How Is Your Relationship — With Yourself?

Posted on February 21, 2012 by adminbjm

Caregivers:

Are you loving yourself unconditionally?

(Expressing your genuine feelings can be a clue!)

February is typically the month focusing on relationships. And what relationship is more important than the one we have our entire life — with ourselves?

So check out how you are doing on these measures of good personal relationship with yourself:

  • Loving yourself unconditionally.
  • Loving yourself sets you free.
  • Loving yourself makes it safe to be who you are.
  • Loving yourself heals you in all ways: mentally,
    physically, emotionally, psychically, and spiritually.

Feeling and expressing your genuine feelings can be a very challenging process after being raised in this culture. Without access to expressing your genuine feelings, you end up cutting yourself off from loving yourself.

Most of us experience a lifetime of outside authorities laying down rules about how we should behave and think in order to be a “good person,” according to society’s mores.   As a culture, we even have an unspoken rule that no one is supposed to talk about what they are feeling. It all starts at home and continues in all our institutions — church, school, work.

When we are not free to express our genuine feelings and emotions, we disconnect from our true selves. This then disconnects us from the life force energies, severing the connection with the Beloved energy of all life.  (This might be what you call Source, God, Goddess, All That Is.) By whatever name, you inherently know how to identify and experience this energy.

From an early age, we learn it’s safer to bury feelings and emotions, especially when we are confronted with the cultural norms imposed by  parents, teachers, and other authority figures.

As we disconnect from our genuine feelings and emotional expression, we disconnect ourselves from our heart energy. This has resulted in generations of people who are filled with low self-esteem and endless negative mind chatter. We’ve internalized into our bodies all these unexpressed emotions that, over a lifetime, turn toxic within us and ultimately lead to dis-ease.

In daily life, this gets expressed as “not doing [anything] good enough,” never being enough or doing enough or doing it satisfactorily. The resulting low self-worth combined with a lifetime of “hoarding” these unexpressed emotions sets us up for illness throughout our lives. (I’ve talked before about the challenges we face with trapped, toxic emotions.) Especially if we reach our senior years, we so often succumb to the aging degenerative diseases: dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s etc.

So how do we feel our genuine feelings and emotions after we numbed then out?  And how does this lead to loving ourselves more compassionately?

We come with a basic instinct to be ourselves and express our genuine feelings and emotions.  To do so again, it’s practical to go back to a successful learning model.

 How did you learn to walk?

Virtually every child succeeds in learning to walk. In spite of falling down repeatedly, we just got up and tried to walk again and again. Then we held onto the edge of a chair or table. And then, finally, we were able to walk.

We did not beat ourselves up for falling down in learning to walk. And our loved ones around us were always cheering us on, eager for us to take our first step. Revisit this model, because we know it’s one that works.

The process of connecting with our genuine feelings can be similar. As we connect with our feelings again (a connection we had as a child), we feel better and have increasing and genuine self-confidence.

Step by step, if we are deeply motivated, we have the ability to heal our child energy.  We can feel our genuine feelings and express our emotions in life affirming communications.   And it starts with affirming and acknowledging yourself in your self-talk.

Loving yourself comes out in how you talk to yourself. It’s the essence of life-affirming communications. All it takes is practice.

 

If you would like to gather with other family caregivers in a circle (either live or by phone) to practice life-affirming communications, please sign up on my home page at http://www.AuthorBettyLSmith.com to receive special invitations or contact me directly at  healthandwellbeingclub(at)sonic(dot)net

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Increase Your Personal Well Being in 2012

Posted on January 19, 2012 by adminbjm

Alternative Practices Can Enhance Health and Personal Well-Being for Family Caregivers

 

Do you desire a long, healthy, happy, and meaningful life?

It’s a crucial focus every month of the year, especially if you’re a family caregiver. With the beginning of a new calendar year, though, your health, wellness, and personal well-being step into the spotlight.

There’s even “National Staying Healthy Month” (January) to increase your motivation. So many inspirations to take action right now!  That makes now a perfect time to commit to exploring alternative practices for your health, wellness, and personal well-being. If you are a family caregiver committed to staying healthy, please consider these keys to keep yourself on track.

 Alternative Paths to YOUR Personal Well Being

Over my lifetime of being a pioneer in anchoring non-traditional and alternative paths to personal growth, I’ve identified these keys that are essential for creating a healthy, happy, and meaningful life.

