Tag: Mental Health

How to heal with gratitude
Healing · Spiritual

How to heal with gratitude

radhikab

Gratitude is an alchemic emotion. When a person is experiencing gratitude i.e., feeling thankful for something; it is impossible for the person to be angry or bitter at the same time. Usually, a human’s emotional body is quite complex and many emotions can exist side-by-side. But, when a human charges their emotional body with gratitude – no negative emotions can exist along with gratitude for the time being. Fear can soon come in after a human is done feeling gratitude, but not along side it. To make sure that ‘fear’ doesn’t come after gratitude, the other emotion needed is ‘faith’ – but that’s a whole different story.

Healing with gratitude is a very ‘feminine energy’ way of healing. It does not specifically look at a wound or hurt, try to analyse it and then try to find ways of healing the issue – this process is very ‘masculine energy’ based – logical, analytical. Healing with gratitude, does not go into the depth of a particular issue, it is more holistic. It is healing by surrender and alchemy – very magical, just like the feminine energies. For a person like me, and I think most of us nowadays – who are used to being more in their masculine energy of  being logical, analytical and deep diving into issues – it requires some patience and practice to cultivate the act of being grateful. Because masculine energy is always out to fix problems and issues, it becomes a natural habit for people in this energy to always strive to improve – which in turn means looking at short-comings and trying to overcome them.

This itself is against the emotion of gratitude in which there is an inherent element of being content in the current condition. The true emotion actually even goes beyond being content – it goes to the extent of bowing your head to the event/person/entity which is causing this feeling of being thankful. The very moment a person experiences this, the ego dissolves for how many ever moments gratitude is experienced and with this ego dissolution – all the ego-based emotions (coming from the Manipur chakra i.e., Solar plexus chakra) disappear. In Buddhism this can be described as when the cause is removed, it’s effect gets removed too. That is why, the emotions of fear, hatred, jealousy, envy, anger, bitterness, etc. which are ego-based cannot exist along with gratitude. Gratitude alchemizes these lower vibration emotions and converts them to love. Love toward the event/person/entity that we feel grateful for. This love also is an ego-free love, a devotional love.

How then can one cultivate gratitude? Here are some ways :

  1. Make a list of things you are grateful for. Keep it with you in your phone. Read it multiple times in a day.
  2. Doing something that ignites your passion. This will make you a magnet for gratitude.
  3. Helping those less fortunate than you are.
  4. Being open about asking for help and making it a point to thank whoever helped you.
  5. Make a list of the tough situations in your life and list all the people who helped you out from it. If something else helped you come out of it – music, books, spirituality, exercise, art, adventure – you can make a list of these. Thank each of them again, if you haven’t already.
  6. Go out in nature and admire whichever aspect of nature you like.
  7. Look at a thing of beauty – this maybe a person, a mountain, a tree, anything – and try to get lost in it’s details. The moment you are completely lost in its beauty is the the moment gratitude will automatically flood your heart.
  8. Say ‘thank you’ whenever you get the chance to.

Once you start magnetizing your being with gratitude, you will start attracting more things to be grateful for. Little by little, your life will start moving from a materialistic realm to a more spiritual realm – where magical synchronicities will fill your life – giving you more and more events/persons/entities to be thankful for.

Here are some songs which I think are the same frequency as gratitude. They talk of different religions, but I find their vibrations to be very similar (P.S.: Not my intention to endorse any of these religions)

  • My everything – Owl City
  • Aaqa – Abida Parveen, Ali Sethi
  • Bolava Vitthal – Mahesh Kale
How women store stress and trauma in their body
Healing

How women store stress and trauma in their body

radhikab

Disclaimer: All of these views are my own from my own experiences. I am not a woman hater & what I have observed may not apply to all women.

Before we start talking about stress and trauma in women, I think we need to mention feminine and masculine energy. These are super broad topics in themselves, but for the purpose of this article, all we need to know is that – every woman has both masculine as well as feminine energy inside her (all humans do). Masculine energy is the forward moving, ‘doing’, controlling energy – it’s actually much more but for this article, this will suffice. Similarly, feminine energy is the waiting and watching, ‘being’, letting it go energy (+ a lot more!). Both energies are present in every human being and they are not in competition with one another, they should actually complement each other.

Now the women who deal with stress, tend to be more in their masculine energies – i.e., they are more in the doing mode, they want to get things done quickly and in their way. In short these women are task masters and therefore they have a higher need of control than the average woman. If you work in corporate culture, you might have seen such women somewhere in the management chain. For such women, stress often shows up in the same places as that in a man. Stress in women can also be held in the head, near the third-eye chakra (Ajna chakra) and in the neck.

