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Your mind and body are inherently and completely connected.
What do I mean by this? The mind-body connection is powerful and reciprocal, meaning that your emotional and mental health impacts your physical health, and your physical health impacts your mental and emotional health.
They are entirely interdependent, so if you support one, you’re also supporting the other. Conversely, if you impede or damage one, you’re also damaging the other.
So what does this mean for you? And what can you do with this knowledge to encourage your own self-healing? How can you heal yourself emotionally?
This connection between the mind and body means you actually hold a lot more power than you may realize.
While you probably already know how important diet and exercise are in supporting your health, we often neglect the health of our minds, and thus compromise our bodies’ health in ways that diet and exercise cannot make up for.
Read this for tips on how to stay active even when you’re insanely busy.
So if you’re ready to take a more holistic approach to your overall health and wish to promote your own self-healing and inner peace, use these simple techniques.
6 Self-Healing Exercises that Promote Wellness and Inner Peace
1. Journal. While journaling your thoughts and feelings has a number of benefits that I’ve written about before, it’s also a powerful tool for self-healing. When you write and transfer your thoughts from mind to paper, you’re able to explore your emotional, physical, and spiritual selves, which helps you to not only identify what exactly is holding you back, but also encourages you to move forward past these challenges. In this way, journaling raises your own self-awareness and helps you to keep a healthier perspective amidst challenges.
2. Make gratitude a way of life. It’s one thing to show appreciation towards certain things in life and to use your manners, but it’s another to make gratitude a way of life, and to give thanks for all you’ve been blessed with. Studies have shown that people who practice gratitude experience greater emotional well-being and physical health than those who do not. Additionally, those who make gratitude a habit show enhanced levels of optimism, feel stronger when they’re challenged, and experience far fewer symptoms of stress, all which work in tandem to promote self-healing and inner peace.
3. Know what you can and cannot control. Often when we’re struggling, we tend to take on more than we should, meaning we may make others’ problems our own. The world will always have problems, and there is only so much you can do to fix them. Rather than trying to fix everything that’s broken and focusing on what you have no control over, focus on what you do have control over. For example, you may not have any control as to whether your company decides to lay you off, but you do have the power to exert control over what you make of the situation. Making an effort to attend more networking events, or to update your resume, or to schedule informational interviews are all things that you do have control over, but you have to choose to focus on your side of the equation.
4. Monitor your self-talk. How you talk to yourself can make all the difference in whether you promote or impede your own self-healing. For this self-healing exercise, listen to your inner dialogue. Are you holding yourself back with negative criticisms? Or are you encouraging yourself to keep pushing? To keep trying? Be your own advocate and cheerleader when it comes to grappling with challenges. The only person that can push you forward (or hold you back) is you. While this may be a more difficult habit to form, it’s one of the most valuable self-healing practices.
5. Meditate. Meditation is a remarkably powerful practice when it comes to self-healing and bringing inner peace. Why? Meditation increases your tolerance to negative or stressful events with its component of mindfulness. This means that you’re able to keep things in perspective, no matter how serious or difficult a situation is. Additionally, meditation focuses on cultivating compassion not just toward others, but also towards yourself. Practicing compassion is key to encouraging self-healing, ultimately because you teach yourself to show kindness towards yourself, and to embrace both your strengths and weaknesses.
6. Visualize. One of the best self-healing exercises is a simple technique involving visualization. Visualizing and positive thinking go hand in hand. In fact, did you know that positive thinkers are more likely to experience better health and even live longer than those who don’t think positively? Visualizing happy memories, events, experiences, and even outcomes has the power to alter your brain’s chemistry for the better. So instead of focusing on your past or present hurts and sufferings, visualize where you want to be, and cling to that vision as if your life depends on it. With time and practice, you’ll find that visualizing promotes not only self-healing, but also creates a brighter future filled with rewarding opportunities. Now that’s something to definitely look forward to.
