BodySense Blog

A New Level Of Mastery

Coming Full Circle

Life is a circular journey through our issues and processes, and this is why things that are technically new often seem very familiar. It is also why, whenever we work to release a habit, change a pattern, or overcome a fear, we often encounter that issue one last time, even after we thought we had conquered it. Often, when this happens, we feel defeated or frustrated that after all our hard work we are still dealing with the same problem. However, the reappearance of a pattern, habit, or fear, is often a sign that we have come full circle, and that if we can maintain our resolve through one last test, we will achieve a new level of mastery in our lives.

When we come full circle, there is often the feeling that we have arrived in a familiar place, but that we ourselves are somehow different. We know that we can handle challenges that seemed insurmountable when we began our journey, and there is the feeling that we might be ready to take on a new problem, or some new aspect of the old problem. We feel empowered and courageous to have taken on the challenge of stopping a pattern, releasing a habit, or overcoming a fear, and to have succeeded. At times like these, we deserve a moment of rest and self-congratulation before we move on to the next challenge.

Coming full circle is like stepping into a clearing where, for a moment, we can see where we came from and where we are standing at the same time. Remembering that we will be tested again is important, but it’s also important to pause and take a look at the ground we’ve covered, honoring our courage, our persistence, and our achievement. Then we can begin the next leg of our circular journey with a fuller understanding of where we are coming from.

DailyOM

Analyzing The Path

Recognizing Happiness

Those of us on the path of personal and spiritual growth have a tendency to analyze our unhappiness in order to find the causes and make improvements. But it is just as important, if not more so, to analyze our happiness. Since we have the ability to rise above and observe our emotions, we can recognize when we are feeling joyful and content. Then we can harness the power of the moment by savoring our feelings and taking time to be grateful for them.

Recognition is the first step in creating change, therefore recognizing what it feels like to be happy is the first step toward sustaining happiness in our lives. We can examine how joy feels in our bodies and what thoughts run through our minds in times of bliss. Without diminishing its power, we can retrace our steps to discover what may have put us in this frame of mind, and then we can take note of the choices we’ve made while there. We might realize that we are generally more giving and forgiving when there’s a smile on our face, or that we are more likely to laugh off small annoyances and the actions of others when they don’t resonate with our light mood.

Once we know what it feels like and can identify some of the triggers and are aware of our actions, we can recreate that happiness when we are feeling low. Knowing that like attracts like, we can pull ourselves out of a blue mood by focusing on joy. We might find that forcing ourselves to be giving and forgiving, even when it doesn’t seem to come naturally, helps us to reconnect with the joy that usually precedes it. If we can identify a song, a picture, or a pet as a happiness trigger, we can use them as tools to recapture joy if we are having trouble finding it. By focusing our energy on analyzing happiness and all that it encompasses, we feed, nurture, and attract more of it into our lives, eventually making a habit of happiness.

Daily Om

Natural Cleaning Products for a 'Green' Home

When you think of air pollution, you probably conjure up images of smokestacks and clogged interstates. But recent research shows that air quality is actually the worst where we feel safest — in our homes.

Some toxins are an unfortunate and unavoidable fact of modern life. But others, like those in household cleaning products, are remarkably easy to do without. In fact, you probably have many of the supplies you need to "go green" right in your kitchen cupboard.

And these nontoxic cleaning supplies work just as well as their chemical cousins but without the nasty side effects (which range from irritating the skin to contributing to cancer).

The well-stocked pantry
Another benefit of going green with your cleaning products: You'll free up a lot of shelf space. Instead of having a single cleaner for each purpose (how different is cleaning a tub vs. a sink, anyway?), you’ll only need these five essentials:

• Baking soda. Buy it in bulk, because this wonder powder has about 1,001 household uses. Use it to cut odors in the fridge, mix it with castile soap for a gentle surface scrubber, or pour it down the drain with some vinegar to clear clogs.

