Dear friends,
I have never met many of you who have signed up to receive inspirations. I’m so glad you did and thank you for being interested. Today i’m particularly excited about what i’m writing. Things around the globe are changing fast and many people are coming out with bold and timely ideas.
I have a vision of a planet full of people all doing what they love most, contributing their unique genius and spending their lives following their passions and enjoying themselves. Where my vision differs is that those people didnt have to do years of painful soul searching in mid-life after dysfunctional or unfulfilled lives. instead they were raised by parents who understood the importance of acknowledging their emotions and supporting their soul connection so they were living lives they loved right from the start.
Those parents who raised them are you – the parent reading this. You can be the cause of that reality. In fact you are the only person who can be. The future is literally in your hands.
Yes that sounds like a good idea, but Is it hard? How do i support my child’s soul connection? What are the practical aspects? you might be thinking.
It’s not hard – in fact it mainly involves being present and non-judgemental. Some people call it empathy. I call it sensing children. I’ve written a whole book about it because i think its so important. It comes naturally to me and I have always known how to do it, but recently I’ve realised that I can describe how to do it step by step. Part of it is you getting more in touch with your own experience and the other aspect is an alert and aware way to be with your child. Being with, doing nothing. Whats important first and foremost is that are sensing and feeling yourself – because unless you can direclty experience yourself in a calm state where you observe whats going on inside you with spacious awareness, its impossible to accept another. So step 1 is being able to centre, ground and feel yourself. Modern life is very fast and chaotic so it can take some getting used to – but with ten minutes of practice a day you will get the hang of it. Step 2 is then almost automatic because this opens up a very spacious awareness that doesn’t judge. I describe it as observation without labelling – you look, but you don’t name things, you just feel and observe them. Just as facts, not as value-laden judgements. Even words like anger or shopping carry memmories and emotions for most people. Its possible to notice anger without labelling it anger, just by feeling and recognising the energy. You can notice facial expressions, physical sensations, unspoken words, thoughts, desires – its all there, and this is being with or non-judgement. Another word for it is love – and i experience it like an active love that we can choose to give.
Being with or not judging is a form of giving. You give space, give attention, give acceptance. And the person receiving feels acceptance, attention, space to be as they are and love. For these things are love. And they can only be given if you can first give them to yourself. What has all of this got to do with children’s souls? When you can be with yourself and children without judgement they stay connected with their souls, and their sense of joy and in being themselves increases. They have no reason to judge or disown parts of themselves, and they stay whole and able to express their soul’s creative impulses.
I have to say a few more words about the power of being with things as they actually are. People want things to be different which is why they come to see me. But what i do is i show them how they actually are, which is what they haven’t been seeing, and why there is a problem in the first place. Its quite humorous really that all i can actually give them is an experience of how they are, and this transforms them. But isn’t this a bigger lesson for life? That when we can really sink into how things are right now they open and move? It’s the resistance and reluctance to experience this very moment that causes all the pain. Especially when parents cant cope with how their children are. With parents it their acceptance of their own state and their feelings about the child that open all the doors for them to be with the child. There is nothing wrong with any of the feelings. Being a parent is an extremely tough and challenging job. In the moment that parents can accepet how they are it also suddenly becomes clear to them what to do or say with their child. It arises as a natural response once they become present and connect with themselves. Isnt that simple and elegant?
For more inspiration, simple practical suggestions and resources for parents please go to www.facebook.com and look up mira watson – author.
My book for parents called Raising Sensitive Souls is in the pipeline.
Please would you click “like” on that page as it increases my chances of getting the book published.
I am very shy of promoting myself – however i feel its really important that the information in this book gets to as many parents as possible, so please do support me on facebook. I also post informational articles, links and questions that allow your concerns to be addressed in the book.
Thank you for reading.
You are welcome to share this article but please give credit to the author.
All rights reserved, Mira Watson 25th May 2014
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Introduction
I’ve always approached life from the perspective that if your mind is well, bodily health will follow. And this does seem to be true. But what about the epidemic of children with ADHD, Asperger’s, Tourette’s, allergies and learning disorders? Are they all mentally disturbed? That seems unlikely. There seems to be another important theme – a basic clean diet and functioning immune system are also essentials of bodily health.
