spiritual development | InstinctiveHealthParenting4U

June 28, 2016
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Resilience is the key to strength

Mental toughness is more of an inner flexibility than an external rigidity. It is adaptability with push through.

I just finished my first half Ironman. It was an extraordinary experience. Running across the finish line took grace and grit. I think my experience there is a metaphor for life. Each event has its own challenges and rewards. Life is no different: Work, play, relationship, friendship, education/training, personal growth, parenting…these are all events in the landscape of life. The common factors of success in these utilize the tools of mental toughness.

When I’m working with a coaching client I focus on resilience, the ability to bounce back to push through undeclared, unexpected circumstances; ones capacity for adaptability creates the highest level of happiness and success in life. Adaptability can cause troubles when there’s a lack of inner stability or core strength then the flexibility results in being pushed over.

This link applies mental fitness to triathlon:

https://www.teamusa.org/USA-Triathlon/News/Blogs/Multisport-Lab/2016/June/07/Mental-Toughness

Here are the ten tips: the italicized information offers key ideas for developing resilience, adaptability, and mental toughness in life…mindfulness.

1. Approach new situations with a flexible mind and recognition of your own preconceptions. You know you don’t know everything, so you can’t really be surprised. Paradigms are key here. It’s not only what you think you know, it’s also what you have locked perceptions about. Allowing yourself to have a foundation that is flexible open and responsive to change makes all the difference.

2. Roll with the unexpected. If you’re giving a presentation and the lights go out, you move the party to the local restaurant and continue onward. Stuff happens; everyone knows it. But how you react to it is what counts. If you’re racing a triathlon and get a flat tire, you don’t throw a fit and break your bike in half. You change it — even if it takes you 30 minutes. Don’t give up. Perseverance, ease of transition, responsiveness… I call this respons- a- bility. The ability to calmly and quickly assess, decide and act (respond) is the key.

3. Remain centered and focused. Other competitive types may try to throw you off with gamesmanship. It’s part of the competitive world, and you may do it too, consciously or not. Don’t let a competitor bait you into unwise moves ruled by emotion. As far as mental toughness within competition goes, you need to know your strengths and play to them, not to someone else’s tune. Stay on task with your goal whenever anything or anyone tries to interfere. Run your own race. This applies to competition, and applies to life at every level. Your skills are best exhibited in your own pacing, timing, and paradigm.

4. Defeat isn’t the end for you. You have lost before. You’ll lose again. Your ability to absorb these and move onwards with your race, career and life is what counts. Michael Jordan has a quote about missing 9,000 free throws or something like that. You get the point. Efficient learning happens after mistakes are made and corrected. Find your way through the labyrinth to the center. Leave that there and move to the next event with a fresh face and clear mind. This will keep you centered, mindful, and give you the best chance at success.

5. Believe in yourself. Recognize your talents with a realistic assessment of your skills. Really knowing that you’re good at something is empowering and will generally help you become even better as you believe in your ability and that skill. No one is good at everything, but we’re all great at something. Recognize this. Confidence creates strength and courage; draws success to you. Insecurity creates loss and deflation; pushes success away. The key is to know yourself; having a healthy recognition of your assets and limitations.

6. Deal with the discomfort. Almost everyone is in pain the last few miles of a marathon or gets tired at some point in an IRONMAN. The front of the pack often separates not on their physical ability but their mental ability to deal with temporary physical states (like pain or fatigue). With a strong mind you can overcome. Mental toughness is knowing when the pain is something that requires immediate attention and when it is not. This is what allows for push through and breakthrough in strength training and physical fitness. Your mind can interfere with your physical fitness by stoping too early or going to long and creating injury. This is paramount in relationship and emotional development.

7. Channel your inner Wolverine. He’s angry, he’s got claws and he heals very, very quickly. Sometimes you have just got to break out a little Wolvie. I like to encourage your inner goddess or your inner warrior. Focus, focus, focus. Know your skills and use them to meet your goals.

8. Crap rolls downhill. It also rolls over you. Anyone in the business world knows that one. As an athlete, you will also experience your share of crap. Crappy workouts. Crappy days. Crappy equipment. Crappy training partners. Crappy races. My goodness, the world is full of crap. But you’re Teflon, baby. Let it roll on down. Move on to that hill over yonder. Shake it off, shake it off.. reset.

9. When things go wrong, keep moving on. “Don’t give up” is a powerful and simple statement. What other options do you have? Is there another way? Is there any way? What do you have to do to make things go your way? Find it. Do it. This is the mental toughness that carries people through situations where weaker minds crumble. Commitment, perseverance…accept the situation respond to it with grace and grit, and a little bit of anger and a little bit of joy..that mixture gives you the strength and the mindfulness to persevere.

10. Things aren’t always your fault. Mentally tough people also tend to be drivers and doers with a predisposition to strong internal locus of control. That’s a funny way of saying that it’s easy to start to think you can make things happen by just doing your best. Some things are just out of your control, and there is nothing you can do to change that. Sometimes there is a competitor out there with a better idea, a higher V02 max or slightly better taper coming into his A-race. See the two rules above and move on. Channel your inner goddess, your inner warrior, your inner magician…recognize with focus you can bend time, break barriers go where no one has gone before…I can do it. The best mantra to get you to the finish line.

Mindfulness is a type of mental fitness. Thinks that will completely stop you are misbeliefs. This bog can help :

https://instinctivehealthmedicine.com/2016/05/17/healing-core-misbeliefs/

Keep developing your mindfulness and you will finish and possible win whatever race you enter in life. in love and light, bg

Beth’s upcoming book, 6 steps to transcending conflict and elevating consciousness, due out in 2016 offers special techniques for releasing unresolved injuries…and the elevation of consciousness.

