Close your eyes and take in the hug I am sending you right now.
Feel it full of love, unconditional love.
We all need hugs.
Physical touch is grounding and calming.
No words needed.
A gentle hug says more than words.
With hugs, both the giver and receiver get full benefit.
If you don’t have anyone nearby to hug,
wrap your arms around your self
and give yourself a hug.
Afterall, your own self love is the greatest love of all.
May you get a hug every day, 💕Bindu
Fibromyalgia and other chronic illnesses are challenging on many levels. We are physically compromised, emotionally out of balance, and mentally stressed. We want solutions to our pain and discomfort. We search and often the solutions come up with none or minimal results. This becomes stress on top of the stress of being ill in the first place.
What then can we do to reclaim our health and happiness . . . our wellness and ultimately wholeness?
Today’s article is focusing on what I call the Fundamental of Wholeness. These are eight important aspects to rebuilding our wellness. Below is a list of the fundamentals of wellness. They create a foundation upon which to rebuild our health, wellness and wholeness.
The ability to be self-aware. To observe our body, our mind, our emotions from a place of awareness rather than identification. In other words, to be able to observe our self objectively. We can be aware of the sensation and pain in our body, the emotions that we feel, the thought that we think. We can start with our conscious thoughts, and then delve into a deeper layer of subconscious thoughts and emotions.
As we meet our self with awareness, compassion is a necessary ingredient. There are parts of us that we might judge or disown. By meeting our self with compassion, we can identify positive and negative experiences, emotions, thoughts, and memories. We can see the good, bad, ugly and beautiful parts of who we are. Without compassion, we may block truly seeing because we have literally and figuratively exiled parts of who we are as they are deemed unacceptable. Yet, until you can meet these parts with compassion, wholeness will continue to elude you.
Balance is at the root of health, wellness and wholeness. Everything in nature survives and thrives because of a state of balance. Your physical body has 12 homeostatic (balancing) control mechanisms that keep your body functioning and healthy. Emotionally, we need a balance of positive and negative emotions to be emotionally healthy. Mentally, we need a balance between positive thoughts and negative thoughts. A healthy optimistic attitude with a healthy dose of reality and awareness of possible difficulties. We need a balance of rest and activity, work and play, alone time and time with others. When discovering the right balance for you, health, wellness and wholeness will be the rewards.
Acceptance is acknowledging what is. That doesn’t mean we have to like it. It means telling the truth about what is. When we are honest about what is, we have the power to change is. If we are denying the truth, ignoring it, or pushing it out of our awareness, we are powerless to change it.
Self-inquiry allows us to go within and discover who we are, what we think, feel, need, want, like, dislike. What are greatest joys are, what are greatest challenge are. Self-Inquiry allows us to discover internal causes of challenges and discover resolutions from within.
The process of awareness, compassion, acceptance, and introspection results in insights from within. We can see parts of our self we had previously denied. We can see how we are creating our own stress. We can see how we have given our power away. These and many more insights are available with meeting our self with awareness, compassion and acceptance.
When I first heard the word responsibility, to me it meant self-blame. Then I heard a new definition of the word which was, “ability to respond.” The ability to respond rather than the old knee jerk reaction to any situation is a step to reclaiming our power. To look at any situation or challenge with awareness, compassion, acceptance and introspection gives us needed information and insights upon which to make internal changes or take external actions, guided from within. That is self-responsibility.
Integration happens as the new awareness’s, insights, internal shifts and responsible actions become integrated into our lives. We begin to feel more empowered in our lives. We can let go of feeling like a victim to our circumstances or feeling like the answers to our problems are outside of us. We can let go of coping mechanism and begin to let our true self shine through.
The fundamentals of health, wellness and wholeness have the power to impact us on all levels of our being: physical, mental, emotional, energetic, spiritual and in our expression in and interaction with the world around us.
Contemplate these fundamentals and notice which resonate with you and which don’t. Pick one or more to experiment with becoming aware of how it operates or not in your life. Remember, awareness is the foundation of all change.
May you be healthy and whole, 💗Bindu
The tricky part with this is knowing what you really love.
Sometimes our surface desires run the show.
and our deepest heart and soul desires get pushed aside.
Slow down, take some deep breaths
Put your hand on your heart and feel your body
Ask for inner guidance.
It will be given.
May you be guided from your heart and soul, 💕Bindu
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” —Ian Maclaren
There are times in life when you are stressed, frustrated or angry with yourself, someone or a situation. You may end up annoyed, rude and sending out negative emotions. Learning how to manage your negative reactions in stressful situations with kindness is helpful to staying centered and balanced.
First and foremost, forgive yourself for being human. Acknowledge what you are feeling and accept that as part of being human. It is simply what you are feeling in the moment.
