Fibromyalgia and the Pain Body Pt 3:  Breaking Free

Fibromyalgia and the Pain Body Pt 3: Breaking Free

The pain body, is an integral part of fibromyalgia. It is the blend of destructive cellular memories, suppressed emotions, sub and unconscious negative beliefs that cause emotional pain, stress and contribute to physical symptoms. 

In order to heal the pain body, it is essential that you break your identification from it.  Otherwise, it literally feels like you are trying to kill a part of yourself.  Your defenses will come up and sabotage your success.

In order to break your identification with your pain body, we need to develop Witness Consciousness or Awareness.

To understand awareness, we must first understand multi-dimensionality.  Multi-dimensionality is the awareness that we are not one-dimensional linear beings.  It acknowledges that we are the sum of many parts.  The parts can be summarized in 6 dimensions:

  1. Physical – body
  2. Emotions – feelings, emotions
  3. Mind – thoughts, belief systems
  4. Expression – how we interact with others and the world
  5. Spirit – the spark of God, consciousness that is the enlivening of our existence, our connection with God, Consciousness, Spirit
  6. Energy – e=mc2 – meaning everything is energy

 

Why is this important? 

When we are disconnected from our spiritual essence, we can become “identified” with our body, mind and emotions.  We have forgotten that we are more than the body, mind and emotions.

When we have been subject to trauma, negative conditioning, or negative life experiences and haven’t resolved those experiences, they congeal into what is called the pain body.  The pain body feels separate from God and everyone else and creates a separate identity to keep itself safe.  The downside of this is that it also holds onto its pain.

In order to free our self from the pain body, we need to step outside of the pain body and view it from a detached perspective.  Stepping outside of the pain body is accomplished through Witness Consciousness.  Witness consciousness is the part of us who can step back and observe the body, mind and emotions.  It is intimately connected with our spirit.

 

How do we do this?

The biggest block to Witness Consciousness is the mind.  The mind is where we store memories of our past experiences.  It evaluates and creates conclusions about those experiences and makes decisions and forms beliefs based on that.  Many of those decisions and beliefs keep us stuck in pain and limitation.

To access Witness consciousness, we need to step outside of the mind.  There are many tools to do this.  I will provide a few here:

  1. If we connect to our breath and watch our breath, it creates a momentary gap in the stream of thought.  That gap is the doorway to Witness Consciousness.
  1. Deepening the breath. When we slow down and deepen the breath, that gap widens, and we come into greater connection with our body and Witness Consciousness.
  1. Pay attention to the current moment. Look around the room.  See the furniture, photos on the wall, other people, animals.
  1. If used correctly, positive thinking can quiet the mind. Our minds are habitually filled with negative thoughts and beliefs.  When we balance the stream of negative thoughts with positive thoughts, the mind can slow down and become less identified with the old negative thoughts and beliefs.
  1. Becoming aware of our emotions. Many of us demonize our negative emotions and suppress them.  Emotions means energy in motion.  By suppressing an emotion, we block the flow of energy and create increase tension and pain.  We also block our awareness.  By breathing and being present with our emotions, we can release the emotion.
  1. Intend to step into awareness. By using this languaging, you are speaking from the witness.  It encourages breaking identification with the body, mind and emotions.
    • Simply say, my mind is thinking . . .
    • A part of me is feeling . . . (insert emotion).
    • My body is feeling . . . (insert sensation)

 

The Benefits of Embracing Witness Consciousness – Awareness

By breaking the identification with the mind, and becoming more aware of our breath, body, emotions, the environment around us, we are entering the present moment and Witness Consciousness.

From a state of witness consciousness or awareness, and its natural connection to our spirit, we can receive answers to the challenges that we have from outside the mind, our conditioning, and our deeply held sub and unconscious belief systems.  This new awareness holds the key to healing and transforming every area of your life.

 

Awareness practice:

  1. Take some time each day, even 2-5 minutes to just stop and notice your breath. When you are at a stop sign, waiting in a line, or every time you open a door.    When you go to bed at night or when you first wake up in the morning.  Put a reminder on your phone.
  2. Pick any one of the steps above and take some time each day, even 2-5 minutes to practice it.

This begins the process of breaking the identification with the pain body and reclaiming your power. 

 

May you grow in awareness, 💗Bindu

What if . . .

What if . . .

What if . . .  ???

For those of us who are challenged with fibromyalgia and other chronic illness, we can feel like a victim to our circumstances.  We might fight the illness and the symptoms and want them to go away.  That is perfectly natural and normal.

