Letting Go and COVID | #073
Apr 09, 2022Episode #073 Transcript | Maria Furlano, DMQ (China), MTOM, L.Ac.
0:01 Welcome to the Art Of Tuning In Podcast with Maria Furlano, sharing insights, tools and conversations to inspire your energetic well being.
0:12
Hello, everyone, welcome. This is Maria Furlano. Thank you for joining me today on episode number 73. I've titled this episode, letting go. And the reason is because this has been a huge theme for me in the last couple of weeks, you might hear in my voice a little bit, I don't know how it's gonna come across on this episode till I listen back. But I may sound a little bit deeper in tone or a little bit raspy. I actually am getting over COVID and I have been healing for the last couple of weeks. And I really want to thank those people who have sent me notes and sent me emails and texts and phone messages. I really appreciated it.
1:01
I also received some emails that asked me if I would be willing to share some of the things that I personally do to support my energy when I get sick. And so I thought, well, I could do that I could share some things, especially because I think that these are more universal things in that you don't have to be recovering from COVID, you can be recovering from anything big, small, little long, doesn't matter. And so I'm going to share some things with you today. And some discoveries, especially from this time. But really, the theme is about letting go.
Transitions in your life
1:41
And one of the things that I know for myself in these last couple of weeks is that this has been a big soul reflection for me, this illness came about right in the middle of a time when I am creating a lot of transitions in my life. And one of those things that happens with people, and I'm sure that you can relate. Sometimes we end up getting sick or getting injured, or having to deal with something in our life, that literally stops us in our tracks where we have no choice. But to just stop everything that we had planned to do all have the momentum, and everything changes. And that's exactly what happened for me.
2:30
And one of the patterns that I have and be interesting to see if you have anything similar to this too, is that in the very beginning whenever I get sick, or in the past when I've gotten injured, and again, right, these are at times when you just don't need this happening in your life, right that goes on in your head, I begin to get very frustrated, sometimes a lot of fears will come up because there's things that I have to get done. And I'm thinking how am I going to get this done? There's irritation, right, just being completely inconvenienced. And what I notice, you know, now having observed this for many years, is that this is this typical pattern of emotion that begins to arise.
3:16
The faster that I can actually catch those emotions and those feelings and stop myself and say, Hey, there's a reason that this is happening, things are out of balance. And the way that you're going to heal is to surrender and let go. Because when we have those emotions of fear and anxiety and lots of new kind of frustration that this is happening, all that does is drain our energy. And it drains the energy that we need in order to be healing.
Giving the space & time
3:55
So I've learned that this is kind of my fighting against right like, whoa, this isn't happening, I'm gonna get better. And sometimes we can kick things out of our system really quickly. But sometimes things last for a little longer. And this, for me was one of those things, it's still something that I am healing from, although I'm so much better now. And when I realized that this was going to take some time, it allowed me to be able to soften into the energy of it. So if someone has an injury, for example, they can begin to do the same thing they can begin to soften into their healing. If someone is going through medical treatments, sometimes what's really needed is to let go and soften into the experience so that the actual treatment can do its job that your energy of the body can actually absorb what's happening. Instead of having this you know going against the pushing against - just resisting.
5:03
That's why the theme of this entire time and the theme of this podcast is about letting go, is because when we learn to truly let go, then we learn to truly allow in the healing.
Practical things
5:16
So people had asked about some very practical things that I do. And of course, yes, I take Chinese herbal formulas that are appropriate to what I'm dealing with at the time, I do my vitamin C, and my vitamin B, and my D and my zinc. I do that all the time anyway and I do uplevel them when I'm ill. And this time, I really did gargle with sea salt, that helped a lot. I also use aromatherapy to clear the room. To clear not only the energy of the room, but the germs in the room to help keep the air really good. And I also use things like eucalyptus and things to help open my lungs to help me breathe better. So all of those natural products, I, of course, use when I'm healing and to keep my energy level up. And they work beautifully for me.
6:11
The body needs all of its resources to heal. And so one of the things that we do in Eastern medicine and holistic medicine, is what you're going to eat and put in your body is exceptionally important when you're healing or when you're dealing with an injury or when you're dealing with any kind of medical treatment. And the reason is because the body needs all of its energy to heal. And it doesn't need to be using any of that energy, for example, on foods that have to be detoxed by the body, right, because they have chemicals or foods that have to be broken down by the body.