You may participate in seminars to learn these techniques through the bethgineris.com. Beth’s groundbreaking book Turning Me to WE: The Art of Partnering with Mindfulness(2013), has some great tools about Temperament style and your personal style of partnering, as well as the insecurity Drivers MAAPS. Discover how your worldview works to your benefit or detriment, and whether you have an attachment that is creating problems in your relationships. MAAPS will help you to discern your insecurities and understand how and what underlies how you developed your insecurity driver (Money, Achievement, Attachment, Power, Structure).

You can find ways to simply connect to yourself in a loving forgiving way through theTurning No to ON: The Art of Parenting with Mindfulness Book (2011). If you want to change your life, see how you can bring mindfulness to your parenting and relationships.

Discover your path, set an intention for what you want to create in your life: It’s difficult to get where you’re going without a map.

August 3, 2015
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Empower your child through modeling authenticity, strength, and security.

Practicing mindful meditation on a daily basis changes the interchange between your inner tripartite mind.

Your tripartite mind was identified by Freud where he observed that decisions were made through an inner interaction between your inner id: primitive wants and desires, your inner rule holder, your superego and your inner mediator, your ego who looks for ways to make both the id and the superego happy. Too much emphasis on the id ruling your decision-making and you end up being a person who is self-centered, not very good at negotiating with your peers and in general a taker in society. Too much emphasis on the superego ruling your decision-making and you end up being a bit bossy, rigid, and not very good at navigating in relationship. While the balance is found in emphasizing the ego’s role of balancing inner needs and society’s rules. Mindfulness is a fantastic way to empower the balancing aspect of your tripartite mind, the ego. ( In general, those who are encouraging mindful meditation reference the selfish and rigid aspects of the mind, (id and superego) by calling them the ego – so it can be confusing.)

Mindful meditation It increases your ability to respond in real-time and allow your instinctive sensory connected cues to guide you rather than your habit reaction patterns reactivity. This allows you to increase your internal sense of empowerment, inner sense of strength and your inner security.

This is a powerful lesson in parenting. To teach your child to develop his or her authentic sense of self you free up an inordinate amount of defensive energy so that he or she can simply allow the flow of life to create and innovate and be happy. But it has to start through your action. What you model is the first lesson taught to your child about health and inner strength, security.

When you model mindful action and respond to tragedy and difficulty with joy, patience, mindfulness, and a sense of inner security, you offer a specific model to help your child develop his or her own sense of inner strength and security.

Forgiveness, mindfulness, and focus on what matters are important keys to this process.

Here is an example of this process of modeling in action. This happened as a result of my authentic modeling of powerful inner security and acting in a way that moves a situation forward.

Several years ago, when my daughter was five years old, I was writing an important lecture for my continuing education class at a community college. I was close to completing the project. I had a time-crunch and was working quickly, at my kitchen table while my daughter was drawing next to me. I thought I was saving the project. I had just completed some important slides wherein I had created some complicated graphs about the power of mindful meditation and it’s effects on the brain. So I had added statistics, information and graphics of the brain. I was completing slide 65. When I went back to send it to my colleague at the university I only had 30 slides. 35 slides had been lost. This was a disaster, as the information was due in two hours so that it could be printed for the participants. I had lost two days of work. When I realized my situation, I had a shortness of breath. I looked on my desktop and in other areas to see if the slides were available on the computer elsewhere. I was unsuccessful in finding them anywhere. So I emailed my colleague to let her know the situation and sent the slides I still had saved. My daughter observed my behavior and my demeanor. What she heard me say was, I don’t want to waste my time getting upset, as it wouldn’t help me with my problem. I sat back down and restarted writing the slides. I was able to finish the project in 90 minutes, because I focused on the process with faith and inner security that I could do it. It was logical as I was only redoing what I had already done, so it was not going to take the same amount of time as it did when I was creating the original slides. Maintaining a sense of mindfulness and letting go of my negative emotional response I had more energy to get it done. The slides went to the printer in plenty of time and the conference was a hit.

But here’s the important part of this story.

Two days later my daughter was working on her computer to draw a picture for her friend for her birthday. She worked on it for an hour. She was bringing it to her friend’s house for her birthday that day. Just as we were getting organized to leave she went to print the picture and there was nothing to print. She had forgotten to save the final product. My five-year old daughter looked at the blank page and rather than crying or throwing a tantrum or making a big deal she said, I don’t want to waste my time on getting angry, I’m just going to go back to the computer and redo it, just like mommy did with her seminar. She returned to the computer and did another picture, she didn’t have as much time, but she was happy with her gift.

A sense of Power is derived from inner security, and inner strength. It requires confidence and clarity. When you feel insecure, or confused you feel powerless.

Pay attention to your feelings to assist you in releasing that which no longer serves you.
You may need to forgive before you can let go.

Anger is an important part of survival. It links with fear and energy to survive.

The limbic system is the part of the brain that reacts to the physical world reflexively and instantaneously, in real-time, and without thought. This is based on previous experience and a number of pathways set up through habit reaction patterning. This causes individuals to automatically act in specific ways that over time are against their best interest. Freud called this repetition compulsion.

Freud identified that humans had a compulsion to repeat specific negative experiences in an effort to change the outcome.

Buddhist thought identifies that mindfulness allows a person to delay that compulsion to react and offers an opportunity to respond to the specific instance in play. When one does mindful meditation consistently the meditator increases his or her ability to mindfully respond.

There are studies that show that mindful meditation changes the shape and lighting up of the amygdala and hippocampus such that there is an increase in the attitude of altruism. This increases the chance for collaborative, mutually positive mindful response to situations and reduces that automatic firing of reactivity that causes defensive reactions. The Amygdala integrates emotional meaning with perception and experience. The hippocampus integrates short-term memory storage and retrieval. All of these physical activities within your brain are shifted to the positive through mindful meditation. This allows for a shift from reactivity to proactivity.

When you model the practice of mindful action, meditation, thoughtful compassionate action you are changing the world around you through your positive effect on those closest to you. Your children will reap the benefits of this behavior and you will promote the development of inner power, security, authentic action and social change on a core level.

