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We have all heard how meditation can be a useful way to calm the mind, reduce stress and gain energy, and yet the thought of trying may seem somehow daunting. The image of the yogi sitting peacefully for hours may just seem too far from our reality to consider meditation as a viable method to de-stress and centre oneself. Yet the fact of the matter is that probably every single one of us has at one time or another been in a meditative state when we are doing something that completely occupies us, whether it is painting, rock climbing, playing a musical instrument, or something else that completely captivates our attention. We are so focused on what we are doing that the rest of the world around us fades from existence, time gets away from us, and we are just enjoying the present moment. This controlled focus can be considered meditation.

Meditation is about focusing on the now. It brings about calm and peace because once we stop dwelling on our past or considering the future, there is nothing left to be anxious about. Suddenly joy can spring up as the confines of time passing drop away. Most of us have probably met people that are very present. It is as if they have roots anchoring them to the earth, and when they are with you, you have the sense that there is nowhere they would rather be, yet at the same time they stay completely true to themselves. They are very dedicated to their professions, as what they do is in line with who they are. I find these people to be very inspiring.

With practice, meditation can help us develop that ability to be grounded in the moment – to live in the now, and it can help us to learn who we really are without being confused by the expectations of others. We begin to hear our inner being and what is really important to us. Once we have found our authenticity, it becomes easier to make the decisions that are in line with who we are and what we believe in. In the long term this can do a lot to reduce stress and improve our health.

Even in the short term, meditation is useful for calming the mind and reducing stress. Just by focusing on the present moment, life stuff will fall away at least temporarily. For those of you that feel intimidated by the idea of meditation and think you are unable to focus on anything for very long, I suggest you try the One-Breath Meditation. As the name implies, your necessary commitment is only one breath long. Then after that breath, you can recommit if you so choose. The reason using the breath is so helpful is that it is ever present, and ongoing. By focusing on the breath you are instantly brought back to the now of feeling the breath enter your lungs, and the breath flowing out your nostrils. So, sit tall and comfortably on your sit bones, close your eyes gently, and observe your inhale. Note the minute pause before you feel the air coming out of your body. Were you able to concentrate on that one breath without your mind wandering? Good. You succeeded in meditating for one full breath. Now if you wish, you can add another breath and see if you can concentrate for two breaths. Ultimately, that is all there is to it. As you add breaths, you may notice your mind wandering, so without judgment, just redirect your attention back to your breath. Initially, thoughts and feelings are inevitable as you lengthen your meditation time, and that is okay. Observe those thoughts and feelings as if you were watching a movie, without analyzing or judging them, and then bring your awareness back to your breath. As you practice this over weeks, months and years, you will be able to focus exclusively on the breath for longer periods of time, and the many thoughts that flit through your mind will slow as you give them no attention. You simply are. Your meditation time will become the time to connect to your true self.

The One-Breath Meditation can also be useful if you find yourself suddenly stressing about something. Someone just cut you off in traffic and you can feel your blood pressure rising. So calm yourself down by focusing on your breath instead of the other driver for a cycle or two, and notice how much better you feel. This meditation technique can be your instant calm that you can pull out of your back pocket when you need it.

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“May I have the courage to change the things I can …”

Finishing up on the quote by Reinhold Niebuhr, how often have you wished something were different in your life, and you realize that it is within your control, yet you don’t do anything about it, or you start working towards a goal only to find yourself petering out on your efforts after a few short weeks?

Usually a great deal of courage is needed to deal with the tough stuff, whether it is initiating important difficult conversations with loved ones, close friends or business colleagues, leaving the familiarity of a steady job to move forward on a business idea, or dealing with anything else outside our comfort zone. 

Often we are afraid of the unknown or of the reaction of loved ones, and so rather than do what we want, we procrastinate and feel frustrated with our lack of action.  Somehow not doing anything is way less painful than doing what we need to do, and therefore we remain stuck.

So, how to get unstuck?  We need to shift our thinking so that acting becomes more pleasurable than not acting. Only then will action be easy.

Write a list of the reasons why it would be painful NOT to achieve your goal, and all the happiness you will gain if you DO achieve your goal, and take the time to really feel the emotions that surface with each list – the pain of not changing, and the pleasure of changing.

For example, losing weight is a common goal, but when faced with fresh-baked cookies, we often give in to the immediate pleasure of eating the cookies, even though that action will sabotage our long-term goal of a slimmer body.