6:51
And this is why we have soups, in our medical practices whose soups allow the body to be able to absorb the nutrients, and then move on to its healing, not break down all of the ingredients. So I had bone broth soup, you know, honestly, I really wasn't hungry at all for days. But finally, when he was eating, or when I knew that I needed some nutrition in my body. Bone broth is a wonderful thing to be able to have on hand that you consume, I put vegetables and made a very quick bone broth vegetable soup, and that I had for days honestly. And when you're healing from things, things like that will help your body naturally be able to use its energy to where it needs to use its energy. And this time actually, I found after several days that I really needed to add electrolytes into my diet. And that seemed to help a lot. We were you know, losing a lot of electrolytes, there was a lot of sweating and things like that. So electrolytes really helped retune my body, I believe.
The Art Of Preparation
8:05
And this brings up another point that I often share with private clients and with students. And that's about preparation. Preparation in order to really take care of yourself and your life is really vital if you want to have an environment that supports you because as you know, when you're not feeling well, or when you're dealing with an injury or you're dealing with a medical procedure, you do not feel like doing much of anything and it becomes very easy to reach for things that are not healthy, it becomes very easy to not eat at all or to not nourish yourself with proper fluids. So then we don't support the fuel of our body we don't support the energy of the body that is going to help the healing process and then it just becomes this very bad downward spiral. So making sure that I always have at least three cartons of bone broth, for example, in my cupboard is something that I do. I always generally have fresh vegetables on hand so that becomes easier to create a soup with. I always have immunity boosting aromatherapy. I always have sea salt in my house. I make sure that I have the supplements that I need and the supplements that I need when I am not feeling well and I take those maybe at those times. I make sure that I have really good teas in my cupboard. You know really caffeine free teas, mint and ginger and beautiful teas that support my body that helped nourish me so that I'm not reaching for things that were not good for me.
9:55
So when we get sick, there can be a great time of detox and it can be a great opportunity to eliminate from our lives, the things that we've been doing, whether it is nutritionally whether it is too much work and not enough rest, whether it's not enough play in our life or creativity or self nurturing, whatever it is, it's a great time to detox out the things that haven't been working, and to allow space to be created for things that need to come in to make us feel good.
What are we tucking away?
10:35
One of the things I had written in an email to my subscribers was I said that this was a time where I was also looking at emotions that I had been tucking away. And what I meant by that is that when I am going through a healing process, I take time to look at the things the past few weeks of my life. And generally I go back to the past three months of my life, and I look at how have I been acting? How is my energy been? How have I been taking care of myself? For example, through diet through rest through hydration? Through communication? Have I been shoving down a lot of emotions that I've been feeling? Have I really been getting the support that I need. And I take time to do this sometimes through journaling? Honestly, this time, I was too exhausted to journal. So I just would sit there in quiet prayer.
11:34
Which brings up another point a lot of people have asked me, do I do Qigong when I'm ill? So Qigong is energy moving practice, it's a healing practice. And there's different phases, there's different exercises that you do at different times when you're ill when you're well, when you are recovering from an injury when you are dealing with treatments. So there's different exercises for different phases, of course, I do something that's called "Shaking The Bones" that I teach inside my membership. And that is actually something that really helps the lymphatic system, move out any kind of toxins, and it also is very relaxing. But when you're really ill, sometimes moving around, sometimes even just standing is not something that you do well.
Meditation Yay or Nay?
12:26
And this brings up another question that I often get about meditation when you're not feeling well, when you are not feeling well. The problem with meditation is that you have a hard time focusing your mind you are really not supposed to do meditation. When you are exhausted. When you're really exhausted, your energy in your body needs to rest it needs to sleep it needs to rebuild itself, when our energy is very deficient. Our mind is also very deficient meaning that our focus is very deficient. When we meditate, it's very important that we hold our focus on our breath, and that we hold our focus in a grounded place, meaning that we hold our focus. For example, in Qigong, we hold our focus into the earth, we hold our focus into our Lower Dantian. Lower Dantian is an energy space that is located in side of our lower belly when we are able to hold our mind in a focused way, by holding our energy in a grounded and focused way, then we can safely meditate and our energy stays grounded and aligned. When we're not able to do that a lot of times what happens is that our focus is off, our energy is off and energy in our body can begin to rise, it can begin to lose its grounded place and it begins to rise up when you meditate and you are not in a grounded place and your energy begins to rise up. You can have problems that ensue from that such as headaches such as sleepless nests, such as anxiety.
