Paul Palmer, proud to be a pisces man

Very often many novice businessmen being provoked by various websites that promises to teach you how to become an affiliate marketer and some websites even sell their e- book, that claims to tell you all you need to know regarding how to start making money instantly aiming to make you enjoy all the facilities that a millionaire enjoys. But maximum time it has been found that some of these thirsty people run on the path where they encounters mirage. The outcome for different individual is different. Some stops advancing further after getting completely drained while others mustering up courage gets up with new confidence and go for reliable and better chance.

It is true that you can make a lot of money with affiliate marketing and it is also equally true that there are also many e-books that aim to make a successful marketer. But at the same time it is really heart breaking and mentally roller coaster ride when these websites fail to fulfill their promise. Actually the facts is that an apprentice with an urge to make money runs head over heels to become rich instantly and locks there logic and employ their emotion which is a big mistake in this field. They get beguiled with the promises made by these websites and they fails to differentiate the original form the fake. If you are extremely fortunate then you would start earning money within a few minutes otherwise it can several days if not weeks, before you make your first sale.

Affiliate marketing can make you rich, but it probably will not do so as quickly as it is being displayed by many websites just catch those peoples who displays their desperation to earn more. Yes, it is true that there are few affiliate marketers earning huge revenue but that too after working on promoting their brand for several years. Remember the adage “Rome was not build in a single day”. It is also unlikely that you will make much money doing no work but it is also true that you might not earn anything while spending the time and money required to your websites running.

Affiliate marketing is all about advertising and you need to advertise your affiliate links and drive traffic to your website. Therefore your first and foremost requirement is building your own websites because advertising on Google without a website is likely to get you banned. This will take your time and effort and during this time you might not earn anything but once you have your own website and advertising campaigns set up in order you will start earning money while doing nothing.

bob123
http://www.articlesbase.com/finance-articles/affiliate-marketing-myths-251381.html

To all of us, we wish a wonder-filled 2007. May we all be there in Oneness at the Last Supper of the Night we are traveling together as The One, and enjoy the delights of its manifold tastes before Light breaks open and wide in the unfolding of the Morning of our REAL existence as the IS.

Greetings to all, and many blessings. The cusp of W-In-t(o) (h)er has infolded the Sun of our Existence in its freezing grip again, and during the long nights of our new winter, we need to pause and take account and hold of our inner strengths, weaknesses, and stores of reserves, in trying to bridge our Fall as Mankind to our possible Spring back into a blazing and radiating Summer Sun, revived and born again from our inner hearts.

I went yesterday into a deep meditation within the One Light, and received a message from the Oneness, which I will share with you below.

This year’s New Year’s celebrations were luring me as I watched them taking millions across the globe into a spirit of hope, wishes, and happiness spreading its magnificence in a contagion of smiling faces. For one day, no dark events, disasters, or lack of inner spirit darkened the magnificent faces of Humanity. I watched, partook in the smiling energy, and remembered.

I remembered when only 6 years ago on the Eve of the Millennium, all nations on the face of Earth, from the mightiest countries to the tiniest of islands, went into common and heart-felt celebrations of the great adventure of being part of the multi-faceted Kaleidoscope which we project as Man-kind when we feel the Great Spirit of Oneness which is at the very core of our beings.

As midnight January 1, 2000, spread its gentle presence across the world, broadcasts were following the magnificent celebrations offered by each and every nation as a gift to its brethrens in the adventure which Life is.

What a moment frozen into the eternity of The One this was! Veils of doubts, old programs and associated passions, had been brought down by Oneness, in order for us to experience in advance what our future IS to be when we all know ourselves as One and united within the flagship of joy of having reunited a divided family originating from the same Father and Mother as One.

And very shortly after that, darkness attacked again, when we least expected it. Surreptitiously at first; ensnaring us all into old beliefs of separateness. And then more violently so, causing us to lock ourselves again into a Dark Age’s mentality. We had started the Exodus from slavery of old oppressive beliefs and grasped Light, but had lost our understanding that all movement into a direction of Oneness causes an automatic counter-movement reacting to it, for such are the laws by which our inner and outer reflected Nature were created in the wheel of Life.

At first we were all stunned; shocked back into old reflexes. Nationalisms, old beliefs in the One Energy Source being different and opposing gods called by different names, and all the aspects which promote separateness and differentiation amongst us were the first instinctive refuge for so many. Armies were rumbling the trumpets of war everywhere. The earth was shaking again with their robot-like heavy steps. The darkness of fear was greeted with vengeful battle cries. And the explosion happened again.

At first, its resolution was touted as obvious. The many would conquer by the sheer force of multitudes and accumulated power that this illusion gives us the One’s lesser fortunate ones in number or capacity. All opposing sides were taking count of their quantity of accumulated consciousness. The many would conquer the One, was the battle cry!

The One, through so many ways again, was trying to first forewarn the many that they were erring again on the path of separation and belief in the conquest by the many of the lesser and of the Idea of One. Little credence was given to it. Mankind blindly again walked into an ever repeating trap. Because of the nature of its misconceptions, much of what was needed and was starting to be healed bled again, and the wounds became deeper. The rift between man and man was becoming ever increasingly, and in an exponential way, greater. And so was the gap between man and his Mother Nature.

Many at first saw the ploy and danger, but as more and more of man attacked its Self, many got tired of the pain of destroyed hopes and turned a blind eye to the pillaging and raping that the spoils of the conqueror were inflicting upon the natural world, and their human brethrens.

Peace, if it were to be achieved, would again come from the final exhaustion of the protagonists, until the next round. Or so it was perceived.

Whole generations were becoming at risk. This was unprecedented in human history. There was an inner revelation and undertaking that not only a tribe, country, culture, religion, or color were threatened but that future generations getting evermore closer to our own, would be at risk of not surviving or be decimated. The idea of the end of all of mankind became part of the gestalt conscious awareness of man, first expressed almost rejoicingly so by some distorted minds corrupted within the grips of false degenerations of old spiritual belief systems, and then within a much grimmer reality when wave after wave of scientists realized that we were really on the brink of annihilation or impending great disasters of a magnitude which defies existence. The force within mankind which for eons cherishes such events, was telling us “I told you so!’ “It has been already written.” “It is in a book.” “Holy Fate!” “Karma!” “You deserve it!“ “The future is already inscribed and static, not a game of probabilities which you can change!” “You have no individual power, no real input!” “Watch the horror show I have prepared for the sinners or the un-this and un-that!” “You and yours will be saved and elevated in this glorious fight, so why care?”

Man started believing that the future was only a reality show that he would watch on a screen, and not experience in his own flesh-and-blood. The Trickster had done well Its job, for so It is programmed to do. The dice were thrown. We were slowly sinking into un-consciousness. Our inner Light was extinguishing itself. Most chose the way of inner denial within their own created world, not realizing that All IS One and interconnected. Nothing can escape that One and Only Reality, as the “Nothing” of SepAraTedNess threw us into a false and powerful sense of separation. The reality was that when one Light was plunging into unconsciousness, it was affecting all the lights of humanity: for The One was sinking with it.

Many parts of Humanity were already suffering, and in great pain. Others were falling into non-being through numbing their senses of awareness. Chemically or naturally produced and pushed drugs and alcohol were helping the process of dimming the Inner Light of awareness.

Problems were piling up. The balance of Mankind and Nature was swaying dangerously close to a perceived precipice. So why not rejoice and enjoy the day, one day at a time, and try to forget what you cannot control or see?

The One was trying to speak to our inner heart, for that is where its Kingdom lies. Most were deaf to its Small Inner Voice.

The children of our future Dream were becoming aware that theirs was the generation which would most probably have to bear the brunt of the Madness of their parents. They were remaining much more aware than their heavily adulterated parents, as we were slowly killing their future. The pain was too great to bear for many, so that they instinctively sought refuge in the same immediate solution of immediate pleasures and gratification, sensing as instinctive parts of Mother Nature, the necessity to enjoy life when they still could. Our spiritual and political leaders were inept and uninspiring, mostly ignorant of Oneness and misguided. We were slowly losing faith in the belief of a possible future.

Night was slowly engulfing Creation, and night-mares were everywhere, either as potentials or already felt realities.

Have you ever heard the story? Do you really want to continue and experience its unfolding? Do you want to experience the end as a REAL end?

You have read books and volumes about it. You have watched TV shows and movies about all the possible ending destructive paths. You were already born into it and programmed, religiously so – as small innocent children – into its beliefs.

Do you want to experience your darkest nightmares? In your flesh, with the pain which your senses give you? Have you lost your senses? Have you gone mad?

Are we all going mad?

Has A-DAM as the One Higher Consciousness of ALL of mankind fallen into an inverted tree, as A-MAD-Man?

As you are all watching the lives of Hollywood stars as the little lights of your reality TV-like life, please stop and ponder if the real show of LIFE-as-we-know-it is unfolding its tentacles without you having a say in it, while you are stuck watching cartoon-like characters. For that is what is happening, and ONLY because YOU AGREED to become asleep at the wheel, or drunk on reality alteration stories, and are inviting a crash. You hold the ultimate power, which is to wake up to One and to Oneness Itself.

Are you going to fight the wars of the No-thing about nothing? How long are you going to watch the political and spiritual pawns of Nothing and their dramas about NO-Thing which only serve separation and may engulf us into the No-Thing, if we allow it, by not waking up and shaking it loose?

You are the only and real Stars of your show. Please look at yourselves. Care about yourselves, for you inner core Selves know themselves as One.

Do you remember the eve of the New Millennium? How long ago was it? Can’t we all bring that feeling amongst ourselves back and let go of all our inner demons, once and for all? Of course we can, and we will!

Starting right now.

You make the choice. That is your free-will. I know my decision, and frankly I also know yours, for we all originate from the same One Seed, and, deep in your self, you long for that moment of recognition of your Light, as you then start the inner great fire of Real Passion for Life and not Passion for Death, and express it as total Love – a Love which will burn all barriers and frontiers; a Love which we are definitely going to experience soon as One Creation as we all awake.

Enough of repeating His-Story! Time to start Our-Story, and enjoy it to its fullest and brightest potential.

Time to bring about our co-creative potential which is immense and infinite, and reboot the old programs from the Nothing fighting-and-dying-about-nothing. Eat from the Tree of Life and not from the Tree of Death. So say I, and in that act you shall not die anymore.

Unless you are so obsessed with the INTIMATE knowledge of the Tree of Good and Evil that you do not realize that this very obsession which you have with destroying and killing what YOU perceive as Evil is the very root which spreads Death and Destruction amongst your interconnected Selves.

You can do it. It is your right as part of One.

Don’t let your old beliefs blind you. Don’t let old programs assail you.

