The Personal Resilience and Warriorship Blog!

Reframe Your SELF

2011-11-02T05:55:00.000-07:00

For over two millennia at least, authentic ancient traditions have been telling us that as individuals we're frequently making a very subtle yet devastating mistake in our lives...

We're incorrectly identifying our SELF! Yes, it sounds counter-intuitive, but in fact it's not. In the modern Western world, especially, we're taught from infancy to identify our SELF with our brain, our thoughts and our emotions. That's right, Descartes has won - we're all taught to believe his maxim, "I think, therefore I am".

In fact, though, your true "self", your deepest "essence" is none of these things. It's not your brain, nor is it the mindstream of endless thought running through your head, nor is it the emotions attached to those thoughts or welling up from deep within. You HAVE a brain, thoughts and emotions, but you are not any one of them, nor any combination of them.

If you believe your brain, thoughts and emotions constitute your personal identity, then you automatically reduce your body to the role of a simple transportation system, a "biological golf cart" if you will. And this unleashes a host of obstacles in your life and will suck your RESILIENCE dry:

You will live in your head
Therefore you will reduce the role of the body to that of a transportation system
This will induce a pattern of chest breathing, which in turn will push energy higher into your torso and head, leaving you increasingly vulnerable to negative emotional states
This disrupts the entire human energy system and leads to emotional imbalance
Chest breathing also has physical consequences, in that it fails to detoxify the major organs as abdominal breathing does
It also leads to emotional incompetence - the tendency to either repress emotion or act it out. Both tendencies leave you as the slave of your emotional world.
Until you "get back in your body", you'll never master your emotions

The only way out of this sad state of affairs is to engage in a meditative process. This allows you to observe the mindstream and realize by your own experience that neither your thoughts nor your emotions are the REAL you. It also puts your consciousness back inside your body where it belongs instead of letting it wander aimlessly in the world of the senses looking for something to ease the pain. And there is nothing more painful than repressing emotion.

If you're making this fundamental "anthropological" mistake of identifying your Self with your brain, what you're really doing is reducing who you are to a bunch of acquired, observable characteristics, to the conditioning you've inherited from your society. You are SO much more than that.

Now here I could get all poetic on you and tell you you're in the image and likeness of God, you're the Buddha nature or you're a being of light. All of these are true, in that your real capacities exceed anything you've likely experienced. But in the end, you have to discover all this for yourself or it has no value, it's just more useless information.

So the first step to recovering your personal resilience is to take your consciousness within, where you'll discover the real YOU over time and free yourself from bondage to your mindstream and emotions. You'll stop living in a past you can't change or a future that's not here yet and discover the joy of being "present" to the "now".

And once you've done that, you're ready for the next step in your healing...

~Dr. Symeon Rodger

Phenomenal Insight into the Mind-Body Connection... from an MD!

2011-10-27T06:24:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a whirlwind four days in Toronto at the 13th annual Energy Psychology Conference, an event that brings together some incredibly gifted healers from across North America and around the world.

Aside from putting on a workshop on Advanced Bodywork at the conference, I was also privileged to share the stage as one of the three keynote speakers, along with Dr. Gabor Maté and Lynn McTaggart. While circumstances prevented me from attending Lynn's talk, I did get to Gabor's and it was SUPER.

(My own keynote was called Hacking Perfection: 7 Secrets for Making Yourself and Your Clients Healthier, Happier and Hardier Than You Ever Thought Possible. I'll be sharing its contents with you later. The good news is that it was a big hit. Now, though, I'd like to focus on Dr. Maté's keynote...)

If you're unfamiliar with the work of Dr. Gabor Maté, you might want to take a look at it - he has some valuable insights for you in the realm of human resilience...

You can watch an interview with him here:

I read one of his books a few years ago, called When the Body Says No!. It's a great book demonstrating not simply the undeniable link between mind and body, but specifically how repressed emotion manifests as malignancy. Not great news for a culture that chronically suppresses emotion ;-)

(Note: this is the cover for the US edition. The Canadian cover differs.)

Dr. Maté made three main points about contemporary Western medicine:

1. It separates the mind from the body

2. It separates the person from his/her environment, including relationships

3. It doesn't recognize the body's innate healing capacity

He went on to say that because we evaluate people by their behavior, appearance and circumstances, we tend to identify our SELF as the combination of these things or, to put it another way, we tend to identify our SELF with our personality. However, the personality is an "imposter", in his words, and the real task of any true healer is simply to help people to see themselves clearly and accurately.

With many years of experience in the medical field, Dr. Maté asserts that cancers and many other serious illnesses, as well as addictions, are usually attempts to avoid feeling the uncomfortable. This existential stance of refusing to face uncomfortable emotional energies puts your whole being in a defensive mode; however, the cells of the body cannot be in growth mode and defensive mode at the same time. The former promotes life, the latter death.

Since our personality is so busy trying to avoid reality, it ends up refusing to see the truth and plunging the whole organism into dysfunction and illness. The real task of the healer is to hold a space of compassion that will allow the client to face his/her inner world so as to transform it. All of this, he said, is not particularly easy in a society that blocks healthy aggression and persistently sends us the message that maintaining our relationships requires us to betray our own authenticity.

The title of his address, The Archeology of Silence, underlines how essential it is for the healer to pay attention to and perceive the client's non-verbal communications because they contain vital clues about what's really going on.

While I don't claim this summary does justice to his presentation, I do believe that all of us can benefit enormously from Dr. Maté's work. So put this guy on your reading list ;-)

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Join Me at This Year's Energy Psychology Conference!

2011-10-07T07:49:00.000-07:00

Just two short weeks from today the 13th annual Energy Psychology Conference begins in Toronto, Canada!

Along with numerous other top experts I'll be there, presenting a two-hour workshop on Friday October 21 called Advanced Bodywork for Emotional Balance and Mind-Body Reintegration.

This workshop contains lots of material I've never presented before - it's the shape of things to come in mind-body integration, a real "how-to" guide to becoming authentically human, mastering your emotions and improving your health. You don't have to continue living in the "mind-body divorce" of Western culture that's messing you up on every plane of your existence. There IS a better way!

You can get all the info on the conference and register here:

http://www.epccanada.ca/

Why Come to the Energy Psychology Conference?

First, you get to meet many of the top healers in the world today and learn cutting edge methods you can use in your own life, in the lives of your loved ones and, if you're a practitioner, with your clients.

There are amazing keynote addresses, great workshops, plenty of time to make new friends and a well-stocked bookstore - it's paradise ;-)

Among this year's presenters is Lynn McTaggart, the famous author of the now classic bestseller, The Field: the Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe. Lynn is one of the world's top authorities on energy healing and cutting edge biology.

Lynn McTaggart

So have a look at the EPC site using this link. If you can possibly come to this amazing conference I would encourage you to do so because it's an incomparable learning opportunity!

Hope to see you there!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Amazing Demo of Personality Types

2011-10-04T09:41:00.000-07:00

Recently I had the privilege of attending a talk by Dr. Robert Rohm, probably the foremost exponent of the DISC personality assessment today. I wasn't expecting anything special since I was already extensively familiar with DISC, but was I in for a surprise! This was one of the most dynamic and engaging presentations I've ever seen...

"If you would describe yourself as an outgoing person," said Dr. Rohm, "I'd like you to go and stand at that end of the room. But if you'd describe yourself as a more reserved person, then please stand at the opposite end. Just go with whatever your inclination is now - this isn't cast in stone."

So we all headed to our respective ends of the room, as he continued... "Now, within each of your groups, some of you will be more 'task oriented' while others are more naturally 'people oriented'. If you believe you're more people oriented, please stand on the window side of the room and if you're more task oriented, I'd like you to stand over on the door side of the room. Do all this while staying at your respective ends of the room."

So there we were, neatly divided into four groups:

Outgoing and task oriented
Outgoing and people oriented
Reserved and people oriented
Reserved and task oriented

Dr. Rohm described each of the above groups in order, explaining, "We call these groups respectively D, I, S and C. You D types are dominant; you like to be in control and take charge, telling others what to do. You want to run the show.

"You I types are inspiring, the life of the party. You want to be in the limelight and you think you ARE the show.

"You S types are supportive and sensitive. You're always there for others, you're great team players and your only concern is that the show should go well for everyone.

"You C types are cautious and careful. You do things thoroughly and methodically, always pursuing excellence. You'll plan the show so nothing goes wrong."

Looking around the room and knowing a lot of the other attendees personally, I could see he had pretty well hit the nail on the head. The irony was that since the group was composed heavily of entrepreneurs, the D and I types were over-represented in terms of the general population.

The Punch Line

"You D types," he went on, "...the happiest day of your parents' life was the day you left home and stopped telling them how to raise you. As for you I- types, the saddest day in your parents' life was the day you left home, because all the fun left with you. You S types never did leave home because you're so happy where you are. And you C types have bought your parents' home and are now leasing it back to them!"

