Turning Attention Inwards Isn’t a Luxury, it’s a Necessity

The importance of personal practice and some of the forms that can take

What makes this article a tough one to write is that I have no intention to preach. Quite the opposite. I recognize that health, growth, learning, surviving, thriving can all take on so many forms.

Living in this world is often hard, taking care of our health along with the demands that are so often placed on us is freaking hard. And time is our most precious of resources where it so often happens that because of all the things we are trying to get done there is precious little of it for ourselves.   

But if there is something that my career as a healer and a Thai Yoga Massage teacher has taught me it’s that knowing ourselves is at the root of health. Carving out that time to turn inwards on a regular or daily basis is the most essential ingredient towards making positive changes and summoning up the courage, the will and the energy needed to make a long-lasting impact.

When I say knowing ourselves, I mean having an intimate, loving relationship with our self. With our body, with the thoughts coming up, with the energy flowing in our body

These things can feel like such foreign concepts and very easy to make fun of as some spiritual hocus pocus.

I get that. Our society has so many voices that make fun, ignore and belittle this process.

I get that because when I started out on this journey of personal health and well-being some 30 years ago, I felt so removed from my body.

There’s a great TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson called “Do Schools Kill Creativity”. And one of the most memorable moments is when he describes what’s it’s like when you get a group of academics together on the dance floor.

That was me, described to a T by the time I finished university. Stuck in my head, essentially cut off from my body, and definitely someone who hated to dance.

There was a lot of unlearning I had to do and how that came to be is a very long story that is still taking place.

But one piece I’ll share here was a moment in my early 20s when I had a true epiphany with my hands.

I had a summer job making wax molds of people’s hands. “YOU MAKE A WAX MOLD OF YOUR OWN HAND! ANY SHAPE, ANY COLOR, ANY SIZE!!”

It was a job in an amusement park and it was my job to convince people to come to my booth, make a shape with their hands and then let me take over their body.

I would put their hand in a bucket of ice-cold water, then a pot of liquid wax and finally back into the water.

Each time I’d do that, a layer of wax would form around their hand. After five or six layers, I could release their hand and then they would have their hand in the shape of a peace sign, an “I love you”, a thumbs up, you name it.

My shifts were often 12-14 hours at a time and by the middle of that first summer I had made thousands of these hands.

One night after one of those 14 hour shifts, I found myself alone at 2am sitting on the boardwalk just taking it easy when I felt it.

My hands and my fingers. They wanted to move. So I found myself in deep concentration with my own hands

My hands were dancing, I felt so connected to them in that moment and my life was changed forever. It was like my heart, my head and my body were on the same profound page for the first time.

I realized then and there how important it was to have a regular dialogue with myself that went beyond the constant chatter in my head.

In fact, that moment taught me that my way into spirit was through my hands and my body.

Learning that about myself changed my life forever. I realized just how important it was and is to have that inner dialogue and connection with something bigger or beyond my thoughts.

Nowadays, I call it training and developing our right brain connectons

I learned that language from my yoga teacher and another very well-known TED talk by Jill Bolte Taylor called My Stroke of Genius. Bolte Taylor was a Harvard brain scientist who had a stroke and lost the use of the left-side of her brain. The planning, structured, protective, stressed out, egoic side of her brain.

Engaging through our right brain is a skill that can be developed just like so many of the skills we’ve developed over the course of our lives.

It’s just that accessing the wisdom, inspiration, creativity, intuition, security and love that comes from our right brain connections requires different skills than what we’ve been taught through our left-brain upbringing.

It comes from slowing down, from feeling, from meditating, from yoga, from journaling, from walks in the park, from martial arts, from massage and from activities that many of us were told were ‘wastes of time’ from various influences in our life.

But, from my perspective, making these kinds of choices to turn your attention inwards and develop and nurture this relationship and these skills can be the key to saving your life, healing your mental health, releasing anxiety and depression and putting you on the path to a more meaningful life.

That’s especially true when you’re feeling stressed, when you have a lot on your plate, when you feel stuck, when you’re trying to make ends meet, when you’re trying to heal from loss, when times are tough and when you don’t think you have enough time.

I’m not here to judge or plant a seed of self-judgement or self-critique in you if this path seems new or foreign or something you feel resistant to

I believe we all are doing our best and that is the foundation from which I write and from which I share.

I’m just here to counter the narrative and the impulse to chase, to hustle, to exhaust ourselves as our first response when we feel challenged.

Hard work is healthy. Sometimes we have to hustle and push ourselves to the limit.

In fact, I think it’s pretty darned healthy to make challenging ourselves a regular/daily part of our lives.

But in the world of health, in the world of releasing suffering and pain, in the world of being able to change our habits, it all is best served by developing and keeping up that inner relationship.

For example if you have a goal to give up or reduce consumption of alcohol or stimulants, or are looking to bring more ease, contentment, joy and happiness into your life or want to come up with creative solutions and the healthy endurance and energy needed to help bring that new idea into the world, it all is best served with a flow of energy that starts inwards and flows outwards.

My yoga teacher had a good way to express it when he said, “Energy begins inside our minds, spreads to our emotions and then pervades into all aspects of our life. It’s up to us and how we want to deliver that energy into all that we do”

If you begin your day in stress and in the hustle in your mind, then that is what spreads into your emotions and your day. It’s what spreads into how you interact with people, into what you consume in order to maintain your energy and into what you create.

On the other hand, if you happen to begin your day in stress and worry, but you then take time to notice it, even for a few minutes, then you plant a seed and make it possible for at least some of that energy to lift and move through you. In its place comes flow, comes the natural energy of something bigger that is literally maintaining, sustaining and helping life to thrive on our planet.

What a dramatic difference that can make in how you spend your day.

Keep stacking up those days into months and years and what a dramatic difference that can make in how you live your life.

What are Some Ways to Do That

In many ways, that is the purpose of this blog. To explore some of those ways that fit under the umbrella of Massage, Love and Health.

I know for me though, it starts with meditation, which is simply making an effort to get quiet, turn my attention inwards, breathe and be a conscious part of the stream of activity happening on the inside.

It is to find a way to sit up with a straight body, close my eyes and breathe. It is to be kind with myself if and when I get swept away in the current of my thoughts.

So that when I notice I’ve been swept, I can then work with my next breath to help come back to my body, to being a silent witness and continue to pay attention.

So lets start and end there. And if you have questions, insights or offerings on how to get started, drop a comment in the chat.

By the way, if you’re looking for a guided meditation to help, here is one you can use.

Sending you wishes for a vibrant, healthy, wonderful day!