ASK LIZ: Was This Reading A Rip-Off?

Dear Liz:

I have been going to a therapist for some time now and I haven't gotten much from it. I still feel specifically unresolved about my love life. I went to get a reading after my therapy session just to see if I could feel better or get answers by some other means. The reader told me that my heart chakra was dark, foggy, or just blown out like a light bulb. She told me not to worry and that it might have been passed down and it was nothing that I did to cause this problem. That made me feel better, but I also gave her a good sum of money to help me fix the problem. Not a huge deal in the long run. My only worry is that none of this will even work. Any advice?

Thanks,
Nicole

I have never met a healer who talks like this to a client. It is really scary to hear that your chakra is “burnt out,” and the purpose of a true healer is to put the person they’re treating at ease, to extend comfort at all times. I suspect this person is a fraud.

If a healer makes you feel like you have way more problems than you ever thought you might have, that is a total red flag that you should take everything they’re saying with a whole heap of salt. Try to enjoy the experience as pure entertainment.

Approach this "new agey" stuff the same way you would anything else in life -- if a therapist isn't giving you need to get better, you go find another one. If someone you just meet strikes you weird, you don't make close friends with them. That kind of thing.

As for the rest of it, I'm curious what type of work you did to "fix" the problem... I wonder because the stuff that you do yourself is the biggest healing agent of all. It is your body and your power. There is some energetic healing that skilled people can help unravel or remove or shake up, and that can help get things started for you.

I am into all this spirit energy stuff big-time, and the more I practice it the more I realize that it is not about "the universe" as this outside thing we have to ask for permission for greatness. “The universe” is each of us. We are all amazing gods with the capacity to literally create and shape whatever reality we want. I think so often we forgo our physical, human selves for the sake of "higher knowledge" or "spiritual guidance" or whatever, and there is no way any of that will truly empower us unless we're also grounded in our bodies.

Get in touch with who you are, really truly, pull away the garbage, and you'll start to see exactly how you are creating your own reality. (You can do this through therapy or meditation or hypnosis or diary entries --whatever works.) Time and time again, this is proven to me, to the point where almost everything -- even the really shitty stuff -- is in some way fun. It's hard to put this in more concrete terms, as the concrete part is different for every single person.

If this sounds interesting to you, I'd suggest reading "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot. Or if you flip through it and it seems too science-y for you (it gets way friendlier as you move along), you can also try "The Intention Experiment" by Lynne McTaggart.

As for exact fourth chakra exercises, I am not an expert! I do know that getting in touch with the intellectual and emotional “true self” is just as important as getting in touch with yourself as a physical being. This can happen through yoga, exercise and/or simple breathwork.

"Wheels of Life" is the book I am reading right now, and the accompanying website suggests one simple fourth chakra breathing exercise. 

Also, I have read this book, "Energize Your Heart In Four Directions," and it taught me how to feel my heart (which I couldn't before, and maybe you can't either), and understand its energetic shape so that I could fill it up in a more complete way. This might sound like total nonsense (um, shape? yeah, it has four chambers and two ventricles and an aorta and stuff...), though when I went through the exercises I hit some stuff that felt like real Knowledge about the human experience and how the state of the heart informs the basis of reality. Just hold on tight -- this book is hella cheesy.