We live life in an effort to constantly ensure and build safety on all levels: emotional, financial, material, environmental, relational and physical. We strive to form a sense of familiarity, and nourish attachments to things, people and routines to create a feeling (which, in reality, is an illusion) of stability and protection in the face of a mad world, ever-changing and constantly threatening our little bubble.

As creatures of habit, deeply attached to a fixed idea of self, others and the world, we don’t like change, even when it’s necessary. We know when something must be changed in our lives, but all too often, the comfort of our habits and beliefs is somehow more appealing.

 Usually, we use the past as a reference, and settle into toxic routines and set ideas of self, which end up defining our future along the same old story lines.

Until one day…we break down.

When our whole world shatters despite our best efforts to maintain the status quo, we break down and lose it all: our sense of safety and the investments in the future we’ve made. We’ve protected ourselves, because change was never the plan. When this happens, we experience it as devastating. Each and every time, we fight, resist, and consume ourselves with changing others or outside circumstances instead of ourselves. Often, we pick ourselves up and manage to get back on the horse—sometimes with new eyes and a fresh attitude, other times with the exact same blindfolded vision.

If life still feels to you like a never-ending series of breakdowns, pains and dramas, you have not awakened to the miracle of brokenness.

You have not yet risen into the light that ultimately brings permanent peace and sets you free.

Moments of drastic change in our lives force us to immediately face ourselves. They throw into question all of the concepts we’ve tried to forge or preserve over the years, and shatter our expectations of the future and of others. We suddenly become powerless in the realm of a new, this-doesn’t-make-sense universe. We’re insignificant entities on the surface of a planet that continues to go around and always will, regardless. The motion of life carries on, and we can’t do anything about it, even though we want it all to stop so we can grieve in peace, with universal acknowledgement of our pain and signs of salvation popping up everywhere. They don’t always appear when you need them. You may be so overwhelmed that you can’t see the signs. In these shattering moments, though, there is hope: from the most unexpected place, salvation comes. That place is brokenness.

When you are broken, lying there in pieces on your bed or your bedroom floor, you actually have a rare opportunity to see things as they really are. You can see that you have spent your life feeding an illusion or avoiding reality. Everything eventually ends, and we do not get to decide when.

All that has a beginning, by necessity, must end. The very nature of life, of existence, of the manifested world IS change.

 

Life cannot exist without change

Your happiness and beautiful experiences would never have been available to you had you not experienced change in the first place.

Change and destruction allow the flow of life’s energy to maintain itself. They are the drive of creation, and the universe is constantly renewing, creating and breaking what is, just to allow new possibilities and opportunities to arise: within ourselves, the choices we make, the types of relationships we choose, daily habits, new facets of ourselves, and, ultimately, how we decide to bounce back again.

If you are drowning in profound grief, inevitable questions emerge. Who am I? How can I move forward? You’re searching for answers because you desperately need to know who and how.

Actually, the answer is right there, immediately available to you as soon as crisis knocks you down.

You are no one. No one in the world of form and impermanence, where everything vanishes at some point—even the idea of ‘I’ and whatever we have made of it.

When your reality is destroyed, nothing is truly lost but your illusion of self.

The notion of a separated, individual self, defined essentially by physical aspects, achievements, personal history and an imagined or well-planned future, inevitably crashes and shows its true, ephemeral nature.

 On a universal level, whenever you are in the flux of change, you are flowing with the essence of life.

On a universal level, whenever you are in the flux of change, you are flowing with the essence of life. You become part of its energy and subject to it at the same time.

Flowing with change, rather than resisting, is the wisest thing you can do. When you flow with it, your imaginary pain vanishes. When you are embracing change, you realize that beyond your problems, beyond your perceived world of gain and loss, your formless essence is pure, permanent life energy.

Interestingly enough, in Hindu Mythology, Shiva, the God of Destruction, works on equal footing with Brahma, God of Creation, and Vishnu, God of Protection. The three represent the most important deities in Hinduism. 

