What does it mean to Futurize Yourself? Why is it important in a fast-changing world? Find out the answers in the interview I gave Sascha Siegmund on his “I Am Your Coach” online TV channel.
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Tag: Body
The World is a reflection of You
Article published in Together Magazine 51, September 2014 p. 29-30
Article written by Tom Meyers
“If only I had…”. “If only I was…” Stop right there and reflect on the following phrase ‘The world is a chewing gum: it takes the shape of your teeth’ coined by Professor Stefano D’Anna author of the personal development book ‘The School for Gods’.
The essence of this quote is that you are the creator of your environment, that your environment is the sole creation of your being, your thoughts, mind and body.
When you are constantly living outside of yourself, when you’re never satisfied with what you have, you’ll never find true happiness or peace within.
You are the only one that can change when you are not happy with what you have with whom or what you’re surrounded with, by creating the change within. To emphasise this with a famous quote that is attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: ‘be the change that you want to see in the world’.
Although it is contested that Gandhi really said this the deeper meaning of the message I know from personal and professional experience it to be true.
To illustrate this imagine you are a person weighing 70 kilo’s that feels depressed, how do you feel and how does the world look like? Now you are that same person 70 kilo’s but happy, how do you feel and how does the world look like now?
Same person with a different state of body and mind, experiences the world very differently. I invite you to take some time and reflect on this and come up with a few examples from your own life when you felt happy or sad and how you looked at the world in the different dynamics.
The world is because you are, taking control of who you are and appreciating what you have are key to living the life you want to live. Become present, mindful and reclaim your responsibility for your health and wellbeing, thoughts and actions and the world around you will shape itself like a mirror image. So it is as within, so without. Your outside world is really the exact reflection of your inner world.
The time is now to stop and return to ease by not wanting more or being different then you are. It’s time for integrity to return, to look again within and bring out the dream you want to see in the world by nurturing that dream within and in the present.
For the days when it all seems impossible, when a veil of clouds are hindering the light. Take time-out, focus on your breathing for a few minutes and add a mantra – which is a phrase you repeat consciously out loud or internally – from the Hawaiian practice of Ho’oponopono. This mantra is very simple and helps to dissipate created gloominess or powerlessness through reconciliation and forgiveness to yourself.
Exercise
Start focusing on your breath and slow it down to a cycle of 6 breaths a minute, then add the mantra ‘I’m sorry, Please forgive me, thank you, I love you’. Feel the words spoken to yourself and repeat until you feel tensions dissolve and ease return.
‘The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realise that you control your own destiny.’ Albert Ellis, psychologist
Tom
For more health and wellness tips, tune in to the feature Health Matters on www.radiox.eu or visit www.tommeyers.be
Rewiring the Brain
The automation of new health promoting behavior so you can THRIVE
“True development is about transforming the operating system itself, not just increasing your fund of knowledge or your behavioral repertoire.”
R. Kegan & L. Lahey – Psychologists Harvard
- I’ve been practicing but not really enough.
- I like to practice more but somehow I don’t seem to get around to it.
- The first week I did it every day and then somehow I forgot.
- I had such a busy week I just didn’t have time…
Do you recognize this behavior, these excuses? The most difficult part for most people whom I ask if they have been practicing their breathing exercises is that they start with determination but loose it after a few days or a week.
Even if it is the easiest thing in the world to do, to spent 9 minutes breathing consciously, it’s a challenge for most. 9 minutes is nothing in 24h, we probably stand on a daily basis longer in front of red traffic lights. Still those 3 x 3 minutes after a week are already long dismissed, forgotten,… and with it, the effort already invested wasted.
Is there a way to have more self-control? YES!
The first factor for increased self-control is to realize that discipline and determination are rarely sufficient to make enduring change in contrast with what you might think. Just relying on discipline and determination can actually have the opposite effect to what you want as outcome. Just like a muscle that gets tired and stops functioning when put under continuous strain, self-control depletes progressively and falters when you don’t back it up with the needed energy to sustain it.
