Meditation: Guide to Joyful Living

 

Meditation, Mindfulness, Guided Visualization. 

What do they all have in common?  They are essentially the same thing, an easily learned technique to downshift your brain action from the active Beta, to relaxed Alpha and finally – with some practice – the insightful meditative state of Theta. (Delta will be deep sleep, which is critical for immunity restoration.)

Brain Waves Defined

The best way to learn and practice meditation is to find a class, a group.  Not only is it easier to to learn with someone showing you the way, but the power of group meditation is awesome. It is usually easier to dial down to the light trance state of meditation. But if you don’t have the luxury of a local group, no worries!  Check out my new book Meditation: Guide to Joyful Living. Click here  to order your copy at Amazon.  It is the perfect compliment to assist in your quest to find joyful space in your life.
But for now, we’ll go through the basic steps to a simple meditation. All that is required is your desire, a quiet place and the focus of your mind.
Expectations:  The first thing to understand is that meditation may feel a little like daydreaming.  Don’t expect to fall into a deep trance state, although it may happen.  It is more likely that you will struggle with your mind playing hamster on a wheel, or a persistent to-do list.  Gently push those thoughts down and offer a quiet thanks. Concentrate on breathing deeply through your nose. Set a timer for 20 minutes or so, which will release that nagging from the back of your mind.
You might want to work on a particular issue with your meditation: find an answer to a question, a direction, or scan your body for healing, or simply de-stress. These are just ideas.

Meditation: The Basic Steps:

• Set your intention.
• Sit quietly, breath deeply.
• Count down to allow your mind to shift.  I use 21, but you can experiment.
• Allow emptiness to fill you – that is an oxymoron!
• If images or messages come, just let them. Try not to manipulate the experience. Manipulation will pull you back out of the trance state.
• When your timer goes off, count back up or reverse whatever process you used to shift states.
• Write down your experiences.

  

  Transmute Hurt into Joyfulness in your life.

Add a 20 minute meditation practice to your life to connect the dots of duty and pleasure and peace.

Copyright©2016BethSteeve

Do I Have To Go Again?

 When would you like to 

come back?  

It's the usual question after a treatment, it seems.  So you think:
"If acupressure works, why do I have to keep getting treatments"
I am asked this question in one form or another over and over.

The answer is complicated.

First of all: Your body didn't just break in one day - unless you were involved in an accident.  Health issues are an accumulation of little breaks that keep building until the dam breaks and you have a "disease." 

Sometimes one treatment is all that is really needed.  Children with stomach upsets, sprains and the like usually only come once.  Children's bodies aren't as "calcified" as adults, they are still growing, changing, shifting. A "disharmony" unravels back to "harmony" much more quickly.

A teenager came to me with migraines. She'd been suffering for several years, and had been through all the tests they doctors could think to give with no results. She was referred to me and I cautioned her mother she might need to come for several visits. During the initial session, I could feel her unwinding and relaxing.  I told her mom that she would likely not need to come back. Her headaches did retreat, and I saw her irregularly over the next two years. I showed her some techniques to do as self-help, deep breathing and visualization techniques that she embraced and used as needed. Then she went happily away to college and on with her life.

But we want to talk to about why 1 treatment doesn't always "fix it."  The short answer is that it took a long time for your body to get where it is. It takes some time for it to "unlearn" the disharmonious pattern.  And your successful recovery is greatly helped by doing self-help work, and making lifestyle changes that contribute to the disharmony in the first place.  If you have constant coughs, chest congestion and you smoke, you need to quit smoking so the body can begin to heal. The value of the therapy increases exponentially.

 4 Steps to A Successful Alternative Therapy Outcome:

1. Search for a Therapy that you can afford -  and can commit to -  long term.  Persistence is a major part of the success of alternative therapies, any alternative therapy.  
2. Evaluate your condition to create a benchmark:  take pictures and use a questionaire that you can retake at intervals. Healing is a subtle process, if you don't have a benchmark, you will not appreciate your gains.
3. Do self-help:  either as primary mode, or as support for your practitioner.  Not only does it save you money, you can do it at home, on vacation, when you need a pick-me-up. Finding a therapy that you can do yourself, and doing it on a regular schedule is the key.  Classes are an excellent way to learn proper technique.
4. Persistence: Doing it when it doesn't seem that anything is happening is critical. You are helping your body heal itself. It takes time, and it takes commitment to your overall health.   Just keep doing it.  Periodically review your benchmark questionaire.
5. See a practitioner periodically for encouragement, and to maintain your stamina. It also gives your system a boost when you've temporarily plateaued. 

Acupressure: Power in Simplicity

 If you have a nagging ache, hurt or just feel exhausted and worn out - call now for an acupressure session.   Mention this article and get the first session free!   

What is the biggest hurdle a practitioner of any of the 'touch' therapies has to jump?    How something so simple, so painless, so...... nothing.... can work.    But it does.   Even if a person doesn't feel that 'frisson' running down a leg or tingling in the toes or fingers, it is still working. 

Meridian Channels

The younger you are - yes, there is a prejudice to age in acupressure as in many things - the faster symptoms reverse themselves.   The reason is simple, younger cells react quicker than older cells on the average.   So younger people often feel "healed" in one session, while older, more chronic conditions often take more time.   By the same rule, a condition that is very new will often correct in only one treatment, or just two - even in an older person.    The lesson being - call in the early stages of symptoms and they will often clear immediately.

But getting back on track:    how can something - that feels like nothing - work?!

Acupressure is one of the foundations of Traditional Chinese Medicine, an over 5000 year old healing tradition.   It works by increasing circulation to areas of the body that have become congested, or stagnated, and the circulation compromised. 

 This can happen many different ways - injury or by the slow deterioration of circulation because of improper nutrition, lack of exercise or stress.   All have been documented as causes in chronic ailments.   Acupressure, acupuncture and many other bodywork therapies have been documented to be very beneficial for chronic health issues as well as acute ones.   Simplistically, it works by connected the dots (acupoint) along the meridian lines.  

Boulder, CO, Study Supports Acupressure in Treatment of Stroke

I have rarely found significant acupressure studies in medical literature.   I am excited to share a recent study done in Boulder, CO, using not just acupressure, but specifically Jin Shin – my specialty – in the treatment of stroke.    The testing was done with Jin Shin treatments and ‘placebo’ treatments to determine the effect on the Autonomic Nervous System.   The Autonomic Nervous System controls the breathing, heart function and is indicated in stress reduction.   The Sympathetic Nervous System is activated by stress and increases the functions of the heart, respirations, etc.   By increasing the effect on the ANS, the SNS is decreased, in other words – this treatment reduces the stressors that increase wear and tear on the heart and the vascular system.   These are also the systems that are often damaged in cases of stroke. 

The most interesting fact to be learned from this study was not that it helped – but that it didn’t help that much until after the 4^th treatment.   This study was conducted over 8 weeks, so for the first 4 weeks, there was no significant change.   I do not personally see this in my sessions, but we are not marking respiration, blood pressure, etc. as they were in this trial.   My stroke clients (not uncommon in any client) report feeling more relaxed, have better flexibility which improves gate, and generally sleep better.   None of these issues were part of the study and, therefore, were not reported. 

Here is an excerpt of the report which was authored by KL McFadden and TD Hernandez and printed in Complementary Therapies in Medicine (Feb. 2010.)

“Cardiovascular Benefits of Acupressure (Jin Shin) Following Stroke”