Tag: Wellness

New online course – How to reduce your stress.

by drcarolhead, posted in Stress, Transformation, Wellness

Do you often feel overwhelmed with the busyness of your life? Are you suffering the effects of chronic stress – fatigue, brain fog, anxiety symptoms? Do you want to change your life for the better?

I have recently developed an online course to help people deal with stress. This course will show you how to begin the journey from stress head to the person you want to be.

I’ve written this course because I’ve experienced stress and anxiety first hand in my life. I struggled with stress for many years before I discovered my own ways of dealing with it. I have taken courses in hypnosis and stress management and have discovered what works well for myself and patients in the clinic.

Over four weeks, with five short lessons each week, I will explore how stress affects the body, mind and spirit and give you strategies to reduce your stress and also address the causes of the stress.

Until January 2021 I am offering the course at a discounted rate. The usual price is $89 but as an introductory offer it is just $49.

To find out more about the course click here.

To buy the course for the introductory price of $49 click here.

If you have any queries or these links don’t work for some reason please email me at drcarolhead@gmail.com

This course is for those people who are stressed out but who are ready to make some changes in their lives. It is not for people who want someone to save them or need professional help. The course is for educational and entertainment purposes and does not replace seeking professional help.

Healing Earth

by drcarolhead, posted in Earth, Healing, Wilderness

I have just spent over a week in Halls Gap doing some locum work. It is such a beautiful place with lovely native bush and so much wildlife. We would sit outside on our veranda and watch the currawongs, magpies and cockatoos as they came to visit. The blue wrens would occasionally make an appearance too but they can be shy.

Sometimes the kangaroos would graze in the yard and some adolescent emus would wander down the road. My daughter scared a snake in the yard and it took off towards the bush, probably as terrified of her as she was of it.

On our walks we saw more kangaroos and emus and the occasional echidna wandering along the track. The bush was dry but incredibly beautiful with tall eucalypts and grassland eaten down by the kangaroos. Climbing further up the rocky hills the understory thickened and the wallabies plunged away into the scrub as we approached.

The spirit of each wild place is evident if you just take a moment to feel and connect with it. And we need to take the time to connect with this spirit that permeates the earth. This is the only way we can begin to heal the earth from the damage we have done. We have to become part of her spirit again. We have to live within nature rather than battle against her. We have to regain our deep connection with the land and ask ourselves what we need to do to help the healing that needs to happen.

It is tempting to turn to Indigenous wisdom for answers and this will certainly help but the connection with the earth energies has to happen on a personal basis. We need to feel with our hearts the spirit of the earth and then we realise we are all one larger system. We are part of the earth and we can no longer afford to believe that we are separate and in control. We cannot reduce the problems we are facing to little bits. We need to view it holistically and to do what we need to become part of the system. Becoming part of nature again rather than trying to control everything.

As we lean into the earth and connect our heart with hers we can begin to know what she needs from us in order to help the system heal. For some this is healing on a personal level from the illnesses our separation has shaped; we come back to ourselves. For others it is work that supports the earth rather than destroys her. For many it will mean turning away from consumerism and towards more self-reliance. For most of us it will mean a radical shift in the way we think about the world. Our beliefs about how the world works need to change.

Go out in nature and open your heart to the connection we all need to make our lives meaningful. We need to connect with the earth to heal ourselves and the earth needs our hearts to help her heal. We will not succeed in this by thinking about it but rather by feeling out the way. By feeling what we each can do to make a difference. This inner knowing of how to help can come to us in dreams or visions, as sounds or sights or feelings. When we connect with the earth energies we open ourselves up to experiences beyond thinking that can help forge new directions. We just need to stop thinking with our heads and start living from the heart, opening ourselves up to the greater wisdom of the earth and being present to our true selves.

I haven’t been writing my book this past week because I wasn’t sure which direction to take. So I’ve been reading some great books by Stephen Harrod Buhner and doing some yoga and working. And I feel like the book needs some reworking so this week’s blog took on a life of it’s own. It sprang from my spending time with earth energies and realising that if I am open I will write what I need to write. What I write doesn’t have to fit into a western medical paradigm but is actually a different way of looking at our health and illness. I keep coming back to the holistic view.

My new book Tools for Transformation is almost ready and the ebook version will be available free on signing up to my email newsletter. Look out for this in the next few weeks.

