Speaker 1 (00:09):
This recording is an offering of Networks for Training and Development's Online University.

Rosa McAllister (00:20):
Hi, everyone, this is Rosa McAllister, but it is for our monthly Healing Circle Call. Sorry, a little background noise there. So I am honored to be your tour guide for this evening or this afternoon, like it is where I am, or maybe it's tomorrow, or who knows where it is where you are, or when you're listening to this, 'cause you might be listening to this three years later, because we record these and have them available in our Online University.

(00:51):
If you're not familiar with that, go to networkstraining.org - www.networkstraining.org - and up on the top toolbar, I believe you should find a drop down menu that has our online university on our homepage. Click on that or just search Healing Circle Call and you'll find us. These are regularly recorded, we've been doing this for quite some time and actually, it's a bit of anniversary. I went back in time and looked, and it was December 10 years ago that we actually started these Healing Circle Calls.

(01:32):
How it originally started... Many of you don't know this, but how it originally started was a group of friends and myself who lived in many, many different places scattered around the United States, in Canada, and even in other countries, and we had a regular email chain that we would send out to one another if something was going on, or we knew somebody who was ill, or somebody needed extra love and prayers or thoughts, we would send it out to one another and say, "Ooh, would you hold this person in mind," or, "Would you in your meditations or your prayers, would you think of this person?"

(02:10):
We would never really say who it was, but we would give just a little bit of information and maybe an initial or a first name, and ask people to just hold them, that it was someone that we cared about or that we were connected to in some way and they were asking for extra love and prayers.

(02:26):
So the group of us, there were about... I think it was originally about eight or ten of us again, from all around- all around the world actually, and the numbers grew, and we would send these out, these requests out, sometimes somebody would ask specifically for a prayer or somebody would ask someone, all of us, to light a candle an- for this person. And sometimes it wasn't for a person, sometimes it was for a situation, sometimes it was very personal for that person. Sometimes we got a lot more detail and information than we probably wanted to know, but it was all in the requester's hand and we just anonymously just did our thing, keeping that person in mind.

(03:10):
And the idea is, we started just calling it a Healing Circle and not that we were healers, quote unquote, I really am not comfortable with anybody calling me that, or myself calling myself that, or anybody who calls himself a healer, it's kind of like, hmm, I don't know. I don't subscribe to that necessarily, I think we can all heal ourselves. And I think helping one another, helping ourselves remember this is really, really important, especially as things get a little wacky, and wild, and busy, and we start spinning or vortexing, as a wonderful friend of mine often called it, I think you all know what that means, when we spin, and get wild, and vortex in whatever way we do that.

(03:57):
For some of us, we shut down and go to bed, for some of us, we raid the refrigerator, or we drink a little too much, or take some medication, for some of us, we exercise like a fiend, for some of us, we cry, for some of us, we laugh, for some of us, we isolate, for some of us, we shop. You know, there's all kinds of things that we do in order to soothe ourselves or to manage and get by. What we found, this little interesting group of people in this Healing Circle that we had via email ten years ago, we started, was the idea that we could help one another, that we were never alone, and that at any time, even in our darkest of times, we could remember that there were at least seven to nine other people who would help hold us, have our back. Light a candle, say a prayer, remember us.

(04:55):
And oftentimes when a request would go out a day or two later, there would be a private email, I know this 'cause I received them, where people would check in, "Hey, Rosa, how are you doing? I've been really thinking of you." And those simple, beautiful check ins, they healed so much. There were a couple of times I remember just sobbing with the numbers of these check ins or little notes of love that would come in, sometimes it was an emoji, an emoticon, or a little meme, or a joke, or something or other... Sometimes it would come in when I hadn't even asked for it, there were a couple of times where I got reminders from some of these friends from the Healing Circle because they remembered and must have kept note that this was a particularly rough time of year for me, and so the next year around that time, they just send a little love with a, "I remember last year and I'm sending you love."

(05:59):
Imagine, imagine if we all got that, imagine if we all did that for one another, imagine if we did that for ourselves. And that's how these Healing Circle Calls got started ten years ago, December, December 2012, and here we are now, so somewhere... I'm not great on timelines, but somewhere, I think about six years ago, maybe seven years ago, I contacted Shauna Roman, some of you know her, she's my boss at Networks for Training and Development, our nonprofit.

