WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Healing Hour: What is the Healing Era?

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

In today's episode, we explore the concept of the healing era and why we all need one.

Hello and welcome to The Healing Hour. I'm Adriana Azarian, your host. And I'm Erica Kaiba, your co-host. And we are here to talk to you today about the healing era. Adriana, can you walk our audience through exactly what that means? Okay, so the healing era was a trend on social media about a year ago at this time where it was trending to kind of do some self-assessment and realize areas in your life that you can grow and heal from past moons, past relationships,

things like that. And so I was really inspired by that. I liked the idea of looking at myself and seeing what habits I could form, what habits I could change, what habits I need to get rid of in order to be more fully myself and more healthy in all the aspects of my life. So the way I see it, the healing era is something that can really be applied to anyone. And it involves the whole person being physical health, spiritual health, mental health, emotional health, and mental health. Very important. Very important. And usually when I hear the term healing era, it's restricted to a specific period of time where someone wants to enter into that healing attitude. But the way you explained it to me last year was that it's supposed to be a holistic lifestyle,

something that goes on. Yes. So I've kind of added my own little tweaks to the healing era. I think it's a lifelong process because the thing about being human is that you're never going to be perfect. So there's always room for improvement. There's always room for more growing, more healing, more, you know, realization about, you know, wounds or bad habits or things like that that that always need to be addressed and worked on. So the way I see it, you're in your healing era until you die. Yes. So where do we start with the healing era? There are so many different areas of it. You mentioned physical, emotional, even dental, especially. Dental. Especially dental. So if you're looking at all these areas of your life and you're like,

okay, I want to improve in this area, that area and the other one, where do you prioritize your focus? That's a really, really good question. I think it starts out with, well, since we are spiritual beings, I think it does start out with this humility that, you know, I cannot be the source of my own healing. Healing can come to me through Christ. It's through Christ that we are fully healed, not we fully become the people that he intends us to be. So that takes a lot of humility. It also takes a lot of humility to look at yourself and realize what you're doing wrong, whether that be, you know, in your spiritual life, you know, struggling with different sins, struggling in your physical life with eating right, sleeping right, exercising right, you know, things like, things like that in assessing

what you could be doing better. Mental health, how are you really doing? Are you addressing your mental health? Are you talking about it with your friends? Are you really in a good state of mind such that you can deal with your daily life well? Emotional health. How are you relating with others? How are you relating with handling your daily issues or even maybe some bigger issues going on in your life? Mental health? Are you flossing daily? How is your oral health doing? Because that affects the rest of your physical health, things like that. You have to have the humility to want to change and to grow from where you are now. You said humility and that reminded me of the acronym you made for healing era. Yes. The process, step by step process of entering into the healing era.

Okay, yes. So there are 10 steps to the healing era that I have made myself. Obviously this is not a hard and fast list of rules. But I think that it is a really good outline for when you are ready to enter into your healing era and your growth mindset. So the first step is humility, and that's accepting that you need to change. The next step would be evaluate. So that's going to be deciding, making those decisions, decide what needs to change in your life. And that doesn't have to be everything right now. Like I said, this is a lifelong process. You don't have to like, you know, make 100 things you have to change right now. Just evaluate what right now needs to change the most. And then you're going to, the A for in healing stands for allow. So that means

you're going to allow yourself to invest in yourself, basically. And that can be financially. It can be, it can be just providing for yourself what you need in order to heal. So like, if you don't floss well enough, get some dental floss, things like that. L stands for let go. So you want to release your negative attitude towards maybe the bad things that have happened to you, the bad, maybe the bad attitude you have towards yourself for not having healed sooner or having these bad habits or a bad mindset. So you just want to let go up that negative attitude and try to cultivate positivity. We want the healing to come from a place of self-love. And I mean that in the best way. I don't mean like, you know, self-worship. I mean like I love myself, so I want to take care of myself so I can

love others better. And then I is integrate or incorporate. So this is when you're going to want to incorporate new habits into your daily life. So you've already decided what habits you want to change. Great. Now you're going to put those into practice. What advice would you have for someone that's worried about going overboard? Like I have decided to, everything about my dental health needs to change. I have 10 habits that I want to focus on now. And then they get burnt out. But at the same time, you want to make hopefully more changes than too few. So how do you balance that? I think it's always good to start out with five things you want to change. So, you know, we have five aspects of the healing era that I've talked about, physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, and dental. And I think

