In a blur, the cheetah lunges ... at the moment of contact ... the young impala falls to the ground. Yet it may be uninjured. The stone-still animal is not pretending to be dead. It has instinctively entered an altered state of consciousness shared by all mammals when death appears imminent ... There is a possibility that the cheetah may decide to drag its ‘dead’ prey to a place safe from other predators ... During this time, the impala could awaken from its frozen state and make a hasty escape in an unguarded moment. When it is out of danger, the animal will literally shake off the residual effects of the immobility response and gain full control of its body. It will then return to its normal life as if nothing had happened. ☥ Dr. Peter Levine
When I lived in New Mexico, I used to take a long but beautiful desert drive through the mountains up to Durango, Colorado. One of my accounts was Ft. Lewis College which literally sits at the top of a mountain, so I loved driving there and walking the hills. My work in the Southwest came with a mixed bag of emotions. On the one hand, everyone knew and remembered me because I was the “Black” manager of my territory. On the other hand, Black ☥ Immigrant People made up only about 3% of the population and Durango was probably at about .5% Black ☥ Immigrant. Indigenous People make up about 7% of the population. To feel safe traveling alone as a Black woman, I had to quickly scope out the land and figure out which rest stops, gas stations, hotels, restaurants, etc. were safe and kind to Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People. I learned many life lessons as a traveling Black woman.
Durango is such a quaint town with fun boutique hotels, curio shops, fancy restaurants and was, for the most part, friendly. It is a scenic drive and the roads are relatively manageable. However, when I’m coming into town, I have to drive down a steep hill and around a few narrow sharp turns. The turns are a little intimidating because there aren’t many rails to stop me from running off the road and down a precipitous hill.
During one of my winter drives, I had a feeling come over me just as I was navigating those sharp turns. Then I felt a sort of an inaudible voice in my head that said “SLOW DOWN.” I immediately took my foot off the gas and began to slow down. Suddenly, and seemingly from nowhere, a huge mule deer jumped down the hill and on to the street right in front of my car. I stopped just in time. It was an amazing experience because for a few moments the deer just stopped and looked at me. We gazed into each other eyes. Then, the deer took off, disappearing almost as quickly as it appeared. I was completely stunned. Mule deers are huge and this one had massive antlers. Had I hit that deer, I wouldn’t be here to write this post. When I pulled into the parking lot of the hotel, I just sat in the car for a while. My hands were shaking uncontrollably. I waited until the shaking stopped and then enjoyed the rest of my trip. I don’t remember mentioning the event to anyone.
A few years later, l was introduced to the work of Dr. Peter Levine, who is both a Biophysicist and Psychologist. For the past 50 years, he has devoted his work to the development of “Somatic Experiencing®, a naturalistic and neurobiological approach to healing trauma.” His work has proven the effectiveness of an essential component of healing that has been an inseparable part of holistic health for thousands of years: movement. We often think of movement as something that we enjoy or as an exercise that we have to do to stay in shape. However, movement is so embedded within a culture's wisdom traditions that its healing power is hidden in plain sight. Unfortunately, colonization forces Indigenous cultures to confirm to the colonizer's societal norms by abandoning healing movements that they consider to be "uncivilized."
Movement is an integral part of African culture, but it was shamed and many aspects of it was forbidden during colonization. However, now that we have “new” substantiated data that proves the health benefits of movement, there is no acknowledgement of:
☥ African culture as a primary example of the complete integration of somatic practices
☥ The history of suppression and oppression of cultures who embody somatic practices
The lack of acknowledgement is one of the many ways in which Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant culture gets appropriated and whitewashed.
The Innate Wisdom Of The Impala
Let's consider the innate wisdom of the impala who entered into an altered state of consciousness at the moment of contact with the predator. Most researchers agree that an inebriated person sustains less injuries and is more likely to survive a car crash because the intoxicant slows down their reaction time and they do not anticipate or brace for the impact. However, a drunk person's actions can create and perpetuate lasting harm for others that often includes fatalities and chronic injuries. What if humans could train themselves to relax at the moment of contact with pain or impending danger?