This social change will be away from propaganda and an external locus of control through popularity and following the outside push of reactivity to an internal locus of control, a sense of empowerment, security, inner strength, resilience and overall spirit-mind-body health.

Children learn through modeling.

As they grow and develop, they say what they heard and do what they saw in childhood.

Sometimes that means they develop the same inconsistent words and actions they observed in they youth.

Make your best efforts to be congruent, or to discuss the conflicting beliefs you hold. Help them understand the multi-layer aspects of decision-making so that they can find their own personal, congruent beliefs.

Practice compassionate understanding and compassionate discipline, lovingkindness, forgiveness, courage, inner strength, and bravery. Modeling these shows them a way to stand up to the propaganda and simple answers they are bombarded with through marketing, and divisive political activities so they can create authentic multilevel personal solutions to the difficult problems in their communities.

Parenting is more than providing the physical support needed for children to grow. It is important to offer protection and support to develop their spirit and mind as well. A healthy spirit in a child will lead to mindful action and physical health. A healthy spirit is one where children have flexibility, resilience, inner strength, courage, bravery, compassionate understanding, inner drive, and a sense of connection to the fabric of life. in love and light, bg

Being in the environment, modeling care of plants, animals, forests, oceans, and that the earth and its inhabitants are all connected as one is the most powerful way to bring us all together as one community and create a sense of unity.

Gather support from the natural environment.

Meditate, create art, work in the garden, exercise, walk through nature, in reconnecting with the tapestry of life you can see the support there as you offer shift in consciousness to your human community.

Shed your skin, Trust your heart-centered, inner guidance IV system. Live your life fully and allow your full, big self to be present in the tapestry of life. You may experience a new Alignment within you, around you and between you and source. in love and light, bg

Find out more in my new book,Instinctive Health Medicine, Finding Your Path to Grace, due out in July 2016.

Check out these videos on Krqe.com in April 2014 and November 2014

You can find out more at http://www.bethgineris.com. Beth’s upcoming book, 6 steps to transcending conflict and elevating consciousness, due out in 2015 offers special techniques for releasing unresolved injuries…and the elevation of consciousness.

Aligning with your true path, your true self in your multidimensional self allows for healing.

July 4, 2015
by instinctivehealthparenting4u 1 Comment

American ideals, Independence Day, and the Elevation of Consciousness

Seemingly it is the sixties again…from the alternative world to the mainstream news, the children of the sixties, who are now in their sixties are interpreting events to fit their agenda. It doesn’t matter if you read your astrology: the writers want to bring back the sixties, or if you watch the news: there are riots in the streets because of racism… it’s as if the children of the sixties have only one style of interpreting the events around them. Their view of the world has overtaken that of those that were in power before them (the fifties generation)…. it’s not that strange for social groups to want to create the world in their image…it’s the rhetoric which is problematic for me. I can see their point, I see where they are coming from, the problem is that it is out of sync out of the timespace of thinking, it limits the opportunity for true consciousness elevation. Collaboration, unity, and the understanding, true belief that we are all one world. requires ascension, it requires seeing in a higher dimension, not dualistic but multidimensionally to work toward creating that unity.

I was raised in the same set of beliefs. I challenged my parent’s worldview. I learned to think in a liberal environment and questioned authority. I was a strong Kennedy Liberal.

Now that the liberal perspective is the authority, the question authority challenge has to come from the libertarian or conservative perspective.

It’s a neutral theme about how to think critically.

I understand that politics is full of propaganda, but propaganda doesn’t serve the alternative community.

The alternative community is where innovation, and really holding the middle space should be coming from. Unfortunately, I see propaganda coming through in astrology readings, channelings, and fringe prediction on a daily basis.

This is my litmus test. Once I hear or read a push toward propaganda I know that person is pushing their ego perspective not channeling from a high source. When I channel information I am continually surprised by the level of love and neutrality and elevated information I receive and hear. Consistently I experience the beauty of the higher dimensional systems; I may feel a negative sense toward someone in my personhood, but then when I channel from source, I hear source saying that person is light just like me…Source is not in good/bad or third dimension, source in in a dimension beyond fifth.

This may sound a little weird to my readers who are not part of the alternative world. That’s cool, let’s look at it from a more cognitive perspective.

My world view is not that of the hippie, partly because I am just too young to have that part of my cellular structure (although I have lots of peers that have gripped that belief system), partly because I am driven toward congruence. Which is to say if I am challenging another to be loving and kind I strive to treat that person the way I am entreating them to treat others. That is not what is happening in the community at large from the mainstream perspective. More often than not I observe hatefulness, superiority, righteousness, and a demeanor of superiority in my fiercely liberal friends toward their political opposites or those whom they propagandize as against their beliefs. That feels deeply incongruent with the liberal agenda of being compassionate toward others. Whenever acting in a way outside of what you are requesting to be the action toward yourself, then you are not living in an integrated spirit self mindful space.

I was raised by a person whose life-breath was integrated compassion and mindfulness derived from his amazing intellect. This integrated spiritual/cognitive mindfulness became my natural way in the world; it became my life-breath. In addition, I was lucky enough to not push down my sensory guidance system that results in a sensefulness knowing that connects me to other humans, animals, plants, nature and spirit in an inexplicable way, and assists me in knowing that we are one world, one planet, one group – all.

I am an immigrant’s daughter. My people left a difficult place to make a better life. They worked hard to make that a truth. No handouts, nothing for free. Those hard life stories that aren’t a myth but reality for my people. My father was the baby of 13 children. His father died when he was a teenager. He won a scholarship to university in Chicago, due to his amazing intellect, and had to forego it to work full time to support his mother. His mother had to mortgage her home to send him to night school, which he completed in 3 years while still working. He took care of his sisters, his mother, and his family, whenever asked. He was the first of his generation to get a college degree. He worked hard, started five businesses, each successful, and then sent all of his children to college. We went on to get graduate degrees, and for one of us from Ivy league Universities. I am the child of a man who moved five social class positions in his short lifetime and then raised me with principles that used to be considered ‘American principles’.