If you would like to buy a copy of my book – Holistic Medicine, Beyond the Physical – copies are available on my website for $30 including postage in Australia.

I acknowledge and pay respect to the Elders and Traditional Owners of the land on which I work and live.

Listening to the calling of our heart

by drcarolhead, posted in Health, Holistic medicine, Transformation, Wellness

Listening to the calling of our heart.

Our hearts are always calling to us. They try to get us to pay attention to longings that we often bury beneath our everyday existence. We bury such longings and ignore the callings because to listen would be to go against all we have learnt about fitting into society. For society does not pay heed to the callings of the heart. Society pays heed to the callings of the ego and the mind; to mortgages and secure jobs, to school work and university degrees; to being a good child, a good spouse, a good parent.

I listened to an interview with John Mayer the other day and he spoke about knowing that he was a musician and writer from a young age and following that calling knowing it was what he was here to do. Sometimes I wish I’d had that clarity of calling at a young age. But for most of us life gets in the way and our hearts get burdened with expectations. We expect we will follow a certain path only to find that it is not what we thought; that we do not arrive at a place where our hearts are filled with joy, love and abundance. We glimpse such places along our path – maybe when we fall in love, or have a child or begin a job that we love. Yet somehow we can’t hold onto that place within us that is trying to show us how to live.

The heart callings have a strange pull on us and sometimes if we pay attention that pull will be an irresistible force that draws us towards our life’s work. The calling changes over time but some impulses are always with us urging us to leave secure jobs and do things that society may frown upon.

Your heart may be calling you to fall in love with someone, or change your job, or have a baby, or buy a puppy. It may be calling you to stop the busyness of your life and spend time listening to its longings. Sometimes we are so busy that we don’t pay the heart and its desires any attention. Maybe it is because we don’t want to hear what the heart has to say about our current life? Or maybe it is just that we have forgotten how to live in touch with our heart centre but rather pay all our attention to the ego mind.

The ego does not want us to listen to our heart simply because to do so might put us against society’s expectations. But even the ego may fall in line eventually. When that part of us sees that the way of the heart leads to joy and fulfillment and wealth of a type not measured by money. We may struggle with listening to the calling of our heart but once we cease the struggle we can just accept that what we need is to pay our heart more attention. Maybe then we can accept that to follow our heart’s desires is not selfish but the way we can be of greatest service to the world.

Changing work

by drcarolhead, posted in Holistic medicine, Transformation

Changing work.

I have been a GP for over thirty years and for much of that time I have struggled with whether or not to change and do something else. I have enjoyed some of the work yet always in the back of my mind been a little unsatisfied. I have changed jobs many times trying to find the perfect GP job and stopped work for a year once to write. But each time I change jobs I find myself back in the same place I had left. Doing work that doesn’t quite fit with who I really am.

Finally I have decided to retire from conventional general practice work and will be leaving San Remo at the end of July.

This decision has not been made easily but I finally realised that I couldn’t keep working in a system that does not support the provision of holistic health care within the GP framework. In Australia our health system is time poor and drug rich; it caters for a quick fix when there are very few quick fixes that actually work to make us healthier.

I have struggled to practice holistic medicine within the GP system and I have therefore decided to give up on that particular struggle. I am sad to leave the patients who have supported me but I feel that I should follow my heart for a change. For too long I have followed my head and justified staying in general practice through logical reasoning. In a way I am moving into my own holistic wellness by shedding a job that stops me from being truly myself.

I’m taking a bit of a leap because I can’t afford to stop working completely yet I also can’t afford to keep doing a job that doesn’t fit with my passions and interests. It is a little soul destroying to do work that is not in line with who I really am.

So where to now? I’m going to continue part time at Headspace doing some youth mental health work as their model is much more holistic than the conventional GP system. I’m going to do more writing which is my biggest passion. And I’m going to allow life to unfold. Just like I write about in my book I’m going to trust the process of life and let go of the outcome and see where life takes me. I’ve tried to control the process around work for so long that I became stuck in a system that I didn’t agree with. It’s time for yet another change and I’m excited to see where life takes me now.

 

Transformation 5 – Allowing

by drcarolhead, posted in Intention, Transformation, Wellness

Transformation 5 – Allowing.

I have spent the last year writing a book about transformation and this week I discovered that everything I had been doing in order to transform was related to the physical aspects. I thought if I transformed my physical environment and my physical body and mind that I would be on the path to greater transformation of the spiritual kind. I tried to incorporate spiritual practices into my life and believed that by doing these practices I would be able to transform myself into someone who was more authentic and more aligned with their spiritual inner self.

