Archive for the ‘Brain & Nervous System’ Category

Stress & Self Reflection

July 5th, 2011 by Michele

I’ve learned a little lately by watching myself create stress out of thin air. Because of that self observation, now, instead of making haste when I’m at home feeding the cats or making dinner, I move thoughtfully and slowly; I breathe while I work; I drive the speed limit more and more, and I’ve begun to give myself time in between engagements. These are the simple things I do to shift my programming.

One of the sources for my stress, I’ve fairly recently discovered, is driven by a need to please. Now this isn’t profound, yet it’s something we all do at some level. It can be incredibly insidious. We often ignore and or we continue to find deeper levels of it. It’s not hard to spot this trait in others, though our own blind spots get bigger as we get stiffer. Take a moment to honestly inquire within about how you try to please other people.

Do you see it? Why do you do this?

How does it appear, in what situations, and where does it come from? Its origins are probably linked to a deep desire for relationship, fear of losing those relationships or some other deeply rooted survival concern which honestly could be just as stressful as the obsessive compulsive act of pleasing. Even the relationship you have with your personal image, your work and other definitions in the world are at stake here.

On a more positive note, this desire to please is connected to a desire to serve, albeit at times quite compulsively; to help or to assist in some way. For me, well all I want is to make sure everyone gets on the road to ascension! That’s a lot of work, isn’t it? And it’s really not my job, anyway. How much effort and stress do you think that stirs?!

Are you stressed right now? How so? Take a few breaths, touching your lower abdomen between your navel and pubic bone. Feel the connection between your breath and this point on your body. First ask yourself how you feel physically, wait while you breathe and then ask to sense the emotions present. Maybe you notice some thoughts running through your mind; these are linked to emotions and of course, the mental tapes are often the cause of stress in the moment.

If you can get past the front story, can you find what lies underneath those stories? Take a few more breaths, relax and ask for the information to surface. What drives your stress?

Is your stress primarily emotional, mental, physical or even possibly spiritual? Are you in the midst of a personal crisis, a serious health issue, death in the family, marriage, new born, financial instability, war, natural disaster, work pressure or job shift, perfectionism, emotional suppression, simple digestive concerns or even self-worth issues? Do you experience any spiritual oppression or any other negative and pervasive energies?

Breath by breath you can access the cause. Not so ironically, you really can’t access the information while in a state of stress! Take another deep breath to release any negative or intense energies. Do it again, repeating this slow, thoughtful breathing for at least 9 cycles. If you’re compelled to jump up and do something, take another deep breath, noticing how you feel.

Your breath will take you on an inner journey, deeper into more thoughts, buried dross and long forgotten experiential emotions. Be still, like a bird watcher. Feel the rhythms of your breath moving and cleansing.

Journal about your stress in this moment and again when you take the time to explore, inquire and self-reflect; request more clarity as you drift off to sleep tonight, awakening with new insights and relief.

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How the Cycle of Stress Works

July 5th, 2011 by Michele

How does the Cycle Work?

It’s also in us to be stressed in the right circumstances; that’s the true rhythmic and elemental piece. Like food, if we’re addicted to stress, how do we find balance without becoming overweight, diabetic or anorexic; and in this instance, complacent and apathetic or dead in the face of a kumodo dragon on some movie screen?

In simple terms, here’s the way our system expresses stress: the fore brain perceives a potentially dangerous situation and transmits this information to the hypothalamus deep in the midbrain. The hypothalamus sends a message via the sympathetic (masculine, Yang, Sun) branch of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) to the endocrine system (pituitary, adrenals) which then pumps up the appropriate chemicals and limbs to deal with this danger. In the end, it’s usually adrenalin that overtakes our systems making us feel fast, strong and powerful, able to overcome anything. So we run away, or we stand and take on the challenge. This is better known as fight or flight and it takes us right back to our mammalian and sometimes reptilian patterns.

But you already know that.

