The Healing Power of Saying Yes

This summer I taught a Shero’s Journey retreat at Hollyhock, the magical retreat center on Cortes Island in British Columbia — an island wild enough to be home to wolves and cougars. My sweetheart Bob came along and, while I taught a powerhouse group of shimmering Shero’s, he birded and kayaked — until the third morning of the retreat, when he pulled a muscle in his back while kayaking.

Our friend, neuropsychologist, Buddhist teacher and author, Rick Hanson, was also teaching at Hollyhock. Being with Rick reconnected Bob and me with the life-changing practices from Rick’s books, “Buddha’s Brain” and “Just One Thing.” We had shared these beloved practices when we were first falling in love, a time when Bob tasted meditation and yoga for the first time.

One powerful practice Rick teaches is saying yes. This means simply saying yes to whatever is happening in this moment, whatever thought you are having, whatever emotion is passing through your awareness. Not just the peace and love and harmony, but the icky, gritty, nasty stuff as well.

As Rick writes in “Just One Thing,” “Your yes means that you accept the facts as they are, that you are not resisting them emotionally, even if you are trying with all your might to change them.”

Based on this practice, Bob decided to say yes to the pulled muscle in his back. He decided to say yes to his pain, yes to the fear he’d be laid up for months, yes to his kayak resting on the pebbled beach, yes to missing yoga, yes to missing birding, hiking and even sex (sigh).

Guess what? His back healed in a quarter of the time it usually takes.

Yes, he was relaxed, able to stretch, meditate and be nourished by Hollyhock’s amazing food and loving vibe. Yet even in paradise, he could have so easily chosen to tighten up with resentment at “missing out” on his planned retreat.

Instead, he said yes. It was inspiring to behold. And it shifted everything for him.

So I ask you, where does resistance show up in your life? What might change for you today, what might open, soften, and shift, if you said yes? Yes to being late. Yes to your breakfast. Yes to a difficult client. Yes to a fabulous client. Yes to learning your mother has dementia. Yes to a stranger holding your hand and telling you it’s going to be OK. Yes to being tired. Yes to a stain on your favorite shirt, yes to the sparkle in your beloved’s eye, yes to dirty dishes, yes to the sun spilling across the floor, yes to the dust bunnies the sunlight illuminates.

Yes.

Saying yes is not about resignation. Resignation is a big NO, a tightening of your soul into “Everybody else can have _______ except me.” Yes is the opposite. It is an opening. You simply stop opposing what you are experiencing. You notice what is. Yes creates relaxation and energy to move forward into action, out of resignation, judgment and mind-numbing fear.

Say yes grudging, say yes fervently, say yes tentatively — there are many flavors to agreeing to have this experience you are having right now. Please do not force anything. When you do not want to say yes, when you hate the very idea, when all you want to do is scream no!, say yes to that, too.

I’ll be saying it right along with you.

P.S. I’m not teaching at Hollyhock in 2012, but I am teaching the Shero’s Journey online and details are here: http://www.entheosacademy.com/course/The-Sheros-Journey. There’s even a pay-what-you-can option!

Photo credit: Chris

Is Healing Your Body a Full-time Job? Tips for Easing the Overwhelm

Does this sound like a typical week? A doctor’s appointment, a massage, acupuncture, daily yoga, therapy, 25 daily supplements, morning green juice, daily meditation, cardio, cooking, and that’s after cleaning the house, getting the kids to school and finishing the sales presentation. Wow, I’m tired just thinking about it.

Healing your body from illness can seem like a full-time job on top of your regular life ? a job you didn’t even apply for.

How do you manage it all without going crazy or making yourself sicker? One option is to ignore your self-care and go on with life as usual. I’ve seen this work for some, but usually not for the long term.

Alternatively, you can try to do it all at once and get overwhelmed under the weight of juggling all your healing tasks with your family and career obligations. Early on, when I was healing myself from multiple sclerosis, I spent more nights at the dinner table crying from overwhelm than I like to think about.

I eventually found a third way between overwhelm and denying the disease. I found a way that honors the healing process without having it consume or define your life. Here are some those lessons.

Start slow.

It can be natural for some of us to take on all the healing modalities at once. That was biggest the mistake I made. I was so determined to stay out of a wheelchair that I jumped in with both feet. I don’t advise it. It’s not possible and it’s not wise.

Instead, start with a few items and build up your self-care muscle. Start with green juicing or 20 minutes of meditation every other day. Any one of these can give you more energy so you can later add yoga or massage.

Self-care is a project.

While you might not have asked for this job, it is yours. Put it on your to-do list. Not just the appointments, but also the juicing, the baths, the supplements – everything.

But don’t put it at the bottom where you will forget it. That’s easy to do without a deadline. Instead, place healing at the top of your list.