• Salt. Say goodbye to your harsh oven cleaner. Instead, pour salt on spills as they happen, allow the surface to cool and scrape up the mess. "If you do that every time you have a spill, you don't need to do anything else," suggests Linda Mason Hunter, co-author of Green Clean: The Environmentally Sound Guide to Cleaning Your Home (Melcher Media, 2005).

• Castile soap. Much gentler than detergent-type cleansers, this basic liquid soap can clean just about anything — from toilets to armpits. Dr. Bronner's is a high-quality, superconcentrated brand.

• Lemon juice. Mix with olive oil for a wood and furniture polish, use it to clean glass and stainless steel or sprinkle it in baking soda to make carpet-cleaning powder. After you've squeezed out the juice, toss the rinds down the garbage disposal to cleanse and deodorize.

• White distilled vinegar. Because of its acidic properties, vinegar can dissolve grease, soap residue and mildew, making it the perfect bathroom cleaner. It's a hit in the kitchen, too. Use it to polish chrome, shine glass and mop tile or linoleum floors.

Ready-made cleaners
Of course, if you take comfort in a bottle that tells you exactly what it’s going to do, you can buy commercial, nontoxic cleaners. Companies like Seventh Generation, Ecover and Bio-Kleen are available at health food stores and many mainstream grocery stores.

Hunter's favorite is Shaklee's new Get Clean product line (www.shacklee.com). Green cleaners can cost more than conventional cleaners, but they're often more concentrated, giving you more bang for your buck.

Out with the old
So are you ready to go green? According to Hunter, if you really want to green your life, cleaning up your cleaning is the best place to start.

"It's manageable, you're working in your own house, you have control and you learn a lot about how to read labels, what's in products and what to look for," she says. "You can use that knowledge when you're doing other things as well — buying cosmetics, furniture and building materials, for example."

Revolution Health Group

Beat Stress, Live Longer

Over the past decade or so, it's become increasingly clear that stress can harm our health. But now a study shows the damage is even more profound than we'd thought: Stress, it seems, can actually make your cells age quicker.

The study, from researchers at the University of California at San Francisco, shows that prolonged high stress speeds up age-related cellular changes by a decade or more. These changes have been associated with serious health problems, including heart attacks and increased vulnera-bility to infection.

All 58 women in the study were mothers between 20 and 50 years old -- certainly a group that knows stress. But the 39 women in the highest-stress group were also caring for a chronically ill child, and the scientists found a direct correlation between the number of years the child had been ill and the extent of premature aging in the mother's cells.

While researchers look for "treatment interventions" -- doctorspeak for ways to chill out -- do yourself a favor and start taking breaks now.

Alternative Medicine Magazine

Sharing The Full Story

Calling On Friends

When we are going through a difficult time, we may hesitate to call even our best friends because we don’t want to burden them with our troubles. This can be especially true if we’ve been going through a series of challenges, and we’re starting to feel as if we sound like a broken record. It is important to remember that at times like these our friends sincerely want to be there for us whenever they can. We can always check with them to make sure it’s a good time for them before we start talking, and if it’s not a good time, we can call back at another time, or call another friend.

We know for ourselves that when we have a good friend, we don’t want them to suffer alone when we are just a phone call away. We want them to call us and share their sorrows with us, as well as their joys, because this is what sharing a life through friendship is about. It is at our lowest points that we really need to rely on our friends without worrying that we are a burden. If you are feeling self-conscious about having a tough time, you can bring this fact into the conversation by acknowledging it. Chances are your friend will reassure you that she is happy to be there for you. In fact, rather than feeling taxed, most of us feel better when we have helped a friend simply by listening empathically while they share their feelings.

Without our friends, we would be hard pressed to get through the tough times and celebrate the good ones. If we leave our friends out of our process when the going gets tough, our friendships can begin to feel shallow. On the other hand, when we include our friends in the full story of our life—the good, the bad, and the ugly—we build authentic relationships in which we can be who we truly are. When we do this, we invite our friends to bring their whole selves to the relationship as well.

DailyOM