KAJAMA.COM NEWSLETTER

by Heather Tick, M.D.

Meditation is [a powerful] antidote to the harmful effects of stress. It changes your body chemistry and brings your body rhythms into sync with one another. It can lower your levels of stress hormones, decrease excessive muscle tension, normalize blood pressure, reduce anxiety, and increase pain tolerance. The particular practice called mindfulness-based stress reduction is based on Buddhist meditation techniques and has been studied and made popular by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Research has shown it to be a powerful technique with benefits for patients with chronic pain and anxiety.

There are many different types of meditation. Some use concentration: you focus your attention on only one thing, such as a sound or mantra. Some employ mindfulness: you quiet your mind by excluding outside thoughts and plans, and you focus on the awareness of everything you are experiencing in that moment and from moment to moment. People think of meditation as something they have to sit still for. That appeals to some, but others just don't have the time or get bored. Some forms of meditation involve stillness and some involve movement. The real meditation, says Kabat-Zinn, is how you live your life.

You can practice using a variety of things: your breath, eating a meal, going for a walk, or a series of movements (as in yoga, qi gong, and tai chi). Any moment in your life can become mindful if you clear your mind of the daily clutter and attend to it: the look on a child's face, the fragrance of a flower, the taste of a meal...

Mindfulness Meditation

Sit in a comfortable position, either cross-legged on the floor (use pillows to prop up your knees if you need to) or in a chair. Rest your hands comfortably on your knees and take a few deep, cleansing breaths. Close your eyes to limit distraction. Focus on your breathing: breathe in...breathe out.

You may notice that your mind is wandering and thinking about the office or the next chore you must do. Just acknowledge the thought and bring yourself back to focusing on your breathing. Each time your mind wanders, bring it back to your breathing, without judgment.

Mindfulness is about being rather than about doing. Do this for ten minutes each day.

Walking Meditation

This is one of my favorites because it combines two things I love to do. You don't have to walk very far. Wear comfortable clothes and shoes.

As you step, pay attention to the feeling in your feet as you place your heels on the ground and then roll toward your toes. Your weight shifts, and you are about to put your other foot to the ground and take the next step. Just observe the sensations in your feet, ankles, legs, and hips, and up through your body.

Are you swinging your arms? What do they feel like? How does the air feel on your face? Is there a breeze? What can you see? People, flowers, the horizon? Are there noises? Loud ones, like cars and voices? Soft ones, like the air as you brush past? The sound of your footsteps? Your breath?

When thoughts of your to-do list come to mind, just acknowledge them and then bring your attention back to your walk.

Eating Meditation

Food tastes better when you don't eat quickly — when you give your taste buds a chance to really experience the food. When my three children were young, I used to inhale my meals. Mealtime was so rushed that I didn't think I would get to eat if I ate slowly. If I could change that part of history, I would. It was not good for my health, my weight, or my children. I set a bad example for them, and now when I nag them to eat more slowly, they point and say I am a hypocrite. I am trying to eat as many meals as I can mindfully, and I have slowed down my overall pace of eating. I find I enjoy the food more and am satisfied with smaller portions.

Try to choose one meal each day during which you eat mindfully. Take your plate of food and sit down comfortably. Take a moment to look at the colors of the food on your plate. Then smell the aromas of the food. Try to distinguish as many different aromas or just enjoy the blend of them. Take a forkful of food and, before you put it into your mouth, hold it close to your mouth and see if you can already taste it. Then slowly put it in your mouth and feel the texture.

Begin to chew slowly. You will feel digestive enzymes being released along with saliva to help you digest your food. Chew for twice as long as you ordinarily would. Then swallow and wait a moment before you decide which morsel of food you will pick up next.

Choose a different part of the meal, if there is more than one type of food on your plate. Notice the different aromas, textures, and tastes, and continue eating this way until you are full. Then ask yourself, How did it feel to eat this way? Did it change your attitude to the food?

I recently heard of a woman who used to gobble a fast-food burger and fries each lunchtime. After learning about mindful eating, she ate one of those lunches mindfully. After that, she stopped eating fast food because she no longer liked the aroma, texture, and taste, which all seemed acceptable when she used to gobble it down.

Gratitude Meditation

Focusing on gratitude allows you to open your mind to those things in your life that are good. We all have something to be grateful for: waking up to a new day, a beautiful sunset (or cloud formation if you live in Seattle), having relatives or friends who have touched us, perceiving the beauty of a flower, experiencing the companionship of a pet. In a psychology study, each week for ten weeks, people wrote down five things they were grateful for. They were compared to two other groups, one whose members wrote down five burdens from the week, and another whose members simply listed five events. The gratitude group became 25 percent happier than either of the other groups. Perhaps gratitude moves us outside of our ego or makes us feel connected. Whatever the reason, it is a good practice.

