Be Like Bamboo

Feeling stress and the need for a quick recharge? Feeling blocked, stuck in your ways and the desire to be more flexible and forgiving? Do you have the desire to undo the energy drain of the life and work, start the year or business anew? If yes, it's time to be like bamboo

Want to be strong without being tough? Finding the strength to lead from a place that does not drain your joy or energy? Be like the bamboo.

As entrepreneurs we spend much of our time working, thinking, and creating from a place of busyness. We spend most of our time in the doing, and very little time in a space of quiet - between all the doing. So much of what we do is on autopilot, focused on goals, and getting things done. This is the path to stress and burnout.

At times we get so caught up in the many little tasks we are managing that we lose sight of our original intention and passion. The tasks take over and the big picture begins to blur.

Often, we are piloted by busy versus peaceful or productive energy. The days fly by, blending into each other. We look up and we are tired or lost.

We are so set on achieving what we set out to do that we often forget to take breaks, celebrate our successes, and enjoy what we have created.

I love the seasons as teachers for leadership and self-care. In the spirit of Spring and the 5 elements, I look to wood as the element of the season. Bamboo, a wood element, is one of the most sustainable, easily renewable resources. When in use, it is one of the most efficient resources - as virtually every part makes a valuable contribution. It thrives without harmful additives, in a variety of conditions. Once planted, the roots remain in place.

This is an invitation in the form of a metaphor. It is also a chance to live into the practice of inviting art, movement and play into your life. Consider it an opportunity to practice visualization - allowing this vision to lead you on your path to peace and clarity. To be like bamboo.

Visioning is a way to just breathe and be. Movement is a way to access our deepest, most enduring self. Letting go of our minds and allowing our bodies to just sway and flow. Connect imagination to this movement and allow it to lead.

When things get tough, take a breath. Move more slowly and see yourself as bamboo. Allowing the Spring element of wood to help you balance your energy.

Feel rooted and light.

Sway and bend gently with the wind.

Strong yet flexible.

Growing tall to reach the clouds.

Able to survive in diverse spaces.

Nourishing.

Healing.

Easily renewed.

Creative. Expansive.

Beautiful in your natural simplicity.

Just be.

Like bamboo.

Namaste'

https://ezinearticles.com/?Be-Like-Bamboo&id=7514723

How To Deal With Daily Stress At Home

Dealing with stress, especially in this day and age of hectic schedules and little downtime, can be quite a challenge. This can be especially true at home, since most of us don't have much time to spend at home.

Your career often takes up a great deal of your free time and forces you to sometimes sacrifice activities you want to do with your families and/or friends. This can often lead to you feeling stressed out in your home life, especially if you're dating or if you have a family. As they can sometimes feel neglected if you are spending too much time toward your work and career and not that much time with them. The information below should help you to reduce the pressure you are feeling at home.

Oftentimes, we can't fit everything we want to fit into our lives because we just don't seem to have enough time in our days. This is often due to a lack of good time management, doing tasks in inefficient ways and/or doing tasks that aren't as important, while leaving more important tasks on the "back burner" to do later.

To help reduce how hectic your home life may feel, you need to become better at managing your time. When you are faced with important tasks or projects related to your work, you need to lay out a plan of how to complete these tasks and to do them within the time you have (i.e. by the stated deadlines).

This can help you plan out how much time you must devote to them each day in order to complete them on time or ahead of schedule. By doing this, you can learn how much time must be devoted to work and how much time can be devoted to your family, friends, and yourself.

This points to the fact that you must take time out for yourself and your loved ones. In this day and age of hectic schedules and working constantly for our professional careers, we get the idea that we should be working all of the time and sacrifice everything else. If we do that, we'll burn ourselves out from the undue and unnecessary tension we put ourselves under. It'll certainly lead to fallout in terms of performance and health because no one can endure long periods of great strain without serious consequences.

That's why relaxing - doing some type of activity for even ten to fifteen minutes per day (or more, say thirty to sixty minutes) is another great idea. This can be anything from working out to listening to your favorite music to watching a favorite television program to surfing the Internet. Or you may want to listen to calming sounds (such as lying down, closing your eyes, and hearing waves washing up on shore via a CD or MP3 file).

Whatever you like to do that helps you to relax, unwind, and relieve any stress and tension you're feeling, you should do for a short period of time each day. This will help you to relax, recharge, and be able to focus on the tasks that need to get done. At the same time this should also be giving you the ability to enjoy the quality time you do spend with your family and friends because you won't be stressed out, and thus, won't be irritable, annoyed, and/or depressed when you do spend time with them.