(06:37):
And I said to Shauna, "You know, I don't... I never told you, but I kind of am part of this group and we do this thing, and it just kind of struck me that maybe there's more people out there that would want to know that they have a group, that they have like, others who are here with them even if we're not really all together, we're not in the same room, but we can be, just once a month a virtual room, if you will. And if we make this anonymous and a phone call rather than an email, I wonder what people would join in, I wonder, do you think this would be worth it, Shauna?" And she said, "Oh, my gosh, I think that's a great idea."

(07:15):
So we started doing these, I put the note out to those wonderful friends, by that point, I think we had grown to a group of almost 20, or 24, or something like that over those first couple of years, and I put it out to them and said, "I hope you guys are okay with this, but I'd like to transition this into this, and it's not that I own this or Networks own this, but we'll be the vehicle, and we'll make available a phone number that people can call into, and it will be anonymous, and I ask you all to help out, to join in, circulate work, but also maybe help out, and once a month, or once a year, or once or something or rather, be the lead, be the tour guide for that call. Let's just keep it short, 20 minutes, no longer than that," sometimes it would be even less than that.

(08:04):
And so we started doing that and we advertised it through Networks, and then I think it was about two years later or something, again, I'm not great with timing. Diane Kehoe, our wonderful goddess of technology, as I love to call her at Networks, she said, "You know, why don't you start recording these?" And like, oh, my gosh, I hadn't even thought about that, we could record them and then they could be available to anybody at any time, and so we started doing it.

(08:35):
So we now have... I think we're in season five, maybe season six or whatever, around the first of the year, next month we'll start the new season, so whether it's season six or seven, I should know that and I don't know what it is. So we have all of these different ones, these monthly calls archived for your enjoyment, and we still do that in the first Monday of the month, 08:00 PM, Eastern Time. And it's anonymous, you can just call in, some people call in every month, some people call in every now and then, and it's a beautiful thing. And you know, I listen in every month, or I try to, and if I miss it, I catch the recording.

(09:14):
I've gone back to some of our old recordings and they, just like those early day emails, and those memes, and those love notes that I would get from friends from all over these calls help to heal me and soothe me, especially when I'm feeling a little down, or a little scattered, or [inaudible 00:09:34], and even on the times when I'm feeling great and things seem to be going well, they just add to it and help, so I hope this can be that for you. And as I mentioned, I get to be your tour guide tonight, so I wanted to just talk a little bit about the history as I just did, because I love history these days, I think it's because I'm getting older (laughs) and I love to reflect back on the genesis our... How things started and how things changed, and this hasn't changed that much other than it was email and now a phone call.

(10:13):
We didn't use to record it, but I can still go back to those emails from ten years ago, and still read them, and smile, and sometimes it brings a tear. And some of those connections still reach out to me every year during a certain time of year when they know it's a hard time for me and I try to do the same for them. So wherever you are, whoever you are joining us now, whether you're actually in here with us or whether you're listening in at some time later, let's all take a collective deep breath together, reach out through your breath, reach your arms out, reach your heart out to one another, and imagine that you're connecting with anybody else who's listening in, nice, deep, slow breath.

(11:11):
Now, just like with the early days of the Healing Circle emails, we'd reach out to one another when there was somebody that were thinking of, not necessarily ourselves, but somebody that we knew needed an extra breath, needed a group to breathe with them, needed people, others to have their back or to help hold them up, to send them a prayer, to send them a love, I want you to take a minute and I want you to think of someone, for me, it's usually the first one that pops into your head, you might not even know exactly why they popped into your head, but think of someone other than yourself who maybe could breathe with us, or could use some help breathing, or could use that hug, or shoulder, or hand, or a little extra love or prayer, whatever.

(12:07):
I want you to think about that person, I want you to quietly say their name to yourself, I want you to close your eyes and get a picture in your head of them, let's all breathe together, get that person in your mind, gently speak their name to yourself, and now let's breathe together, holding them in the circle with us.

