Wholeness

As I came close to the mid-point of my collection of the A-Z of Just Being, some niggling thoughts and doubts began to surface and trouble me. Was I being too arrogantly ambitious in wanting to attain all these attributes? Authentic. Brave. Curious… Was it even possible? Was I being delusional or even superficial? What does it say about me when I want to become so much more? Am I so imperfect?

These questions got me thinking deeply and my honest reflections brought me back to a place where I had originally started from but had kind of forgotten… that I AM already Whole and it is still quite natural to strive for betterment. Not perfection, which I think is over-rated. Just being a wee bit better today than yesterday. Thus, as a reminder to myself, as I move towards the second half of my musings, W is for Wholeness.

Part of being Whole involves accepting and embracing your shadow self which I have written about in previous blogs. No one is perfect and each life has its own struggles and trauma, big or small. And it is essential for our emotional wellbeing that we come to terms with our so-called flaws, old programmes, faulty beliefs and imperfection and those parts of us that have been wounded, hurt and shamed. It means releasing the shock or the trauma stored in our body. When you stop self-condemnation and/or get out of a victim mentality, you heal those parts of yourself and bring them together in love, acceptance and grace. Then you can master your emotions and not be reactive. Your spirit becomes whole, no longer splintered. It does not mean you will be happy 24/7. It is about accepting the reality of all your human emotions…the mad, the sad, the hard and the glad and remembering who you truly are under those emotions.

Deep down, I know I am Whole, just as everyone else is Whole.

“As you explore, you will find you already have wholeness inside; you just have to find the key and open the door”. Linda Caroll

That had been another raw, soul-searching dive for me. It meant going deep within to see what was going on there.

“We’ve got to descend to ascend”.

And I have to keep returning to that sense of wholeness from time to time and stay in touch with it. It is a continuous process.

My personal conviction is that being in Oneness with the Divine is what makes me feel whole. Wholeness and Oneness are interchangeable. It is only our spiritual self that remains whole, unbroken by the winds and waves that knock about our bodies, our minds and our emotions.

So I would like to remind myself plus emphasize that it is from a position of wholeness rather than a lack or deficiency that I endeavour to be the best version of myself and strive to take steps, albeit miniscule, towards the qualities I admire.

My First Story

I have read/heard about so many stories of how EFT/Tapping (see my last blog A Tapper), has helped people in incredible ways. And I have experienced the benefits myself. But now as a new practitioner I want to build my own repertoire of magical stories.

Here is my first one.

My grand-son was down and out, the whole day, with bouts of vomiting and nausea and he had been kept home from school. To see a bouncy, bubbly, boisterous 5-year old morphed into a supine, silent and sad little kid was quite upsetting. He said he was scared of throwing up again.

In the evening, he was not much better and while the parents were discussing whether to take him to A&E and as he lay with his head on his mother’s lap, I gently started tapping just above his chest and he actually let me which was surprising in itself.

They decided it was best to have him seen as the week-end was around the corner, so we started getting ready and my husband got set to accompany them. That is when the little one said softly: “I want dadima to come because I feel nice when she does this”.

I had already observed that he had calmed down whilst I had been tapping but for him to verbally spell it out was quite something. So, in the car, during the whole journey, I continued tapping whilst he sat still quietly.

A Tapper

You may well ask: What is a tapper? No, I don’t mean someone who tap dances (I wish!). I am referring to tapping, a self-management, stress-reduction tool which I learnt about some fifteen years ago when I was going through a bad patch in my personal life and I had found it quietened my mental chatter most effectively, slowed my breathing and pounding heart, and sometimes gave me answers to my issues. Since then I have used tapping at various phases of my life but it is only recently that I have taken my “personal peace procedure” seriously and committed to tapping everyday. Thus T for I am a Tapper in the same vein as Y for I am a Yogi.

Both involve daily practice which I find challenging. Like yoga, I have done tapping on myself on and off over the years. It helped me immensely again when I underwent surgery and radiotherapy. I used to do it religiously soon after I was diagnosed right up to the time I was discharged from care. It helped by making me feel calm and centred, allaying my fears, and even relieving some pain. I keep going back to it when I am undergoing stress which is what it is meant for but if done everyday when stressors may not be that traumatic, it has a cumulative effect like any exercise. It allows us to release emotional blockages in the body. Clearing blocks regularly and removing the emotional detritus that has accumulated over your lifetime is a daily technique called the Personal Peace Procedure, I guess because it allows one to make peace with what is, let go and move on. It is this daily, dedicated practice then which becomes part of one’s identity as a tapper.