it would be good to have a habit for each of those categories. Right. So, okay, maybe you shouldn't like get the most expensive toothbrush and the floss and then like a tongue scraper and then billion dollar toothpaste all at the same time like maybe if your habits are that bad you should just start with brushing your teeth twice a day and flossing once a day like if you want to have two habits it's fine too for that one category start with the basics you know what I'm saying I would say five no more than five when you're first starting out and that might seem like wait a minute my whole life is out of whack like why would I only start with five habits well we'll get there because eventually you're going to get comfortable in those habits and then you're going to

build on top of those habits. Habit stacking. Habit stacking. Yes, a great term. So after you incorporate new habits into your life, you're going to notice the changes. And these might be uncomfortable changes, but they might also, you might notice, oh, wait a minute, I actually feel a lot better. I feel better when I do daily exercise. I feel better when I eat enough vegetables during the day. I feel better when I'm not eating 10 slices of cake at night. What would an uncomfortable change be? Like cravings? I think an uncomfortable change, like, for example, I don't like the fact that I have to go to bed early

because it means I can't stay up late and talk to my friends. It makes me uncomfortable. That doesn't mean it's not a good habit. So noticing and acknowledging when you feel discomfort in a habit, even if it's overall better for you, is just a good thing to take note of. G, grow. So if your habits really are helping you, you'll know it because you're growing in discipline. You're growing.

You're able to relate better to other people and get your daily tasks done in a timely manner and in the best way you possibly can. And then you're going to endure. Okay. E stands for endure. So accept the growing pains that come with healing. like we said, if it's uncomfortable, like just keep going with it. Eventually, you're going to get used to it. Our resolve make helpful change is permanent.

Let's say you were exercising three times a week was one of your habits. Okay, I'm going to make this a permanent habit now. Okay, like I feel good in this. It's something I can maintain over a long period of time. I'm going to resolve to make this permanent. And now you're comfortable. And comfort is good, but it's also motivation to make. it harder again. So you're going to start over. A stands for a new. And you're going to repeat the

process over and over again as much as you can to keep healing. So maybe instead of exercising three times a week, you're exercising every day. Yeah. Or maybe you switch to dental. Right. And it's definitely different for everyone. I mean, not everyone can exercise every day. Not everyone can, you know, it's what you can do, what you enjoy doing, especially. I mean, if you don't enjoy exercising. Like maybe you're just doing the wrong exercise. Yeah, that's another thing. There are many different types of exercises that are available. Sometimes people only think of it as a certain thing. Like, oh, I have to go to the gym and I have to enjoy powerlifting and pushups and boot camp. Yeah. But there's biking outside. There's jogging outside. There's all kinds of

exercise classes. Yeah, exercise is not just in the gym. Find your mojo. Exactly. Exactly. Or your dojo if you like karate. Exactly. Yes. So I thought maybe we could go more in depth to the five different areas of healing. Sure. Sure. And how to evaluate where you're at with each of them and maybe some starting points for improving each of them. So spiritual, I think, is the most important, right? Because, you know, we're made for God and we should focus on a relationship with him. So I think that's going to start a lot with prayer. Having daily. prayer that you can stick to every day. I think sometimes we think, you know, the only way I can be holy is if I'm, you know, like, go full on monk mode and praying the liturgy of the hours and going

to daily mass and doing all this beautiful stuff, but that can actually lead to more spiritual problems if you're not in that state of life. So I think incorporating daily prayer, like start out with just five minutes day of quality time with the Lord. Or like, you know, for us Catholics, like spend your time, like liturgy the hours, like just one hour a day, like one of the hours, or a rosary, things like that. Or getting into the headspace where you're offering every single part of your day to God. The Bible tells us to pray always. Yes. So maybe while you're taking that math exam, you're offering it to the Lord. Oh yeah. No matter how it turns out. Oh, absolutely. I think that's definitely, yeah, that's absolutely necessary as well. But I think when you're also just starting out,

just having like some time just carved to God alone. Yeah. You know? That's important too. Yeah. So I think starting out with that or, you know, like you just said, like incorporating God into the mundane things as well. So like, yeah, when you're taking an exam, offering it to God. Also getting ready in the morning, listening to worship music is something that's very popular in my dorm that I think is a really beautiful idea.