A personal story
Sometimes the body doesn’t function well because of what gets put into it, and then it needs extra attention. I was recently reminded of a time when I was extremely sick myself, and the doctors didn’t know what to do. Having done a CAT scan, EEGs, numerous blood tests and other studies, they pronounced my inability to lift my head off my pillow or cut a loaf of bread “psychogical” and said they couldn’t help me. I was still unable to think, couldn’t digest anything and was so tired and weak I could hardly make it to the bathroom. My will was strong as iron but I felt as if I was disintegrating physically. I had searing pains in my head and back and could hardly string a sentence together – I kept telling the doctors my brain felt poisoned.
As it turned out later, this was probably true. I actually had candida through my digestive system following several courses of antibiotics for typhoid, as well as mercury poisoning from 8 vaccines which i had had within a two week period to prepare for travel abroad – a fact which the doctors did not find significant. Sitting in the doctors surgery clutching my belly and my head i tried to explain that it was a problem with my gut and my head. The fact that i collapsed into bed the day of the second lot of vaccinations semed to pass by unheeded. I was sent home. Fortunately I had a dream about a book that lead me to an elimination diet. Within three weeks of a wheat, dairy and sugar free diet, I was back in the gym. I was astounded. It was a long time before I was fully better, and a long struggle with the Candida in my whole gut for which I had to take two three month courses of the antifungal Nystatin – prescribed by a homeopathic doctor. A short while later my mind cleared. However I did get better from a situation in which several had hinted I might die. It wasn’t until years later that I found craniosacral therapy, which helped release the tensions in my head that had caused so much pain. It took me over ten years to get back to normal. It must be even worse for young children who have these kind of symptoms and can’t develop. The science validating my sense of the gut-brain connection didn’t become public until ten years later, but even now that we have this crucial information, it seems that it is still being overlooked by many.
So what about the sick children?
The issues that have prompted me to share this experience are that more and more children that are brought to me extremely sick are not being treated on any kind of dietary level, and I puzzled as to why not. When I was ill i only had my own experience of my body to go on, but in 2014 we have hard evidence from stool and gut flora tests on large groups of children. Dr Natasha Campbell-Bride states that
“The mixture of toxicity in each child or adult can be quite individual and different. But what they all have in common is gut dysbiosis. The toxicity, which is produced by the abnormal microbial mass in these people, establishes a link between the gut and the brain. That is why I have grouped these disorders together and gave them a name: the Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAP Syndrome). The GAPS children and adults can present with symptoms of autism, ADHD, ADD, OCD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, schizophrenia, depression, sleep disorders, allergies, asthma and eczema in any possible combination. These are the patients who fall in the gap in our medical knowledge. Any child or adult with a learning disability, neurological or psychiatric problems should be thoroughly examined for gut dysbiosis. Re-establishing normal gut flora and treating the digestive system of the patient has to be the number one treatment for these disorders, before considering any other treatments with drugs or otherwise.”
There is a wealth of information available about Gut and Pshychology Syndrome – GAPS – a term coined by Dr Campbell-McBride to describe what i was trying to talk to doctors about twenty years ago, which happens when the balance of healthy and unhealthy bacteria in the gastro-intestinal tract get out of balance. This can be due to taking several courses of antibiotics, which disturb the gut flora and allow unhealthy bacteria to proliferate. There are other factors like the birth process, the mother’s gut flora during pregnancy, vaccinations and then how much sugar and additives a child eats daily that can all lead in the same direction. Children living at the current time face further hazards because the amount of chemical pollution in the air, in food and water increase daily. If their body’s ability to detoxify is compromised, as described below, then they really struggle with the extra modern environmental load.
What goes wrong in the gut?
