Category Archives: Mindfulness Meditation

The two core health essentials during a lockdown for your mental health.

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Exercise (Movement) and Meditation (Stillness)
The two core health essentials during a lockdown for your mental health.

Today’s message is a simple way of maintaining a good habit for your mental health through lockdowns and other trauma effects of Covid19.

Exercise and meditation go together.

If you do one but not the other, you are losing a lot of benefit that you could be receiving for your mental and physical health.

I notice many people often do one of the two really well and neglect the other. There are the people who exercise a lot and are physically fit and energised, but are anxious and cannot sit still in a room. Then there are the people who meditate really well and deep but are depressed and slow moving, finding it hard to act when needed in the world, hiding from the world.

Those who exercise a lot, tend to be the extroverts in the world, and those who meditate a lot, tend to be the introverts in the world. This is their super power.

With Covid right now, both of those super powers are very much needed – together. Doing both is very beneficial and will help greatly in keeping you mentally stable and healthy through these lockdowns and world covid trauma.

So it is good to ask the two most basic questions each day –

Q1. Have I exercised/moved enough?
Q2. Have I meditated/centered myself enough?

Doing both, you are helping reduce any excess anxiety and any excess depression brought on by the ongoing effects of Covid19.

One, helps reduce the trauma effects of the fight/flight response. The other the trauma effects of the freeze response. One connects you to the world, the other, connects you to yourself.
One helps you go in, one helps you come out. Both of the in-and-out movements are necessary for a healthy stable mind in times of trauma, instability and change.

So which one were you missing today?

Always make time for both each day.

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.)

Lock down #5 – Staying in Control

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When a traumatic event hits – where your locus of control resides,
will greatly determine if that event will have a long term affect on your health and life.

Today my home state of Victoria just announced another (fifth hard sharp, five day lockdown) in Melbourne Australia.

So it is important to turn the trauma lens this week, on the effects of a lockdown to your health.

You can have a trauma in your life, if you have been: Failed, Attacked, Threatened, Abandoned, Terrorised or Abused by other human beings, and that their actions have made you feel (even for a split second) that you could die or be seriously wounded or hurt. Even if that didn’t eventuate.

This split second fear occurs because you don’t seemingly have control over your life’s safety. You could die – and for a moment there is nothing you can do about it. That moment is what fires the limbic brain’s amygdala, switching on a fire alarm in your body, which activates the lower brain into fight/flight to attempt to save you. And it can be quite a strong response in the body creating extreme stress and anxiety responses for years to come.

Having a fifth lockdown is now compounding the trauma/stress created by the first four lockdowns. Especially if people’s income/business have been severely affected. Losing a lot of income can feel like a serious threat to ones survival. And it can feel as bad as facing death, if there are no savings to fall back on.

So if this registers as a traumatic event, the fight/flight/freeze system kicks in. The fight – protests, anger, abuse for the government, blame and attacking. The flight – worry, anxiety, panic, firing staff, moving to the country.
The freeze – negativity, depression, giving up, feeling lost, withdrawing from the world. To name a few.

If your locus of control is outside of your body, then the lockdown can affect you as above. But..if your locus of control is within your body, you have a much better chance of limiting any traumatic reactions now and in the future.

To strengthen that internal locus of control, body mindfulness meditation is a great way to acquire that skill. Ongoing practice, helps keep that skill strong and a buffer to outside future unforeseen events.

Because from the inside you can control your responses. Body Mindfulness practice gives you more and more access to your internal world. The more you can access your body from the inside, the less affected you will be by outside circumstances and the quicker you can recover, when hit.

By focusing what’s happening right now in your body, you get more present, and can think more calmly in this moment, leading to better wiser decisions and less reactions day to day – however long the lockdown lasts

Conviction and Repetition – The keys to greater health.

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“There are no incurable diseases. Only incurable people.”
Bernie Siegel MD.

With the escalating Corona virus at the moment, this is good to remember.

Dr Bernie Siegel is a surgeon who over twenty five years ago noticed how some of his patients healed in remarkable ways that were not expected. Looking at these exceptional cases he realised how the patient’s self healing ability came from their attitude, beliefs and emotional expression to name just a few.