This week I discovered I had been approaching the whole thing from the wrong direction. So I deleted most of the book I had written and began again. I have learnt much in the past year but not what I planned. I started out with so much purpose and direction; I planned out the book and assigned chapter headings and tried to make the transformation something logical and rational and physical. Yet what I intended was to become more authentic and more aligned with spirit; to have my inner self manifest physically. My planning and logical thinking got in the way again. I allowed myself to try to control the process instead of allowing the process to unfold.

I discovered that I need to be more allowing of the natural process of life. It cannot be forced. Of course we can try to force it, we can plan and plan but what that generally brings us is more of the same. My more of the same is more dissatisfaction with conventional medicine and my general practice work. I have gone in circles with this and each time I planned a change that might make a difference and each time I came full circle back to the same place.

Now I know that my path is to find a more joyful existence where I can live my passions and help people. I’m not sure what that exactly entails and that’s where I’ve got stuck before. Trying to plan my way out, using my brain to find alternatives. Never succeeding, rather I only find more of the same. Now I see that to transform my life and myself I need to allow it to happen. This means not forcing, not searching, not grasping at alternatives. It means allowing life to unfold in its own way. It means paying attention to signs and synchronicities that show me the path to take to my future. This allowing means making peace with the present and finding joy in the life I have now but knowing that change is coming. I can feel it.

The temptation is to plan and force and work out where the path will lead me so that I know how to get there by dint of will and logic. That is the way we have learnt, the way of control. Allowing is the opposite of control. It is giving up control to a higher force that lives inside us all. This force connects us all and unless we pay attention we might miss the signposts that show the way. The signs are always there but I sometimes fail to pay them enough attention.

Why is it that for years I have been dissatisfied with my work? It’s a sign that I should be doing something different. I always knew this yet I resisted the knowing. What else can I do? How can I make a living? What if I fail? I let the negative control my life. I still feel like most of my path has been on course; that I have needed to learn certain things through my work in conventional medicine. But now I know that I need to be doing something else. I just don’t know what it is yet. I need to allow that to unfold and that’s my new plan. Allow life to unfold.

Transformation 3 – the physical body

by drcarolhead, posted in Health, Holistic medicine, physical body, Transformation, Wellness

Transformation 3 – the physical body.

Transforming our whole self can begin anywhere but I chose to begin with transforming my physical aspects. Decluttering my life was the initial step but then I had to look at transforming my physical body into something healthier. I had let myself go in my middle age, becoming rounder of belly and quite unfit. This was affecting how I felt about myself and I decided that what I was learning about in my nutritional studies I should put into practice and see if it made any difference.

I read and researched about what a good diet should be and came to the conclusion that although I have always had a relatively healthy diet I needed to clean up my act. I had not been eating meat for many years except for fish – so I was not a complete vegetarian. I decided initially to try the low carb high fat way of eating. In this diet, which isn’t really a diet so much as a different way of eating, the carbohydrates are kept to a minimum – mostly just vegetables and the occasional fruit. Protein and fats make up the bulk of the food. I cut out all sugar, bread, pasta, rice, root vegetables and began to eat more nuts and cheese and fish. I ate a variety of vegetables and occasionally some berries.

I managed to stick to this for some months and then went on holidays and it all went out the window for a while. When I returned to it I wasn’t as strict. I felt I had more energy on this way of eating and I avoided the swings in energy that a high carb diet causes. However I lost very little weight and it was quite a hard diet to maintain.

Further research then led me to the Paleo diet – the diet of our Paleolithic ancestors. This was very similar to the low carb, high fat diet but it didn’t restrict fruit as much. It did however mean no dairy. I lasted about two weeks on a vegetarian and fish form of Paleo but found the food choices too limited without meat. After all our Paleolithic ancestors were not vegetarians; much of their diet was meat based.

Not to be discouraged I made a major decision – to start eating meat again. I had been vegetarian partly for health reasons and partly because of the poor treatment of animals. The health reasons seemed a little unclear now. So I began to eat meat again – mostly organic free range or biodynamic.

