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MEDITATION:
It is going to have a profound impact on your life.
The essence of meditation is to be highly alert and aware, but not thinking.
Only when you become very quiet and still, willing to “simply be”, observing your inner experience in the present moment and without judgement, and without striving to do anything, can this profound awareness emerge.
After becoming good at meditating you will be more free to enjoy your life because you spend less time stuck in a state of anxiety.
Try repeating the word “one” on each exhalation of breath.
OFTEN THE DOSES OF TRANQUILIZERS CAN BE REDUCED IF YOU ARE MEDITATING DAILY.
There are two types of meditation:
(1) Concentrative/Structured: Maintaining specific focus on one object.
(2) Nonconcentrative/Unstructured: Whatever comes up in awareness becomes the subject. You simply witness whatever thoughts, feelings desires or physical sensations arise in your experience, without resisting or judging them in any way.
LEARNING TO MEDITATE:
There are four stages.
(1) Right attitude.
(2) Right technique.
(3) Developing concentration.
(4) Cultivating mindfulness.
(1) When you sit down to meditate it is best to clear your mind of any goals. You are not trying to relax, blank your mind, relieve stress or reach enlightenment.
Simply “be with” whatever you experience in the moment. Allow any discomfort or problem to just be. Observe your inner judgments without reacting or judging them! Just let go!
(2) Sit upright with your back straight, either on the floor cross legged or in a chair with your feet flat on the floor. Find a quiet environment. If you are feeling tense before starting, do the progressive muscle relaxation. Don't meditate on a full stomach.
(3) If when concentrating on your breathing, you are really enjoying how you feel, simply notice that and return to your breathing.
(4) The body scan: This is a useful exercise in developing mindful awareness. Focus on the toes of your left foot. Notice whatever sensations youre aware of in your left toes. Then, take a breath in and imagine breathing those sensations out through your left toes. Simply visualise your left toes and imagine breathing down through your left leg and foot and out through your left toes. Do this several times.
Then move in sequence through : Left foot, calf, thigh, right toes, foot , calf , thigh. Pelvis. Lower abdomen. Chest . Left hand, forearm, upper arm, shoulder. Right hand, forearm, upper arm, shoulder. Neck. Mouth and jaw. Eyes and forehead. Top of head.
MINDFULNESS:
Mindfulness is simply moment to moment awareness.
Mindfulness is paying attention without judgment to whatever comes up in the present moment of your experience. It is witnessing your immediate experience just as it is, without trying to change, react to, or interfere with it.
Feel the ray of sun as it hits your face and slowly works its way down your body, warming you. The chirping birds on a spring afternoon, or the humbling majesty and presence of the mountains, oceans, valleys and forests that surround us.
THE GROUND PUSHING UP ON YOUR FEET.
Pay close attention to every step, every movement, even your breathing. Be totally present. Or when you wash your hands, pay attention to all the sense perceptions associated with it. The sound and feel of the water. Or when you get into your car.
Become aware of a silent but powerful sense of presence.
An exercise in mindfulness to reduce anxiety:
(1) Sit comfortably.
(2) Let go of any agenda you have from the day. Adopt an attitude of compassion and friendliness to whatever comes up.
(3) Focus on your breathing via the nostrils.
(4) Expand your attention to include all sounds present. Pay careful attention to sounds, noticing how they rise, fall and fade. If you have any judgments or thoughts about any particular sound, just notice that and let it go. Avoid getting stuck in thoughts about whether any particular sound is unpleasant or annoying (loud dog, annoying phone, baby crying etc.) and just witness the thoughts you have themselves.
(5) If you get lost or confused, go back to focussing on your breath.
(6) As you continue, widen your focus to include all of the internal bodily sensations you are aware of, along with your breathing. Relax and soften into the felt sense of your body, without trying to make anything happen. Notice bodily sensations such as vibrations, contractions, expansions, warmth and coolness. Just allow each sensation to be as it is. If you have thoughts or reactions about any particular sensation, just notice mindfully those thoughts and reactions and let them pass.
(7) Now expand your awareness to include and smells or tastes that are present.
(8) Let most of your attention be on the direct experience of hearing, feeling, smelling or tasting. Whenever you feel distracted or agitated, bring your attention back to your breath.
(9) Allow thoughts to just be as best you can. Let them arise and move on. They are just thoughts.
(10) Now let your attention expand to include whatever comes up in your total experience. Quietly witness mind states, emotions like anger, fear, boredom, sleepiness, restlessness, impatience, calm, peace, joy, jealousy, kindness, love or compassion.
(11) Stay open to everything that is present. If something starts to capture your attention too much, return to your breath and breathe in and out of it.
(12) End your practice gently arising. Work up to 30 minutes a day.
Tension, unhappiness and exhaustion aren’t problems that can be ‘solved’. They are emotions. They reflect states of mind and body, and can only be ‘felt’. Once you’ve felt them - that is, acknowledged their existence - and let go of the tendency to explain or get rid of them, they are much more likely to vanish naturally, like the mist on a spring day.
