Caring Palms is pleased to announce a major change to the website. These changes make the site much more professional looking as well as user friendly. No more are things hidden under three individual and separate sections. Everything is right on the front page with drop down menus to under most topics. And all the information is available no matter what page you are on (with the only exception being articles and journal entries).

Everything you need to know about massage is under the Massage tab, Reiki under the Reiki tab (including class schedules where you can sign up for upcoming classes), and continuing education under the Continuing Education tab. A summary of pricing, scheduling information, booking and cancellation policies, and other classes available can be found under the Pricing and Gift Certificates tab. You can even purchase gift certificates online through PayPal.

The Massage Styles page shows all the styles of massage performed at Caring Palms in a unique accordion presentation. Just click on the one you want to see and it will roll up. And with every style, you can follow the 'Learn More' link to see a longer article.

The Our Studio tab has bits about the studio including written directions and updated pictures of the inside. There is even a link to get turn-by-turn driving directions from Google Maps.

There is information on therapist(s) here as well as student ratings of instructor led classes and testimonials. There are links to other resources, and contact information showing several ways to get in touch with Caring Palms.

You can even request information right from a form on the front page (and that form is on most pages). You can join our mailing list, and look at past newsletters.

The Articles tab has leads you to an archive of articles written by Caring Palms as well as inspirational writing. There, you can also find the Ethereal Journal (blog) which is a compilation of things that have happened over the past 12 years energy -wise, massage-wise, and spiritually. If you are interested in learning about things such as ghostbusting, energy use, mediumship, astral projection, massage results, then this is a place to look. This journal is there to introduce new concepts to those that are interested. It describes things I have learned or done. It is not about me, not about ego. Some entries teach, some just tell of things. If you are interested, start at the bottom and work forward.

Note: Because of issues with the transfer from one format to another, many of the journal entries have strange characters which appear after the period in many sentences. This is especially true with entries from 2004 through part of 2012 (about 500 entries). It does not hinder one's ability to read it, but it just makes it look strange. These should be cleaned up by the end of August.

All the links have been tested (a lot), and I think everything has been working (which is better than a company I used to work for when they put out products that they labeled 'no known bugs'). If you find any problems, please let us know what they are so we can fix them.

One more thing of note: The current menu will not work with touch screen devices such as IPad and Android devices (something we just found out). There is new menu software which we will be purchasing within the next week that will handle all devices from PCs to IPhones to Android phones and tablets. But rather than get this first, I decided to get the site out first.

The new site is much easier to use with everything at your fingertips. I hope you like what we have here.

Caring Palms has been looking for a long time to find help on creating a new look for the website, and after a year of having the software, and not being able to get a handle on it, a client lead me to his brother, Justin Perkins. Justin designed the look of the site, redesigned things as I needed them to meet Caring Palms' needs, and gave me training in the software. This way, I can control everything, make changes, and add as I need. This is what I need to have as this site is constantly changing and growing. And he is also available as technical support should I need it.

Justin, thank you.

• August 11 (Saturday) 10am - 5pm
• August 14 (Tuesday) 10am - 5pm
  Confirmed 
• September 8 (Saturday) 10am - 5pm
• October 13 (Saturday) 10am - 5pm
• November 10 (Saturday) 10am - 5pm  

On July 12 - 15, Brian attended Stansted in Florida, a seminar devoted to mediumship. During the four days there, the students went through meditation, training in energies, and lots of mediumship practice. There were lots of parts of this that ranged from giving readings to healing to trance.

Jan Marshall led the group through tons of exercises which included lots of moving around to change up the energies. At one point, the students were playing musical chairs (literally). They did trance work and energy work where two people kept together by energy only. There were readings which were done one on one, and ones where two people red to a group.

On evening, there were student demonstrations of healing where healers stood before the class and worked on anyone that wanted healing. Brian participated in this, and was very in-demand.

The next evening, students demonstrated platform mediumship. This is where someone will get in front of the class and do a reading for anyone that can accept it (in the style of John Edward). Brian also took part in this and did really well.

