Stress is caused by wanting to be ‘there’

A quotable quote seems to exist in the space between and that invisible connection to one’s life experiences. It meets you where you are and it has the capacity to take you as far as it can because often, as AnaÏs Nin wisely said “we see the world not as it is but as we are.” It is through our lens that we perceive our experiences in life. It acts like a red thread and enables you to discover for yourself to the depths it can take you depending on where you are and allowing you to find your own way through your own experience.

In Sweden and other Northern European countries as well as in Eastern philosophies, the expression ‘red thread’ refers to the core idea of something, the ‘throughline’ that makes it all make sense. Tamsen Webster, sums it up, the red thread is the mental path you take to make sense of something. The red thread is a guide through the maze of your own head. Discover and explore for yourself where these quotable quotes take you on your journey within.

“Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there’ or being in the present but wanting to be in the future.”

Eckhart Tolle

“The moment you realize you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence.”

For further read: Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

#LimitlessResponseAbility #Meditation #Mindfulness

Love the life you live

The beginning of a lifelong journey towards being the best possible you. Make this journey one of inspiration and reflection to getting to know the real you and move you towards the best version of yourself.

Think about a time when you’ve been your happiest…what was important for you? Create a vision for how you see yourself living your best life.

“Love the life you live, Live the life you love“

Bob Marley

#LimitlessResponseAbility #Wellbeing #BeingYourBest

What you browse affects the world

I have always enjoyed reading or watching stories of remarkable individuals, the ordinary to the extraordinary, the impossible to the possible because it inspires me. Stories that bring us optimism, hope and courage. Sometimes, seeing is believing and when a spark is ignited within us, we learn and grow within ourselves that our ability to respond is limitless.

I thought what would be more apt than Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web that has made information sharing possible from wherever we are in the world.

Sir Tim was a software engineer at CERN, the large particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland where scientists came from all over the world to use its accelerators, but he observed how they were having difficulty sharing information. He realised the potential of sharing information by exploiting an emerging technology called hypertext (the system that allows you to click on links and open other webpages). He also recognised that its true potential would be brought to life only if anyone anywhere could use it without paying a fee or having to ask for permission.

“You can’t propose that something be a universal space and at the same time keep control of it.”

Sir Tim Berners-Lee

In 1994, Tim moved from CERN to MIT to form the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international community devoted to developing open web standards. It sparked a global wave of creativity, collaboration and innovation never seen before.

He remains the Director of W3C to this day.

Our ability to respond is limitless. #LimitlessResponseAbility #Inspire

For further reading, visit:https://webfoundation.org/about/vision/history-of-the-web/

Meditation is a quality you acquire

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Growing up as a child, I was always intrigued by the inner peace I saw in monks, this invisible quality they had in them was visible to me. My encounters with the enlightened – I met the Dalai Lama on my 20th birthday and two decades later I met Sadhguru, yogi and guru. Both of these experiences remains the most phenomenal experiences in my life to experience their presence and the profound clarity and sheer simplicity in which they view life and most importantly, their conscious living. An encounter with the enlightened is beyond remarkable in every way as they speak from knowing not knowledge, they speak from experience not belief. They have a knowing on the inner sciences and they advocate the importance of inner experience and transcending the limitations of mind and body as we know it. It remains my north star.

On the quest and pathway to meditation, I found there are as many meditation techniques as there are teachers teaching them. I sought with a clear intention through the years, door after door opened and there is a red thread in the enlightened. 

I’ll like to leave you with a quotable quote. A quotable quote seems to exist in the space between and that invisible connection to one’s life experiences. It meets you where you are and it has the capacity to take you as far as it can because often, as AnaÏs Nin wisely said “we see the world not as it is but as we are.” It is through our lens that we perceive our  experiences in life. It acts like a red thread and enables you to discover for yourself to the depths it can take you depending on where you are and allowing you to find your own way through your own experience.

“We see the world not as it is but as we are.”

AnaÏs Nin

#LimitlessResponseAbility #Meditation #Mindfulness

Wellbeing is the quality of your life

Wellbeing to me means a way of living, consciously created. One that is purposeful, the joy of small moments filled with gratitude and being your best. 

The journey to being your best starts with the simple act of bringing awareness to your daily life.