I know this sounds like it will create more stress. But it works to shift your paradigm, and put self-love front and center. If you are notorious for taking care of yourself last, illness marks the end of that.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying sales reports and soccer practice aren’t important. Yet if you are sick or too fatigued, you won’t make those anyway. There is a reason they tell you to put your oxygen mask on first.

Plan, delegate and execute

OK, all your healing tasks are on your to-do list. Great. But that doesn’t by itself make it any less overwhelming. Just like that big project at work, break down the tasks, plan them out, efficiently multitask and engage help when needed.

Here’s an example. You want to make green juice each morning, but you also need to get the kids and yourself out the door. Plan it out. Sunday afternoon clean, cut and prepare all the produce for the week. Then put enough for a day in seven separate bags. You can even have the kids help. Each morning, grab a bag, juice it and head out the door.

Make healing fun.

Ask a person who loves their job what they love about it and they will almost always say, “because it’s fun.” Why not make self-care fun?

Spice things up. Try Thai massage. Practice yoga naked. Dance in your skivvies to Lady Gaga instead of going to the gym. Play soccer with your kid, and score parenting and self-care points. Be creative.

Make healing sacred.

OK, the shot I give myself every day is not fun. Having to down all those supplements three times a day is no joy either. How do you get through the yucky stuff?

Make those moments sacred. Take a deep breath. Burn a candle or put on a relaxing sacred CD. (I love Tibetan singing bowls.) Then as you pop that pill or insert that needle, imagine it is a magic potion going directly to the source of your illness and restoring your health. Not only does this take the dread out of these tasks, you also incorporate the power of guided imagery that may even boost the healing effects of your medicine.

Be kind to yourself.

I imagine self-care like a serving tray overflowing with beautiful dishes. There are so many dishes piled up that occasionally one falls off. No worries, I just place it back on the tray and continue on. The same is true of all your healing methods.

Know that on any given week or day, something will fall off. You will forget your midday supplements. You will be too tired for yoga. It’s OK. Don’t beat yourself up. Expect it to happen. Why? Because you are human.

What do you do when it happens? Get back on the bike. Pick up the task the next day.

But one word of caution: Create boundaries around the ultra-important healing tasks. Those are the ones that will set your healing back big time if it falls off the tray. For example, I never miss my daily injection, no matter what. For you it may be a pill. Or yoga. Regardless, create strict boundaries around those one or two things. And then don’t cry over the other stuff.

How will you organize your week so you have the time to make self-care an integral and non-overwhelming part of your life?

Laurie Erdman is a holistic health coach and the Chief Wellness Hero at Chronic Wellness Coaching. She helps her clients take the overwhelm and confusion out of their healing journeys.

Photo credit: Tyler Axtell

Your Fascinating Relationship with Money: How Healing Your Finances Can Heal Your Life

Money is at the core of our fears and anxieties. As an individual, family, country and world, it affects us on every level, among people of all races and economic backgrounds. We all have a “money story” that begins in our childhood and continues into our adult life in the form of a love/hate dysfunctional relationship. It is one of the top stressors and can destroy our relationships, self-esteem and health.

• “I can’t lose weight because healthy food is too expensive.” We continue to abuse our bodies and health.
• “I can’t start this business because I can’t afford to leave my job (where I’m overworked and drained).” We stay in jobs that no longer serve us.
• “I have to stay in this relationship because I can’t afford to leave.” Our children continue to be brought up in unhealthy homes.
• “I can’t go on vacation because I don’t have any money.” We use money stress to keep us from really experiencing life.

Take a look at your life. Do you feel abundant, peaceful and in control? Are your relationships calm, happy, effortless? Or do you feel anxious, out of control and in denial? Now take a look at your financial life. Do you see similarities? The state of our finances is often a direct reflection of the state of our lives. How do you want your life to look?

There is a common misperception that gaining control of our finances means sacrifice, restriction and pain. In reality, gaining control and healing our relationship with money means freedom, control and peace.

Everywhere you turn there is fear. Fear of another recession, home foreclosures, a stock market crash. We have to stop perpetuating the fear and start creating healthy habits. Think of how our world would look if each person made their financial house a priority and really lived their best life. Imagine the lives that would change and the families that would be saved. It has to begin with each of us. With these four steps, begin the process of healing your relationship with money. Be a part of a greater change in the world.

Forgive
The first step in healing any relationship is forgiveness. If you feel like you have made any money mistakes, write them down all down on a piece of paper. Take a moment to breathe and truly forgive yourself. Know that whatever pain you’re feeling isn’t permanent. Take the piece of paper and shred it. It’s time to start fresh and look view your world from a place of peace and abundance.

Choose
Now that you’re ready to start fresh, it’s time to choose the kind of life you want to live and let money be the tool to get you there. Think about what you really want your life to look like. Where do you want to live and work; what kind of food do you want to nourish your body; how you want your relationships to make you feel? What does your best life look like? Decide, and let money be just a tool to get you there.

