Category Archives: media

Thank you! 2010 review, changes for 2011

Posted on by
Reply

I want to sincerely thank you for reading my blog. Some of you are regular readers, some occasional, and some stumble on blog posts through search engines.

However you got here in 2010, thanks for reading.

My year of sitting daily has drawn to a close. I won’t say it was 100 percent successful, because I didn’t sit every day, as I had intended. But in another way, it was very successful! Meditation has become part of my near-daily life. It’s not just the time I spend on the cushion, either. I find myself more and more having the courage to really be present as I go about my daily life — to myself and I hope more to others.

I really knew my meditation endeavor had succeeded when I sat on my zafu one day recently and realized that sitting on the cushion and taking that first breath had become an anchor for bringing my awareness completely into the present moment.

I couldn’t have imagined that happening at the beginning of the year.

2010 Blog Stats

Comparing minds want to know: What’s the data on your year of blogging?

  • I had 3,910 views of posts and pages on my blog in 2010. Back in the summer, I hoped aloud that I could reach 3,000 views by the end of the year. Well, you exceeded my expectations! I reached that goal on November 14. Thank you!
  • Back in January 2010, I averaged 6 views per day, with a total of 181 for the month.
  • In December 2010, 21 viewers per day on average visited my blog, adding up to 658 for the month.

Top 10 Hits

The top ten original blog posts by number of views for 2010 were (drum roll, please!):

  1. Trauma releasing exercises
  2. Cranio-sacral therapy, brain waves
  3. Book review: Buddha’s Brain
  4. Holotropic breathwork compared to trauma releasing exercises
  5. Buddha’s Brain: supplements for brain health
  6. Pain and pleasure, pleasure and pain — side effects of living
  7. 12 states of attention
  8. Cleansing the colon, liver, and gallbladder
  9. Trauma release heavy heart
  10. The three centers of intelligence: working with my gut, heart, and head

New Blog Name

Since my year of experimenting has ended and I want to keep blogging, I decided to rename this blog and change its purpose. The new name, The Well: bodymindheartspirit, reflects my interest in a variety of topics related to wellness, well-being, and wholeness (as you can see from the top 10 posts listed above), and my desire to connect to the Source as a well of nourishment both in living my life and writing for this blog.

You can expect more blog posts written by guest writers (let me know if you’re interested in contributing) and fewer poems (intellectual property rights are important for poets — if you like a poet, please buy his or her books and CDs). A new look is also in the works.

Thank you, and I hope you’ll stick around.

Article: Why meditation may help you live longer

Posted on by
Reply

People who meditated for six hours a day (!) for three months were found to have more of an enzyme that can mitigate or perhaps even stop cell aging.

So it’s entirely possible according to scientists that meditation extends people’s life spans. Meditators know it probably does.

I’m pretty sure yoga does too, just judging by the long lives of people who devoted most of their lives to yoga, such as T. Krishnamacharya, K. Pattabhi Jois, Indra Devi, B.K.S. Iyengar (still living). All lived to see 90, some more than 100.

So how does it work?

So how does meditation affect the machinery of cellular reproduction? Probably by reducing stress, research suggests. Severe psychological stress — particularly early in life and in the absence of social support — has been linked with poorer health, increasing risk for heart disease, stroke and some cancers. This is likely due to the negative effects of high levels of stress hormones on the brain and body. By reducing stress hormones, perhaps meditation contributes to healthier telomeres.

Stress is the enemy.

Read the article from Time magazine’s Healthland blog here.

When meditating triggers presence, like Pavlov’s dog #reverb10

Posted on by
2

Brene Brown, whose TED Talk I blogged about the other day after discovering Alan Steinborn’s recommendation on Facebook, does this thing on Twitter that she explains here on her blog. She calls it #Reverb10 and describes it as:

an online initiative that encourages participants to reflect on this year and manifest what’s next. It’s an opportunity to retreat and consider the reverberations of your year past, and those that you’d like to create in the year ahead.

As I understand it, it’s a group initiative. Thirty-one writers post prompts for writing and reflection on Twitter using the hashtag #reverb10. Brene is one of the writers. Anyone can get on Twitter, search for #reverb10, and respond.

Because not everyone is on Twitter, Brene has graciously made space on her blog where people can respond in the comments (with more than 140 characters!) to any or all prompts, and/or leave a link to their blog.

This is social networking at its most awesome!

Here is Brene Brown’s prompt for Dec. 27:

Our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments. What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year?

Click the link above to check out Brene’s response to her own question, and those of many others.

And here is my response.

My most joyful ordinary moment is about something that I became aware of recently, and to understand it, I need to share a little background for new readers.

I started this blog as a year-long project to help myself develop the habit of meditating for 30 minutes daily. I’d meditated for several years, but not consistently. I’d do okay for a couple of weeks, then get derailed (sometimes for another couple of weeks).

I knew meditation had all kinds of beneficial side effects, and I wondered:

If I could put a little (or a lot) more effort into meditating every day, how would my life change?

