For many people, finding time and space for “stillness” can be difficult in modern everyday life. Yet, being still has many highly valuable benefits for our health and wellbeing, as proven by research. When we still ourselves, by sitting or laying down, closing our eyes, and turning our attention inward, we are able to tune into our bodily sensations and become aware of our thoughts and feelings, and ultimately, listen to our inner voice. People who practice meditation, mindfulness, yoga, or similar forms of centering practice on a regular basis are well acquainted with the calming, deeply relaxing and even healing outcomes of being still. For others, however, practicing stillness can be difficult to “make happen” on most days, perhaps even on vacation.

Words from Ancient Teachings

In the Old Testament, there is a famous verse that reads: “Be Still, and Know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10). When we are still and focus our attention inward, we can align with our inner “center point”. Some people call this place our “Soul center”. Others describe it as our “True or Higher Self” or “Essence”. Still others refer to it as “God within” and believe it to be the place where we are “One with God”. Regardless of how we phrase it, it is the place where we become witness to our external conditions, as the events, people and environment around us. Even more importantly, it is also the place where we can observe our inner reality, as our thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations. In other words, we become the Observer as opposed to the Reactor. Thus, when we lean back into our center point, we distance our awareness away from our random thoughts, associated feelings, and any discomfort in our body. As the Observers of our reality, we can begin to detach from (or let go of) our fears, worries, expectations, desires, etc. After sufficient mindfulness practice, we can eventually experience moments of “equanimity” (or inner calm) and even so-called “enlightenment” (or spiritual awakening).

Buddha wrote at great length about how to attain equanimity and enlightenment through various practices of mindfulness and surrendering. According to the buddhist monk Bhikkhu Bodhi, “The mind of equanimity is compared to the driver of a chariot when the horses are moving at a steady pace: he neither has to urge them forward nor to hold them back, but can just sit comfortably and watch the scenery go by.” (The Noble Eightfold Path, 1998). Jesus also encouraged us to loosen our strings to the outer world with his saying: “Be passersby” (Gospel of Thomas, Saying 42). In the same Gospel, Jesus also encourages us to seek the “treasure that is unfailing, that is enduring, where no moth comes to eat and no worm destroys.” In other words, the enduring treasures are rarely found in the outer world, but rather in the spiritual or relational inner world.

Your answers are found within…

In our modern lives, it is easy to become distracted by the constant flow of information and outer impressions, especially if you are an extrovert. Yet, often, it is not in the outer world where we find our most valuable answers and unique ideas, but within. When we practice meditation, or let our minds rest in effortless wandering, for example while sitting on the bus or taking a shower, we are suddenly given the very answers that we seek.

Our “inside” is nothing like an empty dull well, but rather like a flourishing garden where we can find our greatest treasures. Our innermost reality has understandably been likened to a Kingdom, as portrayed in the Gospel of Luke: “Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, [See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20-21, New Testament)

Moreover, Emmet Fox, one of the most popular New Thought Leaders of the early 20th century in the US, wrote: “It is being still to know that God is God. Such ‘stillness’ is the reverse of laziness or inaction. The still dwelling upon God is the quietest but the most potent action of all.” (Source) In other words, the practice of stillness need not be a passive act, but can be a continuous adventure of exploring your ever-unfolding unknown. Regardless of what you may be expecting, being still and going within can lead you to the very answers that you have been seeking, and to the peace of mind and heart that you have been longing for. At least, it will be a journey worthwile taking.

In the image (above), I share my own definition of “meditation”. To me, it is “the practice of consciously re-turning to our innermost place of being the still, silent and serene Observer, where we are able to rest peacefully in the Here and Now and embody our innate capacity for non-judgment, non-reactivity and awareness of eternal unity.” Yes, lots of words, but hopefully something worth contemplating…

For more inspiration, see this article “The Outer Guard Position vs The Inner Soul Center“.

PS. This article was first written as a “newsletter”, which was sent out in November, 2021.

Coaching on to the Spiritual and Existential

If you wish to talk about existential and/or spiritual aspects of human life, or if you are facing a personal existential challenge or crisis in your own life, warm welcome to contact me. (Read more here.)