How wonderful to feel so formidable! Our ego-minds get engaged encouraging us saying, “let’s do that again!” And so the cycle perpetuates.

Because our Western world no longer offers us many opportunities for the very physical and eminent danger of being killed by wild beasts, falling over a cliff, or going without food on any given day, we automatically find ways to exercise our fight-flight mechanism. Thrill seeking through outdoor adventure and other extreme behavior in our culture; driving in a car and creating stressful situations in contained environments like work or career; and relationships can trigger adrenalin just as easily. So we do it, over andover again. It becomes so sophisticated, this need for power and speed, that the tiniest things can trigger a release of our inner, biologically spiritual drug.

Physiologically we have yet to evolve to our greatest capacity, and abating stress is a really important step up into higher consciousness. If we remain stuck in the lower vibrations of stress, we cannot access the divine experiences we long for; sticking here is no better than hanging out in a dingy bar playing pool all day long or watching reality television murder stories all night long.

Like Don Quixote, we humans like to fight our elements microcosmically (inside our own spiritual, mental and emotional terrain) too, so we really need to learn a little about managing and abating stress before even our sacred practices take us into unresolvable, addictive stress patterns.

Have you ever seen a Yogi addicted to stress? No joke, I have!

Some say stress motivates us. Some say it’s a demon, calling it an ever-present, oppressive omnipotence that pervades the universe. Some deny stress altogether, thinking they’re cool and collected. I have my doubts about the truth in those images, even when the projections look calm, not sweaty. Some are just so addicted to the biochemistry of stress, and for a while, at least until they use up their resources and burn-out their adrenals, they look really good in tight skin suits, sinewy, dry muscles and rigid jawlines.

Where’s the razor’s edge here? I believe it’s up to you to find your own fine line.

You can read more about the cycle of stress and the autonomic nervous system here.

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Elements of Stress

July 5th, 2011 by Michele

ELEMENTS OF STRESS
Why do we stress?

Let’s start with some habits. Does any of this sound familiar?

1. Striving (struggling) to make things happen.

2. Completing everything so there’s nothing to do before going to bed or on a trip. Or, doing one last thing before leaving the house.

3. Rushing from one appointment to the next.

4. Hurrying up so you can relax.

5. Driving fast everywhere you go.

6. Always about 5 minutes late because you leave right when you need to be where you’re going

8. Using power over people in your life.

9. PROCRASTINATION and CONTROL!!

These are all very basic and fairly normal stress states, though they’re really only symptoms of what lies much deeper within us. Will you be one to discover what’s underneath the sprawling superficial layers that cover the root system? If we know we’re creating more stress by acting in these ways, WHY do we perpetuate it? Or do we even notice?

Many of us actually like stress because it’s in our nature to push the envelope. Just how far, and in what ways can we push it for purposes of learning and growing before it truly becomes a stress monster or even an addiction?

The energy of our human composite is something akin to creation and destruction, expansion and boundaries, masculine and feminine principles. These are the foundations from which we use stress to evolve naturally, though in this era we sometimes push our minds and bodies so far with the constant pressure of the media and the introduction of newer and grander technologies, we fry our brains and injure our constitutions.

We can break Yin and Yang into individual parts and see how extreme masculine energy quickly grows into that monster. It’s symptoms are over-powering, over-acting, pushiness & bulldozing, willfulness, over-achievement, control, and are often a result of our resistance to flowing with our natural rhythms and soul forces. This monster feeds on the distance or space we create between Yin and Yang, each other, and the amount of time and energy we expend jumping from one construct to the other searching for an experience of balance and integration. Then destroy it all over, again and again.

If we were more emergent and a bit more curious, as opposed to distracted and compulsive, would we be so stressed? Or would we be bored from a lack of polarized definitions?

Stress is elemental in geological, philosophical, sociological, anthroposophical, physiological and metaphysical ways. Because at best, we humans are ever the alchemists, striving to harness, transform and control the elements of earth, wind, water, fire, space, our minds and emotion; we create lots of chaos in everything we do. And with that we leave a lot of entropy.

