Tending to your regulation is an integral part of healing

"In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: 'When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence'?" ~Angeles Arrien, author of The 4-Fold Way

Tending to your regulation is an integral part of healing. How do you regulate besides just coming in for acupuncture treatments?

Regulation is usually tacked into the whole phrase, nervous system regulation, a term we are all familiar with. The nervous system is neurological and the neurological, in Chinese medicine, is often paralleled to the shen, or spirit. Not the same exactly, but very relatable.

Of course, our holy, numinous spirit :-) is not our brain or our nervous system, per sè, but the understanding of the interweaving of eastern terminology and western is important. It can help us to understand why meditation is both a medicine for the spirit and for your nervous system regulation... for the mind, the heart, and the body.

Meditation can actually help heal your physiological and psychological symptoms at the root!

When we are regulated, we are not stressed and when we are not stressed, our physiology and psychology can self-harmonize, we come into our center, our authenticity, and our feel good embodiment.

In our world, developing a meditation practice that works for you in an authentic way can be challenging. This is what I wanted to write to you about today.

'the comfort of silence', as the quote above mentions, can be meditation, contemplation, or reflection. This is the yin: a sacred feminine building of inner resources, restoration, regulation, and integration of the yang aspects of our life (which are many!). This is key to health.

Here are some real life practical tips for starting or starting again, a meditation practice:

*Educate yourself about the meditation research out there now. Allow your conscious mind to get on board and motivated by the life changing effects that meditation can have!

*Addressing blocks to meditation with other practices first: EFT tapping, qigong shaking, specific breath work, yoga, grieving, meditative walking/lying down or standing, parts work(which help to address the inner guards or protectors who don't want you to meditate)...

*Meditation is about being with yourself. Being in your body. Feeling what is here and what is beneath the surface. (Uncovering what is beneath the surface, in the subconscious, plays the biggest role in healing.) Meditation can be challenging if there is pain, fear, and trauma in the tissues/energy field that have not been integrated. Seek trauma healing in whichever forms speak to you. Find a trusted guide, counselor, therapist to support you.

*Acupuncture can help peel layers of trauma so that you can be in your body a little easier. The needles inserted into the body are a somatic-energetic avenue for trauma healing. (However, I believe we need a multi-therapeutic approach for trauma healing).

(Per cross-cultural wisdom traditions, as Angeles Arrien succinctly puts it: singing, dancing, and stories can also support your regulation AND address blocks to meditation!)

Finding the type of meditation that works for you and having a few different types of meditation in your medicine basket will help you to practice regularly. There is somatic meditation, heart-centered meditations, chakra meditation, breath/midnfulness meditation, vipassana, and many more.

And one of my favorite teachers, Thomas Hübl has a new podcast out called Meditating into the Heart - I highly recommend!