On our way home, I asked him to go back to the time period when he felt tired with his friend. (I wanted to use this as a real life learning example for him.)

I asked him to think back to what was going through his mind and what he was feeling.  Of course at first his response was, “I don’t know.” My response was yes you do know, now sit with it and get your thoughts and feelings around that time period.

Sure enough, he said to me, “I felt like I might get judged by her.”  I exclaimed, “Perfect!” “What else?” I asked him to reflect on if he felt: too young, too short, too skinny, hair too short, not good enough etc.

He answered, “Yes, a lot of those things.”

I let him know that the ego/mind is in charge of keeping us safe. It is the part of us that tells us that someone else is judging us and what they are ‘probably’ saying and that we need to get out of there FAST! My son wanted to stay but the ego/mind was screaming, “Red alert! Judging! Get out of here and fast!” But he stayed and got fatigued because his energy drained out of his emotional body. Too ‘scary’ to stay, to painful to be judged were probably the thoughts that were coming to him (consciously and subconsciously).

I reminded him how ‘tricky’ the ego can be and that so much of what it whispers to us is not true. It’s our job to disagree with the ego mind and only put in statements that are positive and empowering and not buy into the limiting beliefs such as what happened to him.

At 42 years old, I, like all of us deal with the ego mind. I loved this example of how it sneaks up on us and can create fatigue. Empower yourself with your thoughts and watch your energy amplify in minutes.

Here’s how to do it:

Imagine a round ball of light (like a disco ball)  about 2 feet above your head.

Take a deep breath in and imagine from the disco ball, light coming down through the ball in through the crown of the head and into the body. Imagine the light being any color that comes to mind OR a golden or white light. This light rests first in the heart then after filling up the heart center and lung area, it moves down with every inhalation, filling up the solar plexus (3rd chakra area -above the naval), then the 2nd chakra, (below the belly button)  and eventually the light pulls into the ground roots us on the earth. See the roots shooting from the bottom of your feet into the earth.

Next, imagine the light coming down through your crown and resting  in the throat area and now  filling this area up. Next, pull the light into the  6th chakra/3^rd eye (between the brows) and lastly, imagine the light coming into the top of the head (crown) and then shooting back up to the heavens.

Continue to breath in the light and go back to the heart center, watching it in your minds eye, expanding out and eventually filling up the entire room. There is no time requirement to do this. 1 minute would be of benefit if you don’t do any other  intentional breathing, but doing this for 5 minutes minimally would be ideal.

This breathing exercise pulls an abundance of universal light into your body which promotes healing on all levels of your being (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual). It is also extremely relaxing and centering. You may see colors and that’s fine. You cannot get this wrong, only right, which leads to total relaxation….

Enjoy!

MEDITATION

Meditation is sustained and unbroken concentration that leads to a highly focused mind. Meditation moves us from using our subconscious mind to our conscious mind. Living in the conscious mind, trains us to live with more focus, proficiency and creativity and less disorganized, chaotic and scattered.  Meditation will actually help you to think in new ways and gain deeper perspective on experiences. You will find that you are not bothered by things that might have bothered or even upset you in the past.

Other benefits of meditation include:

• Slows the release of hormones in response to stress
• Stronger immune system
• Reduction of anxiety
• Lowers blood pressure
• Decreases muscle tension and headaches
• Increases serotonin production (low serotonin levels are linked to   depression, obesity, insomnia and even headaches)
• Substance abuse, alcoholism and cigarette smoking have all been helped by meditation
• Increases compassion for others
• Self Acceptance

The list goes on and on and these are just a few ways  that meditation can be life changing.

HOW TO MEDITATE?

Find a nice peaceful area, and sit quietly (don’t lie down), set your timer (by setting a timer you are not constantly interrupting your practice by opening your eyes and checking your clock) and just clear your mind. As thoughts come in, imagine an ocean wave rolling in and pulling them away, gently, slowly then return to silence. Another visual is to see the words falling off a cliff then the cliff is empty. Any visual will work, have fun with it. Remember, meditation is a practice and even people that have done meditation for years for hours per day still call it a practice. The human mind must be trained NOT to have thoughts and it takes practice! So be easy on yourself.

