Today Body pt 4 : how can Mindfulness help with pain.
Hundreds of millions of people all over the world are impacted by pain. Physical pain, chronic pain, mental pain... Living with pain is not only a physical strain it is also an emotional strain as well. Feelings of frustration, anger, depression or even despair can deeply impact the quality of our lives.
The use of highly addictive opioids to treat pain have caused a silent epidemic, every year 300 million pain prescriptions are given out by doctors worldwide, which equals a $24 billion market, 80%of those subscriptions is consumed in the United States, 15% in Canada and Europe, and the rest of the world gets the other 5%. Unfortunately, 40 to 70% of people with chronic pain aren't actually receiving the proper medical treatment for their pain. The over use of opioid is staggering. Worldwide 187000 people die from opioid overdose every year and that number grows every year by 6%.
We have three Spring Forest Qigong practices each week here at the Center for Mindfulness with Cythe:
Tuesdays at 1 pm slt the Small Universe Mediation Wednesdays at 3 pm slt the Qigong Active Exercises Fridays at 1 pm slt a Self-Concentration meditation for healing
If you are hungry for more Spring Forest Qigong, Sue Crites is a Spring Forest Qigong Instructor and Master Healer and she offers a program of 31 Days of Qigong online on YouTube:
On Tuesday, my new book, Your Mind Is What Your Brain Does for a Living: Learn How to Make It Work for You, was released, and it made me think about the path that brought me to writing a book about mindfulness and how we can use our mind to rewire our brain. Looking back, I see that as a teen I already had the curiosity of a searcher for life’s wisdom, but the first books that “hooked” me were by Carlos Castaneda, and I read them when I was in my early 30s. It was the hippie era and Castaneda’s writing was at the forefront of the counterculture of the time.
Today Mindfulness Thoughts is about tackling our craving and addiction.
We function throughout the day thanks to habits: wake up, brush teeth, make coffee. Transforming behaviors into habits saves our brains from having to make extra effort to make the same decisions over and over, and this can work to our benefit like arriving in time at work, sporting 2 times a week etc
but we can also form habits like smoking cigarettes, stress-eating, or constantly checking our social media and that may be holding us back.
Sa Ta Na Ma Meditation is a Kundalini Kirtan Kriya brought to North America by Yogi Bhajan. This meditation is intended to bring total mental balance. It clears the subconscious mind of traumas and negative, unnecessary emotions. It improves concentration and brain function, increases intuitive abilities and brings peace and understanding. The SA TA NA MA meditation, is the most important meditation in Kundalini Yoga. It was one of the first meditations taught by Yogi Bhajan and remains today as a foundation meditation recommended for every student. Yogi Bhajan said that if you can do only one meditation, this is it. It does everything for you in the order that you need. It is your teacher. It is a catalyst for change because it is a very powerful spiritual cleanser. The meditation is a combination of chanting a mantra while moving the hands through mudra’s. To fully experience the benefits of the meditation, a combination of singing, whispering and silently repeating the mantra are used. A key visualization of concentration is used to cap off the meditation.
It started more than 4,000 years ago when Chinese scholars, studying the workings of the universe, discovered and established the Eastern scientific principle that everything is energy. One of the best ways to help yourself maintain a healthy lifestyle is to practice Qigong. Qi means “energy" and Gong means "to work with" so simply put Qigong means working with the body's energy. Spring Forest Qigong is a modernized form of qigong developed by International Qigong Master Chunyi Lin after years of qigong, tai chi, martial arts practice and intensive meditation. Spring Forest Qigong is a simple, effective system of movements and meditations that can be done anywhere, anytime, and by anyone. Spring Forest Qigong can help you increase your energy and improve your physical, mental, and spiritual health.
Today pt 3 of Relationships and Mindfulness: we focus now on expectations
All of us have an intense desire to be loved and nurtured. The need to be loved, could be considered one of our most basic and fundamental needs. Since we were babies we feel the desire to be held and touched.
This need is important and it isn’t surprising that most of us believe our happiness is whether we feel loved and cared for.
Having healthy relationships, is for most of us the top goal—on par with the goal of leading a happy and fulfilling life.
A relationship has two parallel streams at the base: one that moves constantly and is about desire, wants and needs
and another more deeper and slower that is about the conscious feeling of love for the other person.
