Bird Meditation by Madisyn Taylor

When it becomes too cold to be outside with nature, bring her inside through your meditation.

When the weather gets colder it can be more difficult to get in touch with the marvel of nature as it exists around us. Finding innovative ways to really connect with nature brings us closer to the wonders that envelop our lives. One way to do this is to perform a meditation with our feathered friends, the bird kingdom.

Just by taking a few moments each day to watch the bird activity that goes on in our backyards through our windows can bring a sense of calm and well-being to our lives. Watching and being with the birds that we share our garden space with us allows us to experience greater feelings of relaxation and gratitude for the diversity that is always present around us. Simply watching, without judgment or expectations, heightens our awareness of the beauty of nature. If you watch the birds for a long enough period of time you will begin to feel a great sense of deep joy within you knowing we are all truly divine. Doing this with our family members will in turn introduce a meditative practice that can easily be shared and appreciated by all, as well as create deeper bonds with each other through the joy of experiencing the healing power of nature.

Looking through our windows and placing a feeder and bird bath in our gardens to attract the birds is a way to call forth beauty into our lives. As we consciously connect with our outer world--even when the weather inhibits us from physically being in it--we see that the splendor we view outside of our windows is simply a reflection of what lies within us.

How to Heal Yourself by Talking to your Body by Therese Wade

Your Cells are Listening
Every part of your body has its own consciousness or its own soul. These transformative words, spoken by indigenous medicine women, began my journey within to discover the extraordinary healing capacity of the human body. When this perspective was introduced to me, I was suffering from a severe chronic pain disorder. I suddenly imagined incorporating this concept into my meditation routine. I thought, can my body hear me… can I talk to it to gain its cooperation in healing this condition? Can my body hear me?

The Path to Freedom
That night, after reaching a state of deep calm through meditation, I inwardly engaged my body in a heartfelt conversation, with hope, but having no idea what to expect. After about one hour of this focused communication, something amazing happened. My tissues began to respond. Connective tissue pulled and stretched apart layers of scar tissue. Nerves fired and my calf muscles began to perform flexion and extension exercises independently of my conscious control. As this response continued, one of my calf muscles that had become paralyzed by the neuropathic condition — diagnosed as Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy — came back to life as electric-like jolts shot through the area. My heart pounded as I realized that the path to my freedom from this condition had finally begun. Nerves fired and my calf muscles began to perform independently of my conscious control.

Guidelines for Dynamic Healing
With a background in acupuncture and Oriental medicine, I knew too well how prevalent chronic pain is in this country and I wondered what the implications of this phenomenon could mean to so many others who were suffering. As I continued to make progress with my condition, I organized my approach into a system that I could teach to clients and shifted my professional focus to hypnotherapy. When instructing my clients, I explain that a regular meditation practice is necessary to train the brain to enter alpha and theta brain wave states. While in these states, communication between the conscious mind and the physical body is dramatically enhanced.

A regular meditation practice is necessary to train the brain. I have found that when communicating, there are three key steps to gaining the cooperation of the body:
    •    Approach your body with genuine compassion, understanding that it is made up of conscious cells who experience emotions.
    •    Build trust by engaging your body in mental conversations about your desire for the two of you to cooperate and overcome the ailment.
    •    Allow changes in the conversation by using different thoughts and words that elicit spontaneous elevated emotions.

From my experience, the above guidelines are necessary to achieve dynamic healing responses in the body. The above guidelines are necessary to achieve dynamic healing responses in the body. more

This Is Why Ghosting Hurts So Much by Jennie Vilhauer Ph.D.

The opposite of love isn’t hate; it is indifference. Ghosting, for those of you who haven’t yet experienced it, is having someone that you believe cares about you, whether it be a friend or someone you are dating, disappear from contact without any explanation at all. No phone call or email, not even a text. Ghosting isn’t new—people have long done disappearing acts—but years ago this kind of behavior was considered limited to a certain type of scoundrel. In today’s dating culture being ghosted is a phenomenon that approximately 50 percent of men and women have experienced—and an almost equal number have done the ghosting.¹ Despite ghosting's commonality, the emotional effects can be devastating, and particularly damaging to those who already have fragile self-esteem.

Why do people ghost?
People who ghost are primarily focused on avoiding their own emotional discomfort and they aren’t thinking about how it makes the other person feel. The lack of social connections to people who are met online also means there are less social consequences to dropping out of someone’s life. The more it happens, either to themselves or their friends, the more people become desensitized to it and the more likely they are to do it to someone else.