Stress at home can really take a toll on your health, your relationships with loved ones, and your quality of life. By realizing you're stressed out from work and attempting to relieve yourself via enjoying a favorite activity each day, you can help to relieve the tension you're feeling and enjoy a better quality of life and a better relationship with your loved ones.

https://ezinearticles.com/?How-To-Deal-With-Daily-Stress-At-Home&id=9906950

Self-Test: Are You on the Right Track? How Do You Know You Are Thinking the Right Thoughts?

You are what you think. Every time you have a thought, your brain and your gut make a chemical (called neuropeptide). This chemical is released into the blood stream and makes you feel a certain way. If you have a happy thought, you make happy chemicals (such as endorphins). These happy chemicals go into your blood and you feel good. If you have an angry thought, you make an angry chemical, which, once in the blood stream, makes you feel angry. So your brain and your gut are like a pharmacy dispensing drugs according to your thoughts. These drugs not only determine how you are feeling emotionally but also how your body performs physiologically.

Thus, it's been scientifically proven that your immune system is much stronger after you have watched a comedy, and weakens significantly after you have seen the news. Similarly, a body that displays the so called multi-personality disorder (i.e. a single body that hosts many personalities) can have cancer or not depending on which personality takes over.

You are what you think! Think right and your body will be right. Think wrong and your body will suffer.

So how do you know whether your thinking is on the right track? That's easy! Check with how you are feeling. If you are feeling happy, then your thinking is on the right track. If you feel stressed, depressed, tired, wired, jealous, angry and hard-done by, then there is something wrong with your thinking and you would be wise to change it, asap.

For instance, someone "insulted" you. You may be thinking: "No one has the right to do that. It is not fair. I have every right to be angry because they are wrong and I am right." Think again! Do you want to be right or do you want to be smart? Check with your body. How are you feeling? Are you feeling happy? Or are feeling like a victim, angry, pushed, defeated, and offended? If you are less than happy, no offense but your thinking is wrong. You can't send everyone else to a psychiatrist so you can feel better. You have to change your own thinking if you want to change how you are feeling. There is no other road to health and happiness.

To change your thinking, whenever you catch yourself and become aware of your own unhappiness, assume straight away that your thinking is wrong. Don't spend even one miserable second justifying yourself or rationalizing how you are right and someone else is not. Assume exactly the opposite - you must be thinking wrong (for if you weren't, you would be feeling great!). You are wrong because you took something personal when it actually is not. Nothing is personal. So don't make anything personal. De-personalize the comment, the situation or whatever it is you are triggered by. Strip off any meaning that you put into it. Nothing means anything. Meanings don't exist and they are not inherent to people, things, situations, etc. Your unpleasant situation does not mean anything at all. And even if it did mean something, it wouldn't mean what you think it means. So don't bother attaching any meaning to it. Don't take it personal. Let it go standing in gratitude, love and forgiveness. By doing this, you are not doing a favor to the person that "offended" you. You are doing a favor to yourself. Forgiving means putting yourself first and loving yourself. Because when you forgive, you stop drinking the poison and start living a healthy and happy life.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Self-Test:-Are-You-on-the-Right-Track?-How-Do-You-Know-You-Are-Thinking-the-Right-Thoughts?&id=9696978

Stay Active After PTSD - Overcome Your Post-Trauma Predicament in 5 Easy Steps

Introduction

According to the National Comorbidity Survey Reports over 7.5 million people are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder every year in the United States alone. Most of them suffer from the post-trauma predicament. A predicament is a security system developed by our instinct which prevents us from further trauma. We make a mistake when we think it is an unmanageable disease. Yes, it's definitely a complicated health and mental issue but we can bypass it using simple techniques.

What is a trauma?

A trauma is condensed stress. When an event of our life or a chain of events pile up a huge amount of insecurity within our subconscious mind, we experience a trauma. The major characteristic of a trauma is that it is more of a subconscious affair than a conscious matter. So, to deal with trauma we need to specifically work on our subconscious mind and generate a habit of feeling protected. To do that we need to understand that our subconscious mind is connected to a few things, like- our body, our memory, our environment and the community we live in. If we can manage all these aspects then we'll be able to balance rejuvenate our subconscious mind.

How does post-trauma predicament behave?

The post-trauma predicament is a security system developed by our instinct which protects us from further trauma. Yes, it's a security system that saves our butts. But in this process, it ruins us the other way. In a post-trauma condition, our body cuts the connection between our nerves and muscles. It stops the flow of oxygen in the Neuromuscular junction and we cannot move our limbs. We know this situation as a predicament.

Let's understand this in an example; suppose you want to check your email and you turned on the email app on your mobile phone but there's no internet connection. You can see the "loading circle" on the screen. Your device is trying to synchronize the app with your email account. And, it fails. You try again and the same thing happens. The email app in your mobile phone cannot load the inbox page because the connection between your mobile phone and the internet is broken.