I definitely think a Paleolithic type diet is the healthiest diet and the diet we have evolved to eat. This is the type of food I eat:

  • Vegetables – preferably organic
  • Fruits – preferably organic
  • Meat and fish – meat should be organic, free range, grass fed. Fish should be low in mercury and sustainably fished
  • Eggs – organic free range
  • Nuts and seeds – preferably organic
  • Good oils – olive, omega 3, coconut
  • Legumes – preferably organic
  • Herbs and spices – preferably organic

These are the types of food I avoid:

  • Highly processed foods especially those containing sugar and fructose, artificial colourings, preservatives and artificial sweeteners
  • Sugar
  • Dairy – many people lack the basic enzyme for digesting dairy, others are intolerant to the proteins. I have recently been reintroducing a little dairy into my diet in order to get a little more calcium.
  • Most grains – especially gluten containing grains. Some cultures have eaten grains for centuries and have ways of preparing them that decrease gut problems but for most of us grains should be avoided
  • Soy – although I may eat fermented soy sometimes
  • Processed meats – these have been shown to increase our risk of cancer
  • Foods containing chemicals, preservatives, colourings, antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, artificial sweeteners
  • Alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, other drugs

I do still drink coffee although less than I used to and I have alcohol a couple of times a week and I’m still deciding whether either has an adverse effect on my health.

Overall I feel less tired. I don’t have those slumps during the day when my blood sugar starts to plummet because I’ve eaten too much sugar or carbohydrates. I can go for longer without food if I have to without feeling hungry or cranky. I have lost 10 kg so it seems to be working, and without too much effort. As long as I eat paleo type foods I can eat what I want so it’s not really a diet but just a different way of eating.

As well as good food I have started taking extra vitamins and minerals. Through my nutrition course and research I am taking a multivitamin and mineral that includes most of what I need. In addition I take vitamin c, magnesium and if I feel like I’m getting rundown I take an immune booster with herbs and zinc in.

I think extra vitamins and minerals are important because even though I eat mostly organic food it still probably doesn’t have as many micronutrients as our ancestors’ diet. Certainly we’re probably all lacking vitamin C. I don’t think there is any evidence to suggest that taking vitamin and mineral supplements has adverse effects. It is possible to overdose on fat-soluble vitamins but in the doses in the average multivitamin pill this isn’t going to happen.

In addition to eating much more healthily and taking the extra vitamins and minerals I decided it was important to exercise more. I began walking almost every day and bought an online yoga membership which I actually began to use.

So healthy!

Exercise

Exercise is worth focusing on for a moment. Most of us aren’t active enough in our everyday lives so exercise becomes an important component of keeping ourselves healthy. The more active we are the better although too much exercise can have adverse effects on how health with joint problems and overtraining issues. The secret is always to listen to our bodies and pay attention. If we have been leading sedentary lives then a gradual increase in activity and exercise is best, paying attention to how our body reacts to new exercise and adjusting accordingly.

Each exercise program and increase in activity is individual. It’s important to do activities and undertake exercise that is enjoyable. We want to bring more joy to our lives, not more suffering. Sometimes we do have to go through some initial reprograming of bad habits to come to a place where we enjoy the increase in activity.

A good exercise physiologist or personal trainer can help us develop healthier habits and sometimes we need a medical check up prior to undertaking exercise – again it’s an individual thing. Tailor your physical transformation to your own particular needs.

Changing our outer body, feeding it better and moving it more, not only makes our body healthier but it makes our mind healthier. Our cells rely on good nutrition to do their job and if our cells are healthy everything works better.

Sleep

The other aspect of good physical health is getting enough rest. Sleep is really important for our health; it is essential for healing and restoration. Research shows that adults require eight to eight and a half hours every night for good restorative sleep and the optimum hours are between 9 pm and 5 am. Delta wave sleep, which is the best restorative sleep, has been shown to occur mainly between 9 pm and 2 am. Restorative and healing hormones are produced in this time. Poor sleep patterns over the long term lead to an increased risk of degenerative diseases such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Tips to establish a good sleep pattern can be found on my website –  Sleep

Healthy environment

I’m going to write more about our relationship to our environment in a later blog but our physical environment is important to our health. Most of us don’t realise how much we are exposed to chemicals and radiation in our everyday lives. Compared to our grandparents’ lives we are exposed to myriad chemicals and toxins and higher levels of radiation. These can all cause illness so it pays to decrease your exposure any way you can. Clean living is more important than ever.