Every long term relationship goes through 3 stages:
- The first stage is solely based on needs; you are in love and the neurological storm in our brain enhances the strong desire to be with the other and
you need physical touch and want constant affirmation the other feels the same. This is all about you and your own needs.
- In the second stage a more healthy exchange appears where both partners try to meet each other’s needs and have mutual respect
and love for each other, behaving like equals, the relationship is now about you and him or her.
- The third stage is conscious love, where you love even when your needs are not met and where the love for the other becomes part of your
identity. Unconditional love, the love you feel naturally for a child or a pet, also comes into play. Here the relationship becomes all about him/her and no longer
about you.
Some people have serial relationships one after another, staying in stage 1 forever and driven by this constant urge to search for love.
A relationship that reaches stage 2 has a bigger chance to succeed and become committed and fulfilling. If partners evolve through the stages
differently the relationships can be very painful for one of them. For example one stays in stage 1 and the other one grows in stage 3.
Love is so awesome until it is not,
Love is the best feeling in the world until it’s the worst.
Love feels eternal in the moment till you break up.
There is a lot in love that feels very contradictory.
When we get into a new relationship we always arrive with high expectations, we project all our wants and needs onto the other and ignore the red flags just to surf the wonderful storm of feelings going through our minds and bodies.
Who of you has felt disappointment in his/her relationship in the past or now?
Not so long ago all marriages were arranged by parents to serve economic and social ends, by the 20th century
the feeling of romantic love became the base for making a lifelong commitment
Our current expectations are based on our culture's concept of romance
Hollywood's happily ever after romantic comedies carry the implicit message
that if your relationship isn't ideal in all ways then it is second rate.
For many people, a relationship is considered successful only if all of their sexual and emotional needs are fulfilled,
or their economic and social status aspirations needs to be met.
Obviously, most of the time things don't work out in this manner,
and often there is a feeling of disappointment in the relationship.
Many men and women have very unrealistic expectations about relationships and they
make themselves miserably by comparing their situation to how they think love is supposed to be.
There is no connection to the idea that love itself could be the actual reward.
Human beings are designed to get used to the good things and get used to the bad things,
it has to be this way or we would go crazy.
Unfortunately this has an effect on our long term relationships. What first was exciting and wonderful we take for granted
after a while, we get bored and get back in stage 1 thinking.
Our hardwired negativity bias kicks in, we start to focus on the flaws of our partner, we ruminate on things from the past, the story
of our relationship changes and that story can become anxiety and toxic. Most of us have experienced it, nobody is immune to it.
So how can mindfulness help in this?
A lot of people when they think of mindfulness they think of meditation,
or some pro guru sitting legs crossed on a cliff overlooking the ocean meditation all day
But that is not what it is, mindfulness is an approach to life, it's an approach that says whatever experience I have I try as much as possible to be present for that experience to be focused in the moment and to non judgmentally accept that experience.
There is nothing that I experience that is good or bad it is just an experience.
What will serve me, my survival and happiness, is to see that experience clearly.
Because this week I am talking about Mindfulness and Relationships I want to share this beautiful book with you:
From Shel Silverstein, the celebrated author of The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends, comes The Missing Piece, a charming fable that gently probes the nature of quest and fulfillment.
It was missing a piece. And it was not happy. What it finds on its search for the missing piece is simply and touchingly told. This inventive and heartwarming book can be read on many levels, and Silverstein’s iconic drawings and humor are sure to delight fans of all ages.
So it set off in search of its missing piece. And as it rolled it sang this song— Oh I'm lookin' for my missin' piece I'm lookin' for my missin' piece Hi-dee-ho, here I go, Lookin' for my missin' piece.
The missing piece is a triangle looking for her perfect match, trying to find the pacman shaped Mr Right that will make her feel complete and they can be 'whole' together. Then she meets Big O.
This companion tale to The Missing Piece is an inventive and heartwarming book where the missing piece is in search of its perfect match.
The missing piece sat alone…waiting for someone to come along and take it somewhere. All it wants is to roll along with its perfect match, but some are too small, others too big, and some fit yet don’t roll. The missing piece feels sad and lonely until it meets the Big O, and learns that all it ever needed was a little encouragement and determination to fulfill its dreams.
