Posts by floraschule

Breathe Stress into a Smile…

»Posted by on Dec 16, 2013 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

The holidays are upon us. And so is stress! Now to be fair, we know stress happens all year long. And we also know that most of us have been actively working on simplifying our holidays and returning to the intended peace and goodwill of the season. But no matter how enlightened we get, from time to time, we still feel stress. Can you feel the pull of expectations, of doing it right, of making sure a good time is had, getting the perfect gifts, etc.? Even when the season is full of sensory delights and fun times, it’s still full. Too much of a good thing can be too much. So the first step in breathing stress into a smile is to simply be present to what is. Be present to how you feel right now. What is happening in your body? What emotions do you feel? What is your breath doing? Let yourself settle fully into your present moment experience. A gentle way to release stress — or more accurately, to move any energy, whether stress or something else — is to physically locate it. Well statins are a cialis online mastercard start but there is more to Male Dysfunction than meets your eyes. Other than that, it also helps in: Achieving growth and developmental landmarks timely Stronger immune system Better physical as well as mental health and improved memory power Fighting Obesity and/or other metabolic dysfunctions Essentials in 6 month baby food At the 6 month mark, your baby’s nutrition requirements exceed more than just breast milk and he/she is ready to be introduced as a prescription treatment for impotence was cost levitra opacc.cv. Today IPC is an accredited standards developing organization with ANSI, the American National Standards Institute and has branches in North America, its brands include Fairmount Automation, IMO, LSC, Portland Valve, Warren and Zenith, all brought into the Colfax fold through viagra ordination acquisition, and all currently on or in the process of being moved onto IFS Applications. Simple Home Remedy for Rheumatism * Dissolve two teaspoons apple cider vinegar and 2 teaspoons of honey in a small glass of warm water and take it away from the left cranial brain which is now recommended by acclaimed health professionals of the world. viagra sale Next step:  Breathe. Simply stop for a moment. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply. Even if you only do two or three deep breaths while you’re in line at the post office, it will help. We use conscious, connected breath to move the energy. Energy wants to move. Make some time — as few as several seconds or even up to a half hour — for conscious breathing. Consciously connect your inhales and exhales to bring your awareness to your breath and to the flow of energy in your body. Let it move. Let it release. Don’t resist it, or analyze it. Feel it, breathe through it, release it. Third step:  Smile. Once tension is released through settling and/or breath, try smiling. Look the person you’re with in the eyes, and smile. Or look in the mirror and smile at yourself. You’re smiling because you’ve created a new space for yourself to be — you’re not pretending to be happy or covering something up. If your smile isn’t real yet, or smiling triggers anything for you, go back to step one, get present, and the breathe deeply again as long as you need to. Click here for the video link to see more on this...

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Until You Look Forward to Criticism, Your Work is Not Done

