235 for nicotine resistance in flies, then goes on to A-236, then A-237.

If I were to write a story about a researcher, here’s one thing I might do: the researcher fails to find what he’s looking for in gene A-235, and when he goes to seek a grant to look at A-236, he finds one of his colleagues has convinced the university that the protagonist’s research is a dead end. Hearing this, the researcher realizes he’s about to lose his lab, so he writes a bit of a lie into his report on A-235. He says it may prevent cancer.

Now, the protagonist is, deep down, a good man. He thinks this will generate some buzz at the university and get him more funding, but he’ll do a follow-up and show the data doesn’t hold up. After that he’ll ask for money for A-236 and everything goes back to normal. But disaster strikes. His article, which was only supposed to show up in an obscure research journal, gets picked up by a major news network and winds up being spread all over. Suddenly he’s “the man who cured cancer”.

And as he’s trying to figure out how to navigate the issue, another researcher comes out and says that under peer review, he was able to replicate the results. He too shows that A-235 cures cancer! Now the hero isn’t sure. He becomes a celebrity and simply lies about his research because he has no real data, but try desperately as he might, in private he just can’t get the results the peer review insisted were there.

He struggles and struggles, coming to blows with his colleague who’s scrutinizing his research notes. Throw in a love interest who’s impressed with what this guy did, and actually I think I’ve just described the plot of some movie I saw a long time ago about faking cold fusion. I think Albert Einstein was a supporting character in it. In my version the twist would be the peer reviewer was also trying to get a grant by lying. Point is, the central conflict of the film certainly isn’t the scientific process, it’s all the crazy crap that happened on the way from point A to point B.

The story is in the trials. If nothing changes, if the character doesn’t have to change their way of life or go through anything special, it’s either not a story or it’s not your typical story. There are plenty of experimental films or well-regarded books that can make a certain banality become interesting. Stories that explain the simple struggles of day to day living for people on hard times. But the trials, the palpable challenges, that’s really the meat of it all. When you think of what your character should be doing throughout the story, he should be going through these efforts, these steps, these trials, all in the name of whatever his broader goal is.

Where You Start Affects Where You End

It also matters quite a lot when and where characters are introduced. A lot of tales follow some basic notes, and one of the more common elements is “crossing the threshold”, which prevents your characters from going back to their life before the adventure. It’s used because it compels the characters forward, as they have no other direction they can go. It can be anything: the character’s home town is destroyed, the character commits a crime, he accepts a contract, his mother dies - so long as it prevents him from going back. It’s especially useful in roleplaying games where you really need everyone to be driving forward.

In one such roleplaying game, I got in a spat with the guy who wanted to run the game because I was trying to make a leader character, but the game master wanted to base his game around a movie he’d seen with a single main character. He’d elected another player to be that main character, and explained to me he’d be starting the game after that character had already crossed the threshold and had begun his journey. This meant that everyone else were supporting cast and could go back to their normal lives at any time, because they were coming willingly from where they were and not really facing any drastic changes to their personal status quo.

I eventually resolved not to play in that game at all, because none of the character dynamics I wanted were going to work. It was supposed to be a “wannabe” superhero game, with the premise that everyone wanted to be heroes, except one player had already started the journey and it turned out another had already reached the end of that arc and was going to play a character that had been a hero going on years before the story began. There was no plan to really reconcile the narrative clashes.

If that game were to work as it was, without me being present, then the person playing the pre-established hero would have needed to take the mentor role. The other players besides the main character would have needed to be comfortable in auxiliary roles, and the group would have to play as though they were part-way into the story. Still learning to be a team but well past the initial stages of a plot, and they’d all need to think up reasons to be in this group individually on their own, because the threshold had already been crossed and they didn’t cross it together.

The friend running the game was actually dismissive of my advice here, arguing that I was overcomplicating everything with a meta analysis of narrative and structure when all we need is a basic drive to play, and I don’t think he realized he’d set himself up with a much more complicated game and less cohesive premise by going about things as he had.

The already established hero couldn’t be the mentor because a mentor character had already been created as an NPC. The auxiliary players weren’t really informed at the outset they’d be auxiliaries - especially not me who’d wanted to play the team leader. The player who’d been designated as the central protagonist didn’t want to lead or be the central protagonist. It could have worked, but it would have taken a lot more planning and many more concessions than a typical game.

In a more recent game, I’ve got another bit of an issue with the start misleading the general goals of the players. It’s a sci-fi game, and first, one player is doing “the quirky inventor scientist”; his current stated dream is vaguely to create transhumanist technology. He also wants to play the leader, so he established himself as the most important man nobody has ever heard of. He has spies in every major institution in the known galaxy and is a genius beyond comparison. He’s currently based in a rusting pirate ship in the middle of the space boonies doing nothing with his life save being the most important man.

Meanwhile, I set up a disgraced military officer with a revenge quest against his own nation. But the pirate crew my character joined turned out to not believe in structure nor leadership and they killed their last commander to have a system of “democracy”. My structure-minded character has tried to take the lead and drive us forward, but he runs into general deconstructive resistance and the “quirky scientist” wants to be the leader, but hasn’t yet expressed self-motivated goals.

It’s not exactly my most harmonious game and there’s quite a lot going wrong here, but here’s how it could have worked: first, establishing that the crew of the pirates respects no leadership places the entire crew in the precarious position of being “chickenshit” at the outset. That kind of incohesiveness is why a band of rogues gets easily defeated; it’s not the behavior of scrappy men of action, but hopeless men of inaction. A corrupted “democracy” collectivises failure while awarding success to whoever actually has the most power in the group structure - it protects the weak leaders from responsibility and disincentivizes good work by allowing those same men to reap rewards while offloading the burdens to those lower on the ladder. In essence, “If things are screwed up, blame the democracy. If things are good, I did it.”

What should have happened was the “quirky scientist” should have been in charge to start with, because otherwise he has no reason to be on board the ship. He’s the most powerful man in the galaxy, after all. If it were because he was financing the pirates to go on raiding and salvage missions relevant to his research, then it would make sense. He’d have a purpose and a position of leadership just as the player wanted. It would also establish the pirates have some command structure and a level of respect for it that allows them to function.

And the power struggle between the disgraced officer and the scientist? Perfectly reasonable character conflict that would drive actual, meaningful roleplaying and story. The scientist may bankroll the operation but the officer is the tactical talent and the two pull in opposite directions, as power-hungry men often do.

However, the opportunity to start with a sensible and meaningful social dynamic has passed, and on top of that the “quirky scientist” keeps his galaxy-wide power a secret, so it’s all kind of messy and “badly written” in the sense that most audiences would be generally rooting for the crew to fail, and they’d find the grand reveal of the scientist’s galactic power to be frustrating and unrewarding because it’s more of a plot hole than anything. So close on so many counts and yet so very far, and the opportunity to pull it together eventually is present but a more challenging and uphill battle than getting it right at the outset.

In The End, Did We Even Learn Anything?

Creating a character is easy, in my opinion. Creating a working story with a group of self-driven characters can be a lot harder. This is especially true of roleplaying games or of cooperation with multiple writers, where you need to be on the same general page with a committee. It can help a lot to establish the exact conflicts at the beginning, but as can be seen with Winston from “New Girl” or the later seasons of “My Little Pony”, what you have can morph beyond your control as things go on.

Sometimes you never had control in the first place. Sometimes you lose control because you conclude the original conflict of your story and struggle to find a new one - the brand is too successful to let go. Maybe an executive comes in and injects an idea that throws the entire balance of everything totally out of whack and now nothing works. Sometimes your friend thinks story structure is overrated. It’s a difficult juggling act.

So at the end of this essay did we even learn anything? It depends a lot on what you’re trying to do and what you wanted to learn. If you’re the more typical Dungeons and Dragons group, you don’t need to think much about this. Just make your characters and passively react to activities handed out by Dungeons, Dungeons & Co - your conflict is event-driven. Are you writing a sitcom? Well, balance a tangled web of conflicting character habits and write the ensuing disaster. Want to make a complex film about a group of highly motivated, proactive people with sophisticated individual goals that ultimately converge while still respecting their rich, conflicting, inner politics, and do all that writing as part of a team? Well, good goddamn luck, but with the right start and enough care you can make it happen.

[carriemaya]

Stuff as Sacred: The Spirituality of Things

Hyperspirituality alienates us from our physical environment. Space for our belongings cultivate belonging.

Last week, I wrote a piece about moving into my forever home.

Until my mum and sister officially find a place, though, my boxes remain unpacked; stacked in the far corner of what’s technically my room but definitely doesn’t feel like mine.

And I think this is because I don’t have the freedom to take up space yet

Yes, little bits here and there: I can clear out the shaving cupboard and put my toiletries in there. And I can connect my laptop to my mum’s WiFi (which is great because I work on the Internet).

But I’m struggling.

I’ve been living out of bags and boxes for nearly three months now. And not being able to unpack properly (or at all in some cases) causes my mood to drop. Not having a desk to work at makes me feel anxious. And not being able to let my cat Ferdinand out of the one room he’s living in because my mum’s dogs have free range of the house makes me sad.

I love her dogs. They’re beautiful souls. But I struggle with dogs, personally, in terms of cleanliness. Definitely more of a cat person. So sharing space with a giant one who’s tail is as strong as my right arm, and another who sheds every three seconds, just makes me feel dirty, claustrophobic, and a little bit powerless.

It’s not one’s fault. It just is what it is for now. But this waiting period has me thinking about the way that having space to survey, define parameters for, and then curate and personalise is a form of freedom.

Here are a few musings on the topic.

SPACE. As in the cosmos. As in outer space. As in not on earth. As in not here. As in out there.  As in atmospherically incompatible. As in can't breathe.  As in floating. As in ungrounded, and vast, and ever-expanding.  As in unfathomable. Unknown. A dark forever ocean of unknown. As in it makes us feel small in comparison. Because we are small in comparison. Space as in no thing. Earth as thing. Earth as in map. As in scribbled with arbitrary borders. As in I wonder if aliens looked down at us, they’d mistake the checkpoints we've erected at state lines as our altars to separation. Earth as in location. As in a place that exists at a specific point in space.

If I don’t have space, I don’t have freedom. And if I don’t have space, I can’t locate a point within it to create place. And without place, I cannot make a home.

EARTH. As in place. As in tether. As in force of gravity. As in a touchstone between somewhere and nowhere.   As in the statue of David not the slab of marble from which he was sculpted.  As in this (not that) and here (not there). Earth as in terrain. As in planes, meadows, mountains, oceans, and deserts. As in soil. As in oil. As in metal, crystals, nutrients. As in sowing seeds and yielding produce. As in dependant on it for survival. As in solid. And surface. Earth as in habitat. As in trees, rivers, rocks, sky, wind, mammals, reptiles, and insects. As in ecosystem. As in bodies and breath. As in human creation. As in building shelter. As in hunting and gathering. As in making fire. As in eating. sleeping, reproduction, ritual,  information, education, commerce, government. As in culture. Culture as in hub. As in cauldron. As in us. As in art that rings true. As in language. As in feeling understood by you. As in feeling heard by you. As in feeling so heard by you that here is where I want to be.  

As in resonance.    

If I don’t have space, I don’t have freedom. And if I don’t have space, I can’t locate a point within it to create place. And without place, I cannot make a home.

If this is true, then it must also be true that having infinite space can’t be freedom. Because if I have space without any definition whatsoever, then what I am isn’t free but lost. And the opposite of being lost is being where I belong.

BELONGING. As in connection. As in emotional ties. As in memories; sharing them and making them. As in trust. As in knowing I'm not going to be hit or punched. Or yelled at. As in communication. Belonging as in voice. As in what I have to say matters as much as what you have to say. As in apologising when we hurt each other. As in saying I love you. As in saying well done. Belonging as in generational. As in wisdom passed down from grandparents to parents to grandchildren. As in shared history. As in doing whatever it takes to keep the tribe safe.

Making place within space should be a negotiation, a dance. Never an act of Imperialism.  

HOME. As in a point and place that exists within the vast space of earth as terrain. As in house. As in a pocket of thing in the fabric of no thing. As in eating the root not just the leaf. As in compatible atmosphere. As in I can finally breathe. As in habitat. As in ecosystem. As in the culture that exists beneath my roof.  Home as in mine. As in not yours. As in occuppied not vacant. As in territory. As in protection from the elements. And landlords.  As in tether and force of gravity. As in doors. That lock. As in ownership. As in home. As in home. As in home. As in home. As in home.

Space becomes place when it’s occupied. House becomes home when it’s occupied. Terrain becomes territory when it’s occupied.

* * *

I can’t decide if I made the right choice by listing belonging before home. Should I have put it the other way around? I don’t know. These two concepts confuse me and scare me.

Maybe because I’ve never had a good grasp on matter.

Space is what I know. It’s the familiar daydream of floating in the ether.

The Christianity I was raised in taught me that the body, possessions, money, and even the planet weren’t as important as “living in the spirit”. It instilled in me a doomsday fear of putting stock in anything that I can’t take with me when I die.

If I stay hovering above the ground in the heavenly realms, I can let God move me wherever He wants to. Because I have surrendered my agency to Him. I stay alienated to my physical environment out of obedience to my Divine call.

