A Talk On The Healing Power Of Affirmations

Today,

Sharing with you the power of affirmations and changing your consciousness and also applying intentional positive self-talk.

For those of us who may not meditate regularly,

We don't realize how identified we are with our own thoughts.

The thoughts that go through our head,

We believe them.

We think them to be true.

We don't even doubt them.

They're often streaming there in the background all day long.

We have 80,

000 thoughts a day about that and the majority of those thoughts tend to be negative.

And of those thoughts,

A lot of those negative thoughts are projected back towards ourself and we might not realize it fully.

And what we also don't realize is that we've been trained to think certain thoughts and trained to think in a way that isn't really conducive to our health and our well-being.

So how does that work?

How do affirmations work?

What are we really getting to when we work with affirmations?

And first I'll just start with what an affirmation is.

It's what you want to affirm within your own consciousness.

So an example of that would be,

I am good.

I'm enough.

I'm whole.

I'm peace.

And there is a approach to meditation where you can focus on a single affirmation.

There are some meditation teachings that really focus on this approach specifically,

Which is using affirmations to change our consciousness.

And what meditation does is it gives us space from our own thinking thoughts.

It gives us a level of awareness and observation and neutrality with the way that we're thinking.

And eventually through practice we can begin to change the way we think and have more positive thought forms.

So I'm going to demonstrate with you now how our thoughts affect our energy,

How they affect our body,

And how they affect what we feel,

Even our emotions.

So I'd like to invite you,

Hopefully you're in a quiet space,

Where you can just feel safe and sitting and closing your eyes and turning your attention inward.

And what I invite you to do is to think about a really stressful,

Negative experience.

And just hold that in your mind.

Think about that negative,

Stressful experience that really brings you down.

And as you think about it,

I want you to start to pay attention to what you feel in your body.

Notice how you're holding yourself,

Maybe even your jaw.

And also notice your breath.

How are you breathing when you think about this really intense,

Negative experience?

Is it harder to breathe?

What are you noticing about your experience?

Perhaps you feel contracted.

And then let that go.

So that is a very specific way to approach what we go through when we ruminate over something negative or stressful.

And that was probably something that happened in the past.

So we're bringing the past forward into our present moment and we're replaying past events through our body and our energy.

And actually it's these toxic thoughts and feelings that can make us sick and cause dis-ease.

They can create pain,

They create tension,

They create contraction.

And it's sometimes hard for us to pull ourselves out of that.

We get addicted to negativity.

Our brain is actually wired for fear and negativity.

And the reason why our brain is built that way is for survival.

When we could anticipate bad things happening and anticipate threats in our past,

That was a way to survive.

So it develops a fear based brain.

But through meditation we can begin to change our brain and also change our consciousness.

So our conscious mind is at the tip of the triangle.

Beneath our conscious mind is the subconscious mind.

And then beneath the subconscious mind is our unconscious mind.

And for most of us we are attracting our experiences from our subconscious and our unconscious mind.

So you could say that we're attracting things to us based on our subconscious and our unconscious beliefs,

Past experiences,

And wounds.

This is why we might have a pattern in our life,

A painful pattern of perhaps the same kind of relationship,

The same kind of experience with money,

The same kind of experience with romantic partners over and over and over again.

It's like Groundhog Day because these experiences and relationships have been formed from a very young age,

From when we were developing,

From what we learned in our family,

Our parents,

Our peers,

Our teachers,

Educators.

All of this formed an impression and helped us formulate our unconscious and our subconscious beliefs.

And unfortunately for many,

Many of us we don't have access to that.

We don't know except for what we see externally in our experience.

So when we have an experience and we notice this pattern over and over,

Maybe it's a pattern with food,

With our body image,

With sex,

With money,

Whatever this pattern is,

It's showing us something about what we believe.

And oftentimes that is a limiting belief.

It's a belief that keeps us limited,

That keeps us attached or addicted to a certain way of being.

But how do we open that up?

How do we unravel that?

Meditation is a wonderful way.

If you think about that triangle up at the very top,

I want you to imagine a huge circle.

And that huge circle is our super consciousness.

You could call that our soul,

Our higher self,

God,

The universe,

The universal mind.

And we have access to this higher consciousness that's deeply healing.

And when we work at a deeper level,

Such as an affirmation,

And we say that affirmation over and over and over again,

So the way that you can start to determine this is to pinpoint the pain or trigger that you have.

