Consciousness – the Key to Vibrant Health

Nature Cure – Level 2 (L2) camp was held between 23rd – 29th May at Sadhana Forms, Pollachi.

4 volunteers who came to assist with Level 1 camp that happened on the same dates, participated in this camp as a way of deepening in self-knowledge, experience and service.

And, they were so busy, we forgot to click a group photo 🙂

Here is a collection of their reflections. 

Kritika:

Intellectually we all know that working on life purpose is very important. Once we are aligned to our life purpose we experience true happiness. But what is life purpose and how to figure out it for self was one question that kept haunting in my head since many years.

In this camp, I got a little clarity about it.

The camp started with the relating the keywords – Health, Disease, Vitality, Life Purpose, Consciousness, Flow, Fivefold Food, Metabolism, Unity, Voices of Organism etc that we had learned in our Level 1(L1) camp so that the jigsaw pieces get arranged at the proper place and we can see the deeper picture hidden within.

I had attended the L1 camp in December 2018 with my husband and it was a life changing experience for both of us. Before that I was on regular medication (which included painkillers, steroids and gastric tablets) for approximately 10 years. Since December camp I have not taken a single pill.

Also, I felt an inner call for Nature Cure which encouraged me to stick to this lifestyle religiously and learn more about it. I also hosted couple of Nature Cure related awareness workshops in Nagpur.

I attended Arun Sharmaji’s L2 camp in April. When I learnt it is happening again in May,  I was tempted to attend it again to deepen my understanding on Nature Cure.

In the camp,  we reflected  on how we  experienced the above keywords after  attending the  L1 L2 camps and what deeper  connection we see between all these keywords. Why is experiential learning is more important than only theory can be understood by the following example – We all learnt eating salad is very important. Still many find difficult to follow it on day to day basis. We can only understand how our health gets impacted by it positively when we eat it regularly for a certain duration. Only then we can talk about the benefits and challenges experienced.

I guess this is the reason why in L2 they look for certain qualifying  criteria to attend the camp.

Also, the purpose of L2 camps are to create people who can guide others about Nature Cure so one need to experience it first to be the torch bearer. In every L2 camp the participants practically learn how to support others by helping the L1 participants. Thus both L1 and L2 camps happen simultaneously.

Our L2 class used to start at 6 am sharp and continued till 8 am. In this session we were guided how to channelise our experience and understanding on the topics – Wellness Dimensions, Vitality, Voice  of Organism, Five Fold Food and Metabolism, and Unity.

At 8 am we would break out to help L1 participants with therapies. After breakfast and some personal time between 10.30 am – 12 pm we had another deepening circle of the topic of the morning session. From noon we would volunteer for salad preparation and thereafter have our lunch.

From 2.30 pm till 4 pm was our assignment time where we would sit by ourselves, go deeper inside and write about our reflections on some guided questions given to us by our facilitators. For me those assignments where really helpful and were a tool to understand my core better.

At 4 pm we would break to review the learning of L1 participants and in this process we used to deepen our own understanding. Thereafter we helped in cooked meal preparation and serving food and after having dinner all the participants (L1 & L2) joined together for Satsang at 7 pm.

In our first circle Ananth Anna  explained us the importance of Satsangh sessions. He said people come here with some mental conditioning that ‘I can’t do this, I don’t do that’, which are major reasons blocking the flow of our life. In Satsangh, by bringing creativity as much possible, that mental pattern can break so that flow happens.

In between,  whenever we had some time, we took counselling Sessions for L1 participants and also helped them in filling their health baseline in aKarma Wellness Platform. Those sessions clearly indicated to me how  stress is a common thread (be it in form of scoring good marks in exam, getting admission to good university, handling too much work pressure at current work or identity crisis – when you are not same as others in your group)

My key takeaways from the camp: The purpose of life is to move to the higher state of consciousness. This movement happens automatically. What we need are few tools to be alert and aware, to observe and witness this transcendence. When our actions are not aligned to our current state of consciousness,  we experience disease. We need to economise vitality so that there is flow towards life purpose. The highest state of consciousness is one where one is detached from any form. Throughout our life we keep accumulating different forms. Even any knowledge we gather, if we  understand it just intellectually and not by experience, we may be creating certain conditions and dogmas in our mind which are nothing but form.

