Three Ways to Cultivate Inner Peace

Hello and welcome beautiful Souls!

Today I am sharing with you three ways that you can cultivate Inner Peace. These are three ways that I practice managing my anxiety, regulating my nervous system and navigating my anxious attachment. I want to touch briefly here on anxious attachment, which is one of four attachment styles, others which include avoidant attachment, a combo known as anxious-avoidant and Secure. I’ll dive deeper into these attachment styles at a later date, but I wanted you to keep in mind how our personal attachment styles will greatly affect our Love Language and core needs in our intimate relationships.

I teach that in order to navigate an anxious attachment style you’re going to need these three things; to connect with your nervous system, your body/health and the Earth. These three relationships and how you nurture them are going to help you move through your anxious attachment with more clarity and more Self Trust. If you have an anxious attachment you probably deeply struggle to Trust, especially your partner. But what this is mirroring to you is your need to reunite with your Intuition/bodies wisdom and heal your sense of Self Trust. When we begin to listen and follow the voice of our Intuition {Soul} then we develop Trust in our Self. This builds your confidence and Self Esteem to create a secure attachment style, which allows for more expansion in your relationships, but also in your mind, body and heart.

As you rebuild your Trust again you will begin making decisions from a more harmonious place within, you will no longer react so harshly to people, and things that are happening outside of you, you will be able to stay balanced mentally and emotionally which greatly affects your communication. You’ll notice that as you manage your anxious attachment you begin to feel more secure, you feel in control again, but not from a place of fear, angst or judgement, but from peace, love and acceptance.

Each human has three core needs; to be seen, heard and accepted. When you can provide those three things for your Self then you become your own parent and you strengthen your relationship with your Mind, Body and Spirit. And I am going to show you how you can create the time and place to heal your anxious attachment and cutivate that Inner Peace you’ve always dreamed of! If you suffer from anxiety you probably deeply desire comfort, safety and stability, but never received it. So, please let me guide you!

Number One: Conscious Breathing

This is my number one because it is the BEST way to form a healthy relationship with your nervous system. Your autonomic nervous system is the “fight”, “flight”, “freeze”, part of our brain. That part of our mind can be “triggered” by outside influences {environmental, social, relational} throughout our day. It was designed to protect us of course, but if left dysregulated it can control your unconscious behaviors, thoughts and emotions. It can cause us to feel tension and stress in our bodies, we can develop things like tension headaches, teeth clenching, sweats, shakes, inflammation, fatigue, brain fog, dizziness, blurred vision, numbness and nervousness.

When the nervous system is not regulated with our active awareness, the only time it will “rest” is when we go to sleep at night. But on the other hand if your nervous system is dysregulated you may struggle to fall asleep, to get your racing mind to slow down, you may have insomnia, or nightmares that keep you from getting restful sleep. This eventually leads to waking up groggy or feeling exhausted, drained, irritable, agitated and annoyed. Disturbing your inner equilibrium and disrupting your Inner Peace before your day has even begun. This will then lead to finding pleasure through all the things that drive our Ego; think caffeine, sugar, nicotine, got to have that coffee to perk myself up, gotta have that donut to give me “energy”, gotta have that cig to calm my nerves… All the while these things are gratifying the Ego for a brief moment in time, but they are also adding to the already dysregulated nervous sytem and causing further “damage”.

Breathwork will help you to come back to the present moment. To be with your body in the Now. As you connect with your breath you begin to cam your mind, relax your body and you open up to more Presence and in the stillness you find peace and inside that peace is supreme amounts of joy and that joy is infused with pleasure, which is what you’re really seeking when you reach to those ego gratifying “get me bys”, they work in that moment that you’re consuming, but as soon as you’re done, the pleasure is gone right along with it. With our breath we have that “high” as an endless supply. To be One with your breath is to be One with All That Is. That feeling of pleasure isn’t temporary, it’s everlasting. {I’ve created an linked a 10 minute Guided Breathwork Session to Manage Anxiety that you can use to practice.} Eventually you’ll make it a habit to return to your breath every time you’re feeling anxious. It will truly become like your medicine.

Number Two: Mindful Movement

One of my all time favorite pastimes is intentional walking, or “power walking”, it’s truly been a “life saver” for me. It combines two of my favorite things; nature and music. I highly recommend silence for the beginning of the walk that will help you connect to your body, mind and intuition. And this is very important, because it acts as an anchor to ground your Self to your body for the day. The idea is to make your body feel safe and alive. To connect to it in a way that makes it feel supported, that way it can do its job to “protect” You. And remember You, is your Soul, not your Human Identity. Physical movement doesn't only strengthen your physical body, but also your energetic body.