Shiva is venerated for bringing insight into our blind attachments, overindulgent habits, and the wants and illusions of the ego. Shiva destroys the ego, which represents false identification with form (or the manifested world) and reminds us to live fully in the present moment.

Live the moment to the fullest, and let it all go the minute after. In this way, every moment offers a fresh start, a new richness and intensity without the entrapment of delusions.

SHIVA, the God of Destruction, an archetype of inspiration

Brokenness can be seen as a blessing. It acts as an incredibly powerful moment when we can start all over again, but this time completely afresh, freed, and more alive than ever before. Ultimately, grief and loss are necessary; and this must be known to appreciate the value and meaning of love, of others, and the beauty of the present moment.

Suffering also becomes an extraordinary chance to understand others, empathize with their pain and come closer to the meaning of love and tolerance. One gains the chance to show solidarity and become community-orientated rather than self-absorbed with existential problems.

In your brokenness, when you cultivate empathy for others, you become able to connect meaningfully and deeply, while at the same time mitigating the effects of isolation.

We all experience grief and loss, and everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. As you open your heart beyond your grief and shattered self, your pain may seem very small compared with what others may be going through.

Brokenness humbles you, and turns you in the direction you truly belong: toward others. The same essential emotions and life energy flow through everything that is.

Conclusion

In conclusion, brokenness comes with many gifts and valuable wake-up calls. It gives us a chance to reassess our values, priorities, attachment styles, and mistakes, and see more clearly what truly matters. It points out our toxic habits, relationships, and detrimental or addictive activities—essentially, all that needs to be let go of because it has drawn us into something, we never really wanted in the first place.

How to sublimate your emotional pain and set yourself free from Ego

As much as suffering can be a blessing, unfortunately, like anything else, it is also temporary. I say unfortunately, yes. You read me well… and it doesn’t mean I am a masochist.

In fact, what I mean is that once the state of brokenness and vulnerability is far behind us, we run the risk of falling back into the old traps, picking up the same habits and making similar mistakes all over again. We may become ungrateful, complain, or get attached to the wrong people.

Human beings are not good learners—we all know that. We can hit the same wall a hundred times, yet we stand up and run right back toward it.

We are extraordinarily self-sabotaging creatures by nature. Even when we want change badly and strive to break old habits – bang! We are back to them in no time.

Are we masochists? In essence, no; but in the ego’s terms, yes. We are ruled by our unconscious (the ego) and our past wounds, and tend to re-enact the same old dramas in a desperate attempt to resolve and confront them. This, of course, is completely inappropriate, and irrelevant to the present. The ego is schizophrenic, a very proud ‘bastard’ obsessed with fixing that which no longer exists, i.e., the past.

We successfully pick ourselves up, and after a while, just as we begin to find joy and balance in life again, the gains and insights of our shattering moments—the promises we made to ourselves—mysteriously evaporate. We reach a point when we badly miss these first, insightful moments of our good resolutions.

Here’s a trick to avoid the ego’s trap of unnecessary suffering:

Never go back to ‘whole’ again.

Just stay broken.

And love, truly love, your brokenness.

Travel though life broken.

Exist in a permanent state of brokenness; not the weak, helpless, or frightened kind of broken, but the open-hearted, humble and vulnerable kind.

Never seal a wound that has been opened. Instead, leave it half-open as a reminder of what truly matters to you, of what you need and strive for in life, as a crack across your heart left exposed to maintain a deep connection to your true self and authentic relationship with others.

Leave the cracks of brokenness wide open, so the wind and light can come in and clean away the dirt the ego always gathers around your beautiful, glowing self.

Whenever pain becomes unbearable, strangling your heart and wrecking your body, it may be just a random thought that is generating fear and worry or a sudden state of panic and angst. Just surrender to it, each and every time.

 Surrender completely, religiously, confidently and gratefully. Kneel in front of Shiva and thank him for the terrifying feeling you are going through…really thank him, and acknowledge your ‘nothingness’ in the manifested world and its greatness in the realm of the infinite Universe. Hand your ego over to him generously, with wide-open palms, and I can assure you, he will create the miracle for you. He will listen, and set you free.

