What if you don’t find it easy to just be happy? Then, it may be that you feel in need of healing. Magic is the art of being truly focused on one’s desires. Healing seems to be almost its opposite.

Healing happens when one allows oneself to sink through the many layers of defences we use to protect ourselves. It is these defences that create tension in our bodies and nervous systems. There are layers of belief and of identity, strategies we use to defend ourselves from what we do not want and to achieve what we do, and beneath these are layers of emotion. What is hidden underneath all these one does not know until one arrives there and the process of letting go into one’s core can be frightening. A skilled healer may help in the process of finding the way through these layers.

Everyone who has looked has found that what is underneath all these layers is our being. From this place deep inside where we know who we are, it is possible to see the grasping and the pushing away, all that is exhausting our energies. In this place of inner relaxation, it is possible to see what ails us and, perhaps, to address it. Often, it is possible to affect one’s life situation in a positive way or to bring physical healing. Always, it is possible to relax with what is.

This is the art of healing.

This art has been discovered again and again and has been described in many ways. Brandon Bays explains it in her book The Journey as does Dr Rahasya Kraft in Avalanches and Awakenings, in which he introduces Counselling from the Heart. To be relaxed with what is seems to us so distant a goal and yet it is closer to us than our own breathing. In truth, it is very simple.

"When a clear and compassionate consciousness comes to a wound, the wound disappears, evaporates.”

Here’s a very easy exercise for any time you are feeling stressed. It takes about three minutes, so you can do it at the office, on the bus or almost anywhere. Just take a few moments of time out.

Lovingly place one hand on your lower belly and one on your heart. Now notice where you feel your breath lifting your hand up and down and follow it for a moment. Is it the upper hand or the lower one that is rising and falling, or both of them?

If you notice that the lower hand is not moving much, then the breath is not reaching to your belly. If you like, you can gently experiment with allowing the breathing to deepen until your hand is rising and falling with the breath. This is not serious, it can be done playfully. It will put you in touch with deeper sources of energy within, relax and enliven you.

After a few minutes, you can take this relaxation and restored energy back to whatever you were doing before.