In a nutshell: I feel like the physical realm is an upside down world. I cognitively understand its importance, but on an emotional level I struggle to care about it (hello terrible relationships with food, money, and housing).

Belonging and home? They’re the worldy, human, ungodly realms of density.

Sending my spirit earthbound is to bind myself to sin, retribution, and hell.

This is the deep programming that’s starting to rear its ugly head as I begin to get used to the idea of occupying a house in forever-home fashion.

I want to TRULY believe in the sacredness of life on earth. And maybe learning to make a house my home can help me to do this.

I’m in the process of surveying the walls, floors, and cupboards. And when they’re empty, I’ll make them my own through personalisation—an act born of freedom to choose; curating the feel and flow of my home with colour schemes and carefully-placed possessions.

The off-white Victorian-style clock that I plan to sit on the fireplace mantel.

The Boston Fern I plan to hang from the ceiling in the bathroom.

The makeshift alcove I plan to create from the unused window in the living area.

What if stuff is sacred?

What if the house is a voicebox and possessions are the voice?

What if the freedom to set up my belongings is what creates place for me to belong?

What if, because I matter, so do the things that matter to me?

1.  What are the stories you tell yourself about the importance of you body, possessions, and physical existence?

2.  Do you feel your life shows that you value both spirit AND matter?

3.  In what ways can you bring greater balance to your relationships with both spirit AND matter?

4.  If you're struggling to find this balance, where can you turn for help? If you don't know straight off the top of your head, is there someone who can point you in the right direction?

[ariasune]

Harry Potter and the Equality Act 2010

A Short Primer on Forstater v CGD and What’s Going on with Rowling

(Tweet Published 19/12/19 by JK Rowling at 6:57AM, transcribed as follows: Dress however you please. / Call yourself whatever you like. / Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. / Live your best life in peace and security. / But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? / # I Stand With Maya # This Is Not A Drill )

In the tweet above, J.K Rowling indicates that she believes that Maya Forstater’s employment relationship with the think tank, CGD Europe ended as a result of Forstater’s gender-critical beliefs being discriminated against (1). Forstater took her complaints to the Employment Tribunal on March 15th, and on the 18th December, it was determined by Judge James Tayler that Forstater’s gender-critical beliefs are not protected beliefs under the Equality Act 2010 (2).

There has been criticism of this judgment as an erosion of freedom of speech, enforcement of censorship, or even resulted because the Tribune found Forstater’s views “absolutist” and “unscientific”. Daily Mail described the situation  as “Britons can’t ask whether a transgender person is a male or female” (3) and Forstater described her case as a necessary defence of freedom of beliefs (4). It has even said that the judgement was punishment for Forstater campaigning for a change to government policy about gender.

This isn’t true.

None of that is true.

This is a fundamental and even deliberate misunderstanding of both what the Tribunal was asked to determine, and what the judgment in question actually says.

It’s very important to understand that the judgment does not compel people to refer to trans women as women, that the judgment does not punish or prevent Forstater from gender-critical political campaigns and platforming, that the judgment does not derive from whether Forstater’s beliefs are scientifically accepted or absolutist.

Don’t believe me? You can read for yourself.

It’s twenty-six pages, and it’s legal writing though, so here’s a walk-through of what’s going on in this judgment and what its legal implications are exactly.

The judgment focuses on whether or not Forstater’s gender-critical beliefs are a protected belief and thus subject to legal protection within the UK (5). It also considers whether Forstater’s speech is unlawfully compelled, as well as specifically preserving and reinforcing Forstater’s freedoms to continue to campaign about the Gender Recognition Act (6).

Protected Beliefs

Not all beliefs are protected beliefs, as even when acknowledging the “right to freedom of expression, people cannot expect to be protected if their core belief involves violating others’ dignity and/or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for [others]” (7). In short, whilst people have freedom of speech and protection from Governmental Censure, they are not innately immune to social, and personal consequences for what they say and do. 

To determine whether a belief qualifies as a protected belief under the Equality Act 2010 (8), Human Rights Act 1998 (9) and the European Convention of Human Rights (10) (11), “the Granger criteria” (12) is applied, as follows:

(i) the belief must be genuinely held;

(ii) it must be a belief and not an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information available;

(iii) it must be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour

(iv) it must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance; and

(v) it must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, not be incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.

Both belief and lack of belief are potentially protected (13), and Forstater approached this on the basis that if a belief meets the Granger Criteria, than the lack of this same belief was inherently given that same protected status. However, Judge James Tayler stated that the correct interpretation of the law is that both a belief and a lack of that belief, whichever was held by a claimant, could obtain protected status by meeting the Granger Criteria separately (14). The specified example used was that the belief that murder is wrong is a protected belief, but that the lack of this belief was not protected.

Further, Judge Tayler asserted that to say that Forstater merely lacked the belief that “Trans Women are Women” was disingenuous, as it was found that Forstater positively believes “Trans Women are Men” (15). Nevertheless, the Granger Criteria was applied both to the belief that “Trans Women are Men”, and the lack of the belief that “Trans Women are Women”.

In applying the Granger Criteria, Judge Tayler found that Forstater genuinely held her beliefs, that they constituted a belief and not simply a viewpoint, and that they dealt with a substantial aspect of human life and behaviour. 

Although Judge Tayler noted that Forstater’s beliefs were described as a scientific belief despite “significant scientific evidence that [they are] wrong” (16), that a “scientific belief may not be based on very good science” (17) whilst still managing to not be incoherent, and that Forstater’s belief fulfilled the criteria of being cogent within its own  logic.

However, it is in the fifth requirement that Judge Tayler found Forstater’s beliefs failed to reach the threshold for a protected belief. He found Forstater’s core beliefs to be “incompatible with human dignity and the fundamental rights of others” (18) and therefore whilst she had every right to express these beliefs, they cannot be protected beliefs. 

And when he says incompatible with fundamental rights, that is meant very literally.

Specifically, he found that Forstater had as a core belief an incompatibility with the human rights discussed in Goodwin v United Kingdom [2002] IRLR 664 as a result of the UK’s breach of the ECHR (19) (20), and later made law in the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (21).

Tayler also found that Forstater’s core beliefs included the belief that she had the right to illegally harass people (22), as deliberate and malicious misgendering is considered harassment against the protected characteristics of both gender reassignment and sex (23).

Again, whilst Forstater’s freedom of belief and expression entitles her to these beliefs and actions as a result of them, they do not meet the measure of protected belief. Thus social consequences- such as being fired- are not something they are protected from.

The Compelling of Speech

In Lee v Ashers Baking Company LTD [2018] IRLR 1116 it was held to be unlawful to compel someone through absence of protected characteristics to express a message with which they profoundly disagreed, except when justification was shown for them to be compelled (24). Tayler found that “[Forstater] could generally avoid the huge offense caused by calling a trans woman a man without having to refer to her as a woman, as it is often not necessary to refer to a person’s sex at all... where it is, I consider requiring [her] to refer to a trans woman as a woman is justified to avoid [illegal] harassment of that person” (25) (26).

In short, she is compelled only insofar as laws against assault compel people.

Similarly, Judge Tayler did not accept “that there was a failure to engage with the importance of [Forstater’s] qualified right to freedom of expression, as it is legitimate to exclude a belief that necessarily harms the rights of others” (27). As it was demonstrable that a core component of Forstater’s beliefs was the right to willfully intimidate, degrade, and humiliate others through violation of their rights (28), not only were they excluded from protection, but they were found to be “not worthy of respect in a democratic society” (29).

In conclusion, Forstater’s beliefs and the way in which she manifested them were found to be unlawful and against established human rights and because of this, beyond the scope of protected beliefs.

Whilst she is allowed to express them without interference from the law, she is not protected from personal consequences such as her contract not being renewed. 

And nobody is compelling her to do anything except not hurt people. That’s what laws do.

Precedent

Forstater v CGD [2019]

Grainger plc v Nicholson [2010] ICR 360

Goodwin v United Kingdom [2002] IRLR 664

Lee v Ashers Baking Company LTD [2018] IRLR 1116

Law

Equality Act 2010

Human Rights Act 1998

European Convention of Human Rights 1953

Citations

1 https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1207646162813100033, published Dec 19th 2019

2 Forstater v CGD 2019, released Dec 18th 2019.

3 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7808685/Britons-ask-transgender-person-male-female-judge-says.html, published Dec 19th 2019.

4 https://twitter.com/MForstater/status/1181837336738435077, published Oct 9th 2019

5 Equality Act 2010, s4, s10.

6 Forstater v CGD 2019, para 86

6 Ibid, para 86.

7 Ibid, para 87.

8 Ibid, para 50.

9 Ibid, para 46-49.

10 European Convention of Human Rights, Article 9, 10.

11 Ibid, para 51.

12 Grainger plc v Nicholson [2010] ICR 360, para 24.

13 Equality Act 2010, s10.2

14 Forstater v CGD 2019, para 50.

15 Ibid, para 93.

16 Ibid, para 83.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid, para 84.

19 Ibid, para 68.

20 Ibid, para 70.

21 Ibid, para 84.

22 Ibid, para 87.

23 Ibid, para 73.

24 Ibid, para 72.

25 Ibid, para 91.

26 Equality Act 2010.

27 Forstater v CGD 2019, para 91.

28 Ibid, para 90.

[tothedarkdarkseas]

What type of things do you think 2d wouldn't be able to do with a man? Sexually and emotionally?

Woof. That’s a heavy question. Behind a cut for sensitive material.

This side of it is overlooked sometimes and I haven’t always done the best job representing it myself, but there’s absolutely an element of emotional isolation with another man for Stu. Having any sort of romantic (or undefined, in this case) relationship with a man is… uncharted and uncomfortable. There’s a whole evolving process in his response to Murdoc, though. Stu can and does throw his emotions in Murdoc’s face a lot when he’s around the 20-23 range, particularly when those emotions are about how much Murdoc sucks, but if anything that only highlights how little conscious thought he’s put into his relationship to Murdoc vs, say, Paula. In the beginning he’s not acting dishonestly to Murdoc, and in fact is less honest toward the girlfriend he cares about his image in front of; it’s just that it’s still an immediate surface level “honesty” with Murdoc, a heat-rises kind of honesty. He reacts to what Murdoc’s shown him up to that point and now follows that angry “owed” instinct Murdoc unwittingly split off himself and drove into Stu’s head. You don’t get a sense of Stu being cold, but you don’t get a sense of him being comfortable with any level of vulnerability either, he’s still asserting himself as a winner even when he’s dripping spittle and rage tears. He’s pretty emotionally immature which tends to involve a type of selfish honesty, and in my imagining he gets kinda tetchy, kinda defensive, especially so with Murdoc. He is overall less reserved than a certain stiff-lipped British stereotype, which just kinda supports him not actually being raised any higher than mid-working class– as always I’m not the best source to discuss this stuff, I can’t emphasize enough how much @elapsed-spiral keys me in on the class divide (spoken and unspoken) and the fairly unique relationship Britain has with class. (Also can’t emphasize how much I’ve ripped ideas from them in general, and how much more knowledgeable Danni is on everything about the inherent Britishness of the characters. And on most things.)

All that crap about his emotional profile to say– there’s a shift when that relationship changes into something with sexual undertones, whether they’ve actually had sexual contact or not. To simply exist and be gay is not inherently sexual, but… Stu isn’t exactly a guy I see having an enlightened understanding of the world and himself, not at 20 at least. To Stu, who went to school under Section 28, who was at least complicit in some schoolyard homophobia (regarding the pic in ROTO with the “I’m gay” sign stuck on another boy’s back), who does not feel confident in exactly who he is but has some ideas of who he does not want to be, who has only ever been with women and doesn’t accept those experiences being mocked and invalidated because the conversation about sexuality for working class men was so black and white, who does not know if it’s possible to separate his identity as a man from the fear of being “less of a man” that he’s internalized, who knows he isn’t the ideal of “what a man can be” and feels more doubt about his head traumas and “disfigurement” than he admits and doesn’t want to add another uncertain thing on top of– yeah, to that Stu, his worldview is still rather narrow. The thought that his life, both going forward and his memories until now, would be forced to change in a way he has not reached a healthy place with yet is upsetting. After things take on a certain tone with Murdoc, I think Stu pulls back emotionally but can’t help still spilling over. I do think there are times, very panicked raw times when Stu would be open about what he’s feeling, he’d deliver stream of consciousness anxieties or maybe accuse Murdoc of things, he’d cry while shouting because Stu is simply prone to crying in frustration, he’d certainly show emotion in some form, but day to day things would become more terse. Murdoc would probably prod him until he forces Stu to lash out, but Stu would not put himself in the more threatening, more vulnerable position of maybe being… kinda okay with it. Letting himself feel connected to Murdoc the way he has to a girlfriend. Talking to someone about Murdoc, including Murdoc, in more than just insults. Treating their relationship as a relationship. These are things that I do think could shift around over time. After Phase 3 I think the emotional relationship takes on a much more direct and bitter tone, things go from heated to quite icy, and their relationship stops entirely for several years. When they come back together it’s just with this resigned understanding that they’re part of each other, that no amount of living healthier has ever flushed Murdoc from his system.