I would like to end with deep gratitude to our facilitators – Ananth Anna, Roopa Akka, Raghu Anna and Nisha Akka who engaged us in sharing and reflections and encouraged us to decipher the meaning of everything we learnt so far, for oneself. Also, am really grateful to our group for the energy, collective reflections, smiles, friendship and for making this experience unique.

Thangamani:

Actually, I signed up for this camp to volunteer and to introduce my wife and son to Nature Cure through the Level 1 camp.  I had attended the Level 1 camp with Dr Arun Sharma and I was fully convinced by this school of thought and started to practice the Nature Cure. Though I was not expecting anything particular from this Level 2 camp, I was hoping this will be for clarifying the doubts of Nature Cure practitioners.  I would like to brief my personal experience here.

I was actually following  a few health practices as part of my spiritual practice. I was using self-enquiry (being a witness) and self-surrender (acceptance) from my early school days and hence have not identified myself with any theory, belief or faith. To my surprise, the whole curriculum of this course (Level 2) was about being conscious in all dimensions of wellness and using witnessing as a tool to include and transcend the forms we create. Therefore, the course was very much close to my heart and I can list down some of points that we have meditated upon during the sessions conducted by Ananth, Roopa, Nisha, Vinoth and Raghu.

  1. The very nature of vital energy is free flow of life from formlessness to forms and again to formlessness
  2. The vitality is used or drained when forms are created out of necessity or unconsciously and conserved when formlessness happens.
  3. Conflict can happen among the forms or when the ego identifies with one particular form. These conflicts block the free flowing life and drain the vital energy. If the conflict induced pain lasted in time and space, then it causes diseases and degeneration
  4. The appearance and disappearance of forms are momentary and by using the tools alertness, observation, awareness and witnessing, one can include and transcend the forms and evolve the consciousness further.
  5. In the journey of the consciousness many things such as unconditional love, creativity and gratitude emerge out of wellness.
  6. Higher states can be achieved when power of consciousness is chosen over the force of the mind.

As a fellow learner chipped in, one needs to make a distinction between essential and non essential forms.  It is fair use of vitality to take care of essential forms and a drain on vitality to take care of non essential forms. It is good to direct flow towards essential forms of today, acknowledging  that someday, these forms may also be experienced as formless energy.

I can elaborate the concepts but that will not bring the smile and aroma that prevailed in those sessions. I thoroughly enjoyed the course not because it is completely based on the things (6 points I mentioned) that I was meditating for a long time, but because of the authenticity that prevailed in all the sessions. It is very rare to experience this authenticity.  I am very grateful to the facilitators, volunteers, classmates and everyone who made this wonderful course to happen.

Priyanka:

Consciousness:

Seek what you want, Whatever you don’t want or do not need will automatically get discarded from your life. Observe, don’t put so many conditions to your life and lifestyle. Be conscious about the body’s and mind’s needs because when body and mind are in conflict, we tend to block each other. Mental health preceeds physical health.

Unity:

Higher state of consciousness would be the state of mind where you see reality of nature and can find common pattern of causes of happiness (health) and sadness (disease). In nature cure point of view there is unity in health, diseases, causes, treatment, food and medicine. Unity theory makes things simple, avoids conflicts and helps navigate complexities..

Poorna:

Am still internalizing.  Going through the class notes and rethinking concepts we learnt like chewing of cud. Still trying to understand and unlearn and am going to do this at least for a month along with Nature Cure practices.

And Poorna’s beginner’s mind probably sums up the spirit of this group the best.

Thank you, all four of you – for showing up, putting in the work and being the change.