Self Care: Mindful Preparation

For many years taking care of myself was never high on my list of priorities, but learning Reiki brought me to the understanding that self care is worth spending time on.  At first I resisted this idea, being more interested in helping other people.  However Reiki would not let me persist in this! 

Eventually I surrendered to this simple practice of daily self care and it has had ripples that have affected the rest of my life.  Recently I saw that in fact the self care I had resisted is important for preparing myself to serve others.

Beginning most days with a self Reiki treatment I remain as present as possible as I hold my hands in each of the positions  – a mindfulness practice that helps me to begin the day centred and calm.  This has led me to be more aware of other aspects of self care as I go through life.

Being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes made me look more carefully at my diet and I now know that eating regularly and with protein at every meal helps me balance my blood glucose.  To achieve this requires mindfulness, however as it’s easy to get distracted and forget to eat.  It also requires preparation and planning to ensure I have the right kind of food to hand at the time I need to eat.  I know this can seem fussy and cranky to some people, but I’ve found that through balancing my blood glucose I have more energy and vitality (not to mention loosing 2 stone!).  What this means is that I can do more to serve others and do it better (more efficiently, more joyfully). 

I was recently selected by the British Lung Foundation to run one of their singing for lung health groups, which involved training in London.  In my previous state of health I think I would have struggled to achieve this and would have worried about whether I had the stamina to run the group every week.  Now I feel positive and excited about the prospect!  So improving my health and well being was good preparation to take on this new project.

Another aspect of my self care has been to improve my sleep.  I have Reiki to help me drift off

once I am in bed, but you won’t find me answering emails late at night unless I’m breaking my self care rules!  When I was less good at self care I’ve experienced poor sleep with all the predicted outcomes: irritability, higher stress levels, lack of co-ordination, reduced immunity, increased frequency of making mistakes etc.  Now I take more care to do and not do the things that will encourage good sleep – such as being in bed by 11pm when possible, not eating or drinking anything after 9pm and limiting carbohydrates in the evening.  As a result I sleep well most nights and have more energy to give my attention to planning and balancing my life, rather than struggling through the day, just longing for my bed!

So Reiki has taught me that self care requires mindfulness and is not something that comes last on the list of priorities, but is good preparation for living my life to the full, able to answer whatever Reiki asks of me each day!

New year Choices

When Joy Drake, the co-creator of the Transformation Game was staying with us in November last year she mentioned a concept she had come across concerning the choices we make in life.  At this time of year people are often reflecting on the year that has just passed and making plans for the year to come, so I thought I’d start this year’s newletters by sharing this idea with you in case you find it find it useful too.

 

What she described is the way that when making decisions that affect how to move forwards in life, we always have a choice described as going through door A or door B.  Door A is doing what we have always done, behaving in a habitual way and making what often appears to be the safest choice.  Choosing door B is to decide to do something different from what we normally do, to try another way, take a different path.

Choosing to go through door B is often scary, or at least challenging, but in my experience can also be exciting and enriching.  Learning Reiki at a time when it was little known in the UK was a door B decision all those years ago and I feel that Reiki has been a catalyst for choosing door B ever since. 

One example of this was daily self treatments.  Door A was to just go on with life as normal, forgetting most of the time to give myself a Reiki treatment during the day.  Door A was maintaining the old habits of paying more attention to what other people wanted than to the needs of my own body and soul.  I often looked at door B, saying to myself that it would be good to have a regular self treatment practice, but something always kept me from going through.  I now understand that my sub-conscious was telling me that it would be far too risky to go through door B and self treat every day.  It seems crazy, but there really was a part of me that felt that self treatment would lead to difficulty and painful situations that I would prefer to avoid.  However by taking little steps towards door B –just self treating occasionally, then a couple of times a week, then just for 21 days – I finally managed to go through door B into daily self treatment.  Of course I discovered that not only was it less difficult than I had imagined, it also helped to heal the pain I was afraid of and led to me living a better life.

Choosing door A can feel more comfortable and safe, but as a Reiki master I am committed to continuing to learn and grow, to taking the next step on my spiritual path, to serve those around me and the wider world.  The next step on this path does not usually go through door A.  So as I think about a resolution for the New Year, I think I only really need one: to go through door B as often as possible.  To ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’, knowing that challenges don’t have to be problems, but are opportunities.   I know that Reiki will support me as I cross the threshold into the unknown and I’m looking forward to the adventure!