By changing our focus from how good those cookies will taste to how awful we feel when we feel chubby and how great we feel when we lose the weight may be enough to stop us from eating the cookies.  We need to keep focusing on the outcome we want.

Frequently, the imagined problems are just that – imagined.  So go for it!  For difficult conversations, it may be worth spending some time visualizing the conversation going perfectly.  At the very least it will give you an opportunity to rehearse what you want to say.

Often projects are less overwhelming if they are broken down into smaller tasks and tackled one at a time.  A little bit done on a weekly basis can add up to a lot over a year! So schedule some time into your day-timer each week to devote to your goal.

Often one may really want the end goal, but the journey is extremely challenging. There may be many stumbling blocks along the way that make us want to quit.  Having the belief in the goal and the persistence to keep trying in the face of great difficulty is what will eventually lead to success. 

It is said that Sylvester Stallone, who wrote the screenplay Rocky, was rejected hundreds of times before he found a producer that would produce his movie and allow him to play the starring role, which was his goal.  What if he had quit after only pounding on 10 doors?   We certainly would not know his name today. 

Most of us quit long before ten tries.  We figure after trying two or three times and being unsuccessful that we don’t have the aptitude and we quit.  Not trying guarantees you will not achieve your goal. 

Instead, try something and if it doesn’t work, modify it and try again.  The key is to try different approaches to achieve your goal until you find a way that works. Modeling someone who has achieved your goal can shorten the journey greatly, so approach that person and ask for help, and follow their advice. As Nike says, JUST DO IT!

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“May I have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change …”

Continuing further with topic of letting go, I think that sometimes forgiving someone for a previous transgression may be a necessary step in order to be able to let go of a painful event in the past that can’t be changed.

Forgiveness really isn’t about making the other person feel better for harming us, although they may be very grateful to know they are forgiven. Forgiveness happens within ourselves alone.

It is about getting rid of the pent up anger, sadness, fear, bitterness, disappointment, resentment, or other painful feelings that are stuck, churning inside ourselves, and possibly making us sick.

There is no point to purposefully hanging on to the hurt and anger associated with being wronged for years and years.

For example, if one’s spouse or lover left for someone else, no doubt it hurts tremendously. But why keep hurting oneself by hanging onto that pain forever?

Carrying that feeling of being wronged like a badge of honour may make one feel more righteous than the other person, but the venom inside is only harming the person carrying it.

As in the past example, forgiving can be extremely difficult. If someone close to you was murdered, how is it possible to forgive the murderer? I am not suggesting that by forgiving a murderer that that person should be allowed to roam the streets. Forgiveness is about freeing ONESELF of negative feelings, letting go, and moving on.

Even in far less severe circumstances, being able to truly forgive is really hard. I find that wanting to let go and being able to let go are two very different things. For me it is easy to forgive on an intellectual level, but getting that shift to happen at the gut level can at times be staggeringly difficult.

Sometimes our nervous system and neuropeptide system have linked so much pain to a situation, that we feel completely blocked emotionally. Being unable to forgive at an emotional level holds one hostage to the past, making it difficult to move forward in life.

I don’t have any real answers on how to overcome this kind of emotional baggage, except to suggest that everyone is doing the best they can considering the state-of-mind, information and ability they have at any given time. If any of you have any other suggestions, please share!

Please do keep the comments coming on my blog. If you want to share this article, go to the blog post and scroll to the bottom and click on the “share this” icon. If you want to search for other posts by title or by topic, go to www.wellnesstips.ca.

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“May I have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.”
Reinhold Niebuhr, 1926

Probably when you get right down to it, all unhappiness in our lives stems from having difficulty with part one or part two of the above saying. When we find ourselves wishing for something different in our lives, it is worth asking ourselves whether or not what we are wishing for is something that is within our control.

If our wish is something that is not within our control, then it is perhaps best to accept what is, and let go of that desire. In the simplest of situations, it is a merely a matter of adjusting one’s thinking.

For example, if you are in a hurry and find yourself stuck in a traffic jam, the reality is there is nothing you can do to make traffic move more quickly no matter how hard you may wish otherwise. Tying oneself in emotional knots is not helpful nor healthful.