Some of this chaos and entropy are immediately noticeable, and when we are awake and present, we use the entropy for our evolution. Yet, much of it remains un-recycled, and has long standing repercussions, even covert reactions and effects that bubble up intermittently and often appear centuries down the historical pathway in places we’d never think to look.

On a purely physical level, think about nuclear energy; it epitomizes stress from within its creation, to the use of its power, to the day it becomes destabilized like in Japan or Three Mile Island, and of course into the earthly elements for decades and centuries to follow.

Directional cue: Don’t waste too much time on superficial mundane meanderings here; think back to the basic studies of geology, physiology, philosophy, anthroposophy, sociology and metaphysics. How does stress, chaos and entropy create more stress on the related and subterranean levels inside of you?

It’s in us to be stressed, and if we aren’t already naturally and actively engaged in the practice of stress, we make it so, everywhere we go. We wear stress like a trophy in every season by resisting what we’ve already chosen–human form, earth life, our families, jobs and more. And yet, it’s also in us to be free and relaxed, if only we could trust and allow the Sun to shine, the winds to blow, the earth to quake and the rains to pour without our help and interference. If we did allow it, if we did use our will coupled with clear thought and inspiration, what would be able to manifest? If we used our God-given gifts, we might just be more balanced!

If.

This resistance runs deep, though. On the outside it may look a lot like certainty, knowingness, intelligence and actualization, especially when we look at ourselves in the mirror. Our minds see what they want to see. Sometimes it holds all those wonderful qualities, that’s true. Yet when it doesn’t, or even when we’re brave enough to slow down to experience a different rhythm–an internal rhythm, one that’s linked to the rhythms and tides of our planet and beyond–then we know there’s something off beat inside of us. Until we change our pace for a mere moment, until we live without extreme stress and breathe a bit more consciously, we’ll never know this other option exists.

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States of Mind: Monkeys, Cats & Lizards

March 27th, 2010 by Michele

Monkey mind is commonly known as an over-active mind particularly corresponding to the neo-cortex or cerebral parts of our brain.

It’s premise rests in people whose attention flows where the constantly passing or even raging thoughts go. Like riding a raft through river rapids, these thoughts pass through everyone’s mind constantly, every day, and someone who is at the effect of these thoughts in any given moment, has a “Mind Monkey.” What makes one person different from another is the amount of attention given to those rogue thoughts.

The common Asian concept of Mind Monkey is one who is (Wikipedia) “unsettled, restless, capricious, whimsical, fanciful, inconstant, confused, indecisive,” even “uncontrollable.” Western ideologies often associate it with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or the added hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). That all sounds about right in comparing it to it’s origins in China and Japan.

Some of my less conversant or outwardly expressive friends point out that I am “mental” or have a “monkey mind.” One of those friends recently mentioned to me (after years of finger pointing) that she finally recognized her own “monkey mind.” I laughed when she told me because I know that everyone has a Monkey in their minds and it’s often misrepresented, hidden or misinterpreted. She just didn’t want to know it was there!

As for me, I’ve had lots of experience with meditation, conscious movement, yoga and breath which all slow down my Monkey. In any given moment I can take a few deep breaths and lose my thoughts, although they are never completely and forever gone. What makes one person different from another in this instance is the amount of attention given to those rogue thoughts in any one moment. If I’m feeling particularly self-conscious or in the midst of accustoming to any variety of new situations, I can definitely let my monkey wreak a lot of havoc as I follow those incessant thoughts around in circles. It’s merely a distraction from what is present.

Lack of presence is almost always about the monkey mind. Ever disappear during a conversation or lecture at school or while driving? What about fantasy or imagination? Could it be that indulging in fantastical thoughts without moving them through the body with play are also food for the Monkey?

