Author Archives: George Gintilas

The Five Checks to do Every Morning

Posted on by
1

Starting your day with a body mindfulness connection makes a huge difference to how well your day flows and how productive you are. The core questions to ask, and areas to check each morning are (in order of importance):

How grounded am I?
That is how well are you earthed to the ground. How solid do your feet feel below you when you get out of bed and start your day?

How centered am I?
Do you feel your center of gravity in, or just under, your belly button? Or is the centre of gravity in your head, where a lot of people have it? Which leads to the next question…

How embodied am I?
That is, how fully in your body do you feel? Are you residing in all of it, or just in parts? Are there parts that feel numb or hollow? Are there parts you don’t feel or can’t feel into? Do you feel a disconnect from the neck down? that is, does your head feel separate from your body?

How connected am I to the present moment?
How much of your awareness is operating in reality right now? How much are you aware of your present moment surroundings, without past and future thought forms and memories interfering?

They are probably the top four questions to ask automatically when you wake up each morning, the top four checks. Once they are handled, you can ask the next question…

How connected am I to the Universe?
Once you are in your body, then check how connected your awareness is to the outside world around you. Your sense of connection to the spirit of all people and living things. This plugs your intuition into the flow of the world.

Do all of the above each morning and you are in for a very productive and fulfilling day!

Connecting Deeper and Lowering Suicide Rates

Posted on by
Reply

I was alarmed by the figures of youth suicide reported in the paper in Melbourne today. 3,128 (aged 15-44) died by suicide in a single year. This is almost three times the amount of deaths from car accidents each year. Every day, there are about 8 suicides and 180 attempts. So that means that there are 68,620 suicide attempts each year. That is a lot of pain and angst that people have within them which they do not know how to resolve and heal in a healthy way.

Such pain points to a massive disconnect within themselves and with those around them. This leads to a lot of trapped emotion in the body. If this build up isn’t released in a healthy way, the pain can reach levels where the only way out logically seems to be to kill oneself.

What’s also concerning is that many times, families and work colleagues do not see it coming. So what can you do?
Internally – a mindfulness practice is critical to connect you within yourself to create an outlet for this trapped emotional pain.
Externally – making more meaningful connections with your loved ones is critical. Don’t always assume they are okay just because they are not saying anything. One way to facilitate this is to ask people you care about meaningful questions and ask them often.

I’ll give some examples here but what is important to note is the state you are in when you ask them. You slow down, become mindful, connect within yourself first, and then ask the questions slowly, with a lot of care and then wait, giving the person a lot of time and space to answer. The person must feel safe to go a little deeper than normal. Going deeper requires more time otherwise you’ll just get a shallow response.

Questions:
What’s been on your mind that you think would be difficult to talk about?
What makes you sad about yourself? Sad about the world?
What do you wish you were able to do better, if it were possible?
What makes you angry about yourself? About the world?
When was the last time you got scared or a big fright?
What scares you about yourself? About the world?

No Exaggerated Benefits

Posted on by
Reply

There are many benefits to Mindfulness Meditation and many more with Body Mindfulness. These benefits are described in many mindfulness books. There are critics that think that Mindfulness is treated as a cure-all and that it is given way too many accolades. They think that this is done because Mindfulness is the new fad and the current in-thing and that this will fade eventually revealing the truth that Mindfulness is not all that it is claimed to be.

I find it myself, when I sit down to right these blogs that I can’t help but describe the many benefits over the years that I and my clients have received with Body Mindfulness based work. There is no exaggeration.

Mindfulness helps in so many areas because it is a fundamental shift in the way of living. It changes the fundamental belief that it is the outside world that is the cause of your problems to, it is the inside programs you created for yourself and are consciously and unconsciously choosing to run, that is the cause of your problems.

This is a massive fundamental shift in the way we have been brought up and what we have been taught in school. Through Mindfulness work, you have amazing access to your insides and all your past and present programs. Never before in recorded history has this been taught at the scale that is happening now on the planet.

You are not a victim to your body’s issues, diseases and your minds habits and problems. Almost all health issues can be traced back to an issue in your mind and body that you have access to, and are able to heal.

Of course saying that this is possible and actually doing it requires a lot of practice. But it is worth it. Your health and stress levels will show the difference over time.