Ways to improve your environment and exposure to chemicals and radiation

  • Reduce cleaning chemicals. Use microfibre cloths to clean with and use only vinegar and bicarb soda. We have become obsessed with killing germs which is altering our microbiome and potentially leading to increased rates of allergies and asthma. Avoid bleach, solvents, strong detergents, air fresheners and fragrances.
  • Avoid chlorine and fluoride in drinking water – use a good quality water filter.
  • Avoid all pesticides and herbicides in the house and garden – these contain hormone disrupting chemicals and other toxins, they are designed to kill animals and plants and should be avoided.
  • Keep electrical appliances at least one metre away from where you spend a lot of time- eg bed, couch, dining table. Avoid prolonged use of mobile phones.
  • Avoid storing food in plastic – use glass, stainless steel and lead free ceramics. Plastics can contain hormone disrupting chemicals and other nasties.
  • Open your windows and air out the house on a frequent basis.
  • Eat more organic and unprocessed foods. Avoid the chemicals involved in processing and conventional farming methods and as much as possible eat organic or home grown produce (pesticide and herbicide free of course).

 

When our body is healthy it is more in alignment with our higher self. Sometimes our health is influenced directly by being out of alignment but if we can look after the physical aspects as well as we can this helps our spiritual journey. Diet exercise, good sleep and living clean are important elements of transforming our physical self into a more healthy state.

Transformation 1 – Intention

by drcarolhead, posted in Holistic medicine, Intention, Transformation, Wellness

Transformation 1 – intention.

This blog series is my effort to document the process of transformation that we might undergo in order to become whole or truly ourselves, the person we are meant to be. In order to transform consciously and purposefully we can’t just write about it or think about it. The change has to involve doing things differently, behaving differently. It has to involve action of some type.

In writing this blog I hope to not only learn how to transform myself but also help other people learn how to transform. The intention is to transform myself into a person who is more aligned with my inner self. This inner self is the essence of who we really are but often it is overshadowed by our outer persona. The persona we display to the world comes about as we are shaped by the outer physical world. We let ourselves become a person that sometimes only faintly resembles who we really are. We do so because it is easier than being true to our real self.

My intention when I started this blog was to become truer to myself, authentic, more whole. While I had discovered much about my true self in writing my first book, Holistic Medicine, it seemed that I still lived according to other people’s rules. I still paid too much attention to what society and my ego self expected of me.

Could I transform myself into the person I was meant to be without chaos, illness or drama?

And how was I going to do it?

Without knowing what the process would be I first set the intention that this is what I am going to do. The intention is set by the action of beginning to write this blog and document my progress. I trust that the process will reveal itself as I take each step and documenting it all not only helps me but potentially helps others who wish to transform themselves into more authentic people.

The reasons we are not authentic are many and varied. We tend to become less authentic when we let society or those around us dictate how we should behave. Often it is our own expectations and beliefs that trap us in a life we don’t really love. For surely being authentic is about living a life that is full of joy and love and service to the world. It is about living the life we were born to live, following our true path, our destiny.

How do we identify our true path? How do we know when we are not on it?

The simplest answer is that our true path brings us joy and when we are not on our true path we are not living with joy. Our life drains us and we are unhappy. But changing our life is often a long-term process.

In order to transform into the person I desire to be, all I have to do is align my outer self with my inner self. Of course it’s that easy! My inner self is the eternal part of me, my soul, my connection with Source (the universe, God etc.). This part of me is full of love and knows exactly what the path is. My outer self is the ego me, the mind that chatters away, often with negative thoughts and beliefs. Transforming into my authentic self is about being constantly in touch with my inner self and source. My intention is therefore to live a life in touch with source energy. Setting this intention is important. Like any process living my life in touch with source energy does not have an endpoint and it isn’t a physical outcome so much as a spiritual one.

Once upon a time my intention was to transform my life into a life full of joy and happiness and I thought the way to do this was to stop work as a doctor and become a fulltime writer. So my intention was much more focused on the physical dimensions. For years I fantasized about stopping work as a doctor and just being able to write. I changed jobs frequently trying to find something that was more joyful and fulfilling. Yet I always ended up in the same place. That was because my intention had such a physical outcome attached to it. My inner self and source were always leading, attempting to get me to follow my true path and my true path is to be authentic. Now my ego thinks it knows what that means but it doesn’t. My ego thinks my true path is to be a writer not a doctor. My ego plans and plans and focuses on outcomes that never happen. So now my intention is to live a life in touch with source energy and I can do this by aligning my inner and outer self. In this way my outer persona is a reflection of my inner self – that is what being authentic is all about.

