Emotional Hygiene
You are having a regular shower or bath, brush your teeth, floss them to avoid gum disease, wash your hands regularly etc., but what about your emotional hygiene?
When humans started to take care of their bodies, their life expectancy rose. Having poor personal hygiene can lead to illness and to less life expectancy. We are privileged that we have access to proper sanitation and clean water, as lack of access can lead to some serious infections. Diseases are easily spread when we don’t wash our hands. Another example is gum disease that can lead to heart disease. So, we are told by our dentists to floss and brush our teeth in a certain way and go to the hygienist on a regular basis.
Now, most people are OK with all this, but what about our mental and emotional hygiene? We often lack in taking care of our mind and emotions and yes, it is also a daily activity! Our minds and emotions are not necessarily trustworthy friends, sometimes they are supportive, but also sometimes they can be very unpleasant, and we engage in negative self-talk. Negative self-talk is one big obstacle in our growth and hinders progress.
We live in times when some of us feel emotionally overloaded. There are too many sensory impressions, and we seem to run out of time when it comes to our emotional hygiene. We go to one job interview after another, for most of us the competition is getting harder and harder to get the right job, inequality is on the rise and many of us struggle to keep up with technological advancements that instead of making our lives easier make our lives actually more complicated, and rejection after rejection can create negative self-talk. This negative self-talk, if not addressed, can lead to depression, frustration and anger. Or we are looking for a new friend or partner and when we get rejected our mind tells us it’s because we are not enough. We should go on a diet, exercise more to fulfil marketing's images of a certain type of Homo sapiens. We however lose control over that situation and feel after failure demoralized, fearful for the next encounter, experience anxiety or /and sadness.
Break the cycle!
It’s time to start treating yourself as you would treat a beloved friend! Try not to let your mind ruminate over a past story. This can become a terrible habit, and you chew over the same story over and over again. It’s hard to stop as often it gives the story importance, and it’s really hard to stop. It is even addictive, but it will not benefit you at all! However, you can break it. Distract yourself! Do something good, listen to a nice song, read a poem, call a friend (a real friend who sees the value in you) or go for a walk. WE have to take action and change our responses to failure. This will protect our self-esteem, and we don’t allow negative self talk to take the hold of us. We develop over time emotional resilience and learn to not take things too personally. It often has nothing to do with us if somebody rejects us, if somebody is angry and lets it out on us etc.
If you need some help, come to my regular weekly zoom class. We change your posture and with a change in posture, your posture in life will change. Try a Power Pose next Wednesday at 18:15. I ask for a donation of £8 (but if you can’t pay this, feel free to donate what you can). Don’t’ let your mind talk you into feeling not enough, small and rejectable.
Prioritize your own emotional hygiene!
You can also join me at the next yoga teacher training starting March 2022. 11 weekends (one weekend we spend together in nature on a luxurious, beautiful location in the Downs – see Tilton House for more information). This teacher training teaches you the foundation of becoming an empowered, authentic and honest yoga teacher. With this, you not only transform your own life, but will help to transform the lives of many other humans. Would it not be nice if humanity as a whole can feel better, stop comparing themselves for traits that don't matter etc.? For more information, please contact me at sundarayogabrighton@gmail.com.
There are only limited spaces on this next course, as I believe yoga is best practised with a small group and some are already taken! Secure your space now! Please note, this course is not for people who only want to train their bodies, you need to be courageous to also train your mind. You need to be brave to face your inner fears and internalize this wisdom. It goes deep, and you have to be prepared to battle your negative thinking. Lockdowns have been hard, some go on voluntary lockdowns (but call them meditation retreats, and they are not easy either! You are confronted with yourself and nobody else - this takes courage! So, this is not lockdown teacher training, but we do dive deep into ourselves. Can you do this? It might change you for the better!