"Now understand that these types are complimentary and no one type is 'better' than another. It's just how you're wired. But there's more to it: all of us contain all four types within us. It's just that one or two of the types will dominate while the others have much less influence on your behavior. So if you couldn't be in the quadrant you're standing in now, point to the one that you feel would describe next best how you're wired."

We all pointed. I'm a high C / high S blend, so I pointed to the S quadrant folks standing at the back of the room on the window side.

"Notice that almost all of you pointed to your left or right and that only a couple of you pointed directly across the room. Typically the quadrant across the room is the lowest one on your chart and the one you understand the least.

"Also, there's normally a third quadrant that you 'live in' some of the time. It may not describe your deepest wiring but you're capable of stretching yourself to go there when needed. What is that quadrant for you?"

I pointed to the D quadrant. I don't usually feel a huge compulsion to be in charge, but if I'm on a team with a common task to accomplish and I see that the leadership is absent or ineffective, I will automatically take over and start directing things.

In short, we had a blast at Dr. Rohm's presentation. It was superb. Here's a short video of him telling a funny story of his encounter with a high-C type...

The DISC system, represented by the graphic up above, is a fantastic resilience tool for understanding yourself and others. In the business world, it's a very effective tool for building highly productive teams or for diagnosing and eliminating the tensions and conflicts within a team.

And I'm delighted to announce that from this moment forward, Global Resilience Solutions will be offering DISC training for teams! Does your team need help? If so, give us a call at 888-532-9504.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

*Please note the "quotations" from Dr. Rohm's presentation are simply paraphrased and may not represent his actual wording.

Amazing Low-Tech Stress Relief

2011-09-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

"Now just lie back on your mats and place the two balls under the very top of your trapezius muscles. That's right.... Now slowly push up from your feet, lifting your pelvis off the mat..."

It all sounded so easy as Amanda, our Yoga instructor, gave the directions. Easy until the pain set in!

"Holy s_ _ _ that hurts!" was all I could think. Just like having a massage therapist's magic fingers dig right in. Fortunately, I could use my body to control the level of discomfort.

That's the genius of Yoga Tune-Up technology - using Yoga balls to mimic a great massage up and down your back or pretty well anywhere else you need it. And it's a lot cheaper than massage therapy, that's for sure!

The yoga balls are basically small rubber balls the size of a tennis ball. If you squeeze them, there's certainly some "give" to them, but they do have a definite firmness.

I sure found a lot of knots to work out of my muscles - hence the pain factor for me. Of course, it didn't help that I'd done my weight routine just before Yoga class either - I'm sure that contributed a few knots!

As the class went on, we gradually moved the balls farther down the back, hitting the rhomboids, erector spinae, latissimus dorsi, and "the gluts". At the end, we really did feel very relaxed (and not just because it felt so good to stop!).

The beauty of Yoga balls is also that you don't have to know much at all about traditional Hatha Yoga to benefit from them. If you need to relieve the physical and psychological tensions built up in your muscles, you can do it right away with just about no training.

Have a Look at this Excellent Demo:

Here at Global Resilience Solutions, we're always looking for easy-to-use tools to help you improve your health, dissolve your stress and relax you more. And Yoga Tune-Up's ingenious little balls are a prime example. No need to wait to see a massage- or phsyio-therapist to get those knots out of your muscles. You can do it anytime!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Top 10 Benefits to Knowing and Living Your Purpose

2011-09-19T15:20:00.000-07:00

Brad Swift has kindly provided a second article for us! In the unlikely event you don't already know of him, he is a foremost expert on personal life purpose and co-founded Life On Purpose Institute in 1996 so people like you could have more fulfilling and satisfying lives through clarifying their life purpose. NOTE: I will be interviewing Brad for you this Wednesday night, September 21, at 8pm Eastern.

The Top 10 Benefits to Knowing & Living Your Purpose

by W. Bradford Swift

As the founder and director of an organization with a name like Life On
Purpose Institute, I guess it's not surprising to hear me say that I feel
that one of the most important matters that anyone can do for themselves and
the world is to become clear what their true purpose in life is and to then
live true to it. So, I'd like to point out some of the many benefits to
knowing and living your life purpose.

These are some of the benefits most commonly shared by the clients of Life
On Purpose Institute as well as ones that I have personally experienced by
clarifying and living my own life on purpose.

1. Focus

When you clearly know your life purpose, it becomes a truing mechanism
allowing you to focus more clearly on what matters most to you. Many people
report that this has been one of the most valuable benefits to going through
the Purpose Process (TM), especially once they begin to use their life
purpose to make their decisions and choices in where and how they are going
to invest their time, energy, money and talents.

2. Passion

For many people clarifying their life purpose becomes the key to unlocking
their passion for life. The passion becomes the fuel that propels them
forward in expressing their life purpose, often in extraordinary ways beyond
anything they would have considered before they clarified their purpose.

3. Being Unstoppable

People living on purpose become unstoppable, particularly the longer they
live true to their purpose and the more they allow their purpose to shape
their life. People without clarity of purpose often finds themselves stopped
or stuck in life, which isn't surprising because they haven‚t tapped into
their passion so they're like a high powered automobile without any fuel in
their tank.

4. Fulfillment

Living a life in which you are regularly expressing your life purpose and
allowing it to shape your decisions, your thoughts, feelings and actions is
simply a whole lot more fulfilling. A life on purpose is filled with
meaning, and people on purpose realize they are making a difference in the
world simply by being in the world.

5. Living a Value-based Life

You will learn as you delve more deeply into the Purpose Process (TM) that
an integral component of a person's life purpose are their "core values" --
those intangibles of life that mean the most to them. Our core values are at
the heart of all the values we've been taught we "should value." Think of it
like 3 concentric circles. The largest circle is composed of our "should
values," the next circle inside that one is our "chosen values" -- the
should values that we actually choose to hold onto and live from. The last
circle is our "core values" -- those chosen values that truly matter most to
us. Since these core values are an integral part of your life purpose, when
you are living a life on purpose, you are living a "value-based" life,
rather than a "lifestyle" based life.

6. Fun

Let‚s face it, living on purpose is simply a lot more fun than living a life
based in fear and shoulds. People who know their life purpose and are living
it have a renewed zest for life. They can bring purposeful play to almost
any situation and find or create ways to have each day be a reflection of
their true joy and purpose.

7. Integrity

For me, a life on purpose is a life of ultimate integrity. It's a life that
is whole and complete. People who know their purpose and are living it, know
who they are and why they are here. They live true to their core values as
they serve themselves and others through the expression of their life
purpose.

8. Trust / Faith

As people clarify their life purpose and begin to live true to it, many of
them report a surprising increase in synchronicity and serendipity in their
lives. It's as though the Universe is rewarding them for the courage to live
true to their purpose. With this comes a deepening in trust and faith for
most of these people, as they realize that indeed there is a greater force
in the Universe than themselves and they are an integral part of that force.

9. Grace

According to the dictionary, grace is "the unmerited divine assistance given
man..." and people living on purpose often report living a grace-filled
life. When you commit to living true to your purpose, something amazing
begins to happen. The Universe lines up with your intention and commitment.
Perhaps this quote says it best:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always
ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creativity there is
one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and
splendid plans:that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then
providence moves too."

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have
occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising ones
favor all manner of assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have
come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it; boldness has genius, power
and magic in it." W. H. Murray

10. Flow

And perhaps we can summarize the other 9 benefits under this last one.
People living on purpose live in the flow of the Universal stream of
consciousness. Rather than fighting against the current, they allow the
current of what's wanting to happen to happen. They allow what's wanting to
flow to flow. They know that while they may never completely understand or
comprehend God's divine design and plan for this Universe, they can still be
an integral part in its realization.

=============================================

Mark Your Calendar!

I'll be interviewing Brad on Wednesday September 21 at 8pm Eastern :-)
See you there!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Is YOUR Life On Purpose?

2011-09-14T09:21:00.000-07:00

This week's guest author is none other than Brad Swift. In the unlikely event you don't already know of him, he is a foremost expert on personal life purpose and co-founded Life On Purpose Institute in 1996 so people like you could have more fulfilling and satisfying lives through clarifying their life purpose. NOTE: I will be interviewing Brad for you next Wednesday night, September 21, at 8pm Eastern.

IS YOUR LIFE ON PURPOSE? by W. Bradford Swift

Until thought is linked with purpose, there is no intelligent
accomplishment. With the majority, the bark of thought is allowed to drift
upon the ocean of life. A man or woman should conceive of a legitimate
purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. James Allen

Is you life on purpose? Does just the question stop you in your tracks as it
does many people? Have you been so caught up in the frenetic pace of
today’s consumeristic culture that you’ve not dared wonder if your life is
going in the right direction?