Consider for a moment that there might be a higher possibility.  What if having fibromyalgia or another chronic illness is a wake-up call.  An opportunity to look beyond the illness to underlying factors contributing to the illness.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t want the symptoms to go away.  It does mean that rather than only treating the physical symptom, we might need to look deeper to fully rebuild our health.

 

The Wake Up Call

There are many possibilities that your wake up call might be asking for.  Here are a few examples:

  • Empower yourself in a relationship that you have been giving your power to another person in an attempt to feel more loved or safe.
  • Let go of childhood or societal conditioning to move into a more satisfying or empowered expression of your highest potential.
  • Begin to love yourself more and take care of yourself rather than to give all your energy to others without taking time to rest and recharge.
  • Take care of your body and provide it what it needs to heal and thrive.
  • Heal traumas or emotional wounds that are festering inside and blocking your inner peace and fulfillment.

 

My wake up call:

In my case, fibromyalgia was a huge wake up call and sent me on a journey of personal and spiritual growth that has changed me completely from who I was before.  I held onto a lot of repressed emotions and a lot of should’s and have to’s.  I was a very weak person and would let people walk all over me.  I was so desperate for love, that would stay in unhealthy relationships.  I wasn’t living my truth or my full potential.   Spirituality was an unknown word to me.  

Today, I am a force to be reckoned with.  I am strong.  I own my power.  I speak my truth.  I have found that by loving myself, I don’t need love from outside, yet attract loving people into my life.  I take great care of my body.  I love the work that I do.  I am content with myself and my life.  I have goals that I am working toward, and yet am at peace with where I am at.  My health is greatly improved.

I cringe when I think of what my life might have been like if I hadn’t broken out of the mold I was born into.

 

Are you ready?

If any of this resonates with you, then I congratulate you.  I welcome you to this incredible journey of healing and evolution.  I am here to support you in this journey.  

 

Introspection for this week:

Take some time this week to ask within to get some ideas about what your wake up call is.  Here are some questions you can contemplate:

  • What is your inner self reaching for?
  • What are your unfulfilled desires?
  • What success have you had in moving forward?
  • What is holding you back?
  • What are the obstacles in your way?
  • What support do you need?

 

May you reach your highest potential and live a fulfilling life.

💕Bindu

Let Yourself be Silently Drawn . . .

Let Yourself be Silently Drawn . . .

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

Health, Wellness and Wholeness

Health, Wellness and Wholeness

Health, Wellness and Wholeness

Today, I would like to begin a new conversation around health by looking at the difference between health, wellness and wholeness.

 

Health is a state of the body. 

When we talk about health, we usually mean the state of functionality of the body.  Does it operate at a ‘normal’ level without pain, or at least minimal pain?  When we seek to help our body function better, we look to physical treatments.  Medications, herbs, massage, diet, exercise.  Medical doctors, naturopaths, functional medicine practitioners.  

The focus here is usually attempting to diagnose and change the biochemistry of the body.  Often this approach to health is an outside in approach meaning we need to control the biochemistry of the body in order to feel healthy.  We are doing something to our body to make it function properly. 

 

Wellness expands our concept of health. 

Along comes the wellness industry which redefines the concept of health.  Wellness expands our definition of health to include the mind, emotions, lifestyle factors and searching for happiness in our lives.  We engage in positive thinking, lifestyle modification, honoring our emotions.  Perhaps finding work that inspires, re-evaluating our relationships.  In addition to the physical modalities, we seek out counseling, therapy, life coaching.  

 

Then emerges the idea of Wholeness. 

The overriding name of my business is Integrative Wholeness.  This idea expands the concept of health to include all dimensions and parts of who we are.   It focuses on understanding our multi-dimensionality and bringing all parts of our multi-dimensionality into balance and harmony.  

Integrative Wholeness embraces our physical body, our emotional body, our mental body, our energy body, and our spiritual body.  The intent is to create balance in each dimension.  When balance in each dimension is established the dimensions begin to resonate in harmony with each other.  The soul, mind, heart and body are in alignment with each other.     

Integrative Wholeness is also a process of meeting, greeting, embracing and integrating all parts of who we are.   We each have a personality that includes parts of us that we deem acceptable.  Yet there are parts of us that are wounded and/or considered unacceptable. These parts need to be accessed, healed and integrated.  Some of these exiled parts are the innocent inner children who hold our joy, gifts and talents but were deemed unacceptable by those who raised us and/or our society at large.  When we integrate these parts, we begin to feel more whole.  We reclaim our joy and our passion for life.  