If you can't really get a lot of prayer into your day. Put on that Toby Mac playlist. That Toby Madd. Oh my gosh. Yes. Absolutely. Okay. So after spirituals, those are just a few examples.

You can obviously kind of go from there, but I think that's really where you ought to start, is having a solid prayer life. We can move over to physical health now. Physical health is very multifaceted because it involves what you're eating. It involves what you're, you know, what kind of movement you're getting throughout the day. How much sleep you're getting. getting enough vitamins and minerals. Hydration. Hydration is super important.

So I tell people who maybe are more sedentary, like try to get 4,000, 5,000 steps a day and then build from there. So if you, you know, are not that athletic, don't like exercising, then don't go to the gym and make yourself do things that you hate. Start out by getting daily movement and aim for getting 8,000 to 10,000 steps every day. That makes a huge difference. in how you're going to feel and people who are trying to like hit fitness goals. You know, that's a great place to start.

It's just walking. It's good for heart health. Maybe your daily walk is where you have your daily prayer. Combine things. Yes. Absolutely. There's no reason why you have to keep all this fear is separate because they all influence each other.

That's what it means to be human. I like this rule called the 80-20 rule. 80% of the time you eat whole foods, balanced meals. other 20% of the time, you know, not that you're not eating a way that serves you, but like that you're maybe indulging in like breakfast for dinner or like getting ice cream, things like that. Like make that your 20% of the time. Like there should be room for it. But also make sure you're prioritizing nutrient dense foods. This is over the course of a day? Of like a week. Okay. I mean, it could be a day too, but like over like a week, like you have 21 meals. So like maybe,

you know, 19 of those meals are going to be like really balanced or 18 of those meals are really balanced and then the other few are going to be like more fun. So I can't have 20% of my daily food be ice cream. I mean, in theory you could. But that way you just like it's not a restrictive kind of life. It's like I have room for eating fun things and I should be enjoying the food that I eat. But I should also really prioritize foods that. serve my body. And I mean, obviously, you should also enjoy those foods too. So that's a good place to

start when it comes to nutrition. How about mental health? Mental health, yes. That's a buzzword. Mental health, I think, is something that really needs to be talked about and really addressed, because your mental health has a huge effect on your physical health. And vice versa. And vice versa. It's completely true. I think there is this belief that like mental health is just kind of a leftist thing, like a thing that only, you know, like us Christians, we don't need to be talking about it. But like, no, like, we are all human beings. This is a very important subject about health. And I think it's really important with mental health, you know, assuming that like you're in a decently, you have decent mental health, like you don't have any like serious mental health.

But assuming that you have decent mental health, you know, it's good to take breaks, especially if you, you know, work, you're in school. Taking breaks are extremely important doing things that you enjoy. spending time with people that you love, hobbies that you like, like we said, they all bleed into each other. So for some people, like for us, we like to exercise to help our mental health. We like to do exercise that we enjoy because that helps us de-stress. It gives you endorphins. It gives you serotonin. Yes. And that's what mental health is about, too, is how you feel physically. And cultivating your mind, because that's the place that you live.

live all of your days. That is where you spend all of your time. Oh, yeah. I heard this orientation speech when our freshman year, Dr. David Whalen gave it. And he had this great line. He said, don't you think that what you think about bears some thinking about? And that's so true. How many thoughts do we let pass through our head every day that might be resentful, that might be getting us into a bad attitude? And we just kind of let them all slide by like a flow of water. And no, I think mental health, it doesn't necessarily have to be about therapy. It's about cultivating that mental space and making sure it's healthy and geared towards the good. Absolutely. I mean, your thoughts really do determine how you see the world and other people and how you relate to them. Like,

if you are in this mindset that the world is, you know, everyone's just nasty and not worth your time, you're going to see people that way. Like, you are really going to put yourself in a very negative world that maybe doesn't actually exist. It's going to be nihilistic. It's going to be resentful. Oh, yeah. And it starts with habits. Right. So habits in the way that you think is very important for mental health. Emotional health. How do we distinguish that from mental health? That is also a really good question. I mean, the two obviously are very deeply connected, I think, because, you know, depending on how your mental health affects how you emot and how you relate your emotions to people.

