Carnival of Healing #214: Victory through surrender

Welcome to Carnival of Healing #214! And welcome, carnival-goers, to The Reiki Digest!

Last week's Carnival was hosted by Astrid Lee at Therapeutic Reiki, and next week the show moves on down the road to Rose de Dan's Wild Reiki and Shamanic Healing Blog. Wow! That's three Reiki sites in a row. And of course, Carnival organizer Phylameana lila Desy, About.com's Guide to Holistic Healing, is also (among other things) a Reiki practitioner. Just in case any carnival visitors are unfamiliar with the natural healing practice of Reiki, click here to find out more from the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

You can become even more familiar with Reiki by subscribing to The Reiki Digest email edition (it's free). And if you're already a Reiki practitioner and you'd like to freshen up your knowledge of the subject, you might be interested in our Reiki Update Training course. And we invite you to stand up and be counted in our Global Reiki Census, and add your events to our Reiki Events Calendar. Those are just a few of the ways we've been serving the world Reiki community since 2006.

And for those who may be unfamiliar with the Carnival of Healing, a brief explanation: the Carnival is a weekly round-up of personal blog posts on the topics of holistic health, wellness, spirituality, and self empowerment that travels through cyberspace, setting up its virtual tents at a different site each week.

The great football coach Vince Lombardi often said that "Winning isn't everything: it's the only thing." Coach Lombardi may have won many games, awards, and even the distinction of having a New Jersey Turnpike rest area named after him, but he did not contribute to this week's carnival. Just as well, since our theme this week is the power of winning through surrender.

So if you're hoping to be immortalized on a plaque alongside a highway somewhere, go ahead and keep pushing for victory at all costs. If you're looking for a different kind of win, however, keep reading.

At Life Optimizer, Donald Latumahina kicks us off with The Importance of Giving Up. And Carole Gold at Gold Post-it scores a field gold (sorry, couldn't resist that one) with The Law of Surrender: Giving Up That Which You Desire. At Grace in Gravity, Gina Loree' Marks discusses a different kind of giving up -- letting go -- in Brace Yourselves, a post about how and where we hold onto tension in our bodies.

Health Blogger found victory in defeat in his first attempt to run a marathon. And at Healthcare Hacks, Amy B. Scher never gave up in her fight to overcome paralysis from Lyme Disease -- though sometimes circumstances required her to give in -- and now she's Running Toward Forgiveness.

At X-Ray Tech Schools, Carolyn Friedman urges us to let go of 10 Common Myths About Bipolar Disorder, and at Glowing Face Man, Sam Alexander tells us that letting go of negative thinking has an abundance of positive benefits.

Kaushik Chokshi at beyond karma has something in common with Coach Lombardi: approaching life as a game. But in Kaushik's case, it's not about winning or losing: it's all about playing.

This week's Carnival also includes a couple of great Reiki-related posts: Rose de Dan tells us how she happily gave up the chance to respond in kind to an unexpected outburst in Building Bridges with Animal Reiki. And Sherri Lane gives up her own resistance to sharing her healing gifts in Seeing Miracles Every Day: Following the Healing Light.

All in all, a winning combination! We hope you enjoy this special edition, and we'll be back next week with all our regular Reiki Digest features, including the Celeb-Reiki Report, the Reiki Roundup, and a Reiki sports update.