When somebody asked me some twenty years ago: “What is Qigong or Tai Chi? – without any doubt, in just a few minutes I could precisely explain the goals and characteristics of these practices. Since I had “already” been a devoted practitioner for a couple of years, I was convinced that I knew everything there was to be known about the subject. A few years later I was asked the question again. This time I think I managed to make my unsuspecting victim bored to death by describing different styles, forms, and approaches in Tai Chi and Qigong. I think I could talk about it indefinitely. Fast forward another 10 years or so… and my answers have become shorter and more and more enigmatic. The more I practice the more I realize that I know very little and that our individual goals, perspectives, and interpretations can be vastly unique. At the same time, we have a lot in common when we ask ourselves the same questions and struggle with similar challenges that our daily life can generously provide. We can find many benefits of practices such as Qigong or Yoga. With time, both our understanding and our goals of practice can evolve and change. For me personally, my practice helps me find and cultivate the qualities that are difficult to manifest in a vortex of the everyday pace of life, work, and responsibilities. It is important for me however, to focus at least a little bit of energy on creating some peace of mind, health, and joy in my daily life. How to find my place in this world, in Nature? How to be comfortable in my own body and mind? What is my life’s work? How to accept and like my own self, others, and the rest of the world? These are some of the many questions that my training is helping me to find the answers for. For me, to practice Qigong/TaiChi/Yoga/Meditation means to continuously cultivate the qualities I seek. It means to engage in a process of self-discovery and self-observation. It means to create a quality of being. We don’t need to practice, let’s say: an hour a day. We can practice all the time. Your practice can be your being here and now. Constant awareness and conscious choice of the way you think, talk and act. Noting your posture, your breath, and your tension level. Paying attention to others, paying attention to your own reactions and to your surroundings. Continuous effort to establish an inner and outer balance. It is a practice of transforming the ordinary into the unusual, boring into interesting. It is a way to discover the magic of everyday life! ...
Vipassana – again… (memories from the past)
Vipassana – again… This time my destiny led me to the birthplace of Buddha – the town of Lumbini in Nepal. A small place visited by Buddhist pilgrims from all over the world ( there are estimated 350 million Buddhists worldwide ). A relatively small area became a construction grounds for Buddhist monasteries representing different branches of Buddhism. From Japan and China to Sri Lanka, Thailand and Tibet. It was not the Buddha’s place of birth that was the main reason for my visit though. I came here to take part in yet another experience of Vipassana meditation. While many who had come here would enjoy the beautiful temples and monastery gardens, my journey will take me more “inside”, to the fertile gardens of my own mind. It was time to do some pruning and weeding! The fact that I would not be spending much time admiring what’s outside was readily reflected in the stark architecture of the Vipassana meditation center where I was to spend the next ten days. Actually, the place looked more like a prison than anything else.. The purpose of it being – not allowing the distractions of the outside world to weaken the focus on the world inside.. Vipassana – it is not an experience for everyone. Not everyone is inclined to test his or her body and mind with the severity of silence and intense inner work, meditating ten hours a day for ten days straight. The first few days are always difficult but the results of this tremendous effort can be as surprising as the intensity of the effort itself. Intensity that is difficult to compare to anything else. Ten days of absolute silence, nearly continuous meditation and observation of the many inner processes taking place in each and everyone of us, reveals the truths and realizations about ourselves that sometimes we wish we didn’t know. And all of this takes place in the company of twenty to hundred and twenty silent people who just like me, try to learn something about themselves, figure out why they are the way they are and why their life is unfolding the way it does. It is not very often that we have an opportunity to ask and answer ourselves questions like these. It is not very often that we have the time and environment to go this deep inside. Perhaps it is why many European Vipassana centers are booked full well in advance and every year new centers are built all over the world… ...
Happiness in Simplicity.
Minimalism has been a fashionable trend lately. Many blogs, youtube channels, and websites capitalize on the wave of interest in simplifying our extremely complex lives. I like it. I hope more and more people realize the value of restraint. Especially in the material sphere. For me, personally, minimalism is about efficiency, optimization, and contentment. We own too much, eat too much, stress out too much, worry too much etc. How do we eat just enough? Own no more than we need? Work or exercise in an optimal way? Of course, there is no one, simple answer to these questions but the very fact that we start asking them can potentially lead us in the right direction. We all have the responsibility of looking into ourselves and learning about our real needs, about how we can function in the best possible way, about our natural inclinations. When we begin to get rid of clutter in our lives and by clutter I don’t mean only the stuff that we own but also negative people we spend too much time with, old habits that lower our quality of life, thinking patterns that cater to experiences from the past that are no longer applicable etc etc, – only then we have a chance to see clearly what holds real importance to us. What gives us a long lasting satisfaction and contentment. What it means to be happy. ...
Use it or lose it!
