Friday, March 26, 2010

Ocean wave



The Subtle Mind



Hi everyone,


Last week the love and kindness exercise did not work for me, for some reason I was not able to concentrate or in the psychospiritual language I would say, my conscious awareness was distracted in a very bad way.


This week subtle mind exercise started very smooth because I usually do breathing exercise. When I feel charged with emotions, I tend to breath and focus on my breathing. I believe in breathing exercise; they have worked for me for years, I guess since I read an article about Chinese medicine when I was a teenager and in the article it was said that we live half our lives because we breath half our capacity. We tend to breath faster and shallower depriving our body from its fullness of Oxygen and depriving our mind of it rhythmic regulator. I even used to do yoga for a while, but I guess my limited time got in the way of that, but breathing I do it whenever, sometimes I do it in bed before I sleep.


Although the CD track was horrible for this exercise, but I guess I was able to achieve some calm abiding mind with some relaxation music and concentration on my focal point of breathing.


May be loving kindness could benefit some people, but for me I think subtle mind is more beneficial because I do not have to recall loved one to proceed because that did take me to a tangled place in my mind. One major different I noticed is that loving kindness start by recalling a loved one while the subtle mind require us to send love to a loved ones, I mean the cycle was reversed.


Our three axes of being are body, mind, and spirit and they are interconnected, so if one side is pressured it will vent somewhere else. People who get physically abused should only suffer the physical pain if there is no connection with the mind or spirit, yet the physical pain is soon forgotten and the real suffering will manifest the mind and the spirit, right? So there is no argument the connection between the three axes does exist.


I personally suffer physically when I am sad or stressed. I am a living proof of how my mind and spirit affect my body and vice versa. If I get bad news I have to expect to be sick, usually respiratory infection of some kind and if I get sick I should expect an episode of depression. I literally have to get out of my way to break the cycle, although I recently decided to address my pain and live with it and then move on because I do not know how to let go without getting inside the turmoil, I could avoid it and then explode some other way, so I prefer the short pain cycle to the accumulative one.


Sunday, March 21, 2010

Loving-kindness exercise


Hi guys,

I am embarrassed to admit that I could not fully engage myself in this exercise, may be because there is no quite place in my house or may be I kept drifting or above all, the person I love most is dead and every time this person is present in my mind I will remember equally painful memories. Any way, the part where I flood with love is there but to direct it to others! that was hard for me, yet I connected this experience to prayer because sometimes when I pray to God, I pray for others and I do my best to direct My prayers to them and for unknown reason to me, after I am done with my prayers I feel like the recipients of my prayers are in better state.

I still think this loving-kindness exercise can be of a benefit if I can master it and just like swimming, driving, and riding the bike, this exercise need to be figured out and once it is the rest will come easily. I did not figure it out in order to master it, but as I said the closest I came to such exercise is in prayer.

I would recommend this exercise to people because they may benefit from it, although I would not be able to teach them myself, just direct them to the text to do their best and achieve some results.

When I was young, my grandmother who is the person I love the most, God may bless her souls used to tell me to use my brain like my muscles or I will loss its strength, she used to tell me to read and do math just help my brain keep moving, I listen to her although I found her concept funny to comprehend ( a brain like a muscle!). As I grew up I realized that we can train ourselves to do everything, to eat less, to sleep less, to breath slower, to stick to anger management, to be athletic, to be a mask no one can penetrate..etc. The same is true about mental exercise or psychospiritual abilities. If do not use it, we loss it and to me at least, I side with logic most of the time, so my psychospiritual abilities are limited. Studies showed one hour a day dedicated to our mental training(like the loving-kindness exercise) could help us reach a level of psycho spirituality and I found this to be true because when I was younger, I was living in the Middle East where spirituality is stronger than here in the West, I used to be a better spiritual person and I even possessed what we call a sixth sense. I used to dream of things that will happen in the future and they did happen and I used to sense when someone in my family was suffering and I would call them and find out, my dreams were so clear like a movie, but now, I do not even dream as long as it is not a nightmare! So, YES, I agree with the study that approve of the concept of training our minds.

That being said, I am open to any of your comments.

Fatima

Monday, March 15, 2010

Reflection On My Wellness


We meet again on my blog.

