Category Archives: Mind Body Connection

Freeing your Covid19 Lockdown Trauma

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The previous post focused with a trauma lens on the effects of a lockdown to your health. It can be very traumatic. In this post we look at what to do to undo those effects, even during a lockdown.

As you feel the stress in your body build, some of it can turn into a traumatic response. Freeing the trauma response as soon as possible is ideal. So what can you do? You can’t think it away, it’s not a prefrontal cortex (cerebrum) problem.

Answer: You have to move and feel it away.

Freeing the Fight response – Boxing bag, Pillow Fights, Weights, Gym, Kicking, Martial arts, Tai Chi, Competitive Sport.

Freeing the Flight response – Walking, Jogging, Running, Trampoline, Rebounder, Up/Down Stairs, Swimming.

Freeing the Freeze response – Meditation, Bubble Bath, Long Shower, More Relationship contact, Animals, Hugs/Cuddles, Heavier blankets, Massage, Play, Dancing. Stretches, Singing, Music. Reading, Gardening, Journaling, Being in Nature, More Sunshine.

Notice there is nothing on this list about watching more TV, playing video games, eating more, drinking more, working more, shopping, drugs, smoking. These are avoidance techniques that create addictions. They provide an initial brief relief, but cause more problems longer term.

Anything that doesn’t acknowledge the trauma in your body and offer a healthy outlet, only builds the pressure inside your body, making it worse later. Keeping your mind and body in limbo, is dangerous to your long term physical and mental health.

In fact it is important to make sure you are covering all these aspects at some point on an ongoing regular basis, Covid or no Covid, and even more so, if you have been traumatised in the past.

So how do you know which activities on the list above to do first? Enter your mindfulness meditation. Close your eyes, go down and connect in, wait and your body will tell you what it needs to do next.

The more you can let go (of that thinking brain), the more you will know (from your body.)

Body Mindfulness – Your Everyday Active State

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“Mindfulness in Action – This is something to be practiced throughout the day, rather than just for 10 minutes.”

Leah Weiss – Stanford University’s Compassion Cultivation Program

Mindfulness in action. This is a good term. When you do a mindfulness meditation practice regularly, eventually what begins to happen, is that the inner focus you have while your eyes are closed transfers to your waking active state and for longer and longer periods, before the day and your intellect take over once again.

The ultimate aim of meditation is to have that inner calm connected aware state throughout your day. No matter what you are doing – doing it, in a mindful present state is much more productive and enriching than rushing through and/or over thinking everything.

It is not very enjoyable to live the moment in a rushed over thinking state. It is probably why people are doing whatever it is quickly, in order to get to that state that they long for, all the while missing it, in this present moment now.

As I emphasis in every mindfulness class – you are already perfect inside. That perfection, still, alive, loving, free self is already there within you. Closing our eyes and focusing within for long periods, help to get glimpses of this and helps to have those glimpses shine throughout your day in your daily actions.

The Stress and Trauma of Modern Times

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“Mindfulness involves paying attention to something, in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally….You actually have to tell your brain that is your intention. It won’t know what you’re doing, and it will priorities its activities based on your emotions or your mental energy or your physical needs.”

Stan Rodski, The Neuroscience of Mindfulness, (2019)

Another good book released earlier this year on mindfulness. A psychologist/cognitive neuroscientist, talks about the basics of mindfulness.

Unless you take control of your thinking mind, it will run you. Your conscious awareness needs to direct your thinking mind to stop. It doesn’t need to stop for long to de stress your over cluttered thinking thoughts. But stop it must.

Without conscious attention to stopping, your brain will run on auto-pilot and continue to rehash all the unresolved traumatic events of your past.

This fast paced period of time in our history is stressing your fight/flight emergency system out. Most of our stress is from past traumas where our nervous system has not fully come down from the high alert state, created by one event or the high level of continued pressure from many events, in our current environment.