Maintaining health is similar to riding a bike. You cannot ride a bike and then just stop and expect you will maintain balance. The moment we stop moving our balance is compromised. The moment we stop practicing healthy habits, our health, sometimes unnoticeably, starts declining. The moment we stop using our muscles – they start getting weaker and weaker. The moment we stop stretching – we start getting tighter and begin losing our mobility. The moment we stop making a mental effort to remember, to create solutions, to recognize and react – our mental capabilities’ decline begins. The main weapon we have to prevent this from happening or at the very least, to slow it down, is our effort to continue performing or maybe even improving our ability to perform various actions so that we maintain this ability as long as possible. WE DO TO BE. Idle pleasures like watching television or playing computer games, while ok in small doses, can quickly turn into “preferable” way of spending time, developing strongly addictive habits that do not challenge our mental or physical capabilities, thus contributing to the decrease of our well being. The gradual limiting of our social interactions, relying on patterns and solutions that we are very comfortable with, even practicing the very same practices without seeking improvement can and frequently does bring a slow decline. Is it only because we are getting “older”? Or is it because we are getting lazy? If we look at examples of those in later stages of their lives, who continue working in their field, studying, practicing, researching, it is easy to notice that their abilities do not correspond to their chronological age. In a positive sense. One more reason not to stop DOING! ...
The chemistry of happiness: physiological principles of shaping wholesome personality
What you practice is what you develop. To become the way you want to be, just start doing it. We’re talking about this on all our seminars and retreats: our mind is like a muscle; to develop it in a certain direction, you just need to practice this certain direction. Just do it Like we perform exercise to develop our muscle, and the more we practice the stronger it gets, everything that we do in our mind reinforces this quality of the mind that is being practiced, creating mental habits, positive or negative. The more often you feel irritated, the easier it gets for you to get irritated with or without any reason; the more often you feel angry, the more naturally anger appears in your daily reactions, making you “angry person”, or “irritated person”. Because states of mind and emotions, repeated with certain frequency, are not transient and casual, they’re your practice. By having these or that emotions, you make yourself more likely to get them next time. We’re not aware that we’re practicing every moment, and it can be practice of being unhappy, agitated, worried, irritated, anxious, lazy and apathetic, indifferent, rude, short-tempered, depressed, or it can be a practice of being happy, content, satisfied, grateful, joyful, confident, peaceful, etc. When we teach these simple principles to people, some understand the connection, but there are many who think that this mechanism is not real, that it’s just another kind of philosophy or theory. Others defend their current state of unhappiness by explaining that they have hard life situation and a lot of responsibility, and therefore their state of unhappiness is duly justified. Yes and no. Of course, external circumstances influence the way we feel about life and ourselves, but if we really want to make our life better, we need to try not only to change external factors, but to adjust the way we feel as well, not depending on these or that external factors. Because if we allow ourselves to feel unhappy, anxious, victimized, etc., for a long time, we run into danger of creating real, physical, hormonal and neurological mechanisms that support our habits of being miserable. Even when external circumstances have already changed. In this post I want to discuss physiological and chemical mechanisms of creating mental habits and states to demonstrate that principle “what you practice is what you develop” is not a philosophy or theory, it’s a mechanism embedded in our body and mind. There are two systems that regulate all functions and organs in our body: nervous and endocrine. Nervous system regulates all activity by commands delivered by electrochemical signals via body cells called neurons. The delivery of electochemical signal across the body is possible due to the action of neurotransmitters, special chemicals that transmit electric or chemical signals from one neuron to another or from a neuron to a target cell. Thus these neurotransmitters play important role in the way our nervous system works, shaping our everyday life and functions. Another regulatory system of our body is endocrine. It acts in a purely chemical way, through production of hormones – special chemicals that initiate, facilitate or inhibit chemical reactions in the body and regulate physiological and behavioral activities such as digestion, metabolism, respiration, tissue function, sensory perception, sleep, excretion, stress, growth and development, movement, reproduction and mood. In a word, if you think that hormonal, as well as nervous system, regulate “pretty much everything”, you will not be far from truth. Hormones are transported by our circulatory system and their action, compared to nerve signals, takes longer to take effect, but these effects are more prolonged, lasting from few hours to weeks. There are several chemicals that are particularly interesting to us in our discussion of mechanisms of happiness and unhappiness. These are: serotonin, dopamine and endorphins. Interestingly enough, all these chemicals are both neurotransmitters (meaning they carry out the signals within nervous system) and hormones (they also perform long term regulatory function on body organs and systems). Serotonin regulates mood, feeling of anxiety, libido, maniacal states, appetite, social disfunctions, fobias, sleep, memory and learning process, circulatory and endocrine function. It’s very important in regulation of sleep and mood. Secretion of serotonin induces relaxation. Low levels of serotonin may lead to depression, anxiety, low energy, migraine, sleep disorder, maniacal states, feeling