14:12
So meditating, when you are really tired or really ill is not always the best thing to do. But what I do is I will always pray. Now prayer puts me into a different space. I'm asking for help from my angels from my guides from whatever it is that you believe in and I am asking for help with my alignment. I'm reaching out and I'm expanding my energy. I can do this lying down I can do this seated I can do this standing and it keeps me reminding myself that there is energy for me to access that there is guidance that I have there is energetic support that I have, I will always incorporate as much deep breathing as I can, because breathing is a restorative practice and our body needs to restore.
15:07
And so one of the easiest ways to do this is to breathe into your butt. Now, I know that sounds silly, sometimes I'll tell people to breathe into their hips. But if you're seated, for example, on the chair, you literally think about bringing the breath down into the chair into your butt, and you're bringing the energy of the breath down into the butt, or into your hips or into the chair. And that helps your mind focus your energy into a grounded place. And when you do that, you're able to create more grounding for yourself. But you're also able to bring the essence of the breath into the Lower Dantian. And it begins to build begins to help support your kidney energy begins to help support your adrenals it begins to help support this lower Dantian this elixir energy center, and you naturally are giving yourself a little energy boost. But you only do this in very short periods of time, like maybe even just a minute, depending on how you feel. But I wouldn't do it more than five minutes, honestly, if you're very ill. And the reason for that is because again, we're always looking to not drain our body of very important energy that it needs to heal, we're looking to boost the energy. In many podcasts episodes, you've heard me talk about watering the plants and how if you overwater the plants, you drain the energy all the soil comes out in the bottom. And we do that with our body too.
Gentle absorption
16:42
This is why I'm always talking about short bursts and doing things in small doses because they add up to be huge. When we're not feeling well. In Medical Qigong, we tend to, for example, prescribe in short bursts. But to do several times a day, like maybe you'll do it three to five times a day. But you'll only do it for a minute to five minutes. When you are constantly feeding your body, these little small doses of healing, the body can absorb it, it's just exactly the same as I shared earlier about the soup and giving yourself these nutrient doses that your body can absorb and doesn't have to break down. It's the same thing with any kind of energetic healing, you want to be able to allow the body to absorb the energy and rest. And then a little bit later absorb a little more energy and rest and not push the body push your focus. Not only is it hard for your mind to focus when you're very depleted. But if you force your mind to focus, now you are depleting energy.
Numbing Out
17:56
And there's something else to look at here. And that is watching a lot of television or using your computer or being on your phone on social media, or even reading a book. When you use your eyes, your eyes emit a lot of energy. So be careful when you're healing of overdoing it with wanting to kind of just numb out with television and books and social media. Sometimes it's really nice to be able to distract yourself, especially with funny things, that's something else that I do is if I do watch any television, or I do watch anything at all on my phone or anything like that, it has to be something inspirational or funny, because I want the vibration of energy coming at me to elevate my energy. So I make sure that I don't watch any violence, I make sure that I don't watch anything sad because my lungs certainly don't need that energy. So look at things that you're doing in your life that support you, you know, are you reading an inspirational or funny book, for example? Are you listening to positive music, all of those things have to do with your environment, as we talked about earlier, so your environment supports and creates your healing. And so in finishing for today, with all of that said, in order to be able to let go in order to be able to really allow in a new view a new healing a new sense of self, to make it even easier for all of us, preparation is really key.
19:37
So in your homes, don't forget to support yourself by supplying yourself with good foods with with things that are easy and so nurturing for yourself so that you can actually have the support that you need, and then relax and allow.
19:55
I thank you guys so much for your questions and truly I do thank you for your support these past few weeks and if anything comes up if you have more questions, please let me know, feel free to contact me on TheArtOfTuningIn.com.
20:12
And also, if you're new to this podcast welcome. And if you are in need of a guided visualization that's only four minutes long to root and ground your mind and give you some ease and flow.. Go on over TheArtOfTuningIn.com and you can sign up for that and have free access. I'd love to welcome you into my community.
20:35
Thanks, everybody for joining me today. I wish you much health much love much inspiration, and I will see you in the next episode.
20:45 Outro: Thank you for tuning in. If you'd like to learn more and elevate your energetic well being I invite you to visit the art of tuning in.com where you can learn all about our online studio. I look forward to meeting you there.
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