Fragrant Heart Blog

If you’re feeling stressed could you acknowledge that underlying stress is fear?  Could you face your fears?  To do that requires change in yourself.  Sometimes it seems easier to stay, for example, in a job, or relationship that is not correct for you.  Fear of leaving is greater than the fear of staying.  This doesn’t stop the stress.  While we put up with, deny or pretend that things are okay hormones are being secreted in our bodies such as cortisol and adrenaline.  The over production of these chemicals over time will affect us physically.  A part of our brain that affects the functioning of the mind will go into self preservation and survival mode so that we no longer think with clarity, or can focus or concentrate easily. 

In time our physical bodies will break down.  We are only resilient for so long.  If you have any of the following symptoms, at some level you will be storing fear in your body.  The symptoms are:

• Hypertension
• Heart disease and strokes
• Gastrointestinal problems such as constipation or diarrhoea
• Obesity
• Weakened immune system
• Muscle tension and pain
• High glucose and high cholesterol
• Arthritis and other inflammatory problems
• Infertility and sexual dysfunction
• Memory loss, and lack of focus and concentration
• Increased risk for osteoporosis

What can you do?

Taking up a meditation practice will certainly help you.  There is too much evidence now to discredit the benefits of meditation.  However, as you go about your day, here are some suggestions that will encourage you to let go your stress ( fear ), and help you to stay in present moment awareness.

At the first signal of discomfort such as physical muscular tension, or mental agitation, STOP WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING, and check how you are breathing.  You may have even stopped breathing!  This may be going on all day.  You may not even be aware that you are often holding  the breath.  Now take some deep breaths, breathing the breath all the way down into your belly, and as you breathe out, breathe out until your lungs are quite empty of air.  Feel the air pushing out your belly as you breathe in.  Feel the air leaving your lungs until you have to breathe in again.  This simple breathing will ground you, and bring you back in touch with your body, and most of all reduce your fear.  Take time throughout your day to come back to breath awareness by taking a few deep and clearing breaths each time you feel the slightest tinge of discomfort.

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A Chinese man called Li Ching Yuen, is reputed to have lived to 256 years old.  Whether this is true or not, you can find a lot of discussion about this venerated gentleman on the Internet.  He may well have been very old indeed. 

In an interview in the 1920’s he said, “I think the reason I have lived this long and am still perpetually healthy is because nothing has irritated me since I was forty years old.  Because of that my heart is very calm, peaceful and divinely tranquil.  That is why I am free from any illness, and always healthy and happy.”

The records show he ate simple foods, and lived in the same village all his life.  He died in the 1930’s so the pace of life, and its stresses would not have been so evident back then.  He was an herbalist and probably very in tune with plants and nature for health and well-being. 

Reading about someone like Li Ching Yuen, I was inspired with his message of divine tranquillity.  The tranquillity that can arise in meditation can also seamlessly move into everyday living when our interior landscape is experienced and observed.

All that we need to live fulfilling lives resides within us.  For example, if we are aware of the breath that is there all the time we will become centred and focused, and our lives will be more harmonious and loving.  Fragrant Heart offers you many guided meditations and visualizations that encourage you to be aware of the breath. 

Here is another focused exercise, which you might like to try.  Look at the palm of either of your hands.  Our hands have always been with us just like the breath.  Now focus on the palm of the hand for twenty seconds.  Really focus intently, observing every detail, the lines, the colours, and the veins, even the sensations you may feel there.  After twenty seconds, were you able to stay concentrated, or did your mind start to wander away as thoughts came in? 

Now, just focus on a small spot on your palm, about an inch, or two centimetres in diameter.  Do this for about twenty seconds.  Your mind again may get restless, but see if you can resist the urge to lose your focus.  When you have finished you may be surprised at just how much detail you’ll see in that small spot on the palm of your hand. 

How often are you aware of your heart beating?  Of course, if you have just been doing some strenuous exercise you will hear it thumping loudly in your chest.  But right now if you are sitting reading this take your focus to the beating of your heart.  Maybe even shut your eyes, and just become conscious of your heart beating loud and strong.  Give yourself some time to feel and listen to your heart.

I experience a sense of stillness as I listen to my heart beating.  There is something reassuring about the “lub, dub”, sound of the heartbeat.  We all listened to it for approximately nine months in our mother’s womb, and when we were held to the breast we would have been comforted by the familiar rhythmical beat. 

Listening to your heart beating will not only help you to focus, but will take you within to deeper stillness and silence.

Here’s another way to focus.  This time take your awareness to your fingertips.  If this is challenging at first, start by taking your focus to your index finger tip.  As you do this you may almost immediately notice all of your fingertips, and feel the blood pulsing in them. 

Again, being in your body brings you into the present moment, that enables you to be calm and at peace with yourself.