Finding Inner Balance

By Greg Wheeler

Note: This post is a version of a presentation i gave on the Fresh Perspectives program on WCHE 1520 in Philadelphia on March 9th, 2023

Going Beyond the Noise

I’m so excited to explore Finding your Inner Balance with you. We’ll look at how you can start moving beyond the everyday noise to be able to connect with your inner self and achieve Inner Balance.

Creating an understanding of Inner Balance

Let’s define having Inner Balance as when you’re living from and with your feelings, needs, desires, and dreams in alignment with – or synchronized with – your heart, mind, body, and soul in ways that let you flow with ease and be at peace with yourself while dealing with life’s ups and downs.

Having and living with Inner Balance sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? What makes it so difficult to create or find Inner Balance?

The everyday Noise in your life that comes from living is what keeps you from getting in touch with or knowing your feelings, needs, desires, and dreams. The Noise makes it really hard to hear the messages about your feelings, needs, desires, and dreams that your Heart, Mind, Body, and Soul are trying to send you. Those are the messages you need to hear to create inner alignment and Inner Balance.

The first step in going beyond the Noise is to be able to get to the important information contained in your feelings, needs, desires, and dreams is to understand what the Noise is and where it comes from so you cancel it out or greatly reduce it. You want to reduce the noise so you can hear, understand, and connect with your true feelings, needs, desires, and dreams from your heart, mind, body, and soul.

What is everyday Noise?

According to Wikipedia, “Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing.” For our purposes here, I feel it’s helpful to expand the definition of life Noise to Noise is unwanted sound, information, or distractions that are considered unpleasant, distracting, loud or disruptive to hearing/feeling and connecting with our feelings, needs, desires, and dreams.

In other words, when we are caught up in the Noise of:

  • FEAR – False Evidence Appearing Real – worried or maybe even obsessing about something that might happen but hasn’t.
  • PAIN – Pay Attention Inside Now – what is the source of the pain and how can you heal it?
  • Self-Victimization, Shame, and Blame – What did you say yes to that you never wanted to do in the first place and/or are judging or criticizing yourself for when you are using the standards or measuring sticks of others?
  • Should-ing Yourself – How come you’re putting pressure on yourself by needing to do or be something based on what you think you are, or you think others need, want, or feel you’re supposed to do or be? This is our self-imposed TO DO list and the TO DOs that we let others add to our list whether we want them to or not.

That Noise immobilizes, distracts, confusses, misdirects, frustrates, or depresses us. It’s obvious that you want to minimize the Noise so you can hear your true inner messages.

inner balance 2

Real Steps for Quieting the Noise

You’ve heard the phrase, “the mind controls the body”, right? So how do we control the mind to lower or get rid of the Noise?

In Kundalini Yoga we say the Mind controls the Body, and the Breath controls the Mind. That is why meditation has become so popular – it helps you control your all-controlling breath.

It is truly breath over mind, and mind over matter in your body when you do calming meditations for a minimum of 3 to 5 minutes, as there is a measurable decrease in fight-or-flight hormones in your body. The longer you do the meditation, the greater the decrease.

If you already have your own meditation practice that works for you, that’s great, and I encourage you  to use it frequently. If not or if you want to try a different meditation, then you can use either of these two simple and very effective state-changing, Noise-reducing Meditations for 3 to 5 minutes, minimum. With some practice you should pretty easily work up to meditations that last 11 or 22 minutes. When you do, you’ll notice how much quieter, peaceful, and calm you are inside and how much easier it is to hear your true feelings, needs, desires, and dreams.

Box Breathing

The simplest of meditations is Box Breathing: You can find it all over the Internet. There is a useful version from The Cleveland Clinic HERE. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/box-breathing-benefits/

For Box Breathing, get comfortable in a safe place where you can close your eyes. When you’re ready:

  1. Breathe out slowly, releasing all the air from your lungs.
  2. Breathe in through your nose as you slowly count to four in your head. Be conscious of how the air goes through your nose, down your throat, and fills your lungs and belly.
  3. Hold your breath for a count of four.
  4. Exhale for another count of four.
  5. Hold your breath again for a count of four.
  6. Repeat for three to four or more rounds.

