BECOME YOUR OWN HEALTH GUARDIAN - Tips and tools for daily self-care

BECOME YOUR OWN HEALTH GUARDIAN

Tips and tools for daily self-care

THE BASIS – Your relationship with yourself.

Throughout my years of illness and especially of healing, the first adventure of which lasted more than 10 years and the second continued at 11 years and 5 months, I often asked myself the following question:

What is my power to influence my health?

With the development of several types of diseases, or imbalances, affecting the areas of mental, hormonal, physiological, emotional and spiritual health, the question was gradually being developed...

What are my beliefs about the health of my body, heart, mind, and spirit? What is my relationship with each?

Today, I am in full holistic health, for me, this describes a dynamic expression of health across all four domains of self. I have succeeded in my quest; in seeking my health, I have discovered and developed a culture of harmonized self-care. This culture informs my daily actions.

The tips and tools I am about to share with you are not part of most of our education. In schools, we are not taught the methods or skills to take care of our health in a sustainable way, or to preserve our holistic health. The health messages we receive are primarily related to the intervention and prevention of disease and infection, with very little information regarding our ability to act on a daily basis to preserve our health, or how to awaken and radiate our vitality. Our level of vitality is a reflection of the quality of expression of our internal resources, which include our physical body, our emotional body, our mental body, and our spiritual body. The quality of expression of our resources is informed by the consumption and production mechanisms of each, in other words – their metabolism. Metabolism concerns the processes of consumption, assimilation, and elimination. The efficiency of each of these processes will determine the state of being of each “body” and therefore the expression of each, which brings us back to our vitality.

The context of modern life brings a lot of stress that depresses our vitality - the media, chemicals, social networks, societal expectations, global conflicts...

I associate the assemblage of my illnesses with this toxic modern lifestyle. My mother fed me with breast milk, then prepared the foods with love and without refined or artificial products. She followed a macrobiotic diet that was almost 100% organic during her pregnancy and throughout my youth. Despite her efforts and commitment as a stay-at-home mom, I developed digestive and intestinal diseases during my adolescence. These conditions developed into mental and endocrine system imbalances in my late teens, and by my early twenties, I was gripped by addictions and eating disorders along with my entire package of illnesses and intolerances.

My state of imbalance and especially despair and depression led me to identify what I deeply believed in relation to my health, my vitality, my aging and my power to influence them.

And so it was, my path to healing began, in despair, in illness, stifled by confusion and the feeling of a complete loss of control over my state of being.

Here, in a series of articles, I will share with you the key tips that have guided and supported me on my healing path; my tools to facilitate the development of my holistic care culture, through the self-workshops that I began 11 years ago.

I couldn't walk this path for you, but I position myself as an experienced guide and facilitator, as I was always the exception to the rules regarding medication and conventional treatments.

If you wish to live differently, discover your best self-expression, and the radiance of your beauty, your intelligence, your emotional sensitivity and the wisdom of your soul and your body... I invite you to engage in my proposed exercises to do your own self-workshops, in order to bring out your own holistic health, to become your own master guardian of your health.

First Self-Workshop: My Current Relationship with Myself.

1. Step One – Login
2. In a quiet moment with few distractions, take a few deep breaths. Follow your breathing and notice how it flows through your body.
3. Observe your body and the sensations you notice, observe if there are places in the body that are devoid of sensation, without judgment, simply by observation.
4. Spend some time breathing through your heart to observe your current feelings, without judgment, always observing.
5. Think of an image/object/person/place that you spontaneously fill with gratitude. Hold this image/object/person/place in your attention and allow gratitude to fill your body. This increases communication between heart and mind – and therefore, will open the connection with your intuition, your intellect, and your life experiences.

2. Step Two – Honesty – Your Current Relationships
3. In a journal (I invite you to have one dedicated to your self-workshops), write and answer the following questions:
4. What is my current relationship with my health?
5. Who has the power to influence my health?

• If there are multiple factors/people – note their respective percentage of power over your health

iii. What is my current relationship with my body?

1. What is my current relationship with my heart?
2. What is my current relationship with my mind?

• NB. To describe relationships – here are some sample answers: neglectful, passive, frustrated, messy, angry, tolerant, exploitative, neutral…

3. Step Three – Viewing – Your Desired Relationships
4. In your journal, write and answer the following questions:
5. What will be my preferred relationship with my health?
6. Who would I have preferred to have the power to influence my health?

• If there are multiple factors/people – note their respective percentage of power over your health

iii. What will be my preferred relationship with my body?

1. What will be my favorite relationship with my heart?
2. What will be my preferred relationship with my mind?

• NB. To describe relationships – here are some sample answers: passionate, respectful, compassionate, symbiotic, attentive, curious…

4. Step Four – Login
5. Take the time to reconnect with your breathing.
6. Observe your rhythm, the length of your inhalations and exhalations. Do you breathe earlier into your stomach? your chest? your back?
7. Thank your body, heart, and mind for their openness and support.
8. Plant a seed of intention to stay connected to your bodies now, with a curiosity to better understand your current relationships as well as the true possibilities for your holistic health and vitality.

1. Steps 2 ( Honesty) and 3 (Visioning) may take several days to complete. Take all the time you need to begin with genuine commitment. This workshop is for you and your own health—go at your own pace.

To be continued – Next week, I share with you how to analyze the honesty and visioning responses in order to create a framework for action to support the development of your own culture of self-care… so that you can live your best self in a holistic and radiant way!

To your harmonious health!

Danielle Denichaud