Gratitude meditation is easy. As you fall asleep each night, review five things you are grateful for. You can combine this with a relaxing breathing exercise or one of the other meditations. Be prepared to be happier over time. Meditation practices are one way people feel connected to something larger than themselves and appreciate the spiritual aspects of their lives. Many people find that the experience of, and connection to, the mysterious, the sacred, that which is beyond their everyday experience, helps keep their day-to-day stresses in perspective.

Dr. Heather Tick is the author of Holistic Pain Relief and has been an integrative medical practitioner for over 20 years. A sought-after speaker, she lives in Seattle and works at the University of Washington, where she is the first Gunn-Loke Endowed Professor for Integrative Pain Medicine. Visit her online at heathertickmd.com.
Adapted from the book Holistic Pain Relief ©2013 by Dr. Heather Tick. Published with permission of New World Library.

I hope you are all in very good health! For some time, I have been experiencing some intrusion into my state of being from members of a religious group I used to be involved with. They are doing everything in their power to get me under their influence. I am no longer involved with their group and made a decision to cease contact with them ages ago. As a result of that, they tried using tactics to change my mind, such as offering me holidays, expensive gifts, etc. I still declined their offers and politely told them that I am sticking with my decision. I thought that they would eventually stop influencing me, but to my surprise, they continued to send me gifts and mail and regularly call me on the phone. Some of these members have appeared in my dreams on numerous occasions. I am very concerned about this and would be grateful if you could kindly advise me on how to protect myself from them spiritually. Thank you very much in advance for your kind help and support.

John

Susyn:

Thanks for your well wishes.

Your situation is not uncommon. I think it speaks to a much bigger social problem than religious groups. As humans, we are often bombarded with outside pressure by people who are trying to control, manipulate and influence us to their way of thinking. Remaining true to ourselves and our spiritual values is a challenge we face every day.

Religious groups have long been high-profile institutions that seek to control their members. Over the last thirty years, thanks to a global spiritual awakening, many of us have discovered that we can form a relationship with Spirit directly, and no longer need these groups to tell us how to live or what to believe.

Years ago, I had an experience similar to yours. When I made a decision to leave a religious group I had gotten involved in, some members became highly focused on changing my mind and getting me to come back into their fold.

Of course, the ideal religious or spiritual group operates on the basis of attraction rather than promotion. We are drawn to these groups because of the joy, peace and enlightenment we witness in their members. We should be the ones who seek them out, not the other way around.

There is good reason to be cautious or even alarmed when a religious group employs tactics such as gifts, frequent contact, and the haunting of your dreams. Here are a few ways to stop this unwanted activity and attention:

The first thing I recommend to bring these intrusions to a stop is to perform a freezing ritual. This won't harm the people in question but merely employ Spirit to block them from coming into your head, heart and home. You can find the directions for this freezing ritual in the Special Features area of my Kajama profile.

By performing this freezing ritual, you are asking the Universe to take care of this problem for you. Afterward, these emails, gifts and phone calls should diminish or stop completely. In the mean time, I recommend you ignore them. As spiritual beings, we are wise to avoid addressing or trying to deal with negative people and groups on our own; instead, we should turn these matters over to Spirit.

If you choose, you can also pray for this group and ask that its members become more enlightened. As you bless them and send them on their way, youíll be completing the very important lesson the Universe has just taught you, and in turn may teach them a very important lesson about the meaning and power of true spirituality.

*****

Mata:

According to physical law, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is why relationships tend to continue: one person does one thing and the other person responds, which incites yet another reaction. It's only when one person ignores the natural inclination to respond in kind that relationships change or peter out.

The first thing to do is quit reacting and stop taking their calls. Give these people none of your attention and energy. If they offer you something, simply ignore the offer and go on with your life like they don't exist. Do NOT keep anything they try to give to you, for you don't want to feel obliged to them in any way. Besides, anything you exchange will create an energetic connection between you. If you have anything they gave you, give it to someone else or donate it to a local charity.

That they are entering your dreams suggests there is a hole in your psychic defenses that needs to be healed. No doubt this stems from your fear that these people will be able to influence you against your will. You must overcome that fear with faith in your authority over your own life. To do this, you must seat yourself in your personal power.

Hopefully you are familiar with the legend of Excalibur, in which the English throne could only be held by the one person able to pull a magical sword from a stone. To claim dominion over your own kingdom of experience, you must affirm and wholeheartedly believe that no matter what others say or do, only you have the power to rule in your realm.

When others try to influence you against your will, imagine them with fake plastic swords and then visualize yourself holding Excalibur and shining with divinely ordained sovereignty over your own life and experience.

This will have the multiple effects of boosting your faith and personal power, raising your vibration, and disempowering those trying to influence you on an astral level.

On this metaphysical level, they are waving the equivalent of plastic swords at you, and by being afraid that they can actually force you to do something you don't want to do, you've given those swords power as though they were real. Now that you know they're plastic and that you possess the most power in your own domain, you can just laugh at them and be on your way.

Finally, remember that you have powerful spiritual allies. Pray to your guides and angels to shield you from these efforts and then fill your heart and mind with the thoughts and feelings of all the good things you want to create in your life.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.