Don’t stress over this, just allow yourself to settle into a nice easy rhythm. You may very quickly start to notice the de-stressing and calming effect of this. If you can keep it up for 3 to 5 minutes, you will give yourself a chance to start positively changing your hormonal balance. When you’re done, take a moment to notice how you feel and what feels different. Good Job!

Kirtan Kriya

The other simple meditation to reduce the Noise is called the Kirtan Kryia in Kundalini Yoga.  This is slightly more complicated – and more powerful – than Box Breathing. I have seen this method quiet and relax a whole classroom of 20 five-year-olds in less than 5 minutes. It was pretty amazing.

You can find a clear and detailed PDF explaining how to do Kirtan Kriya here.

A simple version of the Kirtan Kriya can begin in Gyan Mudra. The elbows are relatively straight while chanting, and the mudra changes as each fingertip touches in turn the tip of the thumb with firm pressure.

  • On SAA, touch the first (Jupiter) finger
  • On TAA, touch the second (Saturn) finger
  • On NAA, touch the third (Sun) finger
  • On MAA, touch the fourth (Mercury) finger

Chant in three languages of consciousness:

  • Human: normal or loud voice (the world)
  • Lovers: strong whisper (longing to belong)
  • Divine: mentally; silent (Infinity)

Begin the kriya in a normal voice for 1 minute; then whisper for 1 minute; then go deep into the sound, vibrating silently for 2×1=2 minutes. Then come back to a whisper for 1 minute, then aloud for 1 minute. That is a total meditation time of 6 minutes. For longer meditations change each 1 to a new number. In other words if you changed the 1 to 1.5 then the total meditation time would be 1.5+1.5+3+1.5+1.5= 9 minutes.

After you have completed your practice of reducing Noise around and inside you, you’re ready to check in with yourself to see what your Feelings and Needs are at this moment.

Self Check-Ins

Getting in touch with and knowing your feelings, needs, desires, and dreams is an important step in being able to truly love yourself by then honoring, sharing, and holding boundaries around them. You can check in on your feelings and needs by doing the Daily Self Love Power Practice***. A description is here.

  1. Connect with the deeper, wider center of your wise and capable adult self.
    Connect with the part of you that is wise, resourceful, resilient, capable and strong. Breathe this sense of yourself as a loving, mature adult presence all the way down into your hips, extending the energy of this center down into the earth and out to the edges of the room.
  2. Extend a sense of deep presence from your adult self to the younger self in your body.
    With a sense of deep presence and care, turn your attention to the younger self in your body and extend a sense of safety and compassion to this part of yourself from the deeper and wider center of your adult self.
  3. Welcome in and mirror back the feelings and needs that your younger self is experiencing.
    From a place of deep listening and receptivity, ask yourself the following questions, welcoming in with love whatever the response and mirroring it back with love:

    1. Ask yourself:“What are you feeling”?
    2. Listen for a response from your heart and body and lovingly mirror back the response by naming the feeling: “I can see that you are feeling ___________”
    3. Do this three times or more until you feel you’ve named the strong and/or important feelings.
    4. Now ask yourself:“What do you need?”
    5. Listen for a response and lovingly mirror back the response by naming the need: “I can see that you need  ___________”
    6. Do this three times or more  until you feel you’ve named the strong and/or important Needs.

Note:To support you to accurately name your feelings and needs, please go to CNVC.org and check out their Feelings & Needs Inventory listings, and/or https://humansystems.co/emotionwheels/ provided free of charge. The more accurately you name your feelings and needs the more closely connected to them and yourself you’ll be.

To get the full benefits of this practice, you want to have a journal handy, and when you’re finished with the practice, write down the feelings and needs that you named. Do this twice every day. It’s like medicine for your soul. The power of journaling your feelings and needs will help you see what trends develop over time.

