Elizabeth Chanter of Honour Being is a Creatrix, Classical Homeopath and experienced shamanically trained Reiki Master in The Golden Reiki Way. She offers in person and Remote Reiki Treatments, Attunement and Training, Honour Sacred Art Workshops and Retreats (Dreaming Your Inner Child) and conducts regular Moon Ceremonies in person and online.
We are intended to live bright, beautiful lives in balance with the world around us. Take a moment to reflect: What does being in or out of balance mean to you? What might it mean to live in balance with the world around you? Golden Way Reiki offers a way of gentle re-balancing throughout your entire system, but works best in harmony with other key factors. Always taking a balanced approach to her work with her clients, Elizabeth offers these key factors or your consideration.
Being in balance and being out of balance will mean different things to different people.
Unfortunately, there are so many ways that life can bring us off balance: work, relationships, family issues, digital media, and the pressure to conform and perform. The pressure is on to take care of everyone else and not oneself. This we are taught is selfish. So instead we expend huge amounts of energy simply managing rather than living our lives with joy.
Ultimately, this is a way of living that can exhaust us, much as we may love it. Exhaustion can lead to illness, sometimes serious illness ~ and a balanced life goes out of the window.
But with illness comes opportunity. It can be seen as either something which is interrupting our life’s plans or we can listen to it as a messenger.
Illness can be a bringer of gifts.
The body has a wisdom all of its own. We just need to know how to understand it. As life goes out of balance, our body begins to whisper to us. It might give us an odd sensation of something not being quite right. There might be the occasional pain which we ignore. We just take a painkiller and carry on.
But painkillers are masks.
Underneath the body is still not happy. So it will begin to grumble. If we continue to ignore it, then it begins to shout and painkillers no longer seem to work. If we still do not stop and pay attention, the body will eventually refuse to get out of bed in the morning. And if we carry on forcing it, it may start screaming at us to listen by developing a serious illness. And if we continue to push through despite all of this, one day it stops altogether…
By now we are way off balance.
So how do you begin to restore a healthy balance to your life, whether you are just feeling stressed or are already suffering from illness?
Recently, I’ve done some research on how people bring themselves back to health from serious illness. I discovered an enlightening and well-researched book called "Radical Hope" by Kelly A Turner who is a researcher and psychotherapist. This book documents some amazing stories of recovery to complete wellbeing from chronic and even terminal illness. The common thread between these stories is what I call the 10 Keys to Balanced Wellbeing. (They are in no particular order of dominance.)
As you read through these 10 Keys, ask yourself how many of these 10 Keys have a place in your life?
Which Keys are the ones missing in your life?
Which Keys would help to bring you more into balance?
How might you bring these Keys to balanced wellbeing into your life?
Can you also identify how each one connects to a different element of your Being: how they relate to the balance and wellbeing between your spirit, mind, energy, emotion and body?
For example, some people have a strong natural connection to the spirit and pay less attention to the needs of the physical body. Some focus everything on physical wellbeing through healthy diet and exercise and pay no attention to finding stillness or connecting to spirit. Some have a very strong social network of family and friends, and yet still store all the hurtful emotional experiences inside them.
The tendency is to focus on some health factors and not others. When I considered them, I could see clearly which ones already had a strong place in my life ~ and which ones I needed to bring in to create a truly healthy balance.
So, to counteract my innate tendency towards the serious (!), I’m making it a personal goal to bring more joyful, playful times into my life. And I’m increasing my social network by joining a wonderful Yoga community, growing my circle of soul sisters ~ and planning to buy a puppy for companionship, joy and all that unconditional loving.
You can be creative in your solutions… it can be as simple as going for a 10 minute walk each day to begin to recover your physical mobility rather than spending those 10 minutes on your social media account… Small changes, baby steps, amount up through the year…
And you can reach out to others if you feel stuck in your life. There is a wealth of inspiration and expertise in creating wellness and happiness here on Brainz Magazine alone.
The 10 keys to wellbeing and happiness for a balanced life
Key one: Deepening your connection to spirit
“The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated.” – Plato
Spirit means many different things to different people. Some will dismiss the notion entirely. For others, this will be allied to formal religious beliefs, and for some, this may be a simple inner sense of the “otherness” of life. It is sometimes allied to mindfulness practice as a way of bringing a sense of calm and peace to life. Whatever this means to you, you might like to think of it as bringing a sense of connection to life and being in harmony with something bigger than yourself.