Now the other kind of women, who are usually balanced in their masculine and feminine energies or the ones who are more in their feminine energies – of letting it go, relaxing, being – such women usually don’t experience much stress – but they experience trauma. This is because they might not be trying to control a situation but might be trying to get a particular outcome they wished out of the situation. If the outcome does not match the expectation – women might experience feelings of sadness, despair, grief, helplessness and heartbreak. These are feelings from the women’s heart chakra (Anahata chakra). We can categorize this as trauma when it occurs in a prolonged or frequent fashion,

A woman who has experienced considerable trauma, can also store this trauma in her hips. Hips relate to the root and sacral chakra (Muladhar chakra and Svadhishtan chakra). This can manifest as a woman who gets petrified under a situation which is considered threatening by her. It can cause her to freeze up. Most women also carry an abandonment wound – which has been carried over for multiple lifetimes – which does show up in the hips and sexual organs. Sexual trauma is held in the heart and in the sexual organs.

So if you are a woman or if you are reading this for the special woman in your life. Here is how you can help them.

Stress: For stress you can do similar things as mentioned in men’s stress blog post. For stress stored in neck or head – neck massages and standing in your power and speaking your truth is key.

Trauma: For heart  – mantra meditation does wonders for a broken heart. Please see link to a beautiful heart healing mantra below. For trauma stored in hips, moving the hips, playing, dancing, swimming, activities in water, etc. can help transmute it. There are many hip opening exercises explained online.  Sexual trauma healing needs more time and professional guidance. Talk therapy with a licensed therapist is also wonderful for any type of trauma described above.

So women, who are reading this blog – the ultimate purpose of any human being is to find the right balance, get union within themselves of their masculine as well as feminine energies. The core wound of ‘abandonment’ keeps surfacing for most women, but every time it does – we are challenged again to be whole within ourself (by building the masculine energies). When a woman gets stressed because things are not in her control, it’s a clue that it’s time to let go of expectations (from a man, a job, society or anything else) and go within to align with the flow of the Universe. You are all Goddesses in disguise, all you need to do is realize your true self! <3

Mantra for heart meditation. This mantra will definitely make you cry, once you are a bit advanced with it. Doing a meditation with it for 40 days without a break  is helpful:

Image credit : https://www.covenofthegoddess.com/goddess-asherah/

DIY feet massage for stress relief
Healing

DIY feet massage for stress relief

radhikab

This is my technique for a gentle feet massage which almost always puts my spouse in a deep meditative state. By the end of this massage he has dozed off to wake up only next morning. So try to relieve some stress off a special one or you can do it for yourself as well. In all healing techniques setting intentions is important, also it is important to not simply rush through the massage but give each and every rub a lot of love <3

Time: Approx. 30mins.

Setting: I highly recommend getting a Himalayan salt lamp and a peacock feather for the area where you plan to do the massage. Something as simple as the picture below is good. I will make another post explaining why I think these are helpful. Even if you don’t have this, it’s not a deal breaker 🙂  Make the person comfortable with a blanket, pillow, etc.

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Music: Mul Mantra from Kundalini Yoga is best to support the root chakra (Muladhar chakra). Feet are related to root chakra. If you plan to chant the mantra, it is recommended to cover your head. Please find the two links to Mul Mantra below the post.

Lotion: I use ‘Stress Relief’ by ‘Bath and Body Works’ Aromatherapy line of products. Picture below.

Process: 

1. Apply one-by-one on both feet.

2. Place one foot in position and apply lotion.

3. Fingers and thumbs: Start massaging the thumb – especially the back of the thumb – this is the brain point in Chinese reflexology and puts the brain in a relaxed state. After that hold the thumb in your fingers and move it in circles ~10 times anti-clockwise and then ~10 times clockwise. You might hear some crackling type of sounds because the thumb muscle are loosening. Next rub all the fingers and similarly start circling the fingers clockwise and anti-clockwise. There could be more crackling sounds. Give a good rub to the fingers one last time.

4. Middle of the foot: Trace and rub the area just below the fingers horizontally while applying some pressure. Rub the foot from below the fingers to above the heel. Continue this for sometime. You can use all your fingers. This feels extremely relaxing – you can do this horizontally first, then increase pressure and do it vertically.

5. Heels: Hold the foot in your hand below the heel. Then with both the hands massage the heel with a lot of pressure. This area also feels wonderful to be massaged – stay here for a good amount of time. This has pressure points for the lower back, knee, ankle, gonads, insomnia point and sciatic nerve. No wonder it feels so good 🙂

5. Stretch: Hold the foot in both your hands. Now turn the whole foot in clockwise circles, then anti-clockwise circles. Then stretch the foot from left to right and then right to left. This can be done 5+ times.

6. Same thing for other foot.

This is the process I follow. I hope this helps you in some way to relieve someone’s stress.

Wishing everyone lot of love and light!

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