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Serving a community of private individuals and professionals
who have the desire to cultivate a life of clarity, compassion,
and creativity. Your feedback is encouraged. Please contact
us at seishindo@seishindo.org.
1. Starting Line
Today's newsletter is the second in a series on stress. The
previous issue was called "Self Hypnosis as a tool for
Stress Management".
Every time I research "stress" I find that more and more illnesses
and physical ailments are listed as being related to stress.
The current list of stress related ailments includes the following:
Diabetes, weight gain, cigarette smoking, immune system breakdowns
of various kinds, auto-immune ailments, cancer, intestinal
problems, asthma, headaches, rashes, fibromyalgia, and last
but NOT least (if you are a teenager) acne. Furthermore stress
is said to be more damaging in general for people over the
age of sixty.
There isn't any need to get overly concerned when reading
this list, because you definitely have it within your power
to reduce the stressful reactions that you have. A
key to changing your reactions is being able to track the
way in which you generate stress. This series of newsletters
on stress can play a major role in helping you to have a more
balanced reaction to life,, IF you take the time to track
your experience while exploring some of the Seishindo Practices.
Having an intellectual understanding of what is written here
is great, but it will not tend to truly help you to change
the way you think and react. If you really want to make a
difference for yourself please explore the Seishindo Practices
on our site.
Why is stress related to such a wide range of ailments? Stress
sends the immune system into an overactive and over reactive
state. The body and brain wind up spending a good deal of
time preparing for either "fight or flight." When this preparation
process goes on for the major portion of every day, one of
the results is that the immune system becomes "tired" and
stops functioning in the way it was designed to function.
On a structural level stress leads to excess muscular tension
in the legs, back, shoulders, and face in particular. This
means that our body literally gets thrown off balance by stress,
and our blood flow and breathing are reduced. When our physical
structure is out of balance we will invariably also feel emotionally
out of balance. Internally, excess gripping of the muscles
relates to excess muscular tension in the gut. This leads
to a restriction of the peristaltic action necessary to properly
digest and eliminate our food. On a bio-chemical level stress
throws our enzymatic system out of whack, as the body continually
prepares for an immanent attack. We wind up weakening our
ability to produce enzymes, and thus we lose the ability to
produce the enzymes we need, when they are really needed.
Once the body gets overworked and out of balance, it is no
longer able to respond to real time health issues when they
do crop up. It is similar to the story about the child crying
"Wolf!" By the time an actual wolf shows up, the villagers
had already stopped listening to the child. Indeed, if you
believe, like we do in Seishindo, that the inherent design
of each human being makes the maintenance of health a naturally
occurring process, we can come to the conclusion that various
diseases might simply be a manifestation of what occurs when
we wear our system out via constant fight or flight reactions
to what takes place around us.
In Seishindo we don't believe that taking care of stress is
a one time make or break opportunity. We believe that we can
sometimes find and at other times lose, the peace of mind
and spirit to gracefully deal with the many challenging situations
that we encounter on an ongoing basis. Little by little we
can gain greater understanding of the recipes we use to create
stress, and how to alter these recipes and thus have different
responses to what takes place in our life.
2. Main Course
Recently, a coaching colleague told me a story about his client "Jim" who gets into many arguments and confrontations with others. After each altercation Jim spends a good deal of time attempting to convince my coaching colleague as to how the other person's behavior was the catalyst for what took place. One of his favorite expressions is "I hate it when people jump to conclusions without first getting all of the facts." In return my colleague has spent a good deal of time trying to show Jim how his behavior and thinking play a key role in creating his many problems.
Recently, Jim asked my colleague to accompany him on a business trip. On the second day of their trip they are walking down the street together late at night, having just finished a marathon business negotiation. They are both feeling a little bit ill at ease because they are not familiar with their surroundings, and they are concerned they might be targeted for violence since they obviously are not part of the local population.
All of a sudden they hear another set of footsteps walking behind them. Jim wheels around to see who is following them, and as he does so the man behind them quickly places his hand inside his coat in the area of his breast pocket. Fearing the worst, Jim wheels back around and dashes out onto the street in an attempt to get away from the gun he believes the man is pulling out. Boom! Jim gets hit not by a speeding bullet, but by a speeding car.