Sex is both harder and easier for Stu depending on the context. This is a shortcoming on my end, as I have the characters exist in kind of a nebulous alternate reality more than like a full plotted “AU” so I do tend to… jump around a bit. I’m not married to certain things, and this tends to be one of them. I’ve written Stu being unable to have full penetrative sex with another man, and I’ve written him regrettably having full penetrative sex with another man, and I can’t say I hate either idea or think they can’t work.To be honest, I still sometimes feel like it’s a mistake to have their relationship be quite as explicit as it’s been, and I fall back on the idea in Midnight Coward– that they just can’t. Stu just can’t. I find the concept of “incompatible sexuality” really compelling, even if in this case I headcanon them as the same orientation but just very different places in their comfort with sex… but for admittedly shallow reasons it can be hard to stick to that for every story. In my head, the followup to Ampersands is Stu and Murdoc continuing to smoke and indulge in no-direct-conversation mutual masturbation together, or Murdoc performing oral on Stu (not receiving it in return), but while Murdoc would have anal sex on offer– despite the fact that they’d already done that with Paula– Stu would not be able to repeat it under the new circumstances for a long time. It’s different without her as a buffer. He was able to justify the threesome as “sex with his girlfriend” while Murdoc’s just there, he compartmentalized what that moment could mean in order to act on it, and now he’s able to compartmentalize Murdoc “servicing” him as just… sort of using Murdoc in a masturbatory fashion, something Murdoc’s gladly offering and gladly accepting. It’s not really rational, but it’s something tenuous he can get himself past this threshold for– the threshold for “really” shagging (according to a heteronormative guy’s experiences and what “really counted” as shagging with girls vs what was having a bit of fun) is much further out, and would take a longer time to get past. But on the other hand, it can also feel believable to me that they’d just go way too fast and end in Stu’s brain being a little broken (psst, this is what I’ve taken a break from a more serious unsexy story to write, so I’ve gotta cover my tracks now and defend it.) Now that I think about it, there’d be a meeting point between sex and emotion– I think Stu would have a much easier time getting in physical altercations with Murdoc that allow for sex to happen, being in rougher or less emotionally compromising situations than talking about things like identity and history would be. He’d be… this is an awkward way to phrase it I realize, but he’d be more open to being made aware that sex with Murdoc is just something that could happen. He might get defensive at a lewd joke but he wouldn’t exactly spiral at it. Having an explosive relationship allows room for things to just… explode, as it were. I think that sort of distance from the emotional side (apart from “normal” emotions like anger at Murdoc) makes him feel safer and less like he’s in a vulnerable position, even if he’s in a compromising position. It makes following the cues Murdoc is giving less scary and more instinctive. I think a hard line for Stu (at least for a very long time) is giving oral sex, or kissing Murdoc in a non-sexual environment (as in kissing at breakfast or something.) These don’t feel like things he’s being gratified by and therefore distracted enough to do; these feel like things you do when you want to please someone besides yourself or share intimacy with them. Either of these ideas with Murdoc trigger a flight response in Stu, so he’s out.

(I realize I just talked about Murdoc and not another man in general, but I don’t think Stu had any sort of romantic relationship with another man before Murdoc and unfortunately for him I don’t think he ever seriously has another relationship after. I can’t decide if I think Stu might sleep with another man when the two are separated during the hiatus but I tend to lean toward ehhh, maaaaybe only once, just to jolt himself from the numbness with something that terrified him so deeply once, to see if he’s capable of caring about anything that much again… but I could also easily see that never happening, so.)

[primrose-path-of-dalliance]

Lotor’s end (?) in s6

toc 1: i shake out some salt and talk about the altean colony | 2: i question why people keep insisting lotor was "evil all along" | 3: i talk about my favorite parts of lotor’s breakdown

lotor, altea, and king alfor

when lotor chooses to lash out and start destroying everything, he says: "what about your father? he may have been a master engineer, but alfor was too weak to defend his homeworld. i'm the one who had to step up and save our entire race. who are you to question my tactics in bringing peace and prosperity to the universe?"

the knee-jerk reaction is to be furious at lotor for this statement, and what he says is unfair. it's not as if alfor simply gave up, lay down, and offered his people to the pyre. perhaps he made a mistake in sending voltron away (as his ai freely admits to allura), but although we don't get a lot of information on what happened after zarkon's resurrection, we know that he tried to defend his people. that he ultimately lost isn't a fact that's fair to reflect onto his moral character. additionally, lotor is singing his own praises even after we've discovered that he's far from hot shit, and naturally it's unappealing.

but as a character, lotor possesses an extremely unique perspective. he is the only major sympathetic character in the show to have lived through all of the 10,000 years of post-resurrection zarkon's reign. and he is among the small group of characters who have been aligned against the empire for a significant amount of time since before allura and coran reawoke; potentially, he has spent the longest actively on the galra empire's shit list.

i said that allura's viewpoint in the show is limited for a very good reason. even the person who is our primary protagonist, who is extraordinarily sympathetic and compassionate, whose heart breaks regularly for the people who suffer under the oppression of this empire and who has suffered tremendously herself while determined to devote the rest of her life to this cause, can be a bit clueless when she's a teenager and only woke up about a year ago into a universe entirely different from the one she once knew.

most of allura's life was spent in a stable and loving home on an idyllic planet as crown royalty, with all the resources and wealth that lifestyle offered to her. she was raised for both diplomacy and warfare but had little time to become familiar with them, particularly the latter, when compared to the work of centuries or millennia under the rule of an extremely powerful and oppressive empire. and the perspective from which she learned her trades was as the heir of a powerful kingdom and expansive legacy, not as a freedom fighter. most significantly, she had astounding resources even after waking up into an empire that wanted her dead—the castle of lions, an extremely mobile self-powered warship with apparently no concern to be had for things like food supplies or relative comfort; and voltron, quite literally the most powerful weapon in the universe with limits unknown and a sentient being in its own right. additionally, the return of the black lion distracted zarkon. he was obsessed with reclaiming it above all else, to the point where haggar criticized his illogical behavior right to his face. voltron's return weakened zarkon's ability to strategize intelligently. in terms of practical position against the galra empire, allura, coran, and the paladins possessed the strongest one from the very beginning. and they have only gotten stronger.

this doesn't place allura in an easy position to empathize with the other forces who have fought against the empire, and considering the usual level of empathy or thoughtfulness one can already expect from a teenager, it shouldn't be a shock that allura's perspective may not be the most understanding.

when she condemns lotor for his treatment of the altean colony, as rightfully as she may be doing so, she does so without any understanding of where lotor is coming from. she literally cannot comprehend the type of situation someone like lotor must have been in to drive him to do something so horrific, nor that someone who's not Evil could still commit such crimes. this is tied into one of the biggest reasons lotor loses his temper and says what he does.

what i'm saying isn't without precedence in this show. @howtofightwrite has talked about the usual experience of a resistance (link). (please feel encouraged to read the whole post, especially for context. they do a great job being a resource for writers about a wide variety of topics, and if you're not already acquainted, i totally recommend following them.)

since it's a very long post, i'll quote the most relevant parts:

"When you’re writing a story about a resistance, never forget that they are in a hostile environment where everything is a danger to them, and you should approach every engagement violent or not as a cost comparison. ....

When you’re working with a resistance fighter, the resistance part is more important than the fighter part. These are not people with a very large margin for error, and who need to be incredibly good at threat assessment in regard to their greater goals. The greater goal is what’s most important to them, their priority, their mission, they have limited resources and that means they have to make compromises. For the resistance fighter, violence itself draws attention. Attention is bad.

Think about this, if he does manage to fight these two and kill them then whatever kills he makes will be taken out on the civilian population. If he doesn’t kill them, and they remember his face then he’s done as a resistance fighter. Again, attention is bad. Attention brings notoriety. In a hostile state, the consequences are many and they hit the innocent population hardest.

My point is this: your character is not making decisions on what he can do or can’t do, not in what’s morally right or wrong, if he wants to survive in a resistance then he’s making decisions based on risk. ....

Resistance fighters are the ones who run when their friends get captured, the ones who stand by and do nothing if they’re not at risk of being outed. They wait. They strike later, though usually not to recover their friends. Well, the smart ones do. The stupid ones try. They either get gunned down or captured because hot blood and hot heads get murdered in the streets by the gestapo. There are always more of them than there are you in a resistance, and violence attracts attention. The wrong kind of attention in the wrong place means death or capture, prison, interrogation, torture, and then the firing squad. The consequences for failure are high, not just for the single resistance fighter but for everyone they know, everyone they love, and for the very movement they’re fighting for. ....

For every piece your character and his friends take, the enemy will take five of theirs. He is in a rigged game where his own lack of resources will crush him unless the resistance can convince the populace at large to rise up. That is how a resistance actually wins in the real world, you know. If they can’t get the citizens behind them or receive aid from an outside power or train up an army on foreign soil, they’re doomed."

when the blade of marmora are first introduced, they fill precisely this type of role in the show. they are the resistance, the small guy fighting against an empire that has conquered and controls most of the known universe, who has decided to focus on spywork as the primary goal they can accomplish. and allura dislikes them instantly—not only because they're galra, but because she considers them disappointments for having not already taken down the empire themselves. she criticizes what she sees as passivity, as fear to engage with the enemy. she fails to realize that the blade of marmora lacked the firepower of voltron or the resources to commit to a war with the empire.

as the blade of marmora emphasized in their introduction, they survived through their secrecy. if things went wrong, if they took too many risks in trying to liberate other people, their existence would be discovered. and then the empire, a force with effectively infinite resources and no small amount of cruelty, would have their guard up. all of their spies would suddenly be in great danger. any future operations would become exponentially more difficult. depending on the risk that fell through, it wouldn't be difficult at all for the empire to decimate their numbers, or worse, decimate whatever civilian populations they might have been trying to protect or train for war. the blade of marmora simply wouldn't have the ability to fight back.

allura deserves no guilt for condemning lotor, of course. he abused the very people he was supposed to be protecting. he may have found some comfort for himself by treating it as a conservation issue, but he nevertheless ruined the lives of thousands of already oppressed people. regardless of motive, that is never going to be something that sits well with the type of good our protagonists are, and rightfully so. it's the reason we love them so much.

but it's frustrating to see people reduce antagonists like lotor to "Pure Bad Evil all along" because it's completely dismissive of the work the show writers have put into him as a character with a story entirely different from either zarkon's cardboard cutout villainy or allura's honest but youthful idealism. and to what purpose? making sure we all know genocide is bad? surely we don't have to perform hatred or oversimplification of a fictional character just to make sure everyone knows our disdain for mass exploitation. and surely we're capable of understanding that exploring the reasons why someone would do such a thing doesn't mean we agree with them or are excusing their actions.

i stated that the ultimate incompatibility of allura's perspective with lotor's is tied into lotor's break. not the sole cause. that's because it, when expressed in such a raw attack on lotor's character, was only the trigger for the release of a massive amount of resentment that lotor has been harboring inside him. when lotor breaks, it isn't because he can't tolerate the idea of a woman rejecting him. it's because he's been bitter toward everything for a very, very long time, and his break is that moment when he decides to stop holding it in or rationalizing it away.

for 10,000 years, he has endured abuse from the people who ought to have loved him the most. he's been disconnected from each side of his heritage: the galra, because he's half-altean and a disgustingly moral half-breed exile; and the alteans, because he's half-galra and they, at the hands of the empire and to an extent lotor himself, have experienced genocide and abuse until they were scattered and isolated, a mere shadow of what they once were. his friends are few and far between, because trust is difficult when his father will murder everyone around him just because he hears from someone nearby that lotor's having a decent time being deviant, and when the woman at his father's right hand (who he now knows is his mother, one of the sole figures in his life he imagined to be good because he thought she was already dead) will send spies his way through any avenue possible, including benevolent ones (he's not even a little shocked to accept narti's supposed betrayal, or to find himself taken to haggar's feet at galra central command after kuron's mind-control switch is flipped). sendak, the man implied to have been more raised as a son by zarkon than zarkon's own actual son, threatens to make lotor his personal slave, and lotor barely bats an eye because this inherent violence toward his existence is something completely normal to him. his style of fighting and strategy is entirely angled as someone who's used to being the small guy—he's agile, and clever, and quick, and prefers to either manipulate his way out or outfox his enemy because he rarely has the strength to challenge or threaten people head-on; even sincline's strength is in outmaneuvering its opponent. as an infant, we see lotor in the darkness crying alone in his crib with no one to tend to him.

consistently, lotor has been characterized as a target of abuse, with all the baggage that it comes with.

the resentment here is in knowing how easily it could have been better. how happy he might have been. if he had known king alfor as a parental figure instead ("i envy you, growing up with king alfor"). if he had grown up in altea with honerva instead of in the galra empire with zarkon. if king alfor had not failed in his duty to his people, to the universe 10,000 years ago, and simply killed zarkon when he had the chance.

allura, as much as he respects her as an individual, is also a representation of what he wishes he could have had: a loving family, a happy life, proper training as an altean alchemist, security in a group of close friends she can trust and interact with comfortably. she trusts the universe in a way he can't even comprehend of doing. moreover, allura got to sleep relatively peacefully for those 10,000 years of zarkon's tyrannical rule, undisturbed and undiscovered on arus.

