Tag: mind

  • Serves Me!

    In Waking, by Matthew Sanford, he writes again about his experience with yoga.

     

    “Maha mudra is a strange pose.  In yogic lore, if a yogi practices it enough, he or she can eat anything, even something poisonous. Regardless, it has a magical feel to it.  Seated on the floor, one leg is straight in front of you.  The other leg is bent at the knee, with the sole of the foot pressed against your inner thigh of the opposite leg.  One reaches down, hooks the big toe of outstretched leg with the thumbs and forefingers of both hands, lowers the chin toward the chest, inhales, and tightens the abdomen, pulling it back toward the spine and up toward the diaphragm.”

     

    “As I move into this pose, something clicks or snaps into place or becomes manifest. I experience a new ding.  I suddenly feel a tangible sense of my whole body – inside and out, paralyzed and unparalyzed.  I am stunned.”

     

    “Jo, this feels different, something is different.  I can feel where the pose goes, the unity between the actions.  I can feel it actually moving.” I gasp. “The abdomen hits back and up, and the straight leg thigh pushes into the floor…right?”

     

    “Yes.” She says, breaking a smile.

    “Then the…energy” – I struggle for words – “moves out through the heel.”

     

    “Well actually, the physical actions is to hit down with the thigh and stretch out through the heel,” she says, her tone informative. “….as the spine and chest life in opposition.” I chirp in.  My mind is racing.  How am I feeling this?  How is this possible?  I am perplexed, but the moment is mine.  My entire body is working in concert.  It has been a long time – some thirteen years.  My lost body and my potential body have joined in this pose.  My past, my present and my future are touching.  Although I am choking with grief, I am also an excitable boy.  I have worked so hard to make it back to this moment.”

     

    Jo and I do not say much.  It is too big, too fresh, and not to be spoiled.  Silence – the lamp’s light, the darkness outside the window, our reflections in the class, my creaking house.  My world has changed its shape tonight.  A new level of me is coming alive.  I am overwhelmed with the feeling that my body has been waiting for me to stop neglecting it, waiting for me to quiet down and listen.  My heart is breaking. I feel grateful.” 

                        Matthew

     

    My heart is breaking and I am grateful is exactly the correct sentiment.  To sit in awe of all the neglect and how the body still worked to serve me, given what I have fed it and how I moved it.

     

    I have done lots of yoga this year, working to help my body process all the stressful situations it has endured, and giving it flexibility and strength to move easier.

     

    My mind, my body and my soul are all being greatly helped in yoga each day.

     

    What a great vehicle we get to ride around in!

     

    I too am heartbroken and grateful, many times a day as I witness how it lives and breathes and serves me!

     

     

     

     

  • Spontaneous Evolution, by Bruce Lipton

    Here is a part of what he writes.

    Sometimes, the body’s natural harmony breaks down, and we experience dis-ease, which is a reflection of the body’s inability to maintain normal control of its function-providing systems. Because behavior is created through the interaction of proteins with their complementary signals, there are really only two sources of dis-ease: either the proteins are defective or the signals are distorted.

    About 5 percent of the world’s population is born with birth defects, which means they have mutated genes that code for dysfunctional proteins. Structurally deformed or defective proteins can “jam the machine,” disturb normal pathway functions, and impair the character and quality of lives. However, 95 percent of the human population arrives on this planet with a perfectly functional set of gene blueprints.

    Because the majority of us have a perfectly healthy genome and produce functional proteins, illness in this group can likely be attributed to the nature of the signal. There are three primary situations in which signals contribute to dysfunction and dis-ease.

    The first is trauma. If you twist or misalign your spine and physically impede the transmission of the nervous system’s signals, it may result in a distortion of the information being exchanged between the brain and the body’s cells, tissues, and organs.

    The second is toxicity. Toxins and poisons in our system represent inappropriate chemistry that can distort the signal’s information on its path between the nervous system and the targeted cells and tissues. Altered signals, derived from either of these causes, can inhibit or modify normal behaviors and lead to the expression of dis-ease.

    The third and most important influence of signals on the dis-ease process is thought, the action of the mind. Mind-related illnesses do not require that there be anything physically wrong with the body at the outset of the dis-ease. Health is predicated upon the nervous system’s ability to accurately perceive environmental information and selectively engage appropriate, life-sustaining behaviors. If a mind misinterprets environmental signals and generates an inappropriate response, survival is threatened because the body’s behaviors become out of synch with the environment. We may not think that a thought could be enough to undermine an entire system, but, in fact, misperceptions can be lethal.

