Stress is becoming an epidemic

canyon_man_1[1]You know how you feel when you have had a stressful day at home or work. Your body and mind will give you all the signals. if you are stressed, frustrated, worried and suffering from constant negative thoughts about yourself and the world on a daily bases, then it is guaranteed that your body will be showing some major signals such as illness, pain and tension.  You are not alone and most psychologists will tell you most of humanity is suffering from some degree of physical/emotional discomfort, all because of long held stress.

Stress, deep unconscious stress is now finally being recognised as a major cause of health problems.  
The underlying problem is that since stress is with us all the time we get use to it and take feeling tired and irritable as a normal way of living.
Only when our emotions get out of control and swamp our minds do we consciously take note of our internal state of pain.

Short term stress isn’t the problem in fact it can save your life. It is the long term, consistent stress that wears the body system down.
The charges we carry in our brain, heart, organs, muscles and ligaments for years,
 eventually cause this beautiful body/mind to become unhealthy and prone to dis-ease. Continue reading

Meditation – the peaceful addiction

I first started meditating over 40 years ago. I still meditate every day for about an hour. If I didn’t it would only take about 3 to 4 days before I wouldn’t be nice to be around. I get cranky and annoying. Like a person who has given up an addiction such as smoking or coffee, I am addicted to meditation, not because I look cool sitting on a mat but because I am addicted to the state of peace that I get from quietening my mind and giving up my resistance to feeling my emotions wash through me.
I started meditating after I had gone through a painful divorce. I had never felt so much pain as i did when my partner decided that I wasn’t good enough to spend the rest of her life with. I felt a failure, unlovable, lonely, and mildly depressed. Somehow I knew that the best thing I could do was to just sit in bed and let go my resistance to feeling my pain.
It was intense, large ache throbbing in the centre of my chest.
I decided to stay with it, breathing into my pain, letting it just ache and ache. I don’t know how long it took but eventually the pain started to drop.  It began to dissolve or resolve. That first night I learnt that resisting the pain only made it worse and that the best thing I could do was to do nothing. ‘What you resist persists’, is true when we try to get rid of our emotional pain.
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