Let go of the worry of being late. Instead, have the presence of mind to accept your current reality, and be at peace. The difference between being at peace and being extremely stressed comes down to the difference in how you think. Nothing has changed in terms of the physical reality of the situation, but the hormone and neurotransmitter response in your body will be radically different.

Letting go is a vital part of maintaining emotional health in the most difficult of times in our life. Life is forever changeable, never remaining the same, and it is certain that we will be parted from those we love either through a relationship ending, or through death.

How we deal with these realities can mean the difference between health and disease. Hanging onto the past and not letting go can mess up hormone, neurotransmitter and peptide balance and over time this can create major problems in the body. So mourn, accept what is, say good bye, and let go.
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Western science for most of its history has considered the mind and body as separate entities, and it is only in the last 20 to 25 years that science has proven that notion to be false. 

If neurotransmitters, which were once believed to be exclusively brain information chemicals that control mood, are found in the body, and have been discovered to be manufactured by the immune system also, and neuropeptides that are secreted by the immune system and endocrine system have receptors in the brain, it becomes obvious that there is a two-way communication happening.

Candace Pert suggests that it is useful to think of these messenger chemicals as information substances that link the brain to the body and vice-versa.

When we think of the mind, we think of the flow of information and emotion in a non-material sense, but mind can also be viewed as the communication network between the material body and the brain. Therefore, we can acknowledge that mind and body are actually one, and that there is an intelligence to the system – it is not simply mechanical hardware, reflexes and electricity as was once believed.

Mind or consciousness leads to manifestation in the body. According to Candace Pert, emotions are the neuropeptides and receptors that carry information that link the major systems of the body into “one unit that we can call the bodymind”.

In her words, “We can no longer think of the emotions as having less validity than physical, material substance, but instead must see them as cellular signals that are involved in the process of translating information into physical reality, literally transforming mind into matter. Emotions are at the nexus between matter and mind, going back and forth between the two and influencing both.”

An example of this is when we are nervous we often feel butterflies in the stomach. We talk about “gut instincts”. We have tons of neuropeptides and their receptors in the intestinal tract, so it isn’t surprising that we often feel our emotions in our gut.

And when our intestines are not functioning well and can’t digest our food, we often feel short tempered, so the flow of information can go both ways.

Another example is that controlled breathing is often used to reduce pain for women in labour. Women are taught how to alter their breathing on a conscious level, which in turn alters the quantities of endorphins released, which reduces the pain. The physical change of altering the breath, changed the feeling of pain.

Going the other way, if you vividly imagine slicing and then biting into a juicy lemon, you will probably find yourself salivating. Your thought created a physical response in your body.

So, your physical body can change your thought or feeling, and your thought or feeling can change your physical body. And this all happens through peptides being released and binding to receptors as a consequence of your physical actions, your thoughts or your feelings.

Howard Hall in 1992 showed that the immune system, which is filled with peptides, could be trained at a conscious level through biofeedback techniques.

This has huge implications for the major diseases. Studies have shown that cancer patients who controlled their anger or grief did not recover as well as those who expressed their feelings.

This is not to say that it is the individual’s fault that they got cancer. But, a cancer patient can learn to aid the immune system to fight the cancer by refusing to hold back on his/her feelings. Allowing oneself to feel ones feelings is important to keeping the peptides flowing freely and the psychosomatic system functioning effectively.

Thinking happy thoughts that cover up repressed feelings is not helpful. So let out your anger, grief, frustration etc. in a constructive way, and jumpstart your immune system.

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How many “shoulds” or “shouldn’ts" do you have in your life?  He "should" help me clean the house; she "shouldn’t" react that way; he "shouldn’t" have told me to invest in that stock, because it went down and I lost a lot of money.  If there is a lot of emotion behind such statements, they have the potential to cause anguish.  If we devote a lot of energy to wishing things were different than they are, or that people were different than they are, we wind up stressed and unhappy.

The fact is, what is, is.  There is no point arguing with reality.  If it is raining, we don’t waste our time anguishing that it shouldn’t be raining.  Instead, we plan accordingly.  Many times “shoulds” involve other adults, and we think that we will be happy when the other person changes.  We may be waiting a long time.  It might make more sense to accept the reality that our partner may not be great at keeping the house clean, and instead, plan to have a cleaner come in to help out occasionally. This way, we are not dwelling on the problem, but rather, coming up with a viable solution.