I went to a very liberal, liberal arts college where I was taught HOW to think, not what to think, all perspectives were offered and supported, it was my job to develop critical thinking and decode for myself what mattered. And I came back home challenging my parents’ belief systems, looking at how my country was making mistakes and believing we could make the whole world better through mindfulness, communication, compassion and care. I traveled to Europe and my continent neighbors, and I saw how countries, like people, were not all cut from the same cloth. Different things worked successfully for different countries just as they do for different personalities. I studied Sociology and breathed-in the understanding that culture defines and creates thinking in a way that sometimes shifts a person out of critical, mindful thinking. I learned that you have to challenge the belief systems that ‘seem’ natural and like breathing, because those are ideas that were introjected, swallowed whole, rather than a function of critical thinking. (gestalt therapy, theory, peeling the onion, how to create mini-cultural revolutions) I worked in the chronic mental health community and helped people caught in that community to interact more efficiently in a world that didn’t quite make sense. I interacted with and helped people in the fringe of our society, always with compassion and care. I learned a lot about how culture, experience and dualistic thinking created the problems surrounding the American culture.

Now, I write about mindfulness and sensfulness, ecopsychology, multidimensional interaction and the elevation of consciousness. The answer is not in either the liberal or conservative perspective, it is in transcending and including BOTH. The answer is in integrating the diverse belief systems so that they are interacting in a positive, caring, accepting collaborative way.

How is this related to Independence day? The people who strove to change the nation were like my father, integrated spiritual people. They made an effort to transcend the rebellious pull, to create a thoughtful design to maintain a space in the middle, to help those who show up in the nation to create a real change in how people were treated. They were imperfect, they couldn’t change some of the beliefs that were against their spiritual knowing, so they wrote the Declaration of Independence to include what they knew to be true that all people were created equal, all had the right to life and liberty. As the years go by we create the fullness of that truth with all people, and for my mind all sentient beings on the planet and the planet herself. There is still more work to go to elevate the consciousness of the planet. But those men then created an avenue through the declaration of independence to offer a way to create a higher level of consciousness right here. For that reason I am proud to be an American, and through that care and love for this experiment, I am dragging in the entire human race, the animals and plants and stars, hoping that soon, very soon all can see how we are one people, one world. how wolves change rivers

From my experience with Sociology, with helping people in many different communities and cultures, we aren’t going to get there by demeaning groups through propaganda. We can do it through a real dialogue, sincerely using sensefulness and mindfulness in a multidimensional way to create a healing and an elevation of consciousness on the planet. The empathic civilization, Jeremy Rifkin

With each step you can step onto the Path to Grace.

It requires internally challenging your knee-jerk reactions, belief systems, and those things that trigger you to anger and hatefulness.healing survivor scenarios
Act from a compassionate understanding place with an ernest desire to understand your fellow and sister perspective so that you can learn and grow and clarify your own perspective.
Act toward others with the loving care you desire from them. Use the golden and silver rule to guide you and the elevation of consciousness is at hand.

Not all will survive this powerful time. Each of you can maintain your integrated mindfulness and sensefulness, and while you are learning from others, they are learning from you. This will create the space for an elevation in consciousness. five element cleanse

Gather support from the natural environment.

Find out more in my new book,Instinctive Health Medicine, Finding Your Path to Grace, due out in July 2016.

Check out these videos on Krqe.com in April 2014 and November 2014

Aligning with your true path, your true self in your multidimensional self allows for healing.

January 28, 2015
by instinctivehealthparenting4u Leave a comment

4×4 Habits 2 Health, Week 4, Connect Spirit to Mind

You started with intention, created a map, then began to breathe.
These are the first steps in in re-visioning Spirit and Mind to shift your perspective and health habits.

This week is about attending to the connection of spirit and mind via the breath and concretizing the new vision in your daily actions/habits.

Find your paper that has your personal narrative of intentions.
Re-view your words – are they representative of your intentions three weeks later?
make adjustments, additions, and clarifications.

Find you picture map, what is attractive to you about it today? See it both from a figurative and holistic perspective – figure and ground connecting spirit and mind.

Look into the mirror and view your physical self.

First you will focus on the negatives, things you do not like about yourself.
Jot these down,
now return with compassion and love to your image in the mirror.
be grateful for what is there both the parts you wish to change and those you like when you view them.
Make an effort to shine love on your self through this process. So if you are unhappy about extra pounds then see how these represent something good. Perhaps you still carry weight from the joy of carrying your child and you can be thankful for those pounds while you simultaneously determine it is time to release them.
Or if you see lines between your brows consider what that represents, perhaps a strength of thinking skills and focus, be grateful for your capacity to focus so directly and then you may determine you desire to shift your habits to include play and relaxation in balance. This blog from back in 2010, really gets to the heart of this, please check it out to help you focus on seeing the good in bad…or emphasizing the positive, https://instinctivehealthmedicine.com/2010/09/14/how-you-face-the-day-is-how-it-faces-you-back/ .

How you see yourself matters. Consider compassionately responding to the aspects of your physical being that you find repulsive.

Next, Shift this to your behaviors and words.

Consider how you came to develop the behavior that you desire to release.
Be grateful for the way in which it has positively served you ,
and then you may make a decision to release that patterning.

In this moment you are free to make a deeper shift in your intentions to connect your spirit and mind in an integrated narrative, picture map. You can achieve this by creating a second map that incorporates a fuller picture of your new view OR you may connect the narrative and map you have by putting them onto a paper together, including our new insights from the work in the mirror.

(This process is one you may want to do several times a year to reset your goals and return to your center.)

