Wholeness Healing Center

Finding Calm in your Inner World When the Outside World is Stressful

Life has an ebb and flow to it.  Most of us don’t escape life struggles, but we have times when things flow, and we have times when we have to dig deep to walk the fire of life.  But rarely have we, as a world, walked the same journey with the same difficulties all at the same time.  I am hopeful that we, as humans, we will come together and walk the fire together.  But it all starts with our inner world and how we manage that.  This is the only place we have some control.

Let us face it, without the pandemic, there is plenty of opportunity to practice managing life difficulties.  When you add the pandemic and what it requires of us, it adds a need for a whole new level of skills that we have probably never had to access in this way before.

When It becomes clear that our “outside world” is not calming down, and we have to live in the chaos, it is time to go to our “inner world” to find some calm and some peace.  It is here that we can use tools to be the calm we so want to see on the outside.  I am not saying it is easy to find calm in the midst of it all, but it is where we can actually access the calm.  It is where we can be empowered to handle this stress and move forward in an effective way.

This involves becoming aware of our inner world, our own reactivity and how that pattern looks when we are stressed, what happens internally. We begin to develop awareness of our reactivity.  Through awareness we can then make some shifts internally, in how we choose to “respond” rather than “react” to situations.  It is in this space that we have control over how our life is managed, how we internally process and respond, and how we can keep calm in the midst of it all.

I will be starting the course, A Mindful Approach to Living based on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) on January 26, 2021.  This will be online and live.  The course is 8 weeks and will be on Tuesdays from 5:30 – 7:45 p.m.  There will also be an online home retreat done on one weekend day between the 6^th and 8^th weeks.

MBSR is a scientifically researched method for reducing physical and psychological suffering that teaches mindfulness meditation as a health intervention.  It was created by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979 to help patients deal with chronic stress.  It involves teaching participants how to develop a different relationship to stress resulting from chronic physical and psychological illnesses. The course requires real commitment but is definitely life-changing.  If you are interested check out our website for more information or call the office at 308.382.5297.  There is limited space available.

 

Tags: managing our inner world, MBSR course, Mindfulness practice, responding versus reacting