Friday, July 24, 2009

At least turn down your brain

Tired? Having worked for years helping people with a professional method that helps them manage stress, emotion and their effects on the body, I’ve seen a lot of tired folks. Often it isn’t a major crisis that brings them but merely the toll of normal daily life. Our days in this modern world are filled with messages from every direction, “Feel guilty”, “Feel afraid”, “Feel inadequate”. Even with a fairly strong belief in our selves and intellectual clarity about life’s realities, the emotional toll can be great. Add, then, something out of the ordinary. Let us become a victim of crime, take a financial hit, loose someone in our lives, receive a diagnosis of serious illness or experience some other seeming “low blow”. The effects on our minds and bodies can be unexpected. Traditional psychological methods may try to help us “work through our issues” on a psychological level. What happens, though, to the toll on our mind-body mechanism while we are trying to analyze our conflicts, modify our unhealthy behaviors or reframe how we are perceiving things?

Modern folks have come to understand the importance of keeping their bodies in shape in order for physical resilience and health. We now know enough about the mind to clearly say that we must “keep it in shape” as well for our emotional health and intellectual effectiveness. Because, though, the mind is intrinsically tied to the healthy functioning of the body, keeping our minds in shape daily is critically important for the health of the body.

Even the toll of average daily life can be great enough to mandate our learning a powerful method of training our brains and working to practice that brain training every day. That is what I have helped people do. An effective method of brain training goes far beyond relaxation, it gives you the ability to actually diminish the eruptions of emotions in your body.

If that is not possible, we must consider the importance to both our emotional and physical health of at least “turning down” the activity of our brains daily.

Consider yoga
Learn a meditation routine
Take a hot bath or use the hot tub to relax muscles (relaxation helps quiet the mind)
Take time for the sauna or steam room at the gym
Keep a good novel handy (turn to it instead of the loop of thoughts)
Take time again for painting if that has been a release
Give yourself time for quiet moments with your favorite music

Do something that takes your mind away from the endless loop of “thought created emotions”. It’s critical for a healthy life.