Tag Archive 'emotion'

Oct 29 2008

Profile Image of Linda Binns
Linda Binns

Improve Your Romance with Feng Shui

Filed under Feng Shui

Romance is in the air - especially during the month of February. But for many people, romantic relationships seem unattainable or current love connections lack the sparks they once created. Feng Shui, the ancient art of object placement to enhance energy flow through a space, is gain-ing attention as a powerful tool for improving all kinds of relationships.

“Feng Shui can make a marked difference in people’s lives,” says Linda Binns, founder of the Feng Shui Success Institute and author of Feng Shui for Your Relationships: Changing Your Envi-ronment to Create Better Relationships. “But before you start moving things around or making changes to your environment, it’s important to clarify exactly what you want to change.”

Binns notes that this process, which she calls “setting your intention,” is a crucial first step that will guide your subsequent actions. ” Perhaps you want to strengthen or rekindle the flame of an existing relationship. Perhaps you want to attract an exciting new romantic partner to your life. Perhaps you want to find a life partner with which to share the future. While there can be a variety of issues or scenarios, it is important to begin by considering your current situation and recognizing what you would like to change.”

After setting a clear intention, Binns recommends a variety of actions that can enhance the flow of positive energy in the home, creating a more conducive environment in which to achieve your desires. A few of her basic tips include:

  • To symbolize a close relationship, it is important to position decorative items in pairs. For in-stance, display a painting of a couple, place two ornaments together, or hang two pictures that form a set. Two flowers in a vase or two stuffed animals beside one another are other examples of pairs that you can place in your environment.
  • If you already have a partner whom you wish to become closer to, it is important to display photos that feature you as a couple. Pictures of you with your partner and other individuals, whether family or friends, symbolize your propensity to give up time as a couple in order to become part of a larger group.
  • Clutter and other distractions in the bedroom, such as exercise equipment, a television, work-related items or a computer, serves to bring unwanted distractions into your relationship. Your bedroom should be a sanctuary that feels romantic and invites you to spend time with your loved one.
  • Make sure that the side of your bed is not against a wall because this position symbolizes only one way in and out of the bed and indicates that there is room for only one person.
  • When you make your bed, keep it relatively uncluttered and create a space that will easily accommodate a couple.
  • Master bedrooms ideally feature warm, soothing colors, such as cream, taupe, cocoa, or shades with a red or pink base. Such warm bedroom colors represent warm, close relationships.
  • When you remove clutter, don’t move anything to a storage box under your bed. People store all kinds of things under the bed - fire extinguishers, ladders, guns, papers, books, exercise equipment and more. Remember that, based on the principles of Feng Shui, energy should freely flow throughout a space, including under the bed.
  • Large bedrooms should feature cozy, intimate nooks, such as sitting areas. Again, creating an intimate space reflects an intimate relationship.

Binns says that these are among the basic steps that help set the stage for romance. She details these and other strategies in her new book and offers specific guidelines on which portions of a home are especially important when seeking to create or improve various types of relationships.

“Let’s face it, our relationships do not always go as smoothly as we would like,” she says. “Whether we’re dealing with our partner, children, coworkers, friends or even mailman, our interactions with others can be tricky. As we struggle to make things work, often spending con-siderable time and emotional energy to figure out why certain relationships seem so difficult, many people fail to look at their environment as a factor in the way they manifest their lives. Yet for those who become familiar with the principles and practice of Feng Shui, the results can be remarkable.”

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Sep 30 2008

Profile Image of Randolph Fabian Directo
Randolph Fabian Directo

Meditation Guide: How To Meditate On Self Control

Filed under Meditation

  • How to relax and focus instantly in any situation
  • Natural deep breathing opens your higher consciousness
  • Remain cool and calm in any crisis
  • Simple step by step guide

I’ve listened to a lot of people concerning meditation. First, let’s recognize that there are all kinds of meditation. The problem that I’ve encountered is that people have trouble getting into meditation and staying with it because they don’t know how to take the benefits with them. This guide is meant to help you meditate for instant self control and focus in any situation.

Your Head Knowledge: Intention

When you exercise, the results you want are to be healthier, shapelier, and stronger. When you eat right, the results you want are to be healthier with the necessary fuel reserves for all your strenuous activities. Altogether, these activities make you resistant to aging while helping you to concentrate, perform, and think better.

The actual purpose of meditation is to focus all of your energy, experience, and learning that you’ve gathered towards your specific intention. Every kind of meditation should provide you with specific intention – or at least it should.

For example, in martial arts chi kung meditation, we build bioenergy (Chi) in our outer extremities through exercise. In martial arts meditation, we take that bioenergy and channel the circulation through the energy vessels through focused intent.

