How to activate your self-healing potentials

The mind is influenced by everything - confusion, anxiety, excitement, joy, nostalgia, sadness, fear, anger, worry, love. Like a sponge our mind and heart can absorb all the pain that exists in the world around us. This can be overpowering and draining.

But there are ways to calm and liberate the self that always derive from within.

Here are some thoughts that may help you activate your self-healing potentials:

STOPPING & RESTING IN THE UNKNOWN

Looking at this shared cultural moment through the lens of Chinese Medicine and the five elements, you could say we are deep in the healing potential of the Water element.

The water element exposes our existential fear of the unknown and asks us -

What is absolutely essential?

What is really true for me beyond the “doing” and busyness?

These are big questions, and they’re not always easy to answer.

In order to fully access our potential, we need to slow down, and then even stop. Our culture is not used to pausing or stopping though. We live within a context that values action, results, and speed. Oftentimes, we’re rewarded for pushing forward at all costs. But on a very deep level this causes depletion; of our own vital energy (Qi), and the resources of the planet.

Ultimately, the water element requires us to turn inward, stop the forward driving momentum, and pay attention. When we stop and examine our lives we may discover our vitality is being drained in all kinds of unnecessary ways. This vitality is the deep life force of Kidney Qi that is depleted when our adrenals are pumping out stress hormones. It is the vitality stored in the marrow of our bones. We can restore this vital energy by pausing, stopping, and resting in the unknown.

As the world slows down, is there a way you can stop and let go to support your life force?

This moment will pass soon.

Right now though, is there a way to stop pushing forward and rest even in the sense of the unknown?

The foundational practice of the water element is pausing with trust, not fear.

Think about all of the activities and roles you’re engaged in.

Can you approach this time of forced slowness as a time to re-orient to what is most important?

Can you relearn how to take care of yourself without letting selfishness take over, but while supporting your community that needs you more than ever?

Without neglecting the difficulty and pain that the current global circumstances have caused, what would it be like to suspend the need to do and fix, and instead just be?

What remains beyond roles and responsibility?

STABILIZE & CALM YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM

This has been a challenging year for many of us. When stress and anxiety is chronic and long term it can affect all kinds of systems including the immune system.

Tip:

Meditation can help to reset the nervous system and bring you back to a baseline “rest and digest” response. Plus, learning to be with “what is”, to forgive and to be compassionate, is a powerful technique to practice when facing so much uncertainty.

If you've been wanting to establish or deepen a meditation practice, NOW is the time.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Sit down on your cushion and follow your breath.

2. Observe how the breath comes and goes just like a bubble - Impermanent - Here one moment. Gone the next.

3. Notice how endings become beginnings.

Even just 10 minutes a day can make a difference!

#selfhealing #slowdown #rest #calm #community #meditation #healthcoach