Finding core beliefs by going into the body and feeling the sensations

About ten years ago, I developed a diffuse pain in my lower legs, which would arise on occasion. After a few years with this recurring symptom, I finally decided to do some deep inner work through EFT Tapping. With this process, I “went into my body” with my focused attention, with the intention to feel the “pain sensations” as fully as possible inside my legs. After some minutes in this state of focus, I was able to receive the message from my body, that the pain was due to my tendency to rush and hurry. This is a tendency that I have had for a long time, perhaps since my early 30s. Eventhough I knew it was not healthy, I hadn’t been able to stop myself from doing it. Such a learned behaviour can be quite difficult to change simply by using our will-power. Rather, we need to use a deeper mental and emotional process.

To give you a typical example: I would be standing in the bathroom in the evening and about to brush my teeth. As soon as I started, I would feel a need to rush with it. In my mind, the rushing was necessary because it was late in the evening and my husband was already in bed, and I didn’t want him to wait for me, although I knew he didn’t mind. Yet, even just the thought of needing to rush triggered the leg pain. As my conditioned thoughts to hurry set in, I would feel the stress-level rising in my body, and within seconds, the pain would emerge. It felt like a tension, constriction, and even increased density in the legs. The more aware I got of the situation, the more apparent it became that the pain in my lower legs was due to my tendency to hurry, and that the pain emerged in response to my thoughts, although subconscious and automatic.

At this point, I knew that if could identify the thought-patterns and underlying beliefs that preceeded the pain, I would be able to process and transform these mental patterns and associated emotions, which in turn would undo this hurrying tendency and remove the need to tensen my legs, which would finally remove the recurrence of pain.

To conclude, the underlying belief (that was causing the pain) could be summarized as:

– “I need to rush/hurry with what I am doing.”

Next, I decided to go even deeper. I was now aware of what the underlying core belief was (“I need to rush/hurry with what I am doing.”). But, from where did it originate? And what were the underlying emotions and possible circumstances associated with it. After some further inner work, I realized that the pain actually stemmed from TWO separate stressful incidents in my childhood, which were interconnected by building on each other:

a) The first incident was a “near car accident”, which happened when I was about 7 years old. My father, twin sister, and I were traveling in the car down a two-way, single lane road in a forested area on Gotland, in the South of Sweden (similar to the image below). It was in the late 1970s and we had an old brown Volvo 240 without any seat belts in the back seat for us children. My twin sister and I were quarreling for some time, and didn’t stop to our father’s growing frustration. Finally, he got so angry with us that he pressed the breaks rather hard, whereupon we flew up, standing straight in the back seat, while the car slided to the right side of the road, nearly going down into the ditch. I was totally unprepared for this sudden hard stop and felt quite chocked. In this very moment, I subconsciously created the following belief:

– “If someone gets angry with me, something dangerous might happen.”

b) The second incident was some years later, being around 11 years old. My whole family and I were on our way to see our cousins for dinner. It was a 25 minutes drive away from our home, partly passing over a bridge to a suburbian large island. I was sitting in the back seat with my sisters, and we were just crossing the long bridge above water. I remember my father was getting increasingly upset with all of us at that moment. He was angry that we were so late (again), and he expressed how much he was against being late. In some indirect way, he put the blame on the other five of us, that is, his four daughters and wife. (It apparently took some time for us females to get dressed, so probably we were to blame to different degrees…) While hearing his angry words, I remember scrutinizing silently my own share in us being late, and wondering if I were to blame for the situation and thus for his anger. Here and then, I subconsciously draw the following conclusion (as a belief):

– “If I am late, someone can get angry with me.”

Somewhere in my deep subconscious mind, I must have put the above two beliefs together:

– “If I am late, someone can get angry with me, and if someone gets angry with me, something dangerous might happen.”

