Top 5 tools for reconnecting to your true self
Returning home from Costa Rica a couple years ago, a single mantra resounded in my mind: “For your life to change, you have to change.”
I’d felt broken, brittle and physically injured before escaping to the rustic, idyllic town of Santa Teresa for a week. I returned vibrant, glowing and healed after epic jungle yoga sessions and surfing in warm tropical waters. And soon after, I did make serious life changes, for the first time evaluating how I could change since my circumstances would not budge no matter how hard I forced them.
For me, travel has always been one of the top ways to reconnect to my true self, to hear my intuition’s voice that drowns in noise of daily living. But I can’t always travel. And that’s caused me internal struggle. There had to be a better way.
Over the past few years, I’ve realized that reconnecting is not a mystery. It’s a practice. A spiritual practice.
More people than ever are practicing spirituality, and that’s awesome. The downside to this is a ballooning population of so-called gurus and spiritual teachers. (And yes, I’m aware of the irony of a spiritual teacher saying this.)
The problem comes because people who are suffering tend to look at these teachers who share slivers of their lives on social media — often with the same professionally taken photographs snapped at the perfect moment of gut-busting laughter shown over and over again — as if they had it all figured out. As if they were special.
And all this does is make people feel flawed, like they’re missing some essential ingredient for healing or finding the answers they crave. But it’s not true. We’re all the same.
All the answers you could possibly need are right inside your soul.
So today’s post covers the top 5 tools, techniques and books that have helped me connect with my true self, and that I hope help you find those answers within. If you’d like to download a list of the top 8 books that changed my life, enter your email in the box below.
8 inspiring books that changed my life
Including a few you've never heard of!
Top 5 tools for reconnecting to your true self
1. Meditation
Hands down, meditation has been of the most important ways of connecting to my true self. My resistance to meditation was so incredible that it took me four years of thinking about it before actually sitting to breathe.
It’s said that what we resist the most, we need the most — whether that’s a specific yoga pose or a practice like meditation.
I do a special type of meditation that connects me to my heart and helps me process any feelings I’m moving through.
But the most important thing is simply to start, even if it’s just one minute per day. Keep showing up and the practice will build on itself — even when it feels like nothing is happening.
2. Kundalini yoga
Kundalini yoga is known as the yoga of awareness. It’s a meditative, rhythmic practice that powerfully moves energy through the body. Perfect for healing lingering emotional pain.
It’s a lot different than Hatha or Vinyasa in that there aren’t really any poses to master. I really like this because although I love moving through a Vinyasa sequence, it’s easy for my ego to get involved. In Kundalini, it’s really hard to have an ego because you feel silly half the time while practicing sometimes outlandish movements, known as kriyas.
I’m not sure how I found Kundalini yoga, but I began practicing with DVDs by Ana Brett and Ravi Singh when I was losing my mind after cancer treatment.
I was bald, wearing a pink cotton turban and literally spinning in circles with my arms spread like wings for one of the exercises, and Ana said, “wherever you go beauty happens and healing follows.”
That was probably the first time in my life I thought I could be one of those people who shines bright light from her heart instead of oozing the sadness I’d always felt.
Ana and Ravi are awesome. I highly recommend their videos. Right now I’m doing a 40-day practice with Yoga Beauty Body. (Full disclosure: This is and the other Amazon links here are affiliate links, and if you end up purchasing, I make a small percentage of the sale.)
Kundalini is total soul medicine. I like to use it whenever my energy starts to feel heavy, beyond that which can be cleared through meditation. (It’s also a foundational element of The Big Shift, the magical 40-day journey of yoga, meditation and massive healing that runs once a year.)
3. Travel
Sometimes there’s no more powerful way to reconnect to your true self than exploring a foreign environment, whether foreign to your country or simply foreign to you.
An escape doesn’t have to be a month-long yoga teacher training in Nicaragua (is it just me who dreams of that?), but could be as simple as exploring a different area of your state or home country.
Before traveling to Costa Rica, I was terrified, and so was my husband. I almost allowed his fear to inject my own heart and cancel the trip. Thank goodness I went. It seems like every time I travel alone to connect with my true self, I return with a resounding mantra so necessary for growth.
This time, the message was: “For your life to change, you have to change.”
Soon after, I embarked on the 40-day practice that really did shift long-lasting patterns. It’s not always easy to summon the courage to admit that for our lives to work better, we must work better. It’s not that we have to become better — quite the opposite. We must learn to love ourselves exactly as we are.
BOOKS
High-vibe books help keep you centered, but some books are truly life-changing. If you want the full list of 8 books that changed my life, download the list below for instant access.
8 inspiring books that changed my life
Including a few you've never heard of!
4. Dying to be Me
Dying to be Me is about a woman who was rushed to the hospital, literally about to die from cancer. She had an out-of-body experience and chose to come back to teach people about the boundless, boundary-less, all-consuming love she felt while halfway between heaven and Earth.
For a long time, I approached my spiritual journey in a serious way, but this book helped me realize that we don’t need to do anything other than be exactly who we are. We are loved unconditionally by the divine spirit, and our souls are made of this divine love energy.
She gave the example of food, and said that while it’s important to eat healthy, it’s not the occasional treat that kills us, but the fear we feel around food. This analogy translates to so many other things in life, too.
After reading this book, I felt so much ease about those times when I inevitably fall out of balance, work too much, or grow attached to outside goals. It’s all okay. All we have to do is try our best to remember and surrender. Life is one big meditation.
Just as during seated practice, we constantly train the mind to return to the breath as it wanders, we do this in waking life, too, always training our worldly selves to return to the divine, true self.
The more we practice the easier it is, but the only place we can be is exactly where we are.
5. The Power of Now
This book is well-known, but it’s definitely worth a mention. I read The Power of Now during my first 40-day practice, and it was truly transformative. It discusses non-resistance and how to accept yourself and your life because to wish something was another way than reality is just insanity. Really good stuff.
What tools, techniques or experiences have found to connect to your true self? Share in the comments below! Let’s inspire each other.