Place the map and narrative in a place where you frequently pass by it throughout the day.

Each time you pass it,
stop,
view it fully.
Breathing in and breathing out.
Creating a space within yourself for the images and words to infuse you with peace, will, strength, and joy to create your new habits to health.

You are transforming yourself from the inside out. Habits develop through repetition or an immediate reward for a behavior. So practice and be kind to yourself as you are making these changes. You can check out this earlier blog for more support https://instinctivehealthmedicine.com/2012/07/06/visioning-anew-developing-your-allowing-muscles/ . You may also want to read this blog for emotional support https://instinctivehealthmedicine.com/2013/01/24/two-parables-your-life-is-what-you-make-it/ .

And as always, Remember you have a better chance of getting where you want to go if you have a map…in love and light, many blessings, bg

You can find out more at http://www.bethgineris.com. Beth’s upcoming book, 6 steps to transcending conflict and elevating consciousness, due out in 2015 offers special techniques for releasing unresolved injuries…and the elevation of consciousness.

You may participate in seminars to learn these techniques through the bethgineris website. Beth’s groundbreaking book Turning Me to WE: The Art of Partnering with Mindfulness(2013), has some great tools about Temperament style and your personal style of partnering, as well as the insecurity Drivers MAAPS. Discover where you are in the Temperament and the MAAPS section. You can see how you see the world, and whether you have an attachment that is creating problems in your relationships. MAAPS will help you to discern your insecurities and understand how and what underlies how you developed your insecurity driver (Money, Achievement, Attachment, Power, Structure).

One being at a time you can elevate the way in which you treat one another and elevate the consciousness on the planet so that equality, balance, and freedom BEcome the norm for all. in love and light, bg

January 22, 2015
by instinctivehealthparenting4u Leave a comment

4×4 Habits 2 Health, week 3 Create Space for Breath

Breathing in Breathing out..
Seems simple enough, right?
True we are all breathing in and out right now.
To Create Space for Breath has more to do with conscious breathing – Inspiration and Letting go of that which does not serve…not only from a physical point of view, spiritually, and emotionally, too.

Practice this right now.
Take a deep breath. What happened – did your chest expand? Great.
Now take a breath in and think about breathing deep into your lower lungs, so deep that your belly expands out… Great!
Now, what do you notice is different between your chest expanding breath and your belly expanding breath?
Write down the differences…describe whether you feel your heart rate increase or decrease; whether you feel more or less relaxed; whether you feel a deeper sense of calm or a readiness to react; describe which allows a focus on your external or internal environment.

Okay. Now that you have your own personal experience on paper you can consciously practice the type of breathing you feel brings you to your center, increases your awareness of your internal sensory guidance system, releases anxiety, and readies you to respond mindfully.

Mindful breathing can help you discern what is you and what belongs to another. Check out this post for more detailed information about the power of discernment and conscious breathing, https://instinctivehealthmedicine.com/2010/02/09/centering-and-breath-focus-on-connection/ . Another post that really describes the flow of energy through breathing and ways to dispel left-over negative energy in your body is this blog, from March 2010 and reblogged last year, https://instinctivehealthmedicine.com/2010/03/11/energy-breath-and-balance/

Why focused breathing? Because it puts you back into the driver seat of your life.

Shallow, automatic breathing actually keeps you disconnected from the now. Focused, conscious, mindful breathing brings you back into the center of your being; it allows you to choose How you want to Be in the world; How you want to respond in a given situation. By centering you in the now, you are able to discern what you want to keep in our life and what you want to release. It cuts through anxiety and fear to a quiet inner locus of control that allows your personal sensory guidance system (your five senses and intuition) to guide you through any labyrinth. You may look at this recent blog for even more information about the relationship between will and breath, https://instinctivehealthmedicine.com/2014/07/18/the-space-between-mindful-breathing-and-will-staying-within-the-threshold-of-calm-strength/ .

And for any of you healers out there, this is my favorite blog about the importance of stillness, breath, and being a healer, https://instinctivehealthmedicine.com/2012/02/14/focus-your-energy-and-breathe/ . Breath allows you to focus your energy and create the space for healing, yours as well as other’s.

As part of your 4×4 Habits 2 Health, Breath is one of the powerful keys to changing your world; to change you from the inside out.

Yoga can be a powerful tool to increasing your positive relationship with breath and your body.

Choosing to create space for breath includes creating the Habit of breathing through your fear, your anxiety, your stress.

Begin each day with three deep relaxing, belly expanding breaths. You may follow this with a more entailed breathing in and breathing out session for five minutes (if you do this remember to make your inhalation shorter than your exhalation, so breathing in for a count of 3 and breathing out for a count of 5) Or 9 sets of Sun Salutation A, see this blog for how to do that: http://www.yogitimes.com/article/re-balance-healing-healer-life.

OR through a sound toning and breathing session, see this blog for how to do that: https://instinctivehealthmedicine.com/2014/05/06/sound-healing-2-feel-the-vibration-allow-the-shift-elevate-your-consciousness/ .

Create the space to breathe and you will notice a whole new way of being in your life. Apply this to the map you have already created to focus your energy even further and create healthy habits NOW. breathing in love and light, sending it your way, bg

December 19, 2014
by instinctivehealthparenting4u Leave a comment

Your way home is through…your inner light will guide you

“the conflict between the anti-american attitude of the far left of the sixties and the beliefs of the first generation immigrants who choose America and the belief in the opportunity to chart my own course….” Dinesh D’souza

The issues are complex. The dialogue is so seductive. It belies the complexity of the issues.

This is a photo lauded on facebook recently – I know they want to make a difference and change what they perceive as negative in government and the powers that be…

However, passing this photo off as truth is actually how propaganda works.