All you need to do is let the feeling come to you for a few seconds, wreck you up, overwhelm you, and shiver through your entire body. Let it see that there is nothing within you to destroy any further. Your heart is already broken, but your core essence, your lively spirit, is indestructible.

Know the following: you WILL survive. In seconds, and I mean just a few seconds, you will be set free. When you let a wound open, when you invite it to flow through your whole body, you are about to sublimate your ego, your bodily pain, your inner enemy—whatever has been keeping you in fear, terror and ongoing distress.

Know, then, as you surrender completely, willingly, and physically to the feeling, that you’re about to defeat it permanently, and you will soon embrace lasting peace.

 

Why self awareness vital for growth

As a baby you and I were born with what behavioral psychologists call: a tabula rasa. Tabula rasa means blank slate in Latin and refers to the absence of build-in mental content at one’s birth. Any knowledge is thus achieved only through experience and perception, although neurobiologists point out that there is a pre-programed mental structure to receive and organize information, which is naturally genetically pre-determined. 

Nevertheless we are born with no consciousness, no judgement abilities, no critical sense and no objective observation abilities. Unless learnt, the latter are unlikely to develop through one’s life time, remaining thus subject to their mind pre-conditioning.

During our growing-up process, as a result of this pre-conditioning, but also in order to survive, we have incorporated automatisms, habits, beliefs and defense mechanisms, to protect ourselves, and respond to potentially harming situations. These habits have remained strongly embedded in us and continue to be blindly enacted during adulthood (when the false-self or the Ego is at work).

Although, in the early days, these mechanisms had an effective and specific function, today, for the most part, they serve no purpose: at best we stagnate (by repeating the same drill, same habits, same defense mechanisms and going nowhere), at worse, we destruct ourselves (and others) by getting sabotaged by unwatched and unquestioned automatisms (behaviours, beliefs, feelings) as they distort the reality of the present moment and lead us to inappropriate behaviors.

Watch yourself and assess what habits/automatisms serve you today and what no longer doesn’t. If you decide to keep the old habits and thinking patterns, then bravely take responsibility for the life you are leading, for the choice you make each day and simply deal with the consequences..

‘Everything in your life is the result of a choice you have made. If you want a different result, then make a different choice.’

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, it is wise not to blame anyone; change and life are truly up to us. We may not have been able to choose in what family/social/cultural configuration we have fallen in, but we always choose the manner in which we live our lives and what we do with the presenting circumstances. Stay mindful, stay self-aware.

Watch your thoughts, change your life. Heard of it?

Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy (CBT), the most applied theoretical model in the mental health sector, teaches clients to become mentally strong, realistic and balanced by staying alert to negative thought patterns, using focused attention to challenge and combat them. 

Many clients introduced to CBT, however, are likely to receive directions, homework, worksheets and techniques that are particularly demanding, both mentally and emotionally. I have personally found, in my practice, that the nature of the cognitive tasks involved creates (in addition to homework non-compliance and other difficulties) a further draining effect upon already-saturated and emotionally overwhelmed minds.

In real life, most emotional reactions take place far too quickly to respond intentionally, even when we are taught or trained to ‘break it down’ and search ahead of time for the trigger. Observation and intentional control of thoughts can be hard to apply in the practical sense. Automatic thoughts are particularly hard to stop, catch and identify.

Basically, most emotional outbursts are deeply anchored in a raw body/pain reaction. It is my firm conviction that real change can only happen on an experiential (physical and emotional) level, not on a mental level.

The focus must shift from the mind to the body.

You don’t need to fight, change, or examine your mind to improve the quality of its content; rather, you need to attend to your body, and be present within. If you neglect your body on a daily basis and practice bad life hygiene, you can forget about gaining mental strength, achieving your goals, excelling, or staying strong.

Everything will catch up with you eventually. Everything. The boss is not the mind; it is the body, and you need to listen to it. When you empower your body by responding to its needs, the bullying mind loses its power, and finally listens to YOU.