By bringing awareness to the way you live your life each day will create a catalyst for creating positive life changes in simple and sustainable ways.

With each step, bringing you closer towards wellbeing, shinning your light and living a life you love.

“Wellbeing is the quality of your life decided by how peaceful and joyful you are.”

Sadhguru, Yogi

#LimitlessResponseAbility #Wellbeing #BeingYourBest

Meditation and the monkey mind

Blog | Podcast
5 mins

Imagine your eyes are closed and you are seated for meditation and you enjoy the first nanosecond of silence in your mind which is very quickly in the next nanosecond followed by the usual mind chatter, what we call the monkey mind. Thoughts come flooding in about what your plans for the day are and more thoughts from the past, present and the future. Thoughts about what happened yesterday or what may happen tomorrow.

Podcast | 5 mins

In many conversations around the practise of meditation, these terms have been commonly thrown around “no mind”, “stop the mind” , “quieten the mind”.

A useful Yogic dissection of the mind – one part of the mind is memory and the other part is imagination. Our past is memory, our future is imagination. That means, it is not in existence right now, in this moment, it is just a mental construct in our mind. Thoughts come from our thinking brain (neo cortex) and feelings come from our feeling brain (limbic brain). Understand the nature of the mind, the mind is an accumulation of thoughts and emotions.

How can you resolve the monkey mind using the very mind that is creating it? If you understand the nature of the mind, you will know that it is impossible to stop the mind. What you resist, persist. You cannot control your mind forcefully. Let’s do an experiment together now with just a single thought. Experiment this for yourself in the next 10 seconds to forcefully remove just one thought from your mind, if I said try not to think of a pink elephant for the next 10 seconds? You will notice all you can think about is pink elephants.

During meditation, it is most beneficial to bring your attention and awareness to a life process – for example, your breath, your heartbeat, your pulse then you are rooting yourself to existential reality in this very moment. As you sit in meditation, whenever you find your mind wandering, bring your focus back to a life process – this could be your breath, your heartbeat or your pulse.

When you breathe, focus on each inhalation and exhalation.
You can also focus on your diaphragm, when you breathe, focus on each expansion of your diaphragm when you inhale and each contraction when you exhale.

Keep doing this at each time the mind wanders. Bring yourself back to a life process. 

The benefit of consistent practise of meditation is acquiring a certain quality within your state of being. It is in experiencing it within you.

“You cannot do meditation but you can become meditative. Meditation is not a certain act, meditation is a certain quality.”  Sadhguru, Yogi

The fight or flight reflex when stressed

Blog | Podcast (5 mins)

Podcast | 5 mins

When we are stressed, our primitive stress response activates our emergency response to support the fight or flight response (physiological reaction). Our body is responding to a stressor on the job or relationship issues in the same way as if we were a caveman in mortal danger. Our reptilian brain doesn’t distinguish the nature of the stress – be it a physical threat, job pressure or relationship arguments.

In the fight or flight response, up to 80 percent of the blood leaves our brain to our stomach as the body responds as a matter of survival. At this stage, we are overwhelmed beyond conscious control and our ability to rationalise and respond constructively melts away. It may leave you feeling anxious, fearful, angry, despair or sad. I am sure this loop is all too familiar for all of us when faced with triggers in our daily lives.

As David Walther, kinesiologist so aptly sums up “the way you think affects the way you feel, the way you feel affects the way you think”.  Eckhart Tolle wisely says “If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion, or rather feel it in your body.”

By working with the neurovascular points which are reflex points between meridians and the nervous system, it reprograms your emotional and mental response to specific stressors. It enables the body to release the stress response and retrain patterns of thought that may have become habitual unconsciously. This works just as effectively on present stressors as well as those stored in memory from the past, be it consciously or unconsciously. By shifting the neural pattern to balance the mind-body state, instead of defensively reacting due to the stress-response cycle, this changes your ability to respond to life’s stressors.

Drawing inspiration from David Walther, Donna Eden and Eckhart Tolle.

