by Dr. Heléna Kate | Aug 21, 2015 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
When it comes down to it, everything I\’ve studied and practiced over the past 20 years has been about healing. I\’ve looked at healing from spiritual, material, creative, energetic, psychological and physical perspectives. Today, both my business and personal development work focuses on how I can best facilitate and teach healing practices.
And so, for this week\’s article, I\’m going to talk about ways you can incorporate healing practices into your everyday life.
Paths to Healing
What helps us heal? This is a big question.
From my experience, I can say that healing methods help a person – or in some cases a group of people – heal themselves. These methods often include one or more of the following perspectives or techniques:
The Big YES!
The first step to healing comes when we honor our truth and accept it fully. This easy access to healing could be called the big YES! And this YES! is ultimately about alignment. Our joy, our natural flow, and easy expression of our core selves is most present when our actions and choices are in alignment with how we truly feel.
We can use the big YES! to bring healing to institutions, ecosystems, and even home environments. This happens when – as a business or as a society – we make sure our actions match the missions we collectively set for ourselves.
To bring more healing into your life, first pay attention to what you love. Then, chose to do more of it. When people talk about “doing what you love” and “finding your bliss” they are acknowledging this healing tenant.
Bring Together What is Supportive
When we heal, we bring together things that add to our well-being. Think of this in terms of nourishment. We take vitamins and minerals to feed our bodies what they need to heal. So, if we see a lack of health in one area of our lives, we can ask ourselves: what\’s undercutting my sense of well-being and what can I bring into my life that will support it?
To bring healing into our lives, we can exercise, feed ourselves good food and surround ourselves with good company. We can turn to supportive friends and institutions when in need. And we can turn-inward and ask ourselves what things or which people truly support us.
Remove What is Unsupportive
Sometimes, adding support to our lives is not enough. Sometimes we need to remove what\’s not supportive. The climbing wisteria might be destroying the building. The delicious meal might contain an allergen. There are times when what was once supportive stops being so. For example, you may have shared a supportive relationship with someone that stopped being supportive as you and the other person changed. If this is the case, it might be time to end the relationship. And, sometimes things appear to have no use – or at worst, might be doing harm. We cut out cancer. We medicate depression. These illnesses interrupt our health, so we work as best we can to remove them from our lives.
One thing we can do to partner with our health is to pay attention to our inner critic. When we observe our inner critic at work – and especially when we catch ourselves in a moment of negative self-talk – we can chose to tune into a more positive inner voice. Over time, we can work to remove our inner critic from our inner council.
We can also look through our life to find the things that no longer serve us. We can elect to let these things go even if our sense of nostalgia has us hanging on.
Focus on What We Want
The whole point of intention and positive thinking is to help orient us in the direction we want to go. When we bring an intention to our lives, we focus our attention on a desirable outcome or behavior. We might dedicate our intention towards our self-empowerment or towards creating an ideal business.
If you want to use intention and positive thinking to bolster your life, add things to your environment that remind you of your goals. You can also set your intention at the beginning of every day or each event. This will keep your intention fresh and will help you steadily achieve your goals.
Mend What is Broken
One of the words associated with healing is \”mending\”. Sometimes things get torn apart. We mend a broken bone, a busted fence and even a broken heart. In Shamanic traditions, soul retrieval is a form of mending. It reconnects a person with previously disconnected parts of themselves.
Mending usually emerges out of necessity. We mend something after it has been broken. So, pay attention to how many things in your life are broken. Do you have broken objects, broken relationships, or broken agreements that need to be mended so that you can move in the direction of your healing? If so, begin to put effort into fixing these things so that they no longer drain your energy.
When you bring healing into your life, you\’re likely to be working with these basic techniques to promote your well-being. As you become more and more familiar with these healing methods, it becomes easier to build them into your life, business, or environment in ways that maintain and strengthen your health.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 30, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
“Relationships are mysterious. We doubt the positive qualities in others, seldom the negative. You will say to your partner: do you really love me? Are you sure you love me? You will ask this a dozen times and drive the person nuts. But you never ask: are you really mad at me? Are you sure you’re angry? When someone is angry, you don’t doubt it for a moment. Yet the reverse should be true. We should doubt the negative in life, and have faith in the positive.” ― Christopher Pike, Remember Me
The holiday season brings up feelings of stress and lack for many of us. I personally find myself thinking about the gifts I cannot afford to buy, the tensions in my family relationships and the things that did not happen in a year drawing to a close.
I came across the above quote today and it spoke to me very strongly and inspired me to try to reframe all that is to come in the next weeks. I am personally committing to being more positive, during this time and end my year the way I hope to begin my new one – with compassion, patience and joy – and I invite you to take the challenge with me.
Lets commit to taking time to pause, to reflect and to focus on the good that we do have, not our places of lack. To focus on what is good and right about our lives and especially our relationships instead of the places where they are painful. To celebrate the end of the year by celebrating the areas of our life where there is abundance, where there has been growth and where we are proud and joyful.
One of the ways I am staying focused on the positive is by taking 10 minutes to write about what I am grateful for from now until the last day of the year. Join me in this exercise and lets end this year on a positive note no matter WHAT comes our way.
Blessings to you in this very special, potent and beautiful time of year!
