Nirvana Zarabi-Smith
Doctor of Natural Medicine
ADDICTED TO HABITS
One thing that I have learned as a practitioner is that people don't really want to be good, at least not all day, nor every day. I think that if we did, life would just not be as fun! Most people usually know what they really need to do to take care of themselves, but they really don't want to do it. And obviously, like everyone else, we the practitioners, also enjoy our bad habits and we are attached to them. So I drink my delicious coffee, even though I know it’s not good for me, some must have their chocolate fix and we all tend to put off exercising with any possible excuse. Or we find a level of busyness that we know is not good for us, but we say we have to do it anyway. I often catch myself saying, ‘but I have no choice’ ‘no one else can do it’ or ‘it’s impossible to get help, no one can go inside my brain and do the work for me’ or ‘if someone else does it, than it will be wrong, so therefore I have to do it myself!’ And, since we humans form habits so easily, the more we do something, the more we believe it is right for us. We have to emphasize how important it is for us to recognize this habituation process, so that we can learn how to live healthy, fulfilling lives, rather than simply existing in “slavery” to our habits.
"Your thoughts are your habits. They become part of you. Gradually you lose your awareness of who you are. Instead, everything is based on what has influenced you. Nothing is left but habits, rituals, and impressions of the mind. Your actions are no longer based on your personal knowledge."
Nader Angha (my teacher and spiritual guide)
Recently, I was working with a 16-year-old boy who was really trying to turn his life around. He was so far behind in school that his hard work was not yet showing up in his grades. But, he really did not want to give up on himself. What he told me was, "I have finally learned that I actually can do the work. What is hard is to want to do it consistently. Some days, I just don't want to do it." Often we fight ourselves, doubt ourselves, and put ourselves in conflict about what we 'should' do or how we ‘should’ be. What my client discovered was that with this new recognition of his abilities and his habits, he really did not want to give up on himself, in the ways he had in the past.
What I’ve noticed is that we know what we should do to take care of ourselves, or we are motivated to make some attempts to learn about these things. The problem is we don't use what we know consistently. We only do things temporarily. We take our supplements for a few days, stop and then resume again when we feel like it. It doesn't do us any good to learn about these things if we don't believe in ourselves and in our ability to change. Successfully taking care of ourselves means having faith in our ability to heal and to use what we are learning to improve quality of living for our clients and ourselves. This process includes expanding our awareness and shifting our perspective a bit so that we can begin to practice and teach self-care and self-healing. As with so many things about living, the real question we need to consider is 'How?' I need to ask myself, 'How can I do this?' 'How can I develop the self-respect and self-discipline to transform my harmful patterns into healthy patterns?'
"Remember to remember who you are."
( Rumi, the well-known Sufi poet)
So, in reality, as we learn how to remember to remember who we are, we actually learn how to live. However, learning to remember who we are is not as simple as it may seem. Our mind, likes to remind us of all the ways that others have defined us and limited us. As soon as you are born, you get labeled. Your name, your last name, your religion and the list goes on... Often our mental habits keep us from remembering that, first and foremost, we are beings of energy and light. Our energy is our wealth and how we spend it determines what we experience in this life. In a sense, all healing is energy work. Every thing in this universe is energy. Wouldn’t it be great if we can learn and teach our clients how to transform emotional energy by transforming beliefs and perceptions? Maybe then at that point, we will be able to change the patterns. When we learn how to shift our energy, we can change how we experience our life.
As practitioners, healers, and health care providers, we need to practice what we teach, in order to do our work effectively. Working with people all day, our energy field gets depleted and we need to know how to restore our energy and strengthen it. We need to know how to expand our energy and how to protect it. We need to know how to revitalize ourselves whether we realize it or not, we are setting an example of how to live a fulfilling life.
The first question in expanding what personal awareness is, who's life am I living? If I don't do what I need to do to live my life in a way that is meaningful to me, who suffers? If I don't fulfill my purpose and make my own personal life journey, who suffers?
As practitioners, we believe in the incredible life force within that allows people to heal from horrible trauma and overcome extreme circumstances. We also need to believe in ourselves, and learn to nourish ourselves so that we can sustain the precious life energy we have, and teach others how to do the same. We should remind ourselves to always try to be in the present moment when we are seeing our clients. Most of us are very good at doing this at the office, but we are forgetful and neglectful of being present in our own lives. Now, why is that? If I don't believe in myself, and the need to live my life fully, how can I teach my clients to do this? We must remind ourselves of the essentials in the same way that we remind our clients.
The center of your life is you. You just need to be you.
We need to carefully evaluate what we like, and what we need. The body is the vehicle we need to move through this physical life. But if you are a practitioner, like myself, you usually keep it parked in your office, or in front of the computer at home. If we continue to do what we are used to and comfortable with, what kind of results will we have? So, the first step is to look at the patterns that we know we need to change.
“Our breathing is the tuning fork for our energy, physically and emotionally.” So given the fact that we practitioners sit behind a desk and work with our clients all day, listen to them talk about their pain and heartache and traumas throughout the day, what do you suppose happens to our breathing? Gradually throughout the day we close down our breathing, so that we won't feel as much pain as we go through the day. It becomes our defense mechanism or our shield. As this shield goes through abuse, our thymus gland suffers and therefore, so does our immune system. We are no longer protected. Breathing is so simple and yet we tend to make it so complex. Try this right now, breathe fully and deeply, open the chest and expand your flow of energy. See how simple and yet so difficult? Simply breathing, consciously and fully, is a good way to open us up again to life. Breathing is one essential aspect of cleansing and nourishing our system.