  • Discovering the power of honesty with yourself and others.
  • Feeling and expressing your genuine feelings.
  • Speaking from the truth of your own experience.
  • Shining the light of unconditional love and acceptance on yourself and on your shadow, thus empowering you to express fully.
  • Recognizing the feelings that support you in making the choice that’s right — for you.
  • Experiencing the secret of being happy for no reason.
  • Understanding how, by being truly who you are and expressing the truth of your own experience, you are contributing to the collective good for healing and restoring the fragile planet we live on!

 

Feeling and expressing genuine feelings honestly with self and others is the direct pathway connecting to our hearts.  By the time we entered grade school, most of us had closed down and did not express our genuine feelings. We had lost this precious heart connection.

Our heart energy is where we connect with the essence of who we are — whatever you call this energy that’s our individualized expression of life, Beloved, God, Creator, Consciousness or Source.  When we close off from our heart energy, mainly we feel low self-esteem and experience an endless stream of meaningless and negative mind chatter.

Maybe you’ve had the experience, when seeking to make a decision, that your cultural or religious training said, “Go right,” yet your inner nudging said, “Go left.”  So you trust that inner nudge, “go left,” and it turns out to be a very good decision.

If you’ve been aware of this experience, you might ask, “What is going on?”   From my experience, that nudging that says “go left” is coming from the heart energy or intuition, and it’s the essence from which we express our inner knowingness.

How can we tune into our inner knowingness on a regular basis?  Could it be that by learning to speak from the truth of our own genuine feelings, we will naturally access our heart energy and inner knowingness?  As a very small child, we candidly did this — until we were culturally conditioned that it is “not nice” to express what we really feel. Now it’s possible to rediscover that coming from our heart energy creates good feelings and genuine self-confidence.

When we speak from the truth of our genuine feelings, free from our cultural conditioning, we discover feelings are neither right nor wrong. They just are. We can then shine the light of love and acceptance on our inner self and our inner shadow. With this inner acceptance, we naturally gravitate to recognizing more of our genuine feelings. We grow an inner willingness to express genuine feelings in life affirming communication with others.

With this truth-telling, we begin to recover the energies that we have held in our shadow. How? As we see all the genuine feelings we’ve numbed out and could not safely express throughout our life because they were not socially acceptable, we begin to see the source of what became our shadow self. As we shine the light of love on our shadow and all those buried unexpressed feelings, we are taking powerful steps to heal and empower ourselves.

The more grounded we can be in expressing the inner knowingness of our heart energy, the happier we are. Seemingly for no reason, our life overflows  with fun, joy and laughter.

The more we speak and write from the truth of our own experiences and feelings, the better we feel about our self. This contributes to healing our inner child energy, a crucial step in raising our consciousness.  As we raise our level of consciousness, we are better able to contribute to the collective project of healing and restoring the planet.

Your personal inner healing and well-being work may be the most important step in shifting the greater good for all. If you are willing to explore pioneering alternatives that enhance your health and personal well-being, I invite you to join the community by signing up at the box on the right hand side of my home page at http://www.authorBettyLSmith.com. You’ll be able to access resources and support on being your own authority, and learning about the diamond of health and well-being.

 

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Dislodging Trapped Emotions for Caregivers

Posted on October 26, 2011 by adminbjm

 

Trapped Emotions:

How They Get Lodged in Your Body and How To Get them Out!

Betty L. Smith

 

Find out how toxic emotions get trapped in your body in the first place and five steps to release toxins and open the way to self-healing: a special perspective just for family caregivers and their loved ones.

Since early spring 2011, I have been releasing trapped emotions on my husband who has Parkinson’s and on myself as his primary family caregiver. So far, using the methodologies outlined by Dr. Bradley Nelson in The Emotion Code, I have released about 2000 trapped emotions on each of us. There are still many more to go!

Toxic Results from the “Good Person” Code

I am convinced that people of our generation have a higher-than-usual number of trapped emotions. Why? We were trained from early ages to follow the code of “good” people. When we were growing up, for example, children were to be “seen and not heard.”

My husband always said that it was better not to say anything, never to speak from his true feelings in his family, because, he said, “If you speak from your genuine feelings, you just made things worse for yourself anyway.” So as a generation, we learned to swallow our emotions and numb out our feelings.

Especially when repressing anger, a powerful emotion, we end up cutting off the other emotions in the process. Censoring anger censors every other emotional expression. My father used to tell me, when I was expressing anger, “There’s enough hurt in the world already, without you adding to it.” So I learned to shut up and numb out my feelings instead of expressing them.

