• To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.

    - Buddha

Understanding The Messages of Your Body

Posted on February 14, 2010 by zenhealer

It is a common joke that the body’s messages, in the form of physical aches and anxieties, are often ignored, or go unnoticed, by the average man.

Can you imagine having to learn to operate based on feedback from your body if the dialogue between the mind and the body was muted? Why was the sound turned off? Probably to enable more risk-taking, hunting behavior.

Early man’s survival depended on fearless action in the face of danger, on the courage to explore unknown territories and on the willingness to fight to the death and to protect his community.

Traditionally, masculine mindfulness relied on quickly understanding details and organizing strategy, for action to occur, in spite of physical pain or an internal alarm. It arises from overriding the body’s various alarms and turning on the intellect for planning and action.

The modern caveman, male or female, created football games and reality TV shows like Man vs. Wild. It’s all about actively taking extreme risks. Perhaps you know someone modeling their business accomplishments after real life conquerors like Genghis Khan? This is masculine consciousness at its best, and it has become the predominant intelligence-model for the developed world.

However masculine consciousness, in its development, was successful because it was supported by a complementary survival intelligence to deal with being corralled by the forces of Nature, which includes natural disasters, the changing of the seasons, creating shelter, finding food and recovering from injury and disease.

The forces of Nature gave rise to the development of this other survival intelligence; feminine consciousness, which relied on information felt in the body to prevent, protect and to heal individuals in her care for the survival of her community. Basically, instead of the volume being muted between the mind and body the sound was turned way, way up.

Women Are Environmentally Reactive

According to Mona Lisa Schulz, MD, women have neurocircuitry from deserted primitive brain pathways that function solely to connect us to changes in our immediate environment.

Just think how useful it is to know a blizzard is on its way, to know that rubbing a particular plant on your skin will repel mosquitoes or to know when to warn against the outcome of an extreme risk.

Leading neuroscientists agree that women have evolved with the stronger neurochemical connection to the cycles of our planet.  As a woman, I can experientially say that we do not become the cycles; we simply are the cycles. Perhaps you too can feel this physical attunement that is our connection to the planetary body?

As a vibrational healer, it is important for me to celebrate my ancestor’s ancient role in the survival of her community. This great-great grandmother from our past could comprehend specific instances in which her physical body’s pleasures and/or depressions were actually non-verbal dialogues with her environment. It would be like the translation of a sound, or, vibration heard from a tree, a plant or even the earth. However you’re translating this vibration through your body and allowing your body to interpret instead of analyzing and rationalizing it.

Your Body Is Your Subconscious Mind

In the words of renowned neuroscientist Candace Pert, PhD, “Your body is your subconscious mind.” Perhaps this statement also explains how the mysterious subconscious can know before an event has occurred, because our ancestral neruocircuitry is earthly Wi-Fi. We all know, first-hand, that the state of our bodies conditions our psyche. So imagine how some of what you’re feeling in your body as moods is actually guidance that is meant to alert you to either a problem within your own body or in the body of those around you, including the earth’s body.

Ideally you want to be able to receive information from either masculine or feminine processes according to any perceived stress. A long time has elapsed since man was living in caves, and to navigate modern stress you want to be skilled in both the masculine and the feminine mind allowing yourself to benefit from their balanced partnership.

Are you wondering how this balanced partnership between the masculine and the feminine mind works within you?  The best answer is to actively develop a conscious awareness of and an understanding of the messages from your body.

The first step is to recognize your body as a type of intelligence. Intelligence is not limited to thoughtful analysis, logic and critical thinking even though this is what is emphasized by our society. Intelligence is also body-kinesthetic, which is the natural sense of how your body should act and react in a demanding physical situation where there is no time for thinking. Demanding circumstances were at the forefront of our evolution. I believe that body-kinesthetic intelligence is the foundation for all human intelligence just like the roots that anchor and nourish the branches of a tree. And yet this foundational intelligence is dismissed and rarely utilized except for athletics, dance, bodywork or physical therapy.

Are you thinking of your favorite sport or pro-athlete right now? Then you’re on the right track. But this intelligence is not limited to the Olympics or the above vocations. I can only describe my experience, that for me, the core of being body smart is the ability to read my internal and external environment through feeling sensations in my body — just as through reading the words in this post you can read subtle movements inside your body. These subtle movements have correspondences to your internal organs, other people and the larger world because you are inextricably linked, neurochemically and cellularly, to your immediate environment.

Body sensations are incredibly accurate and reliable, but modern people are mostly disembodied by the time they are in the third grade. Conventional education focuses on developing one form of intelligence, analytical thinking, and ignores the nourishing intelligence that was used for millennia, your whole body.