I have personally experienced the miracle of the relaxed response. I sometimes think of the young Indigenous teen who helped me and wonder how he tells the story. I was shopping at the mall and entered one of those cool gadget stores. I'm not sure how it happened exactly, but I started choking on a beverage that I was drinking. It is essential that everyone knows what to do when they see a person choking. The easy way to remember whether to intervene is to calm down, stay silent, observe and listen for breath. If the person can cough, watch them carefully and refrain from talking unless communicating what you will do to help. It's important that the person choking is not encouraged to talk. If a person tries to speak while choking, it could cause them to gag. Observation will let us know the best course of action. However, if the person is gagging, immediate intervention is necessary. I was in the latter category. Time seemed to slow down for me as I quickly scanned the room and saw that there were no chairs available for me to perform abdominal thrusts on myself. I made my way to the terrified teen employees. The Indigenous teen was closest to me so I made eye contact with him while pounding on my abdomen, turned around and backed into him. He was truly frightened, but he put his arms around me, and together we performed the abdominal thrusts. With his assistance, the blockage cleared, and I was able to breathe again.
When it was over, the Black teen still wanted to call 911, but I explained to him that with that type of choking, I would have been dead by the time the paramedics showed up. I told them that I was a health practitioner and was fine. I looked into the eyes of the Indigenous teen and said "thank you for saving my life." He was absolutely stunned and couldn't respond. I shocked everyone in the store because I just shook it off and walked out of the store as calmly as I walked in. That experience taught me that we can learn how to calm ourselves so that we can respond with a heightened sense of awareness in the midst of danger. Here's what happens when we don't calm down:
☥ We panic and often take actions that make the situation worse.
☥ We get flustered or freeze because we don't know what to do.
☥ We tense up our muscles, setting us up for injury.
Here's what can happen when we enter into a relaxed state:
☥ We breathe slowly ☥ deeply and pause so that we can recognize and act upon the
correct response coming from our innate wisdom.
☥ We enter into the "zone" where time appears to slow down enough for us to become in
tune with our environment, and the actions that we take are swift, correct and precise.
☥ We prevent a situation from escalating or eliminate the threat altogether.
Because the impala is one with nature, it needed no training to connect with its innate wisdom. However, humans continue to move further and further away from connection with the truest part of ourselves.
We tend to use science to disconnect from and compete with nature instead of using it to help us understand and collaborate with it.
Healing movement enables us to synchronize body, mind, emotions and spirit. It is a use-it-or-lose-it game. In the same way that a musician must continue to practice playing their instrument, healing movement needs to be an essential part of our way of life.
During a consultation with one of my clients, I explained the process of healing:
This client was in a very painful traumatic cycle of depression that he couldn’t seem to break. He was on medication that made him feel sick and numbed his emotions. This kept him from feeling sad, but he also couldn’t experience deep joy and he couldn’t cry happy or sad tears. If he tried to get off the meds, he suffered from suicidal tendencies. By the time he came to see me, he had been on this merry-go-round of suffering for 10 years and was desperate to get off the meds. As I am a Doctor of Natural Medicine, medication is beyond my scope of practice, so I insisted that he work with his medical doctor to transition off the drugs. My work with him focused on helping him to become strong enough to no longer need medication.
There is a healing process from Ayurveda called Pancha Karma which means “five actions.” Simply put, the practitioner would meet with a client, and based on what is learned, the practitioner would choose five specific actions (using nutrition, herbs, processing emotions and movement) to activate the body’s self-healing mechanisms. I used this process to help him disrupt his cycle of suffering. We started with a series of consultations that taught him how to process his emotions and helped me drill down to the root cause behind the depression. I gave him several Ayurvedic massage sessions and detailed instructions on how make kichadi at home which he was to eat for a month with fresh herbs. After about three weeks of consultations, massage and kichadi, it was time to introduce him to healing movement that he could do on his own. Based on what I learned during our sessions, I chose to teach him a Qigong form that was simple enough for him to practice at home after some basic instruction. Before we started the practice, I asked him a question that puzzled him.