So let's say you have a pain or trigger with relationships and maybe the deep-seated belief is I'm not enough or I'm not good.

And you would determine that belief based on what's happening in your relationship and start to focus in a proactive way the kind of thought or energy you want to have.

So we tend to default to our subconscious and our unconscious beliefs because we're not even aware that we have those beliefs.

In fact,

Some people say,

Oh yeah,

I know that I want love,

I know that I want abundance,

I know I want this.

And they say that from their conscious mind,

But their unconscious is not on board with that.

Their unconscious says,

I'm not worthy,

I don't deserve that,

I don't deserve to have what I want.

And that unconscious force is much stronger than the conscious mind,

But we can use the faculties of our conscious mind to change what we feel on our subconscious and unconscious levels.

So let me just refer back to my notes here.

Now how would you know that you need an affirmation and what affirmation would work well for you?

So when you can start to determine what the limiting belief is that causes the pain in your life experience.

So first it's finding what is that limiting belief?

What do you need to believe about yourself?

And again,

It might not be something you're fully aware of.

I want to make this known too that words don't mean anything except for the meaning that we ascribe to them.

So words and themselves have no meaning.

It's what we think they mean.

That's the impression or energy that we receive from language and from our thoughts.

So thoughts are things and they can create experiences and they're creating our experience all day long.

So whatever you're thinking,

That's what you're experiencing.

If you're thinking,

This is awful,

I can't believe this happened,

I can't believe so-and-so did that,

That's your experience.

It's streaming right into your body,

Right into your energy and your thoughts are either serving you or they're hurting you or maybe they're neutral.

But our thoughts are just symbols of energy.

So the key is to know what kind of thoughts or words you want to bring forward to create a healing effect.

Some of you might know Louise Hay.

Louise Hay was a visionary,

Amazing spiritual teacher.

She healed her life and herself from cancer with affirmations.

So think that certain thoughts and subconscious,

Unconscious beliefs that we have can actually create pain,

Tension,

And disease in our body.

You might not know what those unconscious beliefs are but they're sitting in your energy.

They're blocking some energy from not flowing for you and you're noticing that maybe in your body and in your outside life.

And Louise Hay grew up in a really unfortunate situation where she was molested.

She suffered from child abuse.

She grew up with really poor self-esteem and this manifested in her relationships with others and it wasn't until she got really really sick that she started tapping into the power of affirmations and the power of positive thinking and that actually healed her cancer naturally.

She never went and received chemotherapy or radiation.

She was able to heal herself through affirmations and a healthy diet.

So we're going to experiment a little bit with affirmations today and the way you know that you need an affirmation is that when you pinpoint the limiting belief that you're ascribing to,

Maybe it's I'm not enough,

And you start to say something like I'm good,

I am abundant.

So when you start to say the opposite of the limiting belief,

As soon as you say it,

You might feel resistance,

You might feel that's not true,

It feels false,

It doesn't feel real,

You might actually feel emotion.

Emotions such as crying or sadness,

Grief,

Where you have something deeper that starts to percolate up because you're saying this affirmation.

That's how you know that you need to really focus on that affirmation for your health.

So saying things like I attract healthy relationships,

I attract abundance,

I attract good things because I am a good person,

And saying those things,

What that starts to do from the conscious mind is that it begins to trickle in deeper into the subconscious and the unconscious.

And a really good time to practice these affirmations and what I suggest is practicing 20 minutes a day and you can start with just five minutes and work your way up to 10 minutes and then 20 minutes.

And it does get kind of repetitive,

Right?

Like you say an affirmation over and over and over again,

I'm good enough,

I'm abundant,

I'm whole,

I'm complete.

Normally you would say the same thing over and over again,

I am complete,

I am complete,

I am complete,

I am complete.

And you would focus on that while gently relaxing your own inner focus,

Your body,

And your energy because the more that you're relaxed,

The more receptive you become and those words,

Those imprints can set in deeper into your consciousness.

Another good time to practice these affirmations is right before you go to sleep.

I would suggest this when you wake up,

Just in that time between waking up in the morning and becoming fully awake and also right before you go to sleep as you start to drift off to sleep because it's in that in-between state that the veils to our consciousness become more open.

That's a state where we lucid dream and we become highly receptive,

So that's also a good time to be practicing your affirmations.

Another thing that I highly suggest that I practice,

It's a method that I developed,

Is intentional positive self-talk,

Which is oftentimes when we're really identified to the voice in our head,

Our voice is for most people pretty self-perating.