Same thing happens with us when we go through a predicament. We try to do some activity, our brain initiates the process but the muscles cannot perform it because the connection between our nerves and the muscles is broken.

How to stay active?

Most of the P.T.S.D. challengers spend a good amount of time lying in bed and sleeping. They get out of bed, have some food and go back to sleep. If you are one of them then don't feel ashamed. It's totally okay. Your body needs that rest. You need to give yourself a minimum time to recover from the immediate shocks of the trauma.

1. Start with 'No-brain Activities':

(Use your sensory organs)

You should start by doing the 'no brain-activities'. After the immediate shocks of trauma, our body develops a practice of feeling stressed all the time. While feeling stressed there is more blood flow to the back part of our brain (mainly in the hypothalamus) and less blood flow on the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe executes all logical and analytic processes. So, it's difficult for us to perform actions. That's why we should start with no-brain activities.

Use your sensory organs to start working. Use your eyes, your ears, your tongue. You can start by simply watching TV or listening to music.

2. Engagement Is The Key

(Use your hands)

Next, you need to do physical tasks. It's the time when you introduce your hands with your eyes and ears. You need to practice what you have learned so far. Simply start singing, start dancing, try to enact your favorite scenes from your favorite TV shows, start cooking, start drawing, do make ups, start working out, literally anything that involves physical engagement. Just keep in mind you should pick one or two of the tasks you like. Do not overwhelm yourself. If you overwhelm yourself with a bunch of projects and cannot finish any of them then you might end up sabotaging yourself. You can schedule a routine that you'll cook in the morning and paint at night or whatever suits you.

Remember, you still do not have enough blood flow to your logical brain so your brain cannot handle more than one or two tasks. Don't set goals, don't pressurize yourself. Just hang out with your task and try to create a relationship with it.

3. Join a community

(Utilize The Power of Collective Humanity)

Next, you'll need to join a community. A community is always helpful. You get to meet a lot of people dealing with similar challenges like yours. You also meet people who have survived similar situations. You'll get to talk to them, you'll get to listen to them. They'll empathize with your pain. And, most importantly they'll recognize your achievements. Also, when we are around people who support us we feel more protected. It is a good therapy for a PTSD challenger.

So, join a community that shares similar beliefs and interest. The community should be a physical community and not an online community.

4. Start a Venture

(Use your legs)

Starting a venture is more of an advanced stage and probably the most difficult one. Most of the challengers fail to nail this one. But, the fact is if you are able to execute stage 4 you'll never look back. It's like a reward to yourself, it's a gift from the Universe. So, you have to start a venture.

Now, what is venture? Anything that is dedicated to a purpose and requires consistent engagement is a venture. If someone has a family he is a member of a venture, if someone works for a company then he is a member of a venture if someone works for a nonprofit group he is a member of a venture. Now you also need to be a part of a venture.

Either join an existing venture or create a new one. It's the best way to attract gratitude which will bring you recognition and empowerment. And, empowerment is one of the best remedies for a post-trauma condition.

5. Keep the ball rolling

(Maintain Continuity)

Now, you have to maintain the continuity. It is said that most of the trauma challengers fail to stay active because they fail to continue the process. It's a secret how to keep the ball rolling.

a. You Need A Strong 'Why'- define a purpose of your life. It's a way to hack the rules of the Universe. As a human being, we tend to stay active if there are people depending on us. If you can convince yourself that there are a few people depending on you, you'll more likely to stay active than if not.

b. Create a Community of Yours- create a support group of your own. They'll keep you motivated and even help you to start a venture. Your community should contain a core and a buffer group to help you in different situations.

c. Establish your actions with rituals- you have to establish the activities I taught previously. Rituals are the best way to do that. A personal 'Mantra' or 'Japa' can help you. Even lighting up a candle can help you to continue your journey.

JUST BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

It's all about what you believe. A trauma has a two-way effect. It affects our physics and our psyche. We do not have much control over our physics but we can control our psyche. And, by controlling the psyche we can govern our physics to some extent. The goal of a PTSD-challenger should be to get full command over their psyche and guide their physics to recovery.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Stay-Active-After-PTSD---Overcome-Your-Post-Trauma-Predicament-in-5-Easy-Steps&id=9657279

How the Mind Helps Heal the Body

How mental and physical health is affected by the way we perceive and relate to it.

“Our mental state can be crucial in determining our experience of symptoms such as pain, nausea, fatigue and depression…Feeling stressed or afraid can cause your heart to race and your bowels to empty, and trigger an immune response called inflammation. These processes aren’t usually under our conscious control—we can’t will changes to occur—but there are indirect methods we can use to influence them.”

While in no way suggesting that illnesses are “all in the mind,” Marchant’s analysis suggests that our mental and physical health is affected by the way we perceive and relate to it. Meditation, says Marchant, is one of those indirect, influencing, methods that can help, which is perhaps not surprising given that how we perceive and relate to our lives is precisely what’s trained in mindfulness practice.