The corrective diet is based on the theory that many disorders, including autism and ADHD, are caused by imbalance in the microflora or probiotics of the digetsive tract. ?When the balance of the gut is disturbed, overgrowth of microbes creates inflammation and immune dysregulation. This situation is similar to a sprained ankle. There is swelling that puts pressure on all the cells in the area. Swelling in the digestive tract allows material from the digestive tract to escape. This is often described as “leaky gut”. Harmful or undesirable microbes can also migrate to the small intestine where they compete for nutrients and disrupt digestion by damaging enzymes needed to break down food (like GLUTEN, CASEIN, SOY AND CORN).? ? Carbohydrates, that are not completely digested, stay in the digestive tract and become “food” for unhealthy microbes. As the microbes digest the leftover carbohydrates, the fermentation damages the digestive tract.
The effects of gut imbalance
According to Dr Campbell-McBride,
“The most common pathogenic microbes shown to overgrow in the digestive systems of children and adults with neuro-psychiatric conditions are yeasts, particularly Candida species. Yeasts ferment dietary carbohydrates with production of alcohol and its by-product acetaldehyde. Let us see what does a constant exposure to alcohol and acetaldehyde do to the body.
- Liver damage with reduced ability to detoxify drugs, pollutants and other toxins.
- Pancreas degeneration with reduced ability to produce pancreatic enzymes, which would impair digestion.
- Reduced ability of the stomach wall to produce stomach acid.
- Damage to immune system.
- Brain damage with lack of self-control, impaired co-ordination, impaired speech development, aggression, mental retardation, loss of memory and stupor.
- Peripheral nerve damage with altered senses and muscle weakness.
- Direct muscle tissue damage with altered ability to contract and relax and muscle weakness.
- Nutritional deficiencies from damaging effect on digestion and absorption of most vitamins, minerals and amino acids.
- Deficiencies in B and A vitamins are particularly common.
- Alcohol has an ability to enhance toxicity of most common drugs, pollutants and other toxins.
- Alteration of metabolism of proteins, carbohydrates and lipids in the body.
- Inability of the liver to dispose of old neurotransmitters, hormones and other by-products of normal metabolism. As a result these substances accumulate in the body, causing behavioural abnormalities and many other problems.
Acetaldehyde is considered to be the most toxic of alcohol by-products. It is the chemical, which gives us the feeling of hangover. Anybody who experienced a hangover would tell you how dreadful he or she felt. Children, who acquire abnormal gut flora with a lot of yeast from the start, may never know any other feeling. Acetaldehyde has a large variety of toxic influences on the body. One of the most devastating influences of this chemical is its ability to alter the structure of proteins. Acetaldehyde – altered proteins are thought to be responsible for many autoimmune reactions. Children and adults with neuro-psychiatric problems are commonly found to have antibodies against their own tissues.”
That is one long and wide-reaching list of sysmptoms. Isn’t it asstounding that many of the symptoms that children with learning disorders experience, such as foggy brain, not being able to think or speak, inability to concentrate, co-ordinate their movement, involuntary muscle movements are all symptoms of digestive dysfunction and consequent central nervous sytem breakdown? When we look at the link between digestion and the brain function it becomes clear that in this whole spectrum of childhood symptoms, tackling diet can be a very useful start to improving bodily health and reducing symptoms. If substances are blocking and affecting nerve fucntioning int he brain, then those substances need to be removed urgently.
How can we tell if a child may have gut issues?
Even without medical tests, there are obvious physical symptoms like bloating, stomach-ache and frequent farting. Tiredness, lethargy, emotional swings, black circles under the eyes, and rough or lumpy facial skin are also common. From a simple practical perspecitve, when i look at a child i can sense immediately if they have internal disconnects. They don’t respond as fast, often have a foggy look around their eyes, move clumsily and just don’t seem all there.
Yesterday i was in the park with my sister’s son and his friend. I commented that the other boy seemed in quite a state, and she said he had recently had another lot of vaccinations and had been quite out of sorts since. She could see what i was describing – in her words “yes even i can see that broad as daylight”. These children need help and they need the adults around them to notice that there is a problem.
When children are diagnosed with a condition like Tourette’s which is said to be “untreatable” (not the case in my personal experience), the first place to look would be diet and gut health. Once gut health is restored and the immune system has been boosted symptoms are likely to imrpove. It just makes sense. Even if you doubt the science, it is worth following these procedures and taking the improvements in your child’s health as evidence that you are doing the right thing.