Furthermore, the core belief “I need to rush or hurry with what I am doing” (first identified) is at play here too, being a sort of “secondary” belief sitting on top of the two “primary” beliefs stated above. Furthermore, the two event-induced beliefs created a third summarizing belief. So in sum, what caused the recurring pain in my lower legs was the sum of four interconnected beliefs, as well as some emotional residue stored in my body from the two events. As the emotional residue was processed, the three interconnected (limiting) beliefs could be released.

In conclusion, by processing certain painful events in our lives and identifying and transforming associated subconscious beliefs, we are able to remove the mental and emotional “constructs” that lie at the root of our bodily pain. There are various methods available for such inner work, for example EFT tapping and BodyWisdom. As a valuable complement to these, I have developed a highly effective and profound process, called Into Essence, which works in a stepwise manner on all levels of our experience (i.e. the mental, emotional, physical, energetic and subconscious levels).

Thanks to such inner work on myself, I am today almost painfree in my legs. Yet, if the pain does arise again on occasion, it is because there are still certain underlying beliefs that need to be discovered and shifted, and/or some emotional residue that still needs to be processed and released. Fortunately, with these tools, I can choose to continue my inner work until all of these steps have been completed and the lessons “embedded within the pain” have been received and integrated into my daily life. When/if this occurrs, the recurring pain will no longer be “necessary” and thus (most likely) cease to be.

Some final words of hope and encouragement

By sharing this personal story, it is my hope that you will recognize the possibility that you too can become painfree. Especially if you have tried other types of emotional, mental or physical therapies in the past and haven’t find the relief that you hoped for. If so, I would love to help you. Please welcome to contact me via email or phone to learn more.

Based on personal experiences, case studies and literature reviews, the two most common root causes of physical pain are: a) a longterm stressful life situation; and b) a highly stressful sudden incident or event. The reasons why an ache ends up in a special place or location within the body, however, varies for the two types of pain:

1. If the ache is the result of a stressful chronic life situation, the location seems to be related to the type of stress that the person experiences; and
2. If the ache is the result of a highly stressful sudden incident, the location seems to be related to the place in the body where the incident (impact) was experienced.

Physical pain caused by a stressful chronic life situation

For many people, physical pain is often the result of a longer period of high stress, that is, a highly stressful chronic life situation. Such a situation may be work-related, that is, experienced due to challenging work conditions or as a result of lack of work. In other cases, the pain is primarily socially related, that is, the result of challenging relationships, often with close family members. In still other cases, the pain may be developed as a result of challenging personal issues, such as low self-esteem, depression, despair, anxiety, guilt, and loneliness. Examples of different forms of physical pain that has developed over time, and their possible causes, are:

• Lower-back pain, which may result from lack of support or security, such as lack of economic resources, creating an inner struggle to hold life up;
• Shoulder pain, which may result from work overload and overresponsibility, creating an inner struggle to carry the weight of the world on one’s shoulders;
• Arm pain, which may result from long-term exhaustion, for example having too much duties and too little rest, creating an inner struggle to carry on and be alert;
• Stomach pain, which may result from an unwillingness to meet and accept life’s present circumstances, creating an inner struggle to go through with something against one’s own will;
• Lower leg pain (calves), which may result from hurrying and rushing through life, creating an inner struggle to run fast(er) to keep up with the pace, either yours or someone else’s agenda; and
• Upper leg pain (outer thighs), which may result from dreading a serious injury or even death of a person (either oneself or someone dear), creating an struggle to protect oneself or the other person(s), which may result in a recurring strong “fight or flight response” via the legs.

In the above examples, physical pain is the result of a longterm (chronic) situation of high mental and emotional stress. The struggle that is taking place in one’s mind and heart eventually builds up to a point where it becomes so “energetic loaded” and physiologically exhaustive that it tranforms into a physical pain in the body.