Naming your feelings and needs is a big step forward to really learning to love yourself. After quieting the Noise, you are able to hear your feelings and needs from your body, heart, and soul. Being connected like this, in addition to loving yourself more, you are able to start to get in alignment with your true self, to create your inner balance. Great work!

Embracing Inner Balance: Woman rejoicing atop a mountain, arms outstretched to greet the morning

Self-Mentoring Mantra

Now that you know how to connect with your inner feelings and needs by using the Daily Self Love Power Practice you can go one step further towards creating Inner Balance as you go above the Noise by creating a Mentoring Mantra. In Katherine Woodward Thomas’s book Conscious Uncoupling – Five Steps to Living Happily Even After, Katherine outlines the following practice to use the Feelings and Needs you named in the Daily Self Love Power Practice. This will help you challenge the underlying assumptions creating those feelings and needs, and put you on the road to creating a Self-Mentoring Mantra***.

So here we go to create a Self Mentoring Mantra:

  1. Challenge Your Assumptions about where, what you are feeling you need at this time is coming from.
    Take a couple of deep breaths and get in touch with and name the beliefs and assumptions that are generating these feelings and needs. What might you be worried about or scared of? What might you be assuming is true? What beliefs might be coloring your perceptions? How old is the part of you that is thinking these thoughts?
    Now, look inside and question from your mature adult perspective your beliefs and assumptions. If possible, offer to give yourself (your younger self) what you need. Support and love yourself by having a compassionate discussion that will not allow yourself to be dominated by that which is not actually true (False Evidence Appearing Real).
    With Love and compassion, see if you can share with the younger frightened and overwhelmed part of yourself what might be more true about your assumptions and needs. For example, “How might you explain another perspective or correct a misperception to a young child that you love?”
  2. Create a Self-Soothing Mentoring Mantra
    Now, share, explain, and offer another perspective that is reassuring and offers encouragement, hope, and containment to your younger self. Share with yourself a powerful deeper truth that is empowering, creates safety, and confirms a perspective that is trusting in the process of life.
    Acknowledging that your adult self is here, loving, caring for, helping, and supporting your younger self, create a self-soothing mentoring mantra. Make this personal and powerful for just what you’re feeling and needing at that moment. Address it directly to your younger self in a way that can be heard. For example, “I love you honey. You’re not alone. You’re safe with me. This is just what it feels like when something scary or difficult happens. I’m here to help you through this. We’ll get through this together. You are _________, __________, __________, etc. just the way you are. You are perfectly imperfect and that’s great!  Together we got this. You’ll feel better soon, I promise.”
  3. Now type this Mantra up and memorize it
    Whenever you feel these feelings and needs, say your new mantra outloud or to yourself to love and support yourself.

***Katherine Woodward Thomas details both the “Creating an Inner Sanctuary of Safty” (Daily Self Love Power Practice) and “Creating a Mentoring Mantra” practices in her best selling book “Conscious Uncoupling – 5 Steps to Living Happily Even After” on pages 93 and 107 respectively.

Now you can move beyond the Noise to Inner Balance

Finding Inner Balance is a journey that requires moving beyond the Noise of everyday life to connect with your inner self and to loving yourself. The Noise can make it difficult to hear the messages from your heart, body, and soul that are necessary for creating inner alignment and balance. By quieting the Noise through practices such as meditation, daily self-love power practice, and creating a self-mentoring mantra, you can connect with your feelings and needs, challenge your assumptions, and offer yourself compassion and support on your path to Inner Balance. This path will also lead you to start creating and living a life that you love.

Guided Support to Help You Thrive and Flourish

You don’t have to face this journey alone. As a certified coach, my purpose is to empower you in applying these transformative principles to your life. Whether you’re looking to consciously uncouple from negative patterns, manifest a fulfilling relationship, or rediscover the magic of conscious recoupling, I am here to offer you personalized guidance and unwavering support. Sign up for a Free Coaching Consultation with me, and together we’ll embark on a transformative journey towards inner balance and the life you truly desire. Let’s unlock your potential and create lasting positive change.