Celeste Yacoboni
Month 3, Week 2
[Theme song playing]
ROBYN: Hello everyone and welcome to month three of the Self-Care Revolution. My name is Robyn Benson. I'm a Doctor of Oriental Medicine.
KEVIN: I'm Kevin Snow, Intuitive Counselorand Self-Care Coach.
ROBYN: We are excited. We have two amazing speakers to share with you today. As I mentioned, month three is all about Releasing and Transmuting Trauma. Some of our Self-Care Coaches are really now calling it really about freeing ourselves which our end result when we let go of trauma is to live, to inhabit our body in a whole different way.
We’re planning this incredible event for March 27th and it’s going to be called Release and Transmute Trauma and it’s 1:00 to 3:00. It’s going to be a live stream. We’re excited because we are going to be connecting with people from all around the globe. We have about 25 people that will be here locally, lots of different practitioners including our first speaker, Celeste Yacoboni.
And then, we’re also inviting other practitioners who are going to be doing remote healing but are going to be part of this incredible transformational day. We’re partnering with a lot of other movements and organizations and we’ll be able to share more with you next week. But right now, we had to keep that little hush-hush but we’re really thrilled with what's happening because I think we realized that this whole trauma issue really keeps people kind of imprisoned in their own body. Would that be the word? What would be your word?
KEVIN: That’s one of things that we were investigating in Self-Care is we know some of these things on what to do, why don’t we do them. This is what we’re finding that there's trauma that is held in the body, the emotional and the physical body. And releasing that trauma can allow us to really take care of ourselves much better.
ROBYN: Take care of ourselves, right. We find that so many people really, when you see about why they end up with the diagnosis of cancer or an autoimmune disease, you wonder, in Chinese medicine certainly since that’s what I practice, there's almost always an emotional component to it. It’s throughout life that there are so many wonderful techniques.
Talking about techniques, Celeste Yacoboni has a lot to share with us. Without further ado, welcome Celeste. How are you today?
CELESTE: Thank you. I am so happy to be here. Hello, Robyn, Kevin, and everyone.
KEVIN: Hi.
ROBYN: Celeste is a Minister of Walking Prayer ordained by the Center for Sacred Studies in Sonora,California. She hosts workshops in which people share and experience different ways of connecting to Source.
Celeste maintains a private practice in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her offerings include Spiritual Embodiment, Massage Therapy, Chi Nei Tsang, Qigong, Women’s Breast Health, Plant Essences, the Hawaiian forgiveness practice of Ho’oponopono and the inquiry, How Do You Pray?
With breath and touch, prayer and song, she holds a space of awareness, presence and inspiration integrating body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Her core intention is to guide people to realize the true nature of the heart opening like the petals of a Lotus flower in words and actions emanating the fragrance of compassion and love.
Her forthcoming book, ‘How Do You Pray?’ celebrating the spirit that unites us features responses to this question from 108 spiritual shamanic and scientific teachers, guides, and activists and we are looking forward to it being release in 2014.
As you can see, all of you listeners, we have this amazing woman that I've known for quite some time. I think, Celeste, maybe at least ten years, right?
CELESTE: Yes.
ROBYN: Yes. She’s such a dear person and I was mentioning just the inspiration of the Self-Care Revolution was bursting through many of us here. It was really about her message today that she certainly fits into this month but also, month five where we’re going to dive deeply into the idea of earthing, reconnecting to the earth, and electro-sanitizing your life. As I read in her bio, she’s going to talk a little bit about what we just went through with our second month which had to do with the connection, the powerful connection of our heart and our breath.
So, here you are. Welcome!
CELESTE: Thank you so much, Robyn. Thank you for years of friendship and support. We have inspired each other and gone through a lottogether. I have been on your table, on your healing touch many times. I'm really grateful to be here today and part of the Self-Care Revolution. It is really important to share everything that we have to offer.
ROBYN: Thank you.
CELESTE: Yes. And trauma is certainly a challenge but it can also be an opportunity for transformation whether it’s health diagnosis or relationship issues or death of loved ones or financial challenges, trauma shakes our foundation. And if it’s too much to process, we hold it in our bodies. But trauma and stress can also be invitations that certainly bring us out of our comfortzone into fields of possibility where transformation and miracles take place.
To quote Ram Dass, “Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God.”
ROBYN: Thank you for sharing amazing Ram Dass’ wisdom.
