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Inspiring Hope | Finding healthy ways of Grieving | Writer

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nervous system

Nathalie with Miten on Life’s Trauma and the Healing Through Music | Episode 18

November 7, 2022 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Miten

Today I have the pleasure to speak with Miten who I’ve known for almost 20 years through his and Deva’s music. Miten shares the traumas he’s experienced throughout his life and how he’s found the healing power of music.

Miten says:

If there is one thing, I would say that’s helped me, that is to sing. And as much as I can, I tell people, not just our community who are into singing anyway, but… church choirs. Find a choir, find a Gospel choir, you know – sing! Because when you are singing, your heart starts to lift, your burden lift, your spirit lifts. It’s not a joke, it’s real and it’s important and it’s a commitment.

Miten

The mantras hold a special place in my heart and my personal healing so I can highly recommend checking out their music on their website, Spotify or wherever you listen to music. 

About this week’s guest 

Miten was born in London and grew up in the 60s. He later went on to establish a successful career for himself in the 70s as a noted singer/songwriter, releasing several albums including one for Ariola Records under the guidance of legendary American producer Bones Howe. He toured extensively, opening for Fleetwood Mac, Randy Newman, Hall and Oats, Lou Reed, Ry Cooder, Fairport Convention, and The Kinks, among others. This period of his life was exciting but left him spiritually unfulfilled.

After reading a book of the discourses on Zen from Osho (No Water No Moon), Miten had an epiphany and began an inner search. He left everything he had known before, even selling his guitars, and traveled to India, embracing life as a member of the community that had gathered around Osho.

It was there he met his life partner, Deva Premal, and they are now renowned worldwide for their fusion of western music with Sanskrit mantras. Together they have presented their music in as many as 45 countries while accumulating accolades from such diverse admirers as Cher and HH the Dalai Lama, with album sales in excess of one million copies. 

Website: Deva Premal and Miten

Topics discussed in this episode

  • Childhood traumas
  • Leaving behind his family, letting go of his life, his identity, and his career as a musician, and joining Osho’s ashram
  • Healing through meditation, chanting, and being in presence of a Guru and finding music again
  • The physical trauma of a double heart by-pass surgery 

Resources mentioned in this episode

  • Film: Mantra – Sounds Into Silence 
  • Tara Mangalartha Mantra with India Arie

Links

–> For more information, please visit Nathalie’s website. 

–> Subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates on future episodes here.

–> Join the podcast’s Instagram page.

Thanks for listening to HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA. If you’d like to be updated on future episodes, please subscribe to my newsletter on Nathalie Himmelrich.com

If you need grief support, please contact me for a FREE 30 min discovery session.

HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is produced and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich. 

Support this Podcast

To support this podcast, please rate, review, subscribe to, or follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.

Remember to keep breathing, I promise, it will get easier. 

Filed Under: podcast, creative healing, emotions/feelings, from personal experience, grief/loss, health, nervous system, spirituality, trauma Tagged With: ashram, chanting, deva premal miten, healing power, healing through music, mantra, osho, physical trauma, sanskrit

Animal Phobias – What can be done?

June 9, 2022 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Spiders, rats, mice, and snakes are just some of the common animals people are afraid of. But what if the fear gets in the way of life?

Phobia versus fear

Phobia is a response to something that is not a threat. This is why phobias are sometimes called irrational fears. The response is so intense it may interfere with your ability to function or perform daily tasks.

Many fears had been reasonable or useful in the past or are even useful nowadays. For example, certain snakes or spiders can be poisonous and therefore dangerous, while other animals might carry illnesses. The fear of certain animals might be genetic which is what professionals call ‘preparedness’. Even a few months old toddlers react with enlarged pupils when shown pictures of spiders whereas pictures of flowers in the same color do not have the same effect.

How do phobias develop?

Often, traumatic past experiences play a role. Many people with phobias describe a specific experience that has elicited the phobia. In addition, phobias can be transmitted through stories, films, and the behaviour of parents.

How many people do have phobias?

More than 10% suffer from phobias, according to studies significantly more women than men. Among the animal phobias, the fear of spiders is the most frequent, occurring in about 5.6% of women and 1.2% of men.

How do phobias affect everyday life?

People with phobias do their best to avoid the animal (or situation) they are phobic about. This can be quite significant and influence people’s lives to the point of, for example, not being able to go swimming for fear of water snakes lurking in the water. These behaviours of avoidance actually increase the intensity of the phobia.

Do phobias disappear with time?

No, they don’t. Even if the animal is avoided, the phobia often remains for a lifetime and determines the person’s experience of living.

What can be done about phobias?

There are different kinds of treatments that people suggest: from exposition therapy to psychotherapy using neurolinguistic programming.

What are the chances of a phobia getting healed?