In fact, the most common stressful situations leading to physical pain may be summarized with six words: carry, worry, hurry, bury, scary and sorry. Looking more closely, each word captures the main struggle inside the person on a subconscious level. The struggle eventually causes so much built-up tissue tensions and exhaustion (and energy blockages) in the affected body part, that it results in physical pain. The associated beliefs of these six words can be formulated as follows:

• Carry – “I believe that I must carry the work load, responsibility, or duties of the world no matter what my body tells me.”
• Worry – “I believe that I must worry about what may happen, either to myself or someone else, so as to prepare for or prevent any negative outcome.”
• Hurry – “I believe that I must hurry or rush with almost anything in life as time is not enough for all that I need to do.”
• Bury – “I believe that I must not speak out my truth or opinions because it may lead to negative outcomes for myself or others.”
• Scary – “I believe that I must protect myself or someone whom I care for, so that nothing negative or dangerous may happen.”
• Sorry – “I believe that I must feel sorry and guilty, even shameful, for something negative that I have done (or someone dear to me has done).”

Physical pain caused by a highly stressful sudden incident

The other type of physical pain is the result of a sudden highly stressful event. This type of pain is rarely obvious at first glance and often quite “mysterious” even for the person in question. It may take one or more sessions with an experienced life coach or a psychologist to uncover the hidden cause and message in the pain. (For this purpose, the process called BodyWisdom is very useful, as well as EFT tapping; hypnotherapy may also be valuable, but even just a genuine interest and attentive listening may cause the necessary unfolding and pain relief.)

For example, I met a woman at a stress-rehab center some years ago. I asked her why she was participating in the “stress/pain/burnout”-program, and she told me that she, among other things, had pain in her right buttock. I asked her when she first began to experience this pain, and she told me that she had been having the ache for some years ever since she had given birth to her child. I asked if the birthing process had been very painful. No, she told me, not very difficult at all. Yet, when she began to recall the day of the delivery at greater depth, she told me that she and her husband had an accident on the way to the hospital where she gave birth. In summary, she told me the following:

“We sat in a taxi and suddenly we were hit from the right by a car. I felt a pain in my right buttock, but I was so focused on the labor pains that I didn’t give much attention to the pain caused by the accident. Then, when my husband and I arrived at the hospital and were going up in the elevator to the maternity ward, we briefly talked about what had happened in the car, but quickly decided that we would leave it at that and not think further about it; after all, we were lucky and no serious injury had happened…

I then asked if she had experienced a similar car accident earlier in her life. Yes, she had and it had also been quite stressful, but it too went overall well. That was the end of our conversation. Shortly after this, she left the building… The next day, she came up to me in the break saying that her pain in the buttock had completely disappeared! She was so surprised and happy. In fact, she had noticed that the pain was gone already as she left the building some 5-15 minutes after our conversation. How could this happen? As the example shows, when she gave more genuine attention and awareness to her body (buttock) and what had happened in the taxi, she began to process the accident more indepth… As a result, the “negative energetic residue” (or cellular or tissue memory), which had been locked inside her body for so many years, had dissolved. She was now pain-free. In sum, it took more mental awareness and emotional processing to dissolve and release the “energy blockage” (or body memory) that had remained in her buttock as a result of the traumatic event. In this case, all it took was a short conversation with some open questions and a genuine interest to listen through.

The following text, translated from a Finish health website, gives a great overview of how we can all react to chronic stress through three main types of symptoms:

“Although stress is a psychological experience, many of its effects are physical. Stress activates the sympathetic nervous system and prepares the body for a threatening situation as a fight or flight reaction. A stressed person’s body is on constant alert, and if this condition becomes prolonged, it leads to many different physical symptoms. Typical stress symptoms include tension in the neck and shoulders, headache, dizziness, high blood pressure, heart palpitations, nausea, abdominal discomfort, recurrent flares, and back pain.

People can be roughly divided into three groups according to how they react to stress. Some people react to stress mainly psychologically and the symptoms consist for example of sleep disorders, fatigue, and impaired life habits. For these people, it is usually easy to recognize stress and understand the symptoms, for example symptoms with congestion. In the other group, however, stress causes physical symptoms, such as aches or pain in arms and legs. Since it may be difficult to perceive the root cause as stress, only the physical conditions and not the actual root cause may be treated. The third group includes people who do not react to stress in any particular way. Their performance level may drop, but they will not have any mental or physical health problems.”