(more…)
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Sep 7, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Very recently, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, poet and Jungian psychoanalyst, said of the late Robin Williams, “He learned for 63 years of his life how to be ‘the fire handler.’ That is where I would praise him, for what he has managed to do for six+ decades; handle fire, while being made of parchment\” (Estés, 2014).
I gasped after reading her words, letting them kindle again for a moment the brittle parchment of my own soul, which has itself apparently survived many conflagrations ignited by failures, losses, and challenges—as well as many other unexpected moments of ecstatic wonder, inspiration, and triumph. Indeed, Estés’s words and Williams’ career—during which we encountered him as Fool, Trickster, Sage, Poet, Hermit, Sacred King, and many more archetypal embodiments—have me reflecting on the true power of the Sacred Wound.
That which might be termed “soul loss” in indigenous and shamanic healing contexts, suffered as a consequence of life’s vicissitudes, is certainly painful and responsible for so much despair and disconnection from meaning, purpose, will, power, beauty, and love. Yet, the hunger to be whole, while leading to a seemingly endless array of mistakes and false starts, can also serendipitously bring wisdom and sow the seeds of transformation. The effort to heal those perpetual wounds engenders—or perhaps illuminates—the unique gifts that only we possess, and more to the point, that only we can deliver to the world in our utterly unique way. After all, no one else can be us better than we can. We have but to make the seemingly foolish choice to turn and face our pain, to lean into that which wounds us, to face with courage what has victimized us, addicted us, or had us on the run for most of our lives.
However, I am becoming increasingly frustrated with ever growing assurances from well-meaning memes and media that the act of turning, confronting, and fighting our demons will itself magically vanquish them and automatically transform everything in positive and helpful ways—as if the act of doing an about-face in our flight guarantees the desired outcome. Irrational thoughts don’t go away just because we dispute them effectively. Beliefs and attitudes built over a lifetime don’t give way to different ones in an instant. Addictions don’t die just because we admit we have a problem with them. Leaning into the storm does not banish its tempests, and one day those storms might indeed have their way with us. Powerful emotions can arise from very deep, abysmal, murky wells. As these fragile bodies lose strength and vitality over the course of a lifetime, we may have the will but not the strength to keep confronting the monsters, and eventually even our will could erode.
Yet, bones that break do often become stronger when healing around the break. Our bodies and spirits can develop an ethereal, silvered grace through the adventures and misadventures of our lives—just as storms and floods etch beautiful lines and curves into rocks, trees, and riverbeds.
Authentic heroism and greatness do not expect, demand, or depend on success. In the best stories, the goal or objective of the quest actually plays a minimal part in comparison to the courage, passion, and integrity of the hero or heroine. These qualities arise out of the decision to remain true to oneself even in the face of doom and failure. Happiness, is not after all, everything.
Moreover, what we understand to be “mental health” might be a chimera against a reality that is itself meaningless, arbitrary, and “insane.” Our artists, poets, actors, mystics, and crazy people—and perhaps some teachers as well—live on or close to that edge of realization, where there is much terrible beauty and beautiful terror.
By no means is a deliberate exposure to being abused repeatedly by those who have shown themselves to be chronically malicious and untrustworthy a good or noble thing to do. Yet sometimes, when heart and body together experience a moment of rightness in a relationship or context, an unprecedented opportunity or growth may present itself. In such a moment, being deliberately, honestly vulnerable—particularly after all that has demolished us and that perhaps continues to wound us—is possibly one of the greatest acts of courage, insanity, and strength that we could ever imagine or embody. To show our tenderness and risk being torn apart again can be an act of power.
Talking about our vulnerability with someone that we hope is trustworthy is admirable, deserving of validation and support, even as it may risk scorn and judgment from others. Actually embodying it, though, in particular moments is wonderful and takes breathtaking courage. It empowers us to be windows on Beauty for those who have eyes to see it, appreciate it, and be inspired by it. Actually living it in an ongoing way reminds me again of Estés’ metaphor of the parchment that holds fire—a life lived fiercely and fully, most likely for a span that passes all too quickly, albeit unapologetically.
That parchment will not be of long duration, and how tragic for those who might never witness directly the beautiful flame it holds. But what wonder is there for those who do, and what secret language written upon it might be momentarily revealed in the heat of the flames?
Read more articles by Drake Spaeth here
(more…)
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jun 5, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
I just want to take a moment to have gratitude for all the great dogs that are or have been in my life and the lives of people I know. I am writing this from outside a vet office where a dog I love very much is being tested for Leukemia. If she has it again, at this point there is no treatment and this brings me to my topic for the week.
Spring can be a weird time to talk about loss but loss happens regardless of the time of year. What I think is even more weird is when we pretend that loss is not supposed to happen. That somehow we are justified in feeling betrayed by life itself if we are confronted with loss. This is actually the source of more pain than the original loss.
Unfortunately, when we grow we not only gain we also loose. It needs to be like this. We heal ourselves and what we created no longer serves is. It no longer fits. Sometimes it falls away gracefully and easily and other times it is dramatic or painful.
It is easy in all of the transformation to pay attention to the wrong things. It is easy to get consumed with emotions. But there is an alternative.
In everything that is going on there is a place of calm. A place of truth. If we can anchor our attention in this place then the situations around us are simply that – situations around us. We are connected to what is deeper and more meaningful, what is leading us and pulling us to our greatness because this never leaves us.
(more…)
