The Solution – Creating Healing Space

We all have the capacity to bring healing into our life experience.  Do you suffer from low self confidence, believing you are just not good enough?  Read on to find simple ways to create healing space and become more self aware.

When we turn back towards our own pain and begin to embrace it with compassion, patience, and tenderness, we open our hearts, not only to ourselves but to everyone else in our lives.  In creating healing space we can magnetise many solutions into our life.

There is no easy, quick solution in changing the patterns of a lifetime. The decision to turn self rejection into self acceptance requires a very strong intention and needs to be practised in various ways every day. We need the courage to take responsibility for our own fear, anger and emotional pain instead of blaming others, lashing out and then beating ourselves up in regret.

Building our Observer

We need to build our observer – the calm detached part of ourselves that doesn’t get swept up in the emotional dramas of life. This means that we need to bring more and more of our attention into the present moment.

How do we go about creating healing space?  Asking ourselves the following questions may help:

• What’s happening RIGHT NOW?
• Where is my body tense?
• Perhaps I can soften and relax it a little?
• Can I take a few slow deep breaths and quieten my mind?
• What happens if I slow down and count to 10 before I react?
• Can I go somewhere and sit quietly for a few minutes?
• Is there a different way I could respond to this situation?

When we are willing again and again to bring our attention back to the present moment many changes take place.  We notice the thoughts and beliefs of self rejection.  Then we learn how to prevent them from making us react. This may seem an insurmountable task at the outset.  However, with practice and perseverance, this discipline of self observation grows.  Above all, we develop much needed patience.

Self Observation -v- Self Analysis

Self observation is not self analysis.  It’s the very opposite!  With self observation, we find ways to quieten the mind and create calmness and space. With practice these wonderful qualities of patience and calmness will grow.  We learn to react in a completely different way to the stress and challenge in our lives – we create healing space.

In this way we not only save our energy, but we stop creating the very dramas and crises that are so destructive in the first place.

The Freedom of Letting things Be as they Are

Learning how to let things BE as they are – we become free to learn and grow. If a child is loved and accepted as they are, and their innate gifts encouraged, they will blossom happily and naturally. However, if they are pushed into performing to someone else’s expectations this blossoming cannot occur.  What happens to the child who has to continuously respond to the drivers: “try harder”, “be perfect”, “be brave”, “don’t cry” etc?  They are forced into a straitjacket of performance and of pleasing others. Sadly,  many of us have experienced this sort of upbringing and education to a lesser or greater degree.

Becoming Loving Parents to Ourselves

We need to learn how to become loving wise parents towards ourselves. This does not mean condoning our weaknesses and then doing nothing about them. It requires the honesty to accept “Yes – these are my fears”, “this is my emotional pain”.  Only then can we become healed and transformed.

Sometimes we just need to acknowledge “I’m scared” or “I’m hurting” rather than trying to “FIX” it or push it away.

For instance, in the same way as a loving parent will hold and comfort a sick child, by just “sitting with it” we can bring so much healing to ourselves.

Have you ever been around someone who completely accepts you as you are “warts and all”? Doesn’t it feel wonderful just to be yourself, not needing to watch what you say and do for fear of being judged, or seen as being “less than”. When we’re with people like that we can be relaxed, unguarded, natural and sincere. It is then so much easier to be authentic and honest.

Coming Home to Ourselves

Imagine how wonderful it would feel if we could extend that acceptance towards ourselves – completely. Imagine how our lives would transform if we cared enough about ourselves to get to know who we truly are, rather than forever straining to be someone else. When we embrace our own pain and fear, we COME HOME to the unique person we are in the deepest possible sense. We merge the false opposites of black and white and create a whole rainbow of colour – another whole world of possibilities!!!