Category: allison keli

posts written by allison keli

Synesthesia A-HA Moment

The Telepathy Tapes season two is out, and don’t worry–I’ll comment more on that as a whole later. But I personally had an a-ha moment last week that I’d like to share. I was listening to The Telepathy Tapes about synesthetes, and I got caught in a spiral.

I’m not sure why I’m surprised, but I am.

If you’ve taken workshops with me, you know that I tend to over-share resources about the topic at hand. I don’t want your exploration to stop with whatever it is I’m talking about–I want your journey to continue! I want your knowledge about a topic to far surpass mine.

I’m not sure when I first learned about synesthesia, but I can pinpoint a date to the article about it that I share with my students. The article here by Jess Dunham about an artist named Melissa McCracken who “sees” music, and then paints it, is dated March 31, 2017.

So we can assume I’ve known about synesthesia since at least then. But what is synesthesia? Cleveland Clinic considers it a phenomena where (when?!) a person’s brain connects two or more senses in an unusual experience–in relation to the general population anyhow. Common examples are tasting words, or having certain colors appear related to numbers or letters.

Yes! Here I go writing about the brain again!

There’s a “primary effect” of your brain processing a sense–say, hearing your favorite song being played. That is processed as sound. With synesthesia, however, it doesn’t stop there. When you process the sound, another part of your brain filters that sound, and the next thing you know you see a flash of green across your eyes, either while closed, or open. This would be the “secondary effect”.

In the case of the article I share in my classes, the artist then creates unique paintings about what she sees when she hears a song. It’s fascinating.

There are so many different types of associations one could have with synesthesia, and the ones I knew about did not seem to apply to me. Even so, I also know I’ve seen weird things that others haven’t. Heard things. Smelled things. Tasted things. But I’ve written them off as yes-they-happened, but they shall-remain-unexplained-experiences.

The reasons for them seemed elusive. My experiences are real, and it is what it is. Whatever that is. I assume there is a scientific reason for what I’ve experienced, but I know science is slow to explain things (it has to be!).

Last week I saw an (older) online video about these two women’s father who had aphantasia. (Watch it–it’s awesome.) I’ve known about this phenomenon too–it’s where your mind’s eye stays darkened. But I never thought that I could have any variation of it, or synesthesia for that matter.

It seems I can be daft.

I consider myself fairly visual. But could I have a variation of aphantasia, or maybe just not be as visual as I thought? Apparently the mind’s eye is on a spectrum. Where do you lie on it? I’m thinking I’m between darkness and somewhat vivid, depending on… well a lot of things.

This could be why I’ve never been able to draw from my mind’s eye. Maybe my mind’s eye is blank! But seeing something, with my optical nerve, well, that I can draw.

Seeing with my mind’s eye, it’s definitely up in my head, not in front of my eyes. I don’t know how else to describe it.

I can have crazy vivid and realistic dreams. I can also have black dreams, if you will, and a nonstop narrator. Doing some research, dreams apparently come from a different part of the brain than the mind’s eye.

But there are other “dreams” I have, dreams that are… incredibly realistic. And I’m lucid in them. Could that be astral travel? Where things are brighter than waking life, where I see darkness dissolve into a bright reality? Science does not support astral travel at this venture. Here’s an article about it.

Keep on this spiral with me. This all led me back to synesthesia, wondering if aphantasia and synesthesia were connected. (Right now, via science, they are not). Then this led me to the things that I do see, or things I have seen. You see, I’ve even written about emotional synesthesia in relation to whether or not you can see auras.

So, ding ding ding duh!

I decided maybe these colors mean I’m a stinking synesthete myself! I’ve been meditating more, watching the colors, fully enveloping them. What if they do mean something? What if I could utilize what I see to better help people when I’m doing bodywork?

While meditating last week, it expanded even more. Joy filled my body, and like a sparkler drawing a heart picture in slow motion for a photo, my darkened eyelids were breached. As I was lucid, I popped my eyes open in hilarity, excited about what I had just seen with my mind, rather than my optical nerve.

I’m assuming if I see a heart again I know that means joy to the fullest extent!

More memories unlocked. Of me seeing words spelled in my mind, or the fact that I math weird (per other people’s opinions–I think I math just fine, thank you very much). How about the time that I almost didn’t die, and I was considered pre-syncope, only I never felt like I was fainting at all. And I have fainted, so I know what that’s like.

Instead, I really felt like a part of my brain went black, a part that was not the optical nerve.

