Native American Traditional Mindfulness Counseling - Udemy
Do you wish you had more tools to help your clients recognize and stop negative thinking? The Native Strength path is a centuries-old traditional system that uses the Wheel of Life to help define and understand our world better. You’ll be given many diagrams you can share with your clients to help them find the origins of their negative thoughts and exactly how to change them along with exercises they can do at home to gain more awareness.
We have been told that people who hear voices in their head are crazy, yet, when we read, we hear a voice in our head that makes sense of the symbols we see. We may hear a voice telling us to remember to get milk on our way home, or to lock the door. These are not signs of insanity. These voices are very important for our survival. These can be the voices of our conscious. Your clients may be hearing voices and not know what to do about it. They may not want to tell you for fear they’ll be institutionalized or placed on strong medications.
Some voices, like the ones that tell us to lock the door, are good, but we also have one’s we shouldn’t listen to. These voices are called our fear feeders.
Our fear feeders are the voices in our head that tell us things that feed on our fears. They tell us we aren’t good enough or that the world is too dangerous for us to pursue our sacred dream, the goal we have for this life. There is a Cherokee medicine story that introduces us to our fear feeders.
If we listen to the fear feeders long enough they grow powerful and their view of reality is often very distorted. It’s important to silence the fear feeders.
We give our fear feeders an appetizer when we use the Wheel of Excuses. For example, “I don’t understand” is a precursor to “I’m incapable of learning.” When we silence the fear feeders and allow the elders to speak, we may hear “I don’t know that yet, but I know where I can go to learn.” When you give your clients the Wheel of Excuses and the Wheel of Fear Feeders, they can see with their own eyes where these fears come from and how they can overcome them.
When we put the fear feeders on the Wheel of Life, we get a deeper understanding. For example, the south on the Wheel of life stands for the emotions, and childhood. The south of the Fear Feeder Wheel stands for myths. So, the myths we tell ourselves that we learned as children, or that cause strong emotions, will give birth to this fear feeder voice. If we were a weak child, we may have told ourselves that we’re not strong enough for something. There may be a lot of fear around this activity in question. If we recognize these things it becomes easier to reason away our fear now that we are older and stronger.
If we don’t REPLACE these fear feeder voices with loving ones, they gain energy. There is a Cheyenne medicine story that introduces us to our inner personas.
Each of us has inside of us a little boy and a little girl, two wise elders, and two adults. These are our inner personas. Each of these has a purpose. When we listen to them all, and not just the adults that make sure we get to work on time, we become more balanced. The elders are our higher power. They can see things we can’t. When the fear feeders are strong, the elders are silent. This results in frustration, depression, and anxiety.
It’s common for people to hear only the voices of their inner adults. These voices remind them to get certain projects done or pick up items from the grocery store. We often ignore the voices of our inner children who appreciate beauty and the simple things in life.
The most important inner voices of all are those of our elders. These are the perfect loving parents we always wished for. When they correct us, it’s with humor and love, never scolding. When we are in constant communication with the inner elders, we have high self-esteem.
Until 1978 Native American religion and culture was illegal in the United States. That’s the year I graduated from high school. I am an enrolled member of the Cherokee nation and decided to seek out the ways of my ancestors. I traveled across North America and found several medicine men and women that I studied with for decades.
In 2002 I was elected Blessed Woman for the Lost River Band of the Cherokees where I shared with them what I had learned. I did pipe ceremonies, taught the people to speak Cherokee, gave sweat lodges, and healings, but the thing the people enjoyed the most was the mindfulness lessons I’ve called Native Strength. It was apparent this information was too important not to be shared with the rest of the world.
I wrote five books on the Native Strength teachings and culture. Due to the popularity of the books, I began a television show also called Native Strength. The books and show are designed for the lay person. This course is for professionals who would like an alternative to their standard care.
In addition to medicine stories, lectures, and quizzes this course includes diagrams you can give your clients to help them recognize their fear feeders. When they look at the Wheel of Excuses and the Fear Feeders Wheel it becomes easier to see exactly how we are choosing negative energy. This will help your clients to hear the voices of their inner personas instead. Listening to the inner personas increases happiness, health, hope, harmony, and humor.