Diseases that should have killed some patient’s didn’t. These patient’s found a way to self heal themselves.

It is good to read and hear about these well respected doctors. They confirm that we as humans have better healing abilities than we ever realised before.

Spending regular time to go within your body and spending deep meditative mindful time, giving your body and it’s 50 trillion cells more love and attention, is very powerful.

But to do this exercise/practice regularly, you have to believe that such ability is there within you.

Know that it is.

Hopefully you can feel the benefits of the reduction in body stress and allow that to spur you on to regular practice. This regularity and depth of focus (that only closing your eyes can do) accumulates to produce a much stronger immune system and a healthier freer functioning body.

If you find it difficult to get that depth of focus, coming to a few of Mindfulness classes in a group can really help reset your connection deeper. Even if you have to travel a fair way (if you live in Melbourne) to get here, it is worth doing every now and then. If you live a fair way away, you don’t have to attend every week.

It can be once a month, or for a few consecutive weeks once every three to four months. The period doesn’t matter. Maintaining the conviction and depth does.

YouTube
My recent appearances on the Channel 31 TV show Health, Wellbeing and Lifestyle have concluded. All five interviews (each 8 mins long) are now permanently available on YouTube for viewing. Or you can click on each one below.

You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel (George Gintilas). There are many more videos to come.

I appear in the following episodes (and the topic):
Episode 5 – How we Heal
Episode 6 – Trauma (Biggest block to healing)
Episode 8 – Anxiety (Hyper Arousal)
Episode 11 – Depression (Hypo Arousal)
Episode 12 – Presence and Spirituality

How far ahead are you playing out your day?

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On describing why he meditates, AFL Football player Zak Jones recently replied..

“I started very slow, but then it became before every game to clear my head and try not play out the game before it began.

For me it was enjoying this for what it is. There’s going to be highs and lows and if you’re worrying about what’s going to happen you’re not enjoying it.”

This leads to a great point that meditation helps reduce worry. How far ahead are you thinking throughout the day? Your body only needs to deal with this moment right now.

Anything more than this is extra stress that is not necessary. Future worry creates stress on your body that affects the quality of your present moment action right now. It also adds extra stress on your body, (which is responding like it is real.)

So how far ahead are you playing out your day right now in your head, while doing what you need to do in this moment? Bring all your thoughts right back to just this moment right now, reading this. These words right now. Nothing more.

If you manage to bring yourself back to this moment and just reading these words right now, you will find there is more enjoyment, doing just this moment. There is also more peace and quiet in your head because you don’t need to be thinking and worrying about the future right now.

When it’s actually time to plan your day, then that’s when you deliberately do it. Any other time, is just added body stress and wasted energy.

Mindfulness meditation helps to bring your mind and body back operating more from this present moment.

Healing and Preventing Diseases

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In Radical Remission – Surviving Cancer Against all Odds (2014), Dr Kelly A.Turner found that there are thousands of cases published in medical journals of people who had healed their cancer after doctors had decided that they were not expected to live.

She decided to interview over one hundred of such cases and analyse over one thousand written cases, to find the factors that led to the ‘miracle’ cure. Those factors were many, about 75, but there were 9 that kept showing up consistently.

So here are the 9 things that you can be doing to radically help reverse cancer or, if you don’t have cancer, to do anyway to prevent it and other diseases in future.

  1. Radically change your diet
  2. Take active control of your health
  3. Follow your intuition
  4. Take herbs and supplements
  5. Release suppressed emotions
  6. Increase positive emotions
  7. Reach out for more social support
  8. Deepen your spiritual connection
  9. Have strong reasons to live

Looking at that list, a body mindfulness practice can help and enhance about 7 of those factors.

That’s one powerful practice.