The effect of mindfulness on inflammatory health was shown in a study by David Creswell that came out this month. This research showed changes in brain circuitry and reduced inflammation after three days of mindfulness training, while three days of relaxation did not have the same effect. Creswell explains the difference in impact between mindfulness meditation and relaxation:

“We show that mindfulness meditation impacts measurable brain circuits more so than helpful relaxation practices, and that these brain circuit changes help us understand how mindfulness meditation improves health. Mindfulness teaches participants how to be more open and attentive to their experiences, even difficult ones. By contrast, relaxation approaches are good in the moment for making the body feel relaxed, but… harder to translate when you’re dealing with difficult stressors in your life. This new work sheds light into what mindfulness training is doing to the brain to produce these inflammatory health benefits.”

How meditation helps me deal with the symptoms of depression and lingering triggers

A mindful way of perceiving and relating to difficult experiences has helped in my journey with depression. I came to meditation around 15 years ago, when stuck in a two-and-a half year depressive trough. I had thrown myself in desperation at various treatments, but mindfulness offered something different. The method itself meant practicing acceptance, just the opposite of what I was used to. This marked the beginning of a transformation—a recognition that the way I was approaching the “problem” of depression actually helped perpetuate it. Through meditation, I learned to see how my attitude and behaviour, characterized by self-critical striving and resistance, was a significant factor in how I felt. Mindfulness offered a gentler way, and I learned how to be kind to myself, even—especially—when feeling stressed.

What’s really changed is that life’s troubles no longer seem to propel me into a prolonged, self-perpetuating funk, one that continues to endure long after the events that triggered it.

I still sometimes experience the symptoms of what I used to call “depression,” albeit usually for shorter periods, after a difficult event. What’s really changed is that life’s troubles no longer seem to propel me into a prolonged, self-perpetuating funk, one that continues to endure long after the events that triggered it. Why is this so? Well, I think that the meaning I give to my condition matters. Once upon a time, I saw depression on one hand as something I couldn’t control, a clinical illness that left me feeling powerless. On the other, I also saw it as my fault, a self-stigmatising belief that filled me with shame, and a sense of failure that I couldn’t shake off. These perspectives, I suspect, made me feel even more depressed.

When I believed that symptoms like heart palpitations, muscle pain, and racing thoughts were fearful catastrophes, signs of the devil depression, I was easily overwhelmed by them, and prone to try to push them away, with a sense of impotent rage. However, as I learned to let go of the labels and judgements about depression, I started meeting the same kinds of symptoms as normal reactions to unpleasant events. I no longer added to their unpleasantness with the stressful belief that something terrible or unmanageable was happening to me, that I couldn’t cope, that it was all my own doing, or that I had to wrestle with it.

Viewing difficult thoughts, feelings, and urges as impermanent events in the mind and body, trusting that they too will fade, just like the events that triggered them, I find I can handle life’s challenges with more competence, trust, and confidence. I’m less likely to add a secondary suffering to the unavoidable stresses of living. Difficulties come, but they also go.

This is a radical shift. Gently practicing steadfastness and self-compassion has not only made uncomfortable thoughts and feelings more workable, but allows them to pass more quickly, rather than reactively keeping them going. With this approach, I make better decisions when problems arise, and I’m more able to draw on my environment for support—rather than the old chaotic, lonely existence I used to lead, my outer life has come more to reflect the qualities of mind that I’ve gradually cultivated through mindfulness practice. With my mind, body and life no longer in such conflict, stress has reduced.

Practicing a shift in view, a change of heart, over and over again, seems to be a vital mechanism through which mindfulness training helps our sense of health. As Creswell’s study elegantly demonstrates, it also leads to measurable biological shifts.

For me, mindfulness has been the “master key” to understanding how the mind and body work, as well as a skillful method for managing them. It’s not magic, of course. Our physiological and psychological habits are strong, and we can’t just think our way out of them—believing this would be falling prey to the pseudo-science which has given mind-body medicine an undeservedly poor reputation. Our experience is conditioned not just by our mentality, not just by our biology, but also our relationships, external environment, society and culture, and we have limited control over all of these. But practicing a shift in view, a change of heart, over and over again, seems to be a vital mechanism through which mindfulness training helps our sense of health. As Creswell’s study elegantly demonstrates, it also leads to measurable biological shifts.

There’s a traditional mind training slogan which says: “Change your attitude, but remain natural.” I think this captures the paradox that mindfulness training invites. Without getting caught in trying to change the moment, we nevertheless change our relationship with the moment—the meaning we give to what’s happening, and our way of responding. This, it turns out, changes the moment too.

http://www.mindful.org/how-the-mind-helps-heal-the-body/