Winter 2024
Greetings from Faiz Healing!
Within the Phoenix Teachings Newsletter you will find our seasonal reflections and offerings for how to align with healthy choices and create support for self-care in the body, heart, and mind.
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How is your practice for self-care going?
As we navigate the world and everyday routines, the call for more energy to feed the machine is continuous. Each designated “to do” or spontaneous agreement to fulfill the space of time requests that we initiate and express our vitality to meet the demand. How often do we stop and check in with our capacity to meet those demands? Like feeding gas to the vehicles that so often cart us around and money to the bank for the amenities we require, the tank of our vitality must be refilled.
Sleep brings restoration for some and appeases the want for stillness in the mind but does it really fill the zephyr of our vitality? Does it inspire and engage us to feel the dynamic sense of desire within to carry out our routines and stated commitments for work and play? The act of creating energy requires all aspects of our body, heart, mind, and spirit be present and contributing. Creating energy also requests a call to unity in all of these aspects of our being, in order to fully embrace the experience of life. Understanding how to recycle, restore, and recreate energy is equally essential for the perception of wholeness and contentment about one’s life.
All too often, we set our expectations for ourselves high and struggle to meet the demand. We say “Time is the Enemy” and fixate on the idea that there is never enough of it to give back to the things that fall in the category of healthy activities for self-care. Our routines dictate so much of our time that the only way to achieve the practice of a new habit is to put it into the routine. Life is a practice. It is important to remember that investing in healthy activities for self-care 10-20-30 minutes a day (or more) is like the warm-up stretch before a work-out, fueling our bellies with nourishment to give us endurance for our tasks in the day, or taking a shower after a long day before getting into our clean bed to rest. You may not think much about these parts of your routine anymore because they have become so normalized but they are in fact an aspect of self-care that you negotiate time for. The question is what would support you most at this time with respect to your goals in daily life? How can you carve out time from your routines or share your self-care interests with your children and/or partner to ensure it doesn’t constantly get deferred?
It can be stressful adding something new to your routine to affect your lifestyle and experience of self. That’s why we must be willing to negotiate at the front end of our plan to build it into our routine. Start with figuring out where in your day you can take 10-20 minutes or more for this self-care practice. Consider how many days a week it feels realistic that you can take that time. Once you have decided, put it in your calendar or phone notifications as a reminder to take that time for you. And when you get caught up in demotivating thoughts for how to build in self-care for the sake of time, take a moment to assess how much you value yourself and what that investment means to your sense of mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health as a whole. Remember you already decided you needed this or wanted to see how it would benefit you over time through the practice of it. When unplanned events effect your plans, it is more common to need more self-care time to restore from the stress of breaking your routine and the energy required to work with the unplanned event which may prove challenging. The way to maintain balance in a life full of unplanned events and demanding routines is to honor the restoration and revitalizing activities that serve the well of creativity within you most!
“Get out of the box”, we say. Move beyond the confining rules of routine and conserving one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions that are dictated by the fear of not having enough or not getting it all done. Channel it in that sacred moment with self in nature or making art. When the invitation to play arises in the mind or the physical, let yourself be called into the lightness of the moment, even if just for a moment. Then, make a plan for when and how to access that opportunity to play, so your attention can be fully present. The art of self-care does not need to be defined as one way or with one medium. There is an abundance of forms in the art of self-care to be witnessed and learned from until one discovers what works best for them and they can change over time! Channel it into quiet time or meditation. Activate it in a new stretch or exercise routine in service to your body. Activate it in collaborative games or adventures with others. Let the pressure of projections to see what you create as “perfect” or exact fall away and remember the art of self-care is a part of achieving a fulfilling balance between the have to’s and the want to’s in life. It is a process, a give and take, that defines your experience of yourself, every day.
Mantra for Creativity and Self-Care
~ Recall the inner child when new experiences were just fun and exploratory. This is the origin of the higher mind and spirit, creating in our world with enthusiasm. That enthusiasm engages a reflective and inspiring cycle that paradoxically fulfills while initiating a flow through the process of achieving that awareness perpetually. Access the essential urge and flow into the heArt of wonder. ~
Collective Energy Shifts and The Chinese New Year
Elemental and Archetypal Change is coming to the background energies of our experiential lives as the Chinese New Year 2/10/24 is upon us! Releasing the undertow experience and patient waiting of our immersion in the Water Tiger and Water Rabbit years of 2022 and 2023, we now enter the Wood Dragon Year of 2024, followed by the Wood Snake in 2025.
The Wood Dragon is highly creative and judicious. It magnifies the charm of our imagination and balances a curious view of the details with a solution-oriented approach we felt were blurred out in the water years as we dug deep into our soulful awareness and emotional sensing or drifted away in our illusions/delusions in hope of escaping reality. The Wood Dragon archetype grounds in with solidarity and reminds us to align our words and our actions to safeguard our integrity with self and others. It reveals the necessary contemplation of trade-offs in our choices and promises abundance through the willpower to grow and adapt in an ever-changing environment.
We are stepping away from the focus on quiet observations to prove our skills in bringing what has been hidden out into the light of ourselves and our world with the option to transform and empower new ways of being that are aligned in the now. Wood Dragon years are marked by enjoyment, artistic and aesthetic exploration, balancing the budget of material and non-material nourishment, and aligning with natural world in order to thrive.
The Wood element is also correlated with revolutionary times, emotional accounting, big movements of energy and opportunity as well as a necessary command of intention that brings synchrony to the rhythmic machine of our bodies, our lives, and our world. The next two years will be a great time to invest in you and in your endeavors to create by expanding self-awareness, intention, and resilience from the root up!
New Publication Announcement!!
I am excited to be publishing the 2nd Volume to my book series “The Weighted Feather: Essays for Mindfulness & Alchemical Living” as well as a companion journal for introspection “The Journey of the Weighted Feather: A Workbook for Alchemical Living”
to be released April 2024!
You can purchase a copy of “The Weighted Feather Volume 1” in my Bookstore
or peek inside at Amazon.com!
For 20 years, Faiz Healing has offered a diverse form of healing and personal growth by creating a sanctuary for patients to focus inwardly on their body, mind, and spirit. Chinese Medicine, Therapeutic bodywork, and Spiritual counseling provide an invitation to relax and let go of the outside world and/or to work through deeper patterns of restraint held within. I am excited to announce that I am now offering monthly Healing Circles, Self-care Classes, and Family Constellation Group Healing Workshops!
STAY TUNED to the Phoenix Teachings Newsletter and Faiz Healing Facebook page for Event Dates and future offerings if you would like to experience the benefit of these opportunities to transform and learn more about your authentic self.
Upcoming Event Details!
Sunday Healing Circles:
A 1 hour experience focused on deepening our connection to self and cultivating tools for stress management. Topics and Exercises will be a flow of discussion, expanding self-awareness in the body, heart, and mind, as well as balancing the experience of the self with others and the collective.
$15 to attend. Time: 11:30am-12:30pm
3/24/2024: Learning about Energy Exchange and Cultivating Intention and Neutrality
5/05/2024: Building, Empowering, and Attuning the Energy Body through Qi Gong, Yoga, Pranayama Breathing, and Spiritual Freedom Tapping Techniques
Please Register and Pay in Advance!
Family Constellation Group Healing:
A 2-3 hour experience focused on healing patterns of conflict and trauma affecting one’s current life story. In this group facilitation attendees will represent concepts or roles in one’s experience and/or family system to reveal visual and somatic relationship dynamics that have imprinted one’ s perceptions of self and how they operate in life as supportive or detrimental factors to the endeavor for holistic fulfillment. This is a very powerful group experience that resonates in the emotional and spiritual body and ripples out into the lives of those who attend even if they do not have their own issue/conflict directly represented. The experience of group healing is profound in its ability to remind us all of the connection we share as humankind. Note: If you would like to come and be a witness or do not want to represent for another you are still welcome in the circle.
$40-$60 Donation is recommended. Time: 2pm-5pm
Upcoming Dates: 2/18/24 and 4/14/24
Please Register and Pay in Advance!
Contact Jewls via FaizHealing@aol.com or 503-936-0036
Self-Care Classes & Emotional Intelligence Workshop Series Coming in Autumn 2024!
