Inspired Action
One of the things I keep intending to do is to expand my range of cds and mp3 downloads. At the moment I think I’ve got two hypnosis CDs and just today I’ve increased my range of more spiritual recordings to three by adding my guided chakra meditation to my list.
But, as they say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. So since I’m in the self-help and personal development business I thought it might be a good idea if I stopped intending and started doing. And that was it, pretty much, until I woke up one morning filled with the inspired idea (don’t you just love the way inspiration makes you feel?) that I needed to create a chakra meditation CD. I don’t know if you know the feeling that’s part excitement, part knowing. I usually ignore it, not because the ideas aren’t good, but because I’ve got bills to pay and so I need to think about what will serve my customers best. When I serve my customers best I make more sales and so everyone benefits. I mean where would we all be if we just did what we enjoyed?
So I lay there filled with this enthusiasm and also a debate about who would want this. In the end I gave in and said to myself, ok, if it’s that important I’ll do it. So as soon as I’d finished breakfast I got started. But first let me give you some background.
Chakra Balancing
Quite a few years ago I discovered I had some skill as a healer. I also read tarot cards and used to attend Mind Body Spirit fayres and festivals. One year I decided I’d set up my stall as a healer, rather than a reader, just for something different to do so that I could enjoy the challenge of how to make it interesting for the show visitors. I decided to focus on chakra balancing. I used a pendulum to detect health or otherwise of those energy centres known as chakras and then I used my healing skills to restore to good health any chakras that were out of balance.
What I quickly discovered was that, without being given any information about the health, or otherwise of my patient, my pendulum would quickly identify problem areas that my patient then confirmed. Let me give you an example. When a chakra is healthy my pendulum would mark out a circular path at a reasonable speed. When the speed of rotation was much slower then I knew there was a problem; or when the shape of rotation was not circular there was also a problem. No movement at all meant a completely closed chakra, and so the chakra required opening before balancing could commence.
I was testing the Third eye chakra (Ajna) on one patient and the pendulum described a distorted oval path – pulling over to the right. I asked my patient if she had any problems with the right side of her head and she reported suffering from persistent headaches. A few minutes healing and when I retested the chakra it was operating normally and my patient reported that the pain had gone.
The brilliant thing about doing healing this way is that the pendulum gives a very real demonstration of the state of the chakra so it is easy to tell when the healing is complete because the chakra is restored.
Chakra balancing is working in this way with all of the chakras in turn until they are all operating energetically at the same level and the size of the vortex (diameter of the circle described by the pendulum) is also matched. I always start at Muladhara (root chakra) for grounding and then work up the body until we reach Sahasrara (crown chakra). I found that during this process my patient would quite often drift into a deep state of relaxation.
Guided Meditation
Then move forward a few years and I had a patient coming to see me for help with IBS. IBS generally requires a long period of treatments. I used a hypnotic version of chakra balancing with her. I put her into a trance and then asked her to visualise the opening of the chakras while at the same time visualising a rainbow of colour moving up through her body. She always loved this and found it created instant relief and good feeling whenever I used it with her.
Fast forward to today.
All Mixed Up
The first thing I needed was a new script, so I sat down and wrote that in the morning. In the afternoon I recorded it and mixed it with a background music track. Then came the fun part. All of my other Hypnosis Cds and mp3 downloads are only available from my own website. My intention this time was to sell through Amazon using their Createspace publishing programme. My commission is considerably smaller selling this way but I hoped I might be able to reach a much bigger audience than my own website attracts.
And that was when the fun started.
Createspace’s upload facility is a bit primitive. I record on my laptop because I produce much better sound quality than I can on my pc, so I was uploading from there. But every time the screensaver turned on (it was a 90 minute upload – and although I do have fast broadband, this was CD quality and so is a big file) Createspace lost its place and restarted the upload.
I had to go rooting around in Control Panel to turn off everything that might turn the screen off or send the laptop to sleep, I turned off all of the unnecessary stuff running in the background and still it would drop the connection at around 20% uploaded. After 5 hours of this frustrating activity I put the file on a USB flash card and plugged it into my pc. Again I had to switch off all the switching off but this time it loaded. So a simple job took around 7 hours. If only they provided FTP upload it would be so much easier.
I called it a day.
A Picture’s Worth…
The following morning I had to design all the bits of paper that go into a CD case. I hadn’t realised there was so much. The booklet which serves as the display part in the front of the case had four pages – all of which needed images and text. The tray insert that goes underneath the CD and is visible through the back of the case also needed images and words.
So I went trawling through the stock libraries looking for suitable images. Then I had to make up some words to make it seem attractive to purchasers, without making any outlandish claims that I can’t prove. It’s difficult not to be enthusiastic about something you believe in and know that it has the power to bring huge benefits to people, but we aren’t allowed to make claims unless we can prove them. The fact that I’ve experienced it, and my patients have experienced it, is just not good enough for the advertising standards people.
The trouble, it seems, is that not everyone is honest and some people just want the money without giving something of equal or greater value in return. So those of us who just want to make life a little easier for others find it difficult to get noticed.
Approval is always nice
Anyway, artwork completed and uploaded, Createspace approved of my artwork within 24 hours, even though they said it would be 20 days. I assume their approval means the quality is sufficiently high to grace the pages of Amazon alongside Cds from big publishers who pay graphic designers and artists huge amounts of money to produce the artwork for their cds. Then I had to buy, yes buy, a proof copy, pay lots of postage because they make them in the US and I live in the UK and wait four to six weeks for it to arrive.
Chakra Meditation Completed
You can imagine that after three days of hard work I’m not too impressed at having to wait four weeks to get hold of a copy, so I created an mp3 version and put it on my mp3 downloads page.
I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product, but I’m thinking I need to get started on the next one. So if you have any suggestions about what would be helpful for you, or just what you think might help a lot of people then please post them below. I’d love to hear your ideas.