Tag: Deepak Chopra

• Being Me!

  I heard something today that I know I have never considered, that when you feel whatever it is you are feeling, that is you.  The You is comprised of feelings and so often we try and run from them, but then we are actually running from our self!

  Geneen Roth and Oprah were discussing her book, "Woman, Food, and God" and about feeling discomfort of any kind and how we usually  eat when we feel uncomfortable. 

  I see this like we are getting to know our bodies to be able to read what they are telling us, and if you look around your surroundings, you can usually find out what is the cause of those feelings.

  In my case, the fear was justified from my father, fear didn't arise for no reason, my body was trying to tell me something, and I ignored the sensations within my body.

  In her book, Geneen is trying to reconnect us back with our bodies and in doing so she will reconnect you with your truth.

  It is an amazing journey to look at what you are doing instead of feeling that which you don't want to feel.

  I simply love that what I feel is me.  And I love that I can now voice what I feel and act upon those feelings.  I no longer have to pretend that I don't feel what I feel, in fact I won't pretend to pretend to pretend any more!

  I am now learning when to stop eating or when to eat.  I am getting to learn the signals of fullness from my belly.

  What an exciting thing to learn about you by looking at your body.  She is the one too that says "Your beliefs are how your body looks."  Deepak Chopra says that the mind is manifested in your body.

  The more conscious I am, the more aware of my body, the less influence the crazy mind has on what it does.

  Just as I learned how to navigate out of dysfunctional relationships, I am hopeful that I can learn what kinds of foods my body really wants.  I will have to listen and pay attention to what it feels.

  Learning every day about this magnificent living organism, the human body.  Which goes back to the saying "We are Spiritual Beings having a Human experience."

  I am becoming more aware of both and learning what they both need, to have the best human experience of being me!

  Thanks Geneen and Oprah.

  May 24, 2010

  Deepak Chopra, feelings, food, Geneen Roth, God, Oprah, reconnection, Spiritual, Uncomfortable, woman, you

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• Spotting Ourselves

  I am reading The Shadow Affect written by Deepak Chopra, Debbie Ford and Marianne Williamson. 

   

  Below is from Debbie Ford’s section.

   

  “Our projections usually shock us.  When we are judging another, we never really think we are talking about ourselves.  But once we understand our finger pointing, we can start to untangle ourselves from our perceptions and fierce judgment of others.  We must remember the old saying, ‘You spot it, you got it.’

   

  The parts of ourselves we try to avoid may be hidden from our view, but they exist as part of our energy field regardless.  The behaviors and feelings we are not at peace with will always find a screen to project themselves on, and we can be sure this is happening when we feel an emotional charge in the presence of someone else.  Imagine having a hundred different electrical outlets on your chest.  Each outlet represents a different quality.  The qualities you acknowledge and embrace have cover plates over them. They are safe- no electricity runs through them.  But the qualities you’re not okay with, the ones you have not yet owned, do have a charge.  So when other’s come along and reflect back to you an image of a self you don’t want to be, you become reactive…

   

  Ken Wilber makes a great distinction.  He says, if a person or thing in the environment informs us, if we receive what is happening as information or a point of interest, we probably aren’t projecting.  If it affects us, if we’re pointing our finger in judgment, if we’re plugged in, chances are we are a victim of our own projections.”  Debbie Ford

   

  This explains to me the difference between being informed in my environment and being affected.

   

  And if someone gets my goat so to speak it is because there is an inlet into a part of me that I am not aware of. 

   

  Interesting to note, that those who get a rise out of us, we are spotting ourselves!

   

   

  May 16, 2010

  Debbie Ford, Deepak Chopra, Ken Wilber, Marianne Williamson, The Shadow Affect

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• More from Deepak Chopra….

  " Children's brains have neurons that mirror the brains of adults in their surroundings.  These so-called mirror neurons are responsible for the way children learn new behaviors, so the theory goes. As they develop, young children don't have to imitate their parents in order to learn something new; they only have to observe them, and certain brain cells will fire in a way that mirrors the activity.  For example, a baby being weaned from breast-feeding watches how her parents eat.  As they reach for food and put it into their mouths, certain areas of their brain light up.  Simply watching this activity leads the same areas to light up in the infants brain.  In this way the newly forming infant brain learns a new behavior without ever having to go through trial and error.
   
  This model has already been tested in monkeys and theoretically extended to humans.  It provides a physical explanation for something as mysterious as empathy, the ability to feel what someone else is feeling.  Some people have this ability; others don't.  A few saintly individuals have so much empathy that they can hardly bear it when someone else is suffering.  Research with MRI's and CAT scans suggest that brain function plays a major role in empathy.  A child's neurons mirror the emotions of the adults around him, leading the child to actually feel what their parents feel.  So if a youngster is surrounded by unhappy adults, his nervous system will be programmed for unhappiness, even before he has any cause for unhappiness himself.
   