You are revisiting the Old Genesis of your Life backwards, back to its One-And-Only Source.

No-THING can exists outside of One, the rest is only reality TV which you make your reality as you watch its empty and dangerous show, throwing you into a sleep-like state.

The force of the Nothing fighting about nothing is only there because YOU give it force and attention. It is NOTHING, as long as you make it what it is as the ultimate illusion in the One Show of the One: Creation. It has no power and dies, as you pull away from its intoxicating drink. Time to sober up!

Please stop this tube of emptiness which is ruling your life, or, at the very least, start by changing the channel and watch loving shows in order to remember that you are that Love, you are that laughter, you are that Life, you are that Romance, and then finally shut the old stories off, and Create your OWN.

Happy Creation 2007!

Before I share the message I want to below, let me state that starting in the next 10 days and going on henceforth, for the ones who are really ready to challenge and absorb material which may allow them to de-program themselves once-and-for-All from old forms of thoughts proven again and again to be self-destructive, I will share some knowledge which is part of the start of my attempt to lighten up the load and baggage we carry, and make us at the very least question our beliefs about Truth. The Truth is that it is the questions which motivate us to change. The Answer to All is in the Question! Do not stop questioning for that is what will propel you to new vistas, new frontiers breaking infernal cycles of painful revisiting of His-story.

Nevertheless, you have free-will. Free-will to stay static, or to enter a dynamic of real change. Nevertheless, if you decide to stay static within your belief systems, I beg you for One’s sake to pause and truly state that you feel that the path you are within now will ensure your present and your probable future as a reality which you really want to EXPERIENCE, intimately so and with full awareness. And if it is so, then you would have made a Real Creative act in choosing that probable future and making it you reality.

This is why only individuals who want to be exposed to the material, which I will start to reveal, and make their own inner direct judgment about it and integrate it in their own Creative ways within their existence, as Conscious Beings, will be exposed to it. For the Real World is a world of Ideas. That is all the One Mind can Be. That is why only the ones who desire to question ideas will be given a link to the restricted (for now) area of our website, so they can climb back the Tree of their deep Inner awareness.

And it should be so, for you must understand that just by being exposed to an idea for even a moment will make you change and evolve as you give it emotions and energy. Remember New Year 2000 and what you felt then!

This is a message from the Oneness, received on December 31, 2006, which I want to share with you now.

This is a Holy year. In this year much of what mankind considers to be Reality will be decided. There has been a big gap between reality and its perception.

Much of what is happening below the feet of man, above his head, and within him, has gone unnoticed, to the real dismay of The One who has been trying to send warnings through many direct channels and through a multitude of events. Even though the One knows Himself to Be One, that notion is so far remote from His Creatures that the mere mentioning of it often brings great discomfort to them.

In the next period of Creation, a time limit needs to be set to the perception of non-interference by the Godliness in the affairs of mankind. When that moment is reached, the dice would have been thrown.

This is the beginning to the end of His-Story, and the beginning of Your-Story.

Much of what you believe in and have been taught as being real, has been but created by the Godliness in advance, in order for you to have a support in which you will be able to express your Creative potential.

Time, as we know it, is about to take on a different dimension which many of you shall experience soon.

Truth is where you will all be.

In this process of Creative endeavor, The Godliness shall be experiencing it with you as you, for you, so that you can all potentially reach the Beginning of Time.

Great responsibilities lie upon each of your shoulders, each and every one of you, and you need to become soon sentient and aware of what your real purpose is as a Creation, which is to Create and improve upon the original program that The Godliness has prepared for you as Himself to experience, and hopefully enjoy, as He travels within each and every one of you the path of His Creative processes in the infinite lattice of possibilities that he has Created in advance, so that He experiences His Being in the many.

The One is asking the many to slowly, patiently, pay attention to much of the guidance that He will tend to project from within their inner selves.

He wishes often that the unfolding of events be smoother. Nevertheless, He has allowed Himself to be restricted by His original plan and program as a challenge to Him, as the many facets operating within His gigantic Mind.

There is still a small window of opportunity to soften the blow of the awakening process, and it is The Godliness’s dream and wish that mankind shall invite within its heart the attention it needs now in order to show Oneness of purpose and existence to all and resist the temptation to slowly extinguish its inner Light as challenging events, which will call upon the inner resources of the many, will try to start happening to project Oneness within the One Heart of ALL.

Gerald O\\\’Donnell
http://www.articlesbase.com/self-help-articles/truth-new-year-2007-message-88186.html

Depression anxiety sleep disorder treatment usually involves a trip to a psychiatrist and a daily dose of sleeping pills and/or anti-anxiety medications. However, there are alternative means available to you to face this disorder without resorting much to medications. If you have the will power, patience and courage to fight depression, you can succeed using these alternative means.

Sleep disorder goes hand in hand with depression and anxiety.

It has been documented by psychiatrists that nearly all of those who are suffering from depression and anxiety have sleep disorder. The reason for this is said to be physiological in nature.

Whenever a person is depressed and anxious, his body is in what doctors call a “fight or flight” mode. This means that the body is full of epinephrine. Fight or flight response occurs naturally in a person whenever he faces a difficult situation that threatens his being. It is a natural or instinctive survival response of humans to adversities.

For instance, when there’s a fire, the body will produce epinephrine to be able to move quickly, be more alert, have heightened senses and save strength. So, if an anxious person is in a fight or flight mode, he would have difficulty sleeping. With less sleep, this also means that the hormonal imbalance will continue to disrupt the normal processes of the body.

With these, it means the best depression anxiety sleep disorder treatment is something that confronts anxiety. And thus, the alternative mode of treatment for this disorder shall focus on attacking anxiety.

1. Get vitamin E and B complex supplements.

Vitamin B complex is known to calm the nerves. This is best taken at night. But do you know that Vitamin E can also help you sleep at night? These two wonder vitamins are the best alternative to depression anxiety sleep disorder treatments and medications. They naturally help the body to relax and be ready to sleep.

2. Avoid sugar and caffeine.

Sugar and caffeine perk a person up, which is why pancakes and coffees are best taken during early mornings. However, since your anxiety has increased your levels of epinephrine, you don’t need anymore of those things that will perk you up. Avoid sugar and caffeine at all cost. As an alternative to coffee, try chamomile tea. This is caffeine free and soothes the nerves, too.

3. Learn how to meditate.

You don’t need to be a guru to learn how to meditate. Just attend a couple of yoga sessions that will teach you the basics on correct breathing and meditation techniques. Meditation will slow down your heart rate and will calm your mind. If you can, continue what you have started with yoga. It will do you good.

4. Get counseling.

Counseling is important for your speedy recovery. Even without medications you can hire the services of a therapist to help you manage your illness and give you a chance to voice out your feelings and emotions to help you deal with your anxiety and depression without fear.

A therapist can give you more recommendations as to what other alternative means of depression anxiety sleep disorder treatment is available to you. And if you are already into alternative treatment, you can ask your therapist if you are on the right track and share with him your progress.

5. Tire yourself with exercise.

Instead of spending your time thinking, tire yourself with exercise. Release that excess epinephrine through working out. Walk, run the treadmill, swim, jog — these are some of the many cardiovascular exercises that can help you release that excess energy. Do this at night, three hours before your scheduled sleeping time. This way, after a tiring exercise session, your body is ready to relax and sleep to recharge for the next day.

These are just a few of the many alternative depression anxiety sleep disorder treatments that you can choose from. If you find any of these alternative treatments to be sound and helpful for your condition, discuss with your therapist how you can incorporate them in your program towards being well.

Flor Serquina
http://www.articlesbase.com/medicine-articles/depression-anxiety-sleep-disorder-treatment-five-ways-of-dealing-with-the-condition-278485.html

February is the month of love. It even includes an entire day that is set aside simply for the purpose of making grand gestures of romance and love. Valentine’s Day has been around for centuries.

One story of the origin of Valentine’s Day dates back to the 3rd century AD. Father Valentine, a Roman priest, defied what he believed was an unjust law of his day that forbade marriage and secretly married young lovers. For this he was sentenced to death, was martyred two centuries later and became one of the most popular saints of France and Italy.

LOVE

This thing called love receives more and more notice in most every area of life. Spiritual traditions have long claimed love to be at the core of healing and happiness. Philosophers have written of three types of love called eros, agape and philia. Medical research has produced scientific findings that love improves our health – it changes us on a cellular level, enhances our immune and cardiovascular systems, and increases our endorphins. A recent Oprah show highlighted a group of middle aged women who attributed their vitality and success to doing what they love. And the Law of Attraction that is rapidly gaining attention identifies love as a high energy emotion that transforms not only the “lover” but those near and far. As well it has the greatest attraction power of any energy.

ROMANCE

Since this is February I want to talk about the love celebrated in February, love that is distinguished by the “Big R word” – Romance. As I write this I am reminded that I don’t hear or read very much anymore about romance, except for a week or two around Valentine’s Day. I think something is amiss. Who doesn’t, if you are truly honest with yourself, desire more romance in your life?

Think of it. Romance is romance because of an array of delicious qualities such as genuine curiosity, adoring attention, expression of deep affection and passionate emotional involvement. Pretty good so far, don’t you think? There’s more. Romance is filled with charm and excitement. There is play, intense pleasure, profound interest and adoration. In romance one’s best self naturally shines forth, as well as the ability to see the magnificence in another. As I expect you know, there is a great deal of energy in romance – energy of vitality, passion and aliveness. Now I ask you again, “Who wouldn’t want more of that?” If you’re counting, count me in.

HOW TO HAVE MORE

The next question becomes “how?” Before answering this question, I want to remind you that any “great” relationship requires several things, one of which is romance. Now let’s get back to the question at hand, “What does it take to have more romance in my relationships?” First, let’s go back to the wisdom of Saint Valentine. He followed his heart not the dictates of something he didn’t believe in. So follow the desires of your heart, rather than the commands of “shoulds.” Second, choose to “become the Cupid in your own life.” Cupid, the Roman winged god of love, who shot his arrows of desire into unsuspecting persons has long been a symbol for Valentine’s Day. As Cupid, you get to shoot your arrows wherever you want. What relationship in your life would you like infused with more romance?

There is the obvious area of intimate relationships, whether with a long term partner or spouse, someone you are dating, or maybe even someone you are interested in but haven’t yet let them know. Is there still romance in your marriage or long term relationship? If yes, be grateful for it every day and keep doing what you’re doing that keeps romance alive. If not, let this month of love be the month to reclaim and re-ignite the playful, passionate aliveness of romance with some gesture that lets your partner know that you “see” and adore them. You can even do this with someone you are dating or begin with someone you are interested in. And there is always the long-stemmed red rose, ever the symbol of love and romance. Whatever you do, do it authentically – put your playful, thoughtful, passionate heart in it!

