“There is a Sun within every person” – Rumi
We are living in a world that is suffering from a great crisis in relationships. Our society is deteriorating from corruption, consumerism, disparity, lack of spirituality, anti-ecological behavior, just to name a few of the most delicate and profound problems. We are immersed in a great deal of pain, from social and cultural chaos that affects our quality of life immensely. We all need to rethink our approach to life to renew our consciousness of the responsibility towards our planet, a vision of healing that starts with self-awareness and leads to achieving a loving impact on the rest of humanity and having a balanced life.
My journey of self-discovery began from a great challenge in my relationships and a painful personal moment of disconnection from myself. I found myself as if I was in a dark well where I could only see my own reflection in the dark. Moving to another country gave me the opportunity to explore ways to heal my own life, transform myself and grow. Coaching gave me the tools to get on this healing path and to accept that no one else was going to do it for me, gave me the power and the responsibility to endure the journey. Nature’s force showed me that I was not alone on this journey. I reached out for her and felt that there was something immensely powerful around me, I began to believe in the signs that nature offered me, and I embrace a living attitude of gratitude. Nowadays, I feel a vital energy that comes to me daily through meditation, exercise, the admiration of nature, and through my relationship with my children from whom I learned about unconditional love.
I am still walking on a journey of understanding the nature of love. A journey of learning to align my mind with my heart, where the true intelligence is. This true intelligence goes hand in hand with love and compassion. These elements combined have the power to elevate a person on his/her growth journey. From my perspective as a coach, connecting our hearts with nature is a process that comprises different levels of awareness:
- Individual Level of Consciousness: To elevate self-awareness through self-discovery. This is possible through one-to-one coaching sessions, or group sessions where self-reflection and openness of the heart is encouraged. I tend to consider a holistic view that recognizes the human being in all its aspects: mental, physical, and spiritual. As a coaching tool, I love to use Points of You® cards (www.pointsofyou.com) which are photographs based on neuroscience and Phototherapy. This is an excellent ice breaker in the process of coaching as it allows people to start conversations from the heart and to expand perspectives.
- Family awareness: On this second level, the goal is to raise awareness of living in a community and to learn to relate through the family. To achieve this goal let us consider the concept of family as the origin of loving relationships and not as based on how it is conformed. A family can be a single mom, a single dad, a family of two men or two women, a newly divorced father or mother, or an assembled family. When there is love, there is no room for judgments, that is what life is all about, embracing it without judgments and seeing the family as the foundation from where we flourish and learn to fly.
To increase family consciousness is possible through workshops and family coaching sessions using tools to recognize the Life cycle phase where the family is at (Detachment, Encounter, Children, Adolescence, Reunion, or Aging). Then we aim to achieve the implementation of coaching techniques and family coaching tools to establish relationships of trust.
- Level of social awareness: In order to raise social awareness it is necessary to have the support of government agencies to establish sustainable initiatives promoting social integration, holistic education programs involving community, environmental education, parks and museums. Creating collective awareness and transforming our anti-ecological, anti-aesthetic and anti-spiritual culture by one of Love and Compassion for Life requires a comprehensive approach and the participation of all agents in society.
These initiatives are educational and seek to reach our hearts through experiences. For example, programs that refocus entertainment to avoid control fishing, hunting, , and animal fights as an act of killing for pleasure. Programs that refocus art towards one more coherent interaction with life and the beauty of nature, programs that focus on spirituality to really cultivate compassion, love, generosity, freedom, and not materialism, power, control and exploitation of human beings.
- Raise Universal and Spiritual Awareness: This is a high level of consciousness and it is not attached to an establishment or any religious institutions. This is a level where the human being becomes aware that he is part of everything, the Universe. At this level we realize that there is a vital force within us, beyond cultural beliefs and conditionings, which allows us to be in harmony with the Universe, and to live in alignment with the universal purpose. Is a path of reflection that has no time and space because it is within every human being. By promoting more spaces of connection to the earth and its healing energy we could all raise this universal and spiritual awareness.
From my point of view, this process involves educating the individual deeply to make him see the impact of his disconnection with himself and with nature, make him see that we are part of the Universe and that there is an energy that needs us to connect with it. An energy that heals us and diminishes the damage to the planet, the damage to our own source of life. To make human beings see that elevating the consciousness of a sick society is to give themselves the permission to start enjoying a space to grow healthy, to create and to develop all our creative potential for the well-being and benefit of humanity. We need to understand that we need to discover through the world and our relationships how to connect to the planet.
Finally, my holistic vision to help others to connect with the heart and with nature is specifically through programs that cover all aspects of a human being: Emotional, Affective, Social, Physical, Spiritual and Intellectual, starting from the following principles:
- To see each person as a unique being and full of possibilities.
- Identify and recognize the human being from a holistic vision (Mind, body, spirit).
- Educate through EXPERIENCES such as:
- Artistic activities in outdoor spaces: Dance, Theatre, Music, Arts, Acroyoga, etc.
- Sport and recreation in nature: Yoga, Walks of Silence, adventure sports.
- Workshops and Holistic Therapies: Aromatherapy, Yogatherapy, Mindfulness, Musictherapy, Energy Healing Workshops, Thai Yoga Massage, among others
- Ecological awareness campaigns through competitions.
- Holistic retreats for families.
Finally, from my experience in Barbados, it is nature itself that teaches us what it is to be truly connected to life. Thanks to nature it is possible to experience something beyond the physical and tangible world, as simple as walking barefoot on the beach, feeling the wind, contemplating a sunset, listening to the birds, enjoying the aroma of a flower, feeling the freshness of the water. It is nature that makes it possible for us to experience the spiritual and energetic world where there is great wisdom, the wisdom of unconditional love.
I honestly believe on the need to restore the bond with nature as something we are part of, a sacred place to reconnect, to return home, to be happy, to honor life, to raise consciousness, beyond our current materialism, integrating all levels of the Self and achieve balance on our planet.
“The very center of your heart is where life begins. The most beautiful place on earth. – Rumi
Angela Nunez.
“The very center of your heart is where life begins. The most beautiful place on earth. – Rumi