The Art of Achieving a Goal

Posted on by
Reply

One of the ways you can use your Mindfulness practice is to focus on a positive goal that you are wanting to accomplish. How you do this is very important. Visualising an outcome helps reprogram your brain and nervous system to make this happen much easier.

But visualising alone is not enough. You need to be out of your thinking mind and in touch with your body to energise the goal. It takes all parts of your body to be aligned and active to achieve a goal. Especially if it is a new one that you haven’t done before.

If it is new and just out of reach (which is what you want) it can be difficult to visualise it clearly enough and that’s normal. So it requires repetition over and over, correcting and adding more detail each time. That detail should be positive, seeing the end result. It should also feel like you have it now in this present moment. To have that real feeling you need to be in that mindful deep state, in your body.

If you are not in that mindfulness alpha/theta state, then the goal is just a fantasy, a pie in the sky dream that has no legs to stand on. If you don’t take the time to repeatedly feel it throughout your body, nothing is likely to happen.

Pockets of Peace

Posted on by
Reply

Finding pockets of peace throughout your day is a very healthy sign and a release valve for the stresses that come at you all day long. A lot of our diseases and issues stem from such stress.

What is stress? The pressure you feel in your mind and body and the pressure your body feels within itself beyond your awareness, that stretches normal calm functioning beyond the normal limits. Mindfulness meditation helps you to create a release valve for this stress, to briefly step out of the environment that is creating the stress and allow your body time to balance and reset.

The more you work under stressed people or the more stressed people you have in your environment, the more you need to find these pockets of peace throughout the day.

Learning to switch off at will, is a powerful tool to combating the stress that is around you. Prolonged periods of stress are not beneficial to your mind or body. Occasional bursts to achieve a deadline is fine but ongoing, long-term it is lethal.

Learning this important skill to switch off at will throughout the day, even for two minutes, gives you back control of your mind and body. Other types of switching off/release valves can be good too, but switching off the thoughts and feeling into your body are key.

Disconnection from your Body can cause so much Misery

Posted on by
Reply

It never ceases to amaze me when a client has a problem (health/habit/phobia/limitation//trauma/psychological etc), that it can be changed rapidly just by bringing the focus into the body while the head is still trying to work it all out (the old way.)

Some words of wisdom that can save you a lot of time, drama, pain, money and effort….

In my experience, if something isn’t working in your life, chances are you have disconnected from your body and have left your poor head/intellect all on its own to try to work it all out for you.

When this intellect process tries harder – thinking more to try to solve the problem – you begin to create the racing mind phenomenon where your poor brain is overworking (thrashing) for very little result.

The more thoughts you need to solve an issue, the more stressed your system is and badly in need of a tune up. At some point, (when you are finally over it) it becomes time to clean up all the unfinished programs in your head that are still running, clogging up your ability to think in a straight line and doing so within a clear space in your head.

Thankfully body mindfulness offers a big key to be able to do this. And you can do this at home in a body mindfulness meditation practice. My body mindfulness class is designed to help you do this for yourself each day and then more intensely when you need something more focused.

I also recommend giving yourself this mind/body tune up with a therapist each year too, with a number of one-on-one private sessions. This helps to speed things up much more. Of course I practice what I preach and I do this myself every year. It makes a huge difference, as you prune all the old unfinished thoughts and issues still whizzing around in your head taking up unnecessary space and energy.

So why don’t people do this more often? One of the biggest reasons is that they think there isn’t a problem until they go inside and find just what is still running in there, subconsciously. That can be a bit of a shock to realise how much of your effort internally is inefficient and clogged with unfinished traumas which you thought you had resolved.

So I have learned over the years to never wait for a problem to surface. I do the work regularly and clear it out before it becomes a problem. You will always find things lurking in your subconscious that are building and are problems in waiting. So do this practice for yourself regularly, ideally daily, and have a series of sessions regularly each year for the deeper stuff. Do it no matter what and you will notice a big difference.

Your life will run smoother, you will feel more in the flow and present. Drama drops off. Your health improves. You age slower and you think with more peace in your head as the thrashing of your thinking clears.

Your Mobile Computer Phone and your Racing Mind

Posted on by
Reply

Body mindfulness is a great antidote to the racing mind and the constant presence of the smart phone. We first called them mobile phones (cell phones), then smart phones, but what they really are now is mobile computers that can take phone calls. A lot of our contact is not done by voice calls as much anymore. So you are carrying around a computer in your pocket which is always-on and always with you, probably 24/7. The intellect loves interacting with this device, and it represents the outward manifestation of the racing over used mind.

