It’s not “Mental Health I’ve got it all together week”
I'm going to be honest. This week I've been a mess. Which is ironic as its mental health awareness week. At least I'm aware right? After all it's not "mental health I've got it all together week". Though being in this industry, I wonder if it's sometimes assumed I do. To be perfectly clear, I really don't and I'm ok with that because I get to then send emails like this to you which I hope might help you if you're ever feeling out of sorts and don't know why.
Before I tell you how I did a self-care u-turn (I'm now feeling myself again), I'm going to take it back a week. To the week before last, when I had a few life-changing breathes, releasing some deep-rooted blocks in my throat chakra which is something I've been working on for the last month or so. The throat being responsible for our creativity and self expression and also the highway to the third eye chakra; the place of imagination, vision and dreams (see my blog post here about the chakras) this is something I wanted to focus on to help me to step into the next stage of my business. Once I released the block in my throat, my creativity and imagination felt like it had the foot to the pedal with no going back. I was high on creativity and up in the clouds. Sound great right!?
Well not exactly…! I was ungrounded and unbalanced.
It's a gift to release these parts of ourselves that are blocked and holding us back, but we need to be balanced. Free and grounded. Open with boundaries. A good communicator and a good listener. Our yin and yang must be balanced to function properly.
When I get busy, the first thing to go is eating. Don't get me wrong, I eat and I love food. But I'm cooking for one, which I find utterly uninspiring and when I'm focused on my work, my relationship with food can become dysfunctional. I felt myself spinning out of control on Wednesday after teaching 4 classes back to back, with little gaps to properly fuel myself. That afternoon, when I then had a call with my mentor, explaining what had been happening…he explain how I was disconnected from my body and my root chakra, asking “How are you going to ground yourself?”
I said the obvious, I'm practicing conscious connected breathing and meditation for an hour every morning and I'm physically grounding every chance I get in the park." He answered with “Ok, but how else could you ground?” as he munched on an orange segment.
“Food” he said. A lightbulb switched on.
Food grounds you.
I'd recently read that when our root chakra is unbalanced it changes our relationship to food, either overeating or undereating. We feel disconnected to our body, so our relationship to food becomes disconnected. If you look back on your life now to a time when you felt ungrounded, did your relationship to food change? Think about when you travel by plane? Notice anything different from usual? I know for me, I stock up on a days worth of food from the airport Pret before boarding a 3 hour flight, like I'm going to get stuck up there and need supplies! It's because flights unground you and our natural reaction is to reconnect to our bodies with food. Fascinating hey?
So perhaps, if you are feeling anxious or have a busy, creative mind, check in. How am I eating? Food is the easiest tool to re-connect our minds to our body. Stay grounded my dear x
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
this month’s affirmations…
I AM BALANCED
Currency comes in 3 forms. Time, energy and money.
It was highlighted to me recently that I'm a giver. I'd never really thought of myself this way, but having people pleasing tendencies…this would make sense. It's easy to give when you love what you do but my work does takes a lot of energy. But this week I was reminded that I need to give myself as much energy as I give others. A little reminder to you too, if you are feeling a little spent. We can't help others if our cup is empty.
Book yourself a massage, go to a yoga class, take yourself on a date, have a movie night in. Do what you need to hold space for yourself too and find balance.
Last thoughts…
HIDING CAN BE LONELY
I spoke last moodletter about doing the work and having the courage to step into the unknown. I invite you to go back to your childhood when, I suspect at some point, you played hide and seek. Were you ever so good at hiding that you couldn't be found? I was on occasion, and I remember, once the thrill of not being caught had worn off, getting quite lonely on my own, waiting there to be found.
That's how I've come to think of our feelings. These emotions that we've buried deep down, hidden, waiting to be found and released. But we don't do we? More often that not, we keep them buried, thinking that is safer, better, easier.
But just like me hiding in my favourite tree, our feelings become impatient and call on us to be found, coming out when we least expect it, sometimes scaring us. So what do we do with the feelings we've hidden?
We breathe them out, we go seeking them and gently release them out of their hiding places so they can be part of us, and we can play again, free and wild just like when we were younger.