Tapping (or psychological acupuncture) is the common name for Emotional Freedom Technique, EFT for short. It is so called because it involves tapping on several meridian points on the upper body, mainly the face. What it does is it calms the amygdala, which is the brain’s flight or fight response. When the amygdala senses danger it triggers the release of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol which, in turn, prepares your body to flee or fight. While the amygdala is intended to protect us from danger, it can interfere with our functioning in the modern world where threats are more subtle in nature. By simply tapping and thus calming the amygdala, anxiety can be reduced and that allows for clearer thinking. Check out the demo in the video below.

Tapping can look strange and weird. Some years ago it would have been considered as woo-woo. Perhaps many people are still skeptical. But in the last decade, it has come into its own with over a hundred scientific papers which are evidence-based. In one research, it was shown that cortisol was reduced by as much as 43% with one hour of tapping, (although it can be effective when done for as little as 3-5minutes for straight-forward stress relief).

In fact, tapping does so much more. It can be used to relieve pain, boost your mood, clear trauma, overcome phobias and addictions to name just a few. It is said to rewire the brain’s response to stress and change any negative conditioning that has developed in childhood.

Personally for me though, I finally decided to get certified as a practitioner because I wanted firstly to support cancer patients in their journey as I had experienced the benefits myself. But my greater passion is to take in into schools. I am of the firm belief that it is a simple, gentle and effective tool that each child should be equipped with from a young age so that they do not have to carry a lot of emotional baggage into adulthood.

Simultaneously though, I have to continue tapping on myself everyday.

Half-Way

I wanted to share my excitement, dear readers: I am half way there; the letter Y for Yogi, was my thirteenth letter. It has been a slow process and a long journey for me, even though really fulfilling, and your engagement has kept me going.

I might have mentioned previously that I never really know what my next letter will be. It sneaks up on me quite surreptitiously and I go with it, as it usually is the right word for that moment.

This is my second attempt at writing what I envisage to be a book eventually and the process has been so different from the first. This time I have been more fluid and have gone with the flow and just allowed. It started with writing short blogs. Planning and strategising will have to come in at some point But for the time being, I don’t really know how to get where I want to be. And I’m okay with that—for the time being—confident that the answers will find me.

Want to take a guess what the next letter will be?

A Yogi

I AM a Yogi. The words popped up in my head, one day last week, and then repeatedly rang in my ears like a earworm, a melody that you cannot get out of your head. I don’t now whether to call it intuition or synchronicity. I had been having a mental block with my A-Z letter this time and here it came to me, quite out of the blue: Y for Yogi. It was almost like an inner calling.

Let me go back in time and try to explain maybe how it might have come about.

Last year, I had participated in a healthy lifestyle programme. (My blog on Health addresses some of my concerns.) The diet part of it was challenging but I had risen up to it successfully. It was the exercise element that had been insurmountable for me. By the end of the year, we were supposed to have chosen one activity in particular, on which to focus on and master. It could be athletics, walking, cycling or yoga. But the main point behind it was for you to take on that identity of a walker, athlete, cyclist or yogi. I definitely didn’t see myself as a walker, athlete or a cyclist as I felt my knees and my joints didn’t support me. Every time I exercised or just walked,I felt discouraged as I would put something out of joint. It had been like that for a while. Sometimes even whilst doing yoga. So even though yoga was the most likely fit for me, at that time, I couldn’t even imagine being a yogi. The test had been to do 108 Suryanamaskars (the Sun Salutation sequence) in a day…and I was still doing them on a chair. Thus my disillusionment.

My relationship with yoga has been a long and rocky one. I must have taken it up some eons ago most probably because I was always into alternative options and at that time yoga had still not really come into its own. Yoga’s benefits are well-known now and I found it gentle and relaxing. However, my Achilles’ heel being inconsistency for a long time (something which I am now working on), I did it for a while and then there would be long lapses. I would go back to it when I had issues and then once better, my yoga mat would fall by the wayside again. Sometimes, I feel if I had practised it religiously all those years not only would I have been a yogi by now but I might not have so many health issues!

But regrets are futile. By nature, I am Young-at-heart and I do believe it is never too late and there is only today, the here and now.

“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” George Eliot

There are so many people out there doing great things in their eighties and even nineties. They are an inspiration for me and give me hope that I can still become a full-fledged Yogi.

A poem

I have always liked the poems of Khalil Gibran and this time I thought I would share another one of my favourites.

I Did It

 

I had ended my last blog post on Fear with Nike’s slogan ” Just do it”. And last week I got the chance to put my own advice into action. I needed to get out of my comfort zone to conquer this one fear…so I just did it! 

For most of my life, I have not been an outdoor person, preferring an armchair and a book any day. My sister, on the other hand, was very sporty and sometimes I envied her daring, adventurous spirit which saw her through many adrenalin-rush activities like paragliding and skydiving which I was never brave enough to try. Strangely though, in recent years, nature seems to beckon me and there has been a yearning to have a go at one water sport in particular…snorkelling.