No Place To Express Your Genuine Feelings

We grew up with what I’ve called “life negating communications.” This is the opposite of what Marshall Rosenberg calls “Non-Violent Communication” in the book of the same name.

We literally have no place where we can safely express our true feelings. Tej Steiner, founder of Heart Circles, highlights this problem when he observes that there is no place that people can express their genuine feelings — not at home, with family, at school, work. I have observed that if it hadn’t been for psychotherapy that became available in the 20th century, we would still not have a place to share our genuine feelings!

How we talk to each other — when speaking in the sanctioned “good person” model, not allowing for the sharing of our genuine feelings, when the listening is done with judgment and not with acceptance, when expressing an emotion makes a person “Wrong” in the listener’s opinion — all of these contribute to an epidemic of toxic, life-negating communications.

Feelings Buried Alive…The Roots of our Illnesses

What happens when we do not express our genuine feelings? Well, they don’t come out our mouth, do they? So where do they go?   Our feelings, unexpressed, turn in on us. They become the trapped emotions that are held in places in our bodies for a lifetime. Those trapped emotions then cause pain and aches in our bodies as they age and leave us vulnerable to diseases, especially the degenerative aging diseases.

Even when there’s an intent to speak in life affirming communication (non-violent communication), if both parties are not fully engaged with this endeavor, then it can turn out just as life-negating as most of our conversations that mask our genuine feelings. I know I’ve been through this recently with someone. I wanted to speak in genuine life-affirming communications, but everything seemed to go wrong.  All I can say is, old toxic habits of communicating die hard.

I’ve concluded that one of the sources of these trapped emotions comes from our life-negating communication patterns and not speaking from our genuine feelings. We’ve been trained not to speak our genuine feelings for a lifetime.

Encouraging Your Miracle Body to Self-Heal

One of the most important ways to shift the energies from toxic to healing is by introducing practices where we learn to love, honor, and respect ourselves unconditionally — exactly the way we are right now. Loving yourself unconditionally is a powerful approach for sidestepping these toxic trapped emotions that seem to be at the root cause of disease.

Moving forward, I am taking my own advice, focusing on one day at a time and acknowledging to myself that “I’m OK in this moment.”

5-Steps to Health, Wellness, and Personal Well-Being

Below, you’ll find my 5-Step Recipe for opening the way and encouraging the body to repair itself without all the stress:

1 *Maintain that present moment focus.

2 *Release trapped emotions using the Emotion Code process.

3 *Speak with life affirming communications.

4 *Speak from your genuine feelings — so you don’t reintroduce trapped negative emotions you’ve just released.

5 *Make a regular practice of loving yourself unconditionally — accepting, honoring, and acknowledging yourself for who you are right in the moment.

Know that there are many paths to self-healing. It’s important that you find one that resonates with you. As someone who has been pioneering changes on the cutting edge my whole life, I encourage you to connect with the perfect people, those from whom you get a good feeling. Trusting your intuition about what will  be most perfect for you in any given moment — the connections, information, people who come your way — opens the door so that your health, wellness and personal well-being can shine!

Please contact me at bsetnow(at)sonic(dot) net to schedule a conversation about your personal well-being and how to feel better.

 

 

 

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Release Trapped Toxic Emotions

Posted on September 13, 2011 by adminbjm

Author Betty L. Smith Speaks Out about Releasing Trapped Emotions

In the spring of 2002 my husband, Gilbert Smith, went from being a middle-aged man to an old man in a few short weeks. In June of that year, we became members of EMC2AIM which is a quantum physics modality that raises your Life Force to 100.  When life force flows through every cell of the body, we stay healthier longer. Ultimately, it slows the aging process.  Gil’s aging immediately returned to normal speed. However the following year, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

At the time he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, he said, “I want to heal myself and speak out about how I did it.”  The allopathic Western medical system has no answers for Parkinson’s.  There is no medical test that can be given that verifies you have Parkinson’s. The doctor makes the diagnosis by watching how you move and walk.

Over the years, we explored all kinds of alternative healing modalities. They slowed his Parkinson’s symptoms.  However, in August 2009 Gil went into the Golden Living Convalescent Home in stage four Parkinson’s.

