To stop stalling, simply go
To stop doubting, simply know …

To stop closing, simply feel
To stop hurting, simply heal …

To stop holding, simply give
To stop counting, simply live …

To what meditation are you opening today?

In my mountain garden in Japan, ripe blueberries fall into my hands.

Energy Doorways into wisdom open.

In what ways do you sense yourself growing into wisdom?

High on a hill in Japan

Summer cicadas are chirring

Sense the singing

Of your own deep heart

This is Catrien Ross

Founder of Energy Doorways

Have you listened to the singing of your own heart today?

Your amazing hands can sense energy.

The energy of the human body.

The energy of a wild bird.

The energy of an ancient tree.

Your amazing hands can sense the energy of a wild boar.

The energy of cats.

The energy of dogs.

Your amazing hands can sense the energy of all living entities.

This is Catrien Ross, Founder of Energy Doorways.

How do your hands sense energy?

This is Catrien Ross, of Energy Doorways.

I am in Aokigahara, the “Sea of Trees” at the foot of Mount Fuji.

Deep in the forest, Aokigahara voices are sounding.

Voices of the wind.

Of the sky.

Of birds.

Voices of the trees.

Of the Earth.

Voices of volcanic rock.

Aokigahara voices are sounding.

This is Catrien Ross, of Energy Doorways, in Aokigahara forest, Japan.

I am entering Aokigahara forest, Japan’s so-called suicide forest.

This is Catrien Ross, of Energy Doorways.

For many Japanese

Aokigahara is a gloomy, scary place of death.

It is also a magnificent forest on the slopes of Mount Fuji.

Teeming with life.

Filled with fantastic formations.

Twisted, tangled roots

Clambering over the volcanic rock.

Filled with secrets

Power

Energy.

It is not a pretty place.

It is a challenging place.

A powerful place.

Aokigahara

Is now considered the second most popular suicide location in the world.

Some one hundred bodies are found here every year.

Why do people come here to die

Amid such beauty?

Is it the fantastic formations?

Is it that the depth of this forest

Resonates with the darkness?

It is a sea of trees

Unlike any you have ever seen.

Look at the roots.

The shapes.

Sense the atmosphere here.

For me, Aokigahara is filled with Energy Doorways

That lead into positive insights

To transform your life.

Fungus that looks like a toad.

Gnarled roots, covered in moss.

With secret entryways

Energy Doorways into the center of the Earth.

The suicide forest reminds me

That life is about perception and response.

In Aokigahara

It is easy to perceive the darkness

And respond by choosing death.

Fall through the trees’s roots here

And no-one

Will ever find you again.

It is a ruin of a forest.

At the same time, teeming with life.

Is it also possible

To perceive the light breaking into the darkness

And respond by choosing life?

This is Catrien Ross, in Aokigahara

Energy Doorways.

When I wrote about this forest 16 years ago in my book, Supernatural and Mysterious Japan (reissued under the new title, Japanese Ghost Stories), Aokigahara was already becoming known as Japan’s suicide forest.

I experience Aokigahara as a place of beauty and mystery and powerful energy doorways.

How was your brief visit to Aokigahara today?

To view more videos like this, please consider subscribing to my Youtube channel, EnergyDoorways.

How did the month of April unfold for you?

As Henry David Thoreau observed, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

Celebration or connection is in the eye that beholds.

Commiseration or complaint is a matter of the heart’s perception.

For me, in this year’s natural rhythms, April was a month of celebrations.

Celebrating ALLIA:

My friend Orna Ross, the Irish writer and poet, launched The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLIA) at the London Book Fair on April 18. The launch was followed by an inaugural meeting of the Irish branch in Dublin on April 24.

Orna is a best-selling novelist turned indie publisher who founded ALLIA as a global, non-profit, collaborative collective of independent self-publishing writers.