Perhaps you feel a little like Alice in Wonderland when she was taken on a
wild ride through the countryside by the Red Queen? No matter how fast
Alice ran she couldn’t seem to get anywhere. Finally, breathless from her
efforts, the Queen allowed her to rest long enough for Alice to comment that
"Everything is just as it was!" to which the Queen replied, "...here, you
see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you
want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

If this sounds like one of your typical days or weeks, or your whole life
for that matter, then it’s times to jump from the not so merry-go-round and
re-evaluate a few of your priorities. Responding to the following
statements will give you a good starting point. Grade yourself on a scale
from 1 to 10.

1. I am crystal clear what my life purpose is.

Disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Agree

Of course, to live a life on purpose starts with knowing what your purpose
is. If you aren’t sure, then that’s where to start. Don’t feel bad if you
aren’t clear. According to Cynthia Kersey in her book, Unstoppable
(http://www.unstoppable.net), when psychologist, William Marsten, asked
3,000 people the question, “What have you to live for?” 94 percent said they
had no definite purpose for their lives -- 94 percent! That leaves only 6
percent of us who know why we’re here. No wonder we’re not a particularly
happy society.

2. The life I lead is a full expression of my life purpose.

Disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Agree

Knowing your purpose is really only the start. About a quarter of the
people who request my services as a life purpose coach feel they know their
purpose but also realize that their life doesn’t reflect it. In other
words, they aren’t living true to it.

3. I live a values-based life rather than a materialistic-based life.
Disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Agree

Many Americans have sold out their values for the Great American Dream
forced down our throats by Madison Avenue advertising. Luckily, we’re
starting to realize the dream is actually a nightmare, but with hundreds of
exposures to advertising every week, living a value-based life can make you
feel like a salmon swimming up stream.

4. My life is free of unnecessary clutter and complexities and I seldom feel
overwhelmed, rushed or cluttered.

Disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Agree

More people give themselves a lower rating with this statement than anywhere
else. It appears many of other or choking on our own clutter. If you don’t
believe it, look around your own neighborhood. How many new self-storage
businesses have opened up in the last five years. In the small mountain
community where I live there’s been at least two new ones, and their
businesses are flourishing.

5. I regularly take time to nurture myself in ways that feed my soul.

Disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Agree

A big issue for many people. Some of my clients are so driven that the
concept of taking even 15 minutes for themselves to just sit and do nothing
but breath and relax is almost inconceivable. Taking an entire evening to
just nurture oneself is beyond comprehension for most.

How did you do on the sample test? Or did you feel you didn’t have the time
to take it right now because you need to get on to more important stuff.
Wake up Alice! Nothing is more important than identifying your purpose and
living true to it. It’s just so easy to drift through life like a cork
thrown by the currents of circumstances, back and forth, living what Thoreau
describes as “lives of quiet desperation.”

The good news is that it’s not too late. It is possible to start living on
purpose immediately, even before you clearly know your purpose. Because
even asking the questions, “who am I and what is my life for?” begins to
shape your life into a new direction. It all starts when you ask the
questions. “Seek and you will find. Ask and it will be given unto you.”

Start asking today. For a more in depth, FREE evaluation of how on purpose
your life is, take the Life On Purpose Self Test at
http://www.lifeonpurpose.com and earn a complimentary life purpose coaching
session.

-----------------------------------------
Again, remember to join us Wednesday Sept. 21, 2011 as Brad helps you personally get a handle on your own life purpose and how to live it. The call-in information will follow shortly.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Take Back Control of Your Time EASILY

2011-09-09T06:05:00.000-07:00

Time... your top non-renewable resource. You can always make more money, make new friends and start over in life. The one thing you can never do is recover lost time.

Has control over your own time (and therefore over your energy) constantly eluded you? It certainly mystified me for years. So how do you transition from the "managed chaos" of your life now to:

Having full control over how you use your time
Being able to accomplish everything that's really important
While giving yourself more free time for the things that matter most to you

Let's Talk About the BASICS

If you need to get hold of your time better, you need to SEE your time visually.

Open a new Excel spreadsheet (or use a spreadsheet from Google Docs, as discussed in the previous post).
Across the top, label the columns Sunday to Sunday. Having the extra day's overlap at the end of the week is something I find visually useful. Down the side of the spreadsheet, put the time in half hour increments from the time you get up until the time you turn out the lights.

Planning based on a one-week time period is vital for clarity. Yes, you need to have clarity on your goals for the year, the month, etc. However, planning concretely on a weekly cycle is the most effective.

Once you've got your spreadsheet ready, don't start filling it in quite yet. First you need to jot down the various role you play in your life. Those could be spouse/parent, technical expert or business owner (or whatever your work is), friend/adviser, volleyball coach, etc. You should not have more than 7 major roles.

Then decide what your top three objectives will be this week. Those could be all in one of your roles or spread across two or three. You should never try to accomplish more than three major objectives per week. These are the objectives that will give you the greatest satisfaction and contribute the most to your long range plan.

Here's a screen shot of one of my weekly schedules from June. I've had to reduce the size to fit it in, so the text is too small to read, but you get the idea. The color coding refers to my own particular "roles" in life.

And mine runs Monday to Monday, simply because Kathy, my amazing accountability partner, holds my feet to the fire on Mondays - that's when I have to come clean about my use of time over the previous week!

The Ironclad Rules of Scheduling and Effectiveness

Yes, the rules. Following RULES is what separates the super-effective "life-hacker" from the rest of the bumbling masses. You have a choice - either YOU decide what you will do and when, or other peoples' agendas will take over and smother you. It's up to you. And it's a lot easier to preserve your independence and safeguard your time if you follow the rules.

1. Take your top 3 priorities and double the amount of time you "hope" it will take you to get them done. Then insert them into your schedule, as early on the given day as possible.

NOTE: Insert them where YOU would like them to go. If you start saying to yourself, "Oh, I can't put it there because I promised Mable I'd talk to her about the bridge club then," your thinking is plain backwards. Put your priority into that time slot and reschedule with Mable. The point is that if you allow other peoples' ideas and expectations to get in the way, you're sunk already.

2. Next, schedule time for the following, using the order below:

Exercise and fitness
Quality time with friends and family
The 1-3 things you would most like to do this week
Admin and household chores

3. Color code your spreadsheet, if you wish, for greater visual clarity

4. Be sure to leave extra time for transit from one location to another, eating and necessary bodily functions. In other words, avoid the common trap of scheduling things too closely and underestimating the transition time from one task to another.

5. As for all the "urgent" things that typically come up like weeds and choke the time away from those few really important activities that actually matter, this is where you need some care. Allocate no more than two times per week where you can batch the seemingly "urgent" tasks together and get them done. It's vital to keep the "urgent" in its place; otherwise you'll always be reacting to the minutiae of life and never have the time to move forward.

6. Work when you say you will. Use a timer (such as e.ggtimer.com) to keep you on track and instill a sense of urgency. When you work, stay focused and don't allow distractions until you get to the end of your allotted time. Working in blocks of not more than 60 minutes works best.

7. STOP working when you said you would stop and play when you said you would play! This prevents the phenomenon called "bleed" where you say, "Oh, I'll work just a little longer on this," or "I'll just stay and chat with Betsy for a few more minutes." This will trash your schedule for the whole day.

8. Eliminate Distractions. First, check email not more than three times during your workday and NEVER before completing work on your top priority in the morning or just before bed.

Also, refuse to attend meetings that have no clear purpose or where no decisions will be made. And learn to politely refuse interruptions from colleagues who just want to chat. Ask them to send you a calendar invite to coffee next week.

9. Go over your schedule the night before and begin your day by visualizing how it will go, feeling wonderful about accomplishing everything.

The Bottom Line

Why go through all this planning? Why live your life by these abstract rules? Simple... it works! You see, the whole idea here is to:

Force you to differentiate what's truly important from what's really not. This will vastly increase your personal effectiveness.
And to give you much more FREE TIME and FREE ENERGY.
Increase your mental clarity
Put you in a position to accomplish your most important objective each day by noon (and often much earlier)!

Follow these simple procedures and you'll find that your life just got a whole lot easier. If you're not finding that, there are a few probable causes.

First, you may find yourself thinking, "This weekly schedule thing just doesn't fit MY life very well. Maybe it won't work for me." Well, nine times out of ten, that kind of thinking is self-delusion. It comes from a hesitancy to make the "tough" decision to defy the "priorities" other people have already inflicted on you. Taking back control of your time means thinking differently, doing things differently and quite possibly annoying others who have unrealistic expectations of you.

Second, it looks great on paper but falls apart on implementation. The most common cause is that you didn't allow enough time per objective or you're trying to do too much at once. There's also the issue of your mental habits. If you schedule something and then, when the time comes to do it, you say "I just don't feel like writing those emails right now," you'll never get anywhere. You've got to do it.

Building your personal resilience is never easy, and taking back control of your time is no exception. Yes, the process is simple and if you do it you'll see great results. Yet it does require a new way of thinking.

So go build your schedule, put it into action and be sure to share your results with everyone on the blog or email me directly. We'd love to hear about it!

~Dr. Symeon Rodger

September's Here and It's Time to Get Yourself ORGANIZED

2011-09-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

Labor Day (the holiday Monday that kicks off September here in Canada and in the USA) may not feel a lot like New Years, but under the surface much of the human activity is pretty similar...

