A Mother's Self-Awareness & Daily-Life-Practice
- Didileia
- Apr 23
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 16
Nourishing body, mind, and heart naturally in family life.
"What we do each day creates the quality of our life."
All human-nature nourishment comes from the greater Nature and Life-force.
Everything we need is always, already within us and around us in Nature.
I speak with inner authority about this as a life like every other, no greater or less than, and as a mother who has chosen to include three other living natures on our Earth. I am responsible to do all that I can for my own and my family's holistic well-being.
Clear sight and appreciation of Nature's wisdom is a long-term cultivation that parents can choose to empower our children with from the beginning of their lives. We all experience how our family's home-life in our formative years solidifies or dissolves our footing in life as we grow older and become responsible for our own life. The true power is in parent's hands to choose, create, and craft a self-empowered experience of life, leading our children by example to show how to eat and drink well, digest well, rest well, move well, and devote our daily energy to do what truly matters to us, individually and together as family.
Parents can adapt a daily rhythm of family life to align with Nature's rhythms, cycles, and seasons. We can embody and lead a healing foundation of gentle, balanced movement, natural inputs including wholefoods and clean water, healthy quantity, quiet time for digestion, and presence to witness and appreciate individual self-expression and use of energy. This upholds core pieces of mental, emotional, and physical well-being, naturally.
Nourishing Body Naturally
"Rise and rest, wax and wane" is a simple mantra to guide our activity and rest, and our receiving and giving. Natural law sets unshakeable boundaries and limitations that we are all bound by and must abide by. We can observe and feel our own physical digestive and energetic limitations and we must respect and keep balance within these in order to be well. Parents can observe each child's nature in this regard and support individual balance of digestion and use of energy.
Natural, wholefoods with a predominance of vegetables, grains, and fruit along with clean water, are the mainstays of physical, mental and emotional health. We cannot choose unnatural, poor quality inputs, and excessive or deficient quantity if we want to support our clear, kind mind and open heart. Physical movement, using manual skills, and being restful are also core to every person's health and well-being. These are all natural things to do, that we all have capacity for, and need to do.
A daily connection with Nature's all-senses nourishment is enhanced by keeping a garden and growing some of our own food, even if it is just a small pot of herbs or flowers. Cooking our own food is also a healing and empowering life-skill. Children, especially, are nourished in every way and significantly empowered towards their daily life-care and self-care when they experience a close connection with the growth, preparation, and consumption of their food.
Nature is full of wonder, mystery, magic, beauty, and harsh reality that children can observe and absorb without intellectual obstacles. To lie on the grass and watch the clouds pass by, or look up at the stars in the night sky and the changing formation of the moon, or gaze upon the mighty power of the ocean are very healing uses of time, not to mention walking amongst nature and experiencing colours, formations, textures, smells, and sounds. We can always be aware of our inputs in terms of our five senses and the five great elements: sound/space; touch/air; sight/fire; taste/water; smell/earth. We have to use our initiative and creative intelligence within natural boundaries and limitations and this is deeply healing and life-generating. The need for human effort and ingenuity provide purpose and heart-inspiration right from birth; having to do something gives us something meaningful to do!
It is also vital to be able to tell our loved ones how we truly feel. It is very important to express all shades of feeling, from grief through to bliss. We must not bury or contain feeling, especially difficult feeling. Parents can be present to notice, hear, appreciate, and express feeling whether it be through conversation, intentional movement, artistry, or creation of form. Whatever the outlet, family and home must be strongholds of healing and safety where each person is able to share their experience of life in all ways, and be protected, nourished, and empowered. We all need to feel included with deep roots of connection, belonging, and value for our nature and how we add to the wholeness of family.
Nourishing Mind Naturally
Parents can show how to keep a clear, quiet mind by choosing and discerning thoughts and ideas. It is a choice to keep our own power of quiet, direct attention and be in charge of our own brain chemistry and how we use our five senses. We can lead in our silent daily example through our action and demonstrate appropriate use of information sources, clarity about tools being separate instruments to use with discernment and for purpose, and speaking for ourselves with clarity and from experiential knowledge about what we know to be true and why. Parents can also show a willingness to broaden our mind and adapt and refine our thinking, while retaining our inner authority and responsibility for our own inner landscape and our life-experience.