The man who Jim had been frightened by runs towards him as he lays bleeding on the street, and uses the handkerchief he already has in his hand, to stem the flow of Jim's blood. It turns out that luckily for Jim the man is a doctor. Fairly soon the bleeding is stopped and it appears that Jim will need some stiches and a cast for his broken left leg, and after about thirty minutes an ambulance arrives to take Jim to the hospital.
Once Jim is on the stretcher and before being hoisted up into the ambulance he thanks the man for his help, and then asks, "Excuse me, but do you mind if I ask you what you were pulling out from under your coat when I first turned around to confront you?" "Why the very same hankerchief I used to stem the flow of your blood." the doctor says. "I have been having my usual spring allergy response, and I was just ready to have a violent sneeze when you all of a sudden dashed out in the street and totally distracted me. My goodness, just now I am realizing that this is the first time today I have gone more than ten minutes without sneezing!"
"Now please let me ask you a question." the doctor says. "Why in the world did you jump out in the street immediately upon seeing me?" Jim quickly replies "Well, we were in a dangerous neighborhood, and all of a sudden out of nowhere you were following us, and it seemed clear that you were reaching for a gun or other weapon. How would you expect me to react?"
The doctor smiles and says "Well, my friend, it seems to me that you jumped to numerous inaccurate conclusions. First you thought that the neighborhood was dangerous when in fact it is one of the safest neighborhoods in our city, although most likely a much poorer neighborhood than where you come from. Since you thought you were in a dangerous place you were predisposed to something dangerous taking place. I am guessing the fact that it was late at night, only added to your sense of fear."
"Yes" Jim said, "All of what you say is true."
"And the fact that initially there was no one else walking on the street except for the two of you, most likely made my footsteps sound much louder and more ominous. Is this not so?"
Jim slowly nods "Yes."
"So" the doctor continued, "With those kinds of thoughts and fears running around in your head, when I stepped out of my house to go visit a patient you immediately thought that I was following you although frankly I hadn't even really noticed you, as I was beginning a build up to a big sneeze." "The only thing that made sense to you in the frame of mind you were in, was to believe that I was a criminal pulling out a weapon."
"I'm sorry." Jim said.
"No need to be sorry." the doctor says. "You have not caused me any harm." "Indeed you have helped me to have a much clearer understanding of how my clients create stress for themselves."
The doctor pauses for a moment and then says, "Let's imagine that you and your friend were walking down this very same street, but at two o'clock in the afternoon instead of late at night, and there was one or two people already walking in front of you, and one person already walking behind you at a comfortable distance. How do you think you would respond to my coming out of my house in such an instance?" "Hmm." says Jim. "I might not have even noticed you!"
"And here is another idea the doctor says. "What if everything initially happened just like it did this evening, but you had taken some self defense training and felt confident in your ability to defend yourself, and also perhaps partly because of your training, you had the tendency to be both relaxed and aware. How do you think you would have responded then?" "I can't say for sure since I never had such training." Jim says, "But pretty much guaranteed at the very least I would not have jumped out in front of the car."
"And since you have been so kind so far." the doctor says, "One more thing if you don't mind." "Your fear of being in dangerous surroundings led you to block out the only real danger that was present - A car speeding down the street. Perceiving danger all around you, you jumped in front of the only danger there was, and thus you created a self fulfilling prophecy."
"Yes" Jim says, "I feel quite humbled. This is a difficult way to learn a very important lesson. But better that I learned this lesson today rather than continuing to struggle for many years to come. Now I can truly understand what happens when one consistently jumps to conclusions without having all of the facts, and assumes that something terrible will take place. Thank you for all of your assistance."
Does this story have any special relevance to you and how you sometimes react to what is going on around you? In any one circumstance there can be many possible responses. and many possible outcomes. Have a different set of beliefs and you will respond differently. Have a different set of capabilities and training and you will respond differently. Change the way you use your body and you will respond differently. Change the environment that you are in and you will respond differently.
In Seishindo we often say:
Body + Language = Emotional Experience
What we mean here is: The overall condition, usage, and awareness of one’s body, plus the way in which one uses language to think about and describe one’s experience, go together to make up one’s current emotional experience. When we change our emotional experience we change our "relationship to" what transpires.