What are your feeling? Anger, sadness, fear, worry, frustration? Emotion is short for energy in motion. Once you are aware of your own emotions, allow yourself to slow down and deepen your breath. Experiment with feeling the emotion without needing to suppress it or act outward with it. See it as an energy moving through you. Your only need is to feel it and experience it.
What is creating the stress and negative emotions? Are you overwhelmed at work? Is it a person that is triggering the emotion? Discovering what is triggering the emotion can assist in transforming it. Sometimes simply feeling the emotion and inquiring into it will defuse the emotion.
Often, under an emotion is an unmet need. Perhaps you don’t feel heard. Perhaps you feel slighted or disrespected. Maybe you feel unloved or unaccepted. Maybe you feel threatened or attacked. Maybe you feel left out or disconnected. By understanding the unmet need, you can more clearly understand what you need.
Do you need to feel love, valued, appreciated, respected? Perhaps you need to feel safe or secure. Maybe you need more space or freedom. Maybe you need to feel included and heard. By understanding what you need, you can explore ways to get that need met.
While it is important to feel our emotions and understand our triggers and needs. It is also important to understand what the other person feels and needs. When we understand both, we can work together with the other person(s) to find a win/win resolution.
Sometimes the need can be met from within. By accepting yourself even when another is criticizing you. By, taking a walk and giving yourself some breathing room. By speaking your voice, sharing your perspective or opinion. Listening to the other person, perhaps drawing them out with questions. Maybe by removing yourself from an unsafe situation. The choices are unlimited. Your inner self will be able to guide you.
If an external change needs to happen take action. Speak your voice, walk out of the room, go for a walk. Once you find the root cause, take action to change it. If it cannot be changed, can it be cut from your life? While making changes, cut out other stress triggers as much as possible. Change negative thought and communication patterns into more positive ones.
Regular exercise can give you an emotional lift and an outlet for negative emotions. Physical movement helps to clear emotions from you body. Take a warm bath. Meditation can help to calm the mind and get a better perspective. Volunteering and helping others may help see things with a different perspective.
By responding to negativity with kindness, you can diffuse a potentially negative outcome. Here are some tips to try:
1. Don’t mirror others negative actions and thoughts. Treat them kindly. This could mean apologizing if it’s appropriate. Acknowledge other’s points of view without judging.
2. Speak in a pleasant, friendly voice as if you were talking to a friend. Keep your voice controlled and without anger.
3. Keep an open and relaxed body posture. Don’t roll your eyes, sigh or make other negative body language movements.
4. Breathe! Take a few long, slow, deep breaths in through your nose, pause slightly, then let your breath out. Deep breathing relaxes you and re-centers your emotions. It puts you and others at ease.
5. Distract yourself by engaging in something pleasant or helping someone else.
Just because you are stressed doesn’t mean you need to react negatively to others. Instead, act in a way that is kind and considerate of the feelings of all involved. Seek to understand your needs and the needs of others concerned. Dialogue in a way that communicates your needs and also be able to hear the needs of the others involved. Work towards a win/win solution.
By holding the intention to create a positive outcome, negative situations can be transformed into a co-creation and positive situation for all concerned.
As Mother Teresa’s poem titled Anyway, states:
“People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered; forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway.”
1. Create and intention be more aware of your thoughts and emotions in a difficult situation.
2. Experiment with inquiring inwardly to understand your underlying needs.
3. Listen more fully to others with and intention of listening for their underlying need.
4. Experiment with some of the suggestions in this article for transforming negativity into something positive.
It’s not your fault . . .
That you have fibromyalgia
It’s not your fault . . .
That you were abused as a child or adult, beaten up, hit, or yelled at.
It’s not your fault . . .
That you were abandoned as a child or adult
It’s not your fault . . .
That you were neglected at a child or adult
It’s not your fault . . .
That you were minimized, restricted, or controlled as a child or adult
You Deserve . . .
Kindness
Attention
Respect
Compassion
Caring
Love
Being heard
Being Seen
And FORGIVENESS
From yourself
And from Others
Stand Tall In your own
Truth
Love
Respect
Forgiveness
Kindness
Compassion
Self love
Self Care
May you know that your are already blessed, 💕Bindu
The benefits from kindness are more than just feeling good. Kindness affects both our emotional and physical body in different ways. Here are some of the benefits of being and showing kindness to others.
For those of us with fibromyalgia, taking on extra responsibilities may be daunting or impossible. If that is the case, begin at home. Begin where you are. How can you offer simple acts of kindness in your everyday life? A smile, a kind word, a compliment. Holding back on an unkind word.
Remember yourself among those you are kind to. Compliment yourself. Remind yourself of the things that you are strong in. Counter an inner criticism with a compliment. Stop a moment to take a breath or gaze at a flower.
Incorporate the smallest acts of kindness every day. You’ll notice changes in how it affects your life and begin to see the ripple effects on other people as well.