In the spring 2011, we finally hit pay dirt in finding a process that activates our natural ability to heal.  Dr. Bruce Lipton, a cell biologist by training from the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and later performed pioneering research at Stanford University, was a featured expert in the movie, The Living Matrix: A Film On The New Science of Healing. Lipton observed that studies show one third of all healing occurs through the placebo effect, yet M.D.s-in-training spend just 15 minutes studying the placebo effect.

In Spring 2011, I heard an interview with alternative practitioner, Dr. Bradley Nelson, speaking on The Emotion Code.  The Emotion Code is a system uncovered by Nelson that quickly releases negative trapped emotions.  Alternative healers have known for decades that trapped negative feelings and emotions play havoc with our health and well-being especially as we age.   For example, in 1991 Feelings Buried Alive Never Die by Karol K. Truman was published. However no one to date has come up with a quick, easy way to release these trapped negative emotions until Dr. Bradley Nelson developed The Emotion Code.

Dr. Bradley Nelson had materials available to teach people how to use the process. I immediately ordered the information on The Emotion Code, started learning, testing it on myself at first.

On one particular visit to see Gil, I found he couldn’t move in bed. His left groin hurt so badly, he could not move — much less get out of bed.  I did The Emotion Code technique on him releasing negative trapped emotions in his groin. The pain immediately left. He got out of bed and with his walker walked half way down the hallway.  The next day I went back and released the negative trapped emotions in his right groin. After that, he went back to walking all four hallways again.

Over the past five months, I have been working with him almost daily, releasing negative trapped emotions in his body either in person or by proxy. He is now speaking better; his drooling has all but stopped; his shaking is greatly minimized; and he is beginning to stand taller and straighter.

Both he and I are feeling that if he had done The Emotion Code when he was initially diagnosed with Parkinson’s, he would not be where he has been these last two years.

As I released all these trapped negative emotions, I also found out when he first felt them and discovered the following pattern.  Many of the negative trapped emotions he formed from birth up to twenty years of age became inactive throughout adulthood.  Then around age 74, about the time he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, they became active again.

Statistics are showing that often Family Caregivers die before the loved ones they are caring for.
In doing The Emotion Code on myself, I found the above pattern applied to me also.  Many negative trapped emotions I had formed as a child became active again when I was plunged into family caregiving (with my mother who has been at death’s door for three years and Gil in the last two years being in the last stages of Parkinson’s.)

I encourage all Family Caregivers to learn and practice The Emotion Code, both to benefit yourself as caregiver and for your loved ones.  To learn more, feel free to send me an email at bsetnow(at)sonic(dot)net. You can read other articles about alternative health, wellness, and personal well-being at my web site, http://www.authorBettyLSmith.com.

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To Heal Yourself, Start Where You Are

Posted on July 14, 2011 by adminbjm

Start Where You Are In Healing Yourself, Healing Mother Earth

My intent is to offer Baby Boomers, caregivers, and elders who are open to alternative approaches (those who call themselves Cultural Creatives) a clear path to raising their consciousness and being their own authority around health and healing issues.

For more than three months, I have been practicing the Emotion Code, created by Dr. Bradley Nelson. Both my husband, Gil, who has Parkinson’s, and I have benefited. I am learning that we can only take the next right step by standing firmly rooted in the present moment.

As I coach and offer these gifts of learning in several processes of self-healing, I have to stand right in the present moment myself.

What is right here in the present moment?

Recently, I reported that I had been releasing the old trapped, toxic emotions I’d experienced from a young age.  Combined, Gil and I have many hundreds of trapped emotions!

These emotions had been trapped for most of my life — since I was a very young child. During my growing up years, it was unsafe to express some of these things. That meant they were buried before I had a chance to get in trouble by expressing those feelings.

A few years ago, I processed deep unexpressed grief I had as a 4-year-old when we moved from one home and left my dog behind. I’ve also learned, for example, that my husband was an unwanted baby. His trapped emotions from the time of conception number more than 140.

What it means now: As I release these very old negative feelings I buried from particular ages or stages of growing up, I often get very tired after a session of releasing.  I’ve learned, in working with Gil, that I can only release a few emotions at a time during a session with him so that he can deal with all the internal processing and not be completely wrung out for several days.

I’ve also discovered that allowing the negative feelings to come up and be released always feels good in the long term. And sometimes in the short term, I feel emotionally down because of the detox my system is going through.