What about your business or career? Might it be time to start romancing your work or your business? Spend some time here with your full attention, appreciation and curiosity. What is one passionate action that would create a spark in this area of your life? Do that by Valentine’s Day. What is the particular charm or uniqueness of your work or business, even if dormant right now? Highlight that in your planning and next steps.

There are many relationships in your life that could be transformed by a little romance besides those I already mentioned – even those with money and time for starters. They all have one common denominator – You. Maybe now is the time to start some “serious” romancing of yourself? How much adoring attention, genuine curiosity and profound interest do you have for you? When was the last time you took time to “see” who you really are and what’s most important to you, or consciously gifted yourself with pleasure? Please take out your calendar and highlight an evening or an afternoon during the week of Valentine’s Day that you will treat yourself to a romantic date with “you” to do, be or have whatever strikes your romantic fantasy. And then, make it a habit.

THE THREE M’S OF ROMANCE

Romance requires that you take time, slow down and pay attention. And if romance strikes your fancy, remember that what you give your attention to grows stronger in your life.

I want to leave you with the three “M’s” of Romance – magic, mystery & miracles. These have to be present for real romance to occur. While science continually strives to “know” and find answers to or reasons for everything in life, I invite you to also allow for magic, mystery & miracles which provide much of the spice in life and the romance in love. Make sure to invite these into the Dance of Romance!

Enjoy this month, and beyond, of romance. And remember, You are a natural! You are brilliant! You are magnificent! Simply by being you. Let your light shine!

If you’d like to speak with me about connecting with your passion and creating a life and business you love, call today for a 30 – minute complimentary consultation @ 617-524-6153.

Reggie Odom
http://www.articlesbase.com/motivational-articles/the-dance-of-romance-111089.html

The door was closed. He tried hard to get in but could not. The door just would not open. He started banging the door. Five minutes later the owner of the house opened the door and slapped him hard on his face. He fainted. He did not dare to push the door again. He never returned back… Ten years later he met the owner of the house on the street. The owner slapped him again…

We think we own our body and mind. But the reality is we are thrown out of our own house. Try getting in one great idea into your mind and see whether your mind accepts it. It would not. It would slap you in your face. Try suggesting something innovative,something disciplined and it would give you a sound trashing.. There is not a single cell or fibre in our body and mind which we own…..We are all sold out ….

We have no control over our fingers,hands,legs and mouth. We are in possession of our body and mind but we do not own them. We have failed to get into our own house and we talk about building new ones. We have never seen even a square feet of our brand new house and we flaunt about our possessions to the world… We are standing outside this house for ages slapped and trashed everyday and we talk about courage,confidence,security and what not….

Then we do something more stupid… We try to get into other people’s house and suddenly we find that the owner of that house is happy to welcome us. We get a thrill reading about other people’s lives appreciating some and criticising many. The newspapers,media, close friends and collegaues become the key through which we are able to enter into other people’s house. We are overjoyed that finally we are able to enter into a house. We look at other people’s house and dream about building our own one. In the night we go back to our own house. We sleep in cosy beds which are kept outside our real house. We want to get into our house but we fear the owner.. The first few minutes of the morning we dream about building a new house.The owner yells and we mellow down…

Wake up my dear friend. First get into your own house. It is a palace and it is built only for you. It has got all the richness you ever dreamt of. Your mind is not the owner of your house. You are knocking at the wrong door. If you think that the mind is the owner of your house you should be in complete control and possession of your house. Think about it. The mind has fooled you all along your life…. This is a fact not an opinion…

Your house has two doors. The one called the Mind will feed you all through your life but it will treat you like a servant and you will have to stand outside your own house.. It will provide you all the luxuries of life but it will not allow you to enter into your house. It fools you everyday by saying that tomorrow it will let you in but the next day it ditches you. You rebel and it rips you apart. It has fooled you for ages and keeps doing so… You are its victim, its easy prey…

Said my spiritual master to me ” Vish, there is one more door which will allow you to enter into your house. You might have to wait for a month or perhaps a year but it will open for sure. This is guaranteed. Now do not ask me to reveal that door. I will trash you if you ask me to… It is so close to you. . I can only teach you how to knock at that door so that it opens quickly but you have to find that door for yourself…. “

I could locate that second door instantly but did not believe in it…. A year later day I again spotted the owner of the house in the street. He wore a slightly different look. I ran away from him. He chased me and caught hold of me…. He did not slap me. He hugged me and told me that he is the real owner of my house . He gave me a lift in His vehicle… He dropped me near my house and pointed me to a direction. I proceeded that way. As i walked in there were no walls and obstacles. It was hard to imagine a house without a wall and a door. Yes it was my own house, a palace which took me thirty years to enter… The first breath inside it blew away all my ordinary desires and wants, the second one was even more fulfilling… The third one drew me crazy…The fourth one I tell you what ……

Get into your own house my dear friend. Your mind is not the owner of your house. It has fooled you enough. No more will you stand outside your own house…. Knock at that second door and Thy will open it for you……

Vishwriter
http://www.articlesbase.com/relationships-articles/she-opened-the-door-for-me–spirituality-information-138353.html

Two holistic health practitioners at New York University Medical Center recently launched an innovative program to help staff and patients begin the practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of moment-to-moment awareness. Mindfulness exercises can improve your attention span, mental clarity, memory, mood, and self-esteem. With regular practice, you can experience a reduction in anxiety, muscle tension, blood pressure, heart and respiratory rates.

Alex Tatarinov-Levin met recently with the founders of NYU’s Mindfulness program,  Jackie Levin, RN, MS, and Tara Piergrossi, a Masters candidate in Public Health at Hunter College. Jackie and Tara talk about the concept of mindfulness and how to begin your own practice in this in-depth interview.

It’s All in Your Mind: an Introduction to Mindfulness

Alex Tatarinov-Levin: How did you get involved in the concept of mindfulness?

Jackie Levin: I have a master’s degree in holistic nursing, and as part of that I became interested in the practice of meditation. I studied mindfulness first with Jon Kabat-Zinn [Associated Professor of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School] and learned about his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program, and that became a foundation of my own personal strategy for becoming centered, focused and aware.

Alex: What kind of stress are you referring to?

Jackie: All types of stress are interconnected, so while we might see emotional stress manifested physically, for example, tense shoulders, aches, pains, and the beginnings of disease – we can also experience it emotionally through anxiety, lack of focus, forgetfulness, mood swings or spiritual distress, in which you don’t feel a connection to others or to a spiritual being.

Alex: Is mindfulness intended to relieve stress?

Jackie: No, but it can be a byproduct. Mindfulness is the moment-to-moment awareness of what is going on around you. It’s a practice of becoming more aware and awake. So many of us are spending most of our time distracted, consciously or unconsciously, thinking about memories of the past or worrying about the future, but the only moment that really exists is this one. The practice of mindfulness helps you become a better observer and non-judgmentally aware of what’s going on in your environment.

Alex: What’s the importance of non-judgment to mindfulness?

Tara Piergrossi: You’re not trying to change the moment, just to accept it without judging it, and without trying to hold on to it or labeling it as good or bad.

Jackie: Your judgment says, if I were to see a dog going down the street and as a child I was bit by a dog and maintained that fear my whole life, I would see that dog as threatening. So is that dog threatening? I don’t really know, but if I take a moment I can become a non-judgmental observer of the dog walking down the street, I can then better understand if that dog is a threat or not, and whether I should turn and run or whether I could actually stop and pet the dog.

Alex: What if I’m restless or have trouble clearing my mind for five minutes?

Tara: Then you’re probably normal.

Jackie: Yes, very normal. You’re not trying to clear the mind; you’re trying to wake up the mind. We think our minds are awake, but mostly they’re asleep to what’s going on.

Alex: So mindfulness helps you step back and assess each situation on its own merits?

Jackie: Yes, that’s it. Each moment is unique. It doesn’t mean you don’t have memories and it doesn’t mean you don’t utilize those memories to make current analyses but you’re not letting those past memories dictate your current experience.

Alex: Is there a relationship between mindfulness and meditation?

Jackie: Mindfulness is a type of meditation practice.

Tara: You can sit in meditation position and notice your thoughts. So thoughts come in, you notice them and just go back to your point of focus, whatever it is, and you do that as many times as you need to, without judgment.

Alex: So it’s intended to help you make sense of your thoughts?

Jackie: Most of the time, we’re not aware of what we’re thinking. Those thoughts are just having random effects on us. So if I stop and I just sit there, I see sometimes I have a repetitive thought. Which means I can begin to attend to it and say, oh, that’s a worry I didn’t realize I had, and what is it I’d like to do about that? Is it really as big a problem as I think it is? So you can begin to discharge some of the tension through natural stress reduction and observe it. And you develop a compassion for yourself—a softness. Saying, oh, I did something I wasn’t so happy about. Most of the time, we end up being hard on ourselves. In mindfulness you’d be able to say, well, ok, I can now see how I did that in a clearer way, and I have lots of options and choices now. I can go talk to that person, I can redo the situation, I can get more information.

Alex: What other benefits are there to mindfulness?

Jackie: In the mental realm, it can increase focus, memory, clarity of thought. In the emotional realm, it can improve your mood. In the relationship realm, it can improve how you connect to others. In the physical realm, it may lower your blood pressure and regulate your heart rate and respiratory rate. Relaxation enhances your metabolism, so it can help your digestive processes because it’s actually activating the parasympathetic system.

Alex: What is the parasympathetic system?

Jackie: There are two systems: the stress response and the relaxation response. The stress response stimulates the sympathetic system that puts me in a fight or flight mode, and that raises the blood pressure and sends your blood out into the extremities so you can run or fight as you might need. It also narrows your focus, so you’re only able to focus on that stress. The relaxation response is the opposite and stimulates the parasympathetic system. It’s about the bodily processes that can go on when you’re not in a fight or flight situation. For example, you don’t need to digest food when you’re trying to fight or flee. The relaxation response reduces your blood pressure. Your heart rate is more regulated; your digestive system is working better and your body releases muscle tension. A lot of energy goes into stress-related anxiety. Stress requires a lot of energy in the body. Sort of like if you’re in a car and revving in the engine but not going anywhere, you’re wearing the engine down.

Take a Minute to be Mindful

Alex: What’s the best position for mindfulness practice and what can people do if they’re not comfortable with it?