Second factor is that you are a creature of habit. 95% of your behavior occurs unconsciously and is processed in the primitive parts of your brain (reptilian brain). These processes are learned or are part of your evolutionary heritage. For example, to move towards pleasure and away from pain is one of those primal drives you’ve inherited from your more primitive ancestors. This biological heritage hasn’t really changed over the last 150,000 years. Look at it this way, your biology reacts to today’s life events which involves technological advancement just as it did in the time when humans were living as nomads and when were chased by a lion. So while our software has been evolving in step with the evolution of our culture, the operating system hasn’t nor has the (body) vehicle for that matter. That sets you up with behavioral responses that were once useful but which are now a nuisance.
“We have to be mistrustful of our brains”
David Kessler – FDA Commissioner.
Third factor is that your primitive instinct seeks immediate gratification which makes you impatient when it comes to long-term goals or with activities that only bring minute changes at a time. For example, changing the operating system, which means rewiring the brain can be a very slow process but so is training to be able to run a marathon. I’m sure like me you can visualize running a marathon – and even win it – in an instant in your minds eye but that doesn’t mean your body is up to it in the same amount of time you needed to envisage it.
The next important insight to know is that your cognitive brain situated in the prefrontal cortex is most of the time – especially when stressed – subservient to your primitive reptilian brain and as seen in factor 2 most of our behavior is directed by the latter. You run – so to speak – on old automatic behavioral patterns.
I hope you start to see that you are faced with rather a few challenges when it comes to self-control. However now that you are conscious of the challenges you can start by putting together an efficient and effective plan of action to update the operating system, by rewiring your brain.
REWIRING THE BRAIN SO YOU CAN THRIVE
Positive conditioning or in other words the automation of new health promoting behavior
– Knowledge is power: Understand why you do the exercise and why it helps you
– Set a long-term goal and divide it into intermediate goals
– Create a training schedule or ritual: Describe and plan precisely when you are going to practice and for how long and set that time aside and commit to it. You can use smart phone apps to help you with this.
– Plan ahead. When you know stress full events are coming up like a meeting with the boss take time to exercise before and after
– Expect resistance: What do you think will undermine your commitment? Why, why, why…
– Involve others: Talk to a friend, partner, colleague have them join you or at least encourage you every day.
– Enjoy the process and be inventive
Remember this…
Think back of that first day behind the steering wheel learning to drive or that first note you played on that flute, guitar or piano. Was that easy or a struggle to think about all the different handling’s you had to do simultaneously. However over time and with lots of practice and repetition it became second nature. Isn’t it amazing to play music or isn’t it absolutely a gift that you can drive a car? Now think of the benefits being healthy will bring into your life I think that is worth practicing for.
Be good to you, always.
Tom
Be Excellent at Anything by Tony Schwarz this book was recommended to me by Rob Bigge from the Greenhouse Group with whom I’ll be working together in the future for bringing you a cycle of workshops all on the theme ‘Understanding and Managing stress’
Your body needs you
The effect(s) of stress (muscular tension, digestive problems, low immunity, depression,…) is the result of the body’s exposure to the stress response (fight, flight, freeze) which in term is triggered following the brains interpretation of a stressor(s) (trauma, worrying, work overload,…).
The effect(s) of stress is in correlation to i.a. the length of exposure, one’s personal coping mechanism and the state of stress at the moment.
The stress response is a series of involuntary neuro-hormonal (adrenaline, cortisol, vagal tone,…) changes that have an impact on the heart, bronchi, vascular system, organs, muscles, immunity system, cognition and behaviour to help us to survive.
When the stressor has ceased the body needs time to reset itself to its allostatic balance – a state where it can react according to the need. The recovery – unlike what we might think – is a long, slow process as it is part of our biology adapted to what life was like thousands of years ago and which hasn’t gone to any major changes since Pleistocene times.