People are examining their priorities and making commitments to improving their lives on all levels; the only difference is they're not openly calling these commitments "resolutions", as they will five months from now. Yet the idea is the same.

And no wonder - the beginning of September is our society's REAL New Year on a fundamental level, more so than the "official" calendar New Year down the road. By the way, that "official" New Year is quite arbitrary anyway. In the old Roman Empire, September 1 was the official New Year for centuries.

Getting Organized

Of all the things the people around you are doing right now so they can "hit the ground running" this week, I think you'll find that taking back control of their time is near the top of the list. After all, if you can't control your time and use it effectively, it's hard to make progress no matter what direction you're heading in.

Fortunately, getting organized isn't nearly as hard as it used to be, thanks to a lot of great online tools available today. In the list below, the tools that have (F) after them are free and the others are so inexpensive they might as well be. Here are some of my favorites:

EVERNOTE (F): Evernote is a a fabulous tool whose logo is, appropriately, an elephant, because with Evernote you'll never forget anything again.

My life before Evernote was an endless series of doodles and notes spread across several notebooks and loose pieces of paper... and you can imagine how hard it was to keep track of what information was where - I couldn't. Enter Evernote and life just got a whole lot easier. You work online and they securely store your notes so there's no danger of losing your valuable info if your hard drive crashes. No more sticky notes needed ;-)

Watch a fun intro to Evernote here.

RESCUE TIME (F): How much time do you waste every day? Wouldn't your life be a lot more painless if you simply worked more efficiently? Welcome to the world of Rescue Time, a free online tool that monitors how you spend time at your computer and, if you wish, how much time you spend away from it. The application even sends you a report each week to let you know how much time you've saved. It's like having an automated supervisor to keep you on track.

E.GG TIMER (F): Whenever you sit down to work on something at your computer, you either allow yourself a specific amount of time or leave it open ended. Setting a time limit is one of the secrets of personal effectiveness and E.GGTIMER helps you do that by providing an online countdown for you. Get in the habit of setting a time limit and you'll be FAR more efficient.

TIME TRADE: Formerly known as Time Driver, TT is an online appointment software that's a real lifesaver to anyone whose life is full of meetings, appointments, etc. Instead of the endless back-and-forth of using email to agree on a time to meet, Time Trade lets you decide when you could be available and then send the other person a link to your Time Trade calendar displaying those available times. They simply click the one they prefer and voila! Lots of time and mental energy saved!

CALENDAR QUICK: Calendar Quick bills itself as your source for printable online calendars. Face it, most of us need VISUAL calendars to wrap our heads around the coming week or month. For me, Google Calendar just wasn't good enough at that. Don't get me wrong; Google Calendar has its advantages, but I found its visual display far too limiting for keeping track of everything in my life.

Calendar Quick allows me to build calendars for any date range I want and then print them as a pdf or as an Excel spreadsheet. These printed calendars are a huge organizational help to me just because they give me the visuals I need. Calendar Quick also has an online monthly schedule you can use - it can import directly from your Google Calendar and then incorporate that data into any calendar you create, download and print.

MIND42 (F) (think "Mind For Two") is an online application that lets you and a friend work collaboratively to brainstorm and draw a mind map of your ideas. Or you can use it for just yourself. For those of us who need mind maps and can't think effectively with just text or bullet points (and that's most people), Mind42 is a great tool.

GOOGLE DOCS (F): Google Docs allows you to create virtually any kind of office document you need - text, spreadsheet, drawing, visual presentation (think "PowerPoint") and then save them online so you can access them from anywhere and share them in real time. You can also upload your existing documents to give yourself access to them while you're away from your computer, out of the office or just so you have a back-up in case your hard drive crashes or gets fried in the next thunder storm.

Before this kind of online storage and sharing, my life was an endless effort to make sure to send myself by email all the documents I would need to work with that day (since I'm in several different locations during the week). Now I don't have to think about that anymore. Result? More time and mental energy saved!

You can access videos about Google Docs here.

There's Lots More

The list above is just the tip of the iceberg. For an excellent list of the best free online tools to help you out with just about everything, go here.

Of Course, the Tools Only Help If...

...if you already know how to schedule and control your time effectively. And that's a true art, yet one that's not too difficult to master. So next time on the blog we'll discuss exactly how to do that. Watch for it!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Natural Disasters, Fear and YOU

2011-08-29T16:19:00.000-07:00

A 5.9 earthquake in Virginia?? Hurricane Irene? Is the world coming apart at the seams? My son felt the Virginia quake quite strongly as far away as Toronto, the city I grew up in and where I never felt a quake in two decades of living there. Yet that city has felt two in the last 14 months.

Of course, my son was on the 12th floor of an apartment building, whereas I was here in Ottawa and closer to the epicenter but felt nothing, probably because I was in a ground floor meeting room at the time. The higher up you are in a building, the more you'll feel it.

As I listened to people's random comments over the next few days, there was one common theme - earthquakes and natural disasters are becoming more frequent and it feels like the planet is falling apart around us and under us.

Fear and Your Personal Resilience

It's nearly impossible to listen to all the low level fear-mongering and not walk away with a bit of the anxiety yourself. As a community of people committed to developing our personal resilience, this should be a big concern for all of us because fear:

Raises your stress level and damages your health
Makes you prone to misinterpret what's going on around you
Clouds your judgment and gives rise to poor decision-making

And we are all fed an non-stop diet of fear and anxiety through the media. You're told the economy is going down the toilet, Western civilization is on its last legs, there are super bugs waiting to eat you alive and now the ground under you is shaking as well.

If you allow yourself to listen to all this there is almost no way you'll be able to keep your focus on cultivating inner and outer harmony in your life.

For a little taste of Hollywood's contributions to the madness, turn up your speakers and "enjoy" this little clip:

"Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated..."

But Is All This Really True?

Let's take earthquakes first. Is it really true that the frequency and magnitude of earthquakes are on the increase? Here's what the US Geological Survey has to say:

"We continue to be asked by many people throughout the world if earthquakes are on the increase. Although it may seem that we are having more earthquakes, earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained fairly constant. (...) According to long-term records (since about 1900), we expect about 17 major earthquakes (7.0 - 7.9) and one great earthquake (8.0 or above) in any given year."

Just propaganda to make you feel better? Well, considering worldwide earthquake data is available instantly at your finger tips from many sources around the world, that seems unlikely. Moreover, a casual glance at the hard data seems to support the USGS' contention - there has been little change in earthquake frequency and severity over the past several decades.

Some people will look at earthquake fatalities, particularly with reference to 2010, and say, "Look, it's getting worse!" However, the fatalities are entirely a function of where the quake happens to hit and in 2010 a major quake hit Haiti, one of the most vulnerable communities on the planet, causing over 350,000 deaths. The fact that a vastly stronger quake hit Chile later the same year yet caused only one thousand deaths because of Chile's outstanding preparedness just goes to show you what a poor measurement the number of fatalities is.

The Joys of Instant, Free, Worldwide Communications

Over just the past 20 years, our ability to identify and track earthquakes has greatly increased because there are now more seismograph stations than ever - about 8000 worldwide.

Think about this: when there was a major earthquake in the 1980s in, say, Indonesia, you could probably hear about it on the TV news. There might even have been a video, though not necessarily. And if you missed the TV news, you might find it in the newspaper, though probably not on the front page.

If that same earthquake happens today, the videos will be all over Youtube within minutes, you won't be able to open your browser without having the video in front of your eyes and then your friends on Facebook will start talking about it too. So the subjective impression we have that disasters are happening more often is just that, a subjective impression not always borne out by the facts.

What About Global Climate Change?

To those living in denial about the reality of global climate change I have one thing to say: call my office and we'll arrange a meeting in Toronto. That's where I'll show you the 30' x 40' piece of turf where we created a skating rink in our backyard for about three months of the year for over 20 years.

No one can do that in Toronto anymore. There's not enough snow. It never stays cold enough for long enough. For the past 20 years or more it's been impossible to replicate what we did back in the sixties and seventies.

The British Royal Society, perhaps the world's most prestigious scientific organization, has this to say about climate change:

"There is strong evidence that changes in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activity are the dominant cause of the global warming that has taken place over the last half century. This warming trend is expected to continue as are changes in precipitation over the long term in many regions. Further and more rapid increases in sea level are likely which will have profound implications for coastal communities and ecosystems."

To the climate change deniers out there, it's time to wake up and read the memo.

An Exercise For You

Here's an exercise you can have some fun with. This will show you whether or not the media / social media are increasing your anxiety levels.

