WELLNESS - Cultivating Awareness in the body

I am a healer.

Technically, I am a life coach.

I would still call myself a life coach, given that I have all the pieces of paper that it takes to convince people that I actually know what I am doing (because another human being told me I was good enough....ugh) but there are too, too many people on this planet with that title.

Sometimes when women in my area find out that this is what my title is, they stop with all of the witch doctor jokes (because they find that out, too) and actually start asking me things that they do not realize until they try it - that it actually works.

Like a charm, even.

As a life coach, I am expected to teach "techniques."

As a healer I am expected to come out into the world wearing something that people might have seen on television when they were children.

But, for real, I do none of these things that too many people are convinced that we who do this as our work in this lifetime. I do not wear a bone through my nose, and neither do I call on any spirits to do my bidding for me.

That is ridiculous. (Note that I did not state that it is impossible...but that is for another writing)

I teach people how to heal their lives, one trauma at a time.

We read so much about how we need to just "let go" of things, but, rarely are we taught what that means. OR how exactly we can do that. It causes lots of confusion, too.

It kind of puts light on the idea that there are a lot of people calling themselves "healers" at this time in our history, but, it seems their abilities tend to lessen when someone comes to them with their issue and because those people cannot pay the fee, those people have to still suffer.

I would love to know what their Christ thinks of these healers and how they are using their gifts with others?

Since, yes, I do make my living doing weird things, and teaching others to heal themselves is not the only thing that I do, that I have been called a heretic for, that I have been called and labeled as an evil woman because I refuse to submit to anyoneʻs crap.

The thing that I teach people the very most?

...to become more aware.

The way that I do it is basically the same way that many others do.

Except for this one thing that we all ought to know about anyway, which is becoming aware of our own body. Lots of people are not aware of the thing that they are buying from these healers, and cultivating your bodyʻs awareness is one of those things.

I was taught these things by my Aunty, Kaleiiliahi, who went home to the Heavens not very long ago. She is who made me very aware of how our thoughts affect our bodies. She is also who taught me how to teach others how to do these things that too many people pay a premium for, only to be told that for the next step in THEIR healing, they have to pay about $199.95 (US) per each session.

Folks, my doctor, Maria, does not even charge that much for a doctor visit to her office. Neither does my former physical therapist, nor any one of the very many specialists who have been in my life or who are still in my life and have been for many years.

I also do not charge what could easily rival an entire familyʻs cellular phone bill for a month.

Ever.

Others can. I refuse to.

I know what it is like to be in need of any kind of relief and not be able to buy that specialistʻs time.

It sucks big time, namely when you come from a culture which honors natural healing more than it will ever conventional. Living in a world which honors technology over humanity is a world which has forgotten its roots.

I wonʻt lie and say that I do NOT charge people for my time and the years that it took for me to learn these things down to a Kanaka Maoli science. I just cannot, with any kind of conscience, promote healing by grabbing every dime that I can from someone who came to me specifically because they are in pain - even and especially when I can sense that they are not pulling a fast one on me.

I cannot do that.

I am shocked by healers who make a gigantic deal out of how much they can teach a healer to make giant dollars off of the suffering of others.

Again - I will not ever tell anyone that I do not charge the kind of money that others have but, for simple things, such as learning to initially become very aware of oneʻs body I am prone to letting the entire world with eyes and the ability to read about one very good, very cool thing to do to calm down some.

Especially when you need to chill in a pinch.

People forget that anxiety is NOT psychological. It is physically felt and THAT Is what causes the mental and emotional stuff - because you still have no clue what to do about how you feel when certain feelings arise. The emotions and tension and the hormones and body chemicals are all rushing through you when you are in a state of heightened emotion. When your body is not allowed to continue the cycle of the three Fʻs, that moment not only stays in your thoughts as a memory, but is not caught and frozen in time in your nervous system.

Other healers will tell you to breathe, and so will this one. They will also tell you to send your breath to wherever the pain is felt - without explaining what that means.

It means that somewhere within you is a physical feeling that happens every time you think thoughts that might end up triggering you. Like the last time you felt a certain way feels like you can or have or might even do right this moment

This healer will tell you that the next thing to do is think about where in your body you are feeling the tension, as opposed to the mental or emotional pain in your thoughts that would cause the body to trigger with an anxiety response.

When you can figure out where that is, you have figured out, as well, a whole lot of this particular practice.

"Where in your body are you feeling the pain?"

When we are physically injured it is easy to answer this question. But, when it is emotional pain, we believe it to be in our minds. The truth is that those sorts of pains are actually referred out to areas of our bodies, causing us to have issues that we cannot figure out the physical causes of.

