The Totem Nutrition Podcast: Episode 003 Interview with Rohini Ross
In this episode, Leah and Rohini discuss emotional health. Rohini explains that each of us has innate well-being. We all have an internal intelligence that is always seeking to bring us back into balance. When we are in a low mood our thinking is distorted, burnout is what you make of it, how addictive distorted thinking can be, and how to shrink distorted thoughts down to size.
Key Takeaways From Our Interview With Rohini
We are all innately well and our body-mind intelligence will always return to this wellbeing.
“Spiritual psychology looks at the innate wellbeing that’s inside each and every one of us.”
“It’s looking to help people connect fully to the wellbeing that’s fully within themselves. ”
“None of us are designed to suffer.”
“On the physical level, if I get a cut, I don’t think about how that cut is going to heal. There’s an intelligence in my body that knows exactly what it needs to do to heal that cut. That same intelligence works for us on the mental and emotional level.”
Our emotional experience is created by our thinking. Emotional struggle is the result of turbulent thinking.
“When we get caught up in negative thoughts, reactive thoughts, we lose touch with that experience of who we really are and we get caught up in a difficult psychological experience. ”
“It’s recognizing that we feel our thinking and recognizing the power of thought in our lives.”
“A low mood is a lot of stirred up thinking.”
“When we understand that our feelings come from thought and we recognize how changeable it is and how transitory it is, whatever experience we’re having becomes easier to navigate. We can ride it out more gracefully.”
“We all have the power of thought and the ability to bring our thoughts to life from our consciousness”
The understanding that we can’t trust our thinking when we’re in a low mood, to me is revolutionary.
“Thoughts are habitual. They’re like any habit. Often times they’re created when we’re quite young. They’re created with the best of intentions. We’re trying to take care of ourselves, but they’re not reality-based. ”
“If we’re engaging in a negative thought habit, it doesn’t stop us from hurting, it only creates suffering.”
“There’s an ability to wake up to how we’re creating experiences for ourselves.”
“I had spent my entire life trying to fix my insecurity. Thinking that it must be something wrong with me, so it didn’t really matter what job you would place me in — I could be picking up garbage from the streets and I’d feel burned out. You could put me anywhere and that belief would rise to the surface. The simple thing that shifted for me, that was life-changing, was that I saw that I didn’t need to change anything just because I had insecure thought. Just because I had an insecure feeling, didn’t mean that anything was wrong with me.”
Trusting and understanding that your innate wellness is always available to you, is how to make improvements in your life and emotional state.
“Understanding this gave me a foundation of knowing that I’m okay, no matter what my experience is. As soon as I saw the shift inside of myself… it changed how I showed up in the world.”
“It simplified things because when we see that the only thinking keeping us from peace of mind and wellbeing is our own thinking and that thinking isn’t real and it’s going to change by itself and that there’s a deeper intelligence inside of ourselves that stabilizes us… it’s kinda like, ‘I can take my hands off the wheel!'”
“When we’re in stirred up thinking, life is hard. Being able to make choices from a settled state of mind is so much easier because you just take the next step.”
“Our behavior always follows our understanding. If somebody is having a struggle where they want a different behavior, there has to be a shift in understanding that will allow the behavior to no longer make sense.”
“It doesn’t take any effort to change once our understanding is clear.”
Rohini Ross is the founder and presenter of The Soul-Centered Series: Psychology, Spirituality and the Teachings of Sydney Banks that starts October 2018 in Santa Monica, CA. She is passionate about helping people wake up to their potential. She is a transformative coach, trainer, and author of Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1). She has an international coaching practice helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of well-being, resiliency, and success. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, watch her Vlogs with her husband, Angus Ross, and subscribe to her weekly blog on her website, rohiniross.com.
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Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
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