Days 1-3

Be sure to watch the TV world news and national news daily
Keep up with your social media contacts as well
Scan at least the front page of your local newspaper - even better, read a few pages
Then, right after you've done that, sit quietly and see if you can detect anxiety within. Put a number on that anxiety from 1-10, where 10 is very severe. Write it down.
Then feel free to use EFT or any other method you wish to clear away the anxiety

Days 4-6

Be sure NOT to expose yourself to the world or local news in any form
Stay off social media - three days won't kill you and your Facebook and Twitter buddies will survive
Stay away from television, movies, Youtube, etc. This is a total media fast. Read something inspiring instead!
At the end of each day, do the same test as for days 1-3 and write down your results.

Then please feel free to share your results with us, either on this blog or by emailing our office. We'd love to have your thoughts on all this!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

A MUST-HAVE Tool for Your Personal Resilience

2011-08-23T06:16:00.000-07:00

No one recovers from Lou Gehrig's disease or "ALS" as it's sometimes called. It's worse... way worse than cancer. It's a death sentence, where 85% of the victims die in 20-48 months. There's no real treatment and certainly no cure. At least, that's what we assumed...

Dr. Ben Johnson, himself a medical doctor, had those same assumptions going through his head when he himself was diagnosed with the dread disease. Then he came across a very new (at the time) health protocol called the Healing Codes and gave it a try out of desperation. The result? He was symptom-free in a matter of weeks and still is today, nearly a decade later!

The Guy Who Made It Happen

This past Thursday night I had the honor of talking with the founder of the Healing Codes, Dr. Alex Loyd. Alex holds doctorates in psychology and naturopathic medicine and does he have a story for you!

You can listen to that story right here on the replay of Thursday's call. If there's one interview you should really make time for during the next few days, this is definitely it:

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To listen to the replay, click this link:
http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=21889254

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You'll learn about Dr. Alex Loyd's personal struggle - life with a severely depressed spouse. His wife, Tracy, was terribly depressed for years. And if you've ever lived with someone going through depression, you know that words can't express how draining it is. Yet Alex persevered through this for twelve long years - that's nearly martyrdom in my opinion.

You'll learn about how Alex discovered what we now call the Healing Codes, although "discover" probably isn't quite the right word. And then you'll experience his total shock at how effective this protocol really was and at what a wide range of physical and emotional challenges it was blowing right out of the water. Have a look for yourself...

What He Didn't Know at the Time

When Alex was living through these initial successes, including the cure of his wife's chronic depression, he had little idea how his method worked, only that it did. Now we have a much better idea what's really going on.

And for the first few years, there were hundreds, if not thousands of letters and emails coming in from people outlining the amazing results the Healing Codes provided. However, that's just anecdotal evidence - even if there's a ton of it - and not exactly scientific proof.

Since that last time I interviewed Alex - back in 2006 on the topic of mindset - scientific studies of the Healing Codes have been done and Alex will tell you about those too.

Another big change since that time is that the cost of the Healing Codes has gone down dramatically. Five years ago the price was still almost $900, because of the high cost of printing binders full of paper and shipping it. Fortunately, digital delivery of some components has allowed them to chop the price down to less than a quarter of that.

If you'd prefer to cut to the chase and take a few minutes to read the facts, you can learn all about the Healing Codes here.

In our quest for physical, mental, emotional and spiritual resilience, the Healing Codes are, in my opinion, one indispensable tool we should all have on hand and use regularly.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Toss 90% of Your Diet and Fitness Books into the Trash Can

2011-08-16T06:04:00.000-07:00

What?? Am I exaggerating here? Toss 90% of your diet and fitness books into the trash can?

Let's be honest, a hefty percentage contain outdated, partial or skewed information anyway, so there's no great loss. For the rest, you may find they add more confusion than clarity to your life and have led to "paralysis by analysis" for you.

Enter, The 4 Hour Body. Goodbye, paralysis!

It Started With a Very Long Road Trip

Last week I spent 18 hours on the highways of southern Ontario in a 55 hour period and 12 hours of that were solo, so I really needed something to listen to. My cousin, a true renaissance man with a fanatical interest in human resilience (and most other things!) had suggested the audio book version of Timothy Ferriss' recent bestseller, The 4 Hour Body.

Well, the audio book was great, but abridged, so the first thing I did when I got home was to grab the book itself - double the revenue going from my pocket to Mr. Ferriss ;-)

If you've read his previous magnum opus, The 4 Hour Work Week, you know Tim is a divergent thinker and a very entertaining and thought-provoking writer. Better that that, he always tests his theories and gives you advice you can easily put into practice in your own life. And this is where The 4 Hour Body delivers in spades.

At first I thought the title was contrived; just a take-off of the previous book's. Not the case, however; it turns out that a total of 4 hours of exercise is all the exercise you need in a whole month to do a total body makeover. And Tim's right on - most people vastly overestimate the "gym time" needed to build sculpted and functional muscles, reduce body fat and get you looking and feeling your best.

Diving Into the Book

Tim effectively breaks down the artificial mental silos we use to separate weight loss, diet, nutrition, fitness, body image and performance, and then pulls it all together for you in a series of usable programs you can apply to yourself. And you don't have to read all of this 550+ page monster. Just select what's most important to you. Want to lose weight? Read pages 44-156. Want to gain weight? Try pages 157-224. Want to get stronger? Then pages 404-432 are for you.

And there's plenty of science in the book to back it all up. Fortunately, Tim keeps all but a minimum of that out of your way while he explains the programs to follow, and then lets you peruse the scientific research at your leisure.

Important scientific note here: Tim is a meticulous data cruncher, as he says, and measures everything! This alone should shift your thinking about how you approach life in general. My own resilience work is built on the same premise: if you can't measure it, you can't prove it. (This, by the way, was the same scientific logic ancient spiritual traditions built their practices on. Then we invented "religion". God help us all!)

At first sight, the book's a bit eclectic, covering an interesting spread of topics:

Weight loss
Weight gain
Building muscle and strength
Improving sex, including the female orgasm
Perfecting sleep
Reversing injuries
Running faster and farther
Swimming and Swinging (swinging as in baseball)
Longevity

But then, Tim's an eclectic kind of guy, so the whole thing hangs together quite well.

Here's a fun video trailer for the book...

Afterthoughts

All this is not to suggest that I have no issues with the book. Tim's mention of microwaving his food makes me cringe and more attention paid to the living, enzymatic quality of food as opposed to the simple categories of proteins / fats / carbs would have been helpful. That said, if you follow his "Slow Carb" dietary suggestions, I can almost guarantee you'll send your health and fitness into the stratosphere.

His longevity chapter is, paradoxically, the shortest in the book and could have done with some more research, including investigations into the world's premier longevity tradition, i.e., Taoism.

And I could go on. However, the fact remains that if you read this book and put its programs into action - whichever ones apply to you personally, of course - you'll be a lot better off for it. So grab yourself a copy and enjoy!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Sun Salutations, Downward Dogs and Exalted Warriors

2011-08-11T18:01:00.000-07:00

It hit me almost as soon as I got out of the car... a very subtle aroma of fine incense. Entering the reception area, a young lady handed me a clip board with a health questionnaire to fill out and told me where to go next.

However, this was not my acupuncturist's office or any other kind of medical establishment at all. It was about to be my first Yoga class in at least twenty years...

How It Started

What was the attraction? Well, aside from my constant drive to test out new-to-me and different forms of training in personal resilience, I'd been really wanting to expand my hip and leg flexibility for a while and summer is the ideal time for this kind of work (the heat and humidity facilitate safe stretching). And what better way to stretch out of your comfort zone than Hatha Yoga?

Indian Hatha Yoga is what people in the West usually think of as Yoga - the use of interesting and sometimes challenging postures that you hold for periods of a few seconds to a few minutes. In reality the idea that Hatha Yoga = Yoga is like saying that the pre-game warm-up = the Superbowl. Yoga is a vast subject.

Anyway, after changing into my conspicuously un-Yoga like exercise attire (I would have fit in perfectly with a Tai Chi class ;-), I took my mat into the appointed room and made myself at home... in a nervous kind of way.

As more people entered, they all sat quietly and never acknowledged each other by more than a passing smile. It was then that I noticed I was the only one wearing shoes - major breach of etiquette apparently! Who knew??

All this describes the first of two Yoga classes at different studios I attended last week. The first was an hour long beginner's class and the second a 90 minute class for all levels. In both cases I was already resigned to my fate as the class klutz, convinced everyone else would have rubber-like joints and glide effortlessly into scarcely believable positions.

Here's a great video to help you get started... and you're NOT a dummy!

What I Learned

I'm really happy to say in retrospect that I emerged from both classes with my dignity intact. Apparently I was already at least in the mid-range of flexibility and even the instructors (who both did an excellent job) didn't come off as having an unlimited range of motion.

One thing that really surprised me was how good a cardio workout these classes were! I shouldn't have been surprised, though, because people make that same comment about Tai Chi and Qi Gong all the time. Just because something appears to be slow, rhythmic and gentle does not mean you're not working your ass off ;-)

And the sweat! It was pouring off in buckets like I've seldom seen before. In the second class I was actually running out of dry T-shirt space to wipe my forehead with so the sweat would stop running into my eyes! And that's a good thing, because sweating is a superb detoxification process. Have a really good sweat and, as one health professional told me today from her own experience, "you'll feel like a newborn baby."