If your intention is about physical outcomes then this blog is probably not for you. While I will go through certain steps or processes that help you transform into a more authentic person it is not a recipe for achieving specific physical goals. Our inner self knows what achievements we are capable of and the direction our lives can take. Our ego thinks it knows what we can achieve but these wished for achievements are often fantasies that society has sold to us. We are all special but often not in the way we fantasize about. When we manage to live our lives directed by our inner self and source we achieve things we never knew were possible but they may not reflect what our ego dreams of.

To set my intention with this spiritual focus of being authentic to my inner self is new for me. All those years I have been trying to be authentic I have just been trying to achieve an ego fantasy of what I believed was my authentic self. I believed that my real role in life was to be a writer not a doctor. Having set my intention to now be authentic I am now open to what my inner self and source have in mind for me – my ego does not know what that might involve but living life with the intention of being authentic opens me up to many possibilities that I may not have even entertained.

I have lived much of my life trying to follow my authentic path but this is the first time I have let go of the outcome in physical terms and set my intention in purely spiritual terms. I intend to live with my physical self aligned with inner self and spirit. Or in other words to manifest my inner self on the physical level. Let’s see how it goes.

 

 

 

Transformation – introduction

by drcarolhead, posted in Health, Holistic medicine, Transformation, Wellness

I had set out to write a book on transformation but have decided for the time being to publish it as a blog. Books take a long while to write and I am keen for some feedback on the topic while I am exploring the process.

My life has been a series of transformations. This is true for most people and especially for those of us interested in personal and spiritual development. Many of our transformations are brought about by suffering or tragedy. Events that happen that jolt us out of our daily grind and make us realize there is more to life than we had been living. Positive experiences can also cause us to undergo transformation – the birth of a child, falling in love, landing the perfect job, or meeting a special friend.

Often we let our lives pass in this way; waiting for change and transformation to arise out of our life’s events. What if we were to actively embrace change and transformation? What if we were to decide to transform ourselves on a day to day basis in order to become a better person? Of course this is the basis of personal and spiritual development and there are many traditions that recommend such an approach. Choosing to actively transform ourselves into the person we were meant to be. Becoming more authentic. Allowing our soul and inner self to be reflected in our outer persona and our life story.

This is what I propose to explore in this blog series. Choosing to transform. Choosing to grow and change into a better version of ourselves. This version is already present within us but it takes some work to allow our outer persona to be in alignment with our inner self.

My first book Holistic Medicine put forward a model that we can use to understand ourselves better. Holistic Medicine sought to provide people with a way to grow through chaos and transform and heal themselves. This blog begins with the assumption that instead of waiting for chaos or other events to transform us we can choose to transform ourselves consciously.

Whilst I believe that chaos is a natural process that leads to transformation it is often uncomfortable and causes a lot of suffering. What if we could grow and learn and transform without having to suffer so much? Why not choose that path?

If chaos happens in order that we transform into something new can we avoid some of the chaos if we choose to be open to transformation all the time? Rather than waiting for chaos and suffering can we be open to change on an ongoing basis?

Transformation comes about as we bring our inner and outer selves into line so that our inner self is expressed. Our ego shrinks and our inner self or spirit grows and becomes manifest in the physical world. We become who we are meant to be and live authentic lives. We heal our fragmentation and become whole.

The process of chaos has been described in my first book but essentially it is a nonlinear process that cannot be controlled; the outcome is never predetermined and it can take us anywhere. Once we find ourselves in a chaotic process we have no control and have to rely on our inner self to bring us to the outcome. The transformation that we undergo can happen on an unconscious level but as we become more aware of our inner self and its connection to spirit we transform on a more conscious level. I believe that as we become even more aware of our inner self we can choose to undergo the transformative processes without the need for so much chaos and suffering. We can choose to grow in a spiritual sense through the power of our desire to do so. But we may have to learn how to do this.

This is what this blog series is about. Learning how to grow spiritually by choosing to do so. Let’s choose to grow and transform without waiting for life to bring it to us in the form of suffering. Let’s choose to transform into our higher self where our physical self is aligned with our spiritual self and we are whole.

 

 

Skills for living an authentic life 6

by drcarolhead, posted in Community, Health, Holistic medicine, Wellness

Cultivating our community.