It pulls the reader who accepts it whole, into acting toward other people, a group of people who don’t precisely agree with them, in the exact ways they condemn…

This is a crisis in our global community right now…this linear, third dimensional thinking wrapped up in the rhetoric of consciousness, social activism, and the rhetoric of the sixties. The seductive quality of the rhetoric uses all the tricks that belie logic, straw man arguments, non-sequiturs…

The comments written within the photo don’t hold up to critical thinking. In order to address the problems facing the global community integrated mindful investigation of the problems facing us is necessary. We need to uplevel our consciousness, include opposing views, paradigm shift, and integrate to solve these problems.

Arguing for the opposite of what is keeps us on the same linear third dimensional curve.

This is the problem with positive rights. This is the reason for a constitution of negative rights. Negative rights protect they press the reader to use critical thinking, to stand in the center of his/her integrated self and create from an internal locus of control the world that supports all beings. Positive rights simply change the name and status of victim or persecutor.

How could you not believe in equal rights for gays, to love whom they love freely and without harassment? It is good to allow freedom. It is not good to force it by persecuting another group or person.
How could you not believe in a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body? Yes women should be free to choose how to maintain their bodies and care for their physical vehicles…they should not be forced to have sexual relationships or to not have them. The issue of pregnancy is complicated because the women and child share the same physical vehicle for that brief 10 month period. Pretending that the being growing inside a woman is something other than another human being belies the reality and diminishes intelligence. Anyone who has been pregnant knows the child is real at the start, a growing human being.
The same people who fight for abortion also fight for protecting animal infants…so how is this? Because of the trick of linguistics…the human growing inside the woman is renamed fetus — as if this being has no connection to the baby that might later be born. The answer is to support protect and care for the women, human babies AND animals, and animal babies AND the environment…it isn’t an either/or. The seductive propaganda has more caring for animal and plant life than human…Intelligence dictates that all life be valued. Just as animals should not be raised for consumption as if they have no sentience, humans babies growing inside a woman’s body should not be treated as if they have no sentience.
How could you not agree with the issues of protecting the earth, recycling, allowing people to set up a household in our country that are seeking asylum? Yep, yep, yep, all important things, and all should be dealt with at the same level of honor.

So valuable…where have the words of Kennedy, and Martin Luther King gone…what has happened to them, twisting them around to support violence and harm against others to take from the government rather than to serve one’s country…twisted it into fighting for imprisonment but using their words —

The thing that we have is our capacity to connect through mindfulness. It is telling that the group who once used to ‘question authority’ have become the group controlling what and how someone thinks. This shows the lack of balance and the degree of incongruence.

From my perspective, this shift in focus in the liberal agenda and propaganda, proves Freud’s theory, that if you don’t work through your issues you will become the person(s) you hate, and you won’t be able to see it in yourself…We have to elevate consciousness not stifle it.

From a consciousness perspective we are developing as two worlds. One world is arguing points from a 3rd dimensional plane — pushing for rights, but forgetting about responsibilities..these individuals for the most part have their hearts soundly in the right place — they want to change what isn’t working or what seems to be avarice, consumerism, and divisiveness…yet they are not using their critical thinking to think outside the crowd mentality, outside the mob mentality of right/might over wrong. This has some of the language of the evolving interconnected elevated consciousness but none of the energy. The mobs killing to make others listen, no matter how important you think your message is – you destroy your credibility through your behavior.

The other consciousness that is evolving is that of one global world, completely interconnected– all human cultures with animals, plants, and the earth…this consciousness is not on the path of 3rd dimension good/bad, right/wrong, but rather on the path of discernment, wholeness, and collaboration. It is in the tessellation space where we are in agreement and built on that. It is compassionate, loving, and embracing collaboration.

It is on another plane from the right /wrong, 3rd dimensional space.

The challenge to everyone of us is to respond to our environment with compassion. Thinking you are right, and acting from this righteous place creates defensiveness in the other person. Finding your inner knowing and making honest efforts to connect that inner knowing with another’s inner knowing that creates love, care, connection, and peace.

The elevation of consciousness begins within you, within me, within our children. And we cannot create the space for that when we treat others without compassion; when we treat others as if we are superior in our ideology. Compassion open the door for understanding and negotiation and finally a place where agreement is.

….the way home is through..first within yourself — addressing the complicated incongruent beliefs and behaviors you have and finding a level of congruence in your thinking and actions. Then next within your family systems. Then within your friendships and work. And finally in how you choose your government and what policies you encourage.

It is a shift away from the power of alpha and popularity mentality toward REAL integrity, and value – from this space you can act in a way that is congruent with this elevation of consciousness.

It’s tricky to stand in the center of your beliefs with your actions and be ready to be disapproved of, dropped off your social network groups because you are not in agreement with the group… and STILL remain loving, compassionate and strive for connection…that IS the elevation of consciousness, to move the group acceptance and drive for power into the workhorse role rather than the leadership role and have your Heart, true internal sensory guidance, and spiritual knowing be your leading guide.

In this season of light let it be so…allow your light to shine and be a being of love and light. The continuation of the planet depends on your capacity to heal yourself, heal your relationships, and live consciously from this space. Shalom, Namaste, Blessings, in love and light, bg

And as always, Remember you have a better chance of getting where you want to go if you have a map…in love and light, many blessings, bg

October 11, 2014
by instinctivehealthparenting4u Leave a comment

money grows on trees…

I wanted to share a positive message about how the universe can and does respond to intention and attention.

My daughter wanted to go to the St James Tearoom.
It’s a fancy luncheon place that serves old-fashioned tea sandwiches dressed in cream cheese, cucumbers and flowers, with biscuits and clotted cream.
It is one of her favorite things to do.
She wanted to go with her dad and he rescheduled his afternoon patients just to take her.

He knows how fast children grow up. he remembers the day his son preferred the company of his friends to him, and he just wasn’t ready for that yet with this one…not yet.