In turn, our meridians become energized and can be used for even more focused martial arts practice. As you see, “forging our bodies in the fire of our spirits” is not just Chinese Folklore; through this feedback mechanism of exercise and meditation, this is what really happens.

Intention: the key to Meditation

There are all kinds of meditations for raising the consciousness to shape reality like the Kabbalah and remote viewing/influencing. Other esoteric meditations like Transcendental Meditation help the practitioners become “siddhis” or accomplished ones, so they accomplish the focused intent of invisibility, levitation or infinite strength, etc.

There are mainstream kinds that raise the consciousness for remote healing like Emotional Freedom Techniques (which takes advantage of the higher guage symmetry of the energy meridians as in chi kung).

All kinds of fascinating things can be accomplished by raising the consciousness. The most common thread between all of them is focused intention. You can go to all the fancy meditation retreats and take all the classes, but what will you take with you once you return to the real world? How will that experience serve you in real life?

Let’s face the facts: Those more advanced accomplishments take time, something you feel you may not have. From what I’ve experienced, most people just want to take a few meditation or yoga classes here and there when they have time on a vacation, then they hope that experience will somehow provide the control that they need when taking on a chaotic world with so much crisis at hand. Most of the time, that meditation retreat becomes nothing more than a beautiful memory.

I believe you want more than that.

Your Heart Knowledge: How to program yourself to relax

Different schools of meditation all have different methods of keying the relaxation response. Some experts advise that you find a quiet, comfortable place at a certain time of the day as you touch your fingers together in a certain way.

What they’re all trying to do is get you into a routine of trained autonomic relaxation, but it’s just not practical if they don’t tell you how to take that experience with you wherever you go. What if you’re in a noisy, uncomfortable place and your hands are full at rush hour, but you need to maintain calm, collected focus to find your way through busy traffic - then suddenly there’s a crash in front of you?

Not to worry: There is a common set of autonomic relaxation responses that most people have forgotten. Because part of our culture is based on stress, we’ve been trained away from our natural abilities since grade school.

Let’s face a discouraging fact: There are no academic requirements for relaxation and focused concentration classes to deal with stress in school or life in general, yet academic officials expect kids to “deal with it” (by taking drugs).

The following set of relaxation responses are keyed through natural, deep breaths towards the diaphragm or solar plexus. Here’s how to easily slide into relaxation mode:

1. Breathe deeply and naturally.

Remember to take deep, natural, slow breaths only through your nose towards the solar (celiac) plexus as you perform each relaxation response. Your nose is your natural filter to pollutants. Remember to breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Feel your breath being drawn deep into your lungs by your stomach muscles and diaphragm.

Your deep breathing keys all of the responses, so they all fall into place. By training these responses you learn to relax automatically.

The solar plexus is the bundle of nerves that cause people the most trouble when trying to relax because they breathe incorrectly, so they have shallow breathes or hyperventilate. When you breathe deeply and naturally using your stomach muscles, the solar (celiac) plexus becomes your ally in maintaining control.

Even if your stomach muscles tense up in a “fight or flight” situation, you’re still using them to breathe correctly and act accordingly.

2. Hold your back in an upright posture.

Standing or sitting in this position helps keep you aware and awake during your relaxation, so you create control over your autonomic responses. If you must lay down, you can use a pillow under your back to hold a naturally straight posture. (Preferably, this exercise should be done in an upright position.) Breathe deeply and naturally.

3. Relax your shoulders.

The first thing I see people do when asking them to hold an upright posture is that they tense their shoulders. Relax your shoulders in order to relax the brachial plexus on both sides of your neck. Tension in the shoulders leads to tension in the neck, then tension in the head which leads to stress ailments like headaches and dizziness. Make the bundle of nerves around your neck relax, and they will help you relax. Breathe deeply and naturally.

4. Hold your head up, loosely.

Feel as if your head is supported by a string from above. Your head is upright, but feels free as if it is floating. This response allows enhanced, circulation of fluids and subtle energies going to and from your head. Breathe deeply and naturally.

5. Relax your vision.

Relax your focus as if gazing blankly along a distant horizon of the ocean. Breathe deeply and naturally.

6. Relax your jaw.

Allow your jaw to relax by letting it drop slightly. Coupled with steps 4 and 5 above, these actions relax cranial nerves 1 to 5 which allow your neural patterns to slow down, thus allowing you to further relax. Breathe deeply and naturally.

7. Place the tip of your tongue gently against the roof of your mouth.

The tongue should be relaxed, but not touching the teeth. The relaxed tip of the tongue should be on or near the center of the palate (between soft and hard palates). This action is easier when the jaw is slightly dropped, another reason for step 6. Breathe deeply and naturally.

