Cleaning our inner 'house' through self-healing & decharging to offload stress… all year ‘round!





“We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.”
~ Jane Austen



How many of us really need a good spring cleaning in our inner houses of stress, anxiety, burn-out, emotional dramas and/or professional challenges?   How about if that spring cleaning could happen every day, rather than just once a year? 


Our inner guide is our best healer
Each of us has the most profound healing resource available – our inner self! Mostly we forget to access that inner healer, distracted by our daily pace of work, relationships, activities, & just plain living.  



In fact, many people live in stressful situations so constantly that it’s easy to assume that this IS living - that our symptoms of stress and strain are just part of life’s normalcy. 

Guess what?  They’re NOT! 

We don’t have to inhabit an inner stress house at all
Through each interaction with other people, each challenging situation, each time we help another person (maybe just by listening heartfully to someone’s troubles), we are taking on a layer, a small percentage, of their stress & strain… and this adds up. 



By the average working day’s end, most people are tired: mentally, physically, emotionally.  



Common symptoms of overload include: 
    

     - physical aches & pains, especially headaches, tight muscles, & itching/burning eyes
     - trouble sleeping at night
     - lack of appetite, or a desire to eat compulsively
     - agitated thinking/ the syndrome of ‘taking our work home’
     - fatigue
     - feelings of burn-out
     - generalized anger, frustration, irritation
     - depression, anxiety, addictive tendencies

What we don’t realize is hurting us
The general consensus is that these symptoms are ‘normal’ – ie, just part of life. 



In actuality, these symptoms are our system’s way of telling us, loudly, that we’ve taken on too much energy from others – it’s really foreign energy, an overlay onto our own systems, like how batteries can hold a positive or negative charge.  



We desperately need to decharge that excess energy.
 

I would offer that in fact, energetically, each of us is a semi-permeable membrane, constantly absorbing the stress and strain from others around us – whether we are consciously aware of this dynamic or not.

Especially for those in the helping professions, from medical to EMT, healers of all types, school teachers, social workers, therapists or counselors – if we’re interacting with others in an open-hearted way, we’re actually absorbing MORE stress & strain.


Simple solution: learning to decharge stress/strain

Decharging is one of the most simple, re-energizing, & relieving tools I learned during my spiritual training in India. It’s ridiculously easy, effective, and should be done every day – akin to brushing one’s teeth daily, so that the plaque doesn’t build up, creating disease & decay.







How to decharge
While decharging requires a much lengthier & nuanced discussion than a few hundred words permits, here’s the thumbnail version:

1. Scan yourself – see how you’re feeling physically, emotionally, energetically. Is there any pain, or discomfort?  What’s your level of emotional calmness? Notice the symptoms that tell you decharging is indicated.

2.  Using the Earth element to decharge… take the bloom part of a fresh flower (any kind, roses are best) & hold it in your hand.  (Or use two flowers, one in each hand.)

3. Use the following simple two-step process to decharge:

•  - 1st Step. Offer a prayer of gratitude to the divine (however you call it: Nature, Jesus, God, Buddha, Mother, Great Spirit, Universe, Higher Power… – the names don’t matter) like “Thank you, God, for creating this beautiful flower that I’m using.”  Gratitude opens the heart & lets energy flow.
• - 2nd Step. Signal to your inner consciousness that you’re decharging by saying, internally, “Right now, I’m decharging whatever stress, strain, upset, pain, negativity, I picked up today…”

Then, just let the energy flow into the flower.  (Everyone’s different – some people feel it, some don’t. Either way, it works.)  



You don’t have to keep thinking, “I’m decharging, I’m decharging,” – be relaxed. You can decharge while driving home from work, watching TV, reading an email – it’s okay to multi-task.  Your consciousness knows you’re decharging: that’s enough for a successful practice.

Generally, you’ll want to decharge about 10-15 minutes, or until you feel the symptoms you noticed (in the initial self-scan) start to dissolve.  The relief of those symptoms signals that you’ve successfully decharged whatever was causing them.

Discard the flower(s) outside, somewhere on the ground (maybe behind some bushes) where no one else will be tempted to pick the flower up for a while.  Everything you decharged is IN that flower – you don’t want someone else to receive that energy, accidentally.



You can hear more about decharging techniques  (as well as self-healing for heartbreak) through my interview with Lynnis Woods-Mullins.

If you're interested in learning more about decharging stress, you can find the full training in bite-sized video pieces -- including a free intro video, below! -- at the Energetics Of Self Care website. 

I also offer organizational trainings and inspirational speaking presentations on this extremely important subject -- appropriate for anyone in the healthcare/healing/service professions.