Plenty of folks go to the doctor, and when the doctor cannot figure it out, after batteries of tests, visits to other specialists, etc., etc., they start all over. Sometimes, it actually causes an actual physical issue -and all because no one asked the patient a couple of questions that have NOTHING to do with physical injury and EVERYTHING to do with a grudge we are holding.

When a doctor asks us where things hurt, we point to where we think the injury is. And the injury might well be where you point to BUT, without having fallen down, or having eaten something that your body did not agree with there will be other reasons for what seems like an acuteness in bodily symptoms when in reality, the injury is emotional, not physical.

This is when, after we have experienced those same feelings which would have caused us to have pain, things like over-prescribing pain meds, sending people to specialists for physical ailments when it is actually an emotional one that is caught in our nervous system seems to be the correct thing to do.

No. Not always.

I am no doctor - but I am an expert in that I have had to, over the course of more than two decades, learn to deal with the emotional events that left me with pain that I could not figure out where it was coming from. It scared me more than much else could, given that my mother, all of my own life, was always in a compromised health condition.

Imagine my mind-trip when I could not figure out what was physically wrong, and thinking all the time about my momʻs illnesses all of my life, and how much I did for myself so that I would not end up with the same things she suffered because of for a long, long time.

I was a mess.

It was not until I was sitting in this cave I call home for a little while longer that it dawned on me - every time I felt angry I would start to sweat profusely. I realize that when it all began, all of these symptoms, I was also at the start of the change of life that most women will experience.

My doctor wanted to put me on meds, run more tests, do things that her training told her was the right thing to do. When I mentioned to one of the office staff the things that I did, up until that visit, and told them that each time I felt a certain way, they seemed a bit...taken aback...not because I had the very nerve to say it, but because no patient had ever brought to them a conclusion such as this one.

No one ever questions them, but I always have, and part of me believes that as one of my docʻs physically healthiest clients that she and that staff cannot believe that someone is telling them the things that I have told them over the years. The thing that makes them realize that I might be on to something is NOT that I am physically in very good health, but that I would try it all out before I would even bother with going to her.

And really, the changes that I made over the years were the ones that people in their 50ʻs would probably do anyway. I just did it before then. That is not science. That is called my having a Virgo south node making me very good at some things such remembering to take care of my body as much as possible, whilst still having fun, and to actually call Mariaʻs office when I am feeling sort of off.

Rarely do I feel physically off these days. Not bad for someone who dropped habits all on her own and without the use of meds...such as cigarettes and always being angry enough to feel like I might want to physically harm someone.

Anger is funny that way. It reminds us of the things that hurt us a long time ago. This is why we react to certain things in a certain way - because it is, the reaction, literally in our nerves and directing things to be like they were the last time you felt like you might right this moment.

Like, right now, my almost 52 year old lower back hurts. It hurts when I wake up and it hurts after I have carried the laundry back and forth to the wash...but it does not hurt enough for me to call Maria.

Lots of old people in my area who need her more than I have ever. No need for a perfectly healthy woman in her 50s to take time away from people who actually need to see her. I see her when I feel like I cannot heal what ails me all on my own.

Which is rarely but once a year for the yearly degradation.

Yes, you would do well in learning proper breathing techniques

Yogic breathing.

Look it up.

Yes there are people who could teach you this, but, why pay someone else to show you how to do what you have been doing from the moment the doctor said they could see your head as it crowned, right? (and you were just told this for not even $29.99)

"Yogic breathing" - It sounds easier than it actually is, and it totally takes practice. Think about it - you have been breathing the same way your whole life. Then along comes a stranger NOT telling you that you are doing it wrong (you are not, obviously - you are alive), and also NOT telling you what the heck a "belly breath" or "belly breathing" is.

I actually had to ask one of the instructors - Monica - at a Yoga studio down the street from here. That was in March of 2020 and since then the Yogic breath is really the only one that my body takes anymore. And, please do not suck in the air through your mouth - through your nose, even if it takes longer than it does through your mouth.

And you do this until your body feels calmer.

When your body is not in a sense of heightened awareness you are actually lots more aware of everything around you and everything going on within you. No one I know is able to collect themselves very easily right in the middle of something gigantic and possibly scary happening.When we are in that heightened state our bodies go into fight, flight or freeze - and when those actions (one of the three Fʻs) arenʻt completed, the energies that were produced by the hormonal groove thing inside of you are still there and still needing for your physiological self to come back to balance - especially your nervous system.

So, really, even though your memories are in your thoughts and mind, your anxiety and its response is bodily and caught in your nervous system.

Think about it.

Calming thoughts (and other things we have been told about)

The thing that I noticed very early on when I began to teach others these things is that there are lots of ways that all of us who do this as our work choose to do in terms of working with others. For me, I have always been one who uses words to do everything.