Naturally, I cannot quite figure out where I fit on the spectrum. I’ve overcomplicated it and brought in too many other factors–like dreams and astral travel. Perhaps this is me being on that wonderful wave of consciousness The Telepathy Tapes keeps bringing up, and these things are on my radar for a reason. Even if I’m slow – or overcomplicating (hey, ADHD!) — this whole personal exploration process of synesthesia.

More links:

This hyper blog post is brought to you by Allison of Nani Lotus Bodywork, & powered by her words via Meditating Squirrel. Thank you for reading! You can also support this blog with a one-time donation, or by sharing it with others.

BTW, AI was used in creating the digital pic, but these words, all mine! ❤

The Telepathy Tapes/Talk Tracks – The Energy Healing Episode

Over two weeks ago, I finally wrote and published my post about The Telepathy Tapes, a podcast which ultimately is about non-speaking autistic people and how they fit into this world. However, as the documentarist and podcaster, Ky Dickens, reveals during the episodes of the first season, things are not as they seem.

Dickens’ companion podcast, Talk Tracks, is meant to further explore ideas expressed in The Telepathy Tapes. Coming from various viewpoints, Talk Tracks tries to connect ideas of science, reality, spirituality and psi-abilities into a better understanding of our conscious existence.

Two episodes have dropped since I shared my post, and the one that came out this past weekend is the one I’ve been waiting for. Dr. Shamini Jain and Madhu Anziani speak about their personal experiences in reference to energy healing, energy work, and in particular, Reiki. Deepak Chopra is even brought in to talk about consciousness as a whole.

From miraculous healing to the dissection of energy work through the lens of science, the biofield of life is explored. This field of consciousness is unmasked. Double blind and placebo controlled studies are mentioned; a paraplegic walks again.

If you’ve ever been intrigued by energy work, energy healing, energy medicine, energy therapy, energy psychology, whatever you want to call it, you need to listen to this episode. The Telepathy Tapes itself was hard for me to listen to without getting excited about the broader context of what was being described. But having Talk Tracks finally deep dive into Reiki itself, has given me an added bounce to my step.

The studies Dr. Jain mentions in the podcast seem to come back to the same premise—> there’s just something about that energy healing! Placebo can heal; physical touch is great. But if intention is involved, intention to connect to a healing energy, well…

In one study, cortisol levels were remarkably regulated during energy healing sessions in comparison to the sham energy work sessions. I’m not a fan of testing animals, but another study of mice showed the slowdown of cancer cells with energy work.

I’m not here to convince you that energy healing is real. I’m here to convince you to listen to this episode of Talk Tracks, and what the hell, check out The Telepathy Tapes website, or just listen to all of the dang episodes while you’re at it.

The episode ends with Chopra asking us to have reverence. He thinks we should be in wonderment that we are here witnessing life, as life. He says we should be surprised that we even exist.

Are you shocked? Listen now!

Want to try energy work? Visit Nani Lotus for more information about the services I offer.

The Telepathy Tapes – A Podcast of Hope

For months, I have contemplated how to start this post.

Fellow Reiki pal, Leslie, and I (via Woo Woo BBQ) even attempted to record our own podcast episodes about it, but kept getting tripped up. It’s not because it’s impossible to believe; it’s not because it’s too easy to be skeptical and ignore. Rather, it’s just… so much.

If you haven’t yet heard about The Telepathy Tapes, it’s probably because you aren’t heavily affiliated with either the autistic or the woo-woo world. My guess, though, as these two worlds continue to collide, more and more mainstream arenas will begin to take note. One side will try to heavily discredit what’s been going on. The other side may–hopefully–keep walking that thin line between falling over an imaginary crevasse that divides what we know, and that which we suspect.

The world is not as it seems.

If we teeter into the chasm, though, maybe, just maybe, we will be okay.

The Telepathy Tapes, at its core, is about non-speaking autistic people, their families and how they live within the world. It also includes interviews with teachers and their students, scientists and skeptics.

While the autistic spectrum touches my family at a very superficial level, there are those whose bodies are so at odds with their spirits, they cannot communicate.

Except, they can. Paradigms be damned. As it turns out, the veil appears to be thin for those who don’t have full access to their bodies. Finding new ways to communicate, and heal, and learn, these individuals appear to have easier entry into worlds some neurotypical people can’t even begin to fathom.

Ky Dickens, who is at the helm of the podcast, is also a documentary filmmaker. She is creating a film about the people of the podcast. (Side note–I don’t know which came first, the podcast or the film.) As she began to know the people she was interviewing, she was shocked to uncover an intricate web of inexplicable phenomena.