Jackie: People should find a position in which they’re comfortable and not in pain, whether sitting or lying. If you’re sitting, your feet should be on the floor, your spine should be tall, but not rigid, and your neck should be long. You’re trying to give enough room for your ribs to breathe and take tension out of your spine. Arms are in your lap so there’s no tension in your shoulders. If you feel tension in your shoulders, put a pillow in your lap to reduce it. If your feet don’t reach the floor, put a pillow underneath them so that there’s no tension in your legs. You can also sit on the floor cross-legged, if that’s comfortable, with a little pillow under the buttocks so that your hips are higher than your knees.

Tara: Or lying down, but it’s sometimes hard not to fall asleep.

Jackie: If you’re lying down you may need a pillow under your knees. You can do it lying down, but the trick is not to fall asleep. Sleeping is not meditating. If you’re having difficulty sleeping, it’s sometimes helpful to meditate first. There’s also yoga meditation, anything that has a point of focus that captures your attention in which you practice not letting your mind wander off your point of focus. Walking can be a form of meditation, chanting is also a form of meditation.

Alex: What connection, if any, is there, between mindfulness and yoga? Between mindfulness and Buddhism or spirituality in general?

Jackie: Mindfulness meditation is a form of Buddhist meditation and many forms of eastern meditation practices. The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program that Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli developed put the spiritual practice into a more secular format.

Alex: Is mindfulness similar to prayer?

Jackie: For me, mindfulness is related to contemplative prayer.

Alex: Is there any conflict between mindfulness and religion?

Jackie: No. people can practice their own forms of religion and spirituality and can also explore and practice meditation.

Tara: It can actually enhance religion.

Jackie: Other practices might call it prayer, concentration, contemplation. It’s a practice to give you insight into yourself. Jon Kabat-Zinn suggested in a program I took with him that we become our own scientist in our own laboratory, and just a keen observer of what goes on in that laboratory.

Alex: Do you have an example of an easy exercise that anyone can start out with?

Jackie: Start with a breath and smile. Put yourself in a comfortable position, with your feet on the ground and your neck and back long and feeling supported. Begin by bringing your awareness to your breath and letting your mind rest on your natural rhythm of breathing. Next, bring your attention to the full duration of your in-breath and the full duration of your out-breath. Wherever you notice your breath the most, at your nostrils or mouth as the air enters and leaves your body or during the rise and fall of your belly and chest.

Alex: Does that help you relax?

Jackie: It can help many people relax, but some people can become more agitated. Then you watch your agitation without judgment and observe it. We tend to run away from the difficult parts of our lives, so if agitation is a response you have to sitting quietly, just observe your experience with agitation, and then experience your mind frame. You might say, I want to get off this cushion as fast as I can, or, I just want to run away from the experience of agitation!

But what is this experience of agitation? You might feel your chest tightening or your heart racing, and observing these symptoms in your body will help you deal with them. What can often happen from there is that you can begin to relax. When we stop avoiding our problems and start gently, compassionately and non-judgmentally facing who we are in this moment, you’ll realize it’s just one moment. And this one might be different from the next. Mindfulness can lead to relaxation, but it’s different for everyone, there is no one way. It’s only you that you’re observing, in an intimate way, when you’re sitting in formal practice of meditation.

I want to connect this to making changes. The whole point of Healthy Monday is to develop a practice of reinventing yourself and changing once a week. If you’re not able to stop and reflect on what are the barriers to making change, or if you’re not able to observe yourself non-judgmentally and with compassion, when you realize you’re not making the choices that are good for you, you can just sit back and reflect on that and gain greater insight. And then perhaps you can make a more lasting committed change.

Formal vs. Informal Practice

Jackie: Formal practice is saying, I’m going to sit down for five to ten minutes a day and just sit with my breath and observe my thoughts and sensations that might be passing through my awareness in these ten minutes. If have the urge to get up or to avoid a thought, then that’s just my experience during this meditation. Informal practice is in our day-to-day life. Taking an everyday experience and being mindful throughout that activity. If I’m brushing my teeth and I let my mind wander to the 50 things I’m going to be doing the rest of the morning, I just stop and for two minutes just focus on the experience of brushing my teeth.

Tara: That’s a great way to utilize mindfulness. I was telling my students, pick one activity you do every day and just be mindful of it. Maybe washing your hair. Where are you going to go? Are you thinking about washing your hair? Probably not.

Jackie: Washing the dishes, making your bed, doing laundry. All those things in daily life are an opportunity to stop and just be present to this one moment. Let’s say you’re on this incredible beach and you’re watching the most amazing sunset. The first few moments you’re actually watching the sunset, but the rest of the time you’re thinking about how you’re going tell this friend of yours about it. In reality, you left the sunset and were actually in a conversation with your friend in your mind. You missed that beautiful sunset.

Tara: Another thing is when you’re on vacation, you’re thinking ahead to, oh, there’s only three days left, and you’re missing your whole vacation because you’re thinking about when you have to go back to work.

Jackie: Then as we go about our day, our formal and informal practices can be utilized spontaneously when moments of stress arise. For example, If I’m standing in a very long line at the supermarket and I’m running late, I may begin to experience a sense of agitation because I’m in a hurry. I just take a deep breath and observe my experience of standing in line, which then helps me realize it’s not that big a deal. I’ll be 5 minutes late, or I’ll put my groceries back and get them later, but I don’t have to let my blood pressure go up, I don’t have to let my agitation take over, I don’t have to stamp my foot and have all those experiences we have when you’re feeling stressed.

Tara: The benefit of using the breath-centered approach to mindfulness is that your breath is always with you; any time of day you can always focus on your breath.

Jackie: And your breath is always changing, so it’s dynamic, and that relates to life. If you’re able to connect to this ever-present dynamic aspect of yourself, you’ll be able to better manage the ever-present changing dynamics that go on in your external life as well. The thing that gets us most stressed and disrupted in our lives is that when we have an expectation of something happening and it doesn’t. Unrequited expectations cause stress. So the more you’re able to accept the moment for what it is, then there’s less chance of your being disappointed.

Alex: Is there a specific breathing method you recommend?

Jackie: In this form of mindfulness it’s just observing your breath. There are many powerful distinctive ways of breathing in meditation, but, mindfulness is just observing the breath, one breath at a time.

Jackie: So there are a hundred ways we can lose our balance – emotional balance, natural, psychological balance, physical balance – every moment. If you’re practicing mindfulness, you have a greater awareness of when you fall off balance, and you can then grab onto your practice of mindfulness to bring you back into balance. This way I don’t get so off-center.

Mindfulness Monday: Practice Living Each Moment

Alex: Let’s say I’m in an angry mood because I recently got laid off. What if meditating doesn’t make me feel any better?

Jackie: Mindfulness is not necessarily about changing an angry person into a non-angry person, it’s about you becoming aware of your anger and how you experience it. So imagine you’re feeling anger, and you send all this rage externally. Unless you’re being violent to someone physically, most of the violence is done to ourselves. Only we’re not aware of it because we’re so focused on our emotional hurt. The goal is not to take away the anger, the goal is for you to become awake to the feeling that you’re angry and that you might have all these varieties of thought and physical and emotional experiences while being angry. When you allow yourself to be aware of your experience, the experience shifts. Say you got laid off and you’re angry. A lot of us would be resentful and angry towards the person who laid us off and we’d blame them for our problems, instead I could become more specific about the concerns of being laid off like, I’ve been laid off, I don’t know if I’m going get another job. I’m scared about not paying the mortgage. What am I going to tell my family? If you can get down to that beginning level of awareness, you can begin to sort through and go on. Just breathe for the next few moments and don’t try to change anything at all. Then see where your thoughts can lead you. Oh, I didn’t like this job anyway, or, maybe I can tell the bank I was laid off, and they’ll give me a month without penalty of paying my mortgage.

Tara: Mindfulness helps you not to cling to that past experience. If you’re in the present, you know, that happened, I’m here now, not looking forward, not looking ahead, just being here for a moment.

Alex: How can mindfulness help you stay away from extreme behavior while encouraging acceptance of it?

Jackie: The beauty of mindfulness, like life, is that it is full of paradoxes. On the one hand, mindfulness helps you not get so angry, but then you say but mindfulness is not asking you not to be so angry, so both are true. It’s a paradox. Human beings want things defined, without confusion. But what mindfulness teaches is that if we’re being present fully in the moment, we become aware of the multidimensionality of our existence. So there is no absolute. So when I practice mindfulness long enough, I become more aware of what takes me, personally, out of balance, so that I am much more sensitive and alert to those situations – and when they start to happen, I go into my practice which is to be present to my own responses. However, if I’m observing my anger, I’m not necessarily acting my anger out. So you could say something to me that makes me angrier than I’ve ever been, and you might never know.

Tips for Starting Your Own Practice

Alex: Who are your Monday Mindfulness Memos intended for?
Jackie: This is on the NYU Medical Center intranet, available for any employee of the NYU Medical Center right now.
Tara: But eventually we’d like to house them on our website, which is being created. We already have one for our preparatory surgery program, but we’re creating one for the Mind Body Patient Care program, and we’ll put these on there – so they’ll be available to anyone. We want to do one memo a month and then supplement that memo with weekly Monday tips on how to use mindfulness and apply it to your daily life. So every Monday you start fresh – you use mindfulness and incorporate it into your life.

Alex: Are the tips cumulative? Or can anyone start fresh?

Jackie: Anyone can start fresh. We’re going to have links and an archive for monthly memos so people can click on that and then utilize those tips.

Tara: The first one is basically, what is mindfulness? and that will always be on the intranet in case you come into this later and you don’t already know what mindfulness is. Later on we are going to write memos on mindful communication, mindful eating… all sorts of ways to use mindfulness in your everyday life.

Alex: What are you trying to communicate with these memos and tips?

Jackie: Basically it’s utilizing the principles of compassion and non-judgmentalness when we listen and speak with each other. The more skillful we are at listening deeply to what another is trying to communicate to us, the more we are able to understand the intent of the speaker.

Tara: It’s an ideal way of communicating. Also, when you’re talking to someone, instead of thinking of what you’re going to say next –you’re actually listening, mindfully listening, and then responding.

Alex: Sounds brilliant – and common sense.

Jackie: The practice of meditation is essentially common sense. But in order to implement it on a regular basis you have to practice. It’s difficult to always remember to be mindful when somebody says something that I want to react to. It also helps me remember that the other person has a frame of reference too, and I want to understand it. That’s where the compassion comes in and the non-judgmental attitude. If you say something to me, I first try to understand your motivation, your reason for saying that, then I can honestly assess what kind of response I should give.

Alex: How does Monday fit in?

