Mental Health unfolds as a daily, even moment-to-moment journey.
Just as the body requires daily sleep for repairs, the mind demands its own restoration. Each instance you permit it, your mind — an intangible amalgamation of thoughts and emotions — engages in this intricate process.
Not Just De-Stress But Heal and Grow
The sensation of mental-emotional healing arises during various activities such as meditation, morning walks in lush greenery, specific mindfulness practices, dancing, and, mostly worth highlighting, the comforting warmth experienced in family and social connections. These are wonderful, uplifting experientials that contribute to a constructive, healing chemistry in the body (hormones and all), leading to a feeling of relief, relaxation, and even high spirits. But healing the mind doesn’t begin and end here. It requires conscious intervention to keep mentally fit, similar to building and maintaining a fit body.
Take your walks, plan your family time, dance, meditate, do everything therapeutic to bring you to a place of calm, and even self-love. Then, bravely delve into conscious mind-work.
Transformative Healing for the Mind in 4 Steps:
Step 1 — Awareness of your inner workings — What am I thinking? What am I feeling?
This necessitates a regular practice of checking in with yourself. Many of us discover this opportunity during intimate conversations with a best friend or partner. In the present day, having someone who can listen to you (rather than impose on you), interpret your body language, and foster your awareness of your own feelings is truly a blessing.
Step 2 — An open acknowledgment instead of denying or suppressing thoughts and emotions.
Whether in our own minds or in heartfelt conversations with others, could we be filtering our thoughts before sharing them? Often, our busy schedules keep us moving from one thing to the next, hindering an emotional connection with ourselves. Thanks to our hectic routines, we may avoid dealing with uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Until…
Step 3 — Actively processing thought-driven emotions — Working with the body
We live in a society where allowing yourself to feel your emotions isn’t always easy. How does this impact your day-to-day functioning? Are distractions, displaced emotions, like venting, stress-eating, and binge-watching, common coping mechanisms? Actively processing thought-driven emotions involves confronting the uncomfortable and releasing emotions through the body. Many of us, knowingly or unknowingly, seek cathartic experiences such as witnessing or engaging in art, like drama, theatre, music, dance, and other active emotional well-being workshops. We are drawn to these experiences that facilitate an emotional connection with ourselves and provide relief through emotional release.
Step 4 — Experiencing moments of clarity in thought and therefore shifts in mindset.
When emotions are acknowledged and processed, clear thinking emerges. The best solutions and decisions come when there are no lingering emotional baggage. Shifts in mindset arise from exposure to new perspectives — growth-oriented perspectives found in books, programs, and coaching.
Therapy is a Good Word. Therapy is for Everyone.
Your thoughts and emotions, the head and the heart, logical reasoning, and your irresistible feelings are more often than not in an inseparable, paradoxical relationship.
What your heart and emotions need is the warm, active presence of a therapist-figure who creates within you a kind of mind-space that emulates gentleness, kindness, and non-judgment, fostering openness and courage to meet your current state of being. Holistic modalities of therapy such as Expressive Movement Therapy (Dance Movement Therapy) encourages unconventional body movements, leveraging your body’s intelligence to facilitate the unobstructed flow of emotional dynamism.
Addressing and releasing emotional suppression eliminates physical blocks like stiffness, soreness, aches, and pains connected to obstructed emotional flow. Your emotions are transient when allowed to flow consciously.
What you are feeling right now will pass if you allow yourself to feel it rather than block it.
Suppressing or ignoring emotions etches a lasting mark — tightness, stiffness, soreness, rigidity. Holding these emotions as physiological blocks ties you to the past in your subconscious, hindering fresh, present-inspired thinking.
Coaching and Therapy Go Hand in Hand
In a coaching relationship, you are likely to experience the guiding presence of a coach who takes you through nuanced perspectives of life and facilitates subtle and profound shifts in your ‘thinking,’ propelling you toward growth. As much as working with the mindset is a crucial aspect of growth, openly experiencing and processing emotions lays the groundwork for achieving clear thinking.
A coach will appeal to your mind and intellect. A spiritually inclined coach will foster holistic growth, aiding you in finding your purpose and living your spiritual purpose through this material world, harnessing abundance in all material and non-material forms. A therapist will hold space for you in empathy, allowing the time for transcending ‘what is’ and creating space for ‘what can be.’ As you liberate yourself by bravely embracing your emotions, allowing them to ebb and flow, you transcend the grasp of the past. In this space, free from past burdens, you can think in the present, accessing clear, pure inspiration.
It is in such a space that you heal and grow, overcoming the negative effects of neglecting your mind, thoughts, and emotions and their impact on your life and living. You grow in awareness and clarity.
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