I am going to begin this blog with the same disclaimer that appears at the beginning of Mirror of the Soul: The author of this blog (Tania M. DeVizia) does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any information in this blog for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author, Tania M. DeVizia, and Balboa Press assume no responsibility for your actions.

When I earned my master’s degree from the University of the Arts in 1994, I had intended to become an orchestral flutist. The irony never ceases to amaze me that the shyest girl in Coughlin High School’s Class of 1988 suddenly wanted to assume the role of performer in front of crowds of people. As a graduate student at UARTS, I was “more high strung than a harp,” in the words of the orchestra conductor, Sean Deibler. Despite my shyness, I have always been a happy person, or, in the words of my colleague, Nick Driscoll, “terminally happy.” I adored Mr. Deibler as a conductor because he was a gifted musician, and he had a wicked sense-of-humor. Laughter filled his rehearsal hall. I remember him saying to me after observing my uncontrollable giggling and perpetual happy face that “we happy people have to stick together because the world simply does not like happy people.” Truer words were never spoken. Rest in peace, Sean!

I took a handful of auditions shortly after graduation but decided the process would be futile until I could get my stage fright or performance anxiety under control. I am a firm believer in the fact that when the student is ready the teacher appears. Music was always my first love, my first passion, but it would take a back seat to a new obsession – mind/body/spirit medicine. I temporarily abandoned the music history books and flute periodicals in exchange for the works of some of the greatest minds in alternative medicine. I approached this new hobby with the same enthusiasm I had for Bach, Beethoven and the boys and devoured the texts of Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil, Wayne Dyer, Joan Borysenko, Larry Dossey, Eric Pearl and William Lee Rand. In fact, I have been following Wayne Dyer for years and was stunned when he crossed over to the Other Side last month. I chose the publisher, Balboa Press, for Mirror of the Soul because Dr. Dyer had posted a link to Balboa on his Facebook page. He encouraged aspiring authors to consider Balboa Press because its parent company is the reputable Hay House. I am grateful I saw the post because this journey with Balboa and all on staff has been amazing. I couldn’t be happier and never expected to have a printed copy of my book in hand only four months after signing on with them. Balboa was the perfect fit for me, and it tickles me to think I have had to access my inner Italian Stallion as I learn how to self-promote a text that took a year for me to write. In the words of Wayne Dyer (and Carl Jung), that’s synchronicity, or perhaps it is a “God wink” in the words of Squire Rushnell.

As I was exploring various techniques to control stage fright in the mid 1990’s, I suddenly found myself being led to different healing modalities. I was intrigued with the power of the mind to control the body because my body is able to maintain a state of perfect health. I attribute that to playing the flute and my thought process because thoughts are powerful things. At the subatomic level, scientists can affect the outcome of an experiment merely by holding an intention about that outcome. Wayne Dyer’s Power of Intention discusses how intentions create reality. It is brilliant! Chapter two of my book, Mirror of the Soul, deals with hands-on healing and miracles. I share my sister’s story of recovering from leukemia after being diagnosed at the age of two in 1979. She nearly died three times, so my parents investigated complementary techniques (hands-on healing, chanting) to heal Christa’s body, especially when allopathic treatment had to be temporarily suspended when Christa contracted chicken pox while undergoing chemotherapy. It was at that point in time – one of the most frightening I can recall from my childhood – that even a nine-year-old kid like myself understood that doctors can only do so much. Where does one turn when allopathic medicine has reached its limits? Wayne Dyer was diagnosed with leukemia in 2009. He chose to forego chemotherapy altogether and sought the help of John of God in Brazil. In Hebrew, the name “John” translates “Graced by Yahweh.” Perhaps it is the reason John of God has healed so many people. Wayne Dyer also used the affirmation “I am well” to heal his body. His family posted on Facebook after he died that the coroner found no trace of leukemia in his body, and his official cause of death was a heart attack. I address sound healing in chapter two of my book as a complementary therapy, too, and mention that Ut queant laxis, a hymn to St. John the Baptist, provided the ancient solfeggio syllable frequencies that have been used to make tuning forks used to restore the health of the body. Scientists have used the Mi syllable frequency to actually repair DNA. I don’t believe it was an accident that a hymn to St. John who was “graced by Yahweh” could be used in the healing process.

In 1998, after the death of my calico cat, I discovered Reiki as a healing modality. My cat had an aggressive form of mammary cancer, and my vet was very pessimistic about the outcome, so I put her to sleep. This devastated me to the point that I had to find some sort of alternative therapy to keep my tabby kittens healthy. Reiki is universal life force energy. The Reiki ideals are as follows:

Just for today, do not anger
Do not worry and be filled with gratitude
Devote yourself to your work. Be kind to people.

Every morning and evening, join your hands in prayer.
Pray these words to your heart
and chant these words with your mouth

Reiki is not a religion, and more information about it can be found at www.reiki.org. I was drawn to this healing modality because I had witnessed my sister receive hands-on healing from members of a prayer community. Reiki resonated with me, increased my intuition and helped me tap into a creative wellspring of ideas. It helped my expression as a flutist so much so that a concert-goer in Tivoli, Italy, told me that while he was watching me play a concert, he could “see the face of God on my heart.“ After practicing Reiki, I noticed that I had calmed down considerably. I was no longer the student who was “more high strung than a harp.” I could play recitals, orchestral concerts and give public lectures in front of students older than I was without any stage fright. It was a miracle! I got my ego out of the way, and performing became less about my insecurities and more about the music. As Wayne Dyer said, “EGO is an acronym for Edging God Out.”