KEVIN: Absolutely. That’s what we were saying earlier is that we don’t know that trauma is holding us back sometimes. We don’t really know that it’s hiding in there, hiding in the tissue, as Robyn said.
ROBYN: It’s using your tissue.
KEVIN: Right. Absolutely, and revealing that. Kind of an overview, just to bring us up-to-date on what brought you to this work, not necessarily all of the years that have gone into it but just a brief overview of what has brought you to this moment, talking to us today.
CELESTE: I'm a Massage Therapist. I've been practicing massage for 30 years, at least, I think longer than that probably. I'm always interested in the body, mind, and spirit connection because it is one wave that flows through our multi-dimensionality. And now, I find a very powerful healing modality that I practice is called Chi Nei Tsang. It is a Taoist abdominal massage. Chi Nei Tsang actually translates as working the energies of the internal organs or applied Qigong.
With the breath and a touch as a practitioner, I am working primarily on the abdomen and contacting, somewhat physically, but also energetically the organs and the meridian systems of the body. Just as we digest food, we digest all of life’s experiences. We digest the process or we don’t. Some things are too traumatic or painful and we really don’t process them but we hold them in our bodies, in our abdomens and they create emotional charges.
Many people have come in to me with a pattern of tension and they have had lots of body work, different modalities for years and they haven't been able to release or shift this pattern. With Chi Nei Tsang, where actually with breath, with touch, with seemingly awareness to that holding, to that place and making contact and loving it and allowing it to release, listening to it, listening to that trauma. I've had really great results and great experiences with people, with this modality.
I am really excited about that. I would say without even coming in for a session or finding a Chi Nei Tsang practitioner in your area, by bringing your own breath and awareness to the abdomen, you can have release too and certainly increase circulation on every level and contacting all the systems of the body. I would recommend laying in bed or on the floor or wherever and putting your knees up and feet flat to really relax that abdomen. Put your hands there, just maybe a couple of inches below the navel and start breathing, really inviting the breath down deep, noticing where the breath doesn’t want to go. Maybe there's some painful areas, some contraction, some places that we don’t feel comfortable bringing too much awareness into.
Breathing into our hands and intuitively, even letting the hands move a little bit and feeling, “Wow, these are my organs. This is my internal galaxy that is powerful, as powerful as the galaxies and the universe out there.” And really getting to know your body, breathing into it even feeling around that navel, the umbilicus, we grew out of that, the umbilicus. Those were our first cells. That’s the root of the fascia, getting to know the body that way, and feeling. You may be surprised, like, “Wow, this is unknown territory. This is some place I don’t go.” People often say that to me in massage, “Wow, I've never had my belly button massaged before. That’s very interesting.” But it’s also very powerful.
So, with the breath and the touch, explore the abdomen and sense some love and energy there and see what happens.
ROBYN: Having received your work many times and I've referred lots of patients to you over the years, it really is an experience, Celeste, because it is like how you describe a Lotus flower. I just see them like that, opening when you work just on my stomach for a session when you combine it with your essences. Can you speak to that? I know that your hydrosol and how you integrate your essences and then maybe move on, from the stomach. How you’d also focus on breast health and educate women on how to take care of their breasts and how to indentify if there's a problem, and how to move lymph because as we know, our lymph system which cures a lot of toxins are pretty congested for many of us, something that has been proven as part of the detox process.
CELESTE: I feel that nature is a great healer and a great teacher. And the Taoists and really first creating this healing modalities, Chi Nei Tsang, the whole five element theory, the whole mother of acupuncture, martial arts, herbology, all of these was inspired by nature, they absorb nature. Nature is an alchemist. Mother Nature, she can transform death into rebirth, new life, composting the old into the new and moving energy. Nature is never tired. She has efficient use of energy and really knows how to use energy in perfect way where it isn't overworking and exhausting.
Nature is so graceful and so beautiful and we can be fed with nature in anytime. Traumatic or tired or when feeling good, go into nature and feed ourselves with this energy and it will heal and transform us, breathing in the green light from the trees, ingesting it to every cell and nourishing every cell, breathing in the sunlight, breathing it into the eyes, feeling the vitality and the heat, breathing in the cosmic energy of the moon and the stars, the receptive quality of the water. Nature is medicine and it is spirit and we are one spirit.