It was a very frenetic and intense training, but very awesome. Brian is looking at going again next year.

The Caring Palms website started in 2000 before it was even Caring Palms. That name came when massage was added. Caring Palms was originally Reiki Holistic Healing and was all about Reiki and all other energy modalities that I did. Some will remember the gray swirling background of the front page and the gray pages of everything else. (In converting from the old format, I still found a half dozen or so pages still on the gray background.)

When I graduated massage school, my wife came up with the name Caring Palms which I registered as a business name and website address. This gave form to the CaringPalms.com website with a yellow background which was primarily massage. Because I was concerned that people would react adversely to Reiki (as many did not know what it was and were afraid of it), I still kept the Reiki site under ReikiHolisticHealing.com.

At some point I decided to no longer give into my fear, and combined both sites into one, Caring Palms. I decided that if some people could not accept what I do, then I would attract those that can. Rather than be two separate web sites, they were combined into one, but separate sides. At this time, both sides got face lifts. The massage side got a red patterned background and the Reiki side had a blue one. this combined with a new front page with pictures taken here by a professional photographer made the site what it was up until last week.

The only change had been the addition of a third side for Continuing Education. Since Caring Palms was adding more classes as a provider for massage therapists, it needed to be separated out from the Reiki side.

That all changes last week when the latest version of the site went live (but still not 100% complete). As of today, everything is there and working. There will be a couple changes coming soon which include a new menu and the cleanup of the journal transfer problems.

At any rate, please enjoy the new site, and let us know what you think about it.

Ego. It's our dreaded enemy. But, is it really?

As healers, ego is something we try to shun, to move away from. Most people dislike those that have large egos. We always hear comments like "that egotistical jerk." Why is it that some people have to push themselves so that they make sure everyone knows that they are better. I can see pushing yourself to be better than others to make yourself the best at what you do. But not to do it so you can rub others faces in it.  

I was once in a club many years ago. It was real interesting watching the egos of all the people. What bothered me the most was that these people weren't satisfied with proving themselves better than someone else, they had to prove that this person was worthless. They weren't just saying "hey, I'm good." They were saying "hey, he's bad." This is when things go too far.  

But, what is ego? Is it the driving force to make us want to be better than we are? Or is it the force that wants to say "look at me. I'm good."?  

In an old Star Trek episode, Captain Kirk got divided into two of himself by a transporter malfunction. One Kirk is meek, mild, kind. The other is animalistic, controlled by his base desires, egotistical. What we saw was that the meek Kirk couldn't command. He didn't have the backbone to make the hard decision. The animalistic Kirk couldn't command because he didn't have the compassion needed. Now, this was simply a piece of science fiction, but what the writer was saying was that we need bothpieces, ego and compassion. But we need them in balance.  

As healers, ego is always something we may have problems with. Trying to prove we're the best, or admit that we can do something to others. We spend our lives fighting that dreaded enemy, the ego. At the same time, we can't survive with no ego. If we go up to someone and offer to help, that is our ego giving us the strength to do so. Without it, we would sit back and watch things go by. We'd be too compassionate to make a decision.  

We need our egos. The trick is to channel them properly. We have to use them to give us the boost we need to offer to help people, or to believe that we can help someone, or to get up in front of people and teach a class. Now those may not seem like the types of things we do when we think of our egos, but they are as much a part of ego as anything.  

When I write my journal, I try to remove every bit of ego that I can. After all, it is not about me. It is not about saying that I am good at something. It is about sharing, and teaching, and learning. At the same time, compassion makes me want to write these entries, but it is the ego that makes me get up off my backside and actually do it.  

We need our egos to give us the confidence to do the things that we do. To keep it from getting out of hand, we temper it with love and compassion. That is the same love and compassion that we use when we heal others. Funny how that works.  

Each person is a unique balance of emotion and ego. The key, is keeping that balance.

At Caring Palms, we pledge to do the best work we can at every session.  We not only do this to continue to earn your business, but because we believe that you deserve the best care possible every time you are here.  This is true whether it is massage, or energy work, or classes. This is our promise.  This is what we will continue to do.