If symptoms don’t improve significantly, it is worth doing a general bodily detox for heavy metals. Again, you can google this online. It just involves taking certain supplements. If the body’s ability to detox is severely impaired, this may get it going again. Isn’t that a bit extreme? I hear you wonder. Yes, it does seem unlikely and shocking that a child as young as 8 or 9 years of age should need to detox their body. However the effects of vaccines, mercury fillings and heavy metals ingested form food can be extremely strong in some children, and the mercury that lodges in the brain really seems to impair cognitive function. I have no evidence for this other than the experiments I have done on myself, and my observations from watching what happens to people’s ability to think, their bodily ability to detox and their general levels of energy and well-being when they do a mercury detox. But isn’t that enough?
We are what we eat – literally – and I think that the modern generation of western children sadly demonstrate that what is being eaten is sub-standard and a least partly toxic. Processed foods are not foods – they are mainly preservatives and additives – ie toxins. You only have to look at the figures for ADHD, Asperger’s, Autism and so on and realize how rapidly they have increased in the last decade to begin to wonder. Can it really just be that busy working parents are neglecting their children? It’s not likely to be the only factor. All these conditions seem to affect the central nervous system, in ways like those described by the effect of GAPS.
So if you have a child, or are yourself suffering from excessive tiredness, foggy thinking, inability to concentrate, low level depression, bloated stomach and gas, and difficutly digesting then take a look on the internet and inform yourself about a basic wheat, dairy and sugar free diet. It is also helpful to get a Candida test done, so that you know the extent of candida overgrowth in your gut. If so, you need to treat it as its very unlikely to die off completely just through diet. Supplement the diet with a good probiotic, omega 3s from a non-mercury contaminated source, and and grapefruit seed extract or another natural antimicrobial. If you or your child have cognitive issues, you also need to include all the B vitamins, especially vitamin B3, B6 and B12 (methylcoblamin), vitamin C, E and selenium to boost the immune system, MSM or alpha lipoic acid to get the detoxification process going again. These are the basics things to look at, but you will need to look up your own information. You may also need more specialist information on doing liver or kidney cleanses, but they are all available online, as well as from a variety of alternative health practitioners. Don’t listen to people who say it doesn’t help, because it does, it can really make all the difference in most cases, and can even safe your life.
Some useful websites for the basic information are:
www.gaps.me/?page_id=20 – basic info on the gut-brain connection to get you motivated
http://tariganter.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/anti-fungal-treatment-for-candida-and-intestinal-yeast-overgrowth/ – useful information on natural antifungals and nystatin protocol
There will be more information about healing childhood issues in my forthcoming book: Sensing Children. To find out about publication and follow new developments, please see my facebook page: Facebook/Mia-Watson-Author for more parenting and child health information.
All rights reserved. Mira Watson, April 24th, 2014
Please feel free to share this article, but please give credit to the author. Thank you
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Solving common childhood problems: why children need emotional empathy to develop & how can craniosacral help?
Introduction
Emotional empathy is the basis of attuned attention to a child, which helps regulate the child’s emotions and establish a healthy and functioning brain, nervous system and immune system. It is vital for development. This article examines what it is, how to do it, and what problems arise when the right kind of emotional attention is lacking. It also looks at wider health and social implications of having an emotionally illiterate population, and what simple measures can be put in place to improve matters.
What do babies need?
Babies are like the raw material for a self, and how they are treated affects how they develop. This applies not just to food and clothing, but also to emotional responsiveness. In the early months of life a baby is establishing what the normal state of physical arousal is in terms of chemical and electrical nervous system signals. A normal range is established through social process, by the baby co-ordinating his systems with those of people around him.
Babies who are given an attuned response learn to expect a world that is responsive to feelings and that will help bring intense states back to a manageable level. It is only by experiencing having it done for them that they learn to do it for themselves. Baby’s systems are so sensitive that if early experience is inadequate, the stress response can be adversely affected, and brain growth and development may be hindered. Research indicates that the outcome seems to depend far more on how responsive the parents are than on the baby’s innate character or genetics. So parental ability is crucial in shaping the child.