Most importantly, we can practice using our mind to hear our own heart's vitality and spirit's light of inspiration that flows through us, and be witnessed by our children in this daily practice. Heart-led parents are a gift to children; showing the highest use of our human intelligence to do whatever takes care of and supports each life to flourish.
Nourishing Heart/Spirit Naturally
The most challenging aspect that I have experienced is to cultivate honest communication of differences while upholding wholeness of family and appreciation of diversity. It takes full faith and unwavering self-trust as a mother to flow compassion into family in the midst of dissent. It takes an open heart and broad awareness to encourage regular time together as family, and live a life of regular rituals that promote both individual and family flourishing where all ages, from young to old, are valued and nourished.
Emotion and our feeling capacity is the mighty power of water that either hydrates and nourishes, floods and wipes out, or dries up and becomes parched on all levels of our body and being. 'Molecules of emotion' as Dr. John Douillard puts them, arise and domino throughout our endocrine system. This is why we must be in charge of our own mind and use it to protect, nourish, and allow our light to shine from within our heart-space. Only we can individually choose how to use our feeling to craft our own life-experience through daily behavioural practice. We do this by keeping a little distance from the river of our thought and feeling, and choose not to be attached to or identified with smaller, separate aspects of life. Yoga teaches us to "yoke" or unite with life and be identified with Life, as a life. This is not just physical asana but a conscious mental, emotional, and spiritual daily-life-practice - a way of being and looking at life and nature on Earth.
In terms of spirituality, I can't see anything more spiritual than consciously using our own precious, limited life-opportunity to have a sensory experience of the Earth for a while. This is practical spirituality for me and the way I lead my own life, support my life-partner as we walk in partnership to craft our family's life, and how I nourish each of my children's lives. It is how I practise being a family member of our extended family circles, and as a human-collective family member - a heart-led citizen of the World cultivating inner harmony and adding to collective harmony - as a mother and householder.
It is a powerful influence on our young people for them to witness a parent's daily-life-practice of deep and abiding connection with their own spirit and walking through life full of faith in Nature and the Life-force. As I flow through my 50's and come back home to my wholeness, I am clear about embodying spiritual-life-practice as a mother-heart in my family because even when children grow up we are always watching our parents and those who come before us for what to do and what not to do.
Is it worth it?
Yes! Now that my children are in their late twenties and teens, I am witnessing the fruits and joys of a long-term cultivation to nourish body, mind, and heart naturally in my family. There is always room for improvement and life can never be perfect in human terms. However, natural, holistic well-being is important to try before turning to drugs, man-made produce, articifial technologies, and a money-driven life. My mind is quiet, my heart is open, and my conscience is clear for having had unwavering self-trust and full faith in my body's wisdom, and in Nature and natural law. My mother-child relationships are better. My life-partnership with my husband continues to deepen in indepenent love and appreciation, and be mutually supportive.
Choosing to be a hamster on a wheel is disempowering and absolutely undermines our inner health and well-being, not to mention our physical well-being. We are all self-empowered, naturally, in simple daily ways of well-being. A simple, natural life is the best!
Family life is the foundational nest for practising our power of choice of inputs, effect on digestion, and purposeful use of energy. We are truly in command of our own body and being. We are responsible for what we choose and how we use our own life-opportunity, each and every day of our life, from our first breath until our last. It is important for parents to lead by example in this and empower each child in this reality.
The great gift of having a family is to nourish and support each other in individual and collective well-being. It is a gift to walk through life with others who want the best for us, rather than feeling alone in life with it's inevitable challenges and joys. Sharing our life-experience with others is also deeply healing and transformative for well-being.
I encourage you to take charge of your life and cultivate a daily connection with Nature through your food, behaviour, and lifestyle; because you are the leader of your own life and you really are choosing how you spend it. Are you living a life in harmony with your body, mind, and heart? Are you using your life-time in a way that feels good to you?