“I didn't understand exactly how I actually felt at the time, so instead of trying to talk it out, I ghosted.” ²

“I used to disappear when it was all I thought it was [a fling], or I got scared of finding what I wanted…Or some kind of fear factor from a past relationship kicks in.” ²

“Looking through the lens of a coward, passive withdrawal from dating seems like the easiest and nicest route…until it’s done to you.” ³

“I kind of think that it's part of what makes the online dating scene so appealing. Since you don't have friends in common or weren't introduced through some other channel, it's not the end of the world if you just drop off the face of the earth.” ⁴

“I, for one, consider myself to be an honest and straightforward person. And yet I’ve ghosted...And I’ve told myself, time and time again, that it’s all the fault of the toxic dating culture we’ve created. And at the end of the day, I think that’s what we’re all telling ourselves.” ⁵

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How to Release the Stress stored in our Bodies by Jacob Devaney

Taking time to unlock the 'muscle of the soul'
Do you spend much time sitting in front of a computer, on a plane, in a car? If so your hips may be locked up which effects your ability to dance, but worse than that it may be causing you undue stress and fear. The Psoas Muscle, is a long muscle located on the side of the lumbar region of the vertebral column and brim of the pelvis, that is also known as the “muscle of the soul”.
It is one of the largest muscles in the body and it is a place where we often store stress or trauma that can literally influence our mood and our outlook on life. We recently explored in depth just how much fear can inhibit our ability to think clearly thus creating an unhealthy perspective that can harm us and those around us. Now let’s look at where that fear might be stored in our body, and a few ways to release it.

In humans, the extremes of the two polarities might appropriately be described as LOVE (+) and FEAR (- ). Love fuels growth. In contrast, fear stunts growth. – Bruce Lipton, Ph.D.
If you spend long hours sitting, your hips may be locked up, causing you undue stress and fear.

How built up stress makes us easy to manipulate
Being in a state of fear allows us to be easily manipulated. Advertisers and politicians have learned to capitalize on this biological aspect of humans also known as the lizard brain. Unfortunately our fast-paced lifestyles (mentally), combined with our relatively stagnate physical activity (driving, working at computer, etc.) causes our bodies to be ineffective at releasing built up stress which manifests in our thoughts as fear or anxiety.

Lizard brain refers to the oldest part of the brain, the brain stem, responsible for primitive survival instincts such as aggression and fear (flight or fight) – Joseph Troncale M.D., Psychology Today
The effects of stress on the body.

A Method to Manage your Anxiety

Here is a simple anxiety relief hypnotherapy video by You Productions. It is available as an iPhone app "Manage Anxiety," if you are interested.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/manag...

I find it particularly helpful as one can listen to the guided meditation or you may decided to turn off the sound and just watch the soothing images. Hope this helps you.

Stay tuned for my own Repatterning Hypnosis recordings in the near future. Yana's hypnotherapy website.

On Fear, Fearlessness and the U.S. Presidential Election: One Buddhist's Perspective by Susan Piver

One could say that many of the world’s ills are rooted in fear. This is a pretty ordinary observation. If you watch a scary movie at night, you hear the noises in your home as ominous. If you don’t, they aren’t. Fear changes the way we perceive the world around us.

On this day just prior to our election in the US, we have an unusually potent opportunity to work with fear because no matter who we support, we are all f*cking terrified. The more afraid we are, the more likely we are to scare each other. The more we scare each other, the greater the distance between us.

The real danger is not in the policies of those we oppose. It is in dividing humanity into us and them. Fear makes us demonize some and cling to others. Someone has to put a stop to this and because you are reading this, that someone is you. (I didn’t tell you that reading this post was equivalent to being tagged “it” in the cosmic game of terror tag. Well, now you know.)

Your job is to assume responsibility for your terror by feeling it because without doing so you offload it into the environment. You turn others into your personal punching bag (by blaming them for what you fear) or your personal snuggy bear (for agreeing with you and assuaging your fear). We become trapped in an endless cycle of reactivity.

In Buddhist thought, the cycle of unexamined thought and emotion could take one of three forms. These are called the “three poisons.”

Mistaken Compassion by Beth Lee-Herbert

True compassion, or empathic concern, is one of the most sublime of all human impulses. We reach toward a greater universal purpose by joyfully extending from our hearts out of our small measly sense of self. Not only does this benefit others; through selflessly extending a hand to those less fortunate, we ourselves feel nourished and uplifted. Even just the compassionate impulse welling forth creates great peace and joy within.