“The rate of cultural change since the evolution of the Homo Sapiens is astonishing, but in the face of that rate of change, there has been no sufficient time for many new and successful genetic adaptations to occur.”
“Every day we play out behaviours that have been part of the human experience for a very long time. Yet these behaviours are played out in an arena that is far from removed from that in which they evolved…. creating conflict between our evolved psychological predispositions and the dictates of modern culture.”
When culture and biology collide by E.O. Smith
“Reaset: The return of Ease” is a self-healing modality that facilitates and acts as a catalyst (speeds-up) the recovery of the neuro-hormonal system to an allostatic balance. By practicing this on a regular basis you’re helping your biology to reset itself more efficiently and thus thus reduce the effects of stress.
“Reaset Body-Coaching” as a therapy goes one step further, it offers a helping hand to the neuro-hormonal, musculo-skeletal, organ and biofield systems to return to ease (allostatic balance). Reaset Body-Coaching also offers information how you can further help yourself.
Author: Tom Meyers
Can some of our current health problems be due to an impass between body and mind?
Life goes faster and faster and our mind seems initially very capable of dealing with this speed of change. However at the same time we see an increasing number of people who are ill with 70% of all illnesses related to stress! The body it seems is not coping so well. How come?
Hopefully the words below will give you food for thought on this matter.
Beyond health and healing: part 2
The last 40 years has seen a tremendous change in the speed with which we need to adapt ourselves. From black and white TV’s with 1 or 2 channels to flatscreens with hunderds. From a turn the disc to dial phone to mobile phones with the capacity to ring anywhere in the world and access to infinite data. Letters that took a week or more to arrive now arrives the next day or with email in the next second. To name but a few changes in a lifetime or at least my lifetime so far.
Through this ‘change of speed’ – action – we’re faced with an equal increasing response – reaction. Imagine not responding within a matter of hours to an email with a question or a message left on your voicemail?
We are continuously being challenged an stimulated to react. One chalenge isn’t over yet or the next one is already there and then next and the next… it’s action, action, action,… We’re always on the ball, in tension.
What about time to ease?
In 1967 psychiatrists Holmes and Rahe examined 5000 patient records to determine wheter stress might cause illness and found a significant correlation between life changes and their illness. From these results they published the Holmes and Rahe stress scale
Those who score 300+ points within a year are at risk of illness. An example of how you can accumulate 300 points:
50 Marriage
40 Pregnancy
39 Gain anew family member
26 Spouce starts or stops work
20 Change in residence
18 Change in social activities
13 Vacation
12 Christmas
36 Change to different line of work
28 Outstanding personal achievement
37 Death of a close friend
As you can see in the above example of events this is only a fraction of what one person – in our western society – can go through during one year. For some this happens within 3 to 4 months. Also note that some of these changes can be seen as positive: Marriage, pregnancy, outstanidng personal achievement…
Would you associate the above when experienced over a period of one year with becoming ill?
If you think about these changes don’t you feel that you can handle them? Some events are not easy but can you mindfully deal with them?
And still, this fraction of what we’re actually experiencing leads to an increaded risk of illness!
I’ve been working with people’s health for more then 10 years and have had many a person come to see me suffering from back or neck pain, feeling depressed, having a lack of energy and/or suffer from general malaise who three to four months prior had gone through a major change in their lives. These were mostly people that moved to Brussels with their family to take up a new post at the European Comission, Parlement or NATO.
Discovering the Holmes and Rahe’s scale gave me great insight to understanding the correlation of major change and the physical pain that became intollerable 3 months later (onset was probably earlier but we mostly react it will pass). Their life had been turned upside down in a matter of months.
Take the Rahe and Holmes scale a bit further and instead of change see these events as stimuli or stressors in other words stress response provoking elements (fight and flight response). The scale was made in 1967 and as I stated at the start of this chapter there has been a tremendous amount of change over the last 40 years and an increase in speed with which we need to react.