What if the power inside of you was stronger than any medicine that you could take?
He paused in disbelief. I could tell from what I learned during our previous sessions that he didn’t feel empowered in most areas of his life. My question was a stretch for him. I thought perhaps grunge rock music might help me. I shared a lyric from Soundgarden that I’ve always thought was powerfully insightful: “I’m feeling like I’m sober, even though I’m drinking. I can’t get any lower, still I feel I’m sinking.” We talked about what happens when the soul of a person will no longer allow that person to run away from what needs to be faced. When this happens, even if the person drinks heavy alcohol, they will remain sober. In the same way, if a person connected with their soul, would it matter whether they drank alcohol or took meds? I asked him to consider the possibility that there was a place inside of him that was more powerful than he could imagine in this moment and then moved into the form.
About 18 minutes into the practice, I noticed that he started to sway back and forth. I knew what was happening, and I didn’t want him to fall. However, I also didn’t want to break his flow of energy. I put a chair behind him and asked him to keep practicing while sitting down and promised that we’d talk about what happened at the end of the session. The rest of the practice flowed smoothly, but during the last ten minutes, he had a profound experience. He was overcome with something that he couldn’t explain, and tears started streaming down his face. I could see the conflict within him as he attempted to figure out how he could be crying in this moment. He hadn’t been able to cry in more than ten years.
When I completed the closing procedure of the Qigong form, we sat in silence for a bit, and I let him cry. When I felt like he was ready to share, I asked him “Why are you crying?” He opened his arms wide as he attempted to express what he was feeling and said, “I feel so ... I feel so ...” He couldn’t bring himself to say “powerful.” He finally settled on, “I feel so ... big.” He said it several times as if he didn’t even recognize who he was in this moment. I asked him how it could be possible that he was crying. Did he take his medication before he came to our session? He said, “yes” in disbelief. “Didn’t you say that you couldn’t cry on the meds?” Again, he agreed in disbelief. “Then how do you explain the tears?” He shook his head, sobbing and said, “I can’t.” I paused, and then said, “There seems to be no logical explanation for your tears ... unless, somehow you found a way to tap into the power that exists inside of yourself.”
I could tell that he was having a sort of in-the-zone moment. He knew it was true but was in a pleasant state of shock. I gave him some specific instructions for continuing the practice and integrating it into his life. The short version of his story is that two weeks later, he had completely and safely transitioned off the meds. The only side effect he noticed was that for about four days, he had flu like symptoms, and he was convinced that it was toxins leaving his body. He was ecstatic to be free and to feel again.
I did my best to keep from raining on his parade, but I had to inform him that our work was not done. Now that he can feel again, he can be sure that at some point life will happen. When it does, without the buffer of his meds, he will feel the full force of his emotions. The next phase of our work was to learn how to properly process whatever emotions that may arise in him (joy, sadness, depression, pain, etc.). In the 13 years that followed, he has only had to contact me three times to help him process difficult emotions. All of those sessions occurred within the first seven years of his newfound freedom, and he never felt the need to go back on meds. The last time I saw him, I was so excited to see that his skin was vibrant, he was content with his life and excelled at setting and enforcing healthy boundaries with family, friends and colleagues. He now understands that as long as he remembers to use his mental health self-care tools and process his emotions, he’ll be able to transcend whatever curveballs life may through his way. I share this story because healing movement is a formidable ally in our self-care toolkit.