Jackie: I think the Monday idea is great. Change doesn’t happen overnight, and it takes practice and commitment. Using Monday helps you realize, without judgment, that changes will eventually occur if you stick with it. And on the days that you don’t, you’re not harsh on yourself. Be kind to yourself. If it’s Thursday, you can decide to meditate or skip meat or whatever else you’re trying to do on that day, but you also know that every Monday is another day when you can begin seeing yourself fresh and anew. In mindfulness, every moment gives you that opportunity – but I think it’s very clever to connect it to a day of the week. The whole point of Healthy Monday is to develop a practice of reinventing yourself and working on changing once a week. If you’re not able to stop and reflect on what are the barriers to making change, or if you’re not able to observe yourself non-judgmentally and with compassion, when you realize you’re not making the choices that are good for you, you can just sit back and reflect on that and gain greater insight. And then perhaps you can make a more lasting committed change.

Tara: I think it really supports being compassionate to yourself. I know in my life, if I don’t go to the gym, I’ll be like forget it. But with Monday, you have a weekly opportunity to start over. It helps you not get discouraged with quitting or having a setback.

Jackie: Mindfulness has really helped with my greater sense of patience. When we’re taking on a big change, like quitting smoking – which is huge – you commit to Monday, you commit to being mindful of every time you have an urge to smoke, and you accept that urge, but in this moment, I can resist that urge because next moment that urge might go away. I know that if I can wait 30 seconds, that urge will be gone. That urge may come back later in the day, and then you sit with it. You can quit cold turkey, but it doesn’t mean you won’t have other desires for cigarettes.

Tara: When you have the urge to smoke, you supplement it for something else, unless you really feel the reason why you’re smoking.

Tara: You don’t practice mindfulness to make yourself a better person or to relax or make changes in yourself, but to help you tune in to what’s going on. All those things could happen as a result, but it is really easy to think I need to practice mindfulness to be better, to do more.

Alex: How has mindfulness changed your lives or perspectives?

Tara: Well I found mindfulness through yoga, and from the process of yoga I started teaching it. I just started doing yoga and it really changed my perspective on my life, and I didn’t know why. I wanted to figure out why and then help teach that to other people. I spent so much of my younger years looking forward, thinking I’ll be happy when I’m in college or I’ll be happy when I’m doing this. You can keep saying you’ll be happy when you get somewhere else, but this is your life right now. So that really helped me to live now and be happy.

Tara: My brother is a mindfulness meditation instructor. He did a workshop with people, and he had a little cup with sunflower seeds. We were sitting and observing our thoughts, and every time you had a thought, you’re supposed to drop a sunflower into the cup. So you could hear when everyone else had a thought, and it was like a rainstorm, and it was just a wonderful to hear everybody’s thoughts. You’re always giving off thoughts, and there’s nothing wrong with having them, just remember to come back.

Jackie: Mindfulness has helped me take things less seriously, be more playful. I can deal with things that are serious and hard, but also have an accompanying lightness to that experience. The people that I know who practice mindfulness on a regular basis smile a lot more, laugh a lot more, enjoy life a lot more.

Tara: Since you’re observing your thoughts, and if you notice your thoughts, it’s like, oh, that’s interesting. Where did that come from? It’s much more playful.

Alex: How’s this for a headline? Mindfulness: live for the moment.

Jackie: It’s more, be present in each moment, really.

Jackie: The more mindful I am the more precise I am. Not in an exhausting way; but, because I’m trying to actually capture everything as it is. I’ve become less satisfied with a lazy approach to understanding what others are trying to say or do. It’s a very precise practice.

Tara: We’re also much more curious about ourselves, and the world around us.

On Mindful Eating

Alex: Can you tell our readers a little bit about mindful eating?

Tara: If you’re mindful of your body, you will be swallowing and chewing when you need to, and you will stop way before you have gorged yourself. To be full, sometimes we throw food in our mouths, but you’ll enjoy and taste the food more if you practice mindful eating. You can extend it to the mindfulness of purchasing and preparing the food, and it will also connect you to the food though awareness of who grew the food, who harvested it, packaged and delivered it, if we’re not in a rural community and growing it ourselves.

Alex: Why is it important to have a connection with our food?

Jackie: I think it’s important to have a connection with everything that’s around us, and that I think good food is important, and the more we’re aware of how our food came to us, the more likely we are to make healthier choices.

Tara: If you’re mindful that you’re hungry, you’ll eat when you’re hungry, and you might make better choices if you’re mindful of your body’s hunger. So if right now I’m hungry, I know that I would probably go eat that whole counter, but if I’m aware of that it will help restrict me.

Jackie: When you connect to where your food is grown and the environment it’s grown in, we have a global awareness, and global awareness will help eventually bring peace.

Tara: It shows that we’re all connected—

Jackie: —and we should appreciate the people who grow our food.

Jackie Levin, RN, MS, and Tara Piergrossi, a Masters candidate in Public Health at Hunter College, are the founders of the NYU Mindfulness program.

Alex Levin
http://www.articlesbase.com/mental-health-articles/the-deceptively-simple-art-of-living-in-the-moment-715865.html

I used to spend fifteen minutes looking into the mirror everyday. I wanted to appear great. Over the years looking great became an obsession with me.Till one day, i fell so ill that I lost twenty kgs over a span of two months…My body was so worn out that even a beggar would not want to converse with me. Lying down in my bed i picked up a magazine…… The headline on the front cover read ” Do you love yourself when you look good or do you experience a sense of greatness when you feel good”

Earlier, I had a belief that one could feel good only when he or she looks good…. but here i had a better choice…..

It has been proved scientifically that those who feel good about themselves and are not too much concerned about their facial make-ups live a longer and more happier life than those who are obsessed with looking good. I had this general belief that if i look good i will feel good. Now this is true to some extent but i had not really understood the hidden meaning of feeling good. As a matter of fact looking good was my only objective in life and feeling good was something which was incidental…

It seemed to me that Mother Nature wanted to teach me something…. I was definitely not looking good during my period of illness and i did not have the courage to see myself in the mirror… So I had no option but to feel good about myself…

What does feeling good really mean? Feeling good means you become your own teacher.You value yourself. You rate your own core beliefs, set your own benchmarks and allow a higher force within you to evaluate your inner thinking. Feeling good is about watching your mind as it travels within you… You do not allow any other person to judge you because you have appointed the best and the most impartial judge within you…

You are the only person who is aware of what your mind thinks and by appointing a higher force within you to watch the movements of your mind you have probably taken the best decision of your life…. Why do you want other people to rate your core beliefs and values? The external world can applaud or criticize your work but they cannot take away the principles,honest intentions and real force guiding your actions…The truth of the matter is we might be disappointed when someone does not accept our view point, our works or ignores us outright but that does not make us powerless. It only pinches us … We fall from the cliff only when we fall in our own eyes … when we fail to stick to our noble intentions and thats what gives us the real pain … that is when we really feel bad about ourselves… The external world is only an excuse for feeling bad you actually feel bad when you let yourself down….

Feeling good is not giving a chance to your higher self to point fingers at you. It is always nice to look good but this should not be your basic objective in life. When you feel good you automatically look good. There is a radiance which surrounds you, a force which compels people to get close to you, to talk to you, to interact with you…. Good looks can only turn heads around but feeling good can pull them towards you…

Next time that you have an option, focus more on feeling good and watch as the world bends it rules for you ……

Empower Yourself Today and learn the proven methods of feeling good…

Vishwriter
http://www.articlesbase.com/relationships-articles/you-better-watch-out-if-you-have-good-looks–spirituality-information-138330.html

Two holistic health practitioners at New York University Medical Center recently launched an innovative program to help staff and patients begin the practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of moment-to-moment awareness. Mindfulness exercises can improve your attention span, mental clarity, memory, mood, and self-esteem. With regular practice, you can experience a reduction in anxiety, muscle tension, blood pressure, heart and respiratory rates.

Alex Tatarinov-Levin met recently with the founders of NYU’s Mindfulness program,  Jackie Levin, RN, MS, and Tara Piergrossi, a Masters candidate in Public Health at Hunter College. Jackie and Tara talk about the concept of mindfulness and how to begin your own practice in this in-depth interview.

It’s All in Your Mind: an Introduction to Mindfulness

Alex Tatarinov-Levin: How did you get involved in the concept of mindfulness?

Jackie Levin: I have a master’s degree in holistic nursing, and as part of that I became interested in the practice of meditation. I studied mindfulness first with Jon Kabat-Zinn [Associated Professor of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School] and learned about his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program, and that became a foundation of my own personal strategy for becoming centered, focused and aware.

Alex: What kind of stress are you referring to?

Jackie: All types of stress are interconnected, so while we might see emotional stress manifested physically, for example, tense shoulders, aches, pains, and the beginnings of disease – we can also experience it emotionally through anxiety, lack of focus, forgetfulness, mood swings or spiritual distress, in which you don’t feel a connection to others or to a spiritual being.

Alex: Is mindfulness intended to relieve stress?

Jackie: No, but it can be a byproduct. Mindfulness is the moment-to-moment awareness of what is going on around you. It’s a practice of becoming more aware and awake. So many of us are spending most of our time distracted, consciously or unconsciously, thinking about memories of the past or worrying about the future, but the only moment that really exists is this one. The practice of mindfulness helps you become a better observer and non-judgmentally aware of what’s going on in your environment.

Alex: What’s the importance of non-judgment to mindfulness?

Tara Piergrossi: You’re not trying to change the moment, just to accept it without judging it, and without trying to hold on to it or labeling it as good or bad.

Jackie: Your judgment says, if I were to see a dog going down the street and as a child I was bit by a dog and maintained that fear my whole life, I would see that dog as threatening. So is that dog threatening? I don’t really know, but if I take a moment I can become a non-judgmental observer of the dog walking down the street, I can then better understand if that dog is a threat or not, and whether I should turn and run or whether I could actually stop and pet the dog.

Alex: What if I’m restless or have trouble clearing my mind for five minutes?

Tara: Then you’re probably normal.

Jackie: Yes, very normal. You’re not trying to clear the mind; you’re trying to wake up the mind. We think our minds are awake, but mostly they’re asleep to what’s going on.

Alex: So mindfulness helps you step back and assess each situation on its own merits?

Jackie: Yes, that’s it. Each moment is unique. It doesn’t mean you don’t have memories and it doesn’t mean you don’t utilize those memories to make current analyses but you’re not letting those past memories dictate your current experience.

Alex: Is there a relationship between mindfulness and meditation?

Jackie: Mindfulness is a type of meditation practice.

Tara: You can sit in meditation position and notice your thoughts. So thoughts come in, you notice them and just go back to your point of focus, whatever it is, and you do that as many times as you need to, without judgment.

Alex: So it’s intended to help you make sense of your thoughts?