Before my first class, I was a little afraid the instructors would be calling out Sanskrit names of postures one after the other, like "Adho Mukha Svanasana!" and that everyone else would assume them easily while I'd be sitting there stunned, thinking the more polite equivalent of "WTF?!". Fortunately, instead of the above string of incomprehensible Sanskrit syllables, the words "Downward Facing Dog" echoed through the training hall. Now that I could understand! It really helped that during a couple of recent business trips I'd picked up copies of Yoga magazines in US airports and refreshed my memory about which postures were called what... at least in English!

And here's some more advance stuff I was NOT doing last week. I include this not only so you can see a beautiful demo done by a beautiful woman on a beautiful sandy beach, but also to underline the fact you don't need to do the advanced postures to benefit. As with most disciplines, 90% of the benefit comes from the more basic practices - fancier is not necessarily better.

The REAL Take-Away

It's easy to go to a Yoga class, have a good stretch, feel energized and then go about your day just as you always do. It's quite another to maintain your Yogic grace, poise and awareness all day long, to say nothing of delving into its deeper aspects in terms of physical health, emotional self-management and spiritual development.

This is where the vast majority of people doing Yoga lose out. And you can substitute Qi Gong or Tai Chi or any number of other profound disciplines for the word "Yoga" in the preceding sentence. If your practice ends when the class ends, the benefits won't be far reaching or really transformative in your life.

Yoga is capable of profoundly reconnecting your mind and body, detoxifying your system, boosting your immunity, calming your nerves and taking your life to a new level. Going to class is a great starting point, but there's so much more to be savored and enjoyed.

Now, if only I could get into the splits (without screaming) and sit painlessly in that damned full lotus pose!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

EVERY MAN Needs to Read This...

2011-08-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

When I was a young man, my track record with the opposite sex could only be described by three words... crash and burn. Here I was, handsome, intelligent, athletic, even nice... everything a woman could want... or so I thought. I just could not seem to figure it out!!

Sound familiar? Do any of the following statements describe your life thus far?

Women don't seem to pay much attention to you
You're mystified by your wife's / girl friend's behavior
When you meet attractive women, they continually put you in the "friend" category
You're a really nice guy, with the best of intentions, and it's getting you nowhere with women
Attractive women actually scare you
Your sex life is full of miscommunication or conflict
You believe that NO ONE has the slightest idea what women want
If your success with women were a book, it would be thinner than "20th Century Italian War Heroes"

Romantic relationships are incredibly important to almost every human being. In a very real sense, they complete our own being and are one of the most important factors in our overall happiness (and therefore have a huge impact on our health as well). Yet SO many men and women fail to get what they're so desperately seeking from their romantic relationships.

So, obviously, there's a huge screaming need here for some help in building truly RESILIENT man-woman connections.

I'd like to introduce you to the men and women coaches of the Authentic Man Program or "AMP":

Turn Up Your Speakers and Enjoy the Video!

This video is long, but definitely worth your attention. For most men, it will be nothing short of "shock and awe", especially the feedback from AMP's female coaches.

Here at Global Resilience Solutions, we're looking for exactly that - resilience solutions to various areas of your life where you need major help. And I'm both astounded and pleased to say that AMP has earned our highest recommendation. We've been evaluating their programs for over a month and they have surpassed all expectations, for reasons I'll get to in a moment. In fact, AMP is one of the top two programs we've come across so far this year!

Now at first glance, you might think AMP is a "pick-up" program; one of those internet programs that teaches guys the right words to say and ways to behave to pick up girls and (not to put too fine a point on it) to get laid.

However, although AMP will dramatically improving a guy's success with women, it contains NO gimmicks at all. It's not about manipulating women through clever tricks, but about really connecting with them on a deep level as other human beings and meeting their deeply felt need to encounter a man who is fully present in his heart and his body, embracing his experience and solidly grounded in who he really is.

And that's what AMP is all about - helping you as a man to:

Understand how women really perceive men in general and YOU in particular
Get out of your head and into your body
Connect with, embrace and share your emotional experience
Reconnect with your natural masculine power, which is what women really want from you

In a society that has a strong tendency to emasculate men - a by-product of out political correctness that serves neither men nor women - AMP can put you back in touch with who you really are. And this is why we give it top marks...

It reintegrates mind and body, teaches fundamental body-work to help you do this, and will completely change your understanding of how the sexes really interact. And because it's such a holistic program, it will improve ALL your relationships; not just those with women.

And if you're a women who couldn't resist reading this post out of sheer curiosity, and you know your primary relationship is not where you'd like it, then this is worth a look-see for you too!

For more information on the Authentic Man Program, just click here.

Wishing you all the happiest of relationships!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Body Work - The Shape of Things to Come

2011-07-27T17:07:00.000-07:00

As our civilization gradually moves towards more effective, resilient and sustainable strategies for living, from level of macro-economics right down to every individual's daily life, the human body is finally re-assuming its proper place.

Where once we assumed all intelligence was between your ears, we now have compelling evidence that intelligence is "non-local", distributed throughout your body. Whereas much of psychology has been based on the idea that your emotions reside in your head, a myriad of successful healing modalities are demonstrating that emotional energies are also located throughout your body.

Bottom line? If you want to master your emotions and your thought processes, with all the benefits that come from that (better health, deeper relationships, more happiness, etc.), then you really have to...

...Get out of your head and into your body!!

How do you do that? Well, there are certain practices that do an extraordinary job of facilitating this journey for you. Body-work, as we're using the term here, is all about reintegrating mind and body.

You're no doubt pretty familiar with things like Qi Gong, Tai Chi and Hatha Yoga because I talk about them all the time. And those are all superb forms of body work. However...

They're not the only ones. Here are some other body work modalities you may be able to find locally and that may help you personally:

The Feldenkrais Method

Feldenkrais is a journey to rediscovering your balance, coordination and flexibility, useful for everyone from athletes to senior citizens.

The Alexander Technique

This one focuses initially on your posture and provides you with superior strategies for effective movement.

Rolfing

Rolfing is essentially a massage technique that targets the fascia layer, forming a kind of bridge between Chiropractic's focus on bone and Massage Therapy's focus on muscle.

Authentic Movement

This unusual method is completely spontaneous and improvisational, a kind of moving meditation without a script.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

PMR teaches you how to relieve stress by alternately tensing and relaxing muscles in a kind of bio-feedback context.

In the near future I hope to be able to share with you some even more cutting edge body work methods we're currently working on here at Global Resilience Solutions. These will build on what you've seen in Rock Solid Tranquility, but be even more advanced, just as easy to learn and even easier to implement in your daily life.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

A Spiritual Short-Cut to Emotional Tranquility, Less Stress and More Happiness

2011-07-21T05:55:00.000-07:00

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Please note: the following post contains a spiritual practice that you should only attempt if you are relatively stable emotionally, self-aware and not under psychiatric care.

Also, remember to join us for tonight's Spiritual Life 1: Foundations teleseminar / webinar at: http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventID=21310599

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As you already know, we'll be examining the meaning of that nebulous phrase, "spiritual life", in my upcoming teleseminar series on the subject. Whatever it means to you personally, though, there's little doubt you're interested improving your emotional life and increasing your subjective feeling of well-being.

And that's a key point because it shows us that whatever spiritual life may mean to each of us, one common denominator is that it is somehow intimately related to our emotional being and, through that, to our very core as human beings.

So what can you do TODAY to calm your mind, settle your emotions, shed your stress and remain increasingly tranquil no matter what's going on around you? Well, there is one simple practice you could adopt that will do all this for you. In its best articulated form, it's a Tibetan Buddhist practice, although elements of the ancient Christian mystical tradition and later Taoism both have equivalents. Please note that you don't have to be a Buddhist to practice this - the results speak for themselves.

The Practice

Choose a day to start your practice. It should be an ordinary weekday with nothing too unusual happening. Here's what you'll do:

When you wake up, sit up for a few minutes in a meditative posture and focus on your breathing to calm your mind.
Once your mind is as calm as it will get, say to yourself, "Everything I encounter today is simply a projection of my mind. Pleasant or unpleasant, everything I experience is no more real or substantial than a dream. If someone acts in a way that is hurtful to me, I can simply remember this is just a projection of my mind so that a negative emotional reaction on my part would make no sense. If something wonderful happens, I can simply remember that pleasant and unpleasant occurrences are always alternating, so there's no point in getting too excited."
As you take your shower, just say to yourself, "Here I am, washing this dream body with this dream soap." And when you're getting your breakfast, realize you're pouring dream coffee into a dream mug.
As you go through your day, remind yourself continually that what you experience is a product of your mind. And remind yourself that the more positive your emotional state now, and the more positively you can affect the state of other people, the more you are planting the seeds of positive experiences for yourself in the future.

This Spiritual Practice Has Several Advantages...