TV news is traumatic to your body. Video and satellite crosses and instant transfer of bad news from any part of the globe was never there one hundred years ago. Now it is on tap, through TV, social media, radio, newspapers etc. And your body responds as if it is a secondary traumatic event happening to you now.

Witnessing a traumatic event can be just as traumatic to your body as actually being in the event.

So it is very important to consciously each day have the awareness to switch off and stop at some point, or at a number of points.

De stressing daily is vital to your health.

Taking real control of your health

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“In a meditative state of mind, we can become aware that we are not a body, but rather limitless, non-local awareness animating or residing as a body. Resting in the spacious flow of loving awareness – which some call God – we discover that we already have, right now within us, everything we could possibly be looking for.”

Russell Targ, Limitless Mind, (2004)

How is it that you can be deeply aware of your body in a meditative mindful state? What part of you is watching the different parts of your body? How is it that you can focus on a big toe and feel it from the inside and then easily switch to another part of your body, say a shoulder and, accurately feel what is happening in there?

You can say the brain is receiving signals through the nervous system which the brain then interprets as a sensation. But who receives that information? Where are you in the physical body? Where is this awareness that knows the sensations?

This is the age old question. You’ve probably heard it before, that no surgeon when cutting open a body and looking inside, has yet to find the seat of awareness. And that’s because it isn’t material matter. It is another form of matter, one which (compared to physical matter) is invisible and formless.

How can something be invisible and formless? Microwaves are, X-rays are, Radio waves are, TV broadcasts are, Wifi signals are, sun rays are, electromagnetic waves are, and on the list goes.

We use different machines to receive and read those invisible waves. We use a body mindfulness meditation practice to contact and feel your real invisible aware self, throughout your body and even beyond, outside of your body.

This invisible awareness – the real deeper you – has access to your whole body. So you can visit any part, diseased or healthy and work on repairing it. Work on healing the trauma that damaged the part. You are that powerful. That ability is already there within you.

How much of this real aware you you have access to, shows up in the history and health of your body. Your body is always a walking history of how conscious you are. How embodied and at home the real you is in your body. The more ‘ín’ your body you are, the healthier and more vibrant it will look, feel and be.

One of the most healthy beneficial practices you can do each morning (or any time during the day) is to stop, close your eyes and check in with yourself, and ask the question – how much of me is in my body now? 10%?, 40%?, 60%?

The higher the percentage, the more effective you will be and the more healthier your body will function. There will be fewer parts out lost on their own without proper direction. Fewer parts clashing with one another and fewer parts accumulating more damage.

So scan your body with this non-local, non-material awareness and find areas that you have neglected, breathe into them, reclaim them and allow them to reconnect to your entire body. If there is a lot to clean up, this won’t always initially be a pleasant experience. But it will be worth it.

This to me is the real meaning of the term ‘ taking control of your health.’

HEAL Documentary

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“Your body loves you, it loves you unconditionally, and it’s not letting you down. Have patience and have compassion. Take one day at a time, you’re going to get there. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been sick, you can heal, and always remember that, and never forget it.”

Anthony Williams from the movie documentary, HEAL (2017)

I just finished watching a very good documentary on alternative health titled HEAL. It was released in 2017 and can be currently viewed on Netflix or Youtube (for a fee).

This documentary is very aligned with my experience in my 30 years of private practice with how we heal and why that is. It is an exciting time to be in the health industry as more and more people begin to discover how to really heal themselves.

Doing a mindfulness practice is one of the central components to deep permanent healing of issues and diseases that we once thought needed constant medication (with side effects) just to keep in check.

The power of your (1) inner belief system and (2) your past traumas, are affecting your health way much more than you probably ever realised. By deeply facing past physical trauma and past emotional trauma you can heal a whole battery of illnesses that before were confined to the medical doctors office, medications and hospitals.

Learning to go deeper within your body and mind is one of the biggest roads to better health. Take time to continually learn the language of your body and mind. You have the ability to access it more than ever before. The medical model teaches you to keep it separate from you. But it is not separate from you, unless you deliberately ignore it, which most people have done in the past.