Well, I failed. I did not meditate every day. I could not meditate with a stuffy nose (mouth breathing just doesn’t get it for me).

I also went through a period of rebellion a few months into the year. I was laying this demand on myself, and it felt burdensome. I rebelled, took a break, plunged inward with questions, and came back wanting to do it, recommitted.

I also had a sort of breakdown/spiritual awakening in November that resulted in me quitting my day job after six years. I was so distressed, I couldn’t sit. A lot of things in my life came to a head. I had planned to leave my job at the end of May in order to start acupuncture school in July, but circumstances actually made it the perfect time to leave (and my gut said I had to, besides).

Other than that, oh, and la-di-dah, a few days of just pure laziness, I have meditated daily in 2010.

End of background.

My most joyful ordinary moment came a week or so ago when I realized that as soon as I sat down on my meditation cushion and took a breath, that I was there. In the present moment. It felt like all considerations of the past and future just dropped away, leaving just the moment and the breath and the quiet bliss.

I am now like Pavlov’s dog, only instead of a bell triggering salivation, sitting on a meditation cushion triggers presence.

I created that in 2010.

This will go to Twitter, and I’ll comment on her blog as well. She’s giving away copies of both of her books and her DVD! I wouldn’t mind having those at all!

I love this project!

Repost: Shoveling Snow with Buddha, by Billy Collins

Posted on by
Reply

Just for the fun of it, because of the big east coast blizzard, I’m reposting a poem by Billy Collins, from his book Picnic, Lightning.

Shoveling Snow with Buddha

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok you would never see him doing such a thin … Read More

Living with wholeheartedness takes courage, compassion, connection, and vulnerability

Posted on by
2

Often when someone asks me to use my NLP training to help them move through a problem state to one of resourcefulness, I have just read or seen or heard something that applies in their situation.

I bring that new information in, and it helps them expand. (I dislike the term “solving problems,” because it seems so linear. Instead we dance with problems, move with them, do the tango, maybe even a little jitterbug, and always end up with new possibilities.)

I do not know how this works, that I find information and inspiration just in time, but I am grateful for these synchronicities. I feel plugged in to the cosmos when this happens. Thank you for taking care of me, cosmos, since I’m meeting up with someone later to play with NLP.

This morning I encountered a wonderful TED Talks video that Alan Steinborn posted on Facebook. (Alan walks with beauty and resourcefulness.)

I can tell this video is going to be a huge resource for me and for those I work/play NLP with.

It’s also incredibly apt for year’s end, when many of us search for the core issue to acknowledge and attend to and dance with during the coming year.

Dear blog readers, read this post or watch the video. Which area of your life can benefit most from your loving attention in 2011?

In the 20-minute video, the gifted and funny Ph.D. social worker Brene Brown discusses her research findings about shame and worthiness. Click the link and watch it if you have time; if not, read on for a synopsis.

Brown says there is only one variable between the people who have a sense of love and belonging and those who struggle for it and are always wondering if they’re good enough:

The people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they’re worthy of love and belonging.

That’s it. That’s what separates the people who live their lives feeling worthy from those who don’t. A belief in their own worthiness.

(NLP works with beliefs.)

To break this sense of worthiness down even more, Brown reviewed her research and found that those who feel worthy share these characteristics:

  • Courage. It’s not the same as bravery. It means to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.
  • Compassion. They are kind to themselves first, and then to others.
  • Connection. They are willing to let go of who they think they should be in order to be who they actually are.
  • Vulnerability. They are willing to do something first, to do something where there are no guarantees.

Brown then went to a therapist to work on her own vulnerability issues. She noted that this single characteristic is at the root of shame and fear and the struggle with worthiness, and also of joy, creativity, belonging, and love.

With a humorous display of her own worthiness, she relates how she told the therapist she didn’t want to deal with family or childhood issues, she just needed some strategies!

She spent a year in therapy struggling with her vulnerability, knowing it’s a huge issue for so many others, and then spent two more years on this research.

She states plainly:

We are the most in debt, obese, addicted, and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history.

We numb ourselves to avoid our vulnerability.

You cannot selectively numb emotion.

When we numb, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness.

To paraphrase, “and then we’re miserable and feel vulnerable, and we numb it, and the vicious cycle starts over.”

Besides addiction, we use certainty to numb — certainty about religion, certainty about politics, certainty about our opinions.

We also use perfection to numb. We perfect our bodies. We perfect our children. Brown notes that children are wired for struggle. If we can let them struggle and also believe they are worthy of love and belonging, wow, what a world that would be to live in!

We also numb by pretending that what we do doesn’t have an effect on people. Oil spills, recalls, global warming, and so on. We avoid taking responsibility and making amends.

To change this direction, she recommends that we…

  • Let ourselves be seen.
  • Love with our whole hearts, even though there are no guarantees.
  • Practice gratitude and joy.
  • Believe that you are enough.

I hope this helps you strengthen your wholeheartedness and believe in your worthiness for love and belonging.

