The power path to boundaries and protection

Life advice, News

If at any time you feel overwhelmed, go through this list of questions as a way to organise the management of what is on your plate, your priorities and distractions.

What is my priority today? Why is it a priority?

Does it make me happy or satisfied? Is it an important step or responsibility towards an authentic goal?

What can wait until tomorrow?

What can I delegate?

Where am I distracted?

What am I doing for myself today for self-care?

What is unnecessary?

Where am I being pressured and is it my responsibility? Where is the pressure coming from?

Within or from the outside?

What am I avoiding and why?

What am I afraid of?

What do I still need to complete, eliminate or clear out that is either a distraction or no longer serves me?

Do I feel balanced? What is not being fed?

What practices have I done today to help in my balance of inner and outer life?

Where have I wasted time?

What can I do today to raise my vibration and bring joy and beauty into my life?

Keep an inventory of your answers and this map of questions will give you much clarity and help you to create a good management plan for what’s new, what’s old, what needs to change, what has changed, what is in transition, what is part of your inner life and what is part of your outer life.

READ MORE

Healing intergenerational trauma

Animation, Cartoon, Colonisation, Indigenous, Intergenerational trauma, News, Video

If people don’t have the opportunity to heal from trauma, they may unknowingly pass it on to others through their behaviour.

Their children may experience difficulties with attachment, disconnection from their extended families and culture and high levels of stress from family and community members who are dealing with the impacts of trauma.

This can create developmental issues for children, who are particularly susceptible to distress at a young age.

This creates a cycle of trauma, where the impact is passed from one generation to the next.

In Australia, Intergenerational Trauma predominantly affects the children, grandchildren and future generations of the Stolen Generations.

Stolen Generations members might also pass on the impacts of institutionalisation, finding it difficult to know how to nurture their children because they were denied the opportunity to be nurtured themselves.

Read more

In Turkey, Sufi music is used to decrease patient stress

Article, Music therapy

The intensive care unit of Istanbul Memorial Hospital looks like any modern hospital anywhere. But it definitely doesn’t sound like one.

Dr. Bingür Sönmez, a cardiac surgeon for more than 30 years, plays traditional Sufi songs on the ney flute for his patients.

“What we are doing in intensive care, we are playing Sufi music to our patients to calm down, to make them feel much better,” he said.

Sufism is a mystic branch of Islam whose traditional music is popular among Turks. Sönmez said five centuries ago when Europeans were burning people alive for having mental illnesses, healers in the Ottoman Empire had a different approach.

“In this country, in Ottoman Empire times, we used to treat psychiatric patients with music in hospitals, in local hospitals,” Sönmez said. “So what we are doing is the same.”

After a short performance for one patient, anesthesiologist Erol Can said the patient’s heart rate decreased by 15 percent. According to Can, musical therapy has scientific backing. He says the hospital conducted a study of 22 patients and measured their stress levels on a scale of one to 10. Their stress went down from an average of seven to three after a 20-minute musical performance.

READ MORE

8 ways to be kinder to yourself in 2020

Gratitude, Life advice, News, Self-love

With everything happening all the time, it’s easy to forget to take care of yourself. How can we focus on ourselves when there is so much going on around us, not even to mention worrying about careers, families, money, stress and everything else that comes with modern life?

Here are eight simple ways to be a little kinder to yourself in 2020.

Choosing to spend time alone can benefit your social relationships, improve your creativity and confidence, and help you regulate your emotions so that you can better deal with adverse situations, according to experts.

“It’s not that solitude is always good, but it can be good” if you’re open to rejecting the idea — common in the west — that time by yourself is always a negative experience you’re being forced into, according to Thuy-vy Nguyen, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at Durham University, who studies solitude.  She added that because solitude helps us regulate our emotions, it can have a calming effect that prepares us to better engage with others.  

Getting better at identifying moments when we need solitude to recharge and reflect can help us better handle negative emotions and experiences, like stress and burnout, said Emily Roberts, a psychotherapist. 

Read more

Indigenous Australians’ grief over bushfires deepens the trauma felt since colonisation

Bushfire recovery, Colonisation, Environment, Grief, Indigenous, Intergenerational trauma, Loss, News

Aboriginal people have said that seeing the fires destroy nature is a reminder that the land was stolen from them 232 years ago.

Australia’s catastrophic bushfires have has not only burnt over 10 million hectares of land, but they have also deepened the trauma Aboriginal people feel over the British colonisation of the country in 1788.

Read more