Key two: Empower the self and listen to your intuition
“In vital matters, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves.” – Sigmund Freud
There was a time when we listened to ourselves far more. We have learnt to rely on “experts” outside ourselves, often influenced by the latest “buzz” on social media. Instinct is designed to keep us safe, the fight, flight or flee option. This is different to intuition, which translates literally as “inner teacher”, sometimes called our sixth sense.
When we trust this we understand that our body knows what it needs to heal. Some people are naturally more intuitive than others, but there are many ways to access intuition. There is great strength to found in empowering the self. Examples are creating calm time free from distractions, meditation, guided meditations, journaling, dreams and being in the natural world. What works for one person may not work as well for another.
Key three: Strong reasons for living
“I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.” – Joseph Campbell
There is an important difference between “I don’t want to die” and having a strong reason to keep on living. This reason has to come from the deepest part of a person’s core and to be unquestioning, an emphatic “I want to keep on living!”
From a scientific point of view, it is a proven fact that when you have a strong thought or emotion, powerful hormones are released instantly into your bloodstream; they have a beneficial or detrimental effect on your immune system, depending on the nature of the thought of emotion.
From an alternative medicine point of view, this invites strong “chi” or “ki” (as in Reiki, meaning Universal Life Force) into the body. Alternative healers believe that we invite the breath of life into us when we are excited about living.
Key four: Embracing a strong social network (includes pets)
“In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge.” – Aristotle
Humans are social creatures by nature. At a fundamental level, we need each other to survive, from babyhood onwards. Babies do not thrive without human touch. However, when we are sick, this is more vital than ever. It is not only practical support which brings comfort. Researchers have recently discovered that when we are surrounded by loved ones or even our pets, feeling loved releases a flood of potent hormones into the bloodstream. This not only makes us feel better emotionally but also strengthens our immune systems significantly. (1)
In other words, receiving love helps the body heal. Another key to this is not feeling alone, which for some may mean being surrounded by a loving family and friends. For others, this may mean being part of a community of like-minded people. The third aspect of this is the importance of physical touch: hugging, holding someone’s hand or the touch that comes from a Reiki practitioner or body therapist. All touch motivated by love is healing.
Key five: Increasing love and positive emotions
“The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” – His holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama
The secret to a bright, beautiful and balanced life may be as simple as one word: happiness. When we feel happy and loving, our physical bodies are flooded with disease-fighting immune cells, our emotional lives are free of stress and worry, and our social and work relationships improve. (Releasing negative emotions that are held in the body is quite different and dealt with in Key Seven.)
It is essential or remember that all emotions are our bodies’ way of letting us know how we feel so we can make an appropriate response. Emotions tend to have a bad name, but many are positive such as joy, optimism, excitement and hope. Love is viewed by many as an emotion, but I would suggest otherwise. Love exists independently of how we are feeling emotionally. There are many different forms of love: mother love, father love, sister and brother love, sexual love, heart-based love, platonic love and spiritual love to name a few.
Not least important is self-love, and our ability to both give and receive love. This is the kind of love which you create in your own life and spread out to others. Positive emotions and love have been called rocket fuel for the immune system!
Key six: Taking control of your health
“Action is the foundational key to all success.” – Pablo Picasso
The word “patient” comes from the Latin pati, which means “to suffer” and “to allow” or “to submit”. Medical patients are not necessarily expected to suffer but they are generally expected to submit. “Good” patients do as they are told by their doctors. “Annoying” patients ask a lot of questions and do their oen research, challenging their doctors’ orders. Most doctors view the breakdown of a body as a mechanical issue to be solved.
However, it has been demonstrated that patients who take control of their own healing actively contribute to their healing processes. It is ideal to be active (versus passive) in your search for a well-balanced life, be willing to make necessary changes, and deal with resistance to the well-meaning intentions of others when they are not right for you.
Key seven: Releasing suppressed emotions
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” – Mark Twain
How and if we release emotions from the past deeply affects our physical health. Suppressed emotions such as fear, anger and anxiety are especially bad for our health. For thousands of years, Traditional Chinese Medicine has observed how emotions become held in particular organs, giving rise to physical symptoms. For example, it teaches that anxiety and fear affect the “water” organs of the bladder and kidneys. Anger and resentment can give rise to physical issues in the tissues of the liver and gallbladder. Grief can lodge in the lungs.