Meditation seems difficult to some people, I often will hear, “I have tried but I can’t!” YES YOU CAN! Meditation is the simple act of quieting your mind. For many people having a focus, like a mantra helps them with mediation. Pick a mantra like “peace” or “OM” or any word that you are drawn to and simply state it over and over again, slowly. You can even sing it out loud or to yourself. The point is to concentrate fully on that word and that word only. When other thoughts drift in, repeat your word/mantra.

You can meditate while walking, riding a bike or even driving! It’s simply clearing your mind and thinking of nothing! Try driving home from work without your cell phone to your ear or the radio on and repeat your mantra out loud for 10 minutes, it’s so incredibly powerful. The next time you go for a walk be present moment with what you are noticing, do NOT bring your iPod or your cell phone, remain present moment and focused on what’s around you!

HOW LONG TO MEDITATE?

Meditation is not something that you have to do 60 minutes a day to begin with. When you first begin a meditation practice, begin with 2 or 5 minutes per day. Stick with that for a week until you feel you are ready to extend your time. Continue extending your time to 15-20 minutes per day and if you can maintain this amount of time-great! If you can only commit to 10 minutes per day this is great too. Spending even a few moments a day of being mindful is far better than not spending any time. It would be nice to have a goal of 20 minutes per day at some point; this may take some time to accomplish and it’s OK.

Be easy on yourself and celebrate even your smallest accomplishments, even your 2 minute victory. You may feel like 2 minutes is nothing but I guarantee you, you are benefiting your brain in more ways than you could ever imagine.

I then realized that it had been 2 months since my last blog post, 6 weeks since my last true meditation and a week since my last deep breathing session. And what do you know…I feel out of balance! I asked myself how did I get here and realized how tricky the ego/mind can be. I remember so many times hearing myself say, “Oh, I need to write about THAT,” and “Wow, I really need to meditate or do my breathing.” And what I would inevidably hear every time was…”Later…”

When the ego takes over (or when we allow it to take charge) it feels that we need to “do” more and more to feel good and feel calm. The problem is that it’s the exact opposite! We need to stop what we are doing and meditate for 5 minutes or do some deep breathing or just STOP the treadmill we are on and just be for a few moments. It’s in these moments of “nothingness” that we find peace and regain balance. When we don’t stop, we fall out of balance. The ego/mind has it backwards it tells us to do more, go, go go, don’t stop!

It’s amazing to me how quickly we can fall out of balance when we don’t take time for ourselves. One of my favorite things to do is to write and it would wind up last on my list!

I have learned a lot about balance in the last 2 months and now feel grateful for the experience as I can write about it. We all have our things that will pull us out of balance if we let them. Meditatation/breathwork/quiet time is like hitting reset on our computers, clearing the slate. It lets the ego/mind release the grip it has on us and our to do list. It allows for us to hear our own God given guidance, our intuition to guide us to what we do next and what we cross off our list next.

This piece is partly a review of Eva Hoffman’s book Time. But Father Martin Boland frames this with his own reflections:

We can become so focused on busyness and speed that we begin to lose a proper sense of ourselves. Individuals can feel that their lives are “spinning out of control” or worse, are about to “break down”. The common response to the question, “How are you?”, has become “I’m busy.” We define ourselves in terms of frenetic activity. At the same time, other aspects and dimensions of our life (family, friendship, the social and the spiritual) are eroded by the constant pressures on our time. “We are money rich, but time poor.”

We MUST stop for ourselves and reset. It will create more time, but more importantly peace and bring us back to balance.

I feel I was born to do the work that I do as a holistic counselor and will never give that up but as we moved through the last year, it was clear that some extra money would be really helpful.

As they say, ‘be careful what you ask for because you just might get it’ is absolutely true. Not only did I add  more counseling clients per week but a new (side) business presented itself that excited me as it has to do with vacations/travel.