My Big Picture Intent

My work as health and well being coach is unfolding as my part of the contribution to the community and movement of business and wellness practitioners who are raising planetary consciousness. Our overall intent is to heal Mother Earth by developing the building blocks for a healing civilization so that all sentient life and the planet herself can live in peace and harmony.

We can’t do it alone. We need each other in communities of like-minded and like-hearted others. I invite you to join with me.  Become part of this global healing community by saying yes to health and well being by signing up at  http://www.authorbettylsmith.com. (It’s the box in the upper right hand of the page.)

 

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Your Health and Well-Being Enhanced with The Emotion Code

Posted on June 22, 2011 by adminbjm

When I started my personal life coaching practice in 1988, I focused my work around my clients’ negative beliefs and emotions and the impact those beliefs and emotions have in our daily lives and on our health. I discussed this in depth in my book, The Power to Change. What I have come to discover is that those early-formed negative and toxic beliefs ultimately have a profound impact on our health in our elder years.

Since 1988, my coaching practice has addressed health and well being at all ages. Now that I am well into the best half of life, with a husband suffering from Parkinson’s, I have been focusing on ways to mitigate the symptoms of Parkinson’s without drugs, to find and share methods to relieve the aches and pains of aging, all while helping family caregivers take care of themselves and their loved ones.

For many, during adulthood years through midlife, the symptoms and pains of our toxic growing up experiences seem to disappear, only to reappear in our 60s, 70s and beyond. Is there still time to release all that old baggage? In the past few months, I’ve come across a process that offers great relief to suffering and pain, and I have been incorporating it into my life coaching practice.

The Emotion Code Process

Starting in March 2011, I have added The Emotion Code technique to my personal life coaching practice. Dr. Bradley Nelson is the founder of the Emotion Code process. He has authored the book, The Emotion Code and has created courses that teach people how to help themselves and loved ones to release emotions that cause pain in the body.

My husband was in stage four of Parkinson’s as I started practicing with The Emotion Code. Visiting my husband in the convalescent home, I was able to help him with physical pain. The pain was so intense in his left groin that he was unable to move or get out of bed. I used the Emotion Code process on him. He released the feelings of abandonment that had started at conception.  As soon as this feeling was released, he felt better. He was able to stand up and walk half way down the hall.

The next day, when I returned, we did the process on the other side.  He was able to walk all four hallways, which he hadn’t done for several months.  I have been going through the Emotion Code process with him for a little over two months now. He is standing taller. His drooling has nearly disappeared. It’s about 95-99% cleared, disappearing for days, then occasionally reappears when he is very nervous. (Drooling is a symptom of the later stages of Parkinson’s.)

I am discovering that many of the negative perceptions he formed about himself from conception to age 20 seemed to go inactive from age 20 to 73. These negative perceptions returned full force again when he was 74.  My observation is: the older he got, the more negative perceptions from those very early years became active and expressed themselves in the disease called Parkinson’s.

Over the past few years, my coaching focus has been to reach out to those in the Parkinson’s community, both the person who has Parkinson’s and the family caregiver.  As I’ve added The Emotion Code process to my practice, I have discovered that when our body is out of balance due to trapped negative energy, it opens the way to many diseases.

Using the tools and process of The Emotion Code, it is not so much about the specific pain or disease you have. Rather, it brings forward the intent, desire and mindset to activate your natural ability to heal yourself and experience complete well-being. Health and Well Being as you age?

I agree with Dr. Nelson when he says,  “Much of our suffering is due to negative emotional energies that have become ‘trapped’ within us. The Emotion Code is a simple and powerful method of finding and releasing these trapped emotions.”

Doing the release work with The Emotion Code is an ideal precursor to installing new, healthier beliefs and attitudes. One of the best ways to install the new beliefs is using the energy psychology method called Psychological-Kinesiology created by Rob Williams. This was among the earliest trainings I took, and where I learned how to create positive beliefs that the subconscious mind can accept. Any belief the subconscious accepts will come to pass in our life.

When we are in balance both structurally and emotionally, we can flourish with health and well being.  When we have imbalance in our body structurally and/or emotionally, we open ourselves up to disease.

Dr. Bradley Nelson’s book, The Emotion Code, helps identify the trapped emotions that are a significant yet hidden cause of much illness and suffering. Please contact me at bsetnow(at)sonic(dot)net for more information about addressing your aches and pains and starting to live with increased vitality, health, and well-being using the tools of The Emotion Code.

