Co-written by MERGE’s Meghan Toups, LPC and her Inner Journey Retreats partner, Lena Franklin, LCSW
Connection to self is the portal for inner healing. By tapping into our strengths, increasing our self-care and embracing sacred stillness, we become more empowered to recreate the life we want to live by healing from within. Here are four ways that you can rediscover your inner healer.
1.) Sacred Stillness
Perpetual busyness is our modern day epidemic. Slowing down takes intention and energy. Pico Iyer says, “In an age of movement, nothing is more critical than stillness.” Truly, it’s through the portal of stillness that we’re able to see the vital movement of our magnificent world ~ dragon flies skimming the water, the sun dipping beneath the horizon and our gentle breath flow. Finding stillness is like having a reset button at our finger tips in any given moment.
Buddha taught that because we are alive, we suffer. To unearth the power of our inner healer, we must respond to our feelings of anger, shame, resentment and grief with gentle attention. But we are often taught to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Stillness is the sacred medicine that allows us to deeply sense and observe our suffering ~ and with intention, we can respond with the compassion our soul needs. Truly, the source of our power stems from the wounds of our pain.
2.) Learn Abundance From Nature
These days, we often become entangled in our scarcity consciousness ~ believing we never have enough money, success or even love. One of the keys to discovering the true and radiant power of your inner healer is to immerse yourself in nature. The natural world is resilient, constantly dying, absorbing nourishment, regenerating and blossoming into the future. Even in Fall and Winter, there’s promise of abundance as springtime nears. Though we can’t see those seedlings sprouting underneath the frozen earth, we trust fully that growth is unfolding.
Connecting to nature with presence opens our intuitive gifts, reconnecting us to the healer within. Belief is powerful. Believing that we belong to the natural world opens up our hearts and minds to the circular gifts of abundance that nature offers.
3.) Connect your Mind and Body through Whole Foods
In our fast paced world, it’s not always easy to eat whole foods, cook or have a meal with loved ones. But when we begin to focus our attention on how food feels in your body, we can embrace a more powerful mind body connection. Our relationship with food begins to change when we increase our awareness and understand that food has the ability to either help or harm us. Intentionally choosing foods that will give us energy, clarity and satisfaction, such as whole fruits, vegetables and grains, empowers us to feel more in control of our life, our health, and our emotions.
The first step in making any change is increased awareness. Simply noticing physical sensations after eating certain foods can create a powerful change within. As you notice foods that make you feel stronger, clearer or more energetic, you’ll feel more empowered to embrace your body’s innate healing potential.
4) Intuitive Wisdom
If you’ve ever experienced a “gut feeling”, or simply just knowing something is right or wrong, you’ve already tapped into your wise, intuitive self. Each of us has a deep sense of wisdom stemming from within. Tapping into our own sense of intuitive wisdom can be an incredibly powerful force to help us make decisions, have a more clear sense of self, and establish positive goals for the future.
Intuitive wisdom often comes in a whisper, an emotion, or a gentle knowing. Silencing our inner critic or “busy brain” is one key way of creating connection within, opening our hearts to receive those quiet, wise messages. Approach this seeking with gentle self-compassion, for the practice of creating stillness and silence can often take some time. As we increase our self-care, sitting quietly in nature or another sacred place, we can learn how to listen to our intuitive self and reconnect to our wise healer within.
Each one of us possesses an inner healer. By finding stillness, immersing ourselves in nature and adopting a diet rich with whole foods, we can begin to reclaim our intuitive wisdom. To excavate your own Inner Healer, we extend a warm invite for you to join us in Santa Fe, May 18th-22nd, 2016 for a transformative wellness journey ~ “Holistic Healing: A Journey Into the Mind, Body and Spirit.” We’d be honored to be your guides on the great Journey Inward.
Light & Love,
Lena + Meghan
Inner Journey Retreats