    Consider the situation of a person with anorexia. While relatives and friends clearly perceive that this skin-and-bones individual is near death, the anorexic looks in a mirror and sees a fat person. Using this distorted view, that resembles an image in a funhouse mirror, the anorexic’s brain attempts to control a misperceived runaway weight gain, by-oops!-inhibiting the system’s metabolic functions.

    The brain, like any governing entity, seeks harmony. Neural harmony is expressed as a measure of congruency between the mind’s perceptions and the life we experience.

    An interesting insight into how the mind creates harmony between its perceptions and the real world is frequently illustrated in stage hypnosis shows. A volunteer from the audience is invited onstage, hypnotized, and asked to pick up a glass of water, which the volunteer is told weighs one thousand pounds. With that misinformation, the volunteer struggles unsuccessfully with straining muscles, bulging veins, and perspiration. How can that be? Obviously the glass doesn’t weigh one thousand pounds even though the mind of the subject firmly believes that it does.

    To manifest the perceived reality of a thousand pound glass of water, something that cannot be lifted, the hypnotized subject’s mind fires a signal to the muscles used to lift the glass at the same time it fires contradictory signals to the muscles used to set the glass down! This results in an isometric exercise wherein two groups of muscles work to oppose each other, which results in no net movement-but a lot of strain and sweat.

    Cells, tissues, and organs do not question information sent by the nervous system. Rather, they respond with equal fervor to accurate life-affirming perceptions and to self-destructive misperceptions. Consequently, the nature of our perceptions greatly influences the fate of our lives.

    While most of us are aware of the healing influences of the placebo effect, few are aware of its evil twin, the nocebo effect. Just as surely as positive thoughts can heal, negative ones-including the belief we are susceptible to an illness or have been exposed to a toxic condition-can actually manifest the undesired realities of those thoughts.

    Japanese children allergic to a poison ivy-like plant took part in an experiment where a leaf of the poisonous plant was rubbed onto one forearm. As a control, a nonpoisonous leaf resembling the toxic plant was rubbed on the other forearm. As expected almost all of the children broke out in a rash on the arm rubbed with the toxic leaf and had no response to the imposter leaf.

    What the children did not know was that the leaves were purposefully mislabeled. The negative thought of being touched by the poisonous plant led to the rash produced by the nontoxic leaf! In the majority of cases, no rash resulted from contact with the toxic leaf that was thought to be the harmless control. The conclusion is simple: positive perceptions enhance health, and negative perceptions precipitate dis-ease. This mind-bending example of the power of belief was one of the founding experiments that led to the science of psychoneuroimmunology.

    Considering that a minimum of one third of all medical healings are attributed to the placebo effect, what percentage of illness and disease might be the result of negative thought in the nocebo effect? Perhaps more than we think, especially since psychologists estimate that 70 percent of our thoughts are negative and redundant.

    Perceptions have a tremendous influence in shaping the character and experiences of our lives. They’re the reason why those faith-filled folks can swig poison, joyously play with deadly snakes and lift a car to free a loved one. Perceptions shape the placebo and nocebo effects. They are more influential than positive thinking because they are more than mere thoughts in your mind. Perceptions are beliefs that permeate every cell. Simply, the expression of the body is a complement to the mind’s perceptions, or, in simpler terms, believing is seeing!

  • Reality has no Delete Buttons

     

    I am way confused about the applications of religion, the way religion believes that you can hand over your burdens to God, that Jesus will carry the things you don’t want to deal with, that he is a dumping off place.

     

    How can you literally hand the “bad stuff” over?

     

    Like what do you do actually?

     

    How do you take experiences and actions and bundle them up and hand them over?

     

    How do you remove them from your past?

     

    Isn’t it odd that this ‘forgiving and forgetting’ technique is only used for things that are troubling about other people; you never remove the ‘good things’ only the bad things you don’t want to deal with.

     

    It reminds me a huge delete button.

     

    When a person’s action hurts or makes you feel bad, and you don’t really want to address it, you can hit this button.

     

    When an incident happens that changes the original picture of someone, you can just hit the “I forgive you button” and like magic they continue to be ‘good’.

     

    This button will allow the other person not to have the hassle of changing, or making corrections; you are just agreeing to not see them.

