Just Who is Oana Anyway?

Healing through laughter is not a dream, but a recipe for survival

If you were to read a book about Oana's life, you might easily decide it was a work of fiction. 

Born in Bucharest, Romania, Oana lived twenty years under the grotesque dictatorial regime of Ceausescu. After the fall of communism in 1989 she studied languages at the University in Bucharest, then received her Master’s degree at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. English is her third language. 

She has worn many hats, working as a translator, as a teacher, and eventually caring for animals both domestic and wild. Volunteering in both the U.S. and Canada, she worked for wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centers.

Currently residing in Arizona, Oana continues to dedicate most of her time to her animals and to writing.  

Her first book, The Healings, debuted in November 2010. It is a hard-to-put-down, laugh-out-loud series of adventures of an eccentric duo: a man and his feline partner walking from ‘healer’ to ‘healer’ and hoping to achieve awareness.

Oana’s take on depression is simple and effective: witticism and laughter coupled with the understanding of the frailty of human nature help us heal. An animal companion, real or imaginary, can be very therapeutic as well.

Many a reader – depressed or not -- will recognize the insanity of most of our daily routines and the elusiveness of Truth.

Oana’s current projects include a memoir titled, Romanian Rhapsody, a children’s book, Dr.Schnauzer and Nurse Lhassa, as well as other stories, all written in the same witty humorous style.      
She is also an active member of Central Phoenix Writing Workshop http://www.paloverdepages.com/ and a co-host of Two Unsychronized Souls Radio Show  http://www.blogtalkradio.com/monicabrinkmanandoana 

To learn more about Oana, visit her author’s website www.thehealings.net  

To read excerpts from The Healings go to http://www.thehealings.net/excerpts-from-the-healings.html

The Healings is available in paperback on Amazon  http://www.amazon.com/Healings-Oana/dp/0984615482/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289455146&sr=1-1

In Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/The-Healings-ebook/dp/B004BSH0RI/ref=tmm_kin_title_0/192-1862715-7132302?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&qid=1289455146&sr=1-1 and Nook format

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-healings-oana/1029789781?ean=2940012775313&itm=1&usri=oana#

We Are Dying Every Day - Deepak Chopra

One reads in many mystical traditions that every person dies at exactly the right time and knows in advance when that time is. But I would like to examine more deeply the concept of dying every day.

To die every day is a choice everyone overlooks. I want to see myself as the same person from day to day in order to preserve my sense of identity. I want to see myself as inhabiting the same body every day because it is disturbing to think that my body is constantly deserting me.

Yet it must, if I am not to be a living mummy. Following the complex timetable of apoptosis, I am given a new body via the mechanism of death. This process happens subtly enough that it passes without notice. No-one sees a two-year-old turning in her body for a new one at age three.

Every day she has the same body, and yet she doesn’t. Only the constant process of renewal – a gift of death – enables her to keep pace with each stage of development. The wonder is that one feels like the same person in the midst of such endless shape-shifting.

Unlike with cell death, I can observe my ideas being born and dying. To support the passage from childish thought to adult thought, the mind has to die every day. My cherished ideas die and never reappear; my most intense experiences are consumed by their own passions; my answer to the question “Who am I?” totally changes from age two to three, three to four, and so on throughout life.

We understand death when we drop the illusion that life must be continuous. All of nature obeys one rhythm – the universe is dying at the speed of light yet it still manages along the way to create this planet and the life forms inhabiting it.

Our bodies are dying at many different speeds at once, beginning with the photons, ascending through chemical dissolution, cell death, tissue regeneration, and finally the death of the whole organism. What are we so afraid of?
Adapted from The Book of Secrets, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2004).


Read more: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/we-are-dying-every-day.html#ixzz1X5TwvJoP

Are You A Sun Sign?

As the Sun puts forth light, so it brings forth life. This Planet

(also known as a luminary and a star) represents the self, one's

personality and ego, the spirit and what it is that makes the

individual unique. It is our identity and our face to the world. The

Sun also speaks to creative ability and the power of the

individual to meet the challenges of everyday life.

One's natural father, husbands and other male influences are

ruled by the Sun, as are children. The Sun's energy is a forceful

one, and in its wake comes authority, the ability to lead and an

individual's essence, their core being. Through the will of this

Planet, we learn to manifest ourselves in the world.