Developing the ability to intellectually understand the messages of our bodies is the second step in how the masculine and feminine mind works in tandem. Dr. Schulz also points out that neuroanatomical mapping shows us that the atypical wiring of the brain of our female ancestors processed an adaptive unconscious; women today have very different brain functions than that of their great-great-grandmothers but the original pathways are still in place allowing us to awaken the ability to interpret, or, intuit what we feel as reliable information.

An expanded consciousness allows for information from your subconscious to filter into your mind’s intellect affirming that there are no separations in the mind-body, only two of many ways to experience your intelligence. I believe that it is every human being’s birthright to utilize the knowledge in our ancestral neural network as the pure expression of intuitive knowledge.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart… Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. – Carl Jung

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Zen and The Way of The Motorcycle

Posted on December 3, 2009 by zenhealer

Life’s Turning Points Require the Balance of Yin and Yang. That is the Balance of Heart and Head.

Imagine yourself on a motorcycle racing at the breakneck speed of 200 mph and out of nowhere an abrupt left turn appears on the racetrack called LIFE.

Adrenaline is coursing throughout your body; your attention, reflexes and instincts are functioning at optimum performance levels. The task requires a Zen mind: stay in the moment, navigate the turn to avoid losing balance thus avoiding injury, failure and death.

Physiologically this is often how the crucial turning points feel in our hurried and hectic lives. In the world of motorcycling, maintaining momentum along your path at the accelerated speed, just as in our modern lives, requires a skillful adjustment– the balance of two complementary forces to avoid falling over. In Nature this is known as the balance of Yin and Yang.

As the moto-racer you carefully adjust your weight to one side leaning away from inertia’s pull while counter steering the handles to create stability. My partner once explained this counter-instinctive phenomena; he is a skilled motorcyclist and while taking a sharp left turn at a high speed he will lean his body to the left but turns the handles toward the right to maintain stability.

A snapshot of any racer going around a sharp curve at that speed appears unstable when extracted from basic quantities like speed, distance and weight. If the racer puts all his energy and focus into leaning into the turn and ignores the importance of steering away to maintain equilibrium then he would loose control and end up being thrown off course. To lessen injury the racer must let go of the bike, relax into inertia and pray that there are no trees or large rocks in the way. By then it is all in the hands of destiny.

You may want to consider modeling a moto-racer’s precision when navigating a turning point or major decision in your business affairs or personal life. Before reacting learn to embrace any obstacle or major decision with your heart, but to avoid being thrown off course, or worse, being harmed, be sure to steer with your intellect.

The word embrace actually means to press to the bosom; to hug. On the racetrack the rider must lean into the abrupt turn practically hugging the asphalt. And in life when you genuinely accept what has been thrown your way you can choose to embrace it, to press it into your chest, and hold it with the arms of compassion.

When you embrace an obstacle or an uncomfortable moment in your life then you are accepting your present circumstance. This is different than concluding, “this shouldn’t be happening to me,” “they are out to get me” or defensively blaming the situation on someone else’s lack of competence. Those statements and attitudes deny the truth that you find yourself in.

Don’t misunderstand me. Yes, you’re expressing the emotions that you are feeling in that moment, however your emotions are in denial because you’re caught up in feeling that it is not fair or you are blaming yourself or others.

By embracing the circumstance then you allow different emotions to surface that will need to be expressed. Sure, it will still feel like you’re walking across a tightrope without a net or speeding out of control but your new attitude about the situation will help you skillfully navigate to the other side while tapping into the best parts of your intellect. The secret here is in your attitude.

This Wouldn’t Have Happened If So-And-So Did Her Job Right…

If you’re not leaning into the circumstance with an open heart and embracing all the parts then you’re caught up in the past or future. Perhaps you’re thinking that this wouldn’t have happened if so-and-so did her job better or if you went to such-and-such school… These feelings create specific attitudes and those attitudes will dictate how you view the situation and the choices that you make.

It takes courage to accept the present moment. It takes a strong heart to embrace the circumstance with compassion and accept that it is supposed to be there otherwise it wouldn’t have been on your racetrack.

Embrace It All, Now You’re Ready To Be Steered To Action!

Western society has advanced by marrying the thinking mind with action; therefore reward is bestowed on those who can analyze a situation and swiftly make impersonal judgment. The problem is that most make personal judgments that lead only to personal gain without considering the harm that this may cause others.

Incredible progress has come from this, but in light of the financial catastrophe of the last two years and many other similar offenses, so has greed and corruption and with that there is no Heart.

Balance your Head with your Heart and vice versa. This is what it means to be born of this planet. Even if you’re speeding toward your destiny at 200 mph you can skillfully create a world in which you do little harm to those around you and to the ground you walk upon. You can create wealth and cultivate personal peace.