Alternative and complementary therapists believe that suppressed emotions create “blockages” in the body which weakens the immune system and then ultimately creates illness. As a Reiki Master and energy healer, I frequently witness my clients' physical illnesses begin to clear as we work to release their suppressed emotions. This is not “quick fix” work, but takes the dedication of both my clients and myself working actively together.
Ways of clearing out your emotional baggage are by talking to a friend, journaling, practising daily self-forgiveness, learning meditation techniques or finding a talking therapist. However, this is a deep and complex area where the issues are often pushed down into the unconscious as a means of self-protection. Finding a sensitive, empathetic and experienced energy or body therapist to help you disentangle and release can be extremely helpful.
Key eight: Exercise
“if physical activity existed in pill form, it would be the most prescribed medicine in the world.” – Grete Waitz, cancer survivor and co-founder of aktiv against cancer.
We know exercise is good for us. There is strengthening research being done into the specific reasons for this, but in essence, our bodies are designed specifically to move. The benefits are emotional and psychological as well as physical.
When you think of exercise, do not limit it to time spent in the gym or running three miles a day. Exercise can also be defined as any physical activity. If you are already suffering from physical symptoms or illness, you may not feel able to undertake strenuous exercise of any kind, but you can keep your body as strong as possible by simply continuing to move in your daily life. Build on that little by little, baby steps, until you are ready to exercise more freely.
Exercise can:
Reduce the risk of dying prematurely
Reduce the risk of dying from heart disease and cancer
Reduce the risk of developing diabetes or high blood pressure
Reduce feelings of depression and anxiety
Help build healthy bones, muscles and joints
Extend your lifespan
Key nine: Herbs and supplementation
“The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician.” – Paracelsus, sixteenth century physician
The main difference between Western medicines and vitamin supplements or herbs is that Western medicine is designed to “kill off” viruses and infections, whilst most supplements are designed to strengthen the immune system. Some Western medicines do their job well but at the extreme expense of the body in other ways, such as chemotherapy or steroid medication. Many alternative practitioners view illness as something the body can fight off as long as the mind-body-spirit system is in optimal condition. One of these ways is by recommending plant-based herbs and supplements to boost the immune system and create an internally strong and healthy environment. It is best to seek expert guidance in these matters, especially if you are dealing with a serious illness. Bear in mind that supplements need to be taken in balance and that herbs are potent medicines.
Key ten: Healthy diet and nutrition
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” – Hippocrates
Hippocrates, the Greek physician who is heralded as the founder of modern medicine, strongly believed that food has the power to adjust, rebalance and heal the body. Today’s doctors receive a tiny proportion of nutrition education throughout their training. They simply do not know about it, even though it is commonly recognised that we are quite literally what we eat. Sometimes a radical change in diet is called for and there are a multitude of specialised diets available. But eliminating sugars and processed foods, and eating only fresh produce and organic meats (unless you are vegetarian) are good steps to nutritionally balanced eating. More special diets are ideally adopted under the expert guidance of a trained nutritionist, such as a Functional Medicine Practitioner.
In summary
You can wait until you have developed an illness to bring these 10 Keys of Wellbeing into your life ~ or, more wisely, you can begin to put them in place today, decreasing the likelihood of illness… and the research also shows that having this balance can even outweigh and change DNA… How about that?
What I love about these Ten Keys to Wellbeing is the way they can be applied right now to create bright, beautiful and balanced lives ~ you do not have to wait until you go way out of balance…
Ready to begin your journey to a truly balanced and healthy life? Book for a free Discovery Session or for a nurturing and releasing first Reiki Treatment to honour your emotional healing by sending an email or going to my Honour Being Website.
To receive my beautifully illustrated “5 Step Guide to Wonder Without Overwhelm” please click on the link.
Elizabeth Chanter is recognised as a leader in her chosen field of healing, energy medicine and Golden Way Reiki. Since 2004, she has been assisting others to make transformational change in their lives, leading to positive, lasting and sometimes extraordinary results. She is passionate about helping her clients to evolve and grow into the bright, beautiful beings they were always intended to be. Having passed through many personal dark nights of the soul, she combines empathy, deep compassion and understanding with many years of professional expertise in her field. She believes in the regenerative power of hope, listening and healing touch.
Reference:
(1) A. Steptoe, S Dockray and J Wardle, “Positive Affect and Psychobiological Processes Relevant to Health,” Journal of Personality 77, No 6 (December 2009): 1747-76