The Sun is majestic, and in keeping with its regal air, it rules

royalty and higher office. This orb also lords over our health and

well-being. The Sun's golden glow is a vital life force which

imbues us with strength, energy and a will to succeed. It is the

Sun which gives strength to the other Planets, which is why this

Planet occupies a key role in Astrology.

The Sun spends about a month visiting each Sign and takes a

year to journey through the twelve Signs of the Zodiac. It is

masculine energy and rules Leo and the Fifth House.

One Man's Thoughts On Karma

Karma

We tend to think of Karma as some kind of luck. You've either got it bad, or you've got it good. If you've got it good, the gods are smiling on you. If you've got it bad, you're at least a little bit cursed, and have to somehow pay or make up for the months or years or lifetimes of having 'blown it'. However unknown your infractions may be to you now.

I'd like to propose that Karma is not about what Happens to you. But that Karma is about how you Handle it. Karma is a state of mind. Therein lies our power to 'create our own reality', and meet what life hands us in a powerful stance of co-creation. By our actions and reactions, thoughts and feelings. It's easy to imagine oneself a victim when things aren't going the way we'd wish. "Bad karma!" we might mutter. Another versions of, "Bummer, man!" But, as they say, 'shit happens'. To all of us! And I believe karma is about how we perspective and meet and handle said 'shit'. If something happens that I don't like, I can label it (or me) bad, and bring the accompanying complaint and victimization to it. If something happens that I do like, I can think I've got it good.

But perhaps I can begin to step out of my thoughts about good and bad, right and wrong, and look at the potential learning in the situation. And imagine myself meeting that perceptually less-than-ideal human experience with an attitude of curiosity, openness and perhaps even gratitude as to what it's here to teach. Every moment is a potential turning point. What happens guides and shapes us. We cannot see the steps ahead. The ego's tendency--brilliantly named the 'Pain Body' by Eckhart Tolle--is to see what it doesn't want as wrong, and to inflict more suffering on itself. We're all very good at that: suffering over our suffering. Perhaps Karma is about alleviating our own suffering when 'shit happens'. And finding the potential goodness. Looking for the lesson. Putting it in perspective.

Opening our arms to the universe and saying, "I don't know why this is occurring, but okay, thank you." I remember, many years ago now, thinking I was going to be moving into a certain place. I had made a special trip to see it again, and to meet with the property manager to sign the papers. When I arrived, he flippantly told me the place wasn’t going to be ready on time for me to move in. No big deal to him . . . But I had movers coming. I had someone moving into the place I was vacating. I thought he and I had a deal. I thought I had a plan. I was basically being blown off, and found myself desperate, in a swirl of stress and angst and upset. I couldn't see myself as anything other than a victim. Now, with nowhere now to go . . . Bad karma, some would say. But that was just a moment in time. Fraught. But a moment, nonetheless.

What I didn't know, and couldn’t see, was that something even better was waiting for me. And that that 'glitch', that moment of apparent bad karma, was guiding me toward the life and home I'm in now. A place of goodness and beauty I couldn't have imagined. Had that other place come through, every single detail in my life would be different today. The people I know. The clients I see. Everything. In Chinese, the symbol for 'crisis' is made up of two other symbols: "danger" and "opportunity."

Under stress, it's hard to see the opportunity in the crisis. To trust that there is an unfoldment that wants something even better than the ego can conceive of in the moment. That to me is about Karma. About meeting life from a place of openness, curiosity and neutrality, so that when things don't go the way we think we want them to, we can be receptive, and create Good Karma for ourselves by how we are meeting life, and treating ourselves and others in the process. This is an act of faith, surrender. Trusting in the unfoldment of our lives, however vague and disappointing that may seem at the time. Opening our arms to life and saying, "I don't know why this is occurring, but okay, thank you." Creating our own good Karma, by trusting the flow of our own evolution, and letting go, and going with it.

Johanna Courtleigh, MA, LPC, CHT

About The Author

Johanna Courtleigh is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Certified Hypnotherapist, Certified HypnoFertility® Therapist and Confidence Coach in private practice in Lake Oswego, Oregon, just south of Portland. Her works seeks to help people create healthier relationships with themselves and others, and to become happier and more "in love", as a state of being. She can be contacted at johanna@jcourtleigh.com, www.jcourtleigh.com, www.portlandhypnofertility.com, (503) 684-8481.