The Healing Garden: A Place Of Peace

Gardening For The Soil Gardening For The Soul

Finding Solace In A Changing World

ISBN 0-9733085-0-8

By Gwen Nyhus Stewart

Chapter 1 Interpersonal Relationships

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In this chapter:

Ø The Communication Process

Ø Listening Skills

Ø Beliefs

Ø Emotions

Ø Should

Ø Exploring Belief Systems

Ø Practical Steps to Changing Belief Systems

Ø Remember

"Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you are right."

- Henry Ford

Healing which means to make or become whole, and peace meaning a state of calm and quiet, does not resemble most of our lives in the 21st century. In 1992, a United Nations Report identified stress as "The 20th Century Disease Epidemic." The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that job stress is "A World Wide Epidemic." In addition, WHO defines health as "The condition of perfect bodily, spiritual, and social well-being and not solely the absence of illness and injury."

In other words, the absence of illness and injury does not necessarily constitute health, but rather physical, spiritual, and social well-being are the determining factors in living our lives in balance and harmony. What this suggests is that creating healing and peace in our daily lives is the contributing factor in determining emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual health. Critical to this well-being is our ability to communicate effectively with self and others and create intimate interpersonal relationships.

THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS

Communication is defined as a process whereby information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behaviours. For the purposes of this book, this definition is refined to say that human communication is the process of making sense out of the world and sharing that sense with others. This process involves three components: verbal, non-verbal, and symbolic communication.

Verbal - verbal communications are the primary communication skills taught in the formal educational system. Verbal communication includes such things as reading, writing, computer skills, e-mail, talking on the phone, writing memos, and speaking to others.

Non-verbal - non-verbal communications are those messages expressed by other than verbal means. Non-verbal communications are also known as 'body language' and include facial expressions, posture, hand gestures, tone of voice, smell, and other communications perceived by our senses. We cannot not communicate and even when we don't speak, our nonverbal communications convey a message.

Symbolic - symbolic communications are demonstrated by the cars that we drive, the houses we live in, and the clothes we wear (e.g. uniforms - police, military). The most important aspects of symbolic communication are the words we use.

Words, in fact, have no meaning; rather we attach meaning to them through our own interpretation. Therefore our life experience, belief system, or perceptual framework determines 'how we hear the words.' Rudyard Kipling wrote, "Words are of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind." In other words, we hear what we expect to hear based on our interpretation of what the words mean.

This is the beginning of the first chapter of the book The Healing Garden: A Place Of

Peace by Gwen Nyhus Stewart. There's lots more information online, but if you've read this

much, you'll undoubtedly find the book of great value!