Act
Write down two things that you are going to start doing immediately to get you closer to your desired life. For example, I will start paying attention to how I spend my money. Conscious spending is all about matching your values (desired life) with your actions. Decide exactly what you’re going to do to start paying better attention, and write it out.

Witness
Witness your life change. Take notice of how you feel – less stressed, less strain between you and your partner, increase energy, more clarity. When you get rid of your money noise, your life starts to open up.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Gandhi

Karie Hill is a financial freedom coach for women. She focuses on removing financial barriers and healing relationships with money from the inside out.

Turn Your Attention to the Arrow in Your Heart

If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart and relate to the wound.

-Pema Chodron

Human nature is a curious and often paradoxical thing.  We often act with compassion toward others who are suffering but never consider doing the same for ourselves.  We have a compassion double standard.  If we saw someone bleeding, we would jump into action to tend to the person’s wound right away.  We would place all our heartfelt and focused attention on the wounded instead of yelling at the person who caused the wound.  We would stay right there with them and take care of the most important thing — the wound and the hurt.

In my early twenties I was driving home around two in the morning from a job I had as a line cook at a busy restaurant.  As I drove up the Post Road in Fairfield, Connecticut, I saw a police car pulled over behind another car and a man on top of the police officer beating him with, what turned out to be, the policeman’s own baton.

I turned my car around right after I passed the scene and got out and ran back toward them (I know, I know … crazy, but that’s another post!).

The police officer’s head was badly bleeding, and someone else who had also pulled over had wrestled the guy (who was drunk), off of the cop and had him pinned down.  I was yelling for someone to call 911 while ripping my shirt over my head and putting it over the cop’s bleeding skull.  I didn’t think about the fact that I was in my bra on the side of the road in the dark with a bleeding cop and a crazy man and the danger of the situation.  I simply was attending to the cop’s wound. I wasn’t thinking about who did this at all.

It would be so wonderful that if the next time we felt hurt by the world, or by someone else, we focused on the arrow that landed in our heart.  Instead of spending time and energy telling that person about our boundaries and what’s acceptable and how they should communicate better, and all the things we think they should do so that we can feel right and better, we could turn our gaze back to our own wounded heart, lingering there with great kindness and gentleness for however long it took to feel better.

For example, you’re following your partner on a bike ride to the store in Brooklyn.  The streets are busy. You don’t know where you’re going.  Suddenly there are a million cars and last you saw her she was weaving in and out of traffic. You’ve lost sight of her.  You feel left behind.  She knows you don’t know where you’re going. You get very angry and pull over to the sidewalk and start texting her.  Where the F are you?!  When you find your way back to each other, the anger has set in, and you let loose verbally on her about being left, her inconsideration, her selfishness. And the rest of the day is ruined.

Or, you could tend to the arrow in your heart. When you lose sight of her and are aware of your upset, you stop and take a breath and realize that you are actually afraid. You feel shaky, vulnerable, embarrassed, and abandoned. You stay with these feelings right there on the sidewalk. You let yourself cry as a way to let the feelings come up and out in a genuine way. When your partner comes back and finds you, you describe how you were left behind as a child and how very painful that was.  You flood your own heart with care as if you are wrapping your arms around a lost child.

One of the things that keeps our attention on others when we are hurt is that we often don’t fully understand the role that the past plays in the present.

The past is rarely in the past.  The examination, healing and compassionate understanding of the past is, in my opinion, perhaps the single most powerful thing a human being can do with their life.

Understanding our past and healing our wounds brings us a freedom in the present that is unparalleled.  People who have done this work are some of the most available, deep and non-reactive people I have met.  They are fully available to be in the present because the past has no grip on them.

By looking at our past and doing our healing work, we not only free ourselves, but we free others from our entrapping projections onto them.  We no longer demand that they change in order for us to feel better.

Yes, we can try to surround ourselves with people who are genuine and can look at themselves and aren’t always passing the buck.  But it’s not always totally possible, and the point is not to sanitize our lives anyway.  The point is to keep tending to what hurts us until it’s healed.

We are naturally caring.  We rush to help others in catastrophic events. Yet when it comes to our own emotional wounds, we often get confused about what to do.

Here are three simple tips that have helped me when I find an arrow in my heart:

• Pause and take several breaths. Turn inside.
• Flood your heart with the warmth and care that you feel for a small puppy or of a loving mother for her child.
• Try to make a connection to your past and where you’ve been hurt before.

By tending to the arrow in our own hearts, we engage pain directly and can minimize further suffering.

Bindu Wiles has been a practicing Buddhist for 20 years.  She has her BFA in photography and her MFA in creative nonfiction. Bindu offers life coaching and online courses, and she is accepting registration for The Photo Essay Project.

