Fresh Start: Letting Go Of The Old, Finding New Ways Forward.
A Free Gift For You!
By Samantha Keen
I love this time of year, where in the northern hemisphere we are coming out of the darkness of winter. The days are getting longer and the light of the sun is growing stronger week by week.
Today is the first new moon of 2025 and it is the Chinese New Year. A time when things can be seeded for the whole year.
Hopefully you have spent the winter months shedding your old skins. Letting go of clutter, old ways of doing things, even the things that worked really well last year. So that this year can be birthed anew.
The new moon is typically when freshness, crispness and newness can be experienced in your meditation. A more internal time of the lunar cycle, but one when something is starting to appear, the creative spark inside is starting to shine.
I have definitely been dropping a lot of layers of old stuff, as I have been sick with bronchitis and then a virus since January 1, 2025.
Last year was a massive year for me! I published a book for the first time (Reclaiming Vitality: A Healing Journey Through Chronic Fatigue and Burnout is available free for the next 5 days on Amazon Kindle if you want to grab your copy now). Myself and my partner Dr Karl Debro traveled to Australia for the first time, having him meet my family and see where I grew up. And 2024 culminated with a long meditation retreat, which was where I got sick. The illness forced me to let go.
Sometimes I get sick when I was supposed to let go weeks before, and I kept on moving forward. It is like the channel release or deep unraveling post a lot of exertion had gotten backed up and then my body of energy or my life force just forced me to lie down and release all that of that pent up fire. This was really a result of having not listened to what my body needed and continuing to forge ahead. I felt like the physical downtime that I ended up being forced to take was far more than it would have been if I had simply done that original energetic churn in the first place.
Can anyone relate?
All of us do stuff like this. It is human to forget to listen to that little voice inside that tells us what we need or what the right thing to do is. The work is catching it earlier and earlier, and if you slipped into an old pattern of not quite listening, then learning from what you did and doing better next time.
This time, going down with those illnesses taught me something new. It taught me about the power of peace.
My normal standpoint is not one of patience but one of forging ahead (some might even say impatience ;). But letting go enough to heal from this pretty full on respiratory illness required patience, a lot of it.
In order be patient with my body, I found that in something bigger than myself, the transpersonal force of peace inside. Once I connected with that force of peace in myself, it was actually a pleasure to just be still and allow the healing to unfold. Of course, I would drop out and then come back again and again. But I liked it so much that I was motivated to keep coming back.
Inner Peace
Peace is something that exists deep inside of each of us. I know this for a fact, because I have experienced it for myself and facilitated it for many others.
Peace is not sugary sweet, or nice or lukewarm. In fact it is a deep fire that packs a punch because it is silent and full of presence.
I am so grateful that it was there for me so deeply during the 3 weeks of meditation when I was very unwell. Ironically my body was very uncomfortable with a respiratory infection, almost writhing with the agitation of the coughing and the itchy disturbance rattling in my lungs. Yet in the stillness of the meditation spaces all around me, I was able to drop into the calm that is always there underneath the surface noise.
It is so important for all of us to have times when we let go of the external noise of the world around us, and find a way back to our own center where the stillness and the silence really is. This inner stillness is where we can find our way back to healing, if that is needed. And it is where we know how to move forward with transformation, if that is what we want.
There is really no greater way to recharge the energetic batteries, or life force inside of ourselves than coming back to center.
For me, the recovery was definitely not immediate once I connected with that peace inside, but it was a pathway that I could keep coming back to through the inward journey of the retreat and then in my travels back the San Francisco Bay Area and my home. It meant that I did not need to take antibiotics, and have other interventions that would have definitely been easy to take in different circumstances.
Whether you have been healthy or unwell in the last weeks or months, these are turbulent times.
In times of great change and unrest, it is important that we know that within each of us there is a resource, a force of consciousness that I am calling peace. Peace is quiet, still, and calm. Yet it carries the fire of truth, and sometimes the opening of universal compassion.
It takes work to access this kind of silence inside, because you have to drop all the surface pulls and distractions to move into it. Nevertheless, it is always there.
If you want to reach that peace inside of yourself this year, take time on your own and find a way to get quiet inside. Allow the waves and the pulls of the outside world to drop away, and get in touch with the deeper aspects of your own presence.
If you do want to do this, I would highly recommend this free online download for a short 4-part training on third eye meditation which I love:
Or if you are really enthusiastic, you could book into a weekend retreat at the Berkeley Spire which is packed full of skills for meditation and energy management. See more details here:
I happen to know that there is a weekend meditation workshop Awakening The Third Eye in Berkeley this coming February 8th and 9th if you want to take part and I have heard that there are a few places available.
Free Giveaway: Book Download on Amazon
I am so happy to be back and working again after a huge time away in down under that I would like to celebrate.
My gift to you as part of welcoming in the new year is five days of free download on Amazon for my book Reclaiming Vitality: A Healing Journey Through Chronic Fatigue and Burnout.
