We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey. ☥ ☥ Kenji Miyazawa ☥
Change, Uncertainty And Grief
Watching the news, addictively scrolling through negative social media posts and talking to frightened friends and family can easily lure our minds away from a state of conscious acceptance to an unconscious state of perpetual fear. However, to remain in a state of fear is a reactive, defensive response to stress and trauma.
Although national/global crises such as an epidemic, pandemic or endemic generates a tremendous amount of uncertainty of when it will be over and what our new "normal" will be, we can choose to engage in an offensive strategy by taking action to positively affect the factors that we can control. I would like to specifically focus on self-care strategies for processing loss (grief) and change (transition).
Nutrition
Honor the body by eating even a little bit of healthy food to gradually increase appetite. Stress depletes our bodies. We have to make important decisions during a traumatic event and nutrition helps us stay clear headed so that we can make sound decisions.
☥ Drink mint or ginger tea to help with digestion and appetite.
☥ Essential oils of orange, rose, rosemary and marjoram help with grieving and trauma
recovery. Eat at least a piece of fruit and some soup or salad daily. If you have no
appetite, drink some ginger tea or chai.
☥ Make a green smoothie and sip on it throughout the day if you are not feeling hungry
(a simple recipe is spinach, water, hemp seeds and mango).
☥ If unable to leave home, ask loved ones/supporters to bring balancing foods such as
fruits, vegetables, soups and limit the sugary comfort foods. Refined sugar bogs
down our immune system and increases depression.
Digestion
At first, loss or a transition may be very difficult to digest on an emotional level which often affects physical digestion. Healthy digestive habits, enzymes and probiotics can help the body process challenging times:
☥ Chew food slowly and thoroughly.
☥ Probiotics and enzymes help the body to clean the blood and break down
carbohydrates, fats and proteins, respectively.
☥ Take a probiotic every morning and evening on an empty stomach.
☥ Take digestive enzymes with your largest meal.
Hydration
To truly get and stay hydrated we need: water + EFAs (Essential Fatty Acids) + electrolytes. All are vitally important during times of intense physical and emotional stress, because these substances are the first to get depleted and usually the last to get replenished.
☥ Coconut water or watermelon ☥ seeds with a little sprinkling of sea salt are excellent
ways to rehydrate our bodies. Drink one serving a day for the first few weeks following
a traumatic event. The entire watermelon can be blended into a nutritious drink (fruit +
seeds + rind).
☥ Have distilled water available at all times to keep from dehydrating, particularly during
a long crying episode.
☥ Add a pinch of high quality sea salt (i.e. Celtic or Himalayan Pink Salt) to distilled water
at least once a day to replenish digestible trace minerals (not enough to taste the salt in
the water but the body will get the needed electrolytes/minerals). Adding a pinch of
sea salt is the healthiest way to add electrolytes to your water because you can control
the quality. Many companies that produce bottled water add inorganic minerals or
electrolytes that are created in a lab.
☥ It is not necessary to drink alkaline water. It is more important that the foods we eat
are mostly alkaline. Most people need about 25% of foods ☥ water that digest acidic.
☥ Put at least one tablespoon of unrefined ☥ cold pressed chia, hemp or flaxseed oil
on salads, in smoothies or other foods daily.
Elimination
A loss or a stressful transition can also affect elimination, both emotionally and physically. Elimination is tantamount to letting go of toxic thoughts and feelings. Letting go is an important part of our growth process when we Enter The Cross-Cultural Hammam.
☥ If elimination has slowed or become difficult, drink a cup of warm water first thing
in the morning on an empty stomach. Add a pinch of sea salt if bowels are sluggish.
☥ Have a bowl of warm amaranth, millet, quinoa or steel-cut/whole oatmeal cereal
for breakfast and mix in a tablespoon of ground flax seeds.
☥ Healthy bowel movements have the size, shape and consistency of a banana.
Emotion
Let emotions rise up and allow them to release. There is no specific time frame for how long our process needs to be for healing from stress, trauma or loss. Listen to your body and allow it to process all that you are feeling for as long as it takes.
Movement (Yoga ☥ Qigong are ideal)
Ask family members and friends to remind us to move or exercise with us because we may not feel like doing anything. Take a brief walk outside daily (preferably at a park or near water) if weather permits. Spending time in nature helps the body/mind/emotions recover from trauma. Just one minute devoted to any of these practices each day will help our bodies recover from the effects of stress and trauma. Allow tears to flow at any time (stay hydrated during times of healing tears). Try the shaking exercise (listed below) for 40 days following a traumatic event. If our limbs periodically shake involuntarily at other times this is a healthy sign that our bodies are also releasing suppressed deep traumas and that we are healing naturally.
☥ Practice gentle, relaxed deep abdominal breathing as often as possible. This is
especially important when emotions well up and we are or have been crying. When we
inhale, we expand our lower abdomen out like a balloon. When we exhale, our navel
gently moves inward towards our spine.