This change is for most people no problem on a mind level as our mind seems to be very capable of adapting itslef to new situations and challenges.
The body however that seems to be another story.
If the mind can be seen as our software and the body the hardware our software has greatly expanded over the last decades. The human software has changed as a consequence of the demands we’ve put on it but what about the hardware, the body with all its components?Have we adapted the hardware to suit the software?
In IT the faster the software the lighter the hardware became. Just look at he phone 40 years ago compared to the mobile phones of today.
Maybe it is presumptuous of me to compare the above comparison with us humans but I’ll do it anyway: The smarter we became the heavier we’ve become.
We actualy have gone the opposite way.
Time to look at the hardware a bit more to shed a light on my observations.
What I think of when adapting the hardware is the speed with which the body processes information and change. We are bombarded with information, various stimuli and before we even have the chance to integrate those stimuli the next set is already upon us. Stress is not followed anymore with ease, just more stress. Ease is something that doesn’t seem to be part of normal life anymore.
Stress?
Our organism has an ancient survival mechanism called the fight and fight (stress) response which realeases amongst other things adrenaline and cortisol. The fight and fight response is there for our survival and must follow a time of ease to reset itself. Just like a muscle if a muscle isn’t relaxed after a time of strain what do you think is going to happen?
The properties of the fight and flight response are such that when activated (sympathetic) it must be followed by deactivation (parasymapthetic). Stress must follow ease.
If triggered chronically the stress response has a adverse affect on our health: Muscles stay tensed, immunity is lowered, certain parts of our body get decreaed blood flow through vasoconstriction (i.e. stomach) which leads to problems etc. Our internal balance is impeded.
Do you start to see the relationship between change, the increase of stimuli and the effect on our health?
I can’t count the amount of people that said but I’m not stressed although they have all the physical signs of being in a stress mode. Yes, the mind might be totally ok with the demands we put on it, it is by nature capable of processing information much quicker. The body however deals with change in a very different matter and the body can over time have an adverse effect on the mind: Chronic stress can make you mindless.
Now to come back to presumtuous and methaphorical statement comparing our increased mental capacity with weight.
(And I’m not saying that overweight people can’t be smart… read on as that is not what I’m implying here)
Have you ever seen a though?
Can you see your body?
If you look at this from a vibrational perspective the mind with its thoughs you can’t see hence has a high vibration (light) and the body which you can has a low vibration (heavy).
Have you ever had a day when you felt down, depressed? How did your body feel then? Now imagine the day that you were extremely happy or better in love. How did your body feel then?
When I’m down I feel heavy and slow and when I’m happy I feel light and vibrant. You too?
How much are you able to handle in a happy state compared to when you’re in a down state?
Now here is the crunch.
Have you ever seen a happy vibrant person that is stressed?
Happy people are less susceptible for stress. Why is that?
(I’m trying to comprehend what I’m observing in others and myself here.)
Back to an example from my practice: Person comes in with severe back ache, looks a bit off-color, feels down and explain what’s the matter: I’ve been having a little bit of pain for the last few days but this morning I woke up and couldn’t move anymore. Then I go to work. What I notice is that the body is dense, tense, compressed, I lift bot legs at the ankles for a test, they feel heavy and have lost their feel of flow. After the treamtment I feel that the body is less dense, more rleaxed, lighter and free. Lifting the legs is easier and if I pull slightly I feel they have regained their elasticity, springiness. Person stands up again and says wow I feel more grounded, I can move better, it feels I’ve just left a few kilo’s behind and what often happens is that the non physical problems they were experiencing seem to have disolved or have gotten less important, their mood is better etc. Sometimes they even reflect on a situation: Why was that a problem?
I would say they went from a low vibration to a higher vibration they are lighter and even look more radiant. Put them on the balance scales and what will you see as a difference in weight?