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3 Steps to Producing a Profitable Holistic Webinar

Posted on July 31, 2009 by zenhealer

If your holistic business can help others improve their lives then you owe it to your customers to deliver your message in a way that makes it easy to choose you. Webinars are an efficient and cost-effective tool for conferences and training but their greatest value is as a resource for offering your message and service to potential clients.

But many are realizing that weaving a mindful or heart-based sales offer into a virtual presentation requires special techniques. Making a sale or attracting a new client through a webinar is vastly different than the offer you’ve perfected for your in-person presentations and seminars.

If you’re unsure as to how to structure your service offering in an information webinar then read on to learn 3 Key Steps for a profitable webinar.

The 3 Key Steps that I will outline for creating a profitable webinar are:

  1. Positioning
  2. Value Proposition
  3. Strategy

1.) In a webinar, you will want to position 4 crucial areas:

a.     You. No matter how well organized or informative your material is your audience will not be open to the benefits unless you position yourself. In the introduction you must establish your credibility while at the same time showing that you are accessible.

  1. Credibility. An authority may establish their special skill or knowledge by detailing their training in practice, their liscenses or successes. Credibility can even be borrowed by mentioning the high-level executives or celebrities that you have or are working with. The listener will know that they can rely on you because you have established your expertise.
  2. Accessible. To be accessible simply means that you are reachable. Successful people that share their most vulnerable moments are inspiring to others. This is why motivational speakers talk about the obstacles that they have overcome. It doesn’t have to be that you lived in your car before publishing your first book. However, sharing how the rejection letters felt as they were pouring in makes you accessible in the mind of the listener. Being accessible is often overlooked and in the paradigm of social media this oversight may lead to stagnation for your business.

b.     Expected Outcome. Then you will explain the incredible outcome that your service provides to your clients. The outcome is the return on their investment they can expect to benefit from, if this includes a financial return be sure to frame it inside of the emotional return.

  1. Emotional. Describing the transformation that a customer will experience from your service is a powerful way to keep your audience engaged. Remember that this is an information webinar and it is highly likely that your audience will begin multi-tasking at some point or simply turn-off their computers if you fail to inspire them at the start.
  2. Financial. Following-up with how much money they can save with you after describing the qualitative (or emotional) benefits will keep your webinar listeners attracted to your information and ready to hear more.

c.     Customers. Next, you will want to describe your ideal customer to make sure that everyone in the webinar is in the right place and give the listener the sense that they are being spoken to individually. This is as simple as saying, If you’re unsure as to how to structure your offerings in a webinar then read on to learn 3 Key Steps for creating a profitable webinar.

d.     Overview. Finally, you will give an overview of what will be taught using the outcome-based language used earlier. Remain connected to the transformative, expected outcome to keep your audience (potential client) listening actively. And don’t be afraid to keep on giving to the audience. A positive principle to remember is to treat your audience as if they are already clients. Let them know you’re already committed to reaching their personal or professional goals.

2.) The 3 parts to crafting your Value Proposition:

Your Value Proposition must be a truthful and compelling introduction to your products or services. Here is an outline for making your message comprehensive and a client magnet:

  1. Need. You’ll create a compelling message that explains the gap between where your customer is right now and where they want to be. Who are the people that will need your service? You must be able to understand, empathize and articulate what it is they need to accomplish.
  2. Solution. Now is the time to demonstrate what is possible with your company’s service. Freely give the solution. In the webinar you will have to give some proven how-tos. Make sure that these are strong strategies and tools, this also helps to build the client’s trust and confidence in you, but don’t give the whole service. Stick with giving your listener the low hanging fruit they can implement immediately with promises of a much bigger bounty (in the future, with your help).
  3. Differentiation. Now you will establish what differentiates you from other services as proof that you are the best solution. One thing to remember is that many people respond to success stories far better than hearing criticism about other people’s services. A good approach for a webinar is to use your success stories as teaching tools. You can transform your webinar into a huge payday by providing proof and teaching through your client case studies.

3.) A 2-part closing Strategy can turn audience into clients:

  1. Game Plan. This is your close. You will need to lay out what is the plan or process for people who want more of your solution. Because you have more and it only gets better. This may be the customized how-tos that you provide with your service. You will explain that with what they learned today they are on their way to achieving their goals but as your client or with your product they can do it more efficiently, cost effectively and with greater success!
  2.  Urgency. First, make it clear that acting now delivers the benefits sooner. Then you will make your service or product available within a limited time or to a limited number of people. In the virtual world you might facilitate the webinar on Wednesday but your customer is listening Saturday morning. Your offer strategy should emphasize urgency and reward people who act immediately but don’t penalize someone that had to wait.

Implementing these 3 Key Steps into your next webinar makes it easier for the customer to confidently choose you.

Don’t forget, if your service is the best-kept secret in your field then you’re not reaching your potential.

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