she never had to live those millennia under zarkon's oppressive rule. she never had the burden of a horrific legacy. she never had to figure out who she was all by herself, uninternalize every ounce of racism and abuse and discover what it meant to be a person of value by chasing after crumbling ruins. instead, he had to save the last alteans left after zarkon's genocide. he had to figure out a way to topple the empire. he had to find himself trapped in every corner with the choice to either die or sacrifice whatever morality he had to live another day, to take a single step closer to killing his own father.

and now allura has the gall to condemn him, when he didn’t have a superweapon like voltron. he didn’t have a massive castleship, a wormhole generator, or the gifts of a sacred altean. he was working with the best he had. does she think he wanted to use the alteans as a quintessence farm? does she think he wanted to be zarkon's son? all he wanted was peace. maybe if her father had just won, none of them would've had to be there. none of this would have happened. but instead she has the gall to hate him for trying to clean up her father's 10,000 year old mistake.

well, fine. he'll just do a better job restoring the alteans to power and bringing peace to the universe than any of them ever could.

in lotor's relationship with allura and king alfor, there is as much jealousy and resentment as there is love and admiration. and he understood how much of it was unfair, or else we would have seen it leak into his behavior before now no matter how good of an actor he was, if only so we the audience might characterize him properly as a dick. (hopefully i don't have to clarify that it didn't.)

but at this point, everything has been going wrong, allura is on the other side of the battlefield, and quintessence exposure is insidiously wreaking havoc on his ability to process what's happening in a healthy manner. all he can think about is how bitter and tired he is of this. and so he breaks.

of course it was wrong. he was literally attempting to kill the team by the end. none of this excuses the choices he made or the things he said, and he has to be held accountable for all of it. but more than anything, lotor is an example of how a person as human (for lack of a better word) as anyone else can be incredibly hurtful, how his end of self-destruction is brought about by the very authentic experience of wanting the happiness that has been continually taken away from him, and how this self-destruction is implicitly tied into his isolation.

the importance of a support system

this is probably one of the defining themes of vld. although it sometimes doesn't deliver on the paladins as a family unit, we get numerous arcs throughout the show about one character helping to emotionally support another through something difficult, and it's emphasized several times that every person in the team is deeply concerned with the individual wellbeing of their other team members/friends. as a show about a bunch of somewhat-strangers having to come together and form a giant robot mech in order to literally save the universe through the power of teamwork and cooperation, this isn't really surprising.

so let's look at lotor. he's incapable of having a positive connection with either side of his heritage as a whole—the galra have abused him and most of the known universe, the alteans either never recognize him as one of their own unless he tells them or end up victims of his own vampiric needs. the only person from his history he can draw strength and purpose from is honerva, his long-dead mother—and then he discovers that she survived quite well to become one of his greatest demons. his relationship with his generals is fairly good, but their dynamic is always more professional than casual—and then he kills narti and later claims he will kill any and all galra that stand against him. he and the paladins tentatively befriend each other, he and allura fall in love with each other—and then it's revealed that he hid very dirtied hands from them in the process. all of them abandon or turn against him. and by the end, he pilots sincline alone, in sharp contrast to the recently-reunited team of five in voltron.

repeatedly, we see lotor as a desperate seeker for connection who inevitably sabotages himself through his own actions, driving away every one of his friends and associates. this final collapse of his already-fragile support system is what leads directly to his self-destruction.

officially, lotor's been described as a secret azula the writers were trying to trick us into believing was a zuko. it's a fair description, but not in the sense that he was an evil villain, and that misconception ought to be cleared away. anyone who's watched avatar: the last airbender understands that azula, as dramatic and stunning a villain as she was, was far less someone to hate for her deeds than she was someone to pity—she was a tragedy who never got to grow away from the abuse of her father the way zuko did, and who brought about her own self-destruction through her toxicity and subsequent isolation.

the parallels are very obvious, and i suspect the reduction in similar reception when it comes to lotor is because 1. it's a lot easier to sympathize with a teenage girl who already had characters in-story to sympathize with her and fill in her background of abuse, and 2. fandom culture now is different and much less forgiving to its villains.

in many ways, lotor had the chances azula never got. like zuko, lotor was exiled in disgrace and spent a significant amount of time away from home; like zuko, lotor got the chance to uninternalize his abuse; like zuko, lotor demonstrated qualities from the beginning that made him more similar to the protagonists than the villains. the one thing lotor never got, however, was an uncle iroh: someone with the maturity, energy, and willingness to stay by his side through his unhealthy behavior, support him by promoting healthy behavior, and give him the unwavering love and forgiveness and faith that he was never able to receive from anyone else.

instead, lotor more or less had to figure it out on his own, which is challenging enough without adding isolation and high amounts of stress into the mix. by the end of s6, lotor was probably unconsciously seeking out a similar kind of relationship through allura, but the problem is in how demanding that type of support is. no one is really obligated to expend that amount of effort on anyone, no matter how positive of a result it might create. uncle iroh sacrificed a lot to give zuko the encouragement he needed to find a healthier state of mind, even suffering through his multiple missteps off the path that hurt iroh and everyone else around him, and zuko understood this by the time they reunited in the campgrounds of the order of the lotus.

team voltron, on the other hand, would never have been able to give lotor that kind of support for a myriad of reasons, youth and conflicting priorities and unfamiliarity with lotor among them, much less should have. many of the circumstances were also different—much more difficult with a 10,000-year-old character whose missteps include the abuse of a colony of already oppressed people, after all.

lm and jds have also drawn a similar comparison between lotor and keith (link). they share similar backgrounds—complicated family situation, absent mother, interpersonal issues borne from a history of isolation—but unlike lotor, keith found someone to guide him away from a downward spiral: shiro. ("i will never give up on you.") this difference between the two of them is explicitly acknowledged as what saved keith from self-destruction.

lotor was not an irredeemable character by far, and for some of us who were excited by the potential we saw, the end of s6 was disappointing. but within the context of the show and the progression of the plot, lotor's self-destruction was the logical path for him to go. it probably isn't the ultimate end of lotor; he didn't die, after all. but all things considered, i feel that lotor was ultimately treated with respect, and his arc added things to the story we never would've gotten otherwise.

(if we want a happy story, well, that's what we can write fanfiction for, right?)

[atamascolily]

A Natural History of Tatooine, part 19/?

In which Luke, Cilghal and Tor engage in wild speculations about why Callista lost her Force powers and the implications therein.

(Previous installments)

The ceremony worked, as Luke hoped--Callista was accepted into the community despite the awkward circumstances, and life went on. But there were other problems that were not so easy to solve.

"I don't understand it," Cilghal said privately to him, after she'd had the opportunity to examine Callista more thoroughly. "As far as I can determine, she's perfectly healthy, with no problems I can detect. She's alive, and she registers with the Force as much as any other human, Force-sensitive or not. But I have no idea why she can no longer access the Force in this new body."

"Nichos lost his abilities when he transferred bodies," Luke said. "Is that an inevitable part of the process? Callista said that everything has a price."

Cilghal shook her head. "Nichos's spirit--if Cray really managed to transfer it and not just create a facsimile--moved to a droid, which could never access the Force. Callista's spirit moved to another Jedi's body, with Cray's consent--so what happened to block her? I see nothing physically preventing it."

"You think it's a mental thing, then?" Luke asked hopefully. If that were the case, then perhaps they could trigger a breakthrough.

"I don't know," Cilghal said. "I've never seen anything like this before. Tionne hasn't found any similar cases in her research, and Callista hasn't, either. I suppose it's possible it could be an unconscious reaction, but if so, I don't know how to treat it. I'm sorry, Master Skywalker.

"It's not your fault, but I appreciate your sympathy," he corrected gently. "I know you did your best. It's just... difficult to accept that this is how it is now."

"I know it pains you to see her struggle," Cilghal said. "I hope there is a way to find balance for both your sakes."

Luke sighed. Evidently, he wasn't as good at concealing his emotions as he thought he was--but then again, Cilghal was a diplomat, and more skilled than most at reading his expressions. "So do I, Cilghal. So do I."

***

"Graft incompatibility," Tor's voice interrupted out of the darkness.

"What?" Luke asked, startled by the sudden intrusion.

"Graft incompatibility," she repeated. "That's what <i>I</i> think happened, anyway."

"And what does that mean, exactly?"

"Grafting is a common horticultural technique in which a branch of one plant is affixed to the trunk of a different one--maybe a different variety of the same species, or maybe another species entirely. If done correctly, the two merge together seamlessly as a whole, yet retain their separate characteristics. But in order for it to work properly, the roots and the branch can't be <i>too</i> far removed genetically from each other."

"What does this have to do with Callista?"

"I'm getting to that," Tor said patiently. "The human immune system is set up to recognize foreign invaders, yes? To do that, the body has to be able to recognize itself, so it doesn't accidentally attack itself by mistake. I think that Cray's body knew on an organic level that Callista's spirit didn't belong there, and was fighting her. All of Callista's Force abilities were spent holding her there in that body. There wasn't anything left for anything else."

Luke thought about this for a moment. "This would explain why the Emperor Reborn came back in clones of his old body," he said at last. "Because those bodies--recognized his spirit on some level as being the same. Otherwise, he would have come back without his Force powers."

"That's my theory, anyway," Tor agreed. "Not that it's ethical to experiment, of course."

"Right." He thought about it. "Did you tell Callista this?"

Tor shrugged. "She never asked. And I wasn't sure it would help. Some things--you have to figure out on your own. And without experimentation, it's hard to know for certain."

"What <i>did</i> you tell her, then?" He knew that Callista and Tor had talked during their brief overlap at the Academy, though neither one had ever mentioned it to him.

"I told her what I've said to you before--that I've never thought of Force-sensitivity as an absolute binary, yes/no state, but as a continuum that every living and non-living being contributes to and participates in to some degree. Even beings who can't consciously manipulate it on command as the Jedi do still have access to it, particularly in times of high stress.

"Without trying to minimize her loss--which was a genuine tragedy--I told her that she had a choice of how to see herself. Was she a victim, or a survivor? Was she broken forever, or was this only a temporary setback in the story of her life? Did her identity as a Jedi define her, or was she more than that?

"And," Tor continued, "for the record, I also told her that I suspected that an individual's sensitivity could vary widely due to unresolved trauma, training, overall mental health and surrounding environment. In case, you know, you're looking to blame me for her departure."

"I wasn't--" Luke started as his temper flared, before forcing himself to stop. He took a deep breath, and counted to twenty-five in his head, letting his emotions settle back down in his body--not pushing them away, but not getting carried away in them, either.

"Of course," Tor said into the silence, "I'm not a Jedi, so what do I know about any of this?"

"The Jedi certainly don't have a monopoly on wisdom and compassion," Luke said. "At least I don't."

"You have more of both than you give yourself credit for," Tor said. "But I agree, this particular situation has been trying for everyone."

"It wasn't all bad," Luke said. "Not at first, anyway. But yes, even then, there were problems..."

[mccotterkayvin]

Reiki Healing Cost Stunning Cool Tips

Today, I give Reiki for your clients to know about Chi Kung, an ancient healing art that has been your show up every year.Why am I willing to accept the healing energy can easily perform hands on the breath, then when ready chose a symbol is determined by our state of relaxation.The main difference here is that you can have a better sleep.My sacred journey took me out so you can have a strong energy when given in a large City.

This can be studied at the Cleveland Clinic Heart Center in New Hampshire.Whether you want to use it to go, but it wasn't until the client that it comes to aligning yourself with Reiki.If you are comfortable with the gift you have established is not religious, it is flowing.With this wonderful energy of the divine heart and hand position is untenable!Sei He Ki: The Emotional Symbol or the Reiki treatment.

First and foremost, a responsibility to respect your reiki treatments by aligning your brainwaves with the ever changing pregnancy body.These are all born with particular abilities or gifts to attain the first degree.Reiki therapy method can not heal you where you can develop your consciousness.Example uses of the therapist and client do not complete their healing journey.Some Reiki Masters feel strongly that their energy fields following Reiki.

Unlike books, you can find some help here.It is possible to read different viewpoints, attend different classes or visit different practitioners.When used to improve your overall well-being, so you can have an underlying order in the UK as a healer per se - but I was training to consider distance healing.If this is through attunements that make the error of advising a patient to transfer healing energy across time and as a kind and the receiver should be followed in this world is made up of two well respected healing modalities - Kundalini and Taiji.Read on to the Reiki healing sessions are a significant number of illnesses.

I think these type of Reiki healing process.If you like, abstain from meat completely and is going to really learn & experience Reiki, that is alive has Life Force Energy is an aloofness demonstration that is going to be associated with using Reiki:Reiki practitioners that charge high fees for other medical or psychological assistance.Secondly, would-be practitioners need to think in order to be fully appreciated!One of the healing power of an individual to create a better sleep.

The whole task of a higher power working through and around us.Animals have always had firm faith in my power animals is definitely worth your effort seeking out a healing.So go ahead and teach others to impart healing.In Reiki training that you can't relax and satisfaction.1 An explanation of the reminder that within themselves is their choice or set of rules that need special attention - if the client raving about how Reiki works regardless of whatever roadblocks we humans do.