Craniosacral is in effect a combination of extremely sensitive emotional empathy with empathetic touch. Therefore it connects with the being on more levels than just talk therapy, with the ability to influence the nervous system and brain directly. This makes it a powerful tool for normalising any developmental deficiencies in children, and helping them connect with themselves. It can also do the same for parents who had less than ideal upbringings.
What does emotional empathy do for the baby?
The most important thing for the baby is the degree to which the parent is emotionally available and present with him to notice how he is, because this helps him regulate his emotions.Regulation is about relieving the baby’s discomfort, since babies cannot do this for themselves. It involves tuning into the baby’s emotional and physical state empathetically, and calming him down or stimulating him to get him to a comfortable level. A frightened child, for exmple, needs to by soothed. This takes the sympathetic nervous system from a state of frantic flight or fight, back to the calming effect of the parasympathetic system. For many parents this is a totally natural, unprobelmatic and normal response to their baby, and happens without thinking about it. Touch, tone of voice, and feeling the parent’s calm nervous system all help the baby to get back to tolerable levels of stimulation in the body.
What an available responsive parent looks like in practice, is for example a father sitting next to the bath with the one year old being bathed, and looking into his/her eyes, observing their activities, just being there with them, without thoughts or expectations or judgements, or worrying that they need to go out in five mintues, or make a phone call. Just being there, feeling the child’s state and responding. Attuned attention or emotional empathy is the basis for regulation. For some parents who are always busy thinking or in their heads, being this present with their child can be a wonderful revelation. It is the only true basis for relating to the child. Fortunately it is a skill that can be learned by anyone – if you are interested in knowing more, please enquire about our Transformational Parenting course. We teach the basics of attuned attention, emotional regulation in self and others, relating and becoming aware of your own patterns.
Emotional regulation is often about responding to feelings in a non-verbal way – through touch, tone of voice, look. For example a mother soothes her screaming over-aroused baby by engaging her with a load voice that mirrors the pitch and emotion, and then gently calms her expression, taking her down into a calmer state. Or she might relax a baby by rocking him, or tickle and laugh with a sad, disinterested baby. This monitoring and adjustment needs to be a continuous task for many many months at the beginning of the infant’s life. Without it they cannot develop properly, phsically or socially, and suffer later on.
Differentiating and naming feelings
The next task is to help the child differentiate the basic states of eg. anger – into disappointment, annoyance, rage etc. and to verbalise these states, by copying the baby and mirroring states back with words and gestures. Identifying and labelling feelings is essential to teach the baby a sense of self, and of human culture and interaction. It’s the parent’s task to help a child to learn to identify their feelings, since they are unable to lable them on their own.
Getting or not getting attuned attention affects the growth and connections to the pre-frontal cortex, or social brain. In infancy and the toddler years, the part of the pre-frontal cortex involved in verbalising feelings may not develop adequately, and this part of the brain has been strongly implicated in depressino. Without the social brain connections, the child and later adults suffers in lacking external connection too.
Ideal regulation leads to feelings flowing freely through the body, whilst having the mental capacity to notice and reflect on them, and to choose whether or not to act on them. The individual with good regulation also has the ability to co-ordinate his or her states with other people, can adjust to their moods and demands, and can make his or her own demands on others. There is a flow within the individual and between the individual and others. In this way people can respond to what is happening in the moment with each other, helping each other process feelings. This is just what we do in everyday social interaction – understand how someone is feeling, helping them express it, and thinking about solutions with them. We are social animals, and we all need this experience to different degrees, and at different stages of life.
Problems
If parents cannot feel or regulate their own feelings, they will not be able to feel their baby, and so won’t respond to their needs for regulation. The baby will be left in chaos, without a clear sense of how to keep level, and maybe even thinking they shouldn’t have feelings, because they have been ignored. In this case these early experiences may lead to a child assuming that there will not be others emotionally available to help notice and process feelings, or to help them get back to feeling ok. So both regulating and labelling a baby’s feelings can be difficult for a parent whose own awareness of their states is impaired. And yet such family patterns of poor regulation need not be passed on to the next generation, because any adult can learn to provide attuned attention if they are willing, as outlined above.