However, even with the best of intentions to generate compassion, there are ways we go astray by deluding ourselves. This becomes apparent when, instead of feeling nurtured by offering compassion in thought or deed, we are left with the bitter taste of negative emotion.

One way we do this is by acting compassionately for others’ approval. If we are acting in a seemingly compassionate way so that others think highly of us, our motivation is still fundamentally self-centered. Even though our actions from the outside seem flawlessly selfless, our motivation is actually to get something for ourselves. Sometimes this is praise or a reward from another person. Other times, even subtler, the reward comes from ourselves: wanting to prove to ourselves that we are worthy by being a good person. We feel compelled to give to others to cover up our own shame. Because we are still fundamentally self-seeking, we end up angry or burned out when we don’t get what we want from the situation. We feel unappreciated or hollow from giving. We push ourselves past our natural limits in the hopes of receiving love, from others and from ourselves.

Are you ready for spiritual adventures in the Himalayas?

Namaste Everyone, Currently, I am offering three tours for 2017 (Healing Wisdom Tour, Nepal Mandala Tour and Skydancer Pilgrimage). They are particularly suited for those who desire a personal pilgrimage for themselves or prefer to travel with a small group. 

For more information, please visit my website.

How Can I Help? by Ruth Terracini

"Is there anything I can do?" can be an exhausting question. Here's a list you can put on your computer, modify to your circumstances, and send out to whoever asks!
Compiled by an Australian woman who died of cancer. 


Practical things:

• Mow our lawn
 • Make me dinner
 • Come over & quietly clean something in my house 
• Invite me to something fun you are doing 
• Take me to a movie
 • Meet me for coffee 
• Send me a card of encouragement 
• Leave some organic fruit in a basket on my doorstep.
 • Share something from your veggie garden. 
• Plant something in my veggie garden
 • Send me a text when you are grocery shopping and ask me if I need anything 
• Find out when I have to go to the hospital for treatment and drive me or visit me there
 • Visit my elderly parent(s) when I am too sick to see them 
• Take my dog for a walk 
• Hire a housecleaner for me.


Kindnesses that take little effort but that can be powerfully uplifting:

• Tell me that you have said a prayer, or sent positive vibes into the universe for me 
• Write me a note telling me why I matter 
• Send me an email or text every now and then just to say you are thinking of me…and don't expect a response
 • Share a memory of me that is special to you
 • Talk to me like a normal person, not a diagnosis. Let me enjoy time with you when cancer is not the main topic of conversation
 • Let me know you care – I don't want my disease or treatment to be the first thing that you ask about, but acknowledge the reality of what I am going through.
 • Do something challenging and tell me that you were thinking of me while you did it (the Relay for Life, a long distance event, a hike up a mountain) 
• Do something for my husband, who supports me. 
• Give me a hug and tell me that you love me
.

The effects of emotional support for someone who is unwell, and their carer(s) cannot be understated. Feeling understood, acknowledged and loved goes a long way to creating a healing environment. You may even find that doing a good turn for someone has positive effects for you too.


Ruth Terracini, March 2015

Tsoknyi Rinpoche Interview on Lung

“In the 21st century, the subject of healing the subtle body is crucial. I sometimes say that for western Dharma practitioners, “body enlightenment” is more important than the enlightenment of the mind.”  ~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

*Q: In your new book “Open Heart, Open Mind” you discuss the subtle body and its influence on our lives. How can we understand the subtle body?
Rinpoche: In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the subtle body (Tib. “lu trawa”) connects the body and mind and is the home of the emotions that influences both.
 Q: So it is a point of great importance that is largely unknown in western psychology. Can you please explain the system of the subtle body in more precise detail?
Rinpoche: The subtle body is composed of three interrelated aspects. The first consists of what in Tibetan is called “tsa”, (“nadi” in Sanskrit), usually translated as channels. They are closely related, but not the same as a network of nerves that extend throughout the body. These channels are the pathways that allow sparks of life(“thigle” in Tibetan, “bindus” in Sanskrit) to circulate and can be compared to neurotransmitters–chemical messengers that influence our physical, mental and emotional states.The “thigle” circulate within the channels due to the subtle energy or inner wind, known in Tibetan as “lung.” (“prana” in Sanskrit).