Connecting back with your body gives you aces to deep power to transform and heal any illness. The HEAL documentary is a great step forward in opening up to a deeper real long lasting healthier life.

View the HEAL trailer here:

Getting Present through your Body

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“As a path to mindfulness, body awareness offers a natural route. This is because, at its core, mindfulness is about living with greater presence, which is a natural state for our bodies, which are moving in the here and now. It is only our thoughts that can drift off into the past or the future.”

(Noa Belling, The Mindful Body, 2018)

Mindfulness is about being fully aware of what is happening in this very moment. As Noa says, the body is one of the best vehicles for doing this. When you look or feel into your body you are noticing what is happening right now in this moment. Your body will also show and feel the history you haven’t let go of from the past, but it will do all that right now in this moment.

If you can observe your body without judgment, analysis or a story, and just feel what’s there right now this moment, you will deepen your capacity to free the load of the past and the worry about the future. This reality check with your body as it is now can help to break the old cycles and programs in your mind that are at the cause of much stress, strain, disease and malfunction.

So what are you noticing in your body right now?

Stop reading right now and just feel down and in – for say 30 seconds or more.

(Pause)……..

What are you noticing in your body now? Feel and tell the truth to yourself……..

Face a bit of what’s there…….

Accept it right now…….

Be with it – right now…….

And watch what happens. What moves by itself?

Keep breathing and allow more of the repair of your body and mind.

Allowing the Left Brain to serve the Right Brain

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“what the left hemisphere can offer must be used in service of what the right hemisphere knows and sees, not the other way round. This is as important in the case of science as in that of imagination, in the case of reason as in that of intuition. The left hemisphere is a wonderful servant, but a very poor master.”

(Iain McGilchrist, The Master and his Emissary, 2nd Ed, 2019)

A lot has been accepted about the differences between our right brain and left brain and what each specialises in. Iain (whose above book has sold over 100,000 copies) has researched the differences of each hemisphere in a long (10 years+) detailed study and has concluded both hemispheres do about the same work. What we thought only happened in one hemisphere actually also happens in the other.

For example both hemispheres will work a math problem, not just the left brain alone as previously thought. The difference is in how they work the problem. The input of both is the ideal and best way to reach a quality best outcome.

However in the Western world and recent history the two brains have clashed with the left brain winning for the most part. Only that this winning isn’t a win at all. It has been the loss of the importance of the right brain function and what it provides to a situation and our daily life.

The left brain needs to scale back and allow more of the input and processing wisdom of the right brain.

The left brain must serve the right brain more, not dominate it as it has done for centuries.

A lot of our intellect dominance sits in the left brain. With mindfulness meditation and more focus on the body, the right brain can be allowed to input more, influence and provide intelligence which the left brain can incorporate in it’s thinking and reasoning. This is vital for a healthy and vibrant culture and society.

Your body – the door way to greater health

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“The remnants of pain left behind by every strong negative emotion that is not fully faced, accepted and then let go of, join together to form an energy field that lives in the very cells of your body.”

(Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, 2005)

Last week I quoted from Eckhart’s book that preceded The Power of Now. This week the quote is from the book that followed The Power of Now.

Everyone will have events in their lives where there are strong negative emotions that are hard to deal with. People find ways to cope with such events.

But coping is not healing and at some point those negative emotions need to be dealt with and released. If not, as Tolle says, they accumulate and join together to form tensions, pressures, pains, muscular restrictions, energy drains, limitations, stiffness, and then later, affect our thinking creating anxiety, depression and if still not dealt with, much worse, disease and even serious injury.

The good news is that you can do something about it for yourself by mindfully connecting to your body on a regular basis. Taking time to connect within allows you to contact the cells that are carrying that built up negative emotion.

By switching off distracting thoughts you open an inner door way within your body that allows you access to the community of cells that make up the different parts of your body. This crucial connection allows for a lot of self healing that scientists and doctors are still coming to grips with.