It can be,

Oh you said that,

You did that,

I can't believe that,

Or maybe there's emotions in the background like I'm afraid I'm not doing this good enough,

Or I don't know if I can really make this happen,

And there's constant feelings in the background of self-doubt or lack of self-worth,

And those feelings are again they're not all in the conscious mind,

They're kind of happening in the background,

And they can even happen in our meditation practice,

Like I don't know if I'm meditating right,

I suck at meditation,

I don't feel like meditating right now because I don't know if I'm gonna do it good,

You know there's all these kind of self-deprecating thoughts and feelings that we can have,

Even about our spiritual practice which is really intended to bolster us and make us stronger and and brighter,

So what you would do with positive self-talk is that you would intentionally speak to yourself with positive energy,

So if you start having these self-deprecating thoughts you'll think,

Of course,

Of course I can meditate well,

Of course I can do this,

You're awesome at this,

You do it,

I do it so well,

And you could say either I or you,

However you want to refer to yourself,

But you are intentionally implanting and talking to yourself in a positive way throughout parts of your day,

And especially when you find yourself becoming more negative or something of a Debbie Downer,

You're going to change your thoughts,

And first you're going to start by changing your thoughts towards yourself,

But then you'll extend the practice to change your thoughts about other people,

And really the thoughts we have about other people,

Those thoughts affect us directly as well,

We might think that we can have a negative thought about somebody else and that that has to do with the other person,

But really we are running that thought and that negativity through ourselves,

So to become highly aware of our way of thinking and how we're feeling is instrumental to changing your consciousness,

Including your unconscious and your subconscious beliefs.

So I'm going to end with a little practice with affirmations,

And again the key is to focus on just a few positive affirmations,

You don't need to have a lot,

You don't need to have 20,

If you have two or three at a time,

Work on those two and three,

Two or three affirmations,

And you can even say your affirmations throughout your day,

You don't have to be in a state of meditation,

If you're washing the dishes you can say over and over,

I am good,

I am whole,

I am abundant,

I am complete,

I mean if you're gonna have thoughts they might as well be positive ones with positive imprints,

And not just that,

Every time you have these positive thoughts you send that energy out into your family,

The people who are around you,

Your community,

You send that energy out into the collective consciousness.

So having those few positive affirmations,

What I also recommend is writing them down,

Write them down on a note card or a post-it note and put it somewhere where you can see it every single day,

At least for 21 days,

If not longer,

Until you feel that it's become an inherent part of yourself.

What I also recommend is writing it in your journal over and over again at least nine times a day per affirmation,

So if you want to really develop something like self-love,

I love myself completely and deeply,

And you write that over and over again nine times in your journal,

You'll notice even the way it feels as you write it down,

It becomes more and more believable,

And the way that you know that your affirmation is working,

And this is another key,

Is that you start to feel it in your body,

You can actually feel affirmations,

Especially if you're a strong meditator or if you are sensitive to energy,

You're going to feel the energy of the affirmation every time you speak it,

So I want you now to think about just one positive affirmation for yourself.

You could say why don't we practice one together,

If you don't have one,

Practice I am love,

I am love,

And we're going to practice it together just for a minute,

Where you turn your attention inward and say to yourself I am love,

And you can say I am pure love,

Or I am divine love,

Something that really resonates with you,

And as you repeat that to yourself,

Begin to notice what you feel in your heart,

Your body,

And your breath.

I am pure love.

I am pure love.

I am pure love.

And what do you notice about the flow of energy that's moving through you?

Perhaps you feel more open,

Calm,

Centered,

So really pay attention to that,

And this is how affirmations work,

The more you practice them,

The more they create imprints,

Positive imprints,

In your unconscious and your subconscious mind.

A meditation is not just about emptying your mind,

You will always have thoughts,

But if you're going to have thoughts,

They might as well be positive thoughts that serve you and serve others,

Positive thoughts that are healthy and create healthy relationships.

So this is how we can start to use our thoughts and our affirmations like creative tools,

Creative tools that can transform and shift our own consciousness and make us more open to love,

To energy,

And to abundance.

Let's close with a little,

Some affirmations.

And I chose some affirmations that are very common for humanity.

What I find as being a coach for a decade is that the beliefs that people really believe in,

And this is anywhere from somebody who,

And you could take anybody from any walk of life,

Whether they're homeless or really wealthy and famous,

There is a common thread for much of humanity,

Which is,

I'm not enough.

