Embrace Chakra-Aligned Self-Care for Coaches, Counsellors & Healers
In my recent role working as a healer in an office for a complementary therapy, I witnessed the impact of burnout and energetic misalignment in teachers and practitioners as well as myself.
This is a very common situation for people who care deeply about the wellbeing of others, Mother Earth and its many inhabitants.
The Healer’s Burden: A Call for Self-Nurturing
As a healer, you are a beacon of light and a conduit for transformation in the lives of your clients. Yet, like a tirelessly flowing river, your own wellspring of energy needs replenishment. And, if you are anything like me, you end up putting the needs of others before yourself.
Our inner sage within us recognises the importance of self care – not as a selfish indulgence, but as a sacred act which empowers us to serve more effectively. And yet, somehow, finding the time and space to nurture our connection to the Divine seems to slip through our fingers with the ever-increasing chores and demands of daily life. I find this frustrating, and I am sure you do too.
However, during Covid I went walking in nature a lot more than I had previously. As did other people. I found the amount of litter carelessly dropped along the woodland pathways to be exceedingly irritating and I would complain about this fact to my close friends and family. The mirror showed up in the form of friends and family who had opposing viewpoints on the pros and cons of the vaccination for Covid. I witnessed individuals who I thought were mild-tempered and open-minded become intolerant angry humans towards those who had an opposing viewpoint. I didn’t like what I saw in these individuals and said to myself I didn’t want to be like them. Yet when I sat down for a moment’s quiet contemplation, I was shown by my guides I was very much like these individuals, only I was angrily speaking about individuals who dropped litter in the natural woodlands surrounding my home.
I decided then and there to stop moaning and judging. I chose instead to become part of the solution rather than feeding the thought field of the problem. I started litter-picking (known as plogging) when I went out on my daily walk. By taking action instead of just complaining, I discovered the first step to self-care. Very simply, one needs to recognise the problem seen ‘out there’ is in fact a problem ‘in myself’ and to heal it I will be required to take action.
I am not always successful with remembering to bless the individuals who carelessly leave litter in the environment for gifting me the opportunity to raise my conscious awareness. However, their acts of carelessness have encouraged me to be disciplined enough to become the solution to litter in the environment. Occasionally, I get a thank you from another community member, however, I don’t do it for the words of affirmation from others. I do it because I want to be part of the solution and not the cause of the problem.
After I had been doing this for about 2 years, I was contemplating on what it would take to have a successful clinical healing business, and into my consciousness floated the awareness many healers (including myself) are addicted to the idea of healing yet are not disciplined enough to do the inner work required unless our lives were in some kind of traumatic upheaval. In other words, we embraced all tools within our tool kit in a down cycle, however, during the upcycle there was no dedicated sacred practice.
Admitting to myself I was addicted to healing and self-help methodologies was the first step. Recognising I was only applying techniques, interventions etc in times of mental-emotional challenge, demonstrated I was not actually following what spiritual masters of past eras stated to be the way to inner peace and transformation. Instead, it just highlighted my spiritual laziness as well as demonstrating I was still focused on finding the magic pill or potion to relieving my symptoms in a down cycle rather than dealing with the root cause.
I felt truly uncomfortable with this insight. I decided it would be better to contemplate it further and have a chat with my guides about it. My guides told me I had been intellectualising spirituality. They informed me I was not putting into practice the wisdom of past enlightened masters, instead I was still reacting to life from the perspective of either/or. This meant I felt disconnected from Life and sought to control life from a place of fear, rather than a place of love. Living life from the either/or perspective continually, meant I was over-reacting to the events of life due to my over-thinking and emotional responses. Spirituality, my guides informed me, when grounded, centred, aligned and present was a lifestyle and came from the and/and perspective.
After much thinking and soul-diving, I was able to admit I had been intellectualising spirituality and healing, rather than living it. Duality, it would seem is just a teaching aid to stimulate us to question life and then begin the journey towards becoming embodied consciously.
The Rise of the Soul-Led Enlightened Healer
On further conversations with my guides and doing some inner work on myself, I realised part of my problem was I didn’t buy into any one secular belief system. Instead, I found the wisdom of many paths sensible and inspiring. I used exercises and rituals from a variety of different religious pathways and my philosophy was favouring ‘Universalist’.
I was an eclectic thinker which meant I avoided any commitment to any one pathway or commitment to a daily sacred practice. I loved the choice of having many ‘tools’ in my ‘healing box of tricks’ when life got messy. However, this meant there was too much choice and not enough focus and practice on entering the inner castle daily.
One day when having a chat with my guides, I was revisiting my life story and looking at the challenges and successes of my healing journey so far. It was whilst doing this, I had another AHAA moment. My training in complementary health practices is based on sound, light, colour and movement. The accelerated learning programme I co-developed with a colleague, was based on sound, light, colour and movement.
I revisited yoga, tai chi and qi gong and noted these were not just physical exercises, they were lifestyles. How had I missed this, I asked myself. I immediately recognised the most powerful lifestyle any spiritual being associated with healing could do, was to prepare their mind, body, spirit and soul to become the solution to the challenge they found distasteful and made them feel at dis-ease. [Note: The word solution contains the word ‘soul’ within it].
I also finally recognised these lifestyles embraced exercises based on sound, light, colour, movement, scent, nutrition, study and psychology. In fact, these lifestyles deliberately used the multiple senses and intelligences to accelerate soul growth. I was in awe.
My guides clearly showed me the chakras were the best guide for an eclectic thinker and practising healer to use for their daily sacred practice. Why? Because they embrace sound, light, colour, movement, scent, nutrition, study and psychology. And, whilst they have their roots in the yoga system, they are today universally known to most individuals involved in complementary healing and are holistic in their ability to focus an individual on the inner world and do the necessary inner work required.
