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Posts Tagged ‘calm’
If you are reading this then you have made a decision to create more peace and calm in your life – Congratulations! It takes courage to take a stand for yourself and say :
“Taking time for me and my well being is the most important thing I can do for everyone in my life, especially ME!”
We’d like to help you along this path and hopefully you’ll find some ideas on our website that make the Journey a little easier.
You’re probably well aware of the many health problems associated with stress: insomnia, high blood pressure, depression, headaches, stomach and digestive disorders, and the list goes on.
What you probably ask yourself when you’re told you need to relax is “Well how am I supposed to do that when I have this list of things to do at work, not to mention, picking up and dropping off the kids and dry cleaning, shopping, cooking, keeping up with household chores, friends, family, community, etc, etc, etc.!!!?”
We all know how frustrating it is to be told you need to take some “me” time and all you can think of is “Great idea! Now who is going to handle all these other things for me while I go relax?!” Well, it doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition. Relaxation can be incorporated into any lifestyle.
The easiest way to start is to find a few minutes each day (preferably at the beginning of the day) to simply be aware, to simply “Be”, not “Do.” We are Human Beings not Human Doings. So maybe you wake up 15 minutes earlier than normal, quietly find a place where you can be alone with yourself and
- Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, your arms hanging gently at your sides, your face forward, eyes closed, smile on your face, and relax your neck and shoulders.
- Take a deep breath in and concentrate on your breath and allow your whole body to be filled with the breath and then let it out slowly and completely. Smile…
- Relax your shoulders and breathe in again and allow your breath to fill your whole body and then release the breath slowly and completely. Smile….
- Relax your shoulders again and breathe in one more time and allow your breath to fill your whole body and then release the breath slowly and completely. Smile…
As you breathe fully, in and out, three times while concentrating on your breath and only your breath you are signaling to “All Of You,” your mind, body and spirit, that you are alive and it is a new day and all possibilities exist. (We don’t always realize just how important our breathing is – without it, we truly expire!)
You become a human “being” and you begin the process of centering yourself for your day ahead. Spending just a few minutes alone with yourself breathing in and out deliberately will begin to show immediate positive results. You will know that you are important and deserve these few moments (and so much more!) and that there is nothing more important you could be doing for yourself and everyone you care about.
Relax into your day and begin to see things change right before your eyes. This is just the beginning but a very positive first step. Congratulations!
Connecting Mind, Body, & Spirit
For almost 30 years, Dr. Dean Ornish has directed clinical research demonstrating, for the first time, that comprehensive lifestyle changes may begin to reverse even severe coronary heart disease, without drugs or surgery. Excerpted from his book Love and Survival.
One of the comprehensive lifestyle changes he discussed was to rediscover inner sources of peace, joy and well-being. The idea behind Everyday Oasis.com was to help people realize the importance of learning to relax, renew and reconnect on a daily basis. Dr. Ornish demonstrates that there are real measurable health benefits to learning to relax. And learning to really reconnect at a deep level with ourselves and then with others will be like a daily dose of aspirin only easier on the stomach.
So exactly how do you reconnect and start enjoying the inner sources of peace, joy and well-being? To start, you have to realize that you are the creator of your emotional responses to everything that happens in your life. Yes, it is true, no matter how much you want to blame your responses on everyone and everything, in reality, you are the one who controls the response and we all know what a highly emotional negative response does to your heart rate, breathing, muscle tension, brain waves, and nervous system.
How many times a day do you end up in a situation where you are having a negative interaction? Now think about the last time you looked at someone with complete love and compassion and gentleness. Think of that picture in your mind and feel those feelings, not just for a moment but really let yourself feel those feelings down deep inside you.
Concentrate that emotional response of love, compassion and gentleness so that you begin to feel it permeate your entire body, muscle group by muscle group until your whole body vibrates from that emotion. That is one way to reconnect yourself, mind, body and spirit. You become disconnected when you feel one thing, and think another, and your body does something totally different. We spend most of our lives disconnected. How many times have you said, “I need to take better care of myself.”
But then you don’t work out or you grab fast food that has no nutritional value and you allow yourself to wallow in negative thoughts about yourself and/or others. You’ve heard the statement –
Everything you have in your life began as a thought.
Try choosing positive, life – affirming thoughts so that the life you lead will be the life you really wanted to lead.
The choice starts way before something happens. We all know that things are going to happen in our lives, so we must first begin with understanding ourselves and what we value for ourselves. When you come from an understanding of what you value then you can make up your mind ahead of time and decide how you will handle situations that come up in life in a more positive way.
You can be proactive and decide that you will not give others the power to make you happy or sad or angry or depressed. You can decide that your feelings come from inside of you and are a chemical reaction to the myriad of previous emotional responses you’ve had over the years in similar situations.
The great thing about knowing this is that you can take a proactive stance right now about how the rest of your life, beginning today, will go. You can begin to change the reaction by stopping and taking a good long look at your response and then realizing that at this very moment you can choose a better response. Practice this mode of reprogramming your negative automatic responses and see what a difference it makes in how you feel and how others react to you.
You have the power to change your world and it resides within you. Taking the time out of your day to reconnect with yourself and start directing that power in the way you really want it to go will be the most beneficial thing you can do for yourself and all those around you.
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