In Seishindo we understand that verbal language arises from the body. If certain hormones are not dispersed throughout the body, you will not report that you are frightened. If you do not grip with various muscles in your body, you will not report that you are tense. If your posture is slumped over and your shoulders are rolled forward, you will not report feeling energized and ready to meet new challenges. When you rock back to front when talking you have a different experience of your circumstances than when you rock from side to side. The way you use your body determines how you think about and describe your experience and the way that you feel (your somatic-emotional state.).
When you change the condition, usage, and awareness of your body you will change the way in which you use language to describe what has been or is transpiring, which in turn will change your overall emotional experience of the issue being considered. The seven somatic variables that we find most accessible in changing the condition, use, and awareness of the body (and thus your emotional experience) are:
a) Posture,
b) Balance and carriage of
the neck and head,
c) Movement and Flexibility.
(This includes muscular holding patterns and micro-muscular
rocking movements),
d) Breath,
e) Facial Expressions,
f) Eye movements that occur
when thinking about what you want to say, and what you feel,
v g) The speed, tempo, volume, tone, and pauses, of one’s
speech.
These variables will be of primary importance in determining
1) One’s emotional experience.
2) The language used to explain
one’s experience, and
3) One’s ability to be solution
oriented.
Each person systematically and habitually, orchestrates these seven variables depending on how they perceive the events and relationships they are dealing with. Making the "correct" changes to these variables will alter the way one perceives what is taking place, and the changes or solutions one believes they are capable of making.
Furthermore, when you change the way in which you describe your experience, you will affect and change the condition of your body, which in turn will change your overall emotional experience. We can describe events differently simply by changing the speed, rhythm, tone, volume, and pauses used in our description.
Stress is a particular emotional state. Emotion consists of language AND body. Emotion is a system that is coherent at a deeper level than language or body taken separately. When your emotional state changes there is a concurrent change in your body, and in your use of language (including your internal thought processes). When your emotions truly change, you will notice a change in the way you use your body AND a change in the way you think about and describe your experience.
3. Practice
Body
+ Language = Emotional Experience
[The exercise that matches this Newsletter requires a minimum of two people participating. This exercise might prove to be a bit tricky for you to try out without having attended a Seishindo workshop, but nonetheless, this is one of THE classic Seishindo exercises and thus I wanted to introduce you to the concepts involved. Even if you don't have someone to do the exercise with, read through it anyway and you will likely learn something meaningful. Hopefully, you will enjoy your exploration.]
To view the exercise, please click on the link.
4. Links
www.mindbodyspirit.com.au
Mindbodyspirit - An Internet
Magazine with 2500 Australasian Personal Development items,
an Internet links Directory of Articles, Courses, Book Summaries,
Links directories and Index pages, a Book Shop of over 140,000
items, a Noticeboard and some services for Writers and Publishers.
I have found this site to carry a lot of interesting information,
and this site has also kindly published various articles of
mine and the response has been excellent. If you have an interest
in esoteric subjects, then you will find this site of definite
value. Also they have a good deal of information about aborigines.
5. Suggested Books and Music
Book: "Clear
Technical Writing" by John A. Brogan. I know that coming
from me, this suggestion will surprise many of you. The title
does not exactly sound like an exciting read. Nonetheless,
if you want to improve your writing skills, give this book
a try, it's excellent. It presents a point that is important
in regard to writing better, and then it gives you the opportunity
to try out what you have learned.
CD: "Praises
for the World" - Jennifer Berezan and Friends. This
CD is a circular groove classic that is enjoyable in most
any setting, and great for meditative work. This is the CD
I used to accompany me in writing today's newsletter. Once
again, I have my friend Sandy Morris to thank for this CD.
6. Copyright
Unless otherwise attributed, all material for the newsletter
"Pure Heart, Simple Mind"(tm) is written and edited by Charlie
Badenhop ©. All rights reserved.
You may reprint, copy, or distribute "Pure Heart, Simple Mind”
(tm) provided you: a. Receive our written permission (which
is likely). b. Attach the above copyright notice to our material.
c. Do not sell our material to others. d. Keep the content
of our material intact without any editing whatsoever.
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