Jackie: Most of the time, we’re not aware of what we’re thinking. Those thoughts are just having random effects on us. So if I stop and I just sit there, I see sometimes I have a repetitive thought. Which means I can begin to attend to it and say, oh, that’s a worry I didn’t realize I had, and what is it I’d like to do about that? Is it really as big a problem as I think it is? So you can begin to discharge some of the tension through natural stress reduction and observe it. And you develop a compassion for yourself—a softness. Saying, oh, I did something I wasn’t so happy about. Most of the time, we end up being hard on ourselves. In mindfulness you’d be able to say, well, ok, I can now see how I did that in a clearer way, and I have lots of options and choices now. I can go talk to that person, I can redo the situation, I can get more information.

Alex: What other benefits are there to mindfulness?

Jackie: In the mental realm, it can increase focus, memory, clarity of thought. In the emotional realm, it can improve your mood. In the relationship realm, it can improve how you connect to others. In the physical realm, it may lower your blood pressure and regulate your heart rate and respiratory rate. Relaxation enhances your metabolism, so it can help your digestive processes because it’s actually activating the parasympathetic system.

Alex: What is the parasympathetic system?

Jackie: There are two systems: the stress response and the relaxation response. The stress response stimulates the sympathetic system that puts me in a fight or flight mode, and that raises the blood pressure and sends your blood out into the extremities so you can run or fight as you might need. It also narrows your focus, so you’re only able to focus on that stress. The relaxation response is the opposite and stimulates the parasympathetic system. It’s about the bodily processes that can go on when you’re not in a fight or flight situation. For example, you don’t need to digest food when you’re trying to fight or flee. The relaxation response reduces your blood pressure. Your heart rate is more regulated; your digestive system is working better and your body releases muscle tension. A lot of energy goes into stress-related anxiety. Stress requires a lot of energy in the body. Sort of like if you’re in a car and revving in the engine but not going anywhere, you’re wearing the engine down.

Take a Minute to be Mindful

Alex: What’s the best position for mindfulness practice and what can people do if they’re not comfortable with it?

Jackie: People should find a position in which they’re comfortable and not in pain, whether sitting or lying. If you’re sitting, your feet should be on the floor, your spine should be tall, but not rigid, and your neck should be long. You’re trying to give enough room for your ribs to breathe and take tension out of your spine. Arms are in your lap so there’s no tension in your shoulders. If you feel tension in your shoulders, put a pillow in your lap to reduce it. If your feet don’t reach the floor, put a pillow underneath them so that there’s no tension in your legs. You can also sit on the floor cross-legged, if that’s comfortable, with a little pillow under the buttocks so that your hips are higher than your knees.

Tara: Or lying down, but it’s sometimes hard not to fall asleep.

Jackie: If you’re lying down you may need a pillow under your knees. You can do it lying down, but the trick is not to fall asleep. Sleeping is not meditating. If you’re having difficulty sleeping, it’s sometimes helpful to meditate first. There’s also yoga meditation, anything that has a point of focus that captures your attention in which you practice not letting your mind wander off your point of focus. Walking can be a form of meditation, chanting is also a form of meditation.

Alex: What connection, if any, is there, between mindfulness and yoga? Between mindfulness and Buddhism or spirituality in general?

Jackie: Mindfulness meditation is a form of Buddhist meditation and many forms of eastern meditation practices. The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program that Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli developed put the spiritual practice into a more secular format.

Alex: Is mindfulness similar to prayer?

Jackie: For me, mindfulness is related to contemplative prayer.

Alex: Is there any conflict between mindfulness and religion?

Jackie: No. people can practice their own forms of religion and spirituality and can also explore and practice meditation.

Tara: It can actually enhance religion.

Jackie: Other practices might call it prayer, concentration, contemplation. It’s a practice to give you insight into yourself. Jon Kabat-Zinn suggested in a program I took with him that we become our own scientist in our own laboratory, and just a keen observer of what goes on in that laboratory.

Alex: Do you have an example of an easy exercise that anyone can start out with?

Jackie: Start with a breath and smile. Put yourself in a comfortable position, with your feet on the ground and your neck and back long and feeling supported. Begin by bringing your awareness to your breath and letting your mind rest on your natural rhythm of breathing. Next, bring your attention to the full duration of your in-breath and the full duration of your out-breath. Wherever you notice your breath the most, at your nostrils or mouth as the air enters and leaves your body or during the rise and fall of your belly and chest.

Alex: Does that help you relax?

Jackie: It can help many people relax, but some people can become more agitated. Then you watch your agitation without judgment and observe it. We tend to run away from the difficult parts of our lives, so if agitation is a response you have to sitting quietly, just observe your experience with agitation, and then experience your mind frame. You might say, I want to get off this cushion as fast as I can, or, I just want to run away from the experience of agitation!

But what is this experience of agitation? You might feel your chest tightening or your heart racing, and observing these symptoms in your body will help you deal with them. What can often happen from there is that you can begin to relax. When we stop avoiding our problems and start gently, compassionately and non-judgmentally facing who we are in this moment, you’ll realize it’s just one moment. And this one might be different from the next. Mindfulness can lead to relaxation, but it’s different for everyone, there is no one way. It’s only you that you’re observing, in an intimate way, when you’re sitting in formal practice of meditation.

I want to connect this to making changes. The whole point of Healthy Monday is to develop a practice of reinventing yourself and changing once a week. If you’re not able to stop and reflect on what are the barriers to making change, or if you’re not able to observe yourself non-judgmentally and with compassion, when you realize you’re not making the choices that are good for you, you can just sit back and reflect on that and gain greater insight. And then perhaps you can make a more lasting committed change.

Formal vs. Informal Practice

Jackie: Formal practice is saying, I’m going to sit down for five to ten minutes a day and just sit with my breath and observe my thoughts and sensations that might be passing through my awareness in these ten minutes. If have the urge to get up or to avoid a thought, then that’s just my experience during this meditation. Informal practice is in our day-to-day life. Taking an everyday experience and being mindful throughout that activity. If I’m brushing my teeth and I let my mind wander to the 50 things I’m going to be doing the rest of the morning, I just stop and for two minutes just focus on the experience of brushing my teeth.

Tara: That’s a great way to utilize mindfulness. I was telling my students, pick one activity you do every day and just be mindful of it. Maybe washing your hair. Where are you going to go? Are you thinking about washing your hair? Probably not.

Jackie: Washing the dishes, making your bed, doing laundry. All those things in daily life are an opportunity to stop and just be present to this one moment. Let’s say you’re on this incredible beach and you’re watching the most amazing sunset. The first few moments you’re actually watching the sunset, but the rest of the time you’re thinking about how you’re going tell this friend of yours about it. In reality, you left the sunset and were actually in a conversation with your friend in your mind. You missed that beautiful sunset.

Tara: Another thing is when you’re on vacation, you’re thinking ahead to, oh, there’s only three days left, and you’re missing your whole vacation because you’re thinking about when you have to go back to work.

Jackie: Then as we go about our day, our formal and informal practices can be utilized spontaneously when moments of stress arise. For example, If I’m standing in a very long line at the supermarket and I’m running late, I may begin to experience a sense of agitation because I’m in a hurry. I just take a deep breath and observe my experience of standing in line, which then helps me realize it’s not that big a deal. I’ll be 5 minutes late, or I’ll put my groceries back and get them later, but I don’t have to let my blood pressure go up, I don’t have to let my agitation take over, I don’t have to stamp my foot and have all those experiences we have when you’re feeling stressed.

Tara: The benefit of using the breath-centered approach to mindfulness is that your breath is always with you; any time of day you can always focus on your breath.

Jackie: And your breath is always changing, so it’s dynamic, and that relates to life. If you’re able to connect to this ever-present dynamic aspect of yourself, you’ll be able to better manage the ever-present changing dynamics that go on in your external life as well. The thing that gets us most stressed and disrupted in our lives is that when we have an expectation of something happening and it doesn’t. Unrequited expectations cause stress. So the more you’re able to accept the moment for what it is, then there’s less chance of your being disappointed.

Alex: Is there a specific breathing method you recommend?

Jackie: In this form of mindfulness it’s just observing your breath. There are many powerful distinctive ways of breathing in meditation, but, mindfulness is just observing the breath, one breath at a time.

Jackie: So there are a hundred ways we can lose our balance – emotional balance, natural, psychological balance, physical balance – every moment. If you’re practicing mindfulness, you have a greater awareness of when you fall off balance, and you can then grab onto your practice of mindfulness to bring you back into balance. This way I don’t get so off-center.

Mindfulness Monday: Practice Living Each Moment

Alex: Let’s say I’m in an angry mood because I recently got laid off. What if meditating doesn’t make me feel any better?

Jackie: Mindfulness is not necessarily about changing an angry person into a non-angry person, it’s about you becoming aware of your anger and how you experience it. So imagine you’re feeling anger, and you send all this rage externally. Unless you’re being violent to someone physically, most of the violence is done to ourselves. Only we’re not aware of it because we’re so focused on our emotional hurt. The goal is not to take away the anger, the goal is for you to become awake to the feeling that you’re angry and that you might have all these varieties of thought and physical and emotional experiences while being angry. When you allow yourself to be aware of your experience, the experience shifts. Say you got laid off and you’re angry. A lot of us would be resentful and angry towards the person who laid us off and we’d blame them for our problems, instead I could become more specific about the concerns of being laid off like, I’ve been laid off, I don’t know if I’m going get another job. I’m scared about not paying the mortgage. What am I going to tell my family? If you can get down to that beginning level of awareness, you can begin to sort through and go on. Just breathe for the next few moments and don’t try to change anything at all. Then see where your thoughts can lead you. Oh, I didn’t like this job anyway, or, maybe I can tell the bank I was laid off, and they’ll give me a month without penalty of paying my mortgage.

Tara: Mindfulness helps you not to cling to that past experience. If you’re in the present, you know, that happened, I’m here now, not looking forward, not looking ahead, just being here for a moment.

Alex: How can mindfulness help you stay away from extreme behavior while encouraging acceptance of it?

Jackie: The beauty of mindfulness, like life, is that it is full of paradoxes. On the one hand, mindfulness helps you not get so angry, but then you say but mindfulness is not asking you not to be so angry, so both are true. It’s a paradox. Human beings want things defined, without confusion. But what mindfulness teaches is that if we’re being present fully in the moment, we become aware of the multidimensionality of our existence. So there is no absolute. So when I practice mindfulness long enough, I become more aware of what takes me, personally, out of balance, so that I am much more sensitive and alert to those situations – and when they start to happen, I go into my practice which is to be present to my own responses. However, if I’m observing my anger, I’m not necessarily acting my anger out. So you could say something to me that makes me angrier than I’ve ever been, and you might never know.