(Source: Translated from the Swedish site: https://www.yths.fi/sv/halsokunskap_och_forskning/halsodatabanken/112/stress)

That statement still holds true today. In fact, only some months ago when I officially launched MindShift Coaching, I again surrendered to the same insight, that: “If I want to feel 100 % true to myself and express myself completely, in 360 degrees directions, I need to listen to all my callings. I need to act upon both my care for nature and for people. Thus, for this reason, I have come to pursue two pathways in terms education and career: one in the environmental field and one in the psychological field. Most of the time, the two pathways have been acted upon in sequence one after the other (as I held the underlying belief that I had to choose between the two). Finally, almost a year ago, I came to the realization that I must have them both in my life, as two companies working in parallel, because whichever “side” I choose, I will always feel incomplete without the other. (The name of the other company is Green Strategy.)

Going back in time to 1998. What happened after the dinner meeting in Ankara was that I made the conscious decision to follow my research path in the environmental field by focusing on the environmental consequences of large dam projects and irrigation schemes in Southeast Turkey. What hereafter emerged as part of my doctoral research, was the study of cause-effect linkages between large dam projects and their environmental consequences within the river ecosystems. I realized that, in order to understand, prevent and minimize dam project’s negative environmental impacts, we need to target the underlying root causes. (Dam projects cause various significant changes in the river’s ecosystem, by blocking, storing, diverting and regulating the natural water flow of the river, which ultimately impact the ecosystem on a physical, chemical and biological level.)

Now, imagine the analogy between a natural ecosystem and our bodies. The water in the river system is like the energy in our body. If we block the energy flow in one part of our body, we will have an accumulation of energy in that part of body and possibly drain out the energy in associated body parts “downstream”. However, our body’s well-being and rejuvenation are dependent on a natural flow of positive energy throughout its system; the life energy “wants” to flow freely within our bodies. (Just like water gravitates downwards within a river system to transport and distribute nutrients, organic matter and oxygen to all living entities within the ecosystem.)

Therefore, if we wish to restore the natural health and wellbeing of our bodies, we need to clear the energy blockages that have been created. There are many different techniques you can use to clear your energy blockages and enable a free flow of energy throughout your body. A highly effective method, which is increasingly recognized and adopted worldwide, is Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT tapping. EFT tapping particularly addresses emotional concerns, mindset challenges and physical conditions, both everyday character (e.g. anxiety, stress and phobias) and more severe traumas (such as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome).

EFT tapping combines the Eastern traditional wisdom of the human body’s energy systems (called meridians) with our modern Western theories on human psychology and talk therapy. Essentially, by tapping with our fingers on certain points of our body, where end-meridians are located, while at the same time focusing our attention on and articulating our deep or sincere feelings, thoughts and physical experience around the issue, we can clear out any negative emotions that have been trapped as energy within our energy system. (Learn more about EFT-tapping here.)

Another well-proven technique that is used successfully to clear emotional, mental and/or physical issues is the Clear Belief’s process, which has been developed by Lion Goodman. This technique reaches even further into our subconscious mind (compared to EFT tapping), by working with mental images and body manifestations (which speak the language of the subconscious mind). By communicating directly with the subconscious mind, the Clear Beliefs process is capable of targeting and releasing deeply held limiting beliefs that has kept us stuck in an undesirable condition (often since early childhood). By clearing out underlying disempowering beliefs, we can address, let go of and heal the actual root cause of most of our emotional, physical and mental challenges in our lives.

To summarize, to restore a healthy state of any living system, may it be our bodies or a river ecosystem, we need to recognize and effectively clear the blockages that are in the way for its natural flows of energy and elements to take place. Thus, while a physical dam hinders the natural flow of energy, water, nutrients, sediments and organisms within the river ecosystem, any unpleasant human experience can cause energy (in terms of stressful emotions, thoughts and beliefs) to become stuck within our bodies thus hindering an optimal well-functioning of our own bodies. Thus, by intentionally clearing out any blockages, we allow positive energy to flow freely within our bodies, which helps to restore our overall health, joy and prosperity.