My Journey to Spiritual Wellness

My Journey to Spiritual Wellness: Surrendering to Love Through Meditation

What health and wellness mean to me is balance and feeling centered across the self-care domains. Positive Psychology suggests that self-care encompasses the following areas:

• Emotional
• Physical
• Social
• Professional
• Spiritual

You can access a self-care check-up here to see what areas you are already strong in and which areas offer opportunities for growth. When I came across this self-care check-up last year, I dedicated myself to crafting a holistic and health-ful life for myself. This year, I am embarking on a journey to focus on one area for each of the seasons on the wheel of the year. As we enter Spring, it feels like a good time to focus on spiritual health.  

Spiritual health may seem to come easily to people who ascribe to an organized religion where they are held up by belief systems and tenets of faith already well established. This is not the case for me, and I have been searching for my spiritual bedrock for most of my adult life. I have done many deep dives into different belief systems, and I have found beautiful truths everywhere. Ultimately, my search has brought me back to myself and to the very land on which I live. Compassion itself has become the foundation to my spiritual belief system, and I believe that returning to devotion and kindness for ourselves, our family, and our community is the spiritual work of our times, or at least, of my own time here on Earth.  

Through a series of painful lessons, I have realized that it is not how I treat those in my favour that gives me the most grist for my spiritual development; it is how I engage with those whom I most struggle with that grows me the deepest. What this means for me is to be thoughtful, patient, and honest in my responses, especially when I am the most triggered. 

When I feel the most defensive and frustrated, I can choose to move inwards to locate the vulnerable part of myself under the anger, the part of myself that is feeling afraid and sad. Then I can bring nurturance and compassion to this part of myself, ultimately allowing me to engage with my loved ones more authentically and with less projection. This specific type of therapy is called Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, and it can be hard emotional work. Many of us (myself included) will need a qualified therapist to sift through the emotional turmoil to locate the vulnerability underneath, so please do not hesitate to reach out to a qualified therapist if you feel you need some extra support. If you are interested in learning more about IFS therapy, Richard Schwartz's booked called No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model is an excellent read.

Living BIG  

This inner work is hard, and it takes time. I am getting better at walking away until I am more regulated. If it is emotionally and physically safe to do so, I believe it is also important to remain open to the person and the relationship over and over again. I am learning vulnerability and humility, which do not always come easily to me. I am also learning to stand in my integrity with a steady and strong voice. Brene Brown’s living BIG (Brown, 2020-present) has been integral in my daily life. Living BIG means holding boundaries with both integrity and generosity. Finally, I am learning to be kind to myself when I fall short of these strivings. And I do fall short, a lot!  

An interesting thing happened for me when I started setting boundaries, standing in my integrity, using my voice, and offering devoted kindness to those in my life. I noticed I started having more tolerance for others when they set boundaries with me. Unexpectedly, I started to experience what life could be like from a place of non-interference, which I am now cultivating with more intention into an ongoing practice of surrender and acceptance.  

It is easy for me to slip back into a place of rigidity and control, as well as intolerance for ambiguity and difference. In her book A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson talks about how every personal experience in life is either based in love or fear. When I am out of alignment with love, I am always mired in fear. It can take effort to pull myself out of whatever inner or outer conflict I am in and surrender to love. This simple (yet sometimes difficult) practice has truly changed my life! Yet, I need to work at it constantly, and I need to give grace to myself often for my missteps and mistakes.  

Surrendering to Love  

Surrendering to love can be incredibly difficult, and it takes trust in the higher order of things. To strengthen my surrender/acceptance muscle, I have built a mindfulness practice in the form of a sitting meditation where I am the non-judgmental observer of my thoughts, feelings, and somatic experiences. This is also referred to as a Vipassana meditation in the Theraveda Buddhist tradition. This simple practice has amplified how easily I allow critical self-talk when I notice my mind wandering, and I have also had embodied experiences of my most painful thoughts, feelings, and memories. I regularly face my shadow parts or those parts of myself that struggle with unforgiveness, anger, and the desire for revenge when I feel hurt or slighted. It can take a lot of courage to look with unwavering honesty at my shadow parts while directing so much self-compassion onto these disavowed parts of myself at the same time.  

Meditation is not all about hard work though! It also invites us into a deep spiritual connection to the unseen and mysterious forces that lie under the surface of all things. I have experienced encompassing unconditional love that brought healing to the long-forgotten and neglected corners inside of myself. I am learning how to direct this love and compassion inwards, and I am often reminded that I am not separated from this Love, not ever. It is ever-present, yet I often forget when I allow fear to take root. Then I remember and turn back to Love, and I have watched miracles unfold around me!  

My new goal for this month is to also incorporate a 30-minute body scan meditation, or non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) meditation, into my evening/bedtime routine. I am hoping that by allowing my body to fully relax while also keeping my mind alert, I can rebalance my nervous system. It can also help access the subconscious where I hold my most deeply held beliefs, patterns, and emotions; I am hoping that I can challenge and potentially transform some of my outdated patterns to better align with my life purposing. After listening to Jay Shetty’s podcast with Andrew Huberman (Shetty, 2023-present), I started looking through my Insight Timer for yoga nidra meditations. There are so many to choose from, and I would love to hear about a favourite one that they have tried and loved. I would also love to hear how others are working to balance their spiritual self-care!  

Sending Love your way!!

Bibiliography  

Brown, B. (Host). (2020-present). Living BIG, Part 1 of 2 [Audio Podcast]. Parcast. https://brenebrown.com/podcast/living-big-part-1-of-2/  

Brown, B. (Host). (2020-present). Living BIG, Part 2 of 2 [Audio Podcast]. Parcast. https://brenebrown.com/podcast/living-big-part-2-of-2/  

Schaffner, A. K. (2020, May 20). How to practice self-care: 10+ worksheets and 12 ideas. Positive Psychology. https://positivepsychology.com/self-care-worksheets/  

Schwartz, R. (2021). No bad parts: Healing trauma and restoring wholeness with the Internal Family Systems model. Sounds True

Shetty, J. (2023-present). Andrew Huberman: How to increase your dopamine by 60% and optimize your brain’s response to stress [Podcast]. iHeart Podcasts. https://www.jayshetty.me/podcast/andrew-huberman-how-to-increase-your-dopamine-by-60-optimize-your-brains-response-to-stress  

Williamson, M. (2009). A return to love. Harper Perennial