With the holiday season approaching joy can be a bumpy ride, with financial burdens, worry, loneliness and uncertainties. During this time of year, can make us feel overwhelmed with a mix of emotions. A feeling that there are many shortcomings or that we are not meeting our children’s, family and friend’s expectations. Stress builds up with a full social calendar and with tremendous hesitations about the true ideal.

Making compassion a part of your life is very transformative and can develop a deeper internal bond, amending heart connection, well-being for your social events and gratefulness for what is available to you at this moment. There are many reason and moments to cherish and that begins with health.

Many of us go through life on autopilot and we don’t make time to check in to how we are feeling. In yoga, the meditative aspect requires introspection to truly look deep within. When we face these emotions head on, it allows us to apply a healthier awareness to live by.

How to feel compassion and experience joy:

1. Magnifying Well-being: Compassions is practiced in mindfulness and the yogic tradition and many studies have been done through neuroscience to explain the effect that compassion has in the ventral vagal system. Compassion for self and others benefits the brains circuitry system enhancing the feelings of joy altering the prefrontal cortex that guides this behaviour. Practicing compassion de-stresses, the body and creates positivity and resilience. Self-compassion is a form of self regulation. Self-discipline encourages this acknowledgement that we all hold within us, the tool to adjust.
2. Accentuating the present moment: What does it mean to live in the present moment, you may have asked yourself? Do you find yourself hectically running around preparing the perfect holiday event for your relatives, are you working long hours for that promotion and it feels overwhelming? Do you feel disappointed because you didn’t meet your goals? Is there a deep feeling of fear secretly living deep inside you waiting for disaster to happen? Joy can be beyond our reach or perhaps its closer than you realize. Living in todays world many are struggling to get ahead or feeling that a certain goal needs to be achieved to be truly happy and joyful in life. Perfection will only enhance worry, stress and unhappiness in your body and mind. Mindfulness teaches that gratitude and appreciation is important to build into your daily life. Appreciation is a part of compassion, when you pause and take a break and realize that you have everything you need within you. Finding joy in simple things truly does establish happiness. Being grateful for who you are and taking the moment to breathe and reflect on what you do have in your reach is precious. Goals will be accomplished in divine timing when it is meant to happen, there is no rush to succeed. The present moment is right here right now with the opportunities that present themselves each day. Being grateful is a handful of happiness with our self.
3. Heartfelt Meditation: Compassion is passion, it is gratefulness, appreciation and a lifelong devotion to yourself. To de-stress and increase awareness it begins with learning to slow down and listening to your body to be able to grasp to the messages that your body is giving you. The energy of love is the greatest power we hold within us all. Enhancing this inner connection with the heart chakra (Anahata in Sanskrit) improves inner awareness. Pausing and feeling this energy flow augments love’s vibration that is healing and resonates towards others in this world. Gratitude, joy reverberates in the heart centre with the capacity to expand forgiveness and to receive.
4. Regulate your breathing: Take a pause to engage with inner reflection each day, at least 3 minutes to focus on breathing. Start with deep inhalations and exhalations through the nostrils. This deepens your body and mind into a state of relaxation. To hep your sympathetic nervous system, from the fight and flight response the parasympathetic system must be activated through pranayama (breathing). Using deep breathing techniques balances your system.
5. Ritual for 21 days: Joy is accessed within; we cannot run after happiness. Joy is a wonderment the sense of awe, what we experience when we are children, through the eyes of curiosity and innocence. You can take back this power and ritualize your joy each day through perceiving life from a different perspective. For instance a walk in nature, practicing your favourite hobby, connecting with yourself through meditation. While observing, jot down in your journal your physical sensations for 21 days, what you experience with each moment that you focus on. What you focus on is what you are sending your energy towards, making note of what you are grateful for and what gives you joy sends a message to your cells and restructures what you perceive as fear, unsafe to safety, joy, happiness etc. Remember that anything that causes disturbance, you have the power to overturn your thoughts into a new positive mindset. Practicing gives you the tool to ground yourself and to connect.
6. Essences of Love: Oils hold a high frequency that works with the body. Essence oils can help the body rid itself from built up blocks, in the energetic system. Oils resonate and vibrate throughout the entire body, expanding and opening you to the feelings of joy and abundance. Great essences to work with are: lavender, cherry blossom, rose, cedar, borage, buttercup, lilies and more.
7. Crystals for connection: Rose quartz, white crystals, obsidian, amethyst, emerald, moonstone, carnelian, kunzite, citrine.

Do you want to work directly with me and learn more about metaphysics, spiritual sessions? How to better your well-being understand your soul’s purpose, reclaim your sovereignty and expand awareness? Get started today!

elizyvonne@embodydivinewellness.com

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