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Effective Caregiving Comes from Personal Growth

Posted on February 3, 2011 by adminbjm

YOUR Personal Growth Journey Holds the Key to Effective Caregiving

You can be a  more effective family caregiver — without losing your health and well being. All it takes is stepping away from old habits, toxic beliefs, and the cultural conditioning that keeps you locked into ill-fitting roles. These are the forces at play that cut you off from  your genuine feelings.

I have been on a lifetime journey of personal growth, stripping away these unhealthy habits and going ever deeper into expressing my genuine feelings. These experiences have helped me be more effective in my role as family caregiver.

It has been an ongoing (and lifelong) learning experience to be able to speak and write from the truth of my feelings.  I have learned the more I speak from my genuine feelings, the more I connect with my heart energy and my inner self.

I also discovered the more I connected with my inner self, the healthier I became. My allopathic physician has been impressed over the years, as the few times my blood pressure went up, I was able to bring it back to normal in a very short period of time without any medication.

The Trouble that Stems from Disconnecting from Your Genuine Feelings

At the root of this personal growth journey is a willingness to feel your genuine feelings and write and speak from the truth of your own experience. By noticing, accepting, and speaking from your genuine feelings, you will start to “peel the onion” of these toxic beliefs and habits that no longer serve you. (I’ve been doing this for years, and I am still peeling back layers of this onion.)

Due to cultural conditioning from family, school, and church, we separated ourselves from what we truly felt in order to survive. In that process, we disconnected from our inner self and formed negative perceptions about our self.   These negative perceptions became rock solid beliefs in our subconscious, beliefs so tenacious that they ultimately open us to disease in the body — especially aging degenerative diseases.

Notice Your Genuine Feelings!

The process of numbing out and disconnecting from authentic feelings is so automatic and ingrained that we are unaware that we are doing it. The first step to healing this inner rift is to simply become aware of the genuine feelings that run like a current beneath what we usually show as “socially acceptable” feelings and responses.

As I connected with my inner knowingness in what is right for me to do, I literally became my own authority. I came to trust and depend on that inner voice.  I discovered that the more I expressed my genuine feelings, the more I connected with what Milton Erickson, an American psychiatrist and hypnosis specialist, calls our inner self.  Erickson said, “Patients are patients because they are out of rapport with their own unconsciousness. Patients are people who have too much programming, so much outside programming that they have lost touch with their inner self.”

In my next article I will share the day-to-day actions that my inner knowingness is guiding me to take with my husband, to support him in his desire to heal himself. After seeing the “The Living Matrix Movie” several times, he made the statement to me,  “It is saying what you have been saying only in different words.” He then made the decision to heal himself.  Only time will tell if he started early enough, as he is now in the later stages of Parkinson’s.

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Practical Health Tips for Family Caregivers

Posted on October 21, 2010 by adminbjm

Family Caregivers:

Follow These Five Steps to Improve Your Health Over the Long Term

Providing care for an ill relative may be among the most challenging experiences of our lives. It certainly has been for me.   Our bodies were made to deal with short terms stresses effectively. (Think: Running away from the saber-toothed tiger.)

Family caregiving, however, is a long-term proposition. The challenge with this kind of stress is to deal with it so it doesn’t compromise your health and well-being.  The basics include taking care of the body. Be sure you get enough sleep and nourishing food. Deep breathing, daily exercise (20-30 minutes), meditation, good habit reinforcement, and maintaining your interests can all work wonders for caregivers on the brink of burnout.

1 Breathe!

One of the things that supports me throughout the day is doing deep belly breathing, something I’ve practiced over the years. I recently learned this technique called “Mindfulness.” This process really resonated and supports me in deep breathing longer and more often.

Say the words in quotes below silently in your mind:
*Inhale #1: “Deeply.”          Exhale #1: “Slowly.”
*Inhale #2:  “Calm.”            Exhale #2:  “Ease.”
*Inhale #3:  “Smile.”            Exhale #3:  “Release.”
*Inhale #4:  “Present Moment.”    Exhale #4:  “Perfect Moment.”

Repeat this series of breaths for at least three minutes (and up to ten minutes) throughout the day to feel better.  To encourage myself to do this calming breath multiple times a day, I put a mark on my calendar each time I do it.

Staying in the reality of the present moment is another technique I put to use years ago when we expanded our business under capitalized, then faced bankruptcy. For a year and half, I went outside daily to look at the trees and hills and affirm, “In this moment everything is OK. We have food, clothing and shelter.”

