Today's tip is about reliving a joyful or sacred experience.
At least twice in the past week I've heard people talk about a really fantastic experience they had, and end with the lament that they wish they could experience that again. The reason they say they can't is because it was a special time, or those exact circumstances will never be repeated therefore they will never be able to enjoy that experience again.
The fact is, you can go there anytime you desire through your memory and imagination.
You do this a dozen times a day, but usually you tune into past experiences that create feelings of anger or sadness that create poor health, like an argument you had with your mate, or the guy who cut you off on the drive to work. When you think about it later, don't you feel the same intensity of emotions you felt at the time the event took place? Of course you do!
I think people tune into these experiences because they get an adrenaline rush: anger is nearly always rooted in fear, and fear evokes the fight-or-flight response and the rush of adrenaline to fight or flee. It also shuts-down the immune system so all your bodily resources are available for survival. When you experience that feeling of anger or fear, even in retrospect to an experience hours or days after the event itself, your immune system goes on vacation so your body can put all its attention on fighting or fleeing even though you don't have any reason At That Moment to fight or flee.
Your imagination is a very powerful tool, and your body can't tell if the experience in your mind is happening "now" or not. Every thought you have, you are having Now; every feeling evoked by those thoughts is happening Now. To your body, every experience is Now!
Use that as a tool toward health and wellness! Tune in to past experiences that make you feel happiness, joy, and love. You can relive those wonderful and fantastic moments just as easily as you can the moments of harsh feelings.
The only tools you need to re-experience a joyful or sacred moment in your life is your imagination and your willingness to revisit the experience. Not only will you bring those moments alive again and bask in those wonderful feelings, your body will be producing hormones to create excellent health as you do it!
This week, I am sharing a video with you from the Abraham-Hicks selection on YouTube. The topic is weight loss, and in terms of Creative Health, the advice given by Abraham through Esther Hicks certainly offers the best in Mind-Body Creation of a healthy attitude toward food and the attainment of your perfect weight: it has to be in the mind before it can manifest in the body!
Here is the description of the video:
"Abraham, translated by Esther Hicks, responds to a question from a woman has tried every diet, done every exercise, and still cannot lose weight.
"Sidestepping the usual - and often frustrating - approaches to the problem, Abraham lays the foundation of a mental attitude that brings to bear the power of Law of Attraction to create the most effective technique ever presented for losing weight.
"Excerpted from the 2 hour and 20 minute program "Think And Get Slim: Natural Weight Loss" which is available on DVD and CD from Abraham-Hicks.
"Recorded September 8, 2006 in San Antonio, TX."
If you are in Bend, Oregon and would like to learn about local Abraham-Hicks gatherings and workshops, please visit the website of Golden Bridge Seminars at http://www.goldenbridgeseminars.com/
We all tend to gather in groups of like-minded people, so it wouldn't surprise me if many of you are fans of positive thinking, creative consciousness and other "your thoughts and emotions create your reality" techniques.
Maybe you've read books by Louise Hay, Gregg Braden, or Ester and Jerry Hicks. If so, you know they all offer similar advice: be aware of your thoughts for your thoughts are vibrations and whatever you think about with strong emotions is what you will create in your life!
Whether your creation is favorable or unfavorable depends largely on those strong emotions. Emotions like anger, guilt, and fear will create unfavorable life experiences and physical disease, while emotions like hopefulness, happiness, and appreciation will create wonderful experiences and physical vitality.
The important point I want to make this week is that you must be very alert and aware of your thoughts! Several times in the last few days, I've spoken with people who are very knowledgeable in these co-creative processes, say they understand the need for positive thoughts and emotions, and yet all they did was grumble about all the negative events in their lives.
While it sure is ok to vent once in a while, if you spend too much time venting the negative, it gains momentum and comes back to haunt you when you least expect it, and least desire it.
Throughout the day, check in with yourself, and examine your emotions: are you stressed, happy, or bored? Be aware of the path and pattern of your thoughts: do you like what you are doing, or do you wish you were somewhere else, or are you getting ready to take what you're doing and toss it on the trash heap?