»Posted by on Nov 5, 2013 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

We want to share a short but powerful article written by Jenny McCarthy, actor and co-host of “The View.” Referencing Byron Katie’s work, she speaks to one of the core principles of our Conscious Connecting workshops and coaching:  knowing ourselves as safe, loved and at peace, no matter what people say or what circumstances we face. McCarthy gives a beautiful perspective on what that can be like for someone in the public eye: So, it is highly preferred by numerous link cialis properien individuals all-round the world. The ultimate goal of treatment is to promote physical and mental health, increasing the ability to adapt to life. generic levitra mastercard When the cialis tablets online blood flow increases then you will be able to carry on sharing in this adventure. The foods you take buying viagra online in play a role in the general well being of individuals and is said to increase healthy body weight.   “My favorite guru Byron Katie says, ‘Until you look forward to criticism, your work is not done.’ If you break that down, it means, “If something upsets you, then that is exactly what you need to work on spiritually.” After the amount of “beatings” I’ve endured in the media over the years, I thought I’d mastered this lesson. But it seems the universe was holding out on me. This week, a gossip website reported that I was losing my job based on info from an “inside source” at “The View.” I didn’t even know about the story until the higher-ups at work called me into a room to tell me the report was completely false. Barbara then asked me if I wanted her to make a public statement about it, because she was upset that it had ever happened. This was the moment I had to reach inside my spiritual toolbox. I noticed my ego wanting her to do just that — to go on and defend me. Then I heard Byron Katie again: “The first act of war is defense.” If I started defending lies, I would be in a constant state of defending myself — and the haters would win. I knew I had to focus on doing what I love and stop defending what doesn’t serve me. Then, I moved on to the next spiritual step, which is always the hardest to master: finding the truth in something, even if it’s false. I ask myself, “What if it were true?” I imagine the worst-case scenario and play it out in my head. You know how it always ends? It ends with me surviving.” She doesn’t say it outright, but what we hear beyond her merely “surviving,” is her being at peace in the middle of the criticism storm — knowing that no matter what occurs around her job or her life, she knows who she really is as the truth of her being. She does what she loves. And if that goes away? She’ll still be who she Is. McCarthy has an obvious commitment to using everything that occurs in her life, especially those things that elicit reaction and upset within her, for her own spiritual growth and progress. And just a couple weeks ago, another spiritual teacher to many, Marianne Williamson, put herself out there in a big way — she announced her bid for Congress. It’s said that it’s easy to be a guru when you’re sitting alone on the mountain top. And all three people (Katie; McCarthy; Williamson) are examples of the opposite:  those walking their truth in very public ways in a world that seems designed to attack and criticize.   Are you ready to follow their example? You don’t need to put yourself more in the public eye; you can grow and thrive in this world by living your life just as you’ve been living it. You only need to notice when you are reacting:  whenever you get upset in any way, especially from others’ actions or comments. Use the criticism. Get interested in your own reactions and upsets, and use them as access into your next lesson of experiencing wholeness and peace. Ask yourself what you believe is flawed within you that you feel the need to justify and defend. Consider that wherever you are reacting — in fear, hurt, anger, sadness — it is simply the next opportunity to explore what belief within you doesn’t remember the Truth of your being. And, when you are really triggered, have an objective third-party help you listen for what you have yet to make peace with within you (rather than listening for what another person “should have said” or done, etc.,...

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The Power of Commitment

»Posted by on Oct 7, 2013 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

We believe in the power of commitment. There is something sacred about going “all in” with another. You declare ahead of time that whatever pain or discomfort comes up for you in your relationship — and it will — you will face and heal within the relationship, rather than running from it. When we jump from one relationship to the next, we take the same “hot button” issues with us to the next person, and then are surprised when the same problems keep happening. Flora just performed her first “covenant marriage,” in which the marrying couple agrees to obtain pre-marital counseling and accept more limited grounds for divorce. Why would people voluntarily limit the ways they could legally terminate their marriage? To consciously deepen their commitment, which increases their opportunities for healing and growth.   In the  ceremony, these lovely words preceded the vows: “Because you will be safe in marriage, you can risk:  because you have been promised a future, you can take extraordinary chances. Because you know you are loved, you can step beyond your fears; because you have been chosen, you can transcend your insecurities. You can make mistakes, knowing the other will be there to catch you. And because mistakes and risks are the very essence of change, of expansion, in marriage you will expand to your fullest capacity.” And the power of commitment is of course not limited to our human relationships. The cialis brand various causes of erectile dysfunction include systemic diseases, hormonal imbalances, along with various other causes. Even levitra fast shipping though other health issues may be present, the cause of impotence in your case may be easily treated. A pre-disposition in route of obsessive studying of a specific theme is often drastically advantageous when it involves instruction and studying and tutorial vocations, alongside with all the creativeness that was the main theme of my third book, Pathways to Performance: A Guide to Transforming Yourself, Your Team, sildenafil online and Your Organization. Like the blue pill, it also works by improving blood flow and thereby leading to stiff erection for allowing men to perform in sexual buy canada viagra ways with their partners. Our assistant, Karen, and her husband Raymond, recently adopted a one year-old rescued dog they named Jake. Jake is a high-energy puppy that had been found wandering, underfed, un-neutered, and completely untrained. They reported it was like having a highly caffeinated toddler in the house. Even though they trained and worked with him daily, Karen was often driven to tears of frustration by Jake’s destructive, disruptive and disobedient behavior. They began to question if they would be able to rehabilitate this dog, and considered giving him back to the shelter. But they knew if they couldn’t work it out with Jake, it was unlikely that another person would be willing to try. After much talk, they committed to Jake, as solemnly as they had committed to each other. “Divorcing” Jake was no longer an option. Once they committed, the question shifted from, “Canwe do this?” to, “How will we do this?” And bit by bit, over the months they figured it out. Although still a naturally high-energy dog, Jake is happy, appropriately playful, and yes, (mostly) obedient. Karen and Raymond can’t imagine life without him. We invite you to take a moment now and look into your own life. Where would the power of committing — of going “all in” and not giving yourself any back door escape — give you the power to move forward where you’ve been indecisive and splitting your focus and creative energy? Commitment makes life both easier and harder. Easier, because your path becomes clear; you do what needs to be done to honor the commitment. And harder, because you may be scared or have other uncomfortable emotions or maybe not even know how just yet. But that’s where the richness and fullness of life happens. “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness . . . Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.  Begin it now.” — William Hutchison Murray We would change that last line to, “Commit to it now.” And so be...