(12:50):
Now we're gonna try something a little harder, I know it is for me, I want you to think of someone and maybe you'd rather not think about. I want you to think of someone who maybe kind of ticks you off, rattles you, vortexes you, angers you, someone that maybe you struggle with, you struggle with even thinking kindly of them, I hate to say it, maybe, but I want you to think of that person, I want you to gently say the name to yourself, and I want you to close your eyes and visualize a picture of that person, and I want us all to hold these people who may not be our favorites, who may be pushing our buttons and troubling us or whatever they're doing, but how about if we all hold them together with us? How about if we reach out some love and some understanding, give them our back and our hand? They don't have to know it, but we're just going to secretly, quietly incorporate them into this Healing Circle with us.

(14:05):
Speak their name again quietly to yourself, close your eyes, and picture them, and let's all breathe together and bring them into our circle of love and healing.

(14:33):
I know that's not so easy to do, but sometimes it really helps, it really helps us to see them a little differently, or at least hold them a little differently, change the emotions, change the drama a little bit. And I believe just like holding one another and breathing with one another certainly has changed many things for me over these ten years. I believe maybe even anonymously doing this with them, maybe you can change things with them too. Let's try it one more time because remember, this is a bit of a struggle. Hold that person, speak their name quietly to yourself, get an image of them in your mind's eye, and let's breathe together and breathe into our circle of love and healing. These people that maybe are not our first people that we want to send love to, but let's do it anyway, all together now.

(15:45):
Now, the most important of all, I want you to say your own name to yourself, I want you to pretend as if you're looking in a mirror and seeing yourself, all your beauty and yeah, your flaws and whatever, but really look at yourself, imagine you're really looking deeply into your own eyes. Imagine you could through your eyes, through your pores, you could send love and understanding to yourself. And what if all of our eyes were looking into your eyes too and all of your eyes were looking into my eyes too? And all of our eyes, and our breath, and our love and healing were circling amongst, in between, and back and forth to each one of us listening in here today, listening in here in three years, listening in here whenever?

(17:12):
I want you to again, gently speak your name to yourself, this time, don't close your eyes, but open your eyes wide as if you're looking gently into your own eyes and accepting all of us looking into your eyes, and let's breathe love and healing to each other and to ourselves, let's do it. Because this is so important, let's do it again, speak your own name gently to yourself, maybe put your hand on your heart or hold your own hand, open your eyes wide as if you're looking into your own eyes and allowing us to look into yours, and let's all breathe that healing, beautiful light together to take in ourselves.

(18:35):
And because we are just that important, let me do it one more time. Speak your name gently to yourself, maybe add in I love you to yourself, hold your heart, hold your hand, hug yourself, open your eyes wide, allow us to look into you, allow yourself to look into yourself, and accept the love, and the healing, and all the juicy good stuff that you deserve, and that you can give to yourself, and that you can accept from all of us, and let's breathe together.

(19:34):
So this silly little exercise was something that a dear friend sent out about nine years ago to all of us as part of the original Healing Circle email, and as I was going through some of those old emails today in preparation and thinking, "Oh, we had some really cool things we used to say and do," and that's when I realized, we started about ten years ago, right about now, it was early December, 10 years ago.

(20:07):
And here we are, it's 2022, just circling back, finding this gem of a simple little ritual, and my immediate thought is, "Geez, Rosa, like, you had to wait nine years to do this again?" (laughs) What if I did this... What if we did this simple little exercise or a variation of this once a year, or maybe once a month, or maybe once a week, or heaven forbid, maybe once a day? You know I'm gonna try.

(20:52):
I hope that you're smiling, I hope that you're feeling the love and the warmth that I'm feeling, I hope that you're well, and warm, and healthy, and that you're sharing your beautiful light with everybody else, because heaven knows we need it, we need you, we need your light, we need you to help us all shine. So I'm breathing with you, I got you back, I'm holding your hand, I'm sending you a hug, and I'm bouncing out, billowing out, beaming out lots of love and healing light to all of you. Talk to you again first Monday of the month, the new year of January 2023, 08:00 PM Eastern Time, thanks all.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Thank you for listening. We hope the information provided was helpful. Don't forget to stop by our website and take advantage of all we have to offer.

(22:06):
(singing).