Guest post: Opinions Are, by Carin Channing

Posted on by
Reply

Note: I am opening up my blog to occasional guest posts from other bloggers. This first one is from Carin Channing, who blogs at Stay Open: Spiritual and Self-Care Space.

I get the sense of dragging myself forward from the chest or the gut into some unknown where I think I should be arriving.

I read this tonight:

“My judgments, my ego-tripping, my attempts to plan and to know what the future holds or to try to drive the future in any way — all futile and hung up on a desperate mind, clinging to an image of importance that simply cannot stand against the field of a quiet mind.”

I wrote it a few months ago on the Be Here Now blog.

It continues to be relevant. Especially about the attempts to plan and to know what the future holds. I really know nothing about anything. I write about stuff, but it’s playing. It’s creating if I’m not thinking about it and it’s just coming out my fingers. So. The image of importance. There’s this thing that thinks there is such a thing as good/bad. And it’s a noisy voice, and not only is it noisy within, but also in the supposed without – that is, that which appears outside of us. The straddling of the two worlds, said a friend to me, is the hell you are in.

The world where there’s right/wrong. This pulls on me. Wants my attention. Wants to hold my head under water.

Today the Text Support message that I sent out said:

“The overall ‘why’ doesn’t matter. How would you know anyway? All you need to know, and will always know, is the next right thing to do. Even if it’s do nothing.”

And as I sit here and type and mess around a little on the internet, I keep feeling these pulls (as mentioned above). The thoughts are about 1) eating, 2) exercising, 3) taking a bath. The pull keeps telling me which one I’ll do when and justifying its existence by asserting that there’s a should out there somewhere about the order of things and about anything else beyond sitting here typing.

I exercised every day no matter what for two years. Even if I just did a little movement or stretching, it counted. Some months ago I let it slip and now, well, I exercise when I do. And what I’m faced with, what’s left, is this massive judgment, insisting that something other than the natural flow of the moment is what’s necessary and somehow even morally correct.

I remain healthy and am not stagnant. A shifting occurred. Nothing occurred. All of that is past. All of everything is past except the exhale I’m doing right now and the gnat that is flying across my field of vision and the heat of the laptop under the heels of my hands.

What is it that I don’t trust?

See? The two worlds. Being guided by the mind, or simply being guided.

Not like either is right or wrong. {giggling now} It’s just that opinions are. Look, there goes one now.

To continue the conversation with Carin, please also visit Stay Open: Spiritual and Self-Care Space. Become a fan of Stay Open Facebook Page. Submit questions to (submit questions to carina@nowstayopen.com).

Santa as guru: Santaji

Posted on by
Reply

Somewhat related to my previous post, click here to read the article 6 Lessons Santa Teaches Better Than Any Guru, by Ed & Deb Shapiro, published in elephantjournal.

Excerpt:

4. He has great psychic powers: flies in the sky with reindeer, descends chimneys without getting covered in soot, goes by many names and forms, and is extraordinarily elusive. Has anyone actually ever seen him? The lesson here is that we can all do more than we think we can, and we don’t need to be applauded. We can practice random acts of kindness quietly, simply, without bringing attention to ourselves.

More on following deep impulses

Posted on by
Reply

Almost as punctuation to my post earlier today, I read Bindu Wiles’ own blog post today, entitled Following Your Gut. Click the link to view the magical photo.

Bindu has been nominated as a finalist for the Blogisattva awards for excellence in English-language Buddhist blogging. She’s nominated in the category of best engage-the-world blogging. Check her out.

Here’s the quote:

“Joy and growth come from following our deepest impulses, however foolish they may seem to some, or dangerous, or even though the apparent outcome may be defeat. ”    – A.J. Muste

Just Breathe: Body Has A Built-In Stress Reliever : NPR

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s a link to a short article on how breathing facilitates stress release.

This article says that rapid shallow breathing, as in fire breath, stimulates the energizing sympathetic nervous system, while slow deep breathing stimulates the calming parasympathetic nervous system.

I’d heard previously that emphasizing inhalations stimulates the SNS, while emphasizing exhalations stimulates the PNS.

I do know that long, slow exhalations are very calming.

Just Breathe: Body Has A Built-In Stress Reliever : NPR.

More on ego death: Experiencing emptiness

Posted on by
Reply

From the book What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America, by Tony Schwartz, a quote from Sandra Maitri, a teacher of Hameed Ali’s Diamond Approach (she later wrote The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram):

“Emptiness can be experienced in very different ways,” Maitri explained, after we’d done the exercise. “Often you almost literally fear you’ll die if you stay in that emptiness, and in a sense that’s true. A given sector of the personality will die if you don’t keep trying to fill it up. But there is something deeper. Emptiness feels like a black hole when it’s viewed through the prism of the personality. But that same hole is experienced as open and pristine and very peaceful when you are in essence. It may take a leap of faith to let go into this emptiness — whether from courage or desperation. But when you do, it is very spacious, and it’s anything but deficient. It is the beginning of opening up to our true selves — to the empty space in which everything arises, to the ground of our fundamental nature.”

This popped up into my awareness after writing previously about jumping off the train, a form of ego death.