Granted we have been lucky, our son stayed close by through college to really eek out the last bits of play with my husband and me. But it is still hard to let go. To see them grow. To watch them do precisely what we are teaching them to do — become their best self and have full and happy adventures in far away places…

It was a beautiful afternoon, a slight breeze in the air. As they were getting out of the car my daughter noticed something in the drain by the curb…she ran over to it and with her most precious smile presented to her dad a hundred dollar bill.

She was delighted. He was dumbfounded.

She had been saving for something special. And now she had found a hundred dollar bill. She felt very lucky. She was. She had a lovely tea and enjoyed all the festivities. When their time was up she took home her uneaten desserts and her special find.

The power of this story is exemplified in her simple belief that the world will provide that which she needs, without question.

Esther Hicks/Abraham encourage each of us to simply ‘ask and it is given'(Hicks, 2004). The Law of Attraction as she calls the energetic law of the universe referencing that what you attend to, what you put your energy into is what you will receive. When you find yourself stuck it is a result of you simultaneously putting energy into releasing something that no longer has value while also holding to it. You allow fear to have a voice as loud as faith. When this happens the energy of both are sent your way and your resulting experience is a lack of movement, or no change.

I see this often when I work with couples. Each party is holding to resentments, or habits, or fears while also saying he or she desires to release it and move forward. They find themselves in the same argument. They reflect and trigger each other’s fear and reactivity. This is a waste of energy. Not simply a waste of energy in the argument but also a waste of the use of your attention and intention the pathway to focus energy toward the creation of your desire.

Each of you reading this can have the same experience of money simply showing up in your life (growing on trees, ready for you to pluck like fruit and receive).

Here are the simple steps to make it so:

Take a breath, exhale and clear your mind.
Visualize what you desire.
Hold the visualization clear in your heart and mind for 30 seconds free of negativity or attachment to the process (reasons it cannot happen or ways it should happen or how you will feel hurt if it doesn’t happen).
Take a deep breath and as you exhale release your desire as you would a butterfly.
Write down what you saw and desire onto a piece of paper and put it in a box you keep near your bed while you sleep.
You may do this as often as you like.
When you gaze upon the box say a prayer that all that is good will come to you.

To strengthen the power of this process

Live your life with an open heart and a mindful attitude. Keep negative beliefs out of your daily thought patterns.
Consciously release thoughts and habit patterns that do not serve you.
Forgive.
Be compassionate toward yourself and others.
Be mindful: When you are struggling, look at the problem within the context of that which is good in our life.

In these difficult times I find myself and others forgetting the power in prayer. The power of faith and knowing. The power of clear intention and attention. I like to remind myself and those I love that the universe is working for me, I just have to get out of the way and let the good I have created flow to me. I wish the absolute best to you. in love and light, bg

You can find out more at http://www.bethgineris.com. Beth’s upcoming book, 6 steps to transcending conflict and elevating consciousness, due out in 2014 offers special techniques for releasing unresolved injuries…and the elevation of consciousness.

You may participate in seminars to learn these techniques through the bethgineris.com. Beth’s groundbreaking book Turning Me to WE: The Art of Partnering with Mindfulness(2013), has some great tools about Temperament style and your personal style of partnering, as well as the insecurity Drivers MAAPS. Discover where you are in the Temperament and the MAAPS section. You can see how you see the world, and whether you have an attachment that is creating problems in your relationships. MAAPS will help you to discern your insecurities and understand how and what underlies how you developed your insecurity driver (Money, Achievement, Attachment, Power, Structure).

You can find ways to simply connect to yourself in a loving forgiving way through theTurning No to ON: The Art of Parenting with Mindfulness Book (2011).

If you want to change your life, see how you can bring mindfulness to your parenting and relationships.
One being at a time you can elevate the way in which you treat one another and elevate the consciousness on the planet so that equality, balance, and freedom BEcome the norm for all. in love and light, bg

July 1, 2014
by instinctivehealthparenting4u 1 Comment

Change your life in 3 weeks with three easy steps that only take minutes a day

Here are three easy steps to change your life in three weeks — and they only take minutes a day.

First, wake up one hour earlier…in the hour do 10 sun salutations. Leave 30 minutes earlier for your first appointment or check in time; when you get to your office or place of business– write down the three things you want to accomplish that day.
Second, build into your day three ten minute quiet spaces.
Third, change all your passwords to phrases that are positively empowering, express gratitude or encouragement. Every time you have to log into a site, open your computer or pay a bill and you write in your password…stop to breath and repeat the meaningful statement in your head with a sense of strength.

Do this for three weeks and you will have an increase in energy, money, and recognition.

I used this set of changes over the last five years and managed to write three books (almost finished with the fourth)… increase my income doing more of what I really love, healed my relationships in my family of origin and my chosen family…and most importantly increased my own self confidence, positive self perception, and clarified my daily interactions.

I am not the only one who came up with the meaningful password one, check this out for confirmation: http://medium.com/@manicho/7af5d5f28038

Namaste, in love and light, bg

You can find out more at http://www.bethgineris.com. Even More outlined in Beth’s upcoming book, 6 steps to transcending conflict and elevating consciousness, due out in 2014. You may participate in seminars to learn these techniques through her website. This book is the HOW TO companion book to Turning Me to WE: The Art of Partnering with Mindfulness(2013). Discover where you are in the Temperament and the MAAPS section. You can see how you see the world, and whether you have an attachment that is creating problems in your relationships. MAAPS will help you to discern your insecurities and understand how and what underlies how you developed your insecurity driver (Money, Achievement, Attachment, Power, Structure). You can find ways to simply connect to yourself in a loving forgiving way through theTurning No to ON: The Art of Parenting with Mindfulness Book (2011). If you want to change your life, see how you can bring mindfulness to your parenting and relationships. One being at a time you can elevate the way in which you treat one another and elevate the consciousness on the planet so that equality, balance, and freedom BEcome the norm for all. in love and light, bg

March 9, 2014
by instinctivehealthparenting4u Leave a comment

ego…no ego: balancing inner desires with outer expectations

The fastest way to align with the best parts of yourself and perceive the oneness of all humankind is through the ego.