2 Move Your Body!

Years ago I took ten years of Tai Chi with my mother. This made a big difference in my posture and well-being.  After that, I continued a daily 20-30 minute Tai Chi practice. Each day, I also take a walk, intending that my mind stay focused in the moment.

3 Meditate — Not Medicate!

Meditation is an outstanding practice and way to relax and clear your mind.  With many available ways to meditate, you need to find what works for you. Perhaps, like me, you’ll find the deep breathing combined with the Tai Chi will give you energy so that you feel better.

4 Reinforce Your Good New Habits!

Train yourself to do all these good things for yourself.  Strange as it seems, you can draw from the art of dog training to encourage your good habits. Whatever you do to take care of yourself earns you compliments.  Learn to recognize what you do to take care of yourself, then praise yourself so that you will do more of it. Just like with a dog, acknkowledge yourself whenever you practice these healthy habits.

The secret?  Never put yourself down or bat yourself over the head and feel guilty when you fail to follow through.  Simply start anew in each moment to do the best you can.

Language can be your friend! Another technique I learned is to drop the phrases that reinforce negativity: “I need to… have to …ought to…should etc.”  Instead affirm yourself and say, “I will do…”  Then do it and feel good about following through!

5 Maintain Your Outside Interests!

Whether it’s work or hobbies, we each have activities that are meaningful and stir our passions. These things turn us on and make us feel good.  No matter how slowly, be sure to keep these things perking along for yourself.

For example, I thoroughly enjoyed leading seminars in the 90s. In 2008 I took a course to learn how to do seminars over the phone. For the past year, I have been working on creating a tele-seminar series for family caregivers.  It has taken me a year to accomplish what I would have normally accomplished in three months. However this ongoing business development process has contributed to my coping with the stress of caregiving in a very positive manner.

If you are a family caregiver suffering from burnout or you need to give yourself a boost, put these five steps to work to enhance your health and well-being.

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Caregivers: Ingrained Perceptions May Hold Key to Degenerative Disease

Posted on October 13, 2010 by adminbjm

Have You Checked In On Your Ingrained Perceptions Lately?

(They May Hold a Key to Degenerative Disease)


Perceptions, especially protective responses to authority figures we developed at a young age, have a tremendous influence in shaping the character and experiences of our lives and our overall health.  Recent research, according to author Bruce Lipton, shows that perceptions inform the placebo effect (healing effects due to positive expectations) and nocebo effect (harmful effects due to negative expectations).  One third of all healings are from the placebo effect. I see this as part of the equation as the final frontier in creating health and well-being for Family Caregivers and our loved ones.

On the flip side, scientific research is showing that the nocebo effect is often the root cause of disease. In our early years, we form perceptions about ourselves, often based on response to an authority figure (like a parent, teacher, church leader).  Such perceptions are beliefs that permeate every cell of our bodies. Ultimately what the body expresses is what the mind has caused the body to believe.

From his cell biology research, Dr. Bruce Lipton in The Biology of Belief, shows that negative perceptions we formed about ourselves (mostly as children) and hold in our subconscious as beliefs, profoundly affect our health at the cellular level. One cell, put in a toxic environment, degenerates. When the same cell is taken out of the toxins and put into a healthy environment, it can return to health and thrive.

Early communications and cultural conditioning experiences lock into a child’s subconscious and mostly remain intact. For most children, their life-negating experiences result in feeling poorly about themselves. Over a lifetime of repetition, they are opening themselves up to disease.  Parkinson’s is a classic example of this.

One Parkinson’s patient, through energy healing, was able to feel and express the negative beliefs he had formed about himself as a child. In the session, the comments included:
I am useless.
I am not good enough.
I don’t matter.
What I say doesn’t mean anything.
Stupid me.
I am left out and not loved.
I can’t do it good enough.
I can’t do it right.
I don’t deserve.
I have to be perfect to be accepted.
It is all my fault.
I am shameful and feel guilty.

Most of us grew up in a toxic stew of negative cultural conditioning, handing over personal inner authority, and being bombarded with life negating communications. Our own health, along with the health of our loved ones we care for, are profoundly affected by these ingrained perceptions.

Name Your Taboos

In my personal growth journey, I found The Taboo Code of a good girl or woman was the reason I buried my genuine feelings, effectively creating an emotional straitjacket. This “Good Girl/Good Woman Taboo Code,” based on my experience, crosses racial, cultural, class, religious, and ethnic divides.