She reaffirms what I’ve believed for a long time. These psy-phenomena of worlds unseen are considered nothing more than a hoax because science is lacking in its ability to study and explain them. (Hello, funding; hello, stigma!)

Not because they don’t exist. Not because they aren’t real, or rather, real enough.

Science is made to study the material world. When things become too abstract, it seems like it’s impossible to measure them. Yet, we’ve all felt love. How do you measure that?

Can you measure thinking about a friend and then her calling you after you thought about her? What came first? Her calling you, or your thought?

If you know me, you know I adore science. I love learning why and how things work. This does not take the magic away, but rather, amplifies the wonder. Science can be hard, and complicated, rather impossible for me to make sense. It can also be very simple.

And of course, science, like anything else, can be weaponized.

Our autistic friends have personalities, dreams and fears like the rest of us. Yes, they can sometimes communicate to us by actions or through a method called spelling. Rather than using science to disprove that a nonverbal person is able to communicate through typing with help (and some of these people have learned how to do it without assistance), why don’t we find ways to measure the telepathic gifts they’ve developed in place of speech?

And there’re a lot of woo woo things going on here. We’re talking conversing across space, and maybe even time. We’re talking about reading people’s minds; we’re talking about healing.

Things this podcast describes sure sound an awful lot like the energy healing portion of my business. Hi there, Reiki. Heya to my tagline of being more than just a massage…an experience, if you will.

There are even animal episodes which will give you paws (I love a good pun!) about every creature you’ve encountered. You’ll discover love stories and transcendence. You’ll learn about death, about religious ideas. You will shed some tears.

You will feel hope.

I highly recommend giving a listen to the podcast, as well as its sister work, The Talk Tracks. The second part of the podcast seems to be less about the specific people covered in The Telepathy Tapes, and more generalized about the topics that were brought up.

The messages are the same, though–even though science can’t prove it, we all have seen and felt things we can’t explain. The nonverbal autistic population appears to have been grossly misunderstood and are more adept at these gifts than speakers.

Love, and hope, are what matter.

We are all connected.

The Influence of Children’s Books on My Life, Reiki & Writing

One of my favorite classes in college was children’s literature. I really had no idea why this was the case, but upon starting to re-read The Time Quintet by Madeline L’engle, I can see how books I read as child not only shaped how I write as an adult, but also my process of thought, and thus, my life. (As an aside here–I’d also like to interject that Arthurian mystery was fairly intriguing to me as a child, too, and Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series certainly shaped me as well.)

Why was I so open to even try Reiki, let alone practice it? For those who don’t know what Reiki is, firstly, it doesn’t have to be capitalized. I just always do it. Secondly, it’s either a) a part of the measurable energy force within and outside of ourselves or b) the practice of Reiki, a hands-on or distance modality often used by holistic health and alternative health providers. You can visit Reiki.org for more information, or here from Nani Lotus Bodywork.

There’s traditional training of Reiki, which is Usui Reiki, and considered the original means to train. But now there are so many other types of Reiki out there, from one I’ve always wanted to try, Lubeck’s Rainbow Reiki, to Rand’s Holy Fire Reiki, to ones I’ve never even heard of. Sekhem Reiki? Lightarian Reiki? What?! It gets confusing.

However, I’m assuming each of these different types all have a form of distance Reiki. Distance Reiki, from my own personal training and knowledge, can move beyond space and time. We may not understand it with our limited thinking, but I’ve seen and felt it work. It just is.

Logically, you can think back to the past while you are in the present. You can also assume things about the future while you are in the present. Thus, time is not linear, even to the human brain and body, because you can think about things and have a visceral reaction in the present.

Here’s where it gets fascinating in the context of my own life. I read these books as a child, and somewhere within me, I registered the notion that light, and dark, needed to strike a balance to both exist. Without one, there is not the other.

I registered that extrasensory perception (ESP), to some extent, must certainly be real. Not because it’s this magical concept and wishful thinking can conjure reality, but because there are so many inexplicable things in life. Déjà vu, for one; thinking about someone and them calling you on the phone, for another; gleaning messages from random things that you see at that perfect moment; or odd shared dreams, weird shared experiences.

I simply call it being in the flow.

Science strives to define these inexplicable experiences, and oftentimes it does. Science is magic; magic is science. Humanity has been thought provoked for only so long, right, so how could we possibly have scientifically proven all of the magic that exists?