Depression Joy
<——————————————————————————->
Heavy Light
I’ve never tried this but I’m sure there is no difference. A person of 70 kg will walk out a person of 70 kg but still their experience of those 70 kg will be very different.
I’m sure we all felt this: In the morning we wake up 70 kg and moody and everything is a burden and heavy. Then during the day something magical happens by the evening we are happy, content, fulfilled and weight 70kg but feel lighter… our vibrational state has changed which gives us a total different experience of ourselves and when we are in the latter state we can handle the world better.
This reminds me of the states of water. When water has a low vibration it’s ice = dense state. When it has a high vibration its vapour and inbetween you have the liquid state. Our bodies are 70% water…
The impass
Our mind due to its inherent higher vibrational state is able to deal with change easier and quicker then the body. The body with it’s lower vibrational state has reached it’s limits. The body is not coping with the increase in and the speed of change/demands we put on it.
If it is so is there a way to overcome the impass and create body – mind balance?
The problems mentioned above were:
- To much change / stimuli in too short a time.
- Reduce the amount of change
- Reduce stimuli
- When depressed are bodies struggle even more…
- Be happy
- Adapt your life so that you can live a more relaxed, joyful life. This can take some time. and sometimes some very difficult decisions have to be made. My own methamprophose took 10 years and is still going on. Don’t make overhaste decisions.
- Do you feel stuck? Then maybe you need to find out your purpose in life and crate a new future.
- If needed get professional help to help you create a new life goal.
- Body tension and overactive stress response
- Get regular body work that helps you to reduce tension and balances the stress response like Osteopathic Body-Coaching does. But there are other approaches…
- Tickle your Amygdala
- Practice at least 3 times a day for 3 minutes focused breathing with positive feeling.
Start interacting with your inate wisdom. Maybe you need to change your died and eat more life food (fresh vegetables or sprouted seeds. Maybe you observe that you’re always critical of yourself and others which requires a change of mindset. Maybe you just need to smile a bit more,…
Maybe you just need to love yourself more…
Be creative and enjoy the process.
What is osteopathy?
Osteopathy is a manual facilitated health care approach based on the principle(s) that the body is a dynamic unit in which all parts are interrelated and interdependent and which possesses a self regulatory and self healing mechanism.
Manual
An osteopath uses his fine-tuned sense of touch to feel disturbances in motion within the body-matrix. Health is when the body’s motions (skeletal, muscular, facial, organic,…) are in balance.
Hence the word ‘BioMotions’ (name of my website) or life in motion.
Facilitated
The osteopath is there to aid the perturbed self regulatory and self healing mechanism and relieves through the application of different manual techniques the disturbances of motion. The aim is to enhances vitality and overall functioning of the patient.
Osteopathic Manual Technique (OMT) includes amongst others:
- Soft-Tissue Techniques
- Spinal corrections
- Fascia Therapy
- Muscle Energy Technique
- Lymphatic Technique
- Abdominal Technique
Dynamic unit
The current conventional medicine model is based on the basis that body and mind are split (dualism). In osteopathy body and mind are part of an interrelated and interdependent whole.
Self regulatory and self healing mechanism
The human body is always working to maintain a state of balanced function. For example, blood pressure, blood sugar and the heart rate are actively kept within a normal range. When there is a laceration or tear in the tissues, a physician can assist by cleaning the wound and bringing the edges together, but healing occurs by the action of inherent forces and processes within the body. 1
Dr. A.T. Still (The father of osteopathy) stated, “All the remedies necessary to health exist in the human body.” He understood that within the tissues, there is an inherent wisdom, a wise all-knowing restorative force, an intelligence within every cell that keeps the body well. When a state of discord arises, this healing force acts to restore functional balance and harmony. Sometimes the body’s self-healing forces can be impaired or impeded by disease or structural imbalance. The osteopathic physician is trained to augment these intrinsic mechanisms to help the body to better and more quickly heal itself. 1