When we can see our Self as more than just a body, but also as a Soul, we actually begin to develop more respect for our bodies because we’re now viewing it as a vehicle, vessel or temple through which our Soul experiences this World. Through our connection with our Soul we desire more genuinely to care for our Self, which makes us want to care for our bodies, to nourish them, to strengthen them, to love them, to take immaculate care of them. This will make you WANT to move, to do the things that make you feel good, and that get you out of your mind and into your body.

I love to stomp to music to channel my anger, becuase if you have an anxious attachment, learning to surrender control and Trust your Self is going to make you fucking angry, you can count on that. But remember, your anger is sacred. It deserves to be seen, heard and accepted, rember from earlier. You have to tend to it with Love and Compassion and honestly I do that through movement and music. Dancing is another form of mindful movement that can be enjoyable. Let your self have some fun. Didn’t you ever sing into your hair straightener dancing and listening to Shanina Twain, oh not you? Just Me? Okay! But, in all honesty you have to practice “letting loose”, With anxious attachment we can become hypervigilant and hypersensitive to our environment and partners and we can be “waiting for the next shoe to drop” or “walking on eggshells”.

Let yourself work through your emotions in a way that is fun and that will give you a good stretch and workout. Whenever I feel anxious, turning on some music and just being with my body through movement, whether it’s stretching and doing yoga, getting outside going for a walk or jog, dancing in my room like an emo teenager to Simple Plan, I just to allow my Self to express itself fully, this alone, eases my anxiety and calms my nervous system and opens my heart to feel comforted, loved and relaxed. And when I do that my Inner Child feels seen, heard, accepted, supported and taken care of and it’s no longer “sabotaging” my Peace of mind. {I've Linked a mindful movement sequence I created for my Weekly Relationship Toolbox that will help you strengthen your physical body, but also protect you energetically.}

Number Three: Stillness

As much as we need movement, we also need stillness. Connecting with nature always returns me to my Inner Stillness, being near the water or the trees, sitting on the Earth allows for me to embody Presence and feel deeply connected to my Spirit. This one is going to be a doozy for the Ego, because the Ego identifies itself with doing. So, where stillness begins, the Ego ends and the Ego doesn’t want to end. It wants to “prove itself”. That’s how it moves through this time and space reality, as it was designed to. But as BEINGS of Consciousness all “we” have to “do” is observe the Ego and consciously choose to respond from the Now, not react from the “past” {emotional memory, stored in the body that's being activated by a current event}.

When we get still we begin to notice that our thoughts play on an endless loop all day long, with little to no awareness from “us”, we don’t notice that some we hold onto really tightly, so much so, that thought pattern becomes part of our identity and now we’ve attached our sense of Self to this narrative that dictates our behavior and we mold our Self to fit into this “identity” we’ve created for our Self based on past experiences. In order to break free from those patterns we have to change out those “old reels” and start playing a new narrative, one that aligns with how we want to feel, which is more at peace, more secure.

In the stillness we get the opportunity to direct our thoughts like a conductor directs a symphony choir. We get the chance to stop playing those same old thoughts that keep on producing the same old results and we get to “paint” a new “picture” of who we want to be and where we want our Life to go. We take back full control of our emotional power of our Co-Creation. In the stillness all we have to “do” is BE, and that is what the mind/body {because over time the mind and body become one} is going to resist the most. Your mind will want to wander and “boss you around”, it will demand that you DO something, anything, but be still.

As you carve out time to intentionally be in the stillness, you will compassionately witness how often you are a slave to the mind/body, it will teach you how much you need discipline. Bringing your Self back to the Present Moment takes discipline and Awareness. It’s like putting your Self in an adult “time-out” not becuase you’ve been “bad” and need to be “punished”, but becuase you need to sit fucking still and be quiet so that you can receive that guidance, support, connection and PEACE that you are seeking through the busy external world.

Retreating into the Inner Stillness will act as your personal sanctuary that you can enter anytime you’re feeling anxious, uncertain, doubtful or afraid, it is your safe place that allows for you to lay down your worries, fears, insecurities, let down your guard, relax into your mind/body and feel supported infinitely and endlessly. Through the Stillness we connect to The Divine, a Higher Power, Source, God, The Universe and we see our Self in a New Light, one that isn’t tainted by other’s perceptions and judgements of us, but one that is crystal clear, that is untainted and pure Love.

Remember beloveds, Love is never lacking in your Life, because that is who you are; Pure Love.

I've created a Guided Meditation for Relaxation on my YouTube. Please Like, Subscribe & Share with anyone you feel could benefit!

Thank you for reading!

Love and blessings, Ashley <3