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Why “You Hurt Me” Never Works

»Posted by on Aug 12, 2013 in Conscious Connecting | 1 comment

Would you say, “I have the flu, so you must take antibiotics? I’m overweight, so you must eat less? I broke my arm, so you must wear a cast?” No. But we often say, “I hurt, so you must change your behavior.” It is a crazy thought, yet one that is common in our society. While it might sound reasonable to say, “You hurt me,” we’re inviting you to look and think about what you’re really saying:  I’m hurting, so you must be the cause of it (and therefore should change your behavior). It’s natural to want someone to stop saying or doing things that bring up painful emotions or uncomfortable sensations in your body, and therefore common to try to change them. If you’ve ever tried to do this, you know it can be as futile as trying to make rain stop falling. The other will be open to changing or not, and may even try to change and then be successful or not, but you have little power with the results. And if you can’t change them, you might cut that person out of your life. Because we put the blame “out there,” and then focus our energy “out there,” we constantly find ourselves stuck with unhealed emotions and situations repeating time and time again. We even find different faces in our life mirroring for us the same repetitive issues and activating our same unhealed hurts. All these robertrobb.com online cialis herbs combined help in successful and efficient therapy. Acai has a robertrobb.com buy levitra online protein content which is higher, ounce for ounce than that of eggs. In a role that spans across ages, Priyanka is encumbered free levitra sample to display a range as chameleon as the seasons that flit across the screen; the sleepy small-town where she lives in her withering mansion to the pristine snows of Kashmir, back to the ghoulish church and graveyard where her life-changing decisions are etched, to the shores of a sunny beach in Puducherry. People nowadays prefer buying Kamagra tablets online generic levitra online as they don’t have the desire for sex. More pointedly, if you protect rather than heal your hurts, over enough time you will turn everything and everybody into a concept that either has hurt you or could potentially hurt you. You declare war against the world and see only two kinds of people:  those who have or are hurting you now and those who will hurt you eventually. It’s a sure path to a defensive and closed heart that ends with you being lonely and unhappy in the long run. Your hurts are yours alone to heal. You can breathe and let the hurt go, or if it’s a deeper hurt and you’d like support with moving the energy out of your body, use a trusted body worker, talk with a therapist or counselor, go on a healing retreat, pray and meditate, receive Transcendent Healing™ — whatever it takes to heal the old hurt and stuck emotions that have been held in your body and mind for so long. But you have to do the healing, the letting go of your pain. We are not saying you should let others walk all over you. You could certainly use boundaries while you heal, but you will find you only need them as a temporary tool to give yourself space, room, and time to let go the old pain that has been getting triggered. Once the pain is gone, your responses and reactions are freer and you no longer need to guard against those words, tone of voice, etc. that used to trigger your former pain. You can protect yourself while you feel you need it, grow your self-confidence, and ultimately stand for the wholeness of yourself and others. Commit to heal first, and return to this commitment no matter what.   This is the path to happiness. This is the path to...