Some Healing Challenges Can Only Be Solved With Movement
Many types of congestion that can form in the organs or tissues cannot be removed with emotional healing, nutrition or herbs. For example, if you have a splinter in your finger, no amount of emotional healing, nutrition or herbs will get that splinter out. It will have to be physically removed with tweezers. In the same way, blockages such as lymphatic stagnation (including edema), lactic acid trapped in the muscles, bound up fascia, scar tissue and unconscious trauma must be physically removed to facilitate the healing process. The viscosity (stickiness/thickness) of our blood is important. According to modern medicine, blood viscosity values are normal if they are between 3.5 and 5.5 cP. Factors such as poor diet, chronic diseases, stress and inflammation can all contribute to increased viscosity of our blood. In the holistic world, healthy circulation of oxygenated blood helps to maintain and regulate the viscosity of our blood. Movement is the foundation of healthy circulation of our blood and when we combine movement with conscious breathwork we help our bodies to:
☥ Prevent injury
☥ Activate the immune system
☥ Move/remove stagnant blood
☥ Increase circulation and energy
☥ Detoxify the body
☥ Physically – cleanse and nourish organs, tissues and glands
☥ Emotionally – release trapped, suppressed, repressed negative emotions from
organs, tissues and glands
How We Catalyze Movement In The Body
If you read my Rising With The Sun blog, you learned about the gua sha, a powerful tool to help move toxins out of the body. In that blog, you also learn the story of one of my clients who was able to use the gua sha to release depression. We catalyze movement in the body through breathing, exercise, physical manipulation (i.e., massage therapy) and the energy that we give our body through healthy foods.
Breathing is a powerful hidden form of movement. During the debrief of one of my extended power breathing exercises, one of my participants was sobbing. She said that she felt intense feelings of heartache dissolve. She was sobbing because the heartache was replaced with “more love than I can stand.” Another participant was on medication that gave him cotton mouth, but when he did the breathing exercise, he was shocked to feel his mouth fill with saliva – the first time in seven years.
I started teaching the breathing exercise after I had my own experience 15 years ago. I wasn’t sure that I could even lie on the floor to do the exercise because I had lower back pain. After the exercise was over, I jumped up because my back was warm. I thought I was lying on a vent. My back was so warm that I went to the bathroom to see if it was glowing red. The heat around my lower back felt like a heating pack and persisted for 45 minutes. When the heat dissipated, all of my back pain was gone! This experience inspired me to become an instructor so that I could increase the awareness of and exposure to healing practices like Qigong and Kamitic Yoga to Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People. At the time, most Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People that I surveyed were not familiar with Qigong or Kamitic Yoga although some had heard of Tai Chi.
How Good Pain Caused By Movement Cultivates Emotional Resilience
I was blown away by the profound affect that a breathing exercise could have on my body. I had to become an instructor so that I could teach these healing movements to Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People for community healing. However, every Qigong master that I found had a traditional approach to teaching the practice which focused on a type of horse stance, that is generally called "Embrace The Tree," before a practitioner could learn the Qigong form. This tradition requires that a person is able to stand in the position with their arms out in front of them (as if they are hugging an invisible tree) for one hour. The picture above features a beginner's horse stance with arms out to the side. In a true horse stance, my hips would be lowered to the point that it would be in line with my knees, placing my legs at a 90 degree angle. The practice was already foreign to Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People. There was no way that I would get them to build up the stamina to stand in horse stance for an hour for the sheer pleasure of learning how to do Qigong - whatever that was. The longest I have ever taught a hold of horse stance in a workshop setting was three repetitions of a one minute hold. During those sessions, I spent most of my time attempting to get the participants to relax their faces. They looked like they were in pain, but it was a good pain with a purpose.
Regardless of the hand position, horse stance builds muscular strength and endurance. As I became aware of the African origins of Qigong, I realized that SPIRIT was using the horse stance to teach me a universal truth that transcended a specific technique:
Healing Strategies From Mother Africa ↔ Diaspora teaches us that in order for a person to hold the horse stance position for an hour, they would have to learn the art of responding to hardship with a peaceful mind, sharp focus and the ability to transcend pain.
