Life is full of ups and downs. There's no way of avoiding them completely, but is there a way to increase the ups and minimise the downs. It's called raising your vibration.
Raising your vibration means to become more in tune with the higher frequency emotions of love, gratitude, joy and compassion and therefore less weighed down and easily triggered by the denser, lower frequencies like fear, anger, hate, guilt and shame. It’s acknowledging the role of consciousness in your health and wellbeing and increasing your access to your own healing intelligence.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?
When you make the shift out of a lower vibration and into a higher frequency there are some immediate benefits:
You feel lighter and brighter
You’re calmer and more content
You can think more clearly
You’re more optimistic and hopeful
Your appreciation for life and nature’s beauty increases
There are also long term benefits:
People who consistently vibrate at a higher frequency have a magnetism that’s appealing in an inconspicuous way. Their eyes are clear and bright and they seem to radiate light from within. They're inspired and see opportunities instead of obstacles, have great intuition and can make the most out of any situation. Their demeanour is refreshingly honest and sincere which reveals the depth of their self awareness. They are self assured and confidant and you feel so relaxed, safe and hopeful in their presence that you forget about time.
Scientific studies show that these types of people get sick less often and live longer, happier lives. That’s because raising your vibration gives you resilience and helps keep you in the rest, digest and regenerate state, which supports your immune system.
HOW DO YOU RAISE YOUR VIBRATION?
The good news is that you don’t have to wait until you’re in a good head space to raise your vibration. In fact, starting this practice when you’re at rock bottom (like I did) can help you bounce back up quicker.
Step One:
Concentrate on your breathing. Take progressively longer, deeper and more controlled breaths.
Step Two:
Transfer your focus to your heart. Do this by tuning out the distracting chatter of the ego and tune into your heartbeat. I find it helpful for my concentration to place my hands over my heart.
DID YOU KNOW???
The heart has a complex neural network that is sufficiently extensive to be characterised as a brain in the heart. This fact has given rise to a new branch of medicine called neurocardiology. The heart-brain’s neural circuitry enables it to act independently of the cranial brain to learn, remember, make decisions and even feel and sense.
Step Three:
Focus on the emotions of LOVE, GRATITUDE, COMPASSION and JOY. Don't just think them, feel them. This is the most important part of the practice. If you can’t conjure these feelings out of thin air, you might find it helpful to remember people or situations in which you felt these emotions. The more details you can remember about these people and memories, the more genuine the feelings are that bubble to the surface. Stay with each of the emotions in turn for as long as you can. You may not be able to do this for very long to start with, but with regular practice, you'll be surprised how quickly these emotions flood your heart and how long you can hold onto them for.
Step Four:
If any of the lower frequency emotions come up, rather than pushing them away, look at them analytically and ask them why they're there. Their presence indicates a past wounds that still require healing, so send them love, compassion, gratitude and joy, until they subside. If this brings forth a strong emotional response, go with it. Tears are healing and help wash away toxins.
Step Five:
Forgive yourself and others. This is a huge one. Hanging onto blame is like trying to swim while carrying luggage. Forgiveness isn’t the same as condoning their bad behaviour, its about freeing you from the heavy and very harmful energies that bind you to them. That kind of luggage doesn't serve you, so like Queen Elsa says, “Let it go.”
Step Six:
End your practice with deep, cleansing breaths, a chi sweep (brushing your hands over your body to clear away unwanted energy), some stretches and perhaps an uplifting song.
When the heart and brain are synchronised this way, or are in what's known as a 'coherent' state, the body’s systems function with a higher degree of efficiency and harmony.
Like any skill, the more you practice, the easier it becomes and the more positive results you will notice. The idea is to get to a level where you're able to shift frequencies and into a coherent state at will, whenever you feel the need.
When I first started, I practiced in the bath tub, because it didn’t matter how much I cried, and I cried a lot. By evicting all those unwanted low frequency emotions out of my system and washing them down the drain, I felt totally liberated and joyful. So much so that sometimes I would burst into spontaneous laughter.
WHAT ELSE RAISES YOUR VIBRATION?
Things that spark joy and lift you up. For example:
Raising your voltage, which also raises your vibration (I go into detail about ways to raise your voltage in my previous blog https://www.vanessawood.nz/post/raising-your-voltage-for-a-healthier-mind-and-body)
Meditation
Prayer
Yoga
Singing and dancing
Grounding or Earthing
Biofield Tuning
Living your purpose and activating your gifts
Doing random acts of kindness
WHAT LOWERS YOUR VIBRATION?
Things that bring you down and make you feel yuck. For example:
Lying
Cheating
Stealing
Gossiping
Addictions
Bullying
Blaming and shaming
Fighting and arguments
Toxic relationships
Even though they make us feel yuck in the long term, many things that lower our vibration are difficult to quit. That’s because they’re habits that give us a small short-term reward to keep us hooked.
The examples listed above are some of the more obvious things which our inner wisdom tells us are unhealthy, but there are many other examples which are more subtle and sometimes require more sensitivity to notice their negative effects.
Too much time spent on social media
Comparing yourself to others
Swearing or cursing at others and yourself
Mistreating nature
Listening to disheartening music
Watching violent TV shows or movies
Making decisions out of fear rather than trust or love
Doing things that conflict with your values
Eating highly processed food
When I was growing up, watching the evening news was part of our family routine, but these days it’s no longer family friendly viewing. It has become shockingly violent and explicit ‘info-tainment' and watching it makes me uncomfortable, paranoid and anxious, so I stopped. Freeing ourselves from that old habit has made our evenings enjoyable family time again.
COMBINE YOUR PRACTICE WITH OTHER ACTIVITIES
Once you get good at it, raising your vibration is something you can integrate into your every day routine and you can even do it simultaneously with other activities. I like to practice while exercising or swimming. I just set my body to auto-pilot and off I go. This practice also goes well with nature activities, so try it while you’re grounding or gardening.
WARNING: Once you get good at this, people will start staring at you. They’ll be trying to figure out what’s different about you. Smile, because you’ll know exactly what it is.
Thanks to:
The HeartMath Institute for your on-going research and for sharing it with the world for free. I hope you don't mind me modifying your heart-brain coherence exercise for this blog.
Further reading:
Photo credits:
I compiled this image from many different images. The creator of the background is unknown. The creator of the jumping dogs images is Julia Christe.
Shout out:
To Michael Morris. Thank you for reading my blogs. Your friendship, feedback and encouragement is greatly appreciated. Bless you M-Dog.