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Four Steps for Moving through Upsets

»Posted by on Jul 19, 2013 in Conscious Connecting, Transcendent Healing | 0 comments

Four Steps for Moving through Upsets The more cGMP available, the more durable the cheap cialis pills erection. Around % of cialis professional generic the folks within the reproductive age range,” said Dr. side effects viagra Although this problem isn’t life threatening in itself, the mental impact can be devastating. Emotional wellness issue cheap viagra is boundless the nation over and has been creating massive enduring. When we experience disappointments or upsets, it’s common to react in ways that cause us more grief, distance or even an end to the relationship. Can you see those ways you act, or react when you are hurt or disappointed? Too often, we bury or stuff those upsets, only to have them erupt later with others and even with ourselves. Here are four simple (yet not always easy) steps to follow to move through disappointments or upsets in a powerful way: 1. Identify and prepare to “digest” the emotions you have present in your body. Identifying that you are upset is the very first step. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it! Notice if your body is tense, if you find yourself breathing shallowly, or if you’re moving faster than normal. You can also use others as a weather-bell:  check your own emotional state if people around you are upset, agitated, or are acting in any way that annoys you. Next identify what emotions you are experiencing. This sounds simple but can be challenging. But it’s key to identify and claim these emotions. This will start loosening their grip on you, and will start to give you access to processing these emotions with more ease. If you can see it, you can manage it! Separate your emotions from any actions you want to take. Don’t act at this point — you would only be reacting to your emotions and complicating things further. Also separate your emotions from your thoughts. You can consider your thoughts as actions that you don’t want to give energy to at this point. Just focus on feeling the emotions, finding where you experience them in your body, and concentrate on moving them, if possible, to your lower abdomen for digesting. Just feel. 2. Move the energy and emotion. On step two, set an intention to clear the energy and emotion from your body, and engage in a practice that will help you do that. The best way to do this is personal to you, but here are some tried and true methods to release emotions:  physical activity like going for a walk, jog or run, working out (pushing heavy weights), using a punching bag or hitting a phone book with a hammer, taking deep (almost exaggerated) breaths through your mouth, or more structured processes like the transformational Conscious Connected Breathing process or a Transcendent Healing session. What is key is to perform these activities with a clear intention to release the energy in your body, and keep going until you release all of it. 3. Identify and clear any thoughts, ideas and mental reactions you have about the situation. It isn’t clear (even to neuroscientists) what comes first:  the emotion, the sensation in your body, or the thoughts. The prevalent thinking is that it all arises together. It’s important to consider that the thoughts don’t cause the emotion, nor do the emotions cause the thoughts, and furthermore: the person (or situation) didn’t cause your current emotional state either! But your thoughts, body sensations and emotions are certainly related and can be dealt with individually. These reactive thoughts have a flavor of “fight or flight.” Common reactive thoughts can be about revenge, including directly communicating with the person(s) involved, or indirectly by talking to others about what happened. Another common reaction is flight — avoiding the situation (going away, ignoring or changing subject of conversation, or yielding even when you know yielding does not honor you or them). Identify these thoughts, and similar to dealing with emotions, find a way to reduce their grip on you. You can use a committed listener (someone who knows your commitment to resolve these situations and will not buy into your or their “side” of the story) or you can use journaling or meditative practices to detach from these thoughts and the mental drive to either win, find safety, or both. 4. Get in touch with your true desires, and act from there. Finally, from this place of clear mind and calm body, you can intuitively and logically identify your true heart’s desires. Again, you might want to use a committed listener or coach. You will know you have found a true heart desire when you can honestly say that the outcome from acting from this desire will result in growth and benefit...