One of the things I study and teach is the Law of Attraction, what you think about comes about, and man did it. This (side) business is booming and my counseling client base has increased again. I also more than ever feel  a book on transformation is going to be coming through me this summer.  So for the last 2 months I have plunged myself into my work. Unfortunately my blog postings and other writings got pushed aside-“to get to later.”

I have missed my blog writings and have pages of notes on topics and experiences that happened over the last 2 months that I wrote down for this blog.

My life fell out of balance for 2 months but I am back! What a great learning experience for myself and teaching tool as well. I am grateful for this experience but apologetic to all of you that have graciously subscribed to this blog.

I am back and writing again, my life is back in balance (thank goodness). Look for weekly postings. They are on there way!

Thanks and blessings to all of you.

PS. If there is a topic of interest that you would like to read more about please let me know. I love your emails and suggestions!

Arnica is a flowering plant native to the mountains in Europe and Siberia and is now cultivated in North America.

The Europeans and Native Americans have used Arnica for medicinal purposes since the 1500’s. The popularity of Arnica in the US continues to grow and is widely used by athletes.

Arnica Montana is used to soothe sore muscles, bruises, heal wounds, sprains, and other conditions caused by overexertion and trauma. Arnica also reduces inflammation and is used with rheumatic pain, swelling due to fractures and even inflammation from insect bites.

The other day, my son was out playing roller hockey in the street and fell on his elbow. He came in and I could already see the swelling beginning. The first thing I reached for was Arnica Montana.

If you are having any type of surgery, take Arnica before and after surgery to help with inflammation.

The uses for Arnica are endless, from a bug bite to a major surgery.

Arnica is sold in stores that sell herbs and natural/alternative remedies. The Vitamin Shoppe and Whole Foods are two examples of stores that have Arnica however it is becoming so widely used it would not surprise me to see it in any grocery store and maybe even Target as an ointment. If you can’t find it locally, there are thousands of sites online that sell Arnica.

— Abraham

Excerpted from the book “Money and the Law of Attraction: Learning to Attract Health, Wealth and Happiness” ]]> http://solutionsbeyondthemainstream.com/creating-with-thought-versus-action/feed/ 0 http://solutionsbeyondthemainstream.com/segment-intending/ http://solutionsbeyondthemainstream.com/segment-intending/#comments Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:00:11 +0000 Michelle http://solutionsbeyondthemainstream.com/?p=307 Today it seemed like I had a list of things to do with very little time. I reviewed what I needed to get done and felt some stress come over me. Then I caught myself and remembered that because of the Law of Attraction (like thoughts and actions attracts like thoughts and actions), if I stay in my stressed out place, more and more stress will come. However, the empowered me knew, if I create wisely, everything will get done in a timely manner stress free!

So how do we do this when our list is a mile long with very little time? Segment Intending.

Segment Intending is an intentional, focused creation in segments. Intention can be broken down throughout the day or simply for one activity. The key is that we spend focused time on how we would like the outcome to be, despite what others may say or our past experiences. For example, if we hear that the wait staff at a new restaurant that we want to try is rude, do we want to go to the restaurant expecting to have rude service OR do we create and intend for a new experience, a happy, fun wait staff and a great meal.

Using my day as an example-I had to exchange an item at the pet store, get a week’s worth of groceries and find 3 dressy outfits for a trip I am taking this week. I had 3 hours to do all of it. (Yes, the most stressful thing was finding the outfits in such a short amount of time).

So before I left my house I thought for about 2 minutes about what I had to do and then planned out my route and visualized the ease in my 3 tasks. I saw in my mind the exchange at the pet store.  There was no one in line and a clerk would be waiting to help me when I walked in. The exchange would be easy and quick (even though I did not have a receipt). I would be in and out in less than 5 minutes.

Next I visualized my grocery shopping experience. I would walk in, focused, no distractions and would be in and out of there in 30 minutes with a week’s worth of groceries and some extras for when I am away (this would normally take me at least 60-90 minutes).

Lastly, I visualized my trip to the clothing store to find my 3 outfits for the important events that I will be attending this week while away. I will walk in and it will be as if the perfect dresses will be on the end rack, waiting for me to see them. If a dress is hidden, I will walk right up to the correct rack and pull it right out. It will be an incredibly easy and fun experience.