I have friends who are not present even when their bodies are right in front of me. Some of my closest friends are with me regularly and yet their minds are living out some other reality. That’s most likely because they have an excessive amount of monkey play going on in their heads. Many of these people also watch a lot of television, play computer games and read cheap romance type novels as a way to shut out the Monkey Mind.

Funny, that I can be carrying on a conversation about something that is quite deep and expansive, a discovery that requires a balanced mental and heartfelt response, while they are off in some other land exploring whatever they explore. Within this dynamic they tell me I am intense and mental. Two days later I can refer to what we discussed (never be fooled by nodding heads and mumble of “uh huh”) and they say, “oh, you never mentioned that!”

On the other hand, and of all my friends, I almost always have the best memory of past events, specific conversations and experiences, even down to the year and season or month…I’m a bit reluctant to admit that I often know the day too.

I have another friend who is very bright, can interact with psycho/spiritually expansive material and yet is constantly distracted by thoughts. Inevitably, during our conversations, we wind our way through many personal experiential tangents before coming to the point. A five minute discourse is often only completed after hours of meandering. She also has a very poor memory of both long and short term experiences.

Her Cat probably isn’t connected to her Monkey and may be talking too frequently to her Lizard.

So what am I saying here? I guess I’d better make a list for the Logos.
1. Monkey Mind is distraction.
2. Monkey Mind is not present.
3. Mental, intellectual, expansive and directed conversations about personal discovery are NOT Monkey Mind.
4. Meditation or any internal focus helps to relax the Monkey Mind.
5. Everyone has a Monkey Mind; the frequency of its visits is a matter of how much we exercise our gift of relaxation or focus.
6. Intellectual books are a way to invite in more material for the mind to ponder and expand upon, yet can become fodder for the Monkey if not channeled properly.

Cat Mind on the other hand is related to the mammalian brain. It is very instinctual, emotional, and psychic or intuitive. It’s in the mid-brain where all of our memories are created and stored and our autonomic functions controlled. Cat Mind keeps us in tune with the rhythms of our bodies as they relate to our planet’s rhythms of light and dark, seasons, rotation and tilt. Lizard Mind is our reptilian brain, or brain stem area, and relates to all of our more automatic functions like respiration and heartbeat. It is very survival oriented.

Reptiles have no real higher brain function, yet as humans with three distinct brain compartments, our Lizard, Cat and Monkey minds are supposed to communicate with one another. Sometimes they don’t do a very good job of it because we entrap ourselves in the cage with Monkey after a long day of details; become caught-up in laying around curled up or playing comfortably in the sun with our Cats because we are overwhelmed emotionally; or stuck in survival mode, only looking for the next bug to snatch, the next rock to climb under or the next rodent to squeeze and then swallow, eating because we are in such trepidation and fear about our lives.

In any of those cases, we are not operating at our maximum capacity nor are we balanced and connected. Keeping it simple, we could effectively say that the lower Lizard brain relates to the lower Chakras; the Cat Mind is the Heart; and the Monkey Mind is the combination of upper Chakras. In the levels of physical consciousness, our energy moves upward toward the higher mind and Chakras, yet we don’t throw away our knowledge of other planes of existence as we climb.

So why, in the microcosmic Universe of Spirituality as related to our brains/minds do we separate ourselves, disconnecting ourselves from our physical and emotional needs or the fact that we have a mind? I think there was something really lost in translation here. And anyone who tells you, just because you are easy with your mental capacity and or higher intellect, that you have a Monkey Mind, is simply not integrated.

In fact, as I did my best to show in the first few paragraphs of this blog post, those who don’t speak outwardly, those who appear to be quiet, are probably most likely to have Monkey Minds, especially if they have memory loss and lack of presence too.

Check out Opening to Spirit courses at the The Energetic Connection where you’ll find tools self-mastery. It really is as simple as a breath. Breathe in; breathe out. Follow the breath, stop the Monkey.

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