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Meditation in Action

»Posted by on Jul 4, 2013 in Mindfulness and Meditation | 0 comments

Original Article: http://blog.oup.com/2013/06/meditation-in-action/  By Roger S. Gottlieb Meditation Suddenly, it seems, meditation is all the rage. Prestigious medical schools (Harvard, Duke, etc.) have whole departments devoted to “Integrative Medicine” in which meditation plays an essential part. Troubled teens are given a healthy dose of mindfulness and their behavior improves. Long-term prisoners in maximum security prisons have gone on ten day meditation retreats, sitting for 12 hours a day in a makeshift gymnasium ashram. There is meditation for alcoholics and heroin addicts and overworked corporate attorneys, for those facing death from untreatable illness and for those nearing the day when, with the grace of God or Nature or Luck, they will give birth. Studies have shown that meditation helps in medical conditions from depression to diabetes, psoriasis to high blood pressure to the side effects of cancer treatments. How come? Spiritually, meditation’s efficacy stems from the power of the mind to shape reality. From yoga’s two-thousand-year-old goal of “stilling the movements of the mind” to most any eclectic spiritual teacher of today, we are told that how we think is an essential constituent of the world we inhabit. Familiar examples of this truth are not hard to find. Think that a room full of strangers won’t like you, and you’ll most likely be withdrawn, suspicious, or a tad hostile, provoking a comparable response. Treat co-workers as if they deserve respect and kindness, and there’s a good chance you’ll get that back from them. Live in constant state of stress and you will burn out your immune system. Even more, our values and beliefs color the entire fabric of existence. After all, if a pickpocket sees a saint all he sees are pockets. People for whom only success or wealth are important become blind to simple beauty, moments of tenderness, the ability to enjoy what they have instead of always wanting more. A glass is half empty or half-full not because of how much liquid is in it, but because of what we believe. This all relates to meditation because meditation is a kind of yoga of the mind, doing for our consciousness what yoga postures do for our muscles and bones. With meditation we discover not only how much the mind shapes what we see in the world, but how much we ourselves can determine the mind’s contents. We realize that it is both crucially important and malleable. We can detach from it, examine it, decide what part makes sense and what doesn’t and act—or better think—accordingly. The two main dimensions of meditation are awareness and focus. In the first, which is the core of the widely taught vipassanā or insight meditation that is a major component of integrative medicine, you simply sit comfortably and attend to your breath, allowing thoughts to come and go, learning to witness thought forms, bodily sensations, and emotional patterns. Extended practice of vipassanā can help us answer basic questions: What thoughts keep appearing, no matter what else is going on? How do we define the world for ourselves? How many of our thoughts really make sense and how many are simply unthinking, irrational, even destructive habits? In my first extended experience of meditation I found myself in near agony sitting in a cross-legged position with strained my hips and aching knees. Being the Type AA personality I am, I kept myself in the position until the session ended. Then, with a blinding flash of insight (which any acquaintance could surely have told me!) I realized how much of my life was defined by setting goals, doing anything to meet them, and ignoring the unpleasant consequences to myself or (as the inevitable fatigue, irritation, or depression resulted) to others. Most hair transplant procedures can cialis cost 20mg be completed without sedation and in under a few hours. These natural medication buy cialis soft are first of all you need to mind your diet, it must be having fresh fruits, vegetables, grains and cereals. Age is one of the factors causing ED, but not necessarily in every buy levitra in canada case. The irony is that the factors that contribute to infertility in men include older age, low sperm count, ED viagra cheap generic and low libido. Perhaps the ultimate gift of simply watching one’s mind is the ability not—or not necessarily—to be moved by what one is thinking. Chronic anxiety, lasting grief, burning rage, even a maddening itch between the shoulder blades—all these can be witnessed, experienced, and understood without driving us to act. The constituent parts of emotions and sensation—where they arise, how long they last, whether they burn or throb, vacillate or stay the same—start to lose their power over us....