It is this experience of integration that will create health from the inside out.  When all dimensions and parts are in balance and harmony, health on all levels is the natural result.  Your body will be healthy.  Your mind will be clear and focused.  Your emotions will be balanced.  You will feel a connection with your spirit and God.  You will be expressing your gifts and live abundantly.

 

In Summary 

I began on a search for health many years ago.  I discovered that health was more that just the body.  I also needed inner peace.  I discovered that the path to health involved the process of healing and integrating all parts of myself.  

This is my vision and what I am here to teach others.  I invite you to listen, learn, evaluate and apply what feels right to you.  

 

Wishing you peace, love and vibrant health, 

Bindu

 

The Fibromyalgia Matrix

The Fibromyalgia Matrix

When I first learned about fibromyalgia, I was excited . . . and then disappointed.

After 20 years of suffering, there was a name for what was going on with me. I thought that meant that it could be cured. I was sorely disappointed. I found that just because there was a name for what was wrong with me, didn’t mean that anyone knew how to heal it. 

I wanted to be healthy.

So, I pulled up my bootstraps and began applying what I had learned in my explorations of holistic health and consulted with holistic practitioners. By that time, I had given up on medical doctors as they had nothing to offer me that made any significant difference. In pulling it all together, I came to a place where I could manage my symptoms, but not make any real progress on completely eliminating them.  I wanted more. I wanted to be healthy and not live within the limitations of having fibromyalgia. I felt like I was living in a box and had to carefully manage my life to maintain a manageable level of pain and fatigue.  

 

Managing my symptoms wasn’t enough.

My search continued. I slowly began unraveling the underlying causes of my dis-ease.  Piece by piece, I began to resolve physical, mental, emotional, expression and spiritual imbalances that were keeping my stuck, unhappy and sick.   Realizing that there was not one thing that would fix or heal what was wrong with me, I coined the term the Fibromyalgia Matrix. 

 

Fibromyalgia Matrixtm

The Fibromyalgia Matrix is the interweaving and interconnected physical, emotional, mental, energetic and spiritual imbalances that underlies the experience of fibromyalgia. Each person’s matrix is unique to them, just like a fingerprint is unique. The Fibromyalgia Matrix creates chaos physically, emotionally, mentally, energetically. No foundation, no stability, impaired function, chaos, nothing to stand or build on. Sound familiar? 

 

Recovery from fibromyalgia! 

Recovery from fibromyalgia is a process of identifying and resolving these imbalances. It is quite like putting a puzzle together. You find the right pieces and put them together in the right sequence. Out of chaos comes order and improved function. As the pieces of the puzzle are found and put together, symptoms go away, health emerges, and peace is restored.  

Rather than chase symptoms, we find and resolve the underlying imbalances. That is the path to creating true health on all levels. 

 

The 8 fold process 

By moving through the 8-fold process I spoke about last week, we can unravel the Fibromyalgia Matrix, and progressively rebuild our health, reclaim our life, rediscover our joy and align with our purpose.   True health is much more than the elimination of physical symptoms. It is embracing the totality of who we are, body, mind, emotions, energy and spirit with love and compassion and reclaiming our uniqueness and our gifts and living successfully, powerfully and joyfully in the world. 

 

An Introduction to the Integrative Wholeness Experience to the Rescue!

That my friends, is what I am about. Are you ready to join me in this grand adventure? I hope so. That is why I am launching the Introduction to the Integrative Wholeness Experience next month. In this program, we can come together to heal individually and collectively. I’m excited about this. I hope you are too.  

Stay tuned, look for more information about the Integrative Wholeness Experience. 

May you be whole, 💕Bindu 


Coming Soon!  Stay tuned for details.

Can meditation calm fibromyalgia symptoms?

Can meditation calm fibromyalgia symptoms?

What is meditation?

The word meditation likely brings up many images or ideas about what that word means. The truth is that it means different things to different people. With that in mind, let’s take a look at meditation.

When most of us think of meditation, we think of stopping the mind, a meditation technique (such as watching a flame or repeating a mantra or watching the breath), or of a state of bliss. In truth, these things are part of meditation, but they are not the whole picture.

For me, the goal of meditation is twofold. It increases awareness; awareness of our thoughts, our bodies, our emotions. It also increases our awareness of the life around us  . . . or our external experience.

Meditation is also a practice that reconnects us to our Calm Inner Presence.  Presence is a valuable resource in our lives and includes the qualities of calmness, clarity, equanimity, compassion, creativity, and connectedness.