When you empower your body, YOU gain full power and control.

 

How To Strengthen Your Body & Health & Immune System

To gain a better Health and allow your Body to be Your Doctor, first and foremost, you need to choose to make your body’s well-being your number-one, non-negotiable life priority. Because real mental strength comes from a healthy body. Your body is a sophisticated machine that evolved over thousands of years and was able to cope (if you are still here, obviously) with the worse sanitary challenges, climate changes and various diseases, it has all the tools embedded. Your job? to empower it with all that it needs and more particularly to listen to your body, so you know what it truly requires.

Here are the basics (too often dismissed, yet absolutely crucial):

1.   Fresh Air

Your body needs air—as in oxygen. Do you think because you breathe daily, that is sufficient? It isn’t. Most of the time, your natural breaths are shallow and incomplete. They oxygenate only a very small part of your body—not your entire self. The natural breathing of a typical Westerner is nothing more than puffing air: ‘spitting’ air out, and catching the breath right back. The oxygen is not going lower than your upper chest. Correct breathing involves going through your nose, past your chest and diaphragm, all way down to your stomach (filling it as much as possible) and all the way up through your mouth, evacuating all of the air like a self-deflating balloon.

Your body desperately needs clean air. Your internal organs do not normally receive the necessary oxygen to release their maximum potential. They are just surviving—in agony. Sickness is often (if not always) caused by blocked energy somewhere in your body. Sooner or later, you’ll pay the price of mental or physical illness from a lack of proper oxygenation. You must take regular, deep, controlled and unforced breaths, releasing internal tension, blocked energy, and toxicity. Massage your internal organs with incoming oxygen, and relax them with exhalation. Keep track of every stage of your breathing. Exhaling eliminates used, dirty air. Inhaling brings in vital life force. You breathe in LIFE, and breathe out DEATH.

Most of the time, you do not fully exhale what is killing you inside, and therefore cannot give yourself what you need to stay alive. In Sanskrit, breath (prâna) means life. Without breath, there is NO LIFE; and without conscious breathing, you have no conscious life.

Visualise your inhalations as healing forces, and your exhalations as letting go of what you no longer need or want in your mind and body. This, in reality, is the biological function of breathing: inhaling what you need (oxygen) and exhaling what you don’t (CO2). You can use your breath for psychological purposes, as well. Breathe in the strength you need, and breathe out what’s causing tension, grief and fear. Absorb what is necessary; discard what it isn’t. Make it a lifestyle rather than an occasional practice (yoga class, for example). 

From personal experience and yoga practice, I urge you to do this:

Whenever you feel sick, in great pain or about to faint—BREATHE. DEEPLY AND SLOWLY. All your internal organs need is oxygen—nothing else. Your body is already a cutting-edge technology that has everything it needs to survive. You have evolved into a masterpiece, able to regulate yourself and adjust under the most extreme conditions. Your body is capable of amazing recovery in almost all types of physically and mentally stressful situations, so just give it what it really needs: calm, focused and controlled oxygenation. Speaking from personal experience, I have come instantly back to my senses in critical circumstances, just by applying complete and conscious breathing. That’s how miraculous and effective this practice is.

If you have a more serious or chronic physical condition, breathe through the pain. Locate the pain and oxygenate it. Do not resist, battle against or tense up around your pain area. I know you may not be used to or comfortable with this, because you may have unconsciously picked up the habit of tensing in an attempt to control and isolate the pain from spreading further in your body. This automatic reflex, however, is unhelpful to your body, as the pain cannot heal in muscular tension or without receiving much-needed oxygen. Your organs must be relaxed and oxygenated to mobilise themselves for healing. Therefore, work always with your body—never against it.

2. Water

Your body needs water. Lots of it. Much more then you’re giving it. Your brain is composed of 75% of water; your body 70%. If you don’t fuel the machine, how can you expect to drive it? Three litres per day is the ideal target amount.

