Holistic Self-Care Tools for Caregivers: Care for Yourself While Caring for Others

By Suchinta Abhayaratna ThD

Many of us are caregivers of one kind or another. We are parents who take care of our children, adults who take care of our aging parents, teachers who care for and educate our students, physical- and mental-healthcare practitioners who care for the sick and elderly. We are healers, shamans, coaches, hairdressers, aestheticians. We provide invaluable service to others but tend to forget ourselves. I am one of you. However, over the past twenty years, I have learned how important it is to be aligned with the whole of who we are. When we are fully present to ourselves, we are more present to the people we serve.

In this book, I share what I learned from years of in-depth study of energy medicine. It enabled me to heal and move through my health challenges with grace and ease, using the quick, easy, and effective subtle energy tools and processes that evolved into the CHI Self-Care System. This book helps you discover the energy tools that you already have and use them to care for yourself, be healthier, and more balanced while you care for others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524554811

Suchinta Abhayaratna ThD

Suchinta Abhayaratna is a transformational psychologist and a holistic self-transformation coach in private practice with individuals and groups in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and online. The Creative Holistic Integration (CHI) Self-Care System is based on her own self-healing journey and over twenty years of intensive study of energy healing to overcome her own health challenges. She received a doctorate from Holos University in 2010 for her research on the effects of the wholeness exercise on Sri Lankan youth who had lost close family in the 2004 tsunami. In Kenya, she shared the CHI self-care tools with cancer patients, their caregivers, teachers working in HIV-affected communities, and women subject to domestic violence.

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Copyright © 2017 by Suchinta Abhayaratna, ThD.

ISBN:   EBook   978-1-5245-5481-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 03/14/2017

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

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Holistic Self-Care Tools

for Caregivers:

Care for Yourself While Caring for Others

Suchinta Abhayaratna, ThD

The Essential SELF-CARE BIBLE for all who wish to help others!

C. Norman Shealy, MD–PhD

Founder and CEO, International Institute of Holistic Medicine

Author of Blueprint for Holistic Healing

This clearly written book provides effective, easy-to-follow approaches which will help caregivers to holistically care for themselves. Most of us, at some time and in some way, fill the role of caregiver. Thus, I highly recommend this book to all.

Ann Nunley, MFA, PhD

CEO, International Society of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to my clients and students for sharing your experiences in this book. You are examples of what happens when we connect to the wholeness of who we are. Guiding, supporting, and witnessing your healing journeys has given me the courage to write this book to empower others who are ready and waiting to start theirs.

Love and thanks to my family, Nimi, Ruvan and Francesca, Saman and Todd: Your love, encouragement, and support for who I am and what I do strengthens me and keeps me moving forward.

Special thanks to Ruvan and Francesca for your gift of photographs, videos, and chakra graphics that grace this book.

Deep gratitude to my teachers and colleagues at Holos University for guiding me home to my Self. You are my soul tribe of scientific mystics / mystical scientists who continue to inspire me.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

How This Book Is Organized

How You Can Use This Book

Chapter 1 Caring for Yourself While Caring for Others

Your Immune System and You

10 Reasons To Practice Chi Self-Care Regularly

Chapter 2 Managing Stress

Observe Yourself

Tree Mandala Visualization

Torus Mandala Visualization

Chapter 3 Self-Energization

Energizing the Hands

Self Energizing with Hands

Affirmations to Coordinate with Self-Energizing Hand Positions

Lock-In Intentions

Hippocrates and the Laying-on of Hands

The Heart-Hand Connection

Using Your Energized Hands to Relieve Pain and Tiredness

Chapter 4 Chakras: Your Energy Centers

Chapter 5 Toning: Using Your Voice as a Self-Care Tool

Experiences Of Toning During A Chi Session

Case 1: Facilitator Notes

Case 2: Facilitator Notes

Chapter 6 Intentions: Thought Forms of Creation and Manifestation

Affirmations for Expressing Divine Light Within

Daily Intentions and Affirmations

Chapter 7 Mind-Body Communications: Self-Muscle Testing

Prelimineries:

Standing Tilt Test

O-Ring

Circle and Point

Catapult

Blind Self-Muscle Testing 1

Blind Muscle Testing 2

Chapter 8 Creating a Daily Self-Care Practice

Record Your CHI Self-Care Practice

Section 1 Wholeness and the CHI Self-Care system

Chapter 9 Wholeness in Brief

Chapter 10 Creative Holistic Integration (CHI) Self-Care System

Chapter 11 The Wholeness Exercise: The Center of the Chi Self-Care System

Experiences of The Wholeness Exercise

Chapter 12 CHI Processes For Deeper Transformation

Trapped Emotional Energy Release (TEER)

Self-Reprogramming (SRP)

Vibrational Essences

Mandala: Circles of Wholeness

Family Constellations Circle

Generational Ancestral Process (GAP)

Reiki

Other Modalities

Chapter 13 Reflections On Being A Caregiver

Section 2 Accessing CHI Self-Care System Programs

Books and Resources

Caregivers Comment On Holistic Self Care Tools for Caregivers

FOREWORD

I first met Suchinta in 1984 at the Women’s Reproductive Rights Conference in Amsterdam. We were both in our thirties, passionate women’s health activists. I was living in Kenya, and she in the Philippines. We were both involved in educating women to breastfeed their babies and supporting their efforts to resist the lure of infant formula companies that were convincing mothers that costly formula was superior to mother’s milk. Mothers were feeding their babies formula mixed with contaminated water, and babies were dying.

I am Ugandan, then living in Kenya. She is a U.S. citizen from Sri Lanka, then living in third world countries where her husband was working for USAID. We are sisters from different mothers. We have been caregivers most of our lives not only to our own families, but also to scores of women who sought information and support from us.

Thirty years later, I was in New York visiting my children. Suchinta was living in the D.C. area. When we reconnected on the phone, my answer to Suchinta’s question—How have you been all these years?—was a detailed account of the constant back pain, of muscle spasms, of sleepless nights, of how I had to give up my job and was now contemplating surgery. She told me of all the health challenges that she had been through and how she had successfully dealt with them using holistic approaches. She offered to share with me the subtle energy-based, synergistic self-care system that she had developed from what she had learned through her experiences and study. I knew nothing about energy medicine, but I resonated with the approach.

I felt that Suchinta heard me, had walked my path, had lived my life, and here she was with exactly what I needed to heal myself. In the three days I spent with her in D.C. she shared with me the Creative Holistic Integration (CHI) Self-Care Tools so well presented in this book. During the rest of my stay in the United States, we met weekly on Skype, focusing on the challenges I was experiencing and responding with the most appropriate self-care tools and processes.

She started me off with the Wholeness Exercise—now an integral part of my life. The results are simply magical. When I feel stressed, I breathe deeply and take a few seconds to realign with Wholeness. In a few minutes, I feel calm and deeply relaxed and am ready for positive interaction with my children and grandchildren, instead of snapping at them. I no longer demand that my daughter look for yet another