Realizing that these were some of the internal skills that Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People need to heal from centuries of racism and oppression, I became determined to solve the challenge of how to encourage us to actively engage in empowered self-care. A person who considers themselves in "good physical shape" will notice that their arms and thighs will start to feel the burn after about one minute of horse stance. This is because most people who exercise focus on muscular strength, but horse stance cultivates muscular ☯ mental ☯ emotional endurance. As time progresses, the burn becomes intense and the muscles may start to quiver. The only way to get through the pain is to place our attention on deepening the breath and sending energy and oxygen to the places that feel the most pain. This requires extreme focus at first, because our thoughts will distract us with complaints of physical discomfort. If we are diligent with our practice, we'll begin to notice that there is a distance between the pain and our perception of pain. We enter a type of zone that cultivates resilience. Often times I would only have about an hour to teach some sort of exercise at a convening for Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People. Imagine what would happen if I said, "OK everyone, let's get into a wide-legged, deep knee bend, hold our arms up, stand still and be silent for an hour." No one would ever invite me to teach a workshop again. I had to find another way to introduce these types of practices and encourage Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People to become willing participants.
Do not carry the experience of life as a wound – let it become wisdom. The harder life has been on you, the sooner you should become wise. ॐ ॐ Sadhguru ॐ
There are a few reasons why I have been so determined to teach healing movement to Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People:
☥ To transmute the hardships of disenfranchisement, systemic racism and chronic doses
of microaggressions into the fuel that powers our ability to become more self-aware,
resilient and instinctively disruptive to the manipulative tactics of others.
☥ To return the brand of investment that we have given to others back to ourselves in
the form of mental, emotional, spiritual and physical self-care.
☥ To slow down long enough to connect with our higher power ☥ ancestors so that we
can recognize solutions to challenges that come to us through intuitive insights.
☥ To arm Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People with a healing strategy that develops
the type of inner strength and wisdom that cannot be taken from us and can make us
impervious to microaggressions and other forms of manipulation.
I noticed that every time I went into horse stance, I had to push past the pain. The longer I was able to hold the horse stance pose, the more mentally and emotionally resilient I became. Once I was able to hold the posture for 20 minutes, I became more self-aware. I could sense when a person was attempting to manipulate me before a conversation or situation went south. I began to see beneath the surface of a person's insecurity or pain which caused them to be manipulative in the first place. This would put me in a place of benevolent compassion - being understanding of another person's limitations while enforcing strong healthy boundaries and requiring that a person demonstrates integrity. When we practice the horse stance form, our mind becomes occupied with constantly scanning our body to ensure that we are breathing deeply, our spine is erect without being rigid, our shoulders are relaxed, our knees are in alignment with the toes and our tailbone is tucked under. All of these tasks disrupts our random mental chatter which helps us to calm ourselves and enter into the zone. As we begin to send energy and oxygen into areas of discomfort, the pain becomes more distant and we notice a deep peace in the space between the pain and our perception of it. In time and silence, we begin to understand pain, its value and its lessons. When we go out into the world and pain shows up, we are prepared to slow down, distance ourselves from emotional triggers and choose a response that puts us in control of given situation.
Often times, Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People are so emotionally triggered that we give up our power by knee-jerk reacting to outside stimuli which moves us further and further away from potential solutions to our challenges. It's a cyclical pattern that we will not be able to break unless we improve our ability to be more self-aware and resist the temptation to become emotionally reactive. Horse stance helps us to become simultaneously disciplined ☯ focused in our mind, body and emotions in the midst of pain and discomfort. I started practicing consistently for about two minutes per day, and it took me about 40 days of consistent practice to work my way up to 20 minutes. I was in no rush to get to an hour. I took my time with the practice, held the pose until I felt uncomfortable, and then deepened my breath and pushed through the discomfort until I felt my muscles shake. I would then slowly ease out of the posture. It took me about nine months to hold it for an hour.
There is a striking correlation between the times that I have felt stuck in a situation/have been emotionally triggered and the times that I have slacked off on my healing movement practices.
What Kinds Of Movement Are Best To Facilitate Healing?
My favorite answer to this question is “the kind of movement that you love doing with conscious breathwork.” Here are some examples of healing movement:
☥ Kamitic Yoga, Qigong, Tai Chi
☥ Dancing (cultural, tribal, belly dancing, etc.)
☥ Stretching with conscious breathwork
☥ Cardiovascular exercise with conscious breathwork (boxing, jogging, jumping rope,
hiking, etc.)