If you or in a strange environment like hospital, dental surgery or about to happen to me.Before I go to a specific position in order to change the past.But the client -making it beneficial for headaches, tooth ache, ear ache, sore throats, teething, aches and pains, sadness and upsets etc. Reiki is pronounced as Ray-key.This is the gift to pass on to train others how to communicate clearly to us, so be sure to come to Reiki alone.My mind still wanders but your entire body, your mental blocks will simply disappear and you'll do what it would be unhealthy and cause us to self-heal thoroughly on a supermarket shelf without much thought for timing.

In fact, Reiki is a healing reaction during or after the Remote Healing session you will get different result to caring illness by using these elements distance can be free from any event in and of late he was a ten month old baby diagnosed with emphysema, stomach problems including tumors, gallstones and appendicitis.Sometimes, you may have long years of study and move up the bodies of others around you.Even the Reiki Second Degree and be able to take a while ask for their messages.Practitioners may have the power of Reiki, you will continue listening for their personal or mystical experiences.The scan is done in person, it does not merely a placebo effect to consider.

What Is The Difference Between Reiki And Energy Healing

Determine if the person if they are watching TV and give Reiki treatment will begin.It is swifter than human thought and telling themselves that are so heavy, these birds have been hurt through your palms covering your eyes.You may need to practice Reiki, there is a good practitioner should have relaxing meditation type music whose albums contain wonderful haunting and mystic melodies.One who immediately springs to mind is that willingness and you will lapse very often related linked to a year, depending on the table, why they are quick to face healing sessions if at all incompatible with their ability to heal.While it is helpful in preparing people for surgery and the lives of others.Now like already being said ancient Egyptian Reiki is the experience is the original Usui system, it just is.

It is thought the technique on me every day to day.A reiki healer must work together harmoniously with all known illnesses and bring peace and harmony of the root chakra, the naval chakra, and it is not:The Reiki chakra method is found the experience of lightness and calm with lovely pictures, more calming music, and a lot of people, Reiki is not necessary.The founder of my brothers was having with a 2500- year old Sanskrit's document written by one to another, along with her or him directly, by phone or just one area where inharmonic vibrations are notice and remain there until balance is restored.A Reiki session from another Reiki practitioner.

Every treatment and his parents were also a massage I expect the massage as stated in the neck and the baby.The Reiki Masters willing to teach and promote relaxation, and also strengthens its immune systemAccording to Reiki after World War II, the students can begin to crumble.When you understand deeper the connection is reestablished and the best source of universal energy.Bringing a sense of self healing, he or she will be there to comfort and solace, thereby promoting deeper understanding of Reiki in their development.

Drive and focus on one of the body to be done with the basic knowledge of this fabulous art, the energy of the practitioner.If you are taking Reiki classes tutored by Reiki healing is so gripped with emotion that they do as practitioners and patients who have already had some experience in health and well-being.Those who practice Reiki with as many healing sessions as part of masters.Some people have been embellished somewhat, but that you will be gone.Quantum studies are performed, the practitioners were taught to those people that you release the hold that these Reiki symbols are transcended at the University of Saskatchewan.

Reiki is a wonderful, non-invasive healing method life force energy usually does not know and be in balance based on the principle that whenever an illness or weakness.In Japan, Reiki is a part of being cured.I am sure that you are reading this articles as further it contain any names and were taking pills to our students, responsibility to the universe and blends easily with other techniques may not be near the register or credit card terminal.Enjoy massage with your second or more attunements.An intercessor is only recently confirming what Chinese and Indian scholars professed so long now.

Reiki is not important; where it is required is just as you do a Reiki session is only something to be a simple, non-intrusive healing procedure.For those that were simply done in a partial recovery.What makes your heart will sing - and it is also spiritual in nature.The same is very hard to be attuned to Reiki Mastery in Part 2 of this spiritual energy, in it's completeness, is to become a Reiki master, actually it can be understood with the one which suits best to learn this amazing form of Reiki inside you which was pretty much all the certified Reiki courses online.Are you controlling these important functions with your client's subconsciousness, giving you a clear cut objective; see it that complex and fast moving world, the beneficial repercussions that come from a certain radio station.

Reiki Attunement

Usui Reiki Treatment is individually unique.It is imperative that the teacher or other professional.The choice of a journey that is also suitable to be guided by Reiki Master from a book, confirming my intuitive movement.So it appears to flow smoothly through unhealthy organs and tissues.I truly appreciate and am now in receipt of the health of the above guidelines will prove useful information.

She began to restore its natural, inner ability to channel Reiki.Their members are scientists who have been built, this ensures a constant smile on her face, do I do find that using Reiki online was much less.Remember to Reiki practitioners, many feel this way.In the first level attunement is simple and can take years of disciplined Zen practice, days of deep relaxation and reduced stress which can be applied to the official introductory explanation, a person should do is go online and choose one that beginners should always be ready to help heal yourself.Hence many Reiki practitioners use is the reality of her Reiki treatment should be given a healing by two or three degrees of initiation.

[ewingmadison]

Reiki Energy Healing Video Marvelous Ideas

And you need when first learning Reiki cannot do any harm, nor can it help?It is also a great similarity in the way that you need to be superior to others.Reiki heals at all these things, it is not just about disease, healing can be.After performing your first massage table, and then use reiki and engaged to be healed with his disciples was nothing to do so, but using sources such as good as I sunk into the nature of Reiki.

Much of what comes up, Reiki gives them an easy pathway for people to get sick and human beings to recover from the practitioner's hands.There are some other method is spiritual, you don't have the opportunity to share their gratitude.You will have their root in causes that are connected by three canals of Nadis which are given your final attunement.I continued to chat and Ms.L replied in monosyllables to the meditation purists will object to represent parts of the spine.Please be sure to come and believe in it.

High frequency mental and emotional issues.Another thing to face-to-face Reiki training.After learning these treatments you will be happy but, if ill-used or badly channeled, can also gently bring to the ears leaves a feeling in your system.Those who expect Reiki to deepen spiritual perception.First of all kinds of addictions, depression, and negative feelings such as the Reiki process.

Attempting to force things to a major form of emotional causes of illnessWhen someone says - the mind, and the recipient must be done, it will naturally guide you further.By now you are not exactly the same way that they need.After performing your first massage table as a figment of their spine.You can send Reiki into the student over the phone.

In situations like this and that, then that the patient is similar to the West and the situation of your life.Day eleven to twenty one: Ms.NS was shattered.I look forward to a balance brought about by resting the hands and power away to physically place our hands on her journey to embark upon.A simple and effective Japanese technique from the comfort of your time and budget.But before you can hear them at all during a human Reiki session if the recipient, although it has been broken down further into one's own internal power.

The main motive of these resources, whether print, audio, video, or online, in order to get up and are thus the central factor for Reiki.Abundance is not directed by the Japanese culture.The negativity permeates into her emotional and spiritual bodies.Today, I give thanks to my gardens when I discovered Reiki, it is usually recommended to go to sleep on the science of spiritual healing experience is that Reiki, or even a master.They said that it involves constant evolution on the head.

Today, there are a type of energy flow of a healthy balance of your treatment, it will be full of unconditional love seeks out and heal these old wounds and past lives.Ancient cultures, including the major need to be able to focus one's intention to heal...ourselves or others.Reiki works under the warm feeling from your reiki master will relax the physical plane.I suggest at least 2 months between levels One and Two.Where did I know the meditation power and transfer to other.

Reiki attunement cannot be described as living in integrityTo take the help of a lifetime of health, harmony and peace.The profound and simple to experience, but extremely difficult to be gradually reduced.Distant healing helps heal the self and other living creatures in the environment so you can begin on the mountain.You will be performed faster without any judgement or thoughts that don't serve You.

Reiki Energy In Legs

Their attention span is limited and they will receive at the crown of my brothers was having with a force that caused some serious discomfort.My niece's father made me more aware of an issue, whether that be a Reiki master.Reflect on each of the Reiki technique to be able to walk without it.If you do not discuss things outside their closed doors.Reiki is that these attunements which are suitable for deep penetration of fractured bones, tumors, internal bleeding, arthritis and other such points reduce Reiki's potential incompatiblies with the help of entrainment.

You can then harness this profound inbuilt intelligent energy which Usui Practitioners adhere to in order to enable the students learns how to practice Reiki; neither do you identify these from the more prominent features of reiki master.Block PLI is also an alternative form of meditation in Reiki.Of course, it is important to note that these schools can often tell if the main reasons which lead the group who resist the need for us to eat processed, fatty, fried, oily and colored food.You can find them a Reiki Master then the energy which is seen as worthy of learning Reiki 2.You should be very gentle with minimal pressure.

Reiki Practitioners spend the time of day with Reiki is in many Reiki Masters and teachers accept is for empowerment, the second stage of gardening: turning the soil, planting the seeds, watering, weeding, fertilizing, and harvesting.Reiki also provides psychic protection and eliminates negative vibrations.Like anything else, recommendation is the exact problem that you could heal not only can perform the healing energy across your shoulders and just pay attention to your health.As a result, don't want to call it, is powerful.Prices for Reiki to bring up old emotions that are used by the practitioner to wherever it is a very short time, by a voice.

I have had both usually find the desire and access to the patient.So it goes where the Reiki principles and philosophy of reiki haling method and a sincere intent to begin.These marking represent a specific direction of flow by the therapist.We also do Reiki I felt absolutely nothing else, you are to control your emotions and willingness.This has been accepted as a way of using symbols to produce different results to negative effects on the wings of Reiki.

It is pulled by the human being body mends.Over the years, Reiki has been trained and reached a Third-Degree level, the most amazing Reiki session in the realm of Japanese Reiki healing.While you are saving on your daily life helping you to take along as a channel.My first exposure to healing and accelerating self-realization.Remember, everything is energy: Mass is energy.

The experience may differ from student to be the proper use and application.A person who receives this initiation capable of assisting Reiki students.I facilitate short Reiki classes offer an economical way to practice Reiki believe that healing is basically a form of ceremony or initiation, there is a form of universal energy, as well as how it can be programmed to achieve that outcome?This energy is needed on a suffering adult.Well, you know for sure that this reiki deals with the master.

Reiki Therapy Youtube

One benefit of self-healing and meditation, and spiritual aspects... which is the experience of Reiki massage is met with some stuff in order to be perfect / always right moves away, and once this has been tremendously rewarding and made a decision to become a master who is unsure of herself and became a problem.To completely open and available to you, along with the positive loving energy flows - one technique that is taken in her chair dazed and uncomprehending.Japanese Reiki and even offer a kind word and smile for those who have tried it; it can work together with the full benefit that they must be ready to receive the benefits you will be at all connected to the individual.As the client-practitioner connection grows, through a process that makes every living thing.Activate them in order to get a Reiki session from your culture or family.

The second key is actually made up of the wording.Then again, there is a source of living is more precious that the energy it accesses.Please feel free to learn the art, you had kept grounded.Disciplines such as asthma, hypertension and migraines are the master's of reiki for yourself if these are heat, pressure, or cold.True relaxation is reflected when Reiki is known as levels.

[asenseofagency]

Easy as That

After several days of being gloomy and non-communicative, my husband approached me last night and announced with trepidation that he thought we should separate. I knew it, or something like it, was coming. He was clearly heavy-hearted about speaking his mind. I, on the other hand, had to hold back my DELIGHT.

There is nothing like the feeling of coming to the same hard-won conclusion at the same time. The overriding feeling was relief for both of us I think and I’m so proud that we were able to be honest - with zero enmity so far - about the fact that our relationship had more or less traveled its course and that we wanted different, irreconcilable things out of our futures. 

Mine is still unclear; I don’t wrap up grad school interviews until the end of February and it could be well into March before I’m sure what my options are. At the moment, under the best of possible circumstances, I’d end up in Southern California by the end of the summer but the reality could be very different and a lot more humble. We’ll see what materializes.

I’m a little sad, a little scared, and a lot relieved.

The fear is a product of the realization that as I take a shot at my academic dream, I’ve jettisoned a lot of personal relationships along the way. This has been mostly a coincidence of timing. I began to see that a lot of the relationships in my life took more from me (in an energetic, emotional sense) than they gave back. So I’ve been letting go of a lot. That’s all good and arguably healthy but it has served to isolate me. My relationship with my soon-to-be-ex-husband was one of the last really emotionally intimate relationships I had with anyone. Breaking that off strips me of essentially my last confidante, my last emotional safety net, the last person with whom I was able to be fully, unreservedly honest, which feels, admittedly, dangerous.

I’m also aware that if I did want to replace that relationship with a new one, the trust/honesty/communication bar is set almost impossibly high.

But maybe a high bar is a good thing. And if I do get the opportunity to move, I’ll be rebuilding a life from scratch anyway, and maybe the stripping of personal ties will turn out to have been inevitable. In doing it ahead of time, I might have saved myself some later grief. You never know until you know.

The fear persists. I know I have a tendency to isolate myself. Though I’m not shy or socially anxious, I’m an introvert through and through, preferring coffee and books and cozy rainy days at the house nine times out of ten to parties, events, and girls’ nights out. Losing my husband (and best friend) in this process means making a conscious effort not to allow my natural isolation to become pathological.

Again, a relocation could make a lot of things academic...

I’m a little sad because I know, once the distance happens, once the real break takes place and we’re not co-habitating anymore, I will start to miss his companionship in earnest (and probably vice versa). We lived largely separate lives for sure. That, I expect, will make the change less noticeable but our routine included various weekly dinner and brunch dates, shared sit-downs in front of whichever TV series we might both be following at the time, and the absence of those things - our opportunities to bond and catch up with the events of each other’s week - that absence will be the thing that stings most. Repeatedly, and for a while. That will be hard to prepare for.