On 2 February 2007, I was walking across Rittenhouse Square en route to a rehearsal of the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia shortly after six o’clock on a Friday night when I was hit by a car while crossing Walnut at 18^th street. It was one of the few nights I waited for the green light, but unfortunately the car turning left onto Walnut also had the green light. It hit me just as I was about to put my foot up on the curb in front of Barnes & Noble. It happened so fast I only remember seeing the headlights, rolling over the hood of the minivan and then falling into a puddle on the ground. I didn’t even know the point of impact. I got up after the initial shock and accepted a ride to the rehearsal from the driver who hit me. He was talking on a cell phone, so I guess it was lucky for me that he had to slow down to make that left. Playing that rehearsal was a blessing-in-disguise because it gave me something productive to focus on, especially since I had to sight-read the principal flute part. After the rehearsal ended, I could hardly stand up from my chair and then realized that the car clipped both my knees. When I returned home, I applied a bit of ice for a few hours and gave myself Reiki until the pain subsided. I was back to my toning cord workout three days later. I contemplated the reasons I endured months of nightmares about an incident in which I was not seriously injured and wondered what lessons I was supposed to learn from it. Our knees represent the part of our anatomy that allows us to bend. Perhaps I was too rigid or unwilling to bend and thus needed to open my mind to a greater wellspring of possibilities and be more accepting of those with opposing viewpoints. That accident was a much-needed wake-up call in which I was reminded that circumstances can turn on a dime. Love and gratitude are real; everything else is just details.

The tabby cats I owned were six months apart in age but were both diagnosed with aggressive tumors in their jaws within six months of each other. Pumpkin’s tumor literally popped up overnight. My vet warned me of the aggressive nature of the tumor and recommended that Pumpkin take antibiotics for the rest of his life. I was reluctant to give him the drugs because they could destroy his kidneys before the cancer killed him. Animals are much more receptive to energy healing than humans. They lack a human’s skepticism. I gave him daily Reiki treatments and fed him plain organic yogurt to kill the infection. He loved the yogurt, and the infection disappeared. Pumpkin died suddenly of a heart attack six months later. Andy’s tumor was in the back of his mouth, and the vet wanted to remove his teeth. I wouldn’t consent to that because Andy’s greatest pleasure was eating, and I wanted him to enjoy his food. He loved the yogurt, too, and it healed the infection entirely. The Reiki helped the tumor shrink as well. The vet informed me that Andy had three months to live because of the aggressive nature of his tumor, too. I was unwilling to accept that prognosis. On a whim, I contacted a Reiki master and scientist at one of the best universities in the country. I was astounded by the kindness of a stranger I never met and his willingness to help me out. He graciously answered my email and recommended some techniques I could use to help my dying cat get through the Christmas holidays peacefully. His techniques were a miracle for me, and I euthanized Andy 21 months after the vet’s diagnosis. He had lived 7 times longer than she had anticipated. The Reiki master I consulted also told me about Tong Ren therapy, which was developed by Tom Tam, an acupuncturist (www.tomtam.com). I devoured all of Tom Tam’s books over the Christmas break and decided to study that healing modality in 2011. Anyone can do it! Anyone, that is, who has childlike faith. It is acupuncture without needles and has helped stage-four cancer patients who have tried every form of allopathic treatment without any hope of recovery. These patients, in most cases, completely recover. I am in awe of this treatment and practice it on myself and send it long-distance. I enthusiastically recommend any of Tom Tam’s books and a book written by Rick Kuethe entitled Tong Ren Therapy: What It is, Why It Works, and How to Do It. Rick Kuethe was a concert pianist until his wife was diagnosed with cancer and nearly died. She recovered her health with Tong Ren, so Rick became a practitioner!

The final healing modality I want to address is that of water. I reference the work of Masaru Emoto in Mirror of the Soul. His NY Times bestseller The Hidden Messages in Water is an amazing book. He conducted experiments in which he froze water samples, labeled them with words like “love,” “gratitude,” “fear,” etc. and then studied the crystals under a microscope. Positive words produced beautiful crystals, whereas negative words formed no crystals at all. He sent some people to a polluted lake and had them pray over the water. After an hour had gone by, the lake became clearer. He believed that since our bodies are more than 70% water, we need to be kind to ourselves and others in order to promote and maintain perfect health. Music can also be used to heal the body, and I discuss several people who use tuning forks to promote perfect health in my new book. Sound travels four times faster in water than it does in air, and, again, our bodies are 70% water. Last summer, I discovered the water cure (www.watercure2.org), which was developed by Dr. Batmanghelidj, an Iranian doctor. I was amused by his name, Dr. Batman, because I am such a huge superhero fan. He reveals in his books that illnesses manifest because of dehydration, so drinking water can cure most ailments. Sea Salt is added to a few glasses of water in order to keep the water in the cells long enough for it to repair said cells. I found his research fascinating and have been following his advice for the past fifteen months. The results I’ve experienced have been miraculous!

When I discuss the human energy field in chapter two of my book, I mention that it is both electric and magnetic. Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra always said that anything we perceive to be solid is actually just vibrating at a much slower pace. Our physical body only appears solid. It actually has several layers of energy, which keep it perfectly “in tune.” Perhaps that is why tuning forks can restore balance to the body or entrain it. Water is a poor conductor of electricity, but salt is an excellent conductor of electricity so perhaps using Sea Salt in the electric human energy field is not so crazy. Dr. Batman warns against low-salt diets, as salt is needed for the heart and brain to function efficiently. As an energy healer who has worked with frequencies of the human energy field and as a musician who can attest to the healing power of sound, I tend to believe Sea Salt can not only cleanse the physical body but the energy field as well. I have always felt more refreshed after swimming in the ocean! Again, I am not a scientist, so I don’t recommend any of these treatments. I merely am sharing information that has fascinated me for twenty years. I am grateful that what started out as a quest for overcoming my shyness and stage fright has resulted in a wealth of options for maintaining perfect health. I am perfect, whole and complete!