Another way to look at it may be to figure out whether something is our business or someone else’s business. What another adult thinks, does or does not do, is that person’s business and we do not have any control over that.  What we think, do or do not do is our business, and we do have control over that.  Staying in one’s own business only can vastly simplify a life. So, get rid of the “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” in your life by becoming clear on what is, and then if needed, come up with positive solutions that are within your ability to control and execute.  This will lower your stress and probably make you a lot happier.

These are a couple of the concepts come from the book Loving What Is, by Byron Katie, where she talks about a process called “The Work”, which consists of four questions that help you analyze your beliefs about difficult problems in your life, and allows you to find freedom from the heartache.

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As I have suggested in previous tips, what one thinks about actually results in physiological changes in the body.

When I was scheduled for gum surgery, I was terrified. I went through the operation in my mind a gazillion times imagining the knife cutting into my soft palette in graphic detail.

By the time I went in, I was in quite a state. My heart was pounding, my muscles were tight and stiff, and I felt like I had consumed 20 cups of coffee, even though I had had none.

The actual operation was nothing. My imagined operation was far worse, and my body had reacted very strongly to my imagination.

The body interprets our thoughts as real. In other words, the body responds to what we are thinking and puts out the necessary hormones as though the scenario were actually happening, even though it is only in our mind.

Instead of going through the operation once, my stinking thinking caused me to go through the operation countless times, each time eliciting a very real stress response in my body. Not a very healthy thing to do …

Because of the fact that our physiology interprets our thoughts as real, what we think about when confronted with challenges has a huge impact on our health.

Constantly catastophizing a problem resulting in our fight and flight response being activated all the time, means we never get the rest and recovery needed to keep us healthy. Not only that, but it is very difficult to focus on finding a solution to a problem when we are in a stressed state.

Our adrenals which secrete stress hormone to help us cope, become more and more exhausted fighting these imaginary demons on a daily basis. In today’s modern world, it is very rare that we find ourselves in a life and death situation where we actually need our stress response to kick in to keep us alive.

Most of the time, our stress is caused by what we think when we are reacting to a situation. Change your thinking, and you instantly change your body’s response.

So, when you find yourself dealing with a problem, instead of dwelling on it, acknowledge the situation and focus your thoughts on possible solutions.

If something is completely out of your control, understand that, and don’t waste your energy and hormones dwelling on something you cannot change. Controlling your stress levels will go a long way towards preventing cancer and many other diseases.

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Sometimes when life feels like an insane rush, stumbling from one problem to another in a desperate attempt to make it through the day, it may be difficult to remember how very privileged we really are.

I would bet that everyone subscribing to this e-zine has a roof over their heads, more than one outfit to wear, shoes on their feet, and an opportunity to choose what to eat from an abundance of delicious, quality food, not to mention people in their life that care for them. That alone puts us in the top echelon of the world!

We are extremely lucky to have what we have, and when life is slinging its arrows into our hearts, it is helpful to remember that. Write down at least 20 things that you are grateful for. If you are going through a tough spell, notice as you are making your list, how your feelings change from negative to more open, accepting and positive.

Read, think and be grateful about the items on your list upon awakening each morning, and start your day right with wonderful feelings of gratitude for what is your blessed life.

For me, remembering daily what I am grateful for and all that I have in my life has been a boon! Starting the day with such positive thoughts sets the tone for my day and makes it easy to be happy.

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Your thoughts create your life. Everything that you do or create, is a thought first. Everything that was ever invented was created first in someone’s mind.

Your thoughts influence your moods, your feelings and even how your body functions. (Think about biting hard into a lemon, and notice that you are salivating.)

So, tend your thoughts well. Think happy thoughts. Have an attitude of gratitude. When something goes wrong, think about what you can learn from the experience.

As John Kehoe suggests in his book, Mind Power Into the 21st Century, imagine how closely you would tend the garden of the mind if a dollar were given to you for every positive thought, and a dollar were taken away for every negative thought.

Imagine this were true, because as you think, so goes your life. If you dwell on your lack of money or love, you will have a lack of money or love. If you think thoughts of gratitude for all you have in your life, the floodgates of abundance will open up to you.

There are many books written on this topic, some of which are at www.wellnesstips.ca/think.htm. Bob Proctor also has a number of audio and video programs on how to think in order to change your circumstance.