Morning Mindfulness - Two Positive Minutes To Start Your Day

One of the phenomena of human mind is that we constantly return in the past. We’re thinking about what happened or what could’ve happened yesterday, a week ago, last year, etc. Also we may be fantasizing about the future. My personal approach is based on the belief that everything has time and place.

I’ve read the story about a man who sold his mine literally for pennies. He gave up when he was several feet away from diamonds, and his successor got the richest diamond mine in South Africa.    So, how can we determine, should we keep digging or should we turn back?

Many people think that Thanksgiving is an American holiday. Well, it is now. But don’t you forget that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in the US in 1621 by pilgrims, who were in fact immigrants from Europe. So actually it is an immigrants’ holiday, whether you like it or not, which later became a US Federal Holiday. But I think regardless of whose holiday this is, it’s a great time to express Gratitude.

Many people may already know how to be successful, but they are not. Why? For the same reason people don’t work out even if they know working out is good. Knowing the path and walking the path are two different things.

My teacher said, “Don’t be too hard because hard can be broken. Don’t be too soft, because soft can be bent. You have to learn to adjust according to the situation. Once you become flexible, you’ll be virtually undefeatable.” 

Revenge is not restoring the balance. No matter if I hit my opponent back one second later or one year later, I am late. In martial arts timing is everything. My response has to be right on time to stop the opponent or to step aside. If I have to hit him to restore the balance, so be it. But if I miss — I miss. If I get hit, and the opponent is walking away, running after him is not restoring the balance. It is initiating a new attack. Basically, an ego trip.

I think many people, including yours truly, have experienced moments when thoughts are getting out of control. Something is boggling our mind, and we cannot stop thinking about it. What can we do?   Meditation often does not work in such cases. It may actually aggravate us instead. So I would suggest physical activity. Sometimes the best solution is find a punching bag and beat the.. whatever.. dust our of it. And that’s OK. That was what my teacher suggested.  

When we are using positive affirmations, they need to be kind of assertive, positive and articulated in a present tense, just like it is already happening.

Usually I see two major mistakes people make during self-talk.   One of them is using a negative form of positive affirmation. Let’s say somebody is making a statement, “I don’t smoke any more, I don’t want to smoke!” This statement definitely has a positive intent. The person is trying to stop smoking, pretty obvious. However, let’s look at the mechanism of action.

Many years ago I read the book called “What to say when you talk to yourself” by Dr. Shad Helmstetter. The author was stating that 75% of conversation is actually a talk to ourselves. I believe him. We are constantly talking to ourselves.   I already started this conversation in my previous episodes, and today I will give you a couple of practical advices I’ve learned so far.

When kids are born I believe they have no concept about what their life should look like, other than basic human needs and the fear of loud noise. As we grow up, we absorb the belief system of those who are around us most of the time, beginning with parents, then school, and so on. At some point that becomes our belief system, and we don’t even question it.    I am not saying this is right or wrong, it is what it is. Our belief system determines what we do, what profession we choose, what path we take in life, and so on. You’ve heard perhaps, that our thoughts affect out words, our words affect our beliefs, our beliefs affect our actions, our actions form our habits, and our habits create our destiny.

There are quite a few discussions going on today about teaching kids to meditate. One of the questions that comes up is when is a good time to start teaching that? I guess it depends on the teacher, type of meditation etc. However, I’d suggest to pay attention to a couple of points.   1. Don’t try to force children to meditate. Remember, their attention span is different. Also, they don’t see any health benefits, any philosophical ideas etc. They like to play. 2. I think the most important is the example set by parents. 

When I say the word meditation, majority of people, at least those I’ve met, imagine somebody sitting on the mat with eyes closed or maybe even rolled up. Some people have really funny ideas about meditation. However sitting is just a small part of the family. I do teach several different techniques in my classes in Phoenix, AZ. But today I’d like to talk about specific type, which is a walking meditation.

I choose to believe that it takes the same amount of collective energy to get from point A to point B in life. Basically, this is one of my interpretations of the Law of Energy Preservation.

I met quite a few people over the past three decades who told me they tried Yoga, meditation, Qigong or similar practices, and it just did not work for them. Is that possible? Yes it is. And today I’d like to share with you a secret about how to make this practice work for anybody.

by our words and action we may be programming our children to fail. Even if they go to college, get a nice job, and do OK from the society’s perspective. But in reality all they do is join the army of people who walk with empty eye sockets back and forth between home and job, and who never get their dreams fulfilled. Sorry, I am getting a bit emotional here, because this was not the future I came to the US for. 

Today I will talk about jogging. Yes I used to jog at some point of my life for a couple of years. As a child, I was not in sports. However once I got in martial arts, I realized I needed to do something about my worse then average physical condition. So I found in a scientific magazine an article about jogging. Running marathons became very popular in early 80s. It had charts and very clear program. And being a nerd, I loved charts and numbers... 

Many years ago I heard about a man in Soviet Union by the name Porfiriy Ivanov. Quite an interesting person, a healer and a teacher. He called everybody “kiddo”, so after his death his followers called his system “Detka”, which means “Kiddo” in Russian.

The Autogenic Training was created by German psychiatrist Dr. Schultz. That is basically a set of affirmations designed to bring our body and mind to the state of relaxation. It has absolutely no religious or philosophical component.  About my journey:http://hpln.org/autogenic-training/    

Most of our body cells are getting replaced on a regular basis. Some cells live several days, others - several years. And some cells, like neurons for example, never replace, as far as I know. I am not going to speculate on scientific topics today.   The question is, if our cells are getting replaced, why are we aging? Our skin is being replaced on regular basis, why is it looking older with age?