☥ Beginning with our ankles and working up to our head, rotate each joint clockwise
and counterclockwise at least 10 times.
☥ Go for short walks outside in nature (just around the block is fine).
☥ Lie on the back with the feet/hands up in the air at a 90 degree angle. Shake arms and legs vigorously for one minute or more. This exercise releases anger, frustration and
trauma and stimulates your circulatory and immune systems. Begin by shaking one
arm or leg at a time if this exercise is too challenging.
Epilogue ☥ Your Treasure Map For Self-Care
Thank you for taking the time to actively engage in your own self-care. If you have ever spent time at a hammam ☥ steam room ☥ sauna, you will notice that it is a comfortable space because you are wearing minimal or no clothing and you can just be yourself. However, after a short time, it starts to get hot, and you begin to sweat.
This is a good thing because you are helping your body to eliminate toxins. If you want to detoxify your body correctly you will:
☥ Breathe slowly and deeply to help your body adjust to the intensity of the heat.
☥ Sip water every 15 minutes to stay hydrated.
☥ Have a piece of fruit ☥ pumpkin seeds ☥ favorite healthy snack available.
☥ Take a shower after excessive sweating.
☥ Go into a cold room/take a cold plunge/cold water rinse off to cool down before doing
another sweat and to stimulate your lymphatic system.
☥ Go for a walk in nature, spend time in meditation ☥ contemplation, have a healthy meal
and give your body some time to complete the healing process (which could include
sending you messages through your intuition about your next steps).
As you journey through ☥ interact with the blogs ☥ other content on phyllishubbard.com, you might have an insight that causes you to suddenly feel mentally ☥ emotionally “hot” -- which could show up as:
☥ “Ah-ha” moments
☥ A hop-in-the-bed-and-cry-yourself-to-sleep or fetal position crying time of intensive
self-care
☥ Intense feelings of anger/regret about something in your past
☥ Disorientation caused by the realization of truth
☥ Strong reactions such as heightened senses, vomiting; an urge to release emotions
such as yelling/screaming, going outside for fresh air/to take a walk, punching a
boxing bag/pillow; a feeling of tightness in the chest, etc.
If you find yourself having a strong reaction, I encourage you to flow with it while helping your body to release mental ☥ emotional toxins by using the same five self-care strategies listed above for releasing physical toxins. Your body talks to you all the time, but unconscious adherence to social conditioning can mute its messages.
Strong reactions are your body’s way of letting you know that there is a deeper issue requiring your attention.
Keep revisiting the content ☥ utilizing the five self-care strategies until you no longer experience the strong reaction, release fears and have identified ☥ transformed ☥ removed the root cause of the issue. You will find additional strategies throughout this website that you can add to your mental health self-care toolkit.
Self-Care Sustainability Suggestions
☥ A Cross-Cultural Healing Haven – read this blog to understand the purpose of
phyllishubbard.com and the meaning behind its organization ☥ symbols.
☥ Revisit the content periodically and make a note of if/how your perceptions have
evolved. Check out our blog page for an experiential healing journey.
☥ Check out the other pages on phyllishubbard.com:
☥ Home - watch the videos. Click on the images in the Spiritual Guidance
section. Each image has a story that might assist your self-care journey. Learn
about other spiritual practices.
☥ About - Learn about my background ☥ reasons for co-creating
phyllishubbard.com
with Spirit. Explore healing through the image carousel and videos.
☥ Shop ☥ Kamitology - Purchase and download vital tools for your personal growth
☥ development.
☥ Reclaiming Our Humanity - Help us develop and disseminate video courses.
☥ Rise TV - Practice breathing and movement exercises and deepen your
understanding of healing through the experiences of community members.
Check back periodically to discover new/re-experience the content.
☥ Journey - This is your invitation to own the journey to radiance. Experience the
journey and download healing resources to share with your friends, family and
community.
When you share healing, healing comes back to and flows through you.
About Sharing ...
During my first presentation to an all-Black audience, I introduced 20-year-old research on the hazards of sitting. I presented the research because I noticed that people sat for way too long at convenings and realized that the information was not disseminated to Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant communities. I was determined to intentionally include this research, often surprising participants by getting people up to stretch. After more than 13 years of intentional work, Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People are just barely beginning to normalize conscious movement. We still have a long way to go, and it is important that we share what we know as much as we can to prevent the disenfranchisement of wellness information to Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant communities.
Copy/Paste Version Of A Full Citation Example:
Hubbard, P. S. (2020, September 27). Healing Strategies For Grief ☥ Transition. PHYLLISHUBBARD.COM. <https://www.phyllishubbard.com/post/how-to-cope-with-grief-and-the-stress-of-covid-19>
Please do not keep phyllishubbard.com to yourself. We will not co-create a better world until we heal our current, past/childhood traumas. We will not love others until we learn to love ourselves.
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