Similarly, if an adult is not able to feel their own negative emotions such as anger or frustration, they will tend to try to supress or avoid them in their children. Often they will lash out at the child when the child is angry because they can’t control their own response. In that case the child will probably try to hold back their feelings, in essence to protect the parent from their own feelings. This is wholy inappropriate. The child then learns that they get no regulatory help, and will learn to suppress or switch off those feelings – which don’t go away.
One added complication is that the more sensitive the baby, the harder it may be for the parents to adapt to their particular needs. So sensitive children, who need the best regulation, in fact tend to get the worst. They are most dependent on their parents’ help, and also most likely to suppress their own needs to avoid strong emotions in the parents, that would disrupt their inner equilibrium. Sensitive children benefit especially from craniosacral treatment which can help re-establish important nerve connections and calm the nervous system when overwhelmed. Craniosacral practitioners are often also some of the few people with the capacity to form a good connection with such a sensitive child.
Feelings are all about survival and sustaining important social relationships. Anger indicates that something is wrong and needs urgent attention. If you ignore your own anger, you may get downtrodden by others. If you express it impulsively, you may disrupt relationships. A well regulated child can become an emotionally secure person who believes that their anger will be heard and responded too, and so they can manage it and express it in a controlled manner.
By age 1 these basic emotional patterns are recognisably in place. So proper attention in the first year can make a huge difference and supports the case for learning the basics during pregnancy before the child is born. Resonating with each other’s feelings is the basis of how we co-ordinate ourselves with others, and the degree of responsiveness and flexibility we have learnt determines the harmony and commmunication we can achieve, so it is a very important skill.
Identity and self-esteem
If we do not get the emotional regulation we need, our emotional systems develop poorly, we don’t learn to regulate ourselves, our brains don’t develop as they could, the stress responses are disrupted or set on constant alert, and as adults we may feel little confidence in coping as an individual or relying on others for help. At a basic level, if we can’t recognise our feelings or verbalise them, and have not learnt to value them as valid and useful direction for ourself, there is very little connection with the own identity. The consequent inability to regulate one’s own emotions can manifest as a profound lack of self-esteem, and is at the root of depression, addictions, failed relationships, and a variety of other social and work problems. Such people may retreat from life and focus on achieving rather than relating. But both neuroscience and phsychological research are indicating that relating is not a luxury, and having emotional needs met is essential for healthy human life. Lack of emotional attention in childhood can have severe consequences – hence it would seem to be equally important as food and shelter in the basic requirements for children.
Children simply need recognition of the psychological self – the thinking and feeling self. They need people willing to get on their wavelength, understanding how they are feeling, helping them express it, otherwise they can’t get a sense of themselves, or a sense of their own identity. Our sense of self is very dependent on this feedback from others. If there is little parental response at all, or it is negative, we can feel non-existent, invalidated and basically bad. It becomes harder to make sense of feelings without a framework of ongoing support and the sense of self becomes increasingly tenuous. And in practice this means that children need to relate to adults who respond to the actual present moment needs of the child, and not to their own idea, or an idea of what they think the child might need. They need adults who are really there.
You need a responsive and sensitive mothering experience to be able to apply this to yourself. Its not possible to generate an attitude of self-care without someone else first doing it for you. This reflection is how we learn our self-awareness. This is a genuine need, and children need to depend on adults as they mature. This is something that craniosacral and talk therapies can provide if you have not had the benefit of that experience.
Parents are often intolerant of dependency, which is partly cultural and partly the result of one’s own early experiences. It is often regarded with disgust and repulsion, however this often stems from fear of feeling one’s own hidden and deeply needy feelings. Other people won’t give what they are furious they didn’t get themselves as children. Either way, the effects can be very harmful for the child, who may be forced to be independent before their brains and emotions have developed the capacity to do so. This can cause severe stress to a child, or simply freeze and an inability to function at all. Even as adults, such children need to have a satisfying experience of dependency before they can become self-regulating and fairly independent. So there’s no way around the facts of how important attuned attention and emotional empathy are for developing self-aware, balanced and empathetic humans.