This is not different.

Lots of coaches tell their clients to picture a movie and watch it in your mind forward and backwards. Others will tell their clients to write letters to the issue to see what can be gleaned from that activity.

I prefer doing the one that most of us do - which is body awareness right in the moment that we are figuring things out.

There are people who I have a long history with who would tell you that the one person who they know who will do what she needs to in order for people to understand her is me. There are things that I have done for clients that they told me worked like a charm in terms of simply just calming their anxiety.

No I am not a doctor - I am an expert, meaning that in terms of healing, I have experienced everything that I did and got myself out of that emotional turmoil that stayed living in my nervous system and kept me its prisoner for a very long time.

One of those things was teaching myself how to calm my nerves.

In order for us to calm ourselves, first we have to be very aware of how our bodies are feeling in that very moment. For a lot of us it is not that simple to just calm the hell down. Emotions are like that and when we are triggered a whole lot of physiological stuff happens at the very tiniest of levels. This is maybe why it can be hard for anyone with a medical degree or a license to practice just go with whatever it is that they have been trained to do.

The first thing that you wanna do is...

Think about what your right arm feels like in the sleeve that it is in, and how your skin feels against it.

And how does the left side of your head feel, right above your ear?

What about the inside of your right ear and can you actually feel the vibrations of sounds within it?

The top of your left foot - are you wearing a sock and how does that fabric feel on your foot?

What does the air feel like on your face? What does it smell like when you inhale? What taste is in your mouth right now?

Haha do you have to pee? Can you hear your stomach gurgling?

What do you notice to the left of you, sitting on top of that chair?

The reason for all of what seem like ridiculous questions is that they are meant to break the monotony of the intensity of the anxiety. Nothing more and nothing less.

The cool thing about that one exercise is that all of those questions bring about thoughts to the client that actually may help them have one of those AH HA moments where that feeling and those sensations which prompt the memories to come back and make us feel a certain way. Breathing all the way into your belly makes it a lot easier for your nervous system to calm itself and grasp on to things that are within your reality right this moment.

It is, like all of these kinds of exercises are meant to, remind you that you are here and in this present moment, and that the things that you were traumatized by, possibly for a long time out of your life, even though they are not happening outside of you, when something triggers you your body goes right into the "three Fʻs" mode. It is like your physical body is reexperiencing all of those emotions and all of the havoc that brought it to you in the first place.

This exercise is one which grounds us in that moment. We hear an awful lot about that word and that phrase "being grounded."

I am old enough to recall when it was not a good thing to be grounded all the time hahahahaaa.

Groundedness

What this is is actually just your being present and aware of this very moment.

All of those questions up there that seemed to be going nowhere actually took you out of that thought pattern where everything that you think about might be about one thing in your life at this moment. It may well be a very pressing thing for sure.

But, to stay there in what seems like a recorded loop that makes you feel anxious just because you know how to deal with it is not healthy at all. Just because you have been tolerating the feelings without actually dealing with the anxiety is not the sort of security anyone needs, because physically, and eventually emotionally, it is not at all safe.

I am not at all telling anyone that they will never have to deal with feeling like they do about certain things but I AM saying that you CAN control how you FEEL about things - and even get through the feelings every time WITHOUT trippinʻ out on stuff.

The reason, also, for that strange list of things that told you to feel your arm in your sleeve is because in doing so, we find out how aware we are of our bodies. It might seem strange for anyone to tell people to do this, but, when you think about things, you might ask yourself bigger questions than the ones that start out with "How the hell am I going to (insert what seems impossible here)?" because that highlights the problem, rather than the need for addressing an issue.

Such as the idea that thinking about your right arm in your sleeve might have led you to think about a time when you were wearing that same shirt and how you felt on that day. Perhaps tasting what your mouth tastes like consciously made you think about the last time you ate what made it taste like that....and only now have you been actually shown how it is that all of those memories have stored themselves somewhere within your body, lodged in the nervous system at another time in your life.

It could also be something that is literally passed down through your genetics - if you can look like your great-grandmother, then the odds of your experiencing things like she did, maybe the very same things that she did, are far greater than anyone thinks about. We do not only inherit physical things - we also inherit, some of us, the duty to write the unwritten part of the story, or to finally change the family curse to no longer be that.

When you are finished reading all of this, breathe it all out and actually feel what that feels like to have the air rushing out of your lungs, and what that sounds like, too. What does all of that oxygen filling your lungs all of the way up feel like versus what it felt like before someone explained this one thing to you, and why healers might do things like this?

$199.99 and lots and lots of "homework"versus a couple of minutes of your time to read these words for free....I donʻt know.

Seems like a bargain to me.