Lifestyle

Cultivating joie de vivre

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

As an autistic person, I find there is a definite link here between my particular wiring for high sensory processing, which can make me feel more overwhelmed than some other people might be in the same situation, along with a tendency to live in my thoughts way too much, plus also the need to actively process those senses though my body in such a way that the body fully registers them, but without overwhelm, on the way through…because, otherwise, I can tend to bypass the body altogether. Not least because of issues with chronic pain, learning to bypass the body can become a really big issue. Also gentle grounding activities, such as letting energy passively drain through me into Mother Earth, doesn’t feel quite enough.

Rather, I tend to need to actively participate in the processing part in order to remember what my body is there for…and that it is important and useful for me to have one (something I tend to forget…), which is where the power of dance comes in for me. Dancing, quite literally, puts me back in touch with my body and helps me to remain more grounded for a long time afterwards. Yet whilst this especially applies to someone like me, as in highly sensitive person with autistic wiring, I suspect it applies to anyone that lives in their head and has become detached from their body to a very high degree…which is more common that you might think; a typical modern phenomenon.

I plan to share much more about the proven benefit of dancing, for autistic people, soon in another post that I’m working on for Living Whole.

To start off this topic, here is a post I shared yesterday, in my other blog Spinning the Light, on the importance of GROUNDING joy into the physical body (an absolute essential for health and for navigating these times), whatever that happens to take in your particular case.

Cultivating joie de vivre

spinning the light

…has never been more important, or elusive-seeming, so how do we conjure up, specifically, grounded joy, rooted in the body, during such challenging times?

(As doing the research that led to my retrospective post the other day reminded me) a relentless sense of my own joy of life has always been one of my defining traits, as it were, rescuing me from some very hard times, even way back when as a child feeling quite helpless in situations that traumatised me. As an adult now dealing with chronic health challenges, I have come to regard it as an utterly essential ingredient of life, so much so that I cringe when I watch so many people loose their grip on it (not that I blame them in the circumstances) because of perceiving themselves as victims of those circumstance, knowing as I do that unless we take our own personal steps to…

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Are you relating to people…or their energy field?

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

When you are an empath, you may tend to walk into a room and find yourself tracking the energy fields of everyone in there...do you relate? And in your relationships, dialling into people's energy over their personality? This comes with inevitable pitfalls...I speak from experience here, as well as playing with some reasons why we might do this in the first place and how we can bring the trait into more balance for far better health.

Moving more, not less

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

My physical foibles (labelled such things as EDS and chronic pain) don't render me unentitled to a gloriously reimagined health future but even more prone to be open minded and eager enough to embark on the journey because there are no rules where I dwell, it is all a giant leap in the dark so why not make it a leap towards what I prefer to envision and thus create. The first step is to make friends with movement...

Creating new body memories

~ Helen White ~ 5 Comments

As an adjunct to clearing the body of old emotional memories in order to heal, it's important to start a blank canvas of creating positive NEW body memories that invite the body to take part in choosing what makes it feel good. Here's how I'm using that understanding to move into the later stages of recovery from chronic illness, shifting me into a new place when it comes to how resilient and good my body feels (yes, we all still have our off days)...

What’s your alchemy? (Mine is dancing.)

~ Helen White ~ 3 Comments

Our personal version of alchemy is so often performed without even thinking about it, when lost in those tasks that take us deep into ourselves, into our innate knowing and our joy. So often, we learn to treat such activities as self-indulgent, pointless or plain weird and yet, the paradox is, they often hold he key to our deepest transformation...in other words, they are exactly what we need to be doing right now.

Religious practice to get us through (no, NOT what you think)

~ Helen White ~ 3 Comments

Adopting healthy habits is the thing that will get us all through this challenging phase and so here's the point I'm making here: The religious practice I speak of here is nothing to do with attending "church" (we need to reclaim that association back, to re-empower ourselves), its to do with devotion…to one's self, one's life…and the conscientious, faithful practice of observances that affirm one's existence as spirit in human form (a long way around of saying “health”); and on this topic I have much to say.

If you’re an empath, you’re probably feeling all this at a whole other level…

~ Helen White ~ 2 Comments

So honour that, own it, work with it too. We’re all feeling rattled, thrown around and turned inside out at the moment but, if you’re an empath, you’re likely to be feeling it at a whole other level. You may well have felt all this global chaos and overwhelm coming our way even before it … Continue reading If you’re an empath, you’re probably feeling all this at a whole other level…

Harmony

~ Helen White ~ 5 Comments

...for those of us who are especially sensitive, though the idea of being "out" amongst a load of other people in a room together is quite abhorrent as an idea, the reality is we could benefit from this more than most...because its the missing link to our health, we have to dare to go there to break the stalemate of our stuckness, and choir is an appropriate way in as it puts us where harmony is the very name of the game.