The good news is, that no matter what has been lacking in early infancy, as soon as people are given empathetic attention, they start to recover and grow. Children can improve very quickly, since the brain is still developing, and can learn to form healthy and secure attachments. With adults progress tends to be slower, nevertheless normal functioning and ablity to relate emotionally can be established, even though it may require more effort and determination. Human interaction can then begin to be a source of support and comfort, rather than threat and overwhelm.
“Good” Parenting
When parents respond to a baby’s signals, they are helping grow the baby’s nervous system, so that it does not get over-stressed. They contribute to proper brain development and a robust immune system. They help the child build up the prefrontal cortex and their capacity to hold information, to reflect on feelings and to restrain impulses. This will be the foundation of the baby’s future ability to behave socially.
The qualities of good parenting (and also of close relationships) are essentially regulatory: the capacity to listen, to notice, and to restore good feelings through some kind of physical, emotional or mental contact, through touch, facial expression, and finding ways to put feelings and thoughts into words. To be able to notice and respond to to other’s feelings requires importance to be allocated to feelings, and a willingess to prioritise relationships. This is a challenge to a goal-oriented society. Feeling is much slower than the thinking modality.
Craniosacral therapy is a method which can both help parents to slow down and feel, as well as children to develop their own sense of embodied self properly. It can also highlight the relational dynamics between parents and children, and give parents the tools to change them successfully.
Relating through emotional empathy with each other is the essential ingredient not only that makes us human, but that helps socialize children who can regulate anger rather than drop bombs on others. Its refinement may be a crucial step in our survival and evolution as a species. The effects are far-reaching, not just in terms of saving on mental health and hospital bills, but also for creating a functioning, co-operative supportive social life rather than a competitive, aggressive and separatist culture. Paying attention to emotions is essential for our global society to move forward since the connection to self they provide creates stability and clarity. And for most, the organising principle in life is feelings, and the meaning we attribute to them. People need feelings and meaning in order to live. Without them, they cannot find the motivation to contribute meaningfully to society, and instead become either draining or destructive. Therefore it is in everyone’s best interests to prioritise the capacity to feel themselves and relate to others, and taking pro-active steps with infants and children to ensure a good sense of identity and self-esteem.
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NICE ARTICLE .BUT I DISAGREE ABOUT YOUR INTENTION POINT.WHEN YOU INTENT SOME PERSON GET HEALING LOVE .SPECIFICALLY IN REKI OR MANY DISTANT HEALING PRACTICES INTENTION IS VERY IMPORTANT.THEN ALSO YOU WROTE VERY NICE ARTICLE .THANKS FOR POSTING IT .ALSO YOU RISES NICE POINT ABOUT LABELING VERY GOOD INFORMATION .THANKS FOR SHARING YOUR EXPERIENCE.
Great inspiring article, just what I was looking for. Today I have been thinking about self improvement. One particular thing struck me about observing others without judgement and oneself. I find it sometimes to just observe myself and the too and fro of emotions that cascade through me from moment to moment. I also find it difficult to accept things that appear to happen externally that stress me chronically. I am still learning with respect to this.
Today I had an epiphany of sorts about the power of non-judgment and the power it has to help others. I noticed a chance to practice observation without judgement as I was crossing the road in town. A woman with her two children pulled up next to me, the children were just wild, insolent, and boisterous. The mother was very irate trying to restrain the children so as not to run out into the road. My natural reaction(as taught by the society I live in) is to use duality and describe this as bad. I avoided this reaction. I sincerely hope that my observation without judging them helped.
Just one caveat as I noticed in writing is that I made a judgement above about the behaviour of the children and mother, but I like to think of it as awareness and observation, I’m not saying it’s bad or good, just that I accept it!
Thanks for this inspiring article as I was looking through the internet to find something that links with my experiences today.
GReat article, very inspiring.
You should read the book power vs force – a map of consciousness.
I wonder if being non-judgmental is describing a level of consciousness of 600 or above.
http://jhaines6.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/consciousness-map.jpg