When we use this device we go into our head and our body goes on hold. There is little movement in your body and you are probably breathing very little (unless you are dealing with something very emotional or exercising at the time). You cut off your conscious awareness of your body to use this device. If this is overdone, it can create health problems, relationship problems as well as feeling lost in your head.

When your body is divorced from the decisions you make in your head you lose a lot of intelligence, creativity, you add stress to your thinking process, (so it takes longer to see things clearly) and so you lower your ability to make smart decisions.

Staying in constant contact with your body is crucial to better health and better decision making.

The mobile computer works fast, requiring you to think fast to keep up with it. Connecting with your body is slow, forcing you to slow down and take more care of the present moment. But what may seem slow is actually very fast and efficient in the long term and you get there with much less drama, less waste of energy/resources (less dead ends, less of the long way around to get there) and arrive healthier and happier along the right path for you.

Lost Connections leads to Depression

Posted on by
Reply

The last class for 2018 is running tomorrow night. The Mindfulness classes will resume again on Tuesday Jan 15th 2019. So a shorter break than other years. 2019 will make it 9 consecutive years running of this class and as is tradition, the first class will be free for whoever books in until full.

I’m reading (technically listening to) a great book titled Lost Connections by Johann Hari. Where he covers the real causes of depression in most people. And the research all points to lost connections. For example, we have lost connections with:
* People – today we have fewer friends we can confide in,
* Work – more people doing less meaningful work,
* Childhood Trauma – people are not taking the time to go within and complete their past trauma to reconnect with themselves,
* Natural World – we are losing the natural organic rhythms of nature that we use to have centuries ago.

I recommend this book highly. It’s a damning indictment on trying to solve depression with prescription drugs.

A Body Mindfulness meditative practice helps you to reconnect with your real self. I’ve found that when you reconnect to yourself within – your body – you then naturally want to reconnect to other (better) people, spend more time in nature, do more meaningful work, eat better etc.

Coming home and reconnecting to you is the first biggest crucial step to eradicating depression. And this time of year is when it usually hits the hardest. I will be on leave for 2.5 weeks from Dec 21st (returning Jan 7th 2019) but I will still be able to see some people for individual sessions (in person or from anywhere in the world over Skype/Zoom) should you really need help with that inner connection over the Xmas/New Year break.

If the body is not at peace the mind is not at peace

Posted on by
Reply

If the body is not at peace the mind is not at peace.

Your body has a very big influence on your mind. More than what most people realise. A lot of it is subconscious, below the level of your awareness. With body mindfulness work you can access more of this deeper awareness, bring it into light and help it release.

When you go deeper what often arises is repressed buried emotions, feelings that are unresolved, unfinished. These unfinished feelings are there because you couldn’t deal with them at the time. So your mind labels them out of bounds, they become a no-go zone in your body. This no-go zone creates a stress in your body in its attempt to keep them locked away. Over time if they are not released they turn into physical pain, and longer term, become chronic pain.

So much of our chronic pain in our bodies are actually repressed emotions.

Release the emotion and the physical pain disappears. The majority of the medical community will still not acknowledge this proven fact and it doesn’t matter, as long as you believe it and do the work to access and release.

I’ve seen this happen time and time again in my private practice. And of course I’ve experienced it in myself too, over and over again.

I highly recommend reading Dr John E Sarno’s books. A good one is Healing Back Pain – The Mind Body Connection.

Take time to put ‘on’ your body

Posted on by
Reply

We take time to put on our clothes each morning. We should also take time to put on our body.

Try not to leave home in the morning without getting into your body first. Body Mindfulness work helps you to do this. Taking a few minutes minimum everyday to actually feel into your body can make a big difference to the quality of your day and mind.

You need to settle into your body like you are putting on your clothes. As you get in, you will feel what parts are comfortable to feel into and what parts are not. What parts need more attention, what parts are numb, what parts are stiff or flexible etc.

You are basically linking your awareness/spirit to your thinking mind and body.

When you don’t do this, you are more likely to have unfinished programs from the day before still running, clouding your mind and stressing your body. Especially the ones that run on automatic pilot because you haven’t paid them enough attention to realise they need switching off.

This is an over stressed way to live each day and it doesn’t have to be that way.