I am delighted to be the community builder for ALLIA in Japan and you can see for yourself what the celebration is all about by visiting ALLIA’s website at allianceindependentauthors.org

All the best to you and ALLIA, Orna!

Congratulations to my dear friend Hans for celebrating 84 years of firmly sensing nature’s rhythms and cycles. Hans, also known as Dr. Johann G. Laetz, serves as the wise and compassionate Oracle for Energy Doorways.

Happy Birthday, Hans!

A pat on the back to myself on the formal approval of my doctoral dissertation. I am now Catrien Ross, D.Th.

Given my cross-cultural background, it is not surprising that my spiritual perspective is broad and deep, apart from any organized religion or creed.

I celebrate intrinsic spirituality and healing, awareness of nature’s rhythms and intelligence, and women’s wisdom.

Congratulations to me!

Celebrating April:

As in … the little wild boar who decided to make a home with us.

As in … the Australian client who made a first trip ever to Japan to take sessions in personal energy dynamics with me and the deep shifts that unfolded at the foot of Mount Fuji.

Celebrating All Things Spring:

As in … picking baby ostrich fern from the banks of the mountain stream alongside the house and enjoying the fresh, mineral tang of the curled fiddleheads.

As in … harvesting an abundance of shiitake mushrooms from our logs, with warm memories of Barbara from Scotland, who helped prepare the logs three years ago.

As in … savoring the scent of plum blossoms in the early morning air.

How about your celebrations of April and all things Spring?

And how will May unfold for you?

How connected with your own inner nature do you feel today?

Your inner nature expresses the ebb and flow of your personal rhythms.

You rush forward to meet life or you withdraw – often in confusion and doubt – according to the timing of rhythms expressing within you at any particular moment.

Your personal cycles and rhythms reflect the greater natural world communicating through you.

Your sensory experience is actually Nature connecting with nature within you.

Since 2007 I have been teaching and writing in Japan about Natural Energy Wisdom,™ the self-growth process I originated.

Designed to empower and unfold your inner, innate wisdom, Natural Energy Wisdom™ is the result of my personal study of natural cycles and rhythms experienced through living for over 15 years in the mountains of Yamanashi, Japan.

This self-growth process arises from the wisdom of your inner nature interconnecting and interacting with the greater world of Nature that supports you and sustains you.

It also honors your natural creativity, your natural essence, as well as your natural intelligence.

At the same time, Natural Energy Wisdom™ teaches you to become aware of the communication you continually have with your body, with your mind, with your spirit, with natural energy flows.

Your natural sensations and feelings are important because they constantly call your attention to the situation or focus that aroused those feelings in the first place.

Your good feelings, for example, indicate your continuing natural survival.

You learn what is healthy and supportive for you.

Natural sensations were not invented by human beings.

Each natural sense you experience is actually Nature speaking to you and through you.

As you recognize what is essential for your survival, you also learn what does not support you and sustain you.

For example, becoming aware of your inner nature while consciously connecting with Nature gives you a very special feeling of self-acceptance and compassionate love.

As your awareness deepens, in your personal relationships and situations you more and more begin to look for this love and acceptance you sense within Nature and within yourself.

Little by little, you learn to transform or release relationships and situations that do not reflect this deeper self-esteem.

So connecting with your inner nature and Nature means connecting with the deepest and wisest part of yourself.

I see Natural Energy Wisdom™ as a natural bridge integrating body, mind and spirit.

As such, it works both with the intrinsic intelligence of the DNA in the cells of your body, and also with the greater intelligence of the cosmos.

Yet nature connection is not an intellectual exercise you simply read about in a book or listen to at some lecture.

At its heart, Natural Energy Wisdom™ encourages you to be very real, very vital, very practical.

Because you become physically and spiritually grounded, you empower the active now, the present reality of your actual life.

One critical pillar of Natural Energy Wisdom™ is physically connecting again by going outside into the natural world.

As you replenish your connections you rediscover your natural spiritual connection.