An important part of our life is our relationships with other people. Certainly to live an authentic life it is necessary to have authentic relationships with others and be a part of a community. Our community or tribe gives us a place to be ourselves and to support others to be true to themselves.

Community doesn’t just mean the local neighbourhood although some of us do embrace the local community, however this is becoming less common with large cities and busy lives. Our community may be a local church or a local gardening group. It may be our meditation or yoga circle or our bridge club or local school. It is important to have places where we feel we belong and we can act ourselves rather than being who we might be expected to be. For some people their work provides a community but for others the work environment is not always a place where they can be truly themselves.

Cultivating community is about having good relationships with family and close friends but also involves extending our circle beyond those we are closest to. It is a place where we can have relationships with others through finding common ground. Communities are invaluable for times when people are in need; they support their members through good and bad times and people often become even closer in times of crisis or tragedy. In fact tragedy can bring both small and large communities together in an outpouring of grief and support.

Ways to cultivate our community

  1. Talking more to people we meet in our everyday lives enhances our community. Even small conversations can bring light to someone’s day and you never know what connections you may develop.
  2. Explore the ways in which we can be of service to others. This builds community connections. We might do volunteer work or help with child-minding for the single parent or gardening for the elderly. Simple acts of kindness are a great way to increase the strength of the community and allow us to express our authenticity
  3. Get involved in community activities. Go to local activities such as farmers markets, meditation groups, local concerts and gatherings.
  4. Embrace the culture of your community. Be it a church group or school community, a spiritual group or a bridge club it is important to celebrate the cultural aspects of the group.
  5. Celebrate the individual and their authenticity. We can make sure we celebrate individual achievements especially as it relates to the community.
  6. Be inclusive rather then exclusive. Community should embrace diversity as well as being a place where we feel ourselves; we can include members who traditionally may be excluded and in that way strengthen the larger community.

 

To be authentic means that we aren’t just ourselves in the privacy of our own home but bring that authenticity to our communities and the world.

 

Disclaimer. This web site is for research and entertainment purposes only. The information given in this site is not intended to replace a therapeutic practitioner relationship.

Skills for living an authentic life 4

by drcarolhead, posted in Holistic medicine, intuition, Transformation, Wellness

In the fourth blog in this series I will be looking at how to listen better to our intuition. In my last blog I wrote about the different sides of the brain; the left side that is logical and rational and the right side that is intuitive. Our inner authentic self is always trying to enter our conscious awareness and intuition is a pretty direct way to do this. Both logic and intuition are useful skills but most of us have come to rely more on logic and we forget to trust our intuition.

Intuition is not solely located in the right side of the mind. It is also in our body, especially in our gut. We get gut feelings that provide us with important information about a situation or person and this information isn’t at all logical. Or sometimes we feel something in our bones or just know something in our heart centre.

Our intuition can also speak to us through our senses – we can receive messages through visions or hearing messages or through an inner knowing – clairvoyance, clairaudience and claircognizance.

There are many ways that our intuition tries to get our attention but we can be more open to accessing our intuition if we have the intention. By intending to be open to intuitive messages and paying attention to them by following through on their messages we allow our inner self to speak with us more directly.

We can use traditional intuitive tools – tarot, runes, oracle cards and the like. These tap into our intuition in quite concrete ways providing us with information that we might not otherwise be able to access. By using these tools regularly we become more practiced at allowing our inner self to speak to us directly.

We can also access our intuition through our dreams and visions. Sometimes there are obvious and direct messages or we can pay attention to the symbols and images. To discover the deeper meanings behind our dreams we might read dream books or see a psychologist skilled in dream interpretation.

Another way that intuition comes to our attention is through intuitive flashes and hunches. A sudden thought might jump into our awareness or we might feel a strong urge to do something spontaneous. These intuitive flashes can lead to moments of creativity as new ideas come to us or might lead us to meet people who help us on our path. Following out intuitive hunches may take a leap of faith but as we follow our intuition more we become more in tune with it and its connection to our authentic self.

Intuition is a pretty direct line to our inner self yet many of us have forgotten how to trust this skill. We rely more on our logic and our rational brain and try to think our way out of problems. We plan out our lives and forget to let spontaneity and creativity help us follow our path more closely.

 

 

Disclaimer. This web site is for research and entertainment purposes only. The information given in this site is not intended to replace a therapeutic practitioner relationship.