L’engle describes kything, this process of “going within” others and their experiences, connecting even more than regular ol’ ESP. The way she writes about it made me realize, oh my God, this is Distance Reiki. (Another aside: this reminded me of when I was personally learning about Reiki–during the last season of the TV show LOST. And guess what? We chalked up the light at the center of the island as Reiki as well!)

All of these pop culture references, all of these hidden books, or even books in plain sight. Beyond our wildest dreams is the true reality; our limitations taking us only so far. I understand why reading is considered dangerous and wilding. It truly can open your mind like a parachute.

I have no idea what drew me to these books as a child, but I can clearly see how the magic of them shaped my reality, and even my own writing! I imagine that when The Light Thrower series is said and done, my own themes will continue to explore good, and bad, light, and dark, and the delicate balance of the music of existence. And I imagine, as I continue to practice and teach Reiki, that more and more experiences from my childhood will continue to support the expanding reality of my today.

Thoughts on Panic Attacks, Burnout & Being Death Defying Amongst Wellness Providers

Let’s be brutally honest here. Wellness providers at large? Yoga instructors and the like? I’m going to say something scandalous. Here it is: these people, they are human. They are not death defying. They get burnout. They have panic attacks. They won’t always practice what they preach.

At this point, I have followed Yoga with Adriene for a really long time. Not since the very beginning, but pretty darn close to it. I’ve welcomed Adriene and her specific brand of at-home yoga with open arms, finally curating something that felt like a very-real yoga practice due to the videos she offers on YouTube. Over time, Adriene has become fairly famous, having carved out a niche in the wellness industry.

In the recent edition of Women’s Health magazine, Adriene spoke about her experience with burnout, a largely taboo topic for those in this industry. Whether only put on by others, or by ourselves, the stigma of burnout or, for even a short period of time, not applying what we preach, is very real. We are supposed to be mentally strong, these generally guiding beacons of health as we help steer others into who they were meant to be.

I’m not going to call it an illusion, but if a spade’s a spade…

I remember a woman who was vegan, fit, healthy as can be, got sick from cancer and died from it. I also remember a nasty comment from another woman who was almost downright smug about this woman’s death. She had poo-pooed her attempts at arresting death by living well. She was basically saying, “See? You’re no better than the rest of us. You still died.”

But I don’t believe that people who try to live well do it because they want to cheat death. I think, and maybe those in this industry more so than some others, we recognize that death is a very active part of life, for better or worse. Death cannot be cheated, but improved living can be acquired… with forgiveness, kindness, and perseverance. The right kind of perserveance, that is, that doesn’t lead to burnout.

There will be the charlatans who act elevated above all others with their knowingness. But most of the people in the wellness industry, in the care provider realm, most that I have met are humble and acutely aware of their faults and flaws.

As those in the limelight become more vocal to the masses about their own struggles, then maybe a more generalized forgiveness for being human can become normalized, and accepted. Wellness industry leaders will tell you they’ve had plenty of failures, that they too have lapses in their own ability to walk the walk.

This is the thing, see, and I’m repeating myself to make a point. They’re human. This is how humans are. We struggle, and especially if we have the right support system, we will try to do better. If we fail, we will get up and try again. We will have moments of not walking the walk, not talking the talk. It’s normal. It’s human.

In the Women’s Health article, Adriene is very personal about what led her to have panic attacks. She notes that when she had her first one, she had gone to a hospital because she wasn’t sure what was happening. This happened to Adriene, the Queen of Calm. Since the terms burnout, panic attacks and anxiety aren’t supposed to apply to people like her, she didn’t even recognize that that’s what it was.

I too can personally attest to this as well, having a similar bout of panic attacks in my own past. If we don’t get better at recognizing the need to support our nervous systems, more and more Adrienes will continue to fall off of these pedestals, of, frankly, non-reality.

We all need to recognize when we aren’t taking enough care of ourselves. This means daily check-ins, permission to fail, permission to spend a day in bed, permission to vacation as Adriene says in the article. Did I mention permission to FAIL?

EVEN the caregivers. EVEN the yogis. EVEN the bodyworkers, the meditators. Not just even–especially so.

Adriene’s bravery sharing her story is a great step for all of us. Nobody is above failure, burning out, or having panic attacks, even the so-called-super-healthy who look like they have their sh*t together. Nobody is above death. But we all have the right to live life without the stigma of it being a big deal when we, too, fail. When we too, fall. When we, too, have panic attacks. Just like the Queen of Calm.