Sunday, September 21, 2008

Mental Health
















Alas, life expands to overfill our day, at times. Umpteen responsibilities take over and our indulgences go by the wayside. Not so good. Indulging in what gives us pleasure does healthier things to our minds and bodies than pressure filled responsibilities. Though I haven’t turned to my blog in the last month to relax, I have paid attention to my bodies needs and during pressure filled days, I have taken “time outs” periodically amidst my activities. A hop onto the love seat on the back deck, feet up in the sunshine and a fifteen-minute period of concentration with mental training exercises I teach and use daily. Not only does my body relax but my brain is more creative and focused when I return to my tasks.

Too often we get ideas of things we want to do, or are forced to meet demands of our world and expect our minds and bodies can be dragged into responding effectively on cue. We've learned that in order to keep our bodies in shape physically, we must exercise and sleep enough. Hopefully we are learning that we must keep our minds in shape, as well. Effective timeouts for our minds is essential if we want them to respond effectively by “thinking well”, ‘being creative”, “remembering effectively”, and “handling emotion well”. Timeout’s for the mind also deactivate our nervous systems.

As you go through the day, think of your central nervous system (brain, spine and nerves) lighting up like a Christmas tree – that is stress. Effectively quieting the brain begins turning off those lights and relaxing your body.It’s easy to teach a simple mental training exercise, the difficulty is helping people make it a habit in their daily lives. At first for most it seems awfully simple, and they may wonder, “Here I am counting backwards again, what’s that got to do with my problems?” Even if it makes sense, it takes a while to make it a habit and therefore is easily forgotten. Another problem is that unfortunately our bodies are not used to feeling calm and relaxed. Most people are more used to feeling stressed and frazzled. When a calm, relaxed feeling overtakes the body it can actually feel “uncomfortable” until one gets used to it. It’s worth getting used to, in fact, essential for health.

Here is a simple way to start, take ten minutes a couple times a day and give it a try.

Get comfortable and close your eyes, count backwards slowly and silently from 25 to 1,

Next: heighten your breathing and slowly focus your breath into the various parts of your body(feet, legs, hips and stomach, chest, back and spine, shoulders, neck and head)

Next: Visualize a beautiful scene from nature and hold it for a couple minutes (just experience it, the colors, details, sounds, etc. – no “thinking about it”)

Finally: Count from 1 to 5 (cueing the mind to speed up again and get going)

If you do this series of mental exercises very slowly and hold the scene for a couple minutes it should take around ten minutes and give your mind and body a needed rest. It’s been shown that ½ hour of mental training can be the equivalent of 4 hours of sleep. Give it a try. If you make "quieting your brain" a habit, the effects over time can be life changing.