My perfectly imperfect journey of transformation began with a knock on the head. We never knew exactly what happened before waking up in a French hospital. “You hit a tree head on,” they told us. “You were knocked unconscious.”
At first, I felt terribly annoyed that my body ached all over when I was starting my ten-day vacation to France, Spain, and Italy. Locating someone in Spain to remove the stitches from my head felt like a huge inconvenience.
The gravity of my situation struck me abruptly once I got back to my French apartment. A letter from my mother included an obituary of a high school friend who had died in a small plane crash. Suddenly, my thinking turned upside down. “I am so lucky to be here. We could have been killed.”
This event at the ripe age of twenty changed me forever. The knock on the head made me see things in a new way. I felt as though I had been given another life. After working through a layer of shock, I began asking big picture questions: Why am I still here? What is it that I am supposed to do with this life I have been given? I started listening for the answers within. As I listened to my inner wisdom, I began a transformational journey to balance body, emotions, mind, and spirit.
Maybe you, too, have come to a turning point in your life of asking what you\’re here to do. Maybe your anxiety and stress are pushing you to look within. Maybe you\’re starting your journey now. Hopefully, it won’t take a smack on the head to knock some sense into you.
If you’re feeling a call to do something more with your life, but you’re not sure what that is, I can help. Check out my online programs. https://leahskurdal.com/events/
Body Awareness Around Food
My journey to serenity started with body awareness. For a number of years, I ate compulsively. When I felt lonely or anxious, I would snack my way around the kitchen, never feeling full or satisfied. Have you ever refilled your plate several times with desserts like I used to do? In my twenties, I weighed as much as when I was nine months pregnant in my forties.
A nasty candida yeast imbalance made me come to terms with my sugar addiction. I got rid of the bowl of M&Ms on the coffee table and the secret stash of chocolate in my underwear drawer. As I cleaned out sugar from my diet, it dawned on me that I was stuffing my mouth when I felt anxious and ungrounded. I began making conscious choices. I started to honor food and honor my body. Rather than eat compulsively, I chose to pause, breathe, and nourish myself in other ways.
Emotional Awareness — Processing Anger
I raised my emotional intelligence on the journey of transformation as I learned to process emotions. Nothing in eighteen years of formal education had prepared me to be a stay-at-home mom. I was unprepared for the amount of love, joy, and contentment that I would feel in raising children. I was totally unprepared for how angry I would feel and the level of self-control and emotional mastery it takes to be with children. Thankfully, twenty years of my spiritual journey experiencing the Divine Within had given me many resources to renew my spirit when I needed it most.
“I want to go to work instead! You stay home!” I cried, one day, as my husband left for work.
I took a few deep breaths and sat down in the peace chair with both kids still hanging on me. “Mama needs some God time,” I told the kids. Focusing on my breathing for a couple minutes helped me feel more centered and calmer. Then, turning my awareness inward, I found the special connection to the Divine Within. Feeling connected to my source of power within, I felt renewed and able to deal with the demands of raising young children again.
Mindfulness – Toggle from Ego-Mind to Soul Awareness
As I listened more deeply to the wisdom within, I started toggling to that place of wisdom more quickly and efficiently. On your computer screen, you can toggle between two or more pages running at the same time. You can also toggle the screen of your awareness between thought and stillness. Your mind streams thoughts non-stop, usually without the light of your awareness. When you toggle between ego-mind awareness on the surface and Soul wisdom deep within, you find respite from the non-stop noise of your thinking. Focusing on the gap between thoughts, you connect to Soul and God the Infinite.
Spiritual Awareness – Putting it all together
Deeper awareness bubbled up from inside me like a well-spring. I wanted to know God. Not in an intellectual, thought-filled way. The very cells in my body were longing to know their connection to the Divine.
I felt I had met a kindred spirit when I read Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, Alter in the World. In it she wrote, “People are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God.”
My car accident opened a doorway for me to examine my life. Since then, I have studied how to live my life on purpose.
I am passionate about sharing skills to connect you to your innate well-being within that’s waiting to percolate to the surface. Here is a link to a free eight-minute guided meditation on my YouTube channel to help you connect to the Divine Within.
In Part 3 of Seeking Serenity: How to Find Your Inner Calm and Joy, I will share practical body awareness tools from Chapter 5: Your Inner Healer. We will take a look at how you can strengthen your immune system from the inside.
Connect with Leah Skurdal on The Wellness Universe & Walk Away Feeling Better!
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Leah Skurdal guides people to up-level their stress resilience to improve relationships. Leah shares intuitive insights in private Energy Healing to address the roots of disharmony. As an inspirational speaker and published author, Leah offers lively classes, experiential workshops, and keynotes.