3. Healthy foods

Exclude from your diet junks foods and anything that is not organic and fresh. Not preferably…imperatively! Exclude processed foods, and anything that was originally plastic-wrapped. If you eat the same thing every day, expect nothing but deficiencies, starvation from lack of vital nutrients, and a slowing-down of your physical functions (at best) or sickness (at worse). Variety and balance are key.

How you eat is just as important as ingredients. Eating fast is a big downer, even if you eat in a perfectly healthy way. Your metabolism must have time to assimilate. Eating slowly also allows you to appreciate the value of food, to notice the effect it has on your body (if it’s good for you or not) and to awaken your senses. Eating must be a religiously mindful practice; an act filled with respect and gratitude. Stop eating when you feel full. Know when this happens (you would be surprised how many people can’t read their body limits). Eating slowly also prevents unintended weight gain.

Eat only when you are hungry, and don’t diet—just listen to your body. It will self-regulate, and bring you naturally to your normal weight, even if you have slipped outside your biological set-point. Three positive or negative point fluctuations within your healthy weight range are, however, normal. Start valuing your food, and be very cautious about what you put into your body. Quit toxic substances (alcohol, cigarettes, medications and other drugs) and empower your body to become independent of doctors and prescribed medication.

***Natural Foods are Your Best Medicine***

4. Sleeps and laughs

‘A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures for anything’. (Irish proverb)

Sleep is a crucial part of your basic functioning. Avoid sacrificing your sleep to achieve things that won’t buy your health back once you’ve attained them. Drugging yourself on coffee and high-caffeine ‘energy’ drinks[CL1]  is not empowering your health, it’s ruining it. Both are diuretics capable of seriously dehydrating your body. The more time you spend outdoors, in the fresh air and away from the radiation of electronic devices (computers, smartphones, TV) the better your sleep quality will be. You mind needs to wind down without exposure to electronics at least a couple of hours before sleep time. Go for a walk after work—with your kids, your dog, your friends, or just alone. Breathe deeply and slowly in your bed, repetitively, riding and counting your breaths. Take refuge inside your body and listen to the melody of the breath.

If you stay long enough inside your body, cleaning it persistently with your breath, the space of this sacred inner place will make you fall asleep.

5. Physical exercise

Your body is built to be active and to move. It’s a no brainer. When you exercise, you cause your body to move the energy from your mind down to other areas, vitalizing and empowering your body as a whole. You are strictly not a sedentary creature. You must implement daily, for 30 minutes at the very least, some form of exercise such as running, swimming, dancing or stretching—whatever. Moving and exercising also allows you to eliminate toxins and unlock the energy stuck in key parts of your body. Walking back and forth in your office does not count as exercise. Physical exercise must reach the stage where your mental activity dissolves completely and your body awakens. If you feel more present in your body than in your mind, you are doing it right. For hyperactive or compulsive over-thinkers, intense, sweat-producing exercise is a daily must.

Conclusion

Consider these simple body empowerment principles as vital; not only to cleanse your body to the fullest, but also to clean your mind. As you become increasingly clean within, you become able to notice much more easily, and much earlier, the number-one troublemakers and anxiety-provoking factors: your automatic thoughts. These are your main fear and illness generators. Fast identification of negative automatic thoughts enables more effective control. After exercise, you will observe the effects of these intruders on your general health as soon as they want to sneak back in. You will then realise how they disrupt your well-being and your inner peace–in your body—.

Final word and conclusion: the mind-body-spirit relationship can never be neglected and medical approaches must consider the body as a whole just like psychologists and psychiatrists must approach the mind assessed holistically and not in isolation. Without a full assessment of the life quality involving physical health, nutrition and the quality of the environment where one lives, important holistic elements, can be missed, and when this happens there is a serious impediment to change, resilience and therapeutic outcome. Therefore, a GREAT start is to empower your own body and spirit, learn how it functions & what it needs, before turning to professionals and delegating your own health into the hands of mainstream/chemical/invasive medicine – often more damaging to our overall health than not.

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