It reminds us that nothing we see or experience in our world exists in the same way that our senses suggest to us. For example, all "material reality" is largely empty space and fields of energy. There is no solid "matter" at all. As Einstein once said, "Reality is an illusion... albeit a very convincing one."
It quickly severs the link between what happens to us and our habitual emotional responses, thus building our inner freedom.
It allows us to maintain a much calmer emotional life while at the same time building positive emotional content throughout the day.
In other words, events will no longer control how we feel.
We naturally find ourselves in the "place of the observer" - one of the principal goals of meditation and of deep prayer.
We find ourselves happier, with less stress and a lot more joy, all for very little effort.

Is there a catch? Just one: this is a discipline and a practice - it doesn't work unless you do it. One hint for you before you start - take it easy and begin with few expectations. It's pretty common near the beginning to feel a sense of "Wow! This is SO cool!!" and then, a day or two later, to feel, "Damn, this is harder than I thought!"

No worries, though. That's all totally natural. Just give it a try and feel free to share what you discover by commenting on this post or dropping us a line. Enjoy!!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

The 5-Step Process to Getting Clear on What You Really WANT

2011-07-19T05:02:00.000-07:00

Few things are as important to your personal resilience as identifying your overall direction in life, getting clear on who you are, where you're going and what you really want. Yet many are those who bumble ahead without first paying their dues at this toll house of life... and they pay for it down the road with confusion, uncertainty and unhappiness.

So this first step is critical. And contrary to what some think, this is not about making a list of neat things to have. This is not like making your Christmas list! It’s not about making a list of every little thing you might like to have. Would I like an electric back-scratcher? Well, if someone offered it to me I suppose I wouldn’t turn it down. But if no one offers it to me I’m unlikely even to think about it for years, if at all. This isn’t even about getting all the stuff you really want. This is about first and foremost finding out who you are.

The Critical "How To" Steps

First, make a list of everything you've been really interested in during your life. Write that down. You can use an ordinary piece of paper, a journal or a word processing program to do this – it doesn’t matter. But it does matter that you do it in writing! It’s good to ask other people who know you well if you’ve missed something. Ask your parents, peers, siblings, or anyone who knows you well. You should take a couple of days to do this. Start today. Then come back to it once a day for a couple of days. After this and ONLY after this, go on to step 2…

Second, make a list of everything you've been really good at during your whole life. Someone once wrote to me claiming he had been totally mediocre at everything his whole life. I’m sorry, but I think there are probably some self-esteem issues there that are obscuring the truth, because everybody I know has lots of talents, irrespective of their level of intellectual sophistication, their education, or any other factor.

Do the same thing here – take a couple of days. Ask those who know you well. Now comes the hard part…

Third , look for patterns. You try to answer the question "why"? Almost everyone skips the third step - big mistake! The third step is harder to do, and there is not necessarily a right or wrong answer. It's a voyage self-discovery. This is not simply an intellectual process – it’s a process of feeling, of emotion, of the heart. You can't force this process, so just let the answers come to you. If anything does come up, write it down. If you really don't see any connections, any unifying themes, don't worry and just move on to the next step.

Fourth, find out what really inspires you. You see, it is not enough to know what you want. It is not even enough to know what you're really interested in or what you’re very talented at. What you need to know here is what overriding purpose inspires you deeply. There could be more than one. What turns your crank, what floats your boat?

You may have a huge interest in aircraft. Any idea why? Maybe you are a natural comedian. Do you know what it is about comedy that turns you on? What can you work on or think about for hours and lose all track of time? What purpose, issue, field of endeavor or question fills you with inspiration and energy, so much so that you feel like you’re carried on a wave?

Fifth, do this exercise: take the lists of your interests, talents and the connections between them and imagine jobs you would be totally jazzed about having. You can make them up. For instance, if you’re the aircraft lover, imagine someone offering you the job of looking after the aircraft of the world’s largest aviation museum… with a huge budget for new acquisitions that you decide on!

Take your time and just imagine different jobs you could have related to your passionate interests. REMEMBER: these jobs don’t have to be real. Don’t let your cursed sense of reality get in the way – just have fun with this.

The Temptations

After studying and experiencing various types of mindset work over the years, it seems to me there are some fundamental traps to avoid:

Worrying about your doubts. The antidote is to go and do the things that will bring you results. Usually these are activities that are just outside your comfort zone but, once you start doing them, they feel SO right. Also, realize that doubt is a natural stage when you're about to do something new and different. Just don't let it paralyze you ;-)
Sweating about not having clarity. The antidote is to take action on the small things you are clear about. And realize you can't force clarity. All you can do is continually stay inspired and let the answers come.
Thinking "I'm not passionate about anything." That's because you've let the fire go out. I've studied martial arts for years and years, but if I don't keep up with what's going on, if I don't read, study and practice, I lose that inspiration pretty quickly. So no matter what you're interested in, you pretty much have to toss logs on the fire of your inspiration. That fire won't feed itself - you have to do that!

If you follow this process and avoid these traps, you'll be amazed at how much more clarity you have on your life within a matter of weeks. Now go for it!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

Get Happier and Healthier by Doing This One Thing...

2011-07-12T06:01:00.000-07:00

"The best of all medicines is resting and _______."

~ Benjamin Franklin

Hi everyone,

Care to fill in the blank in today's quotation?

Read on to find the answer...

A recent study has shown that _______ causes you to secrete more of a hormone called GHRELIN, which has a few interesting side effects...

- It gives you energy
- Makes you more action-oriented
- Makes you more sociable
- and better able to overcome obstacles

Okay, I know. You're saying, "Where can I get me some of this stuff?!"

Relax - your body makes it. Your stomach makes most of it and some extra comes from your kidneys, your hypothalamus and pituitary glands.
Ghrelin has a notable anti-depressive effect and generally makes people much HAPPIER.

Of course, your system makes more of it when you're _______.

That might be part of the reason people practicing authentic ancient spiritual traditions are about the happiest folks you'll ever meet. At least, that was certainly my experience of the Orthodox Christian monks of Mt. Athos in Greece.

And they're certainly well known for their _______.

SO WHAT IS _______ ALREADY??!!

It's fasting. The practice of going without food or sometimes food and drink for a certain defined period. It's long been known that fasting kick-starts the body's cleansing reaction, causing you to release toxins.

And fasting it SIGNIFICANTLY contributes to longevity. (If you want to live a long time, try not only eating a BETTER diet, but also eating LESS). Some recent experiments with mice determined that cutting down the little rodent's food intake contributed to lengthening his lifespan by 30% or more and keeping him healthy at the same time. For a human, that would mean the difference between a life plagued with health problems and coming to an abrupt end around age 80 versus a longer, disease-free life of closer to 106 years. Sound good to you?

Fasting is also critically important to any REAL spiritual life. By the way, that doesn't mean that ALL religious fasting is helpful spiritually, it just means truly spiritual people practice fasting. There's a difference!

Now, though, the evidence also suggests that fasting has a very positive, mood-altering side effect as well. Again, this applies to INTELLIGENT fasting, practiced in MODERATION. Don't succumb to the silly logic that if a little fasting makes happy, a ton of fasting will make you the happiest person on earth. Wrong!

So if you're aiming for personal resilience in your life, fasting will be an indispensable practice for you. It will improve your mood, giving you the emotional resources to cope with the ups and downs of life. It will help you detoxify, keeping you healthier. And it will greatly facilitate your spiritual practices, such as prayer and meditation.

NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE?

Then the best way to start is to ease yourself into it.

You can try spending a morning with nothing more than pure water, for example. Then - and this is REALLY important - take note of how you feel physically, mentally and emotionally.

One of the easiest ways to incorporate fasting into your life is to set aside one day per week for it and then do a detoxification cleanse 2-4 times per year. For your one day per week, you could start off, for example, by something as simple as drinking only pure water in the morning and then having only liquids (nutritious smoothies, for example) for the rest of the day.

So, why not set aside a day to avoid this...

... in order to enjoy this?

Believe me, your digestive system will be thanking you big time!

There are lots of varieties of fasting and we can't get into the details here, but you get the general idea.

When regular fasting becomes part of your life, you'll LOOK FORWARD to it, knowing how great it makes you feel.

Remember to smile when you fast ;-)

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Hard to Believe These Dinosaurs Still Exist...

2011-07-04T18:41:00.000-07:00

Gobsmacked!

A few months back, my daughter mentioned to me that one of her friends would never even entertain the possibility that God or anything "spiritual" might be real because "it's not scientific".

"What?" I replied, taken aback. "Sounds like her mind is stuck in the '70s... and she wasn't born until the '90s! You should tell her that her 'science' is a bit out of date."

Truly, I'm always a little stunned when I run into someone who believes atheism is scientific. Of course, I'm just as gobsmacked when an otherwise intelligent person informs me - as one did recently - that he considers alternative medicine to be nonsense and "witchcraft" and that he is happy to follow the advice of his allopathic MD exclusively. "Well, that's your funeral," I thought.