According to Chinese chi kung theory: “..when the tongue touches the roof of the mouth cavity, yin and yang vessels (yin in front, yang in back) are connected and the (chi circulation) circuit is complete. This tongue touch is called ‘Da Chiao’ or building the bridge. The tongue acts like a switch in an electrical circuit…” (”Nei Dan,” Ch. 3, p. 48, Chi Kung Health and Martial Arts by Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming.)

You may say that you’re not into chi kung meditation, so why do step 7? In fact, this is a natural, albeit, subconscious response by everyone throughout the day; we’ve all known since birth to “complete the circuit” in this manner, but a stressful culture trains unnecessary stretching and and tensing of the tongue and surrounding oral muscles which causes chi stagnation. This can lead to chronic physical and mental ailments.

In Chinese Medical Chi Kung theory, your tongue is an extension of your heart. When you relax your tongue, you relax your heart. Breathe deeply and naturally.

Your Deep Breathing is Key

Remember, your deep breathing keys all of the relaxation responses at once. All you’re doing is putting back all the natural autonomic functions that stressful culture took away from you. Once you have correctly trained steps 1 – 7 above, one deep breathe is all it should take activate all of the above relaxation responses, so “all of the pieces fall into place” immediately.

I imagine that you may have already mastered all of your relaxation responses. Since you were born with them, all you’re doing is “remastering” them. Now, you know how to take the benefits of meditation with you to any situation to meet the challenge of a chaotic world with no trouble…

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Jan 18 2008

Profile Image of Debi Silber
Debi Silber

Seven Tips to Become a More Positive Thinker

Filed under Positive Thinking

Have you ever noticed how good things happen to good people? There’s no mistake here. These people didn’t just “get lucky” but instead were proactive within their lives as opposed to simply reacting to things as they occur. They created the experiences they have beginning with the thoughts they think. How does this work?

Positive thoughts lead to positive feelings. These feelings lead to positive emotions. These emotions then promote positive behaviors. Finally, the positive behavior creates positive outcomes. In applying these steps to a real example, it may look something like this.

Let’s say you’re thinking about how nice it will be to spend some quality time with someone you love. Just thinking about the time you’ll spend makes you feel good. Maybe you’re feeling content, loved and happy. Those feelings lead to positive emotions such as love or joy. When you’re experiencing emotions such as love or joy, you’re more inclined to behave in a way which is in line with those feelings. Maybe you’re more supportive, loving or compassionate as a result. Because you’re more supportive or compassionate, you have more to give and behave in a manner which is conducive to showing your compassion. You may be more inclined to say or do something nice to someone, simply because you feel good.

Your random act of kindness (whether through words or deeds) may just be what the person on the other end needed. Maybe they were having a difficult day and your kind word or gesture enabled them to gain a better perspective and turn their day around. The immediate outcome may be that you’ve helped another person smile, feel valued or appreciated. The more extended outcome is that they now experience more positive thoughts which then turn it into a feeling, emotion, behavior and the cycle continues.

This entire scenario all came from just one of your positive thoughts! We have millions of thoughts throughout the course of a typical day. If more of them were positive, can you see how powerful this can be?

So if becoming a more positive thinker is on your to-do list, here are a few simple ways to begin.

1. Retrain your negative thoughts. For every negative thought you have, counter it with something positive. For example, “I’m so fat” can be countered with “I’m making healthy changes every day.”

2. Show gratitude. Here’s where you acknowledge, validate and appreciate all that you have. You recognize how blessed you are and show appreciation for all that you have and see.

3. Read positive quotes/books. Get ideas and inspiration from gurus, teachers and mentors. Learn how others create a positive outlook and get ideas from them. Also, learning from others can show you how they’ve managed difficult situations. It’s a great way to learn how they’ve turned obstacles into opportunities and used adversity as a learning tool or stepping stone to achieve something better.

4. Surround yourself with positive people. Just as how laughter is infectious, the positive thoughts, emotions and feelings from others can be infectious too. Besides being more positive, these people are also much more pleasant to be around.

5. Believe. Believe you can be a more positive thinker. You will or won’t become a more positive thinker based on your belief that you can or can’t.

6. Laugh. Not only does laughter feel good, but it’s good for your health. Studies show that laughter promotes the release of “feel good” chemicals within your body which helps to strengthen the immune system. What a funny reason to lighten up!

7. Control your thoughts. While you can’t control many things, you can always control your reaction to them. That means that an unfortunate situation can be either a minor bump in the road or a complete devastation…it’s up to you.

This holiday season, there will be many opportunities to become angry and upset or enlightened and enriched. The choice is always yours but as long as you do have a choice, why not choose to become a more positive thinker. By helping yourself you never know just how many other lives you may touch as a result.

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