By being nourished, by resonating with nature in this way, we realize our oneness of spirit and our oneness with all life. I think using the plant medicines like the hydrosols that I use. They are essence waters of the plants, flowers, roots, leaves that are created in the process of distillation, making essential oils. The hydrosols are the water soluble components so we can drink those. Since we are mostly water in our own body, in our own cells, by drinking these plant essence waters, we are able to take the information and the healing power and healing essence of these plants into our body.
When people come in for a session, as Robyn is saying, we share a glass of hydrosol. Maybe we share a glass of Rose water or Sage water or something and we invite that plant knowledge and healing property into our body. It’s a really beautiful, beautiful thing to align with the power and the medicine of nature. Using essential oils is the same way. Using them to massage the body and to smell, it really changes our frequency. By smelling, for instance, frankincense, myrrh, sandalwood, potpourri, sage, these are some of the essences that many spiritual traditions have used to connect with spirits in churches, mosques. Even the Wise Men, it was said, brought the gift to the Baby Jesus of frankincense, myrrh, and gold. So, these were so valuable and so special, these incredible essences.
By taking an inhalation, smelling these oils, it really does enliven something in us and open us to these more subtle energies and spiritual insights. They are very beautiful. And I love using the plant essences, waters, and oils in my practice as well as in my life. When I'm out hiking and walking and being in nature in the beautiful sanctuary out there, the natural world, I love communicating with the trees and praying with these plant spirits. We are one essence. Connecting with them in that really spiritual way and smelling their beautiful branches of seeder or juniper or pine and ingesting and merging them in that way is a spiritual experience. It is a beautiful communion and very powerful. I do have blends of oils.
Robyn, you mentioned the breast massage. That’s very powerful. I have a beautiful blend of oils that I use to work on the breast tissue and it really increases circulation, drainage of the lymph and also, waking up any stagnations. Moving energy in there to help to keep things fluid. The lymphatic system doesn’t have a pump like the cardiovascular system has the heart to pump and move that blood along. But the lymphatic system relies on muscle contractions, our movements, to move the body, to move that cellular waste from the body and to the lymph vessels and then into the circulation.
Massage is really, really wonderful for that. The breast doesn’t really have any big muscular bodies to pump. It’s really important to keep the breasts moving, to shake the breasts, to have them move and circulate. And often where bras with underwires, that can really inhibit the movement of Chi and lymph circulation.
ROBYN: With this whole Self-Care idea and this theme, what do you recommend women do for themselves and what would be one technique that each woman who’s listening today could start doing everyday or a couple of times a week?
CELESTE: One thing, you can take your bra off for a while. When you come home, get into something a little more comfortable, maybe just take the bra off and let the breast move naturally, uninhibited. It’s not very supportive but maybe you don’t always need that support if you're home and not as active as you are out in the world. Movement is really big, allowing the breasts to move. You can massage them. You can massage your breasts. It’s a wonderful way to check out and get to know your body and feel, “Oh, yeah.” What it feels like and then keep an eye, just know what it feels like.
The more you massage, get to know your breasts through the years, you will see if there are any changes or anything that you want to be aware of. But you get a beautiful oil, a blend or a herbal oil is really good and circulate, big circles around the breasts and lift them and move them and jiggle them. If you aren’t massaging, you could lean over and shake your breasts. Just give them a good little workout, a good little shaking out to help to move that lymph and to circulate energy and blood and lymph and Chi.
ROBYN: It’s good for women also to identify what is normal tissue and what for so many, because the new disease of the 30’s is cancer. As we know, breast cancer is rising year by year. It’s definitely something that more women should get more in touch with their tissue, they could kind of tell the difference. I know that’s something you teach very well too.
CELESTE: Thank you. It is very important to know your breast, to get to know your breast, and to really self-monitor. You know what's going on. You can feel if there are any changes. Then you take responsibility too for what's up, if you need to have a breast massage, or an exam or something. It’s really nice to know your own body and not just have to check in with a healthcare practitioner or doctor every once in a while but really to be involved in your own breast and body health.
ROBYN: Before Kevin asks a question, I want to mention too that men have to be concerned about this too because more and more men are being diagnosed with breast cancer. They may get older because of having too much estrogen in their body which is part of being alive in the world today are forming breast tissue. This is an important message that I think Kevin is going to lead you. You're so multi-dimensional. You're just like the Lotus flower opening up, my dear Celeste. But we know you have so much to share when it comes to prayer and speaking about Ho’oponopono.
KEVIN: The basic question is we know that you have a very busy schedule. How do you find time to fit prayer into your life?