☥ Massage therapy, especially NMT (neuromuscular therapy) and deep tissue massage
☥ Gua sha, massage crystals
Fascinated by our scientific virtuosity, we imagine that we can fix people, repair the body as we would repair a machine. Patient and doctor alike tend to forget the simple fact that the living body, unlike a machine, has the ability to heal itself. ☥ ☥ Dr. Irving Oyle, Author Of The Healing Mind
Let’s Practice Some Healing Movements
What I love about these exercises is that most people can do them. These healing movements generate a great deal of energy, so they are contraindicated for pregnancy and epilepsy. Consult your medical doctor before practicing. For those who are able to practice, please do not be discouraged if you discover that you can only move a few centimeters in a particular direction. Your flexibility and proficiency will improve with time and practice. Each movement is repeated three times in the video. The healing power of these movements is unleashed as we move through many repititions. Begin with three repetitions and then slowly increase in multiples of three. It is important to practice each repetition with the intention of improving body alignment, slowing down and deepening the breath and self-correcting the form. These intentions help to prevent you from robotically going through each repetition just to get the exercise done. Rather than going through the motions, practice staying present and you’ll soon find that you’ll disappear into the zone as you move through the reps. Staying present with each repetition is an important way to cultivate patience ☥ spiritual ☥ body alignment. I generally do at least 36 repetitions, but it took me several years of extended practice to build my internal strength and muscular endurance. Even if I did 100 repetitions of just one movement, each movement is completed as if it were my first and only movement.
In time, you will no longer need to count repetitions. Your body will guide the length and intensity of your practice.
Stay present, be gentle with yourself and patient with the practice.
Full Body Drumming To Relax Mind ☥ Energize Body
I highly recommend practicing this exercise first because it warms up the muscles which facilitates mind ☥ body awareness, preps the body for stretching and other exercises and prevents injuries. Full Body Drumming relaxes the mind ☥ energizes the body. It promotes calmness ☥ gentleness ☥ silence within the self. Regular practice heals disorders that develop in the kidneys, ears and bladder, encourages natural detoxification, improves circulation and strengthens immunity.
A Cleansing Stretch For Courage ☥ Joy ☥ Spinal Health
This exercise cultivates courage ☥ joy and enhances creativity ☥ sexual well-being. Regular practice heals disorders that develop in the lungs, skin and large intestines. It improves oxygenation through breath, expansion of the lungs and strengthens immunity. This cleansing stretch also improves the health of your spine. It stretches and strengthens the intercostal muscles (the muscles in between your ribs).
A Cleansing Side Stretch For Mental Acuity ☥ Immunity
This exercise improves mental acuity, our ability to make sound decisions ☥ assimilate ideas. Regular practice strengthens immunity and helps to heal disorders that develop in the eyes, liver and gallbladder. This exercise also improves the health of our spine. It stretches and strengthens the intercostal muscles (the muscles in between our ribs).
A Cleansing Stretch With A Twist To Demystify ☥ Heal Our Emotions
This exercise helps us to demystify ☥ heal our emotions, cultivate openness and trust and increase our sense of power, confidence and joy. Regular practice heals disorders that develop in the stomach, spleen and pancreas, promotes healthy digestion of nutrients and strengthens immunity. It gently and safely massages the viscera (internal organs), improves circulation and helps cleanse the body of physical and emotional toxins.
Harness Your Internal Power For Love ☥ Happiness
This exercise deepens your connection to the truest part of yourself. It increases love, creativity, spiritual connection, future hopes, empathy, spiritual purpose, self-love, ability to love others, internal power, confidence and helps your body to cleanse and release physical, emotional and mental toxins. Regular practice heals disorders that develop in the heart and small intestines and strengthens immunity.
Move Your Body ☥ Be Well ☥ Be Radiant
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 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). The Pain Remedy Hidden In Plain Sight. PHYLLISHUBBARD.COM. <https://www.phyllishubbard.com/post/the-pain-remedy-hidden-in-plain-sight>
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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