Tips for Starting Your Own Practice

Alex: Who are your Monday Mindfulness Memos intended for?
Jackie: This is on the NYU Medical Center intranet, available for any employee of the NYU Medical Center right now.
Tara: But eventually we’d like to house them on our website, which is being created. We already have one for our preparatory surgery program, but we’re creating one for the Mind Body Patient Care program, and we’ll put these on there – so they’ll be available to anyone. We want to do one memo a month and then supplement that memo with weekly Monday tips on how to use mindfulness and apply it to your daily life. So every Monday you start fresh – you use mindfulness and incorporate it into your life.

Alex: Are the tips cumulative? Or can anyone start fresh?

Jackie: Anyone can start fresh. We’re going to have links and an archive for monthly memos so people can click on that and then utilize those tips.

Tara: The first one is basically, what is mindfulness? and that will always be on the intranet in case you come into this later and you don’t already know what mindfulness is. Later on we are going to write memos on mindful communication, mindful eating… all sorts of ways to use mindfulness in your everyday life.

Alex: What are you trying to communicate with these memos and tips?

Jackie: Basically it’s utilizing the principles of compassion and non-judgmentalness when we listen and speak with each other. The more skillful we are at listening deeply to what another is trying to communicate to us, the more we are able to understand the intent of the speaker.

Tara: It’s an ideal way of communicating. Also, when you’re talking to someone, instead of thinking of what you’re going to say next –you’re actually listening, mindfully listening, and then responding.

Alex: Sounds brilliant – and common sense.

Jackie: The practice of meditation is essentially common sense. But in order to implement it on a regular basis you have to practice. It’s difficult to always remember to be mindful when somebody says something that I want to react to. It also helps me remember that the other person has a frame of reference too, and I want to understand it. That’s where the compassion comes in and the non-judgmental attitude. If you say something to me, I first try to understand your motivation, your reason for saying that, then I can honestly assess what kind of response I should give.

Alex: How does Monday fit in?

Jackie: I think the Monday idea is great. Change doesn’t happen overnight, and it takes practice and commitment. Using Monday helps you realize, without judgment, that changes will eventually occur if you stick with it. And on the days that you don’t, you’re not harsh on yourself. Be kind to yourself. If it’s Thursday, you can decide to meditate or skip meat or whatever else you’re trying to do on that day, but you also know that every Monday is another day when you can begin seeing yourself fresh and anew. In mindfulness, every moment gives you that opportunity – but I think it’s very clever to connect it to a day of the week. The whole point of Healthy Monday is to develop a practice of reinventing yourself and working on changing once a week. If you’re not able to stop and reflect on what are the barriers to making change, or if you’re not able to observe yourself non-judgmentally and with compassion, when you realize you’re not making the choices that are good for you, you can just sit back and reflect on that and gain greater insight. And then perhaps you can make a more lasting committed change.

Tara: I think it really supports being compassionate to yourself. I know in my life, if I don’t go to the gym, I’ll be like forget it. But with Monday, you have a weekly opportunity to start over. It helps you not get discouraged with quitting or having a setback.

Jackie: Mindfulness has really helped with my greater sense of patience. When we’re taking on a big change, like quitting smoking – which is huge – you commit to Monday, you commit to being mindful of every time you have an urge to smoke, and you accept that urge, but in this moment, I can resist that urge because next moment that urge might go away. I know that if I can wait 30 seconds, that urge will be gone. That urge may come back later in the day, and then you sit with it. You can quit cold turkey, but it doesn’t mean you won’t have other desires for cigarettes.

Tara: When you have the urge to smoke, you supplement it for something else, unless you really feel the reason why you’re smoking.

Tara: You don’t practice mindfulness to make yourself a better person or to relax or make changes in yourself, but to help you tune in to what’s going on. All those things could happen as a result, but it is really easy to think I need to practice mindfulness to be better, to do more.

Alex: How has mindfulness changed your lives or perspectives?

Tara: Well I found mindfulness through yoga, and from the process of yoga I started teaching it. I just started doing yoga and it really changed my perspective on my life, and I didn’t know why. I wanted to figure out why and then help teach that to other people. I spent so much of my younger years looking forward, thinking I’ll be happy when I’m in college or I’ll be happy when I’m doing this. You can keep saying you’ll be happy when you get somewhere else, but this is your life right now. So that really helped me to live now and be happy.

Tara: My brother is a mindfulness meditation instructor. He did a workshop with people, and he had a little cup with sunflower seeds. We were sitting and observing our thoughts, and every time you had a thought, you’re supposed to drop a sunflower into the cup. So you could hear when everyone else had a thought, and it was like a rainstorm, and it was just a wonderful to hear everybody’s thoughts. You’re always giving off thoughts, and there’s nothing wrong with having them, just remember to come back.

Jackie: Mindfulness has helped me take things less seriously, be more playful. I can deal with things that are serious and hard, but also have an accompanying lightness to that experience. The people that I know who practice mindfulness on a regular basis smile a lot more, laugh a lot more, enjoy life a lot more.

Tara: Since you’re observing your thoughts, and if you notice your thoughts, it’s like, oh, that’s interesting. Where did that come from? It’s much more playful.

Alex: How’s this for a headline? Mindfulness: live for the moment.

Jackie: It’s more, be present in each moment, really.

Jackie: The more mindful I am the more precise I am. Not in an exhausting way; but, because I’m trying to actually capture everything as it is. I’ve become less satisfied with a lazy approach to understanding what others are trying to say or do. It’s a very precise practice.

Tara: We’re also much more curious about ourselves, and the world around us.

On Mindful Eating

Alex: Can you tell our readers a little bit about mindful eating?

Tara: If you’re mindful of your body, you will be swallowing and chewing when you need to, and you will stop way before you have gorged yourself. To be full, sometimes we throw food in our mouths, but you’ll enjoy and taste the food more if you practice mindful eating. You can extend it to the mindfulness of purchasing and preparing the food, and it will also connect you to the food though awareness of who grew the food, who harvested it, packaged and delivered it, if we’re not in a rural community and growing it ourselves.

Alex: Why is it important to have a connection with our food?

Jackie: I think it’s important to have a connection with everything that’s around us, and that I think good food is important, and the more we’re aware of how our food came to us, the more likely we are to make healthier choices.

Tara: If you’re mindful that you’re hungry, you’ll eat when you’re hungry, and you might make better choices if you’re mindful of your body’s hunger. So if right now I’m hungry, I know that I would probably go eat that whole counter, but if I’m aware of that it will help restrict me.

Jackie: When you connect to where your food is grown and the environment it’s grown in, we have a global awareness, and global awareness will help eventually bring peace.

Tara: It shows that we’re all connected—

Jackie: —and we should appreciate the people who grow our food.

Jackie Levin, RN, MS, and Tara Piergrossi, a Masters candidate in Public Health at Hunter College, are the founders of the NYU Mindfulness program.

Alex Levin
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/deceptively-simple-art-of-living-in-the-moment-748009.html

Self defense for women has become a huge issue-from domestic violence to date rape, from assault in a parking lot to rapes on a college campus it seems as though women are the prime targets of these crimes, anytime, anywhere.

Hundreds and thousands of rape cases have been reported around the world, and studies and reports clearly show an increasing trend in this direction. Sadly, most cases go unreported-approximately 95%. Same is the case when it comes to murders, sexual assault, robberies and other crimes. It seems that women are not safe anywhere and vulnerable to different crimes all the time.

Sad to say most women fall into the category of "it happens to the other guy". They think such things cannot happen to them or always happen to other people. WRONG! More and more women are taking proactive steps to help prepare themselves for the day when something might happen-it is the prudent thing to do. Having a sense of self confidence is step number one.

Did You Know?

–One out of four women will be sexually assaulted on a college campus.
–One out of eight women will be raped while in college.
–84% of women who were raped knew their assailant.
–57% of rapes occur on a date.
–75% of male students and 55% of female students involved in date rape had been drinking or using drugs.

Just think about the world we live in today. Statistics show that every two and a half minutes someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted. This would make you realize that no one is actually safe or immune from violence. It makes sense to be aware and prepare yourself before it’s too late. Save yourself from being the next statistic.

Preparation is the key to success when it comes to self defense for woman. It helps build the self confidence you need to prevail in an assault situation. Experts believe that when an assault occurs most victims are caught off guard, panic and don’t think clearly.

With a little courage, common sense and PRACTICE your survival instincts will kick in. Therefore to excel in the art of self-defense, you must be mentally and physically prepared. Just carrying self-defense weapons or attending a course will not help you anymore. You must keep PRACTICING some self defense tips and techniques so that you are always charged with the confidence to win in an attack.

Stay aware of your environment and do not let yourself to be caught off guard. Get a good self defense instructional DVD that can teach you what you need to know to survive a street attack. Learn the art of fighting back. Learn how to use and carry some non lethal self defense weapons such as stun guns and pepper spray.

Carrying these self defense products and getting the self defense training will offer you a sense of security and confidence and make you feel that you are armed to face an assailant anytime.

Jack Krohn
http://www.articlesbase.com/self-defense-articles/self-defense-for-women-start-with-a-sense-of-confidence-166330.html

Death is the natural thing that happens to all living things. Everybody reacts to the loss of someone they love or care about. However, at different ages people react differently when somebody dies. For a child to understand death, the concept of death has to be formed in a child’s mind. The concept of death means that death is universal, inevitable, irreversible, and that there is no physical existence after death. The whole concept of death is being developed in a human being through the time and consequently the complete understanding of this concept depends on personal development.

One of the greatest Swiss developmental psychologists Jean Piaget after the decades of studies concluded that all children have uneven but gradual development of their sophistication and that every stage has to have its own time. The first goes first and only then the second stage can develop. Piaget divided all of the development into four main stages: 1) sensorimotor, 2) preoperational, 3) concrete operational and 4) formal operational.

When a baby is born he or she enters the sensomonitor stage of development. During this stage a baby discovers the world through grasping, smelling, sucking, and other primitive actions. These actions however have no significant results for overall development of a baby’s worldview. At the age of one month babies learn to realize the shape of objects. Being five month old babies can acquire information with their hands. At this point of time things only exist when babies see them. As soon as the object disappears it is out of an infant’s mind. The most important thing that impacts the understanding of death and dying, when a baby is in sensorimotor stage, is the concept of object permanence. This concept means that objects continue to exist after they disappear from the sight. Piaget first noticed this phenomenon in 1952 when he took away some object from babies younger than eight months there was no reaction by the babies which greatly supports the theory that babies at this age do not have the concept of object permanence developed. Thus, babies can only start realizing loss of someone when they have the concept of object permanence developed. During the second year of life children begin to realize that people that surround them and disappear sometimes do not stop existing. The second year is also a very important period in developing symbols and associating them with some objects.

