Hello Again

We often get told that self-love and being true to ourselves is a key to our happiness and fulfilment, but what does it mean to love ourselves? Is it being selfish or narcissistic, or does it lead us to health and wellbeing?

I believe the latter to be true. In fact, loving yourself means you have more to give to others – very unselfish! However, even with a strong intent, it can sometimes be hard to put into to practice. There are lots of reasons for this, which include belief systems and childhood/social conditioning.

In this newsletter, I will look at a couple of different methods to assist you to be loving to yourself and to help you come from a heart space. Firstly, I discuss a way of making decisions or choices that are life enhancing and energising. Then I have given you a Lovingkindness meditation that helps to cultivate feelings of love towards yourself and others. It is my favourite meditation and I hope you give it a try.

Warm wishes,
Alison

A way to make life enhancing choices
Lovingkindness Meditation
Stress Management Tips
Something Interesting...

Choices for your highest good

Part of being loving to yourself and true to ourselves means we make personal choices and decisions that are life enhancing and lead us to fulfilling our highest potential. This is the path that leads us to those great qualities that we desire in our lives such as joy, love, health, and inner peace.

Sounds great, but how do we know we are make choices that are for our highest good? One effective way of doing this is to follow the energy. When you have a decision to make or a variety of different options to choose from, use your body and your awareness of where the energy is to help you choose what is in your best interest.

To do this you need to bring each option to mind and spend a couple of minutes focusing on each one in turn. Imagine yourself making the decision or pursuing the option and note how it feels in your body while you think about it. If you are not used to noticing feelings/sensations in your body, it make take a little practice, but it gets very easy to do in time. Observe the following:

• Where do you feel it?
• How does it feel? Does it feel nice or uncomfortable, positive or negative?
• Is there a sense of outflow of energy or constriction?
• How strong does it feel on a scale of 1-10?

You are looking for feelings of ease, wellbeing, outflow and feelings located in your heart centre area, rather than those that feel bad or constricted. Try and take your head out of the equation while you are doing this and just focus on your body and how it feels.

As a general guide, uncomfortable feelings in your solar plexus region usually indicate your gut instinct is telling you it’s not for your highest good, even though your head make be giving you lots of very good reasons for doing it.

Energy flow and good feelings in your heart centre are a positive sign. You can rate the strength of the feeling to evaluate different options that make you feel good and expansive.

Be aware that sometimes thinking of an option can raise feelings of tightness or anxiety in your chest. This means you need to look more closely at this and that it does not mean it’s the wrong option. We get tension in our heart area when we are considering things that take us out of our comfort zone. Yet this maybe something that is important for our growth and wellbeing. You may need to do some work on clearing what you are fearful of. Remaining in our comfort zone can feel safe in the short term (and may be appropriate at times), but eventually it can lead to stagnation, constriction and lack of fulfilment.

Being aware of your energy is a fantastic way to guide your life. The more you practice the easier it gets. Please come and see me if you need help with this process or help you clear any fear/anxiety you become aware of.

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Meditation - Lovingkindness

The practice of lovingkindness is an effective and fundamental path to opening the heart and mind. It contains the seeds of profound happiness and inner well-being, which is especially necessary with all the pain and stress in our lives today. The Buddha first taught the lovingkindness, or metta, as an antidote to fear, but it also helps us overcome feelings of separation, isolation and craving love, which all give rise to pain.

Please Click Here for the meditation directions. Read all the directions first so the practice itself can be straightforward. It is not difficult to remember.

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Stress Management Tips

...solitude is such a potential thing. We hear voices in solitude, we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life; we receive counsels and comforts, we get under no other condition...-- Amelia Barr

* If you have things going around and around in your head and you can't get clear about what you need to do, stop thinking for a while! Give yourself time out and create a space so the answers can appear. We will never hear the answer, our intuition or guidance if our heads are full and busy spinning. Simple, but effective!

* Any time you hear yourself saying "I should do...", don't do it! "Shoulds"indicate a total lack of desire to do something. To do it (whatever it is), means you are going against what you really want to do and you are not being true to yourself. To do it will only bring up feelings of resentment, frustration, or other negative emotions which are detrimental to our health and wellbeing. Learn to say "No" and be happy!

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Something Interesting...

For anyone who wants some more indepth knowledge of TFT and how it can be used to work through trauma, you may like to follow the link here to an article by Dr Robert Bray, "Thought Field Therapy -Working Through Traumatic Stress Without the Overwhelming Responses". Dr Bray has done amazing work with TFT. His finished article was recently published in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma Volume 12, Number1 /2, page 103-123, 2006.

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