Learning to connect within, gives you unprecedented access to your physical vehicle as well as your past unprocessed emotions and traumas. Facing this past material is not always easy but it is worth the resulting freedom, reduced drama and enhanced health that is waiting on the other side of that old hidden pain.

This can be difficult to believe if you have been brought up thinking you have to always take something when you are unwell.

But if you learn how to face something now,
you most likely won’t have to take something later.

Learn to say NO to a lot of things

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“…focusing on everything means focusing on nothing. It’s almost impossible to accomplish anything significant when you’re racing through an endless litany of tasks and emergencies. And yet this is how many of us spend our days, weeks, months, years – sometimes, our entire lives.”
(Michael Hyatt, Free to Focus, 2019)

I’ve talked about this information overload many times over the years. It’s a sign of the times. It is so important to be able to narrow down what you want to accomplish and then spend time just working on those specific tasks related to what you really want.

To do that, you have to constantly say NO to a lot of things that bombard you along the way. Your smart phone tends to be the biggest distraction. If your head is too much in control of your day, saying no will be very hard. But if you have a regular mindfulness practice, it makes it much easier to train yourself to switch off the distracting thoughts and the corresponding external information overload.

Having a deep connection to your internal world and internal space is very precious. The more body mindfulness work you do to inhabit/embody yourself, the more you will guard it, the more you will say No to things. The more focused you become on tasks and information that really matter to your goals.

Looking back, I found that the more connected I became to my body and inner self, the better choices I made.

I noticed I began to choose and do what worked rather than what was popular.

This is a very important point to make here. Your mindfulness meditation practice helps you access the real you. It helps you clear the way to accessing your true home, which is throughout your physical body. Then your guidance system becomes your own heart and not the ‘convincing’ information your head is brain-washed to need.

You are unique, a magnificent human being. Very precious. And the more you can embody this, the more unique choices you make, more often. Following the herd mentality, is not fulfilling, so that begins to lessen. You live a life that is much more rich and alive. One that actually contributes something special to the world that makes a real difference.

You have that in you.

The importance of Space and Stillness each Day

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“When you are full of problems, there is no room for anything new to enter, no room for a solution. So whenever you can, make some room, create some space, so that you find the life underneath your life situation.”
(Eckhart Tolle, The Power Of Now, 2004)

Fifteen years on and this book is still a timeless classic, as readable today as it was when it was first published. It still remains the number one book on my bedside table.

Body mindfulness meditation helps to create that space to make room for new solutions, new connections in your brain which otherwise could not be created. Downtime is critical to growing and repairing your brain functions.

Some space and stillness time is very important to have at some point in your day. It is critical to your growth and a healthy mind and body. It also doesn’t feel good to be on the go all day long without pause. Constant stress on your body leads to inflammation internally, which leads to some of the leading causes of disease, ageing and death around the world.

It is that important, to create space.

So why don’t we do it naturally? Because the old habits of western society say that doing more is better. Your intellect wants to do do do and go go go. Accomplish more, fill all idle time, no blank spaces. Somehow this has become ingrained in our culture, become the norm.

Our thinking minds constantly overrule the needs of our body, our heart and our spirit. What these parts of us need and want sadly don’t get much of a look in, until it is serious or they break down.

Often when a mediation practice takes a back seat it is being overruled by a very convincing mind program that says ‘doing more is more important then being right now’. And so your being doesn’t get a chance to properly correct your doing. Left too long, is when people begin to report drops in productivity, feeling lost, or unfulfilled or stuck in a rat race. Left further unchecked, leads to disease and breaks in body function.

Left to its own devices, the intellect sees no value in space and stillness. Because it means the intellect gets turned down even switched off for a period. The intellect wants to always remain in power, in total control, so switching off is not an option.

So it takes some doing initially, to take the time each day to switch it off, stop the rampant thinking and just be and be still, for a little while, coming more back into your body. Even if your eyes remain open. This stillness time will help re organise your thinking processes and allow much more efficient use of your time and energy, reducing stress and improving health.