All these encounters remind me a little of my dear old dad who - and no, this is one hundred percent true - could never keep straight the difference between yoga and yogurt!! To be fair, though, dad grew up in a much different time and was always open-minded enough to admit defeat if you could present him with irrefutable evidence. After all, he was a lawyer!

So what do you say to someone who's essentially stuck in the mechanistic worldview of the Newtonian Physics and can't break out of that paradigm? What do you say when they accuse you of being unscientific, gullible, "new age" or plain stupid?

Here are some simple suggestions for you. Just remember, what resonates with each person is unique, so be prepared to adjust your words accordingly ;-)

Helping to Open Their Minds

First, know why you want to engage them in conversation at all. For me, it stems from the fact that the study of human resilience, which is the study of maximizing human potential, demands an absolutely unbiased, evidence-based and therefore scientific approach to understanding the nature of reality itself. It's quite clear that if we allow ourselves to be slaves to preconceived notions and comfortable ideologies, we are not doing that.

Second, remember there are four stages to any scientific discovery - 1. It's dismissed as rubbish, 2. It's persecuted as heresy, 3. "There may be something to this" and 4. "It's absolutely true and we thought of it first".

Knowing that's the case, consider the following short video, where Dr. William Tiller, professor emeritus of Stanford University, explains why some people, including scientists, just can't handle new information that challenges their assumptions:

Third, if they're talking about anything spiritual, you can inform them that the original versions of most of the great spiritual traditions espoused a scientific method based on using the human mind-body organism as the instrument of observation. So, if they're really as scientific as they claim, they should logically be prepared to do one of two things: a) engage in the spiritual experiments these traditions have outlined in order to prove or disprove their claims, or b) admit their ignorance on the subject.

To help you with this, you should read the short article on "True Skepticism" on Dr. Gary Schwartz' website here.

(Also, feel free to share your copy of my book, The 5 Pillars of Life, with them should they want a more detailed explanation, or send them to the Global Resilience Solutions website to get their own).

Fourth, be prepared to share with them some of the latest scientific evidence on human potential, including experiments in such things as distance healing, research into the human energy system, scientific validation for methods used in energy psychology, such as EFT, and more.

To get started, you can have a look at the works of:

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake (UK biologist who has pioneered the theory of morphic / morphogenetic fields)
Dr. William Tiller (Renowned US physicist studying subtle energy fields)
Cyndi Dale (US author who has done extensive research into energy medicine across cultures)
Dr. Gary Schwartz (Doctor of psychology, medicine and surgery at the University of Arizona and a researcher into the spiritual side of psychology)

There are lots of others, of course, so I'm not pretending that's a complete list by any means. Hopefully, though, all this will help you more than hold your own the next time your run into someone who "didn't get the memo"!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

What "Internal" Exercise Can Do for You

2011-06-30T04:17:00.000-07:00

Internal exercise is much different than what most Westerners think of when they talk about going to the gym or getting in shape.

Internal exercises are different because they've been designed with the whole person in mind, because they reintegrate mind and body and because they are sustainable - in other words, they lead to long-term health and, unlike some forms of exercise, they're not prepared to sacrifice that for the sake of short-term gains.

Hatha Yoga

What's the opposite? Have you ever seen someone running on a treadmill and watching TV at the same time, with their body doing one thing and their mind another? There you have it - a recipe for limited results, where you're treating your physical life and your emotional / spiritual life as unrelated.

Tai Chi

What are the classic internal exercise forms available to you today? Chinese Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Bagua Zhang, Xing Yi Chuan, and Indian Hatha Yoga are all viable options if they're taught properly. Granted, Bagua and Xing Yi are the least common; however I thought we should list them in case you come across them!

Bagua's circle walking exercise

The Short List of What Internal Exercise Can Do for You

Helps Your Heart: improves your aerobic conditioning, oxygen uptake and endurance, while lowering resting heart rate.
Improves Your Flexibility: May not seem that way at first, but you'll become much more physically flexible doing internal exercises like Qi Gong, Tai Chi or Hatha Yoga. This will reduce your stress, release trapped tensions and help you become more flexible emotionally.
Banishes Your Worries: Chronic worry and anxiety can increase your cortisol levels, which unfortunately correlate with elevated blood pressure, depression, weight gain and increased insulin resistance.
Improves Muscle Tone: Contrary to popular belief, these exercises build muscle like crazy. This superior muscle tone helps protect you from injury, back pain and even arthritis. Moreover, these exercises target deep core muscle groups vital to many aspects of your health and promote the flow of blood, oxygen and energy (qi or prana) throughout your system.
Takes Off the Pounds: Internal exercises burn far more calories than most people think and, even better, as a practitioner you're more likely to improve your nutrition. This will help you drop even more weight, if that's your goal, or at least arrive at your optimum weight sooner.
Lubricates Your Joints: To keep your joints healthy, internal exercises take them through their complete range of motion. This bathes the joints in nutrients they might not otherwise get, keeping them healthy, pliable and resistant to injury.
Balances Your Blood Sugar: Internal exercises promote better sugar metabolic function, improve cholesterol balance and decrease risk of diabetes and its related complications, such as kidney failure, heart attack, blindness and limb amputation.
Kicks in the "Relaxation Response": That's an expression coined by Dr. Herbert Benson. Internal exercise brings your breath, movement and mental attention together, calming you automatically and shifting your nervous system over to the restorative parasympathetic circuit.
Builds Those Bones: Because they favor weight-bearing exercise, internal systems tend to build up bone density and stave off osteoporosis. Moreover, some systems have special methods for keeping the bone marrow healthy and the bones resilient.
Improves Balance and Coordination: This is a function of mind-body integration and translates into fewer injuries and accidents as well as enhanced mobility.
Circulates Your Blood Better: Vitality is partly dependent on efficient blood circulation. Internal exercises wring the venous blood out of your nooks 'n crannies, reduce the workload on your heart and also thin your blood naturally, reducing the likelihood of clot-induced heart attacks or strokes.
Builds Mind-Body Awareness: As you practice, you become more and more sensitive to how you use your body - your balance, weight distribution, the places you habitually hold tension and the psychological resistances you've built to life that translate into physical manifestations of stress. And once you're aware of these things, you can change them consciously!
Immunizes and Detoxes You: Internal exercise postures move your lymph fluid quite efficiently, boosting your immune system, destroying pathogens (including cancer cells) and promoting a natural detoxification of internal organs in general and the lower digestive tract in particular. This release of toxins and improved immune system functioning provides a solid basis for long-term health and longevity.
Deepens Your Sleep: By circulating blood, energy and oxygen more efficiently, reducing your stress and inducing a never-before experienced level of control over your own organism, how could you help but sleep better?
Instills Happiness "Software" in Your Mind: If your practice goes beyond just doing the routine to "get some exercise", you're in for a treat. Internal exercise systems are holistic tools for cultivating mind-body harmony and happiness at levels you've probably not felt before. And these systems often have or are connected with meditative systems that can revolutionize your life (in fact, that's what they've been designed to do).
Ramps Up Your Relationships: As you become calmer, more flexible and more connected with the core of your own being, other people will more often crave connection with you. Internal exercise helps you become more compassionate, more approachable and more balanced - secrets you can share with your loved ones and anyone else who will listen.
Spiritualizes Your Romance: Internal systems are indeed holistic - they have or are connected with repositories of expertise on conjugal relations that can show you how to deepen your emotional connection with your spouse, master your sexuality and spiritualize sexual union.

Needless to say, there's lots more! Of course, none of these benefits come without regular and consistent practice. The deeper benefits only come if you make the effort to build your lifestyle on these practices and the principles that underlie them.

If you'd like to learn more about one form of internal exercise, Chinese Qi Gong, and its origins in the world's most successful tradition for cultivating health and longevity, just go here.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

What About the PLANET'S Resilience???

2011-06-27T10:06:00.000-07:00

Resilience... the word's Latin root means "to bounce back". And what do you bounce back from? You bounce back from an event that knocks you off your feet, interrupts "business as usual" and leaves you head spinning. We often refer to these events as "disasters".

I was privileged to spend much of the past week at the annual World Conference on Disaster Management (WCDM) in Toronto, a high profile event bringing together some of the top people in the fields of emergency management, business continuity and disaster recovery worldwide.

And disasters appear to be getting more frequent and more severe. In 2010, some 373 natural disasters killed 270,000 people in 131 countries, severely testing the structural resilience of nations and the personal resilience of over 200 million human beings. But what if some of those disasters weren't really "natural" disasters at all, as we tend to assume?

World on the Edge...

Enter Lester Brown, world renowned environmentalist, author of World on the Edge and head of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, DC. Lester's address to hundreds of conference delegates blew everyone away...

What if last summer's devastating heatwave in Russia, that killed 56 thousand people and destroyed 40% of the Russian grain harvest, had been centered on Chicago instead of Moscow? Easy, world grain reserves would have dropped to 52 days of consumption from 79 (the lowest reserve we've experienced), grain demand