It is important to differentiate between a natural fear and a phobic response. We want to remain responsible and prepared for the potential danger a poisonous snake might offer but the aim is to resolve the unrealistic fear or phobia that impedes the experience of life.

If you’d like to treat your phobia make an appointment today.

Image Credit: Photo by Flash Dantz on Unsplash

Filed Under: trauma, emotions/feelings, nervous system, stress Tagged With: fear, phobia, stress, trauma

Regulation of the Nervous System

September 2, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich 1 Comment

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

Regulated

Human beings have a nervous system. This nervous system comes into play on a daily basis.

When a nervous system is regulated, blood flows naturally and effortlessly, moves into the higher-order part of our brain. In a regulated state, we have access to our social engagement function, creativity, higher-order problem solving, and complex perspective-taking to the current level of our cognitive development.

Having a regulated nervous system is essential to well-being and the potential of thriving as a human being.

Dysregulated

When dysregulated, however, this higher-order brain function shuts down by degrees depending on just how activated (triggered) our nervous system becomes.

Triggers can for example be

  • being exposed to intense noise, activity or movement
  • trying to accomplish too much in too short of time, rushing
  • being in a highly stressful environment, such as at work or home
  • sudden shock, for example being fightened by a loud noise or through an attack
  • violence to the body, as subtle as through blood being taken

As an effect, we lose access to our ability to engage socially, often felt as social anxiety.

We lose access to creativity and problem solving, which often feels like stress.

We lose access to perspective-taking, often felt es rigid and stuck thinking.

As a result, we tend to experience some heightened aspect, or a combination of

  • fight
  • flight
  • freeze
  • fawn

“There are two types of people in this world. Those that are traumatized, and those that are traumatized but they don’t know it.”

Gabor Mate

Regulation is a priority

Being regulated, therefore, should be a high priority in the way we approach life.

A truly regulated state, however, only exists in relation to other human beings, referred to as co-regulation. We are socially wired and our nervous systems need others to feel safe.

Co-regulation versus self-regulation

A dysregulated state is essentially a child state, and a child is incapable of feeling safe without the presence of a calm adult. Regulation is learned by modeling and through co-regulation in attuned and secure parenting relationships.

When there is a lack of a safe, calm other – either because that is the reality one finds on in or because prevailing attachment patterns block one from being able to recognize and move towards this form of security, then alternative regulation strategies are enacted.

Self-soothing (self-regulation)

Examples of self-soothing (calming down an anxious nervous system) are:

  • calming strategies, such as breathing in a specific rhythm
  • going for walks in nature
  • using specific scents an essentials such as in aroma therapy

Self-soothing is a strategy, a technique to help one get by, but it won’t solve the reason why the nervous system is in an anxious state, to begin with.

In regards to attachment styles, this technique is most often used by anxious types.

Auto-regulation (self-regulation)

This strategy tends to focus on taking one’s mind away from the intensity of interpersonal stress, often by seeking other forms of intensity.

Examples of auto-regulation are:

  • exercising with high intensity or in extreme sports
  • using drug or alcohol
  • watching movies or series, usually dramatic or action intense
  • sex
  • applying oneself in certain types of intense breath-work or meditation
  • working through high focus periods
  • using emotional cathartic prelease processes

All these intense energy-focusing activities shift one’s focus away from the triggering event while maintaining the activated state within the nervous system. This seemingly highly productive strategy is over time taxing on the adrenals, kidneys, and the nervous system health.

In regard to attachment style, this technique is most often used by avoidant types.

Co-regulation

Co-regulation, however, is an experience of entering a regulated nervous system state in and by the presence of another, or multiple, human beings.

It is often so natural that we don’t necessarily recognize that we are in it.

Examples of co-regulation are:

  • connecting to your beloved
  • playing and having fun with another human being
  • feeling the care of attuned parents
  • looking into someone’s eyes without even saying any words

Ways to co-regulate are:

  • Touch – such as holding hands, sitting shoulder to shoulder, back-to-back or in a simple embrace with another human being
  • Breath and gaze – which involved breathing together while maintaing some form of eye contact
  • Verbal – through active, embodied listening and reflective mirroring

Co-regulation AND self-regulation

All of those kinds of regulations have their place and are highly necessary. At times, self-regulation is the only available option, yet, co-regulation is vitally important. Even more so in today’s situation.

Optimal thriving as a human being does not, cannot, and will not (while we remain human) occur in isolation.

Damien Bohler

Filed Under: emotions/feelings, mental health, nervous system, trauma

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    Nathalie Himmelrich

    I accompany people therapeutically as a holistic counsellor and coach.

    I walk alongside people dealing with the challenges presented by life and death.

    I’m also a writer and published author of multiple grief resource books and the founder of the Grieving Parents Support Network.

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