Help Your Healer Heal You

The role of the patient has changed dramatically over the last several centuries. The Industrial Revolution created labor specialization and division in all spheres including healthcare. Suddenly, there was not one doctor but many subcategories responsible for different parts of the body. The structure of healthcare also changed significantly: hospitals became more accessible and seeing a doctor doesn’t require traveling long distance.

Living in the wilderness without access to immediate medical help, our ancestors once had a deep awareness of their bodies, which allowed them to notice the slightest shifts of their health and take appropriate steps to stay healthy. Now there is no survival requirement to develop such awareness. Over time we got used to relying on external cues about our health and courageously handed over the responsibility for our health to the doctors. Everything is “diagnosed” and treated by a third party. First it was another human and now it is often a computer. Our internal awareness – the most efficient diagnostician – is put to sleep. The only part that we are doing actively now is “popping pills.” Unfortunately, this approach rarely brings back our innate health.

Why our current approach to health is failing

- Doctors don’t have time to treat every human according to his/her unique conditions and point out all disease causes. As a result, we get a general diagnosis and a general prescription.

- Specialists have a limited understanding of how internal body systems can influence each other. Connecting the dots can take months or years. As a result, a dermatologist will prescribe a steroid treatment for acne instead of finding a root cause and maybe offering dietary advice.

- Most treatments used by modern medicine are symptoms-oriented. They rarely get to the root cause of the ailment because that is more time-consuming and labor-intensive.

- Our own passivity encourages us to wait for someone to make us better. The “pop a pill” approach encourages this. No matter how long it took us to make our body sick, we impatiently demand doctors to make it better immediately. We rarely ask ourselves about our own role in the healing process.

Fortunately, more people are choosing natural ways of treatment and healing with acupuncture, herbs and diet. However, natural medicine requires a different stance from a patient to be successful. A passive “I am here, treat me” won’t get you far.

What does it mean to be a good patient? These five tips will help you get the best results from working with an integrative medicine practitioner.

Be a student of your body. No one has more incentive or resources to understand your body than you. Ayurveda says that we are all unique and need to be treated with this idea in mind. To function at the most efficient level, discover your unique diet and lifestyle routine through trial and observation. For example, while some people thrive on 100 percent raw food, some feel better if they eat cooked food. Reading about other people’s experiences and doing research can point to a new direction, but nothing should be accepted as the final truth unless your body agrees with it. All you need is an attentive, curious mind and an independent variable such as a diet. Proceed with every experiment mindfully. If you are juicing for the first time, pay attention to your body’s reaction. Have your juice room temperature one day and cold the next. Take note of how it affects your energy and digestion.

Be open to new concepts and ideas. Integrative methods of healing often rely on different philosophies about the world than the ones we were brought up with. Most of them are ancient but nevertheless logical and reliable. During my “treatment” year I learned that our body can heal itself if we create a good environment for it. This idea might seem simple but it is fundamentally different from the way most western doctors think. Integrative practitioners believe in our innate body intelligence. For me it meant shifting my focus from a search for the right magic herb that would solve all my problems to focusing on creating a nurturing space, a positive outlook and trust in my body.

Be ready to actively change. If you are sick, your current lifestyle, diet and/or exercise regimens don’t suit you. Something has to change to create a healthy you. You might have to give up something that you liked or think that you like and adopt new ways. You are the only one responsible for your choices. Start experimenting. Remember that you are unique and your body knows best. You just need to learn its language!

Be patient. Herbs and dietary changes might take longer to alleviate symptoms than traditional pills. They eradicate the cause, not just the symptoms. For example, if you experience allergies, integrative medicine will focus on cleaning your body and improving liver and spleen functions, not just stopping the itch and sneezing. Don’t expect overnight changes. The ailment will be less likely to come back. It took me over a year of incremental changes in my body to get back to normal.

Be willing to overcome discomfort. Integrative medicine often uses methods that might seem unpleasant. Whether it comes to fasting, enemas or acupuncture needles, it takes getting used to. Chinese and ayurvedic medicine believe that herbs taken in a tea, brew, jam or wine form are more effective than when packed in a pill. Some herbs do not taste like nectar but the taste has its own medicinal effects. Fortunately, our taste buds adjust quickly. Initially, I couldn’t stand the taste of Triphala, a bowel tonic and a strong detoxifying herb, but after slowly sipping it many nights in a row it grew on me. Give yourself enough time and space to adjust.

If you made a shifted from a Western medicine approach and are working with an alternative medicine practitioner, take a new approach to being a patient also. Stay healthy and share your experiences!

Nadya Andreeva is a yoga instructor and ayurveda enthusiast who creates a wholesome path to wellness through yoga and nutrition workshops. Her articles are featured on MindBodyGreen, Modern Hippie Mag, and YogaCity NYC. Nadya holds an MA in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from NYU and hopes to bring holistic approach to wellness into the corporate world.