Now I am going to ask myself, am I well? Well, I feel fine. The truth is, I can not answer such question with three words "I feel Fine", no one can. All of us are a mix of forces that take their toll on our bodies, I like to think of our bodies like a ship in the middle of the ocean. There are so many variables that will guarantee the safety of that ship like the wind, the water, the material in which the ship was made, and above all, unthinkable circumstances like storms or defects in the body of the ship. Human body is not different, there are times that I feel I am in the middle of a storm and there are times that I wish I did not exist, yet there are times that I feel I am part of a great world. I am sure I am not the only one who feel this way, we all do at some point.

Physically I am a strong woman in general, but the wear-and-tear of aging is starting to show its ugly face, yet I tend not to think about it much and live my life as tended to do years ago. I love to move and enjoy that as long as I can. I think moving helps me feel alive and that makes me happy. Psychologically, my happiness is connected to my physical state. I am one of those people that exhaustion does not sit well with my psychology. I need to sleep well, eat well, and be physically active in order to be psychologically balanced. Spirituality is not one of my biggest focuses, yet I do believe that we are all here on this earth for a reason and I do know that what I do will touch other people lives in one way or another. Therefore I am very careful not to hurt people's feeling and if I do I try to make it up for them because I believe my bad energy will transdescend from them to other people as well and the end result will be like spreading a plague.

I would rate my physical being 7/10, my psychological well being 9/10, and my spiritual well being is 7/10. I would love to be on the top scale for all my well being parameters, but to me I feel the physical part is the one controlling the rest, therefore I am aiming to improve it and the rest will follow.

What I am doing to improve my physical well-being is going to physically therapy to improve my back pain which affect my mode and personality in a negative way. I also go cycling to help get some fresh air and rewind all my stress. In the future I am willing to incorporate breathing and relaxation exercise to help me be calm and balanced.

I loved the relaxation exercise "the crime of the century" and I admit the name did not give me the right idea in the beginning and I was preoccupied by negative thoughts when I started it, but once I did, I got caught. I think the exercise was smooth, calming, and the voice was very hypnotizing. When it was done I really felt something had changed in me, I honestly felt weightless and like my body does not exist, weird huh? yet that how I felt and it was awesome considering I never felt like this before. I would definitely do that again as it turn out I can use my imagination to work for me, how nice!!

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

My First Relaxation Blog


Hi every one,

This is my first correct blog ever! Yes because the first one was a free idea of mine and because I love books and movies the subject was chosen accordingly.

I am doing it right this time, I hope!
I am welcoming everyone to my blog. My first topic would be relaxation and relaxation techniques.
Who do not want to be relaxed, as a matter of fact people go to desperate measures to feel relaxed and serene, but unfortunately, life and responsibility get in the way.
In a literal meaning, Relaxation is a way of spending time in which you rest and feel comfortable. On the other hand, what happen to our body during relaxation is a very different story, important stuff happen during relaxation, our body rebuild and rejuvenate during relaxation.
Some of us heard that exercise help us relax, dancing help us relax, deep breathing help us relax, so why is that? In normal circumstances when our body goes through sudden stress, our sympathetic system will fire up the fight-and-flight response by pumping blood to the limb's muscles, increase the heart beats and blood pressure, does that sound like a vigorous exercise vital signs? yes it is and after it is over, our parasympathetic system will take over sending blood to the intestine, other visceral organs, slowing the heart rate and lowering blood pressure, all a long giving us a feeling of relaxation, the body will start a maintenance mission to assess the damages after the fight-and-flight fiesta and all along our body is relaxing and rejuvenating.
That being said, we do realize that we need to relax to be healthy and well. There are so many relaxation techniques, but I favor meditation, breathing exercise in particular because focusing on the in-and-out of air will take the mind off the stressful subject swarming in our subconscious mind, and if accompanied by music it will release endorphins which is even better. The closest way to think of endorphin as natural Ecstasy drug, it will make you happy. The body release endorphins after exercise, sex, eating, and listening to music, isn't that cool to know.
I guess we do not have to be cynical about the affect of breathing exercise, the Chinese used for hundreds of years, nevertheless, music was believed to heal and was used to treat certain physical ailments by the ancient Greeks.
I will be looking forward to hearing from you.
All comments are welcome.
Fatima