Connecting with Nature is thus a profound way to unfold yourself spiritually.

You find yourself expressing your natural spirituality in your daily life through increasingly healthy integration of the many aspects of your body, mind, spirit.

Through Natural Energy Wisdom™ you rediscover for yourself that cosmic energy and your personal energy are one and the same.

You stimulate the joy of engaging your nature within and without.

And you affirm the certainty of empowering your natural energy flows.

This article is the first in a series of blog posts about Natural Energy Wisdom.™

My self-growth process was introduced in my book, Hikari no Uzu, published in Japanese by Energy Doorways in 2009.

Now, as I begin writing about Natural Energy Wisdom™ in English, I would love to hear your comments and insights.

How do you feel right now about your own inner nature and the ebb and flow of your natural rhythms and cycles?

Are you resonating with the mysterious energies of the heart on Valentine’s Day, today?

My blog post celebrates some Valentine’s Day inspiration with you.

Only from the heart can you touch the sky – Jelalludin Rumi

Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving – Kahlil Gibran

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens – Carl Gustav Jung

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The holiest of all holidays are those/Kept by ourselves in silence and apart/The secret anniversaries of the heart – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The amount of happiness that you have depends on the amount of freedom you have in your heart - Thich Nhat Hanh

And how about this heart-filled video from the Institute of HeartMath?

Happy Valentine’s Day from the foot of Mount Fuji!

Catrien Ross
February 14, 2012

Has someone or something needled you lately?

What hidden truths about yourself did your reaction reveal?

Inner sensitivities can be powerfully provoked by the jab of an unwelcome goad.

Feeling needled can trigger painful reflexes.

That’s because what needles you the most is often what you most need to learn.

The person or issue causing you the greatest discomfort is time and again the essential pinprick that stimulates your deeper self-growth.

You hamper your own growth by hostility towards to the very needling that can teach you more about yourself.

Well, an annual celebration in Japan today offers some unusual encouragement.

Translated into English as the Festival of Broken Needles, Hari Kuyo is a memorial service for broken, rusty, and otherwise worn-out needles held on February 8 (or December 8, depending on the region).

Discarded needles and pins are brought to shrines and temples where they are blessed for the years of usefulness they provided.

They are then stuck into a slab of tofu and released from service.

Hari Kuyo traditionally celebrates the day when seamstresses in Japan were permitted to enjoy a rare holiday from their daily duties.

The softness of tofu absorbs, not only the sharpness of needles, but also the pent-up sorrows of a life spent sewing for survival.

Hari Kuyo presents the opportunity for a moment of relaxation and gratitude:

A welcome awareness that a life filled with needles might not be so hard after all.

Sticking needles into tofu symbolizes a shift in perception that transforms your habitual reaction to the provocations that needle you.

Whenever you take what needles you personally, you amplify your pain.

Your life lesson becomes that much more difficult.

But habits are simply energetic responses that have settled into fixed patterns.

Changing the vibrational frequency changes the pattern.

This change in frequency starts with a shift in your perception.

How would it be if you stick what needles you into soft tofu?

Rather than be goaded yet again into your habitual response, you choose instead the softness of acceptance.

As the needling finds its mark within, you bless it for the hidden truth it triggers.

You thank the pinprick that stirs an unresolved issue into your conscious awareness.


I am not a seamstress, but Japanese acupuncture is part of the energy medicine and spiritual healing services at Energy Doorways.

The two photos show used acupuncture needles in tofu, along with some colorful Japanese pins.

Receiving acupuncture treatment is another way of transmuting the stab of needles into a positive experience that redefines the flow of your energy patterns.


By accepting and thanking what needles you, you free yourself from the perspectives that confine you.

Your hidden truths can surface to transform your pain.

Like the participants in Hari Kuyo today, you hold the power to release the fixed patterns and worn-out needles that no longer serve you.

So next time someone or something needles you, why not have some inner tofu ready?