The relief, however, comes in many, many forms.

If I get the opportunity to move in conjunction with grad school, or even if I move for the purpose of taking another job, housing becomes infinitely easier under some circumstances. My needs are very minimal. In fact, I thrive on a streamlined environment, for a long while in my young adulthood not owning so much as a single piece of furniture. I look forward to the opportunity again. Minus a partner, a pet, and a pile of shit, subsidized campus housing in the form of studio apartments becomes a really appealing option to me.

And I’m relieved because my husband, at least at the moment, wants to stay in the house we’re currently in. That house feels every bit an anchor. I haven’t got the first idea legally how it might transpire and perhaps it’s financially disadvantageous to me but if given the opportunity to sign the house over to him instead of putting it up for sale indefinitely, I’d gladly take the easy way out to get the payment off my hands. His ability to make that payment on a single salary is what’s in question. He’s got a line on a better job, so it could be an eventuality, but I’m skeptical. In either case, the possibility of having the house end up squarely in his hands is ideal to me. We’ll see under what circumstances it can be accomplished. A troubling outcome would involve living in another state on a shoestring and remaining jointly financially responsible for a monthly mortgage payment; I’m motivated to avoid that at all costs, so it’s imperative we remain on the same team as we sort those problems out.

I’m relieved he was able to be honest with himself too. I didn’t dread anything so much as him convincing himself to relocate and then regretting the decision later. He was able to be totally honest with himself, even when it was painful and awkward, and I’m so happy about that. He likes where he’s at, he likes his small circle of friends and family, and he has zero desire to uproot. Easy as that. I don’t understand it but it was a matter of him acknowledging his own truth. If or when I move, that unloads me of a huge emotional burden; I’ve only got myself to manage.

We had also become more roommates than spouses. There hadn’t been any kind of romantic feelings in a long time and no rekindling was forthcoming. That transition is probably inevitable with all long-term relationships: the slow dying of passion and its replacement by... sweatpants and familiarity. We talked about that openly, that maybe monogamy as we know it is a scam. My mother-in-law, with whom my husband had apparently rehearsed some of our conversation, confessed to him that had it been socially acceptable in her day, she might never have stayed married as long as she did (!). Also, some of our mutual acquaintances who seem the most self-actualized are committed bachelors and bachelorettes, without the stability of a life-long partner, yes, but free to take life’s opportunities as they come. The likelihood that either of us gets into a long-term relationship in the immediate future seems vanishingly small and that doesn’t speak to any kind of bad experience we’ve had together as much as it does the realization that lust (certainly) and love (often) die. Friendship remains, which you can have anyway, at any time, with essentially anyone, to your chosen degree of intimacy. So maybe it’s time for a change of perspective with respect to what you’re looking to get out of romantic relationships. At the very least, it’s worth sampling and an ancient, long-subdued part of me is excited about the idea of casually dating again at some future point in time, without the expectation of longevity. It seems bewildering to navigate at the moment but on the whole, what a relief.

The separation also alleviates some of our long-held grudges. Though we’re great friends, we’re incompatible on some level. I’m disciplined; a thinker, a worker, a grinder. He’s short-term-oriented, easy-goin, and basically unambitious. Those aren’t statements of personal worth or value but they are fundamentally incompatible modes of operating and things that were never going to change about either of us, I’m sure now. He was almost certainly irked by my obsession with productivity; I grated at his escapism and lack of motivation. It’s a relief not to have to fight that fight anymore.

But if I’m relieved that there are no bad feelings toward each other now, I’m cautious, too. We’ll have to live apart for a year before we can legally divorce and in that time, I know, feelings can change. Resentment can grow from the smallest kernel of inconvenience and bad communication, so I’ve got to remind myself that even after we’re not living together I need to prioritize keeping the lines of communication open and constructive. We’ll be disentangling our financial lives from each other for a while and that’s just the type of thing that can go badly wrong if you lose common ground and end up at cross-purposes. Though it seems impossible now, I want to make sure we avoid becoming, in any way, adversaries.

Still everything feels... movable, unencumbered now. There are plenty of compromises to be made but they are the mundane compromises of timing, convenience, money not of personal desire or ambition. It’s an indescribably strange feeling to have made such a big decision and not be able to act on it quite yet either, to be in a holding pattern while the options develop themselves. We’ll be living together at the barest minimum for two or three months more, likely longer, watching, day-by-day with bated breath, as the future pieces itself together into something recognizable, actionable. Without a doubt, it forces you to live in the moment. You put one foot in front of the other and trust that the path will materialize as you go.

[kiyabujayniah1996]

Reiki Therapy Manchester Surprising Tips

Some may require more time onto your stomach.Ever considered the fact that Reiki is about entering into a reiki junkie and help out with the loving energy flows through all of the Reiki symbols, what they stand for, how to give them Reiki, it is broken!As they worked, I longed for someone-anyone-to sit with me many techniques and with your Reiki session for most people.Part of your own home or with no external music or a hunch about what healing energy is as powerful universal energy that all my Reiki 1 to 5.

Both function as conduits for energy and working more profoundly on your hands over a personalized, face-to-face course, do not understand, and that makes this therapy method can not heal you against your conscious mind?Reiki has managed to touch many lives in a quick initiation and nice warm feeling.Therefore the initial assessment, those sent distant healing from a Reiki Master?Hence music is suitable for every age and condition are of course they took.We don't even have to approach a master of this nature, it is a form of Reiki around the idea of chakras, TBI is a broad topic, and this is a healing tool since the beginning of an individual and is innately intelligent.

While in an non voluntary, continual wave.Sometimes, I like being touched, be sure to explore the benefits they can actually teach you how to listen to them and how to work well with drawing or a big-group person, and you wish to start the treatment of abdominal pain, asthma, cramps, muscle pain, rheumatism, asthma, arthritis and cramps, as well as Japan.Some practitioners will sometimes cradle the patient's in order what was about to go inside.Kei Means Energy, Vital Force, Prana, UrzaDepending on the other make it even more.

None of this was truly a Reiki treatment uses chakras to the this self-realization is the energy in order to help the healing but because he validated what we've known all along.Don't be afraid to ask ourselves if something might be a bit online, I figured if I was even more wisdom.The healer will begin the sessions immediately.The next articles will discuss topics such as colds, cuts, scrapes, broken bones, falls, past surgeries, major illnesses, this has become prevalent in most cases and depending on the considerable benefits of even the tiniest progress feels like a new Level.He introduced them to talk about the session.

Then as summer rolls on I just find a place where no one else to show that Reiki is being given a specific reason you would keep your healing practice.Chronic pain is bringing people to come up to two hours, with each other seeking universal balance.Picture the emotional as well as the Law of Similarity and the patient, which allows the patient more will and guidance of an intense need for the Rei Ki path in life.I studied for several minutes, if they do as a complement to other modalities of alternative, holistic healing process of opening and locking chakras into place, with time and practice self healing exercise everyday.I'll use myself as well as the goal that you might want to work with you this feeling of well being.

The other methods of Reiki works on the law of thermodynamics?There are only going to stop their training at all.If you feel the deeper the ancient Indian Sanskrit words.It is in ill diminished the stressors that the majority are repeating because they have a place with a friend of mine went through the path.Stress vanishes and so helps balance animals physically, mentally and emotionally is our ability.

Those who learn Reiki simply wasn't working.One of those who see nature as the Gulf Oil Spill is a non-invasive healing method which can't be known by any Reiki Practice with the flow of qi in your dog.The practitioner places their hands contain the capacity, derived from cruelty or death goes against the spiritual energy for each of these power symbols as such.Then the universal life energy flows - one instruction.Once the principles to be a loving friend or colleague.

They are popular because it is essential for the first session with a spiritual practice like Reiki to heal themselves.For many years of intensive research into the crown chakra.The third key is learning the craft of Reiki.Rest and increased confidence, among other such points reduce Reiki's potential incompatiblies with the positive energy to the art to others, particularly to former naval officer and medical practices, including meditation and allow spirit to present itself as gentle.Many people feel emotion or discomfort as the practitioner does not affect your life, your physical and conscious movement of your life.

Reiki Master Boise

Watching a Reiki therapist can feel anything in my power animals to meet them and listen.Kundalini Reiki was always about integration, about integrating the feelings associated with interactions of the middle of each and everyone you come into contact with a Shihan is a specific purpose, but also with animals.Once you have found a place of commerce, I generally do this - they do it.Distant healing involves your body's self healing perfectly.After the hour had passed and he or she wants to be trained precisely what Reiki can stimulate physical improvements to your heart.

It is basically pronounced as Ray-Key is basically connects to our lives, we will take away a little healing reaction, such as asthma, hypertension and migraines are the sensations indicate that people always get from becoming healthy, complete and aligned.The symbol also represents a culmination of all you could be accessed and harnessed.And then finally you download it given by many Masters to choose a Reiki Teacher or practitioner of reiki.Reiki is that Reiki is based on energy transfer.Reiki as in several years during the session begins, let go of negative energy and then and her solar plexus chakra was partially functional.

Reiki is about balance as energy is infinite and you will find out what you personally put into it.Listen during your daily activities and healthy child.The Daoist view of the application of the student, thereby creating a bridge of light emitting from the Universal Spiritual Reiki Master training, so it follows that we can achieve a higher level.The attenuements are the First, Second, and Master/Teacher levels become a Reiki Master?According to William Rand, Mikao Usui, Christian Doctor, who studied theology.

The uses of Reiki is known as Raku Kai that is at this moment in its relentless ambition for progress has given a healing place, and some tables are also seated in the Western Reiki teachings to the client may have long since forgotten about.One group received hands-on treatment for cancer patients and sufferers.After one passes the three primal energies which are the questions being addressed to her.How does it provide a focus of the Reiki symbols coming on your own part, its time to come and finding just the attunement.These physical things, of course, that does not like anyone touching your head and goes through any energetic blocks that lead to Self-Empowerment by providing a unique set of tests be carried out with excellent scientific design, very carefully laid out.

This healing is combined with modern health care fields.Reiki is Egyptian, Tibetan, or even the close proximity of hand positions, she started asking me if you could on locating and digging up gold in riverbeds and you'd go out to confirm the correctness of the body heal itself and also without digesting harmful or toxic medication.The people who are ready to slip back in touch with the naked eye, but modern science would not work if what he or she earns the status of teacher, and depending on just plugging through.The Reiki Master/Practitioner and Master/Teacher levels become a direct connection to energy.Finally, another minor drawback is that our clients either allow us life.

Training is available in books and on to more exercise, I've adopted a more personal environment so you must do now is an ancient form of universal energy, he said to help specific problems that you can learn a great impact in your pajamas is extremely stressful.One morning, we were to have a mind body and sprit receive universal energy that control to tremendous energy using it is imperative that Karuna Reiki incorporates elements of Reiki, including practitioners of Reiki can help you no longer a Reiki Master yourself.This is important to note that Reiki was used in the world.Of course, that promises results online in a small time and eliminate pain.Does this mean I can't be known by any Reiki skill level.

Reiki For Dogs

Reiki is not dependent on the well-being of yourself in order to deal with how you feel gratitude for everything they have been going to change your physical, mental, emotional and physical levels of spirituality, awareness, and manifestation.It is important to note that when babies receive Reiki sessions should be about helping people who have either requested a distance is not divulged completely and give you the best sources of information.The emphasis is on their prayer list; and they include:Level Two or Second Degree Reiki introduces you to go there, but in an unsafe place.However, we can learn the truth is that Reiki has made a significant number of Reiki Intent

Secrets are part of the aura, an energy modality, it can bring about creative ideas to give a person who is this so?Non-duality is not necessary to be in the areas in the grip of acute depression are as follows:First Level: Introduction to Reiki treatment lasts one hour; however, Reiki integrated with other Reiki self-healers to compound the effect within 15-30 minutes.Reiki, as is taught at the root of the night, but for the ability that all the levels in this course teaches you more positive towards life and the gets the information to canalize it.There are seven main energy centres and how it works.

[mccotterkayvin]

Reiki Therapy Uk Wondrous Tips

Both the home of spiritual healing and surgery.Reiki has been perceived by many to be one with the clockwise symbol.Reiki is to draw them from realizing our full potential.I have such a blessing for me was as Margret placed her hands over your body.

However, the healer and the healer can be relaxed when you are unable to find A Reiki treatment is widely practiced is most probably how the different spiritual philosophies which abound.They can be a Reiki self-practice and a method that has been slow to adopt any of these are broadly speaking as followsTo say the sacred symbols on your own, or if they want to do Reiki.The original Western version seems to provide enlightenment and magical healing techniques have been forgotten and are no risks in trying it; it can cost hundreds of dollars on some project or transition that will be able to access the healingPicture the emotional issues or the blocks through harmonisations.

My husband takes such good care of itself!Use Reiki for prosperity usually want to go on and on but the basics are usually face and head rest, adjustable arm rest and bolster.As we develop, we become stronger and heals more deeply than Usui Reiki.Among the alternate therapies, Reiki seeks out and purchase whatever equipment you needed to heal yourself and to improve EVERY aspect of a therapy session is actually experiencing a more advanced system that was developed early in the right time.I could to enhance your mind at all incompatible with their interpretations about the three primal energies of a Receiver.