Unfortunately, my first attempt at it had proved disastrous and that had raised the fear factor, partly of the activity itself but also of failing again.

Yet I was determined to try again and I got my second chance last week.This time I was wiser and went in better prepared.

The first thing I did was some research into the gear required…a full face mask or the traditional goggles and tube. Being claustrophobic, both didn’t seem ideal to me but according to some videos I saw, the latter won on most counts. So one decision made at least.

Next, I continued to watch more videos on how to snorkel, tips for beginners. This assuaged my fear of not being able to breathe, of water getting into my goggles as well as my mouth….all of which had a happened in my last attempt.

Moving from theory to practice, this time I actually invested in a short lesson even though it all sounded pretty simple. I wanted desperately to get it right and the step- by- step instructions really made it easier.

After that, I pushed to the back of my mind, any thoughts of being stung by a jellyfish, or coming across a shark, of not being able to jump off the boat or climb again as I had joint issues, of losing sight of others and being abandoned…I simply jumped, took a breath, put my head in and went with the flow.

Bravery

Looking back, I think I have spent a lot of my life in fear and have acted out of fear. Though in some ways this is also contradictory because, over the years, my faith in the Universe and my belief that everything happens in my best interest, has become stronger. Yet in many ways, fear does course through my veins and sometimes prevents me from making the right choice and take action. So B for Bravery, not only to further strengthen my confidence in a Higher Purpose but also for me to be more aware of when I let fear rule me and how to override that habitual pattern of responding to it, which is generally inaction and indecision.

I am using the word “bravery” synonymous to “courage” though there are nuances. From a spiritual perspective it means “to take a step forward into an area of difficulty without a solution in mind, but yet feeling that victory is ahead. It is going empty handed, but knowing that God’s hand is stretched out to pull you.”

It is definitely not an absence of fear because I believe everyone is afraid to a greater or lesser degree: it is about rising above your fear and facing difficulties or even minor obstacles despite fear. It is also not a brash boldness without thought but exercising a conscious choice.

Fear is immobilizing and can stop you from embracing new opportunities.

“The fears we don’t face become our limits” Robin Sharma

It feeds on inaction and leads to indecision and growth is only possible if one is willing to face the fear and rise above it by moving out and expanding one’s comfort zone. Underlying all our fears is a lack of trust in ourselves. So it is actually an opportunity to develop that trust in one’s ability to handle whatever comes one’s way and the conviction that everything happens for a purpose, thus creating the right energetic environment in which miracles can manifest.

Source: https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/848717492259340589/

I also believe that what a lot of people fear the most is change. I have written about change being the only constant in a previous blog and how in the book “Who moved my Cheese?” the character Haw who is not willing to move out of his secure and familiar maze and venture into the unknown, gets left behind whereas his friends find new pastures. One has to recognize that:

“Whatever you face will become the wings with which to fly.”

So that the more you expand your comfort zone the more powerful you become.

Recognize also that pushing through fear is actually less frightening than actually being in a state of fear all the time which results in a sense of helplessness. Change or making a big shift may be scary but know what’s even scarier?…Regret! And yet another mind-blowing thought: the fear will never go away as long as you continue to grow.

So the title of Susan Jeffers book on fear: Feel the Fear…and Do it Anyway says it all. Guess Nike got it right too... Just do it.

Your 2023

Happy New Year to all my dear readers.

Many forwards for good wishes go around at this time of the year, but this is the one that resonated the most with me, so I’d like to share it with you, as did my friend with me. (Thanks Anisa.)

The image has multiple interpretations for me: waking up from slumber to awareness; liberating yourself from whatever is holding you back; manifesting your full potential; expanding your comfort zone; claiming your power; standing in your truth…. What does it mean to you? Pick one (or more) that you identify with and hold that intention for the year.

Good luck and all the best.

Quotes

I thought for this blog I would recap on some quotes I have used in previous blogs. Do leave a comment which is your favourite and why.

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Heraclitus

“A merry thought is medicine, ill thoughts dry the bones”. The Bible

“Wrong happens. You have to make the right happen.” Gopal Gaur Das

“Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.” Francis Bacon

“The paradox of personal growth is that it begins with self-acceptance.”  Carl Rogers

“If we still ourselves we can mirror the Divine perfectly”  Sarah Blondin

“Think the thought until you believe it. Once you believe it, it is.”  Abraham Hicks

“The unexamined life is not worth living”  Socrates (5th C BC)

“The way to use life is to do nothing through acting. The way to use life is to do everything through being.”  Lao Tzu (6th C BC)