The outcome? The pet store was EXACTLY as I had intended, the grocery store was never quicker and I walked into one store and found 3 dresses right away and then one more store to find one more dress. I ended up buying 4 dresses because I could not decide on which one I liked more. It was the most efficient shopping experience I have ever had when buying specific outfits, and I made it home with time to spare!

Before we start each day, begin by  creating the type of experiences we would like to have instead of living by default and allowing our day to just happen. Plan not only with a list but take 2 minutes to visualize and intend how easy and beautiful all experiences will be in our life each day.

An allergic reaction happens when the body interprets a substance as a “foreign enemy” and goes into attack mode. If the immune system is not strong enough to disable the antigens in a substance (dust, mold, pollen) then the immune system has an overaggressive response which looks like runny nose, watery eyes, fatigue, etc.

To key to allergy relief is a strong, healthy immune system.

These are my favorite supplements that boost immune system function:

1. Vitamin C-3000 mg/day taken throughout the day. Excellent for reducing histamine levels in the blood. Also Vitamin C strengthens and detoxifies the immune system. (I love Nature’s Plus Vitamin C-they are chewable, taste great and kids love them too!)

2. Grape Seed Extract-100mg/1-3 X per day. This is a natural antihistamine. Also, its flavonoids inhibit allergic reactions that can cause eczema.

3. Quercetin-Builds mast cell membrane strength. These membranes are carriers of histamine. Quercetin keeps the membrane walls strong to prevent ruptures that leak histamine freely into the body, thereby causing allergic responses.

4. Bromelain-1000mg/day. Bromelain is an enzyme that comes from the juice and stem of the pineapple. It is an excellent anti-inflammatory that strengthens the immune system and clears mucous from the respiratory system. (Can also be used post surgery or anytime an anti-inflammatory agent is needed-has similar effects to ibuprofen).

5. MSM (Methylsulfonylmethane)-1000mg/1-3X per day. MSM contains sulfur which is an important nutrient for healthy body functions. MSM keeps the immune system strong and supports the respiratory system. MSM also improves allergies, skin problems, asthma and headaches.

There are many homeopathic remedies on the market that also can be taken with or without supplements. My favorite brand is bioAllers. It’s a liquid homeopathic. They have specific remedies for Tree, Grass, Pollen, Hayfever or a combination Pollen/Hayfever. Homeopathic remedies are great for children that can’t swallow pills. I use this one for my son in addition to the supplements.

It is not necessary but could benefit greatly to begin taking the supplements and homeopathic remedies before the symptoms appear. This will build the immune system gradually and the body will be ready when the pollen hits. However, if pollen has begun in your area and allergies are upon you, no better time than now to build immune strength.

Lastly, we all can agree that stress plays a role in immune health. Relaxation techniques, meditation and any enjoyable activity will help with immune strength. Relax, take supplements and enjoy an allergy free season!

During this time of “no resistance” the things we have been trying to create and manifest in our lives have a way in. Nothing is stopping them from manifesting when the “resistant conscious mind thinking” has ceased.

To take your creations to the next level try spending the last few minutes before falling asleep in a “creation mode.”

Close your eyes and imagine anything that you would like to bring into your life. A new car, new home, relationship, job, vacation, anything! Spend time before drifting off to sleep imagining you have already attained it. Imagine driving around town in the new car, parking it in the garage. Imagine walking on the beach in the new bathing suit with your new thinner, toned body and having people compliment you on how great you look. Our brains cannot tell if it’s really happened yet or in our imagination.

The key to manifesting whether it be day or night, is to remove resistance to what we desire. In dream state, the resistance is removed because the conscious mind is shut off. So if we sleep for 8 hours, that’s 8 hours of manifesting we are doing with no resistance! When we think about how much time throughout the day we spend time “consciously creating,” (very little to none) an exercise like this could certainly have profound effects on your life. Have fun with it and watch before your eyes, your creations begin to manifest all around.