The ego is the mindful aspect of your self. In fact, if you want to get to no-ego you want to fully embrace ego, and then you will observe no-ego within you as you elevate your consciousness to oneness with all. (Gineris, turning me to we:the art of partnering with mindfulness, 2013)

This is not unlike the very power of breath in yoga to dissolve the blocks of energy within your muscles. Embracing the blockage, and breathing with and through it transforms the energy.

The concept of ego in psychological theory is the role of mediator and rebalancer in the tripartite aspect of the human mind developed by Freud.

The ego’s job is to mediate between the primitive needs and wants, the id, of an individual and the introjected societal shoulds and should nots inculcated from your parents, the superego. (Freud, the ego and the id, 1923)

The ego has gotten a bad rap from alternative healers indicating that it is power and control based. I suspect this has to do with the Buddhist concept of living free of inner desires. There is no need for a mediating aspect of mind if you are not in such an inner battle between self and society.

Another confusing piece of the puzzle is the term egoistic or egotistic, it references an inflated picture of self and selfish behavior. The root of these words is ego and so there is a tendency to attach selfish, power-hungry meaning to the word ego.

But this is the same mistake as calling someone who is hypomanic depressed. it is understanding the meaning of the prefix hypo, less or under, without understanding the meaning of the word. When an individual is hypomanic she is agitated frustrated, aggressive, but not in a full-blown manic state… so just under (hypo) mania. She is still hyper-aware and hyper-agitated.

Your ego is not selfish but rather holistic, attempting to discern ways to guide your actions and thinking toward caring for individual needs while living under the expectations of society.

The problem with an interpretation of ego as power-hungry is that it pulls you away from the part within you that is actually guiding you toward spirit.

Ego is that aspect of yourself that invites compassion, neutrality, lovingkindness, and the concept that we are all one to come into your mind.

Shift your relationship to the word ego by clarifying the underlying meaning.

Avoid acting in a selfish manner.
Use mindfulness, compassion, and lovingkindness in your decision-making.
Breathe
Embrace the perfection of spirit already within you, guiding you toward the most holistic and loving action that allows for the oneness of the universe to be represented.

Ego/no-ego, rebalance your internal picture so that you can increase your empathy and connect to the spirit within you that is connected to all. Then your needs and society needs (or group, or couple needs) clarify, become aligned, and your actions are empathetic, bounded, and resonant from an inner security.in love and light, bg

dr beth gineris is an integrative medicine practitioner in albuquerque, new mexico. she offers compassionate, mindful guidance to online coaching clients and clinic patients daily using her medical intuitive, clinical counseling, energetic rebalancing, and oriental medicine skills. you can find her at http://www.bethgineris.com

Das, Lama Surya. Buddha Is as Buddha Does: The Ten Original Practices for Enlightened Living. HarperCollins, 2007.
Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and The Id. w.w. Norton & co.,1923.
Gineris, Beth. Turning Me to WE: The Art of Partnering with Mindfulness. Createspace, 2013, p186-190.

February 19, 2014
by instinctivehealthparenting4u Leave a comment

easy centering meditation for all ages

This is an easy way to teach kids how to meditate

Begin with breath.

Sit comfortably.

Close your eyes.

Imagine golden light coming in the top of your head and moving down along the interior of your body along your spine with your in-breath.

As you exhale imagine negative energy, stress, fears, or obstacles moving out your feet.

If you like you can think of how the sun feels on your back to get an image of warmth moving through you.

Breathe in so that your tummy gets big and breathe out so that your tummy gets smaller.
Breathe in for a count of 3 and out for a count of 5 (after a while you may want to breathe in for a count of 5 and out for 7 or even long but always have your out-breath be longer by two counts).

You can have you child teach a favorite stuffy to help learn the routine.

In medicine the best strategy to habituate yourself to a procedure is see 1, do 1, teach 1. So use that strategy here to help inculcate for your child the meditation process.

After 10 to 20 breaths have a strong exhalation and open your eyes; you will feel refreshed.
You can lengthen the time you breathe to 3 – 5 minutes.

Encourage your child to practice in the morning and the evening.

3-5 minutes for younger children is an excellent practice. As your child becomes more practiced you can increase to 15 minutes twice a day. Long time meditators may meditate for 30 or more minutes. Let your experience define what is best for you and your child.

Encourage your child to use this technique when faced with a stressful event. After practice it will become a natural instinctive method in response to feeling out of balance, feeling fearful or stressed.

You can do this too and it will reinforce your child’s practice.

Enjoy! in love and light, bg

On April 5, 2014, I will be teaching a course on the use of mindfulness to treat anxiety for coaches, teachers and parents, at the Center for Instinctive Health Medicine…. Mindfulness techniques to reduce anxiety & stress, in children, excellent for counselor, caregivers, coaches, and teachers tuition $120, April 5, 2014, 9-3, 6 hours of ceu for counselor and therapists— includes applications for children and adolescents for parent/teacher training. [this class can be purchased for training in classroom or counselor site training – modified to fit your needs – contact dr. gineris by email]….. These techniques are great for counselors and I offer CEUs for nm licensed counselors, you can sign up through my website, www.bethgineris.com.

dr beth gineris is the author of Turning NO to ON: The Art of Parenting with Mindfulness (2011) and Turning ME to WE: The Art of Partnering with Mindfulness (2013). She endeavors to assist individuals in the process of upleveling their consciousness in everyday interactions to experience profound love, connection and care in their relationships and communities. You can find her books on amazon.com and through her website.

InstinctiveHealthParenting4U

Change your Attitude, Heal your Soul, Balance your Life. Uplevel YOUR consciousness. Find your way HOME through MAAPS.

Tag Archives: spiritual development