     

    Agreeing to not see them does not make them disappear.  You are just two people pretending something is no longer there.

     

    It is like living in a world where hurtful things happen, but you are denying they are there, you are determined not to see/hear and feel them.

     

    I am amazed and blown back that many actually believe this works.

     

    This delete button is in your head; it really doesn’t work in reality.

     

    You simply can’t walk along and hit this button when people’s behavior is unkind.

     

    You can’t create a new version of someone by overlooking his or her behaviors/actions! It simply doesn’t work in reality.  In reality the person continues on doing that which he does and you are just overlooking it.

     

    How supposedly intelligent individuals cannot see this NOT working puzzles me.

     

    The only delete button is actions.

    They have to act different.

    They have to walk a new walk to change their behavior.

     

    You simply can’t forgive and forget enough times to make the other person change.

     

    My mother tried this repeatedly and my father continued to abuse little girls.  Her forgiving and forgetting allowed him to not have to change.

     

    Oh MY God you simply can’t stuff this stuff into a belief in your head and make the world a better place!  You have to deal in the real.

     

    What is so insane to me is I am seen as the one with the issues for I have no delete button anymore!  I am the problem, because I will not forgive and forget.

     

    My delete button is broken.

     

    I am out of my mind and into reality.

     

    Reality has no delete buttons!

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Present Training.

     

    As I sat in a room with four other people, one was leading the class and the rest of us were to follow along.  It seems an easy task, to sit and be led, to sit and absorb, to be one with the whole class.

     

    Yet I found myself not following along, but going against the other students. 

     

    One wanted to know what was up ahead, had to know, what would come next, and couldn’t relax in this chapter, worrying about the unknown.

     

    The other two wanted to either change the way things were being asked of us, or stepped into the past operation regaling us with stories that had nothing to do with where we were going.

     

    Their nonsensical behavior was like a loud horn blast coming in and interrupting the flow, their worries/concerns/thoughts of past and future events bleeding into the now.

     

    What a great thing to witness and a frustrating thing to be part of.

     

    I seen how their minds kept leading them away from the task at hand, like pre-school aged kids they needed to be rounded up and brought back to class.

     

    I just never thought that the hardest part of ‘teaching’ someone is to keep them present.

     

    Their attention span was limited and as the afternoon progressed it became worse, and the more they stole time from training, the longer training became.

     

    My patience of idling along in the present, while they played out in the past and future wore me out.

     

    To sit and observe this behavior is so intrusive and rude to the present.

     

    It is the ultimate battle in each situation, between what is now and what was or will be.

     

    As I sat on the sidelines frustrated, I too was battling with what is, for I expected us to all remain in the present training.

     

     

     

     

     

  • ‘Their inner knowing….’

    I decided I was doing my 75th yoga class at 7am this morning, my nosebleed said, “It will be later.”

     

    Last night I went to bed to go to sleep, my mind went to bed to wrestle with other people’s lives, and we were both losers.

     

    The mind likes to be the party planner, the event coordinator, and the one in charge, when it is only the guest.

     

    Yoga means ‘to yoke’ and what I feel it is doing is trying to yoke the mind. 

     

    “To bring your mind back to the body for 20 seconds, which is the hardest thing to do…” Bikram

     

    Bringing the mind back to the body is to bring the mind to reality, to this present moment and your body, not somebody else’s body, to yoke it to your life.

     

    It seems impossible that the mind isn’t with you and for you at all times, but watch. 

     

    Watch and see how often you miss what is in front of you while you are off in another’s land.

     

    And once your mind looks about in their land, you want to decorate, plant, arrange, toss out, add, do many things YOU feel they are lacking.

     

    I am so damn grateful that I won’t allow those foolish ideas to pass my lips, now. 

     

    The old me would have tossed out orders like a drill sergeant to get that persons life in order.

     

    What is equally insane is this mind comes into my world and does the same to me, trying to move me out of my present moment. 

     

    Oh and you know when someone else has lost their yoke (mind), for they will come into your world with great orders of things YOU need to do.

     

    Inside of us is this inner knowing, which doesn’t live in the mind, that will lead us where it is we need to go.

     

    Trust that inner knowing, trust that it will lead the way, for it is always about you, never about another.  It moves you!  It is not our job to move another!

     

    Otherwise it would be called ‘their inner knowing’….

     

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