Healing: Self-awareness, Self-Care, & Returning to the Authentic Self

The healing journey takes us along many different pathways. As we travel, healing challenges us to remember and reestablish our internal and external connections within the Great Mystery that surrounds and enfolds us. It is this grand design that comes alive within us each time we reconnect with our heart and authentic Self.

Healing asks us to show up and be present. This is a huge challenge in today’s world, where we encounter constant stress and change. During three decades of practice as a physical therapist, clients continuously demonstrated how three strategies enabled them to live and maximize daily health and well-being:

1. increase Self-awareness
2. use Self-care practices
3. reconnect with the heart and authentic Self

These strategies and practices enhance our ability to respond and create a greater sense of wholeness throughout our being — body, mind, emotions, and soul or life force.  Learning and applying these practices is key to developing strength, flexibility, resilience, and a sense of personal empowerment during life and healing.

All healing involves Self-healing. This heart-and-soul journey and evolutionary process leads us “home” and endows us with the ability to engage and grow through the paradoxes of life — the sorrows and the joys, the efforting and the effortless, the doing and the being. Each of us who participates in any healing process, our own or others, are like stars that inhabit the realm, shedding light amidst the darkness, in service to everyone and everything.

What Self-care strategies and practices have you explored to increase Self-awareness? Many are available: meditation, mindfulness, yoga, journaling, movement/exercise, time in nature, music, dance, art, hobbies, etc. Any and all of these bring reflection on three questions:

1. Who am I?
2. What do I want and/or need now?
3. Where am I going?

The answers will not be revealed through logical reasoning and everyday mind. The answers will be found within, as you listen to and become present with the wisdom in your heart and authentic Self. This is your inner GPS system that will always guide you toward what has heart and meaning and your own North Star.

Take time in stillness to become present with your heart and authentic Self or true nature. Hold your hand(s) over your heart. Start with a simple breath practice, inhaling and filling your lungs with new, clear energy. Release what no longer serves you with each exhalation — stress, tension, confusion, anxiety, etc . Count or focus on each inhale and exhale, noticing how your body, mind, emotions, and life force respond. After 5 - 10 minutes reflect and journal about Self-awareness that arose through this breath practice. Then reflect and write your responses to the above three questions. What did you witness and learn?