“If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion, or rather feel it in your body.”
Eckhart Tolle

The way you think affects the way you feel, the way you feel affects the way you think

Blog | Podcast (5 mins)

Podcast | 5 mins

David Walther, kinesiologist summed it up perfectly “the way you think affects the way you feel, the way you feel affects the way you think” – let’s unpack this together. Our thinking brain (neo cortex) is located next to our feeling brain (limbic brain) this physical proximity is what drives the thought-feeling connection.

To help you better understand this, let’s take this for a test drive.
When you think positively about someone – your impression and perception of them, do you notice naturally your feelings towards them is also positive. And the same would be true if you felt positively towards someone – the nature of your interaction with them creates a pleasant feeling within you, naturally your thoughts of them would also be positive.

On the flip side, when you think negatively about someone, your feelings towards them tend to be negative. And if you felt negatively towards someone because of an unpleasant interaction or experience with them, you would notice that your thoughts of them would turn negative too.

Buddha explains the human mind – there are four aspects of the mind.

  • Cognition
  • Recognition
  • Sensation
  • Reaction

Now, to see these four aspects of the mind in action. An image comes to your eyes – it enters the first aspect of your mind, cognition that cognizes that this is a sight, not a sound/ smell/taste. Recognition, the second aspect of your mind recognises that this is a flower that it is looking at. It recognises that this is a flower because a vast library of sights exists within you. Recognition is possible because of past impressions. When you recognise it, based on your past impression of how you experienced it either a pleasant or unpleasant experience this then creates a sensation within you when you encounter it again. If your past impression with this flower was a pleasant experience of relaxing in nature, your sensation would be positive however, if the sight of this flower was at a funeral of a loved one, the sensation would likely be one of sadness. It is not the flower itself, but it is how it is imprinted in you that makes you experience it differently. Reaction, the fourth aspect of the mind is the way in which you respond to what you are experiencing and most importantly, your ability to respond is what determines the nature of your experience of life.

Our body remembers, a balancing taps into your body’s natural intelligence to find neutral. When you are operating with neutrality, it changes the very way you are experiencing life’s situations.

 Drawing inspiration from David Walther, Sadhguru and Buddha.

“By mobilising our thoughts and practicing new ways of thinking, we can reshape our nerve cells and change the way our brains work.”
Dalai Lama XIV

Using your conscious mind alone is like balancing a truck on one wheel

Podcast | 5 mins

We tend to rely heavily on our conscious mind. I’ll like to draw on the iceberg as it’s a concept we are rather familiar with. Just like an iceberg, your mind is comprised of two parts: the part that’s visible (above the surface) and the part’s that hidden (below the surface).

The top of the iceberg that you can see above the water represents our conscious mind. This is where our thoughts, feelings and memories that we are aware of and what we reveal consciously. This is our logical, analytical thinking, five sensory sensations and short-term memory. Interestingly, this is only 10% of our brain function.

The bulk of the iceberg that lies beneath and unseen represents our unconscious mind. This is where our repressed memories, experiences that is hidden from our awareness and what we conceal unconsciously. This is the reservoir of our beliefs, protective reactions, distressing experiences, habits, emotions, insecurities, stressors, trauma and long-term memory. Importantly, this is 90% of our brain function and hidden from our awareness, it exerts the greatest influence over our everyday behaviours and actions. For many, more than 90% of actions is unconscious.

I’ll like to share a really useful analogy – using your conscious mind alone to navigate life’s challenges is like balancing a truck on one wheel. Imagine that. By tapping into both the conscious and unconscious mind is bringing the truck to balance on all wheels. When all wheels are balanced, you are using every aspect of you to serve your benefit in order to move forward. Imagine this, how would you move forward if your truck is titled on one wheel and also trying to move forward?  

“There are layers and layers of memory in the unconscious.” – Sadhguru, Yogi.

Our body remembers and our body stores past stressors in its cellular memory and meridians, Qi. Your mind can play tricks on you however, our body never lies. Kinesiology through muscle testing gains biofeedback into the mind-body system where stressors were stored and by clearing these blockages from the past through the body’s energetic systems, it enables you to respond differently to your past, the present and the future.

Drawing inspirations from Sadhguru, Yogi; Sigmund Freud, Psychoanalyst

“The volume of memory that the body carries is a billion times more than the volume of memory
your mind is capable of carrying. Every cell in the body has phenomenal memory – not just of this life.”
Sadhguru, Yogi