When you have a string of negative thoughts or emotions, acknowledge them but don't dwell on them. Instead, try to turn them around into something positive. Doing this will raise your vibration and let you manifest things you like and want instead of attracting all those things you are trying to avoid!
The video of today's Creative Health Tip is about 7 minutes long.
Today's Creative Health Tip is: Attitude of Gratitude
Researchers at the Institute of HeartMath explain the connection between heart disease and stressful feelings (published by MSNBC/Today Show on January 26, 2006http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11023208/)
Just consider: this information has been around for almost four years now, and most people haven't yet heard of it!
Begin quote:
An appreciative heart is good medicine Psychologists once maintained that emotions were purely mental expressions generated by the brain alone. We now know that this is not true — emotions have as much to do with the heart and body as they do with the brain. Of the bodily organs, the heart plays a particularly important role in our emotional experience. The experience of an emotion results from the brain, heart and body acting in concert.
The Institute of HeartMath, a research center dedicated to the study of the heart and the physiology of emotions, has conducted numerous studies identifying the relationship between emotions and the heart. A number of their studies have provided new insight into understanding how the activity of the heart is indeed linked to our emotions and our health, vitality and well-being.
Emotions and the heart Recent HeartMath studies define a critical link between the heart and brain. The heart is in a constant two-way dialogue with the brain — our emotions change the signals the brain sends to the heart and the heart responds in complex ways. However, we now know that the heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. And the brain responds to the heart in many important ways. This research explains how the heart responds to emotional and mental reactions and why certain emotions stress the body and drain our energy. As we experience feelings like anger, frustration, anxiety and insecurity, our heart rhythm patterns become more erratic. These erratic patterns are sent to the emotional centers in the brain, which it recognizes as negative or stressful feelings. These signals create the actual feelings we experience in the heart area and the body. The erratic heart rhythms also block our ability to think clearly.
Many studies have found that the risk of developing heart disease is significantly increased for people who often experience stressful emotions such as irritation, anger or frustration. These emotions create a chain reaction in the body — stress hormone levels increase, blood vessels constrict, blood pressure rises, and the immune system is weakened. If we consistently experience these emotions, it can put a strain on the heart and other organs, and eventually lead to serious health problems.
Conversely, HeartMath’s research shows that when we experience heart-felt emotions like love, care, appreciation and compassion, the heart produces a very different rhythm. In this case it is a smooth pattern that looks like gently rolling hills. Harmonious heart rhythms, which reflect positive emotions, are considered to be indicators of cardiovascular efficiency and nervous system balance. This lets the brain know that the heart feels good and often creates a gentle warm feeling in the area of the heart. Learning to shift out of stressful emotional reactions to these heartfelt emotions can have profound positive effects on the cardiovascular system and on our overall health. It is easy to see how our heart and emotions are linked and how we can shift our heart into a more efficient state by monitoring its rhythms.
Benefits come from being appreciative The feeling of appreciation is one of the most concrete and easiest positive emotions for individuals to self-generate and sustain for longer periods. Almost anyone can find something to genuinely appreciate. By simply recalling a time when you felt sincere appreciation and recreating that feeling, you can increase your heart rhythm coherence, reduce emotional stress and improve your health.
For people who may initially find it difficult to self-generate a feeling of appreciation in the present moment, experts suggest that they recall a past memory that elicits warm feelings. With practice, most people are able to self-generate feelings of appreciation in real time and no longer need the past time reference. Dr. Rollin McCraty, director of research for the Institute of HeartMath, says, “It’s important to emphasize that it is not a mental image of a memory that creates a shift in our heart rhythm, but rather the emotions associated with the memory. Mental images alone usually do not produce the same significant results that we’ve observed when someone focuses on a positive feeling.”
We now know that this does not apply only to a healthy heart, but that all your organs and cells respond to positive feelings! In Chinese medicine, the liver is associated with anger, the kidneys to fear, the lungs to sorrow and grief. Experiencing anger day in and day out for long periods of time can eventually create chronic health conditions of the liver; chronic fear can create chronic kidney disease, and so on.
Your awareness and conscious creation can over-ride these automatic physical responses to emotional conditions.
Adopt the Attitude of Gratitude to create your excellent health!
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