Here are some of the toxic taboos I grew up with:

*You are to be humble and unassuming.

*You are never to toot your own horn. That is being conceited and boastful.

*You are always to think about what other people want. Any thoughts of what you want are selfish.

* “What will the neighbors think?” It is critical to behave in such a manner that, if the neighbors know what you are doing, they will approve.

*You never speak well of yourself because that is considered bragging and is an insult to others.

*You are responsible for how other people feel regarding what you say or do.

These are the Taboo Codes I uncovered with a group of women.  I’ve asked men to tell me the taboos they grew up with. Only two men have ever given me any response. Interestingly, one of the recent responses: For men, it is taboo and seen as a weakness to appear to have (or admit to have) any mental problems. That was why my husband joined me in couples therapy — because it was “my problem.”

One of the most pernicious taboos for  family caregivers: “You are always to think about what other people want and need, especially family members. Any thoughts of what you want or need means you are being selfish.” Trying to live up to such a taboo can trap Boomer family caregivers in doing for family members to the detriment of their own health and well-being. (Remember the airlines: “Always put on your own oxygen mask first.”)

Take some time now to reflect and write out your own inner beliefs and the toxic taboo code that was ingrained in you. Which taboos can you release as no longer valid? The only thing you stand to lose is your chains.

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Caregivers: Stop. Look. Listen. Then Act.

Posted on October 12, 2010 by adminbjm

If you care for your ill and ailing loved ones, and you are feeling guilty or stressed out or overwhelmed by the challenges of being a full-time family caregiver, KNOW that you are not alone.

Like the airline flight attendants say, “Put on your own oxygen mask first, before you try to assist others.” You, as the primary caregiver, may not realize you have to take care of yourself first. Look at it this way: If something happens to you, who will take care of your loved ones? You are important. Give yourself this small but vital gift of self-support.

Stress is the major issue when you are faced with caring for a loved one. That stress, if unattended, has been known to kill the caregiver before their loved one.

Practical Exercise for Family Caregivers to Break the Habitual Cycle of Stress with Your Loved One

Stop. Look. Listen. Then Act.

As children, we learned the basics of “Stop. Look. Listen,” before we crossed a street. It’s still good advice.  Sometimes going back to the basics can be really effective.

In this case, it’s important to stop, learn to listen to your thoughts, look and observe your actions, and then take it the next step by watching how things turn out, what takes place in the interaction. Such nonjudgmental observations will help you connect cause and effect, so that needed behavioral shifts can be more easily implemented.

For caregivers, when you are with your loved ones, observing your old habits of thoughts, speech, and actions from a loving but distanced vantage point will go a long way in helping you to see more clearly what is going on.

This “Stop. Look. Listen. Then Act” exercise is hugely effective in combating the old habits ingrained by cultural conditioning.  It also takes a lot of practice and discipline, to stand back and observe yourself and your situation from the standpoint of an impartial observer within yourself.  However, if there’s one exercise that will move you rapidly along the path of learning to trust your own inner authority and relieve the stress, this “active observation” process is it.

Here’s a way to get started. Decide that on your next encounter with your loved one, that you will put this “Stop. Look. Listen.  Then Act,” exercise into practice.  As you encounter your loved one, simply let a part of your mind pretend to be a video camera, and you are the camera-person.

You simply observe the interaction and conversation as it happens.  You non-judgmentally observe what you are feeling on the inside, what you actually say to your loved one, what happens during the interaction. It can be really helpful after the interaction to sit down and write about what you observed throughout the process of observing to make your learning more concrete.

As soon as you can after the encounter, take a moment to write your reflections. Before you start writing, close your eyes and take some deep breaths. Even just observing like an impartial third party can bring up issues and emotions. Take some time to reflect and write about what came up for you doing this exercise.

  • What did you learn?
  • What might you do differently?
  • Do you see how what you are thinking does (or does not) connect to the words that come out of you?

This “Stop. Look. Listen. Then Act.” exercise is the first step to becoming more mindful of how we interact with our loved ones. We see more clearly the results of our old habitual behaviors.

Maintain this observer attitude before you attempt to make changes in your behavior. You may discover that the simple act of observing will allow you to release stress and guilt while naturally shifting some of your actions to become more beneficial in your relationship with the loved one you are caring for.

In fact, I recommend doing this exercise regularly, and in different areas of your life, not just in your role as caregiver. It will stretch you and make you aware of old habits in a way that few other exercises can.

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