Never-Fail Methods to Regain Balance and Well-Being
Theoretical physicists have made observations about time, concluding that it is speeding up. As the universe expands, time speeds up. Well, for those of us down here on the street, that’s a no-brainer. Every year, every month, every week, sometimes seems like a break-neck rush from one crucial task to another. If we can keep—or find—our sense of humor through it all, and gain a moment of perspective, we might realize that even one minute of ceasing all activity, or one minute of disengaging from the worries and frustrations created by our expectations, can mean the difference between misery and well-being.
It is in this spirit of calmly sitting in the eye of the hurricane of our lives that I offer well-tested, scientifically sound techniques you can apply on yourself to reduce pain, eliminate worry, restore equilibrium, and bring back that natural state of well-being. I use them daily myself, and have never seen them fail (provided I actually take that one minute and apply them!).
Some of these techniques come from ancient spiritual practices, others from modern research into human physiology. They take a minimum of discipline to perform, and produce nearly immediate results. You don’t have to ingest any substance, rub anything on, or smell anything. And, best of all it’s free. Try these practices, and then let me know what your experiences were on the forum. Enjoy!
Practice #1: The Inner Smile
I first read about this in a book by Taoist Master, Mantak Chia, Awaken Healing Light. The entire book is absolutely fascinating, but this one practice is emphasized as being very important:
- Smile with your face.
- Then, imagine a smile on your heart. See it beating joyfully and purposefully.
- Get your liver to smile, your stomach, lungs, intestines, brain.
- Now find a discomfort, pain or tightness. Make it smile. You will notice this act seems to relax the area and the area around it.
- Now breathe slowly into the area.
This immediately allows energy to flow through and past the blockages causing the discomfort, and, most importantly, causes an awareness of tension and the thinking that created it.
Practice #2: Take It Away
I discovered this phenomenon on my own after doing the Inner Smile consistently in yoga class. I’m speculating as to why it works, and at this point am thinking that pains and discomforts are really the body’s attempts at reaching out for relief. All that is necessary, apparently, is to grant relief from a forgiving, smiling space.
- Make the pain-discomfort-fear-worry or unwanted emotion smile.
- See the condition as a shape. It has a form—it can be a blob, a structure, any shape.
- Now, calmly smiling, gently say to yourself, “Take it away.”
- Observe it leaving.
The Taoists and Buddhists say that there is no hierarchy of tasks. In other words, the flapping butterfly wings are as significant as an erupting volcano, or moving a mountain and moving your little finger are really the same order of magnitude. Motion is motion. It is merely the rearrangement of surfaces. Our assignment of difficulty or ease is an arbitrary and thus illusory habit of mind, thus, the more it hurts, the more severe must be the cause.
This concept is important because it factors in to this practice. If nothing else, this practice will teach you that a mildly stiff back and a sharp, stabbing pain in the knee are just different shapes of the same thing: the body’s request for relief. I have noticed that whether it is a mild discomfort or worry, or a sharp pain, the time it takes to dispel it seems to have nothing to do with intensity, so I’m quite sure that is completely arbitrary. Experiment with it.
I’ve also gotten definite signals or requests to do something to accompany the Taking Away, such as “drink water,” or “eat a grapefruit,” or “breathe deeply”—probably to help renormalize the system.