  Why doesn't every child learn empathy?  Because brain development is wildly complex and never the same for two babies.  When we were infants, all kinds of brain functions were being programmed at the same time, and for some of us empathy was only assigned a minor role.  This is a troubling inequality, and it extends to happiness.  When you see the brain has a set point for  happiness, traceable either to genetics or childhood influences, it's all too easy to conclude that nothing can be done about it.  However, this would be a mistake, because neither the brain nor your genes are fixed structures; instead, they are in process every minute of your life, constantly changing and evolving.  You are still being influenced at the genetic level by new experiences.  Every choice you make sends chemical signals coursing through your brain, including the choice to be happy, and each signal helps to shape the brain from year to year.
   
  In the overall picture, research has shown that the brain's set point can be changed by the following:
   
  Drugs that act as mood elevators, which work only in the short term and have side affects.
   
  Cognative Therapy, which changes the brain by helping us change our limiting beliefs.  We all tell ourselves stories in our heads that provoke unhappiness. Repeating the same negative belief over and over, ("I am a victim, I am unloved, Life isn't fair, something is wrong with me. etc" creates neural pathwayss that reinforce negativity by turning it into a habitual way of thinking.  Such beliefs can be replaced by others that are not simply more positive, but are a much better match with reality (I may have been a victim in the past but I don't have to remain that way; I can find love if I chose better places to look for it, etc)  In treating patients whose lives are dominated by negative beliefs, psychologists have found that altering really fundamental beliefs can be as effective in changing brain chemistry as prescribing drugs.
   
  Meditation, which alters the brain in many positive ways.  The physical effects of sitting quietly and going inward are amazingly extensive.  it took a long time to unravel the puzzle.  Researchers had to work against the Western assumption that meditation was mystical or at best a kind of religious practice.  Now we realize that it activates the prefrontal cortex  the seat of higher thinking- and stimulates the release of neurotransmitters, including dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and brain opiates. Each of these naturally occurring brain chemicals has been linked to different aspects of happiness. Dopamine is an antidepressant; serotonin is associated with increased self-esteem; oxytocin is now believed to be a pleasure hormone (it's levels also elevate during sexual arousal); opiates are the body's painkillers, which also provide the exhilaration associated with runners high.  it should be obvious, then, that meditation, by creating higher levels of these neurotransmitters, is the more effective way ofchanging the brain's set point for happiness.  No single drug can simultaneously choreograph the coordinated release of all these chemicals.
   Deepak Chopra – book "The Ulitmate Happiness Prescription"

  February 27, 2010

  brains, children, Deepak Chopra, neurons, parenting, Ulitmate Happiness Prescription

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• Happiness Prescription

  In Deepak Chopra’s book, “The Ultimate Happiness Prescription, he writes;

   

  ”The roots of unhappiness are often invisible. This is especially true of the conditioning that creates toxicity in a person’s life.  The most powerful conditioning exists at a subtle level of the mind.  It begins in the first year of a child’s life, as the infant brain learns how to think, feel and behave from influences in the home.  Conditioning becomes he dominant feature in all of us by the time we are toddlers.

   

  This is when we set lifelong patterns into our brains. Even today you are replaying scenarios you learned when you were two or three.  Consider a small child out with his mother.  He sees a giant lollipop and wants one.  What does he do?  The most common pattern is the following: First he is nice, asking in a cajoling voice if Mommy will buy him a lollipop.  If this tactic doesn’t work, he tries the opposite, acting nasty.  He whines and cries and makes a scene. If this doesn’t work, the next step is to become stubborn and indifferent.  He refuses to pay attention to his mother, who wants him to stop being unhappy and difficult. This is a subtler approach than nice or nasty.  If stubbornness fails, the last scenario is to play the victim- poor me, no one loves me enough to buy me a lollipop.  When the mother finally gives in, her child becomes conditioned, thinking he’s discovered something that ‘works’.

   

  Simple as this emotional cycle might sound, millions of adults continue to act it out, using the same belief that their tactics “work” to get them what they want. The problem with this conditioning is that my manipulating others, you never really get what you want, which is greater love, peace and joy. Because conditioning trains the brain into a false sense of happiness, you are actually manipulating yourself.  You become the kind of person who doesn’t know how to be anything other than nice, nasty, stubborn or a victim.

   

  Conditioning is the subtlest form of toxicity.  You cannot reach true happiness without escaping your mental conditioning.  In our society there’s a wave of interest in leading a life that’s more natural, free of toxic substances.  Purification of every type can be beneficial.  But the secret to detoxifying your body lies more in the mind than anywhere else.  There are seven steps to ridding yourself of toxin at the subtle level.