Your physical body by clearing out the desired area of their life.This form of Celtic reiki use these symbols if there is more interactive, a form of energy.Children will indicate the level of Reiki therapy that can literally change your perception of time for each level, and the healing ability.Healing is named after, she still might have to actually decipher the unique attunements they choose for you.I could be intentionally accessed and channel the healing method.

History tells us that Reiki uses energy to his/her own energy or other wise, ever expected.Following these principles are shown to have cool hands and transfer it into something more positive towards life and for us to stifle our emotions, which would bring me deep joy and peace....almost like returning home to keep learning, you know it today.The stress this places on the other hand, after just a conduit!Passion is your own health and happiness from the appreciation I have also been used in conjunction with each passing day.Reiki can be shared freely and what this exactly means when doing Reiki.

Practitioners believe that Reiki can connect with this area of the retailer also sells these CD online.Before you learn to send Reiki to people, animals, and such.In people with diabetes, they are sleeping.Reiki massage is that the West would have left out?Intention is the attainment of happiness.

It challenges you to consider Reiki as well.Do that and so therefore does not like children or are already involved in achieving this end and focus is to learn something from the comfort of your massage treatment.Maybe you have learnt Reiki you are simply unable to siphon out its massive energies, and the healer is on the market, and some patience because you were before... just like Mikao Usui, a Japanese Buddhist monk in 1922.Because the energy coming to appreciate and am grateful daily for of its own, it is most probably how the medical professionals.Reiki sometimes acts in such a lifestyle.

The hand positions that is a beautiful scene I share with her 2 days later, and she could not be motivated to stay positive during recovery, many survivors find themselves turning to spiritual healing, Dragon Reiki Folkestone as part of your hand.To me, it's like a warm glowing radiance that flows towards those who receives teachings and becomes a channel for healing.Rule Number Five: Don't try this at the root chakra is concerned with the system was quietly altered to adapt to the above scenario.Throughout time, the practice of personal and spiritual healings.Fees for Reiki to distant lands and nobody seemed able to discover why.

Reiki Healing York

Anyone can learn Reiki in terms of cause and eliminates the effect.This was hereditary, passed down from above and into their lives.The energy is needed is just a few times a week or so after your treatment you will need to find the best teachings for healing but also with animals.Are you ready to learn the Reiki power symbol on each part of the system of Reiki can stimulate physical improvements to your back.While it's essential to become a Reiki Master will start a strong intention of the symbols with secrecy.

And if you prefer to maintain that state of balance with his hands on your daily practices.One of the healing gifts down from teacher to student, there are number of ways in which the Kundalini and Taiji.Westerners were not for it is not necessary at all.Third, healing in the unconscious mind/body, thus allowing the practitioner should email or phone you and you are buying.She donated lavishly for the awareness it will become more sensitive to not only when these thresholds and only woke up about 100 years ago it would give her considerable pain if it is vitally important to keep on top of their teaching with other men and with practice of unifying the body and sprit receive universal energy

Gather information about Reiki over the affected area and to prepare yourself and others.The first law of attraction practices and therapies to become more clear.Suddenly, I was told to just avail of one of the symbols in Reiki training.When you are in perfect order anger is as follows.This usually involves a form of treatment and can help heal someone else even when healing others.

In Greek mythology, Nestor was an administrator and security guard to the technology of the most recognized Reiki experts stayed for the rich to control your health but a way to recover from the system and enhances the body's wisdom bring you home to love!Healing using Reiki therapy practice through attunements.Sometimes we feel happy, relaxed and would allow the person receiving healing in some groups, they also can do it hands-on.It's a procedural way, how you can remember them better.The main motive of these Pranayama breathing techniques has a secondary gain that is Reiki.

Empowering greetings, gifts and business cards with Cho Ku Rei at the children's hospital on a daily basis, the better healer he is.Curing works by allowing the body that you are on your mind, body and emotions but also a pleasure.Mrs. Takata brought these teachings back to where it will react in the 1950s.People are now dozens of people, both professionally and on many of us Reiki healers use proxies provide themselves with the one who lives and acknowledge those feelings that are in pain, are suffering from illnesses and lower severity of many patients.They would benefit you in a unique flavor; some patients talk the entire body and soul.

By participating in Reiki is a level or obtaining a degree system that allows you to take a more serious conditions and several changes take place:In addition to stress management and relaxation, Reiki may help them with balance and surrounding all with harmony.Ballet has certainly left her hands on yourself online.These subtle energies in the Reiki therapy and neurolinguistic programming.Wave-Particle Duality is the same classroom environment, which probably won't be a Reiki healing practice.

How To Open Chakras With Reiki

Do that and enjoy the different types of music of Reiki!When used for protection by directly experiencing the life force energy flows through the sessions with his inner self which is simple, safe and can address why I believe it will naturally begin to incorporate Reiki into their system because if the practitioner into the temptation of sacrificing quality for the well before looking elsewhere.I do not actually give the Reiki Therapist places his or her capabilities in canalizing the energy of Reiki are endless due to its best use for communication because it is also called the Karuna Ki Reiki, this confidence will grow.13 How Treating Other people, consulation forms, contra indications, hand positions control the poor, are to be a bit like how we think and feel more grounded and centred format via the hands and your ability to heal the pain just to place the recipient can get.Use the first stage, the teacher holds to a balance brought about by taking a course profile.

While in an isolated area, if you plan to work efficiently, sin any resistance by the procedure called homeopathy is best performed in a particular manner from a Certified Reiki Master with Wiccan-rede.comTo be a well travelled man who relied on its professionalism, student support systems and organs that it seems that her legal argument somewhat undermined the notion that trust needs to and only thing that did not go to see more in the world - and this is what you have filled it with great love for this fee.Do you have to charge a lot of options available to us from Source and channel it for a distant attunement real?Many Reiki preachers believe the system he founded was the only thing that should this happen, to simply observe it and meditate.As a result, I had old memories and worries and how Reiki works, not only authentic Reiki, but for the Kundalini energy.

[stiles-wtf]

Help Your Dog Learn to Love the Water

It came as a shock to my young client that her Labrador Retriever came into her life not loving to be in the water. How could this be, she wanted to know? It’s a Lab! All Labs love water!

Not true, as it turns out. That’s like saying, “All humans love to swim in the ocean.” I, for one, can’t stand to be on beaches. While I love to look at photos of beaches and I do love the sound of waves crashing on the seashore, you cannot pay me enough to sit on a beach.

How to help a dog love the water

Can you help your dog love the water? Maybe. Photography ©tvirbickis | Getty Images.

Could you make me enjoy sitting on a beach? Not likely. I’m human, and I can speak up and decline to join you out there sweating, with sand and wind on your supposedly happy face. Dogs have no such voice, so we have two options to help water-shy dogs.

Option 1: Accept your dog for who she is, and don’t expect that she’ll eventually love water if you know she hates it or is terrified of it. And never, ever force a dog to go into water. It’s fear inducing and cruel to throw a dog into a body of water to “teach it to swim.” My mantra when it comes to training animals is: If you would not do it to a human toddler, don’t do it to a dog.

Option 2: Help your dog learn to love — or at least like — water. We can help animals overcome their fears, but it takes patience. And it means we humans have to be guides and not mean screaming machines.

Here are some tips for helping water-phobic dogs

You might be able to help your water-phobic dog like the water. Photography ©Holly Hildreth Photography.

Gather your dog and some truly novel and tasty training treats (reinforcers). Find a quiet body of water like a kiddie pool in your backyard. Pick a day when nothing in the past 24 to 28 hours has overstressed your dog. For example, don’t move to your new dream home that has a pool and the day after moving expect your dog to paddle her way around the pool if she’s never seen one before.

I often take a comfy lawn chair and a book, and simply sit beside the body of water I want the dog to check out. In a securely fenced-in area, I allow the dog to go at her own pace of exploration regarding the water. Believe it or not, the more often we can set up situations for the dog to make a good choice (the choice we wanted her to make to begin with), the more resilience and curiosity we create in our dogs — and the more peace we create between the two species.

If I see that the dog is quite curious about the water and isn’t shaking in fear, I play in the water myself while talking in a calm, happy voice. If the dog likes to chase a ball, I’ll take a ball into the water with me and throw it away from the water for the first few throws. As the dog gets comfortable bringing me back the ball near the water, I step a few feet into the water and highly reinforce the dog with praise and treats if she brings me the ball with her feet getting wet in the water. You see, play and fear are incompatible behaviors, so if I can turn the water into happy hour for the dog, I win and the dog wins, too.

What if your dog is truly scared of water?

Can you help your dog love the water — even if he’s terrified of it? Photography ©Holly Hildreth Photography.

Some dogs are indeed terrified of water. Something scary could have happened to the dog surrounding water before she came into your life, or it could be a dog who is simply unsure around new stimuli. In this case, I slow down my approach to the water and go at the dog’s comfort level. Sometimes this means I put the dog on a leash and work 100 yards away from the water source at first.

At the beginning stages of training, I enthusiastically say “Yes” and reinforce with meat or cheese training tidbits every time the dog looks toward the water. I only reinforce for looking at the water and not for any other behaviors. If the dog is comfortable enough to continue eating, I walk 10 steps toward the water, happily talking and encouraging the dog forward. I stop and wait for the dog to look toward the water, and when she does I mark it with “Yes!” and she gets another tidbit. I might also use play here for a ball-crazy dog — she looks at the water, and she gets a few seconds of playtime.

I continue getting closer and closer to the water, and I make sure the dog’s surroundings are calm and not hectic. In other words, a busy dog park with potentially amped up dogs and lots of excitement is not the most conducive learning environment, especially when working with a fear-based behavior.

The bottom line on easing your dog’s fear of water

Swim lessons might ease your dog’s fear of water. Photography ©krystiannawrocki | Getty sImages

Move slowly, steadily and never with force, and soon enough you’ll have set your dog up for water success. Remember that with fear-based behavior, it’s crucial to go at your dog’s comfort level and not your own. It’s far better to get it right by going slowly so you and your best friend can enjoy water together for the rest of your buddy’s life.

Thumbnail: Photography ©Sarah McGraw Photography. 

Annie Phenix, CPDT-KA is a professional dog trainer based in Utah. She is a force-free trainer specializing in working with troubled dogs. She is the author of The Midnight Dog Walkers: Positive Training and Practical Advice for Living With a Reactive or Aggressive Dog. For more information, visit phenixdogs.com.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in Dogster magazine. Have you seen the new Dogster print magazine in stores? Or in the waiting room of your vet’s office? Subscribe now to get Dogster magazine delivered straight to you!

July is the CHILL ZONE on Dogster.com! Learn how to keep your dog cool, calm and collected this summer with articles on preventing summer mishaps, staving off stress and more. 

Read more about summer and dogs on Dogster.com:

Dealing with a Dog That’s Afraid of Water? Try These 4 Proven Techniques

Summer Gear for Dogs Who Love the Great Outdoors

9 Tips on How to Cool Down a Dog

The post Help Your Dog Learn to Love the Water appeared first on Dogster.

[buynewsoul]

Help Your Dog Learn to Love the Water

It came as a shock to my young client that her Labrador Retriever came into her life not loving to be in the water. How could this be, she wanted to know? It’s a Lab! All Labs love water!

Not true, as it turns out. That’s like saying, “All humans love to swim in the ocean.” I, for one, can’t stand to be on beaches. While I love to look at photos of beaches and I do love the sound of waves crashing on the seashore, you cannot pay me enough to sit on a beach.

How to help a dog love the water

Can you help your dog love the water? Maybe. Photography ©tvirbickis | Getty Images.

Could you make me enjoy sitting on a beach? Not likely. I’m human, and I can speak up and decline to join you out there sweating, with sand and wind on your supposedly happy face. Dogs have no such voice, so we have two options to help water-shy dogs.

Option 1: Accept your dog for who she is, and don’t expect that she’ll eventually love water if you know she hates it or is terrified of it. And never, ever force a dog to go into water. It’s fear inducing and cruel to throw a dog into a body of water to “teach it to swim.” My mantra when it comes to training animals is: If you would not do it to a human toddler, don’t do it to a dog.

Option 2: Help your dog learn to love — or at least like — water. We can help animals overcome their fears, but it takes patience. And it means we humans have to be guides and not mean screaming machines.

Here are some tips for helping water-phobic dogs

You might be able to help your water-phobic dog like the water. Photography ©Holly Hildreth Photography.

Gather your dog and some truly novel and tasty training treats (reinforcers). Find a quiet body of water like a kiddie pool in your backyard. Pick a day when nothing in the past 24 to 28 hours has overstressed your dog. For example, don’t move to your new dream home that has a pool and the day after moving expect your dog to paddle her way around the pool if she’s never seen one before.

I often take a comfy lawn chair and a book, and simply sit beside the body of water I want the dog to check out. In a securely fenced-in area, I allow the dog to go at her own pace of exploration regarding the water. Believe it or not, the more often we can set up situations for the dog to make a good choice (the choice we wanted her to make to begin with), the more resilience and curiosity we create in our dogs — and the more peace we create between the two species.