If you are constantly hoping that the sun will come out or wishing that you could travel to the peace and tranquility of an imagined future or an idealised past, your actual life will slip by unnoticed. Become curious about the world right now.
It might be wise to let go of some goals that you have been striving too long towards.
Such as making lots of money from betting or poker! DONE.
You tend to get caught up in important career and life goals, and such demanding projects as home-making and money-making in DOING mode.
Do you tend to walk quickly to get to where you’re going without paying attention to what you experience along the way? Don't! WALK WITH ALL YOUR SENSES.
Do you rush through activities without being really attentive to them? Don't!
Just think of all the pleasures of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching that are drifting by you unnoticed.
Mindfulness teaches us that while thoughts can be valuable, they are not ‘you’ or ‘reality’.
We re-live past events and re-feel their pain, and we pre-live future disasters and so pre-feel their impact.
Try to consciously know that you are remembering or planning.
If you can sense when the breath is short and shallow, you can begin sensing your own internal weather patterns, and choose how to take action to look after yourself.
STRESS:
If there is too much information sloshing around in the mind, your working memory begins to overflow. You begin to feel stressed.
Telomere shortening is much more rapid under conditions of chronic stress. How we perceive stress makes all the difference in how quickly our telomeres degrade and shorten. We don't have to make the sources of our stress go away (most will not, stress is natural), only change our attitude, to increase our longevity.
Become conscious of your options when you are stressed. There are so many paths out, and things you can do, even in that moment to alleviate it.
The four basic things you need to be stress-free: Exercise, Sleep, Meditation and Intimacy. These can help us build a bank against stress when it comes, which it inevitably will.
Have a strong commitment to experiencing the fullness of life as it unfolds, moment by moment.
If we have no healthy ways of releasing built up tension and stress, then over a period of weeks or years we will more than likely drift into a perpetual state of chronic hyperarousal from which we rarely get any break and that we might even come to think of as “normal”.
Before you take your benzo for a stressful day, experiment with bringing a non-judging awareness to the experience you are having, at least for a few minutes, and see what occurs.
Because what we call symptoms are often the body’s way of telling us something is out of place. If we ignore or SUPPRESS these feelings with pills, it could lead to more severe symptoms and problems later. What's more, you are learning nothing about your body.
As soon as you intentionally bring awareness to what is going on in a stressful situation, you have already changed that situation dramatically!
When you feel overwhelmed and anxious (or need a cigarette!) be bring awareness say to your jaw as it clenches, to your brow as it furrows, to your shoulders as they tense up, to your fists as they clench, to your heart as it pounds, to your funny feeling stomach etc. See if you can be aware of your feelings of anger or fear as they rise inside you. Locating your emotions in a particular part of the body can be very telling.
Tune in to the actual experience of your symptoms.
Try saying to yourself in these situations :”This is it.” or “Here is a stressful situation” or “Now is a time to tune into my breathing and center myself.”
Don't take personally events and circumstances that are not personal.
Ask yourself “What is this symptom saying, what is it telling me about my body and mind right now?”
To move to greater levels of health and wellbeing , we have to start from where we are actually today, in this moment, not from where we would like to be!
If you have your headache, ask yourself what was your mood or emotion before? Can you breathe with the sensations of the headache...the pounding or dizziness?
Breathe in and out through the top of your head and let the tension in your headache flow right out of your body through the hole at the top.
YOUR PAIN IS NOT YOU!
What about accepting things just as they are right now, in this very moment, even if you hate them, even if you hate the pain?
YOUR BODY IS NOT YOU!
It is yours to work with, take care of and make use of. It is a very convenient and miraculous vehicle but it is hardly you. Nor are your thoughts and emotions!
Are you twisting and standing up at the same time when you get out of the car? Don't. Twist first, then stand.
We say “I have a cold” or “I have a headache” or “I have a fever” when it would be more accurate to say “The body is headaching, fevering or colding!”
It is not helpful to expect pain to disappear with mindfulness. Don't expect anything at all.
Cancer:
Stressful life experiences can influence the activity of the immune system, which is known to play a critical role in the body’s defense mechanisms against cancer.
The cancer-prone pattern is described as someone who tends to conceal his or her feelings and is very other orientated while actually feeling deeply alienated from others and feeling unloved, and unlovable. Inability to express emotions gives you over 4 times the death rate of others. This is regardless of whether you have smoked or not!
A lack of close relationship to parents and an ambivalent attitude toward life and human relationships is also cancer-prone.
To survive cancer you need a fighting spirit, and total denial that you have cancer. Stoicism (putting a brave face on) or feeling helpless is no good.
Many scientists believe that the production of cancer cells is happening in the body at a low level all the time and a healthy immune system destroys them continuously.
Be aware though, even if it turns out that there is a connection between negative emotions and cancer, to suggest to a person with cancer that his disease was caused by emotional problems is totally unjustifiable. It amounts to blaming a person for their disease.
By the time you have been diagnosed, the issue of what caused it is not really important. You need to take responsibility for what needs doing in the present. Positive emotional factors can enhance healing.
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