  1.    Take responsibility for your present response.

  2.    Witness what you are feeling.

  3.    Label your feelings.

  4.    Express what you feel.

  5.    Share what you feel.

  6.    Release the toxic feeling through a ritual

  7.    Celebrate the release and move on.

   

  These seven steps apply whether you are trying to change a toxic emotion, habit, craving, or relationship, because your past conditioning lies at the heart of all of them.

             Deepak

   

   

   

  February 26, 2010

  conditioning, Deepak Chopra, Happiness Prescription

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• It Will Respond In Kind.

  Below is an interesting view of your awareness and your body, perhaps this will help us as we continue towards 50 more days of yoga.  Our bodies are our partners, 100%!

   

  (from Reinventing The Body, Resurrecting The Soul)

   

  "Relating to your body calls for the same basic attitudes that go into any intimate relationship.  Tending to them every day keeps the relationship healthy.

   

  Trust

  Consideration

  Honesty

  Mutual cooperation

  Loving appreciation

   

  These are all aspects of awareness. People focus too much on the physical choices that the body presents – whether to take vitamins, how many calories to ingest, how much to exercise. Without awareness these considerations tend to be fairly useless.  Your body knows if you fear it; it rebels at being disciplined like a disobedient child; being ignored makes it grow dull and inert.  The whole purpose of consciously relating to your body is to provide the kind of foundation that is really needed.  After that, you can take any physical measures in the right spirit, and that will bring the best results.

   

  Trust.  Real trust is implicit.  It doesn’t depend on shifting moods.  It doesn’t need to be tested or proven.  Most people only trust their bodies so far. They anticipate a time when the body will bring pain and the distress of aging.  If you are on the lookout for what can go wrong physically, you are relating out of distrust, the opposite of what needs to exist.  So reframe the situation.  Think of the millions of processes that are being carried out perfectly in billions of cells every second.  Compared to that steady, faithful, perfectly coordinated functioning, the few times that the body shows distress are minuscule.  It’s far more realistic to trust your body than mistrust it.  After all, you trust you mind even though it occasionally breaks out in irrational reactions and is susceptible to moods of depression and anxiety.  Your body stands by you without asking for any reward, and its steadiness far exceeds the shifting winds of the mind.

   

  Consideration.  Your body doesn’t demand consideration, but it will reward you amply if you show some.  It’s considerate to walk away from stressful situations.  Stress puts enormous pressure on the body’s coping mechanisms, and that includes the stress of loud noise, congested work environments, excessive physical demands and emotional upset.  You may consider it recreation to run a marathon, for example, but you should consider your body’s viewpoint.  Another basic consideration is rest and regular daily rhythms.  Instead of waiting until you are too tired to go on, provide rest several times a day to your body – all it takes is a few minutes sitting quietly with your eyes closed.  A predictable routine for meals and exercise also shows consideration.  If you are used to irregular habits, it may bore you to adapt new habits, but if you persist for only a week, you will notice a positive response from your body.  It will be more relaxed and at the same time more responsive and energetic.  Even the most minimal effort at exercise, such as getting up from your desk and stretching every couple of hours, injects a bit of personal attention to the body.  Keep in mind that your attention is a basic nutrient that your body needs.

   

  Honesty. In personal relationships, it’s a strain to keep up a false front, and the same is true for relating to your body.  In both cases the falseness usually comes down to self-image.  You look at your body and want it to match your ego’s desire to look good in the eyes of others.  People spend thousands of hours in the gym, not for the sake of the body, but to satisfy an ego-ideal of beauty, vanity, strength, and security, and to fit in with someone else’s expectations. Body image is a huge problem for many people, and classically woman are the most distressed about it.  You can reframe the whole problem by comparing our body to the person you love the most in the world.  Do you really care what that person looks like in the mirror?  Do you denigrate that person for not fitting the image of a supermodel, not being at their ideal weight, not having biceps or big enough breasts?  Does growing older make that person less valuable in your eyes?

     The reason those considerations don’t matter is that you are relating to a person, not to an object that must match an ideal image.  Now think of your body as a person who is just as intimately related to you.  You don’t even have to call this person “me”.  By any name your body has been relating to you as the most faithful of friends, and once you regard it that way, ego image becomes irrelevant.  In short, learn to personify your body, and they you won’t be so tempted to objectify it.

   

  Mutual cooperation.  You can’t expect your body to serve you if you give it nothing to work with.  The body of a middle-aged executive isn’t out to sabotage him when the man decides to shovel a foot of snow from the driveway. But if he has ignored his heart for years, there is a danger in sudden hard exertion, perhaps fatal danger.  The key to the body’s reliability lies in cooperation: only ask for as much as you have given.  Compared with other intimate relationships, your body asks for a fraction of what it is willing to give in return.  This is another area where it helps to personify your body instead of objectifying it. Think of your body as a willing worker who wants only a meager salary, but who cannot survive on nothing.  The salary it asks for is paid in personal attention. If you genuinely want to cooperate with your body, paying it a little attention makes proper diet, exercise and rest easy – you will be providing those things because you want your willing worker to be happily employed.