Basically there are two things that are critically important for us to add to our lifestyle. The first is breathing. Breathing cleanses the system and opens things up; it clears away what is no longer needed. The second essential element for healthy living is physical movement. We sit all day listening to people. So we need to move around and be more active. We need to add some form of physical movement to our lives - dance, walking, swimming, stretching. We all need 60 minutes a day of movement- minimum.
As you all know, whenever we have an emotional reaction, we also have a physical reaction. Remember, that for every action there is always a reaction. It’s one of the basic laws of the universe. It is especially important that we find ways of releasing our physical and emotional tension through some kind of movement. Breathing and physical movement help cleanse our energy field, revitalizing the body, mind, and spirit. So the next time, you feel drained after a session, ask yourself, ‘did I forget to breath?’ or ‘did I not get enough movement today?’ These are some very simple steps to take to keep your field or your ‘energetic bubble around you’ clear.
There are many methods that promote healing and help us develop a healthy lifestyle. The problem is that what we usually do is learn about these things, but we don't do them. We know what we need to do to resolve our problems and correct our lives, but we don't do it. Or, we do it for a little while then we stop. Why is that? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Could this be some sort of addiction? Are we addicted to stress? Do we enjoy the rush and the sense of accomplishment in an insane way? What do we get from our dis-ease? Is it attention that we are not getting elsewhere? Ask yourself these questions and see if you can find the answers within your heart. My great teacher, Nader Angha, once said to me, ‘people recognize the truth when they hear it, but they turn away and forget. They go back to what they are used to.’ Why are we so used to or addicted to our patterns and daily habits? Why do we feel that every day is a routine? We wake up in the morning and go to work. The women clean the house, take care of the kids (some men do it too!) and they go to work. What about men? They wake up in the morning, go to work, take out the trash, cut the lawn and then sit down and watch the Super Bowl. Why? Why? and Why? Is this all there is to life? You’ve all heard that most heart attacks happen on Monday morning. Have you every wondered, ‘what is it about going to work on Monday morning that can cause a heart attack?’ Is this the body’s way of saying stop to your stressful routine? Perhaps.
Those of us in the "helping professions" spend our lives trying to assist and educate our clients so that they can resolve their difficulties and live healthier, happier lives. And most of us struggle with some of the issues that our clients do - stress, pressure, obligation, searching for others’ approval, addictions, weight issues, depression, and a multitude of fears and anxieties. How come the healers are always the sickest ones? (Oh, no, here I go lecturing myself again…) We have to learn to take, that is take time for ourselves too. There must be an exchange of energy. Remember, the law of the universe is that for every action, there is a reaction. For very input, there is an output. For every Yin there is a Yang.
Many are addicted to stress and sometimes this is not on a conscious level. Some of us have realized that we are workaholics and are always super busy. We get used to always feeling stressed, tense, pressured, and hyped up to try and get everything done. This is what we are accustomed to; this is what we like to feel. We are creatures of habit and therefore are habituated to feeling this way. Once our stress is gone, some feel lost without this constant sense of heightened pressure. All of a sudden you feel lost and as if nothing seems important. Without all the constant companions of stress, we don’t feel important or valuable to ourselves. Without having this constant sense of heightened stress, we become unsure of our own identity. Isn't this familiar to most of us? We get used to living with this enormous sense of constriction, and we try to do as much as we possibly can. We are habituated to the excitement and rush of it. We often become ‘stress junkies’.
All self-care methods - exercise, relaxation, biofeedback, guided visualization, being in the present, meditation, proper cleansing, nutrition, conscious breathing, prayer - open up our energy flow and revitalize our energy reserves. They help us heal from the toxins and contamination we deal with everyday. When we stay constantly busy, pressured, and stressed - everything is constricted. We experience constricted breathing, constricted movement, constricted thoughts and constricted emotions. Living under the obligations, we live constricted lives.
My point is that we get used to whatever is familiar to us, our habits. Then we naturally struggle against change, no matter how good it is or how much we think it will help us. Isn't this true? There are so many ways we all do this. For example, I say, I love to meditate. But when someone asks me how often I meditate, the answer is not enough. Why? Well, we all have our list of reasons, such as: I don't have time; I don't have time alone; I can't do it when the kids are home; etc. The truth is that we resist change even when we believe it is good for us, because we believe that change is hard and we are comfortable with our habits.
My teacher, Nader Angha, who has taught me everything that I know, says: "In order to gain something for yourself, you need to move beyond your habits. It takes work and troubling yourself to discover what truly benefits you. How much strength do you get from what you do?"
We have learned that self-care, self-respect, and self-discipline are hard, so we really don't want to do these things because we believe that they are so difficult. We tend to only do things in healthy ways when someone else is watching, in most cases the health care police. Rather than learning to be accountable for ourselves, and to have faith in ourselves and our abilities, we have learned to appear accountable to others. This leaves us feeling powerless in our own lives. Rather than living our lives feeling comfortable with ourselves and what we are doing, we have given someone else - the health care police authority over what we do. We have forgotten who we are and have given our power away. We are not likely to change our self-limiting beliefs unless we know what they are. If we don't recognize them, we just repeat them; they are our habits.