A quick snapshot of each factor:

  1. To change your diet – cut out sugars, dairy and reduce meat.
  2. Be actively involved in your health (don’t just sit around wishing), be willing to make changes, face your fears and don’t automatically do everything a doctor says you must do.
  3. Your body wisdom knows what’s best for you, listen to it.
  4. Strengthen your immune system with supplements.
  5. Blocked emotions and trauma seriously affect the immune systems ability to heal disease. This factor is massive and often overlooked.
  6. Increase the fun, joy and love in your life. Deepen your inner connection.
  7. Receiving love from others helps the body to heal. Family and friends can provide the love that boosts the body’s healing ability. Doing anything that stops you from feeling alone is what helps.
  8. Connect to the unconditional universal love that we are all part of. Merging with the peace of everything, where you are not separate from the whole. This spiritual energy can significantly help the body to heal. Pray and/or meditate to help quiet the mind noise.
  9. Expand your creativity, believe you will live, that you have a greater purpose and deserve to be fully alive.

Having the Courage to face your Demons

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“Manning up in the past was to suffer in silence, manning up now is to put your hand up.”

(Danny Frawley, AFL Football Great/Coach, 2019)

Danny Frawley died in a car crash hitting a tree last Monday afternoon. He was only 56. The whole Australian AFL football world was in shock that this great man had died.

He was the second longest serving captain ever of the St.Kilda football club – the club that I follow – so I remember his playing days well. He also did some good things in his coaching days and then was a great host and commentator in the media, radio and TV. He was a great leader and inspired many. He was much loved by all.

Danny had major depression issues over the last ten years. He was one of the first men in football to go public with his mental health issues. Having them splashed across the newspapers would not have been easy. This was such a brave thing to do for a celebrity and for a man so much in the public eye of the australian football world.

I am hoping his legacy will have a wide reaching effect on all men, to stop playing tough and pretending ‘she’ll be right mate’ and be brave and courageous enough to speak up and ask for help without feeling it is a sign of weakness. In fact it is a sign of great courage.

It takes great courage to face your demons. It takes men even greater courage to do that, because of cultural conditioning growing up. I believe it is the beginning of a death sentence when a man decided to completely suppress his real feelings in order to be or look strong. This is just not healthy whatsoever. Blocking off feelings reduces your life span.

It takes great courage to face what you have going on within you. I see this regularly with new clients, coming in shaking and scared at what will be revealed. I was the same. Having been through it myself, most are able to calm down fairly quickly and begin the deep inner process.

Looking back at all the sessions I had over the years, I would often be sitting in the waiting area terrified at what I was likely to show to the therapist which had never been safe to show ever before in my life, even to myself. This type of courage leads to freedom and greater health in your life. It’s not easy, but it is worth it.

Doing a regular Body Mindfulness meditation practice means you will have to go within and eventually face some of your old traumas and demons that you could not face in the past. Don’t give up when uncomfortable feelings arise. Just take a smaller piece, whatever is manageable and face that. Do that regularly and you will progress further than ever before. You will thrive.

The Effort Required to Produce Quality Results

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“..how total are you in what you do?
Is your doing surrendered or non-surrendered?
This is what determines your success in life, not how much effort you make.”

(Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks, 2003)

Another timeless classic from Eckhart. This book came out a year before the world wide best seller, The Power of Now.

This is one of my all-time favourite quotes.

People think that you need a lot of effort to accomplish things well. But there is a big difference between lots of doing doing doing action and quality embodied action. You can put in a lot of effort and strain and sweat and produce little of value. Or you can put in quality measured, embodied effort and achieve high quality great results.

It’s not the amount that counts, but the quality of that doing. And you cannot produce quality without first being present in your body in the here and now. Without body mindfulness meditation it can be hard to be consistently present enough in your body to produce that quality result.

Another way of putting it, the quality comes from being in the ‘zone’. That alpha deeper state in your body, where your brain is not obscured by a multitude of thoughts that are irrelevant to the task at hand. Unnecessary thoughts that make you push through, strain, strive and sweat to produce a quality result.

The habitual interference of thoughts that have nothing to do with the present moment you are working in, is a world-wide phenomenon. Each of those thoughts will link back to something unfinished on your mind, or something habitual that you thought was normal to think right now.

How do you let them go? How do you drop them? By surrendering to this moment. By practicing focusing on your body and the here and now and not giving up or beating yourself up when the thoughts take over.

You can do it. It is inherit in your primary nature to be able to do it. You had it as a child before you were taught to over think through everything.

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.