PARENTING WITH CONSCIOUSNESS AND THROUGH AYURVEDA

 

I was a social worker for ten years and my focus was on Child Protective Services and I was specialized in Sexual Abuse. For ten years and having worked with hundreds and hundreds of families, along with going through my own personal therapeutic healing work around my issues related to my upbringing and with my relationship with Yoga and Ayurvedic Medicine I continue to support parents, intending parents and soon to be parents in how to promote optimal well-being for their children. Essentially, I wear the hat as an Ayurvedic Expert of how to support the health of a child, body-mind-spirit. With my extensive training as a social worker, degree in psychology (concentration in psychobiology of mental disorders) and Ayurvedic holistic medical training, I offer my ongoing experience with the intention of children first.

This is a two step process and by this I operationally define this as such: 1) every one of us adults contains our own inner child with all his/her ages up until this very moment that we are responsible for. Meaning that we must attend to our own inner babies/children and adolescent teens and young adults. 2) As we are in charge of nurturing our own from within we must then be able to hold a sacred and safe place for children that we foster externally, whether adopted, fostered or actually birthed. We must have our own issues in check enough so that we can properly provide the essential and primary foundation so that our children can be optimal in the world and fully functional adults. Otherwise, we set them up for failure because we haven't ensured our own personal emotional and mental success.

I focus on emotional success because without the healthiest version of mental/emotional well-being we can not experience full success in the world which isn't limited or bound to financial. Coming from a happy and balanced mind will ensure an enriching experience in the world independent on money. Incidentally, more often than not, an individual feeling clean love and happy mind will polarize and attract abundance through various facets of life.

I personally am passionate about this topic because my vision and awareness sees all children including those in the bodies of adults. I see so much neglect, ranging from physical health to community/societal health.

Phase 1: 
Planning parents come to me and yogically/Ayurvedically I counsel and supervise both parents, since it is primarily a two parent job, in diet and lifestyle invorder to create a platform of optimal health. 
Phase 2:
Parents that are pregnant or fostering/adopting children, I counsel them according to my experience and during their arduous but hopefully joyful experience.
Phase 3:
One children are present in the environment of these parents, I continue to counsel them and provide additional resources so that parents don't fe r l alone in the process but also have a developing awareness of the bigger and smaller picture.
Phase 4:
Independent of the physical "little ones" and simply focused on parents, or adults who don't want or have children, I remind them that they have a younger version of themselves within.

CHILD ABUSE
As adults, we do the best that we can, or do we?!
Adults/parents who do not provide a safe foundation will only continue to encode into the genetic make up and mental programming that the world is not safe and the ide of what love isn't. These children, our younger versions of ourselves will view this world through such a limited and cold lens. Parents who have an environment that shows instability, dysfunction and vascilation of love and constant fear will only breed these children to be adult versions of ourselves. We say we want the best for our children and yet through our own unhappy hearts we plant these seeds, as far as in utero and thought, and cultivate children in our images.

I see in lower socioeconomic communities how children contine to sprout in families who already struggle with scarcity. These parents are stressed daily and yet continue to live beyond their means. Is this the message that should be perpetuated for these children?

I have parents that live in unhappy households because they are no longer or have ever been in accordance with their spouses. These parents struggle to keep the "family together" but are they really? What mesdage are they brewing within their children? What message do you think the children are truly receiving? When we deny the idea of unhappiness, when unhappiness is being conveyed as a different message, the child is smart enough to encode this message within their little minds and hearts and they will store all of this, even what you as adults think they "don't know" and later it will come to the surface because the body, cells, organs, mind and connective tissue records and stores all this and releases at a later time. I know this from first hand personally. As a "healer" I've witnessed and continue to witness this as patients lay on my tables and have emotional releases from long forgotten stories. I experience these releases simply when an individual is put on a specific dietary regimen and even a series of powerfully orchestrated breath techniques.

Parents bring their children to see me for all sorts of unresolvable health issues and 95% of the time the root cause stems from the home environment and parental dishevelment on various fronts. Parents must become aware of this and be willing to heal their own unresolved emotional/physically toxic stories if they truly want to create a family structure that empowers the child and supports a hopeful future, versus a bleak one; along with supporting optimal physical and mental health in children. It brings me great sadness to see children and the children within adult bodies that suffer. Yet, I feel hopeful for the healing potential that is available for profound transformation.

We are the seeds of our parents, shaped by environment, mind and emotions. Children are our seeds. What are we doing personally in order to instill such quality and values in them? We pass these seeds onto them and they become a version of us in the world. So on and so forth. This is an endless cycle. We can affect change by what we are willing to change today about ourselves. Children are always watching us because we are the models that show them how to navigate the world. What messages are we giving them?

If we really want the best for them it all starts with how we are providing the best for our children. If we say we are sacrificing for them, are we sacrificing the "right thing" so that there is gain through investment, versus loss in the long run. Sometimes decisions to support this process isn't pretty in the moment, but again, this might be the best way to encourage the optimal representation of how to live in the world. If we "get it together", then this creates a better picture for not only ourselves but also to them and the future. There's no hiding from ourselves, and even when we try, an unjaded child will show us through their innocence that we can not really hide. If we try to hide, we deny them their innocence and wisdom. By doing so, maybe we had this done to us and we are perpetuating the cycle of abuse. Yes, lying is abusive because it is a form of violence appearingly in some cases as subtle.

Lets get it together and give a better message by being a model. Lets heal our own wounds so that we can reduce the wounds in them. Lets wake up and walk the walk of truly making a radical difference in our own lives so that this ripples across the board.

I'm optimistic in the work that can be done with consciousness! All this is said with love.