I think emotional health is more so exterior, whereas mental health is more interior, I would say. Let's unpack that. Yeah, let's unpack that. Let's say that I am having a really difficult time in a relationship, maybe with a family member, a friend, a romantic relationship. That's going to build up interiorly. If you don't acknowledge that it's there. If you don't acknowledge that it's there, the way that you relate that to people is going

to be either healthy or not healthy. What you can do to address emotional health talking through it. you know talking through it with friends uh talking trusted people who you can who you who we appropriate to speak to about this and your emotions and letting yourself feel your emotions if you yeah if you just if you suppress it if you ignore it it it'll go away but that's not maybe you should just suck it up is something that gets said a lot right the idea that emotions are sinful emotions are not sinful you cannot control your emotions that's true sin is something that you can control your emotions

or you can't control feeling your emotions right You cannot control feeling your emotions. You can control how you act on your emotions. And paradoxically, if you try to pretend that you're not feeling certain negative emotions and you suppress them, you're going to end up acting out on them and in an insane way. Maybe not in an insane way, but it's going to build up, it's going to get to the point where it's out of your control, and then you're going to feel very bad. Yes. Don't do that. Acknowledge the feelings. Find the root cause of the problem. Exactly. And deal with it accordingly.

It's afflits to spiritual health. If you are letting your emotions build up and then you take it out on someone, that's sinful. But feeling your feelings is not sinful. Emotions can be a really good signpost. Yes. I mean, they're not the be-all and end-all. But, for example, you brought up a relationship that might be giving you trouble, whether it's with family or friends or what have you. If somebody is doing something that is bothering you, hurting you, something that's out of line,

and it's affecting your emotional health, instead of saying, I'm going to ignore this and hope it goes away, advocate for yourself. I think sometimes we're socialized to say, like, oh, I should be a doormat. I should just let people do their thing and just deal with it.

But that's kind of, that's almost selfish. It's avoiding conflict to the point where it's selfish because you're not telling somebody what you need from them. And they can't give that to you if they don't know what you need. So they're going to keep doing this thing. unintentionally maybe that's hurting you and your relationship is going to suffer so direct communication

advocating for your needs christ himself said if you have a problem with someone you take it to them and i think that's really important for emotional health i think our lord knows what he's talking about when it comes to that sort of thing yes and all things actually yes um and then lastly dental health and people always laugh at me when i say dental health that's why we keep laughing when we bring up dental help. Very true. I have been told it's part of physical health. Like why do you make it a whole category of its own? I would actually argue that it is part of physical health, but it's a very important aspect of physical health. You have a doctor and you have a dentist. Exactly. Yeah, you might have other doctors on the side too. Give a primary care doctor, you have a dentist.

And the reason why is because your dental health is so important on your physical health. You have a microbiome. You have a microbiome. And if you're not, addressing the bacteria in your mouth and it's building up over time and it's going to start affecting your gut health. It can affect your heart health. And it can also be your gum health is also like a warning sign for other health problems too. People don't realize. So paying attention to that and being on top of that and I think a really good way to to take care of dental health is flossing and I always hated flossing because I have a very small mouth. and so like using the string floss you know what I'm talking about yeah it's not a fun experience

when you have a small mouth so I get floss picks because those make it much easier for me so maybe if you're someone who also struggles flossing get floss picks you know things like that there are options out there that can make taking care of your mouth easier so I think flossing is something to incorporate wearing your retainer if you have one. I mean, I've been wearing mine daily, and it's made a huge difference. Yeah, I think so too. And it's been an uncomfortable habit because it does hurt if you haven't worn it for a while. Yep.

But the payoff is great because now I actually have the bite that I paid money for. The bite, yes. So now that all that is said and done, you've been listening to The Healing Hour. With Adriana Azarian, you're happy. and Eric Kaiba, your co-host. Join us next week.