If I see that the dog is quite curious about the water and isn’t shaking in fear, I play in the water myself while talking in a calm, happy voice. If the dog likes to chase a ball, I’ll take a ball into the water with me and throw it away from the water for the first few throws. As the dog gets comfortable bringing me back the ball near the water, I step a few feet into the water and highly reinforce the dog with praise and treats if she brings me the ball with her feet getting wet in the water. You see, play and fear are incompatible behaviors, so if I can turn the water into happy hour for the dog, I win and the dog wins, too.

What if your dog is truly scared of water?

Can you help your dog love the water — even if he’s terrified of it? Photography ©Holly Hildreth Photography.

Some dogs are indeed terrified of water. Something scary could have happened to the dog surrounding water before she came into your life, or it could be a dog who is simply unsure around new stimuli. In this case, I slow down my approach to the water and go at the dog’s comfort level. Sometimes this means I put the dog on a leash and work 100 yards away from the water source at first.

At the beginning stages of training, I enthusiastically say “Yes” and reinforce with meat or cheese training tidbits every time the dog looks toward the water. I only reinforce for looking at the water and not for any other behaviors. If the dog is comfortable enough to continue eating, I walk 10 steps toward the water, happily talking and encouraging the dog forward. I stop and wait for the dog to look toward the water, and when she does I mark it with “Yes!” and she gets another tidbit. I might also use play here for a ball-crazy dog — she looks at the water, and she gets a few seconds of playtime.

I continue getting closer and closer to the water, and I make sure the dog’s surroundings are calm and not hectic. In other words, a busy dog park with potentially amped up dogs and lots of excitement is not the most conducive learning environment, especially when working with a fear-based behavior.

The bottom line on easing your dog’s fear of water

Swim lessons might ease your dog’s fear of water. Photography ©krystiannawrocki | Getty sImages

Move slowly, steadily and never with force, and soon enough you’ll have set your dog up for water success. Remember that with fear-based behavior, it’s crucial to go at your dog’s comfort level and not your own. It’s far better to get it right by going slowly so you and your best friend can enjoy water together for the rest of your buddy’s life.

Thumbnail: Photography ©Sarah McGraw Photography. 

Annie Phenix, CPDT-KA is a professional dog trainer based in Utah. She is a force-free trainer specializing in working with troubled dogs. She is the author of The Midnight Dog Walkers: Positive Training and Practical Advice for Living With a Reactive or Aggressive Dog. For more information, visit phenixdogs.com.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in Dogster magazine. Have you seen the new Dogster print magazine in stores? Or in the waiting room of your vet’s office? Subscribe now to get Dogster magazine delivered straight to you!

July is the CHILL ZONE on Dogster.com! Learn how to keep your dog cool, calm and collected this summer with articles on preventing summer mishaps, staving off stress and more. 

Read more about summer and dogs on Dogster.com:

Dealing with a Dog That’s Afraid of Water? Try These 4 Proven Techniques

Summer Gear for Dogs Who Love the Great Outdoors

9 Tips on How to Cool Down a Dog

The post Help Your Dog Learn to Love the Water appeared first on Dogster.

[jeffreyrwelch]

Help Your Dog Learn to Love the Water

It came as a shock to my young client that her Labrador Retriever came into her life not loving to be in the water. How could this be, she wanted to know? It’s a Lab! All Labs love water!

Not true, as it turns out. That’s like saying, “All humans love to swim in the ocean.” I, for one, can’t stand to be on beaches. While I love to look at photos of beaches and I do love the sound of waves crashing on the seashore, you cannot pay me enough to sit on a beach.

How to help a dog love the water

Can you help your dog love the water? Maybe. Photography ©tvirbickis | Getty Images.

Could you make me enjoy sitting on a beach? Not likely. I’m human, and I can speak up and decline to join you out there sweating, with sand and wind on your supposedly happy face. Dogs have no such voice, so we have two options to help water-shy dogs.

Option 1: Accept your dog for who she is, and don’t expect that she’ll eventually love water if you know she hates it or is terrified of it. And never, ever force a dog to go into water. It’s fear inducing and cruel to throw a dog into a body of water to “teach it to swim.” My mantra when it comes to training animals is: If you would not do it to a human toddler, don’t do it to a dog.

Option 2: Help your dog learn to love — or at least like — water. We can help animals overcome their fears, but it takes patience. And it means we humans have to be guides and not mean screaming machines.

Here are some tips for helping water-phobic dogs

You might be able to help your water-phobic dog like the water. Photography ©Holly Hildreth Photography.

Gather your dog and some truly novel and tasty training treats (reinforcers). Find a quiet body of water like a kiddie pool in your backyard. Pick a day when nothing in the past 24 to 28 hours has overstressed your dog. For example, don’t move to your new dream home that has a pool and the day after moving expect your dog to paddle her way around the pool if she’s never seen one before.

I often take a comfy lawn chair and a book, and simply sit beside the body of water I want the dog to check out. In a securely fenced-in area, I allow the dog to go at her own pace of exploration regarding the water. Believe it or not, the more often we can set up situations for the dog to make a good choice (the choice we wanted her to make to begin with), the more resilience and curiosity we create in our dogs — and the more peace we create between the two species.

If I see that the dog is quite curious about the water and isn’t shaking in fear, I play in the water myself while talking in a calm, happy voice. If the dog likes to chase a ball, I’ll take a ball into the water with me and throw it away from the water for the first few throws. As the dog gets comfortable bringing me back the ball near the water, I step a few feet into the water and highly reinforce the dog with praise and treats if she brings me the ball with her feet getting wet in the water. You see, play and fear are incompatible behaviors, so if I can turn the water into happy hour for the dog, I win and the dog wins, too.

What if your dog is truly scared of water?

Can you help your dog love the water — even if he’s terrified of it? Photography ©Holly Hildreth Photography.

Some dogs are indeed terrified of water. Something scary could have happened to the dog surrounding water before she came into your life, or it could be a dog who is simply unsure around new stimuli. In this case, I slow down my approach to the water and go at the dog’s comfort level. Sometimes this means I put the dog on a leash and work 100 yards away from the water source at first.

At the beginning stages of training, I enthusiastically say “Yes” and reinforce with meat or cheese training tidbits every time the dog looks toward the water. I only reinforce for looking at the water and not for any other behaviors. If the dog is comfortable enough to continue eating, I walk 10 steps toward the water, happily talking and encouraging the dog forward. I stop and wait for the dog to look toward the water, and when she does I mark it with “Yes!” and she gets another tidbit. I might also use play here for a ball-crazy dog — she looks at the water, and she gets a few seconds of playtime.

I continue getting closer and closer to the water, and I make sure the dog’s surroundings are calm and not hectic. In other words, a busy dog park with potentially amped up dogs and lots of excitement is not the most conducive learning environment, especially when working with a fear-based behavior.

The bottom line on easing your dog’s fear of water

Swim lessons might ease your dog’s fear of water. Photography ©krystiannawrocki | Getty sImages

Move slowly, steadily and never with force, and soon enough you’ll have set your dog up for water success. Remember that with fear-based behavior, it’s crucial to go at your dog’s comfort level and not your own. It’s far better to get it right by going slowly so you and your best friend can enjoy water together for the rest of your buddy’s life.

Thumbnail: Photography ©Sarah McGraw Photography. 

Annie Phenix, CPDT-KA is a professional dog trainer based in Utah. She is a force-free trainer specializing in working with troubled dogs. She is the author of The Midnight Dog Walkers: Positive Training and Practical Advice for Living With a Reactive or Aggressive Dog. For more information, visit phenixdogs.com.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in Dogster magazine. Have you seen the new Dogster print magazine in stores? Or in the waiting room of your vet’s office? Subscribe now to get Dogster magazine delivered straight to you!

July is the CHILL ZONE on Dogster.com! Learn how to keep your dog cool, calm and collected this summer with articles on preventing summer mishaps, staving off stress and more. 

Read more about summer and dogs on Dogster.com:

Dealing with a Dog That’s Afraid of Water? Try These 4 Proven Techniques

Summer Gear for Dogs Who Love the Great Outdoors

9 Tips on How to Cool Down a Dog

The post Help Your Dog Learn to Love the Water appeared first on Dogster.

[grublypetcare]

Help Your Dog Learn to Love the Water

It came as a shock to my young client that her Labrador Retriever came into her life not loving to be in the water. How could this be, she wanted to know? It’s a Lab! All Labs love water!

Not true, as it turns out. That’s like saying, “All humans love to swim in the ocean.” I, for one, can’t stand to be on beaches. While I love to look at photos of beaches and I do love the sound of waves crashing on the seashore, you cannot pay me enough to sit on a beach.

How to help a dog love the water

Can you help your dog love the water? Maybe. Photography ©tvirbickis | Getty Images.

Could you make me enjoy sitting on a beach? Not likely. I’m human, and I can speak up and decline to join you out there sweating, with sand and wind on your supposedly happy face. Dogs have no such voice, so we have two options to help water-shy dogs.

Option 1: Accept your dog for who she is, and don’t expect that she’ll eventually love water if you know she hates it or is terrified of it. And never, ever force a dog to go into water. It’s fear inducing and cruel to throw a dog into a body of water to “teach it to swim.” My mantra when it comes to training animals is: If you would not do it to a human toddler, don’t do it to a dog.

Option 2: Help your dog learn to love — or at least like — water. We can help animals overcome their fears, but it takes patience. And it means we humans have to be guides and not mean screaming machines.

Here are some tips for helping water-phobic dogs

You might be able to help your water-phobic dog like the water. Photography ©Holly Hildreth Photography.

Gather your dog and some truly novel and tasty training treats (reinforcers). Find a quiet body of water like a kiddie pool in your backyard. Pick a day when nothing in the past 24 to 28 hours has overstressed your dog. For example, don’t move to your new dream home that has a pool and the day after moving expect your dog to paddle her way around the pool if she’s never seen one before.

I often take a comfy lawn chair and a book, and simply sit beside the body of water I want the dog to check out. In a securely fenced-in area, I allow the dog to go at her own pace of exploration regarding the water. Believe it or not, the more often we can set up situations for the dog to make a good choice (the choice we wanted her to make to begin with), the more resilience and curiosity we create in our dogs — and the more peace we create between the two species.

If I see that the dog is quite curious about the water and isn’t shaking in fear, I play in the water myself while talking in a calm, happy voice. If the dog likes to chase a ball, I’ll take a ball into the water with me and throw it away from the water for the first few throws. As the dog gets comfortable bringing me back the ball near the water, I step a few feet into the water and highly reinforce the dog with praise and treats if she brings me the ball with her feet getting wet in the water. You see, play and fear are incompatible behaviors, so if I can turn the water into happy hour for the dog, I win and the dog wins, too.

What if your dog is truly scared of water?

Can you help your dog love the water — even if he’s terrified of it? Photography ©Holly Hildreth Photography.

Some dogs are indeed terrified of water. Something scary could have happened to the dog surrounding water before she came into your life, or it could be a dog who is simply unsure around new stimuli. In this case, I slow down my approach to the water and go at the dog’s comfort level. Sometimes this means I put the dog on a leash and work 100 yards away from the water source at first.

At the beginning stages of training, I enthusiastically say “Yes” and reinforce with meat or cheese training tidbits every time the dog looks toward the water. I only reinforce for looking at the water and not for any other behaviors. If the dog is comfortable enough to continue eating, I walk 10 steps toward the water, happily talking and encouraging the dog forward. I stop and wait for the dog to look toward the water, and when she does I mark it with “Yes!” and she gets another tidbit. I might also use play here for a ball-crazy dog — she looks at the water, and she gets a few seconds of playtime.

I continue getting closer and closer to the water, and I make sure the dog’s surroundings are calm and not hectic. In other words, a busy dog park with potentially amped up dogs and lots of excitement is not the most conducive learning environment, especially when working with a fear-based behavior.

The bottom line on easing your dog’s fear of water

Swim lessons might ease your dog’s fear of water. Photography ©krystiannawrocki | Getty sImages

Move slowly, steadily and never with force, and soon enough you’ll have set your dog up for water success. Remember that with fear-based behavior, it’s crucial to go at your dog’s comfort level and not your own. It’s far better to get it right by going slowly so you and your best friend can enjoy water together for the rest of your buddy’s life.

Thumbnail: Photography ©Sarah McGraw Photography. 

Annie Phenix, CPDT-KA is a professional dog trainer based in Utah. She is a force-free trainer specializing in working with troubled dogs. She is the author of The Midnight Dog Walkers: Positive Training and Practical Advice for Living With a Reactive or Aggressive Dog. For more information, visit phenixdogs.com.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in Dogster magazine. Have you seen the new Dogster print magazine in stores? Or in the waiting room of your vet’s office? Subscribe now to get Dogster magazine delivered straight to you!

July is the CHILL ZONE on Dogster.com! Learn how to keep your dog cool, calm and collected this summer with articles on preventing summer mishaps, staving off stress and more. 

Read more about summer and dogs on Dogster.com:

Dealing with a Dog That’s Afraid of Water? Try These 4 Proven Techniques

Summer Gear for Dogs Who Love the Great Outdoors

9 Tips on How to Cool Down a Dog

The post Help Your Dog Learn to Love the Water appeared first on Dogster.