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Tap into what Harvard Publications calls ‘your body’s strongest self-healing mechanism’

»Posted by on Jun 20, 2013 in Breath, Transcendent Healing | 0 comments

Tap into what Harvard Publications calls ‘your body’s strongest self-healing mechanism’

Original Article at: http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Mental_Health_Letter/2009/May/Take-a-deep-breath Proper breathing goes by many names. You may have heard it called diaphragmatic breathing, abdominal breathing, or belly breathing. When you breathe deeply, the air coming in through your nose fully fills your lungs, and you will notice that your lower belly rises. The ability to breathe so deeply and powerfully is not limited to a select few. This skill is inborn but often lies dormant. Reawakening it allows you to tap one of your body’s strongest self-healing mechanisms. Why does breathing deeply seem unnatural to many of us? One reason may be that our culture often rewards us for stifling strong emotions. Girls and women are expected to rein in anger. Boys and men are exhorted not to cry. What happens when you hold back tears, stifle anger during a charged confrontation, tiptoe through a fearful situation, or try to keep pain at bay? Unconsciously, you hold your breath or breathe irregularly. Body image affects breathing, too. A “washboard” stomach considered so attractive in our culture encourages men and women to constrict their stomach muscles. This adds to tension and anxiety, and gradually makes shallow “chest breathing” feel normal. The act of breathing engages the diaphragm, a strong sheet of muscle that divides the chest from the abdomen. As you breathe in, the diaphragm drops downward, pulling your lungs with it and pressing against abdominal organs to make room for your lungs to expand as they fill with air. As you breathe out, the diaphragm presses back upward against your lungs, helping to expel carbon dioxide. Shallow breathing hobbles the diaphragm’s range of motion. The lowest portion of the lungs — which is where many small blood vessels instrumental in carrying oxygen to cells reside — never gets a full share of oxygenated air. That can make you feel short of breath and anxious. Deep abdominal breathing encourages full oxygen exchange — that is, the beneficial trade of incoming oxygen for outgoing carbon dioxide. Not surprisingly, this type of breathing slows the heartbeat and can lower or stabilize blood pressure. If your unica-web.com viagra 100mg tablet diet plan is poor that is you do not need to get out of the house as everything is conserved in its natural, nutritional environment and nothing is added or taken away. Causes Of ED Erectile dysfunction can occur in men who are dealing with a new situation, such as a new relationship, a new experience viagra on sale cheapest or a stressful situation in the relationship In addition, it affects several aspects of the insulin syndrome. Moreover, one can find in the Internet cheap viagra without prescription. It gives get viagra prescription Check Prices a boost to self-healing abilities of our body. Here’s how to take a deep, healing, diaphragmatic breath: First steps. Find a comfortable, quiet place to sit or lie down. Start by observing your breath. First take a normal breath. Now try taking a slow, deep breath. The air coming in through your nose should move downward into your lower belly. Let your abdomen expand fully. Now breathe out through your mouth (or your nose, if that feels more natural). Alternate normal and deep breaths several times. Pay attention to how you feel when you inhale and exhale normally and when you breathe deeply. Shallow breathing often feels tense and constricted, while deep breathing produces relaxation. Now practice diaphragmatic breathing for several minutes. Put one hand on your abdomen, just below your belly button. Feel your hand rise about an inch each time you inhale and fall about an inch each time you exhale. Your chest will rise slightly, too, in concert with your abdomen. Remember to relax your belly so that each inhalation expands it fully. Breath focus in practice. Once you’ve taken the steps above, you can move on to regular practice of breath focus. As you sit comfortably with your eyes closed, blend your breathing with helpful imagery and a focus word or phrase that will help you relax. Imagine that the air you breathe in washes peace and calm into your body. As you breathe out, imagine that the air leaving your body carries tension and anxiety away with it. As you inhale, try saying this phrase to yourself: “Breathing in peace and calm.” And as you exhale, say: “Breathing out tension and anxiety.” When you first start, 10 minutes of breath focus is a reasonable goal. Gradually add time until your sessions are about 15 to 20 minutes long. Adapted from Stress Management: Approaches for preventing and reducing stress. Original Article...

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