Lesson 1 -- IMPORTANT: This version of your lesson is for saving or printing only. Please access links from within your Online Classroom.

INSTRUCTIONS:

• To print this page, wait for the page to fully load. Once the document is ready to print, simply click your browser's File menu and choose Print.
• To save this page, click your browser's File menu and choose Save As. Select a disk drive and folder to receive the file, and change the name of the file to less1.htm. To view the file while you are offline, just go to the drive and folder you selected when you saved the file and double-click the file named less1.htm. Your browser will start and you will have access to the file.

Healing Ourselves
Lesson 1
Connecting with our Inner Healer
Chapter 1: Creating a Healing Time and Space

This first lesson looks at how we can re-organize our lives to create the time we need and an energy space that supports us in doing this process.

In this first lesson we will be :

• creating the time to connect with our Inner Healer and body's intuitive wisdom
• identifying and setting up a space where we feel comfortable enough to slow down and tune into our body's intuitive wisdom
• useing a journal to record these experiences
  
  

  Lets begin with a short questionaire around time allocation.

  Time allocation questionaire

  Date
  

  How much time do you have for yourself each week - time that you can spend alone doing an activity you love?
  

  
  

  How much time would you like to have for yourself each week?

  
  

  If you don't have enough time what out of the following areas take up most of your time?

  1. Doing things for others YES/NO
     If you answered yes to this question you could be looking at patterns of co-dependent behaviour that cause us to rely on a sense of "other-esteem"for others rather than a sense of "self-esteem" from within ourselves
     
     
     
     
  2. Work time YES/NO
     
     If you are spending a lot of time working and this is tied into generating money,is there any way you can simplify your life to reduce your living expenses so you can work less and have more time for yourself
     
     
     

  Most of us lead very busy, externally focused lives. The society we live in is very consumer orientated and profit driven. It constantly offers us new distractions, activities and externally orientated goals. Penelope Ody, an English herbalist and natural therapist in her book "Making Time For Me" compares this pressure to being trapped on a escalator of activity that we cannot get off. If we don't make a conscious effort to get off, we can easily become swept along in this tide of external activities to a point where we become exhausted, numbed out and disconnected from people and ourselves.
  To coin a popular phrase, we become "Human Doings" not "Human Beings". Doing is an activity, whereas being is an experience. It is an experience that we need, It offers us an opportunity to reconnect and develop a relationship with ourselves. Developing a better relationship with ourselves will be reflected in better relationships with people around us . It is the key to developing a sense of connection, meaning and a creative relationship to life.

  This lessons assignment is an exercise in creating the healing time and space that we need for ourselves and fitting this into our lives.
  If you would like to take this now enter here

  Chapter 2 - Keeping a Journal to Support Our Healing Process

  
  

  Keeping a journal is an prominent feature of this on-line course. During the course we will be using journal writing to examine an important part of our lives, our relationship with ourselves. We will be using journaling to :

  • explore any reasons for not allowing time for ourselves
  • explore our relationship with our Inner Healer
  • keep a dream log
  • communicate with parts of ourselves we have shut out and ignored

  Tools for writing
  There is no hard and fast rule about what you need to write.Here are some suggestions for what you may need:

  1. A notebook lined or unlined (if it is unlined this allows for diagrams and drawings as well). Alternately you can use an A4 file if you want to print out the sheets from the course and keep them as a record.
  2. Pens or pencils. Some people like to use a pen with colored ink. Others (myself included) like to use a pencil. You might also want to buy a penlight - useful if you wake up at night and want to write or record a dream.
  3. Additional options : a small notebook or post-it notes to carry in your bag or pocket to record fleeting thoughts and insights which often appear spontaneously at inconvenient times. They are important as they are on the fringe of consciousness and need to be caught before we lose them again. Log them into your notebook or onto a post-it note and transfer them to your journal later when you have time.

  How To Write

  Writing in a journal is not the same as writing a piece of literature. Journal writing is about self expression and it means about writing down everything. We need to feel safe to do this so you may want to keep your journal in a safe place where other people will not disturb or read it.
  Writing down everything and suspending criticism about what we write is very important. If you think of something that does not feel acceptable to write down, write that it does not feel acceptable. Then look at it and ask yourselves what are the feelings in me that make it feel unacceptable. We all have an inner critic that judges and censors our experience. This part of ourselves tends to screen out those things that do not seem perfect. But healing ourselves is not about being perfect. Often the things that we hesitate to put down on paper hold the key to transformation and change as they touch on the edge of our blind spots, those parts of ourselves that need to be noticed, acknowledged and healed.
  So when we write we need to try to write honestly, noting down every thing that comes into out mind. When you have finished writing re read what you have written, without judgment, without comparison and with a sense of oneness and ownership. If we can do this we can begin to examine our lives constructively, and as we do this we will develop more acceptance and understanding of ourselves.

  During this course you will be using journaling as a tool for exploring and recording your experience.
  Each lesson will have an exercise that involves writing in your journal. Throughout the course the appearance of this icon will indicate you nedd to write in your journal.
  For the first lesson we will be focusing on getting started. By doing the following exercise

  
  
  

  Throughout the course we will be indicating by this icon when you need to write in your journal.

  
  
  

  Chapter 3: Tools For Change - Journaling
  

  Keeping a Journal is a life skill. It is a tool that we can use to examine our life and from that examination begin to change and recreate it in a way that is more affirming and supportive of who we really are.
  The society we live in always encourages us to look outside of ourselves for answers to our problems. Yet all of us carry the answers to our life challanges withinus, in our bodies cellular memory and energy field.
  It is just that we need to make time and space to connect with these Inner Answers.Writing in a journal can give us this time. It can help us slow down, stop and make a space for ourselves. It leads us to look inwards and to contemplate our lives. It can give us the time we need to slow down and listen to ourselves.
  Initially doing this may feel a bit strange. We may feel a bit uncomfortable with no external activity to focus on. This is why journal writing can be very helpful here. Writing in a journal provides us with an external activity while at the same time records our inner feelings and intuitions It offers a bridge to a more focused way of being. Looking within and recording in a journal the thoughts and insights that come to us as we create a quiet time for ourselves has a sense of validity that reinforces our sense of who we are and what is true for us. Re-reading what we have written can create an inner "aha" and a sense of mental and emotional well-being. It can make us feel good about ourselves.
  Even if what we have written is sad or distressing writing it down gives us a sense of validation. At least someone is listening to us and we are being heard at last even if it is by ourselves.

  IMPORTANT: This version of your lesson is for saving or printing only. Please access links from within your Online Classroom.

  home lessons assignments

  Copyright 2001 by Mary Choo. All rights reserved.
  No reproduction or redistribution without written permission.