The next stage in the development is the preoperational stage. According to Piaget we are in this stage in the age from two to six. During this period we learn to reason things intuitively without full understanding how things work, according to some magical things. At this age kids develop their symbolism, they view made up monsters as death. During this phase of development kids are usually self-centered which means that there are only them and the world is turning around them. Another feature of this stage is the concept of conservation which means that properties of the object do not change as the forms of the object change. “Piaget believed that both object constancy and conservation mark the beginning of a major advance in cognitive development, one that lasts until the age of 11 or 12.” Preschoolers view death as separation from them. Most children of this age feel grief when they lose somebody but they do not understand the whole concept of death yet. They picture death not as a permanent thing. When playing cops and robbers kids shoot each other with toy guns and the shot one falls imitating death and quickly gets up. By doings this they show their view of death as temporary and partial.

The third stage of cognitive development is concrete operational stage. This stage starts when we are about seven years old. It is when we begin to reason logically. During this stage the magical thinking still exists and the death is viewed as some scary skeleton that is going to kidnap and kill them. Between ages six and ten children think that they can cheat death which shows that they do not understand the universality of death yet. The mature understanding of death starts when children are about ten years old. The fact that the suicide among children of ages from 5 to 14 is present highlights that children do not fully understand the concept of death. Children simply do not see the number of possibilities in the future that is also the reason why the suicide among children happens.

The next and the final stage of Piaget’s cognitive development is formal operational stage. At this stage children obtain a possibility of logical and abstract thinking. By the age of ten we start to understand that death will take part sometime in our bodies, and by understanding this we agree that we will also die some day. The main idea of Piaget’s theory and all his studies is that adults are able to understand death whereas children can not.

According to the psychodynamic point of view, the point when a child starts to realize that he or she will die or another one will die is another facet of the sense of self. Another great scholar Sigmund Freud spent a great deal of time on studying the development of children. He also found out that as a child gets more sophisticated he or she differentiates others from his or herself.

“According to Margaret Mahler’s theory the newborn’s subjective world is initially self-absorbed.” Only by the age of two and a half to three a child achieves a sense of his or her separation from others. The organization of an emotional dimension to the sense of self is called libidinal object constancy. Mahler calls this stage as the psychological birth of an infant. From this point of view infants do not have a formed understanding of death but they emotionally react to the caregiver disappearance.

According to Easson a very young child is a part of the parent –child relationship and that is why the child responds to the feelings of his or her parents. At this age fatally ill children do not realize that they will die soon, therefore they do no get too much upset. They only get upset when they see their caregivers being sad over them. Parents should talk to little kids about death but it is very understandable that no parent wants to do it. Most mothers find it very challenging to talk about particular death of a particular child as probably they can relate such a situation with their own families. It’s a big problem for them and they choose to leave this subject without discussion although I believe that children need to know more about death so that to be better prepared and understanding for their future.

People undergo different stages of development throughout their life, not only in childhood as Freud’s theory states. According to other psychological theorist Erik Erikson believes in life-span developmental psychology which states that people differentiate and become overall different with the new crises and challenges in life. Erikson says that with each new decision people make they become more developed and each subsequent decision in their life would be based in part on that former decision with a previous experience in mind. On the other hand is the previous decision was a wrong one, the decision as to the new task can be held back as people could be afraid of possible outcomes of such decision. They look back and see an unpleasant experience and this makes them think of a bad result in whatever they do. This situation can be observed in everyday life of almost each person.

The scientific proof of those situations can be found in the Erikson’s four stages of infancy and childhood, involving conflicts and challenges. The first stage a child undergoes when he or she interacts in the first years of life with the parents and external environment. In case when “psychological, security, and belongingness needs are generally met”, children become more trusting. Their inner sense of security grows stronger and they acquire a belief for a good future because as they have learned they can predict their environment to some extent. Totally opposite effect the mistrusting feelings have on children. They become anxious and defensive, they have no belief in their future security. I think this first stage of a child’s life is of great importance and it forms his or her comprehension of life as a whole for years to come. The second stage in a child’s development although rather physical has a huge psychological impact on his or her life. In this stage child learns to walk and to hold things, this allows him or her to develop a sense of “doing something independently “, if those attempts fail, child may and probably will feel ashamed and somehow mistreated. I believe in this stage parents should encourage children to try doing things on their own and if something is a challenge help them without being pushy and aggressive. In that way children will feel welcome and cared for rather then rejected by their own parents, in return they will acquire more confidence in what they do in their future life.

Third stage that takes place between the ages of 3 and 6 is the logical continuation of the second stage. When kids get very active they want their parents not to get too involved in their activities. Parents’ role at this time is rather of a spectator, of course to a certain degree. Children have to feel the sense of being taking an initiative themselves and being able to take and resolve new challenges. This again would give them a feeling of ability and self worth, if this doesn’t happened a child will develop a sense of guilt and resentment from the society. Examples of such children are numerous unfortunately and they would have been avoided if parents new about this problem in time. The fourth and the last stage in child’s development according to Erikson lays during the years 6 and 7. This final state means that children have to learn to act like a full grown ups and adjust to the rules and norms of the world of grown ups. I think that at first especially, children may feel lost and very challenged by a quickly changing and difficult world of adults. And of course if children are not on the same page with the rest of their external environment they become stressed and helpless. This causes them to be closed and feel inferior to their peers, which in later years results in poor performance of most tasks they do. Consequently, this fourth stage is so to speak the last chance of a child to be fully accepted by the outside world and to become adjusted to its rules and functioning schemes. On the other side this is the stage when one finally decided if the world is a nice place to be in or a dangerous place and one has to protect himself or herself from any influences from outside.

The feeling of rejection a child may acquire throughout those four stages of development, will most probably result in sense of inferiority as I have already mentioned. It could grow into a very extreme feeling of self hatred and unworthiness, which in turn may lead to suicidal thoughts and even suicide itself. I think that this situation can be prevented by careful observation of such children and by encouraging them to perform whatever they wish by themselves and helping them when really needed. Constant care and advice could do a lot for these children and their psychological problems should never be neglected.

The approach to children’s development on the basis of step-by –step theories are contradicted by a different version called “the humanistic existential perspective”. It claims that children regardless of how many stages they have gone through of years 3 and older have a sense of grief and loss that is formed altogether from what their experiences were, their environment, family bonds, cultural experiences. And some children can comprehend death much earlier than indicated by the Erikson’s theory for instance. Humanistic approach also says that each situation is very individual and everything must be taken into consideration, although children do have a strong emotional reaction to the loss of people they have known.

Another scientist claims her own theory as well. Myra Bluebond-Langner researched the behaviors of dying children in early ages, and came to a conclusion that age-based and stage-based development theories at times are non applicable to children who know that they will dye soon. As her research shows, these children not only feel but also understand that their time on earth is limited and they have to get a lot of things done. They behave as adults already, without undergoing a step-by-step growth like most people do. I think it’s a result of a deep stress that causes them to understand and feel more deeply things that take other people years. Very strong feeling such as fear, loneliness, anxiety, fear, and sadness leads children to such understanding of their own life and probably approaching death. They are exposed to all these negative experiences in the hospitals where they have to go through their medical treatment, where they have to undergo surgeries and other very unpleasant and often painful intrusions. They are losing control over physical abilities and become angry with everything because they are no longer masters of their own bodies. With irritation come sadness because of the loss of their previous abilities. It’s very painful not only for children but for their families, as they have to suffer as much as the ill ones. I think it’s a great trauma for the whole family and leave a deep print in lives of people who had to overcome death of a child.

Dying children as was mentioned earlier become isolated and distanced not only from their friends from school but from their immediate family as well. This happens because of parents often choose to keep silent about true consequences and causes of the illness and thus children become distanced and mistrusting. Adults do not let children talk about a lot of aspect of life such as “their feelings and fears, their hopes and despairs, life and death” (French psychiatrist Ginette Raimbault, pg.162), thus they take away from them whatever fun they could have, especially for a dying child who has lost hope. Only talking about hope could help him or her feel encouraged and not desperate.

Every child is unique regardless in what he or she does, the same is with living and dying. Each child will behave differently and parents have to be ready to be flexible and caring in any case. I think they have to be very patient with dying children not to hurt them even more and encourage them in all they do and feel, let them talk and try to listen them and respond to them in a way they expect. I believe this will make their days on earth more pleasant if there any chance for a pleasant moment in their situation.

So far I was writing about the death of young children and their reaction to their own illness. However, there is also another very important situation which can influence child’s life immensely, it is the death of someone close, a family member, a friend, or pet. The strongest effect of course on a child is death of a parent or a grandparent, which later causes feelings of despair, protest against society and detachment when child becomes uninterested in anyone surrounding him or her. Moreover, grieving children may acquire not only emotional problems but also a number of physical malfunctions. I have to note, however, that children from stable families suffer from parent’s death less then those who were stressed all along by an unstable family.

“Hyperactivity and difficulty controlling emotions” (pg.166) is also normal for children in grief and they should express their feelings how they wish to, it’s normal, although parents have to pay attention to a constant physical problems. If such happen a child needs professional help. Slightly different reactions are observed in children with a loss of as sibling. Birenbaum and Robinson (pg. 167) investigated this question and came to a conclusion that children with dying siblings show more problems living in society than kids from normal families. Also they found out that most children could tolerate less attention to them from parents IF they know what is happening to their brother or sister. Thus, I again come to a conclusion that children have to know the causes of the situation that they are in now, for them to make up their mind as to how to behave. Involving them in this process will let them learn easier how to cope with their grief and to understand death better.

Death of a parent or a sibling is not the only stressful lose that a child can experience. The death of pet is another loss that is not a mere “emotional dress rehearsal” like some people think. It is believe that very young kids do not get too attached to pets and thus do not grieve much, on the contrary children of school age understand the loss and get angry when pets leave them, because they had already established a sort of close relationship with them. For a child it’s an important issue, unfortunately it is not yet profoundly researched, to detect any concrete behavior patterns of children who have lost their pets.

The issues of death as a phenomenon can only be understood deeply by people, no only by children, only when people come to understanding then death is a termination of a physical form of existence. One has to comprehend that their loved ones or even themselves will be separated soon forever, because of death. I think that weather it will be a step-by-step learning or an abrupt experience, it only can be fully understood when it actually happens. After that time has to pass, so that the person can look at it in perspective of years after death, and then, I believe he or she can conclude what death is and how to deal with it.

Jeff Stats
http://www.articlesbase.com/college-and-university-articles/the-understanding-of-death-139948.html