   

  Loving appreciation.  Your body is going to serve and uphold your interests for a lifetime.  It’s only fair to appreciate it for this service, and if possible to appreciate it with genuine affection.  Most people are far from doing that.  Instead they look on their bodies like old models of cars that will need more repairs and cause more trouble as they wear out.  This causes a serious disconnect.  What they want from life-a future that’s more comfortable and fulfilling-is mismatched to a body that grows more uncomfortable and disappointing. The mismatch isn’t the body’s fault, however; it’s the product of beliefs and assumptions born in the mind.  We all relate to loved ones who grow older, and if we’re lucky, we relate to them better as they age.  Familiarity breeds fondness in this case, and appreciation flows more naturally.

   

  The same should hold true with your body. Being a familiar companion, you can grow fonder of it over time.  The two of you settle in to a shared life, knowing things about each other that no one else can possibly know.  If this sounds like a marriage, that is rightly so.  The highest aim in life is the marriage of mind and soul, and since the body links the two, it deserves to be part of a more perfect union as the years unfold.  This isn’t a fantasy that tries to compensate for the advance of physical aging. It’s a realistic way to approach you own awareness.  If you aim to be more aware, wiser, and more fulfilled in the future, invite you body to join that future as an equal partner.  When the body, mind and soul are matched, the results will be far different from when they are alienated from one another.”

             Deepak Chopra

   

  So, as you head into our studio for your next practice, just remember, you are not alone, but with your closest buddy ever, your body!

   

   

  Imagine the attention, love and appreciation we are putting into our bodies each time we do our yoga. 

   

  It will respond in kind!

   

  January 10, 2010

  Deepak Chopra, mind and soul, Reinventing your body, resurrecting your soul. Bikram yoga, you and your body

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• Come Dance With Me!

  “Unceasing change turns the wheel of life, and so reality is shown in all its many forms.  Dwell peacefully as change itself liberates all suffering sentient beings and brings them great joy.”

            Buddhist sutra

   

  Dwell peacefully in change.  We are certainly not taught to embrace change, to actually expect change, instead it seems that we struggle to stop change, always.

   

  The seasons are switching outside, and the leaves are changing color, leaving the living world for the world of decay.  As winter is being born, fall is dying.

   

  “If we had the patience and a high-powered microscope, we could sit and stare at our hands and watch the river of change flowing through our own bodies right now.  We could watch our cells changing and dying and being replaced, over and over and over.  From year to year, every one of our cells is replaced.  Literally, who we were yesterday is not who we are today.  Our skin is new every month, our liver every six weeks. When we inhale, we breathe in elements from other organisms to create new cells, and when we exhale, we send parts ourselves out into the atmosphere – into the living, breathing universe.  “All of us,” writes Deepak Chopra, “are much more like a river than anything frozen in time and space.” (Broken Open)

   

  Imagine, we are not frozen in time, yet how often do we feel we must capture this moment, take prisoner this age, or hold tighter this stage, instead of holding the value of change.

   

  The value in change is that we have to enjoy what we have when we have it, to treasure each morsel as it fleetingly rushes by, yet open to the new rushing in.

  Never holding to tightly or failing to appreciate what is here right now, and knowing when to release.

   

  That is a talent that babies and perhaps dogs have.

   

  I am slowly but surely learning how to do this, how to be at peace with change, to fully enjoy the moment and then let it go away.

   

  To be in the flow of change, instead of trying to be the stopper of change, if that were even possible!

   

  I think the river of life rushes by you, as you are the stopper person, that life simply goes around while you are standing still, it refuses to comply with your stopping.

   

  We can sit down and hold on to fall in our minds, but winter will come in anyway, tossing snow and frigid temperatures in our faces never asking our permission.

   

  I read a poem that describes God in four words, “Come dance with Me!”

   

  Come dance with me as winter, come dance with me as fall, come dance with me as summer, as youth, as old age, in sickness and in health, we join God in all His wonderful disguises.

   

  Come dance with Me!

   

   
  

   

   

  Not the God of Names,

  Nor the God of don’ts,

  Nor the God who ever does

  Anything weird,

  But the God who only knows four words

  And keeps repeating them, saying:

  “Come dance with Me.”

         Sufi poet Hafiz

   

   

  October 12, 2009

  Broken Open, changes, Deepak Chopra, Elizabeth Lesser, God, sufi poet Halfiz

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