of tension and irritation, memory and attention problems, compulsive eating, aggression and anger, decrease of sex drive. High level of serotonin causes calmness, higher pain tolerance, feeling of well-being, bliss and unity with universe. We can increase level of serotonin in three ways: cultivating positive moods, exposure to bright light, and exercise (think yoga, aerobic exercise, running, chi gong, tai chi, dancing, any exercise routine and movement therapies). Another family of substances, endorphins, are sometimes called “hormones of happiness” because they induce the state of happiness, euphoria and contentment, increase tolerance to pain, reduce stress effects and tiredness and increase body’s resistance to internal and external stress-factors. The name of the substance is translated from Latin as “morphine-like substance originating from within of the body”. The level of endorphin is increased by experiencing emotions of love, creativity, bliss, contentment. Endorphins are also produced during long and strenuous exercises to decrease pain, heighten reaction speed and boost body’s stress adaptation (think of high intensity long duration exercises, static yoga practices that require stamina, etc.). Also production of endorphins is triggered by immobilization and cold-temperature stress (think of Vipassana and other long-immobilisation meditation practices, and temperature tempering). Other factors to stimulate endorphin production are pleasant music, new positive impressions, sex, and chocolate. The last hormone-neurotransmitter to be discussed here is dopamine. Dopamine is responsible for good mood. Dopamine performs many important functions that influence memory, control of motor processes and pleasure. It makes us feel alive, motivated and content. The chemical is part of positive encouragement system, creating feeling of contentment and pleasure when we do the things we like, eat delicious food or make love. Such drugs as cocaine, nicotine, opiates, heroin and alcohol, as well as delicious food and sex, increase dopamine level. Therefore researches assume that such behaviors as smoking, drug and alcohol addictions, indiscrimination in sex partners, gambling and overeating are connected to dopamine deficiency. Low levels of dopamine in motor areas of brain causes Parkinson disease, whereas low dopamine in cognitive areas of brain impairs cognitive functions and leads to poor memory and inability to learn, poor concentration, scattered attention in performing tasks and conversations, low energy, absence of motivation, inability to enjoy life, addictions, manias, absence of satisfaction from activities that used to be gratifying. Dopamine production is stimulated by states of positive stress such as being in love, listening to pleasant music, performing physical exercise and having sex. The feeling of enjoyment in itself stimulates production of dopamine, which in turn enhances feeling of enjoyment and happiness. Research shows that meditation increases dopamine levels as well. In studying all this information, we cannot help noticing striking similarities: increase of all three chemicals is attained by developing positive attitude to oneself and to life, cultivating positive mood states, enjoying whatever we do. Also, notice that all three substances are stimulated by physical exercise. So it seems like healthy physical activity plus positive mindset is the way to go in creating a “happy body chemistry”. Add to this plenty of daily sunlight, gratifying sex life, body tempering, outdoors activities, meditation, pleasant music and a little bit of chocolate (if you need it at all provided you do everything else), and your internal “laboratory of happiness” is bound to work abundantly. As all the three chemicals induce the state of well-being, happiness, contentment, pleasure and joy, the moment you start “practicing” contentment and satisfaction to stimulate their production, you will get a gratification of these states lasting in your body and mind more naturally and effortlessly. While it seems that we derive a great deal of satisfaction and pleasure connected with things happening outside of ourselves (for instance, you have got yourself a limousine), these feelings are not created from these outside world events. They are created by specific substances in our body and the external events can only trigger production of this or that substance. Therefore, why even bother trying to shape what happens around us (that very often is hard or impossible to do) if you can directly orchestrate the chemistry in your body by some substance manipulation and get exactly the same results?! Did the drug addicts find an ultimate solution? Happines comes from within… with a liitle chemical help.. .Well, let’s not go too far. With biochemistry in mind, the mechanisms behind drug, tobacco or alcohol addictions seem to be much easier to understand. As it was mentioned before, the effect of most drugs and alcohol on subjective sense of pleasure is explained by heightened levels of dopamine and other neurotransmitters. However the drawbacks of drug addiction are numerous, starting from messing with body mechanisms of natural production of these chemicals and developing drug tolerance leading to psychological, physiological and chemical drug addiction, finishing with negative effects foreign substances have on our body systems and organs. And even though the idea we’re trying to put into practice: creating a faculty of being happy in any situation in life, with or without a limousine; also disregards the influence of the outside circumstances and instead, it focuses on what can be done from the inside out. The difference is: no side effect and no need for drug dealers ;-). The implication of the existence of these chemical processes are extremely straightforward: the more we cultivate feelings of contentment and happiness in everyday life, the more we develop our natural capacity to be happy, without any efforts and conscious involvement. The more we enjoy life and whatever it brings and learn to view any situation as good to us in this or that way, the more life is enjoyable and filled with joy. So, what do you practice today? I used the sources: Young How to increase serotonin in the human brain without drugs Berry, Lerner, Meier & Yang The chemistry of happiness Neurotransmitters, depression and anxiety ...
