Come in from the cold! This is the season of sweet love. Warm yourself at the inner hearth or heart space of your beautiful self. Moving from the autumnal Letting Go season, now is the time to focus on Going Within towards two things:
♡ Slowing down
♡ Sweet self love
Take a moment and stop everything. Just notice your thougts right now. Could you be warmer towards yourself? Using winter as a guide, slowing down is key to the season of
Going Within. This is a good time to observe your relationship with yourself. As an Achiever personality I found myself rushing through tasks with the fear that I would run out of energy before completing them. I think we all know how that strategy pans out!
Consider the needs of a stressed nervous system in this season. Perhaps some gentle self massage, slow and soothing. Yoga, listening to nurturing nature sounds or herz frequencies as well as favourite music.
Maybe follow practices that strengthen and tone the vagus nerve and move us out of sympathetic fight or flight state, into more of the parasympathetic state. In parasympathetic, rest and digest, we are slower, calmer and we conserve energy.
Here are some ideas of how to approach the season of Going Within:
☆ Set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and do everything in slow motion for that time. Notice how it feels to move in that way. Notice your thoughts. When outer things slow, thoughts might slow down too allowing the executive function brain activity in the prefrontal cortex to become more active. Do you have more clarity after this slowing down?
☆ Imagine you are a hibernating cuddly bear. Wrap a soft comforting blanket around yourself and snuggle into some cushions on the sofa. Really pay attention to your body and comfort. Once you're settled, do one of your favourite breathing practices for a few minutes then ask your body what it needs right now. Keep gently asking and listening. The automatic conditioned-self responses start to fall away as the mind becomes quiet in this still space. Gradually the true inner voice comes forward. You might like to write some notes afterwards.
Still on the sofa, think about an endearment that you would most like to hear. It might be from your childhood. Or words like
darling or honey or it might be something quite different. Again ask at your inner hearth and simply wait to hear your sweet love name.
☆ When you go to the bathroom, pause, look into the mirror, into your eyes for a moment and smile. Say hello to your beautiful self, using your sweet love name. Try doing this for 3 days running and see how you feel. When you become easier with loving yourself in this way, maybe practice talking to yourself using this sweet love name. Bring it into rounds and practices. One of our greatest challenges is self acceptance and this might be a first step.
As we we allow the warmth of the heart to draw us closer we might begin to experience more of the True Self. This self holds only love for us and the less resistance we have, the more we begin to fall into our own open arms.
Allegiance with the True Self, in Buddhist terms, carries us beyond the personal self and into the ocean of all life. Yes, it could still be overwhelming to be opened to the pain of our planet, but we face it with love, not fear. And these experiences come and go. The heart opens and closes. Just as life is a rhythm of ebb and flow, expansion and contraction. The Turning Inwards season of healing paradoxically turns us more outwards. The cold winter turns us to the warmth of our inner hearth and here we find connection to the wider world. Through this we learn of life beyond a limited ego self view. The wound of ego loss from the Letting Go season has space to heal.
The sweet love of our own wonderous self starts to slowly shape the buds of the spring to come. All will be well
Blogs in my Seasons of Healing series can be accessed from this link
Elaine is a brain retraining, a lifelong love of learning, a free spirit, and artist and is committed to her own healing as well as supporting others on the path.
Her life's purpose is to encourage others to find the freedom of the True Self and her journey holds the riches of intense training in Buddhism, coaching, alternative therapy and Jungian psychology.
She he has lived in different parts of Africa and Southern Spain and has now settled in the hills or rural South West England.
Thank you so much for a really beautiful blog Elaine. I find doing things in slow motion really helpful and also love the idea of turning within as the days get colder and shorter. I'm inspired by your self-love practice and will try it this week! Thank you 💗