Meditation is not connected to or owned by any religious or spiritual group although many religious and spiritual groups include meditation in their practices. Therefore, meditation, in and of itself is non-denominational.

 

Meditation and the harnessing the mind

Have you ever tried to stop the mind? It really doesn’t work. The mind is like any other organ in the body. It has a job to do and its job is to think, just as the heart’s job is to pump blood and oxygen through our body 24/7. So, to try to stop the mind is a losing endeavor and we can become caught up in fighting with the mind, which is not helpful when “meditating.”

Yet, by sitting and watching the breath or a candle flame, we can create mini-vacations from the mind. In those mini-vacations, the mind is silent for a few moments or longer. Those gaps grow over time are helpful in allowing the mind, body and nervous system to relax.

Bringing your attention to a positive statement or mantra, helps us to break up the chain of habitual and life negative thoughts. Over time, those positive statements become part of our data base and balances the life negative thoughts.

 

Meditation builds patience and compassion

Initially when we sit to meditate, we will often lose our focus very quickly. At this point, most of us berate ourselves for losing our focus. But not to worry, losing your focus is part of the process. The important thing is that as soon as you notice that you have lost your focus, you simply bring your focus back to the technique. It is as simple as that.

This has a twofold purpose. Becoming aware that you are thinking again and have lost your focus builds awareness. Bringing your focus back to your technique begins to harness the mind.

 

What is the best meditation technique?

There are many meditation techniques and you may wonder which the best technique is. We are going to bring our idea of bio-individuality to meditation just as we have with all the other topics we have discussed. The perfect meditation technique for you will be the one that works the best for you. Period.

But, where to start? What meditation technique will work the best for you? Consider how you process life. Are you more visually oriented, mentally oriented or tactile (sensation) oriented? If you are visually oriented, you might want to choose a visual meditation technique such as gazing at a candle flame or imagining a particular image. If you are mentally oriented, you might choose a word, affirmation, or mantra that resonates with you. If you are tactile oriented, you might want to choose a sensation such as feeling the breath moving in the body or other sensations in the body.

Experiment with different techniques and see which one works the best for you. How do you know if it works? You will notice an increased sense of relaxation and calmness. As you continue your practice, you will notice periods of stillness or quietness followed by periods of activity. The periods of stillness or quietness increase, you may notice a detachment from your thoughts and even from the meditation technique.

Reclaim your Power of Choice

Meditation brings greater awareness of your thoughts, emotions, sensations, and spiritual essence. As your awareness increases, you have the ability to consciously choose rather than to unconsciously react to happenings within you and in your world.

You become more aware of how your thoughts, feelings, words and actions impact you and the world around you. As awareness increases, you begin to make more and more choices that will bring you back to a place of balance, calmness, relaxation, peace and harmony.

 

Connect with your calm inner Presence

Within in each of us is a calm inner Presence. That Presence is found in the gap between the thoughts.

Presence is our spiritual essence. The spark of God or Consciousness that lives within your heart and in every cell of your body.  You can allow this part of you to guide you through your life and assist you in creating more harmony, health, groundedness, and peace in your daily life. It can become a trusted guide as you navigate life’s challenges. It can be your anchor during your ups and downs.

Once you have tasted balance, peace and harmony, you will want more of it. It will become more important to you than things that pull you away from inner peace.

 

How does this help fibromyalgia?

With meditation the body, mind and nervous system can relax. You can move from fight, flight or freeze into, rest relax and repair. This is the foundation for rebuilding your health. Your body knows how to heal itself. But is needs to be in rest, relax and repair mode to be able to heal the body. In the rest cycle, the body makes repairs, removes toxins and allows your whole system to reset.

 

Contemplation for this week:

  1. Are my thought primarily negative or positive?
  2. How busy is my mind . . . just notice the busy-ness.
  3. Am I able to redirect my mind to thoughts of my choosing?
  4. How do I naturally relate to the world? Visually, mental, or sensory?
  5. Try sitting for 5 minutes each day just watching your breath. What happens?

In truth, meditation is very simple, but not always easy. It is helpful to have a teacher or group to assist you on the journey. Believe me, the mind will draw you away and it is helpful to have someone or a group to pull you back. 

Stay tuned. I am working on a group program to help with this process.  Not just meditation, but many tools to reconnect to our body, emotions, heart and spirit.  and begin the process of healing from the inside out.

May you connect with your calm inner Presence, 💗Bindu

Stay tuned

I am still working on the program that I will be launching.

More information coming soon.