And there's also a deep-seated fear that I'm bad or I'm not good,

And that people are going to find out that I'm not good.

And because I'm not good,

I can't do this and I'm not unable to do that,

And I have a lot of self-doubt,

And I'm not willing to take risks or try new things because I'm not good.

So I think that's a very core belief that people work with is,

I'm not good or I'm not good enough.

So we're gonna end with these affirmations I've put together for just a few minutes,

And the affirmations are,

I'm enough,

I'm abundant,

I'm whole,

And I'm complete.

I'm complete.

So wherever you are,

Find a comfortable seat,

And David says,

If you grew up as a child and you are going to amount to nothing and you were told that,

That would destroy your soul and self-esteem.

So he asked,

Does it take a while to use affirmation to have a shift in your life?

Yes,

It does take a while,

David.

To really answer your question,

I think that depending on the level of what you could say abuse or mistreatment,

The number of years that you had to experience that or endure that,

That could mean,

It doesn't necessarily mean that it equates to now you have to do that much more work,

But it can take longer because those beliefs are more ingrained within your unconscious or your subconscious.

So it's important that you have patience with yourself and let these affirmations take time to work,

And there are some affirmations you can come back to for years because,

This is what I think,

Our society has set us up for not enough.

Our society constantly feeds to us all the time.

You need more,

You need more,

You need more,

And because we're constantly thinking that we need more because we're not enough,

We're always in the state of grasping.

You know,

There's never a feeling of just being really settled and centered.

Our media and everything in our society tells us that we need more and that more is better and more and more and more is good.

And so when we're always being thrust out of our center because we're having to get more and achieve more,

Do more and produce more,

It causes us a level of suffering and it doesn't allow us to really have peace when you're constantly striving and constantly grasping,

Especially in the Western countries.

So I think that it is important to keep affirming what we want to be affirming within ourselves because that,

Those kind of beliefs can really throw us out of the balance and the abundance of life because abundance is who we are naturally.

It's what is naturally who we are.

And you see animals,

They don't grasp,

They're not striving,

They're not hoarding,

You know,

They're not worried and they're not fearful.

They just,

When they're hungry,

They go find food.

You know,

They don't worry that they can't do that.

But in our society,

That's why I think it's very important to keep affirming what your values are and what's important to you because it's so easy to get unconsciously pulled by our external reality and the mass consciousness of society.

So let's close with these four affirmations.

Wherever you are,

Letting yourself find a comfortable seat.

And I want to close to you that coaches,

Meditation coaches,

Should work with affirmations with their clients and determining what those pain points are,

What those limiting beliefs are.

Oftentimes when people want to experience something in their life or attract or achieve,

There are these unconscious forces that don't allow that to come in.

So it's important to work on all the different levels when you're working with someone and especially somebody's deeper fears and unconscious beliefs.

So it's important that you find affirmations that are coming from your client and that resonate with your client as places to focus and create health in their own consciousness.

Okay,

So finding your comfortable seat.

And the first place to start is with relaxation.

Letting the body become completely tension-free.

As you release tension,

You also release resistance and opening yourself up to the flow of energy,

Opening yourself up to the feeling of peace,

And noticing how good it feels to let yourself simply sit back and relax.

And pay attention to your entire body.

If it helps,

You can draw a circle around your body so that you can have that whole circle of awareness around your physical body and feeling your connection to the earth.

And I will say a few affirmations.

You can allow yourself to simply listen and you can also allow yourself to repeat these affirmations to yourself.

So staying centered in your heart and extending your heart space outward into your body and your aura,

The field around you,

And relaxing into the thoughts,

I am enough.

I am enough.

I am enough.

I am completely enough.

I am abundant.

I am abundant.

I am completely abundant.

Notice where you feel these affirmations when you hear them.

I am whole.

Breathing in,

Breathing out.

I am whole.

I am completely whole.

Allowing yourself to relax and really receive.

And lastly,

I am complete.

I am complete.

In this moment,

I am complete.

I am enough.

I am abundant.

I am whole.

I am complete.

And allow these affirmations to resonate within your body,

Your being,

Your whole consciousness,

Out into the rest of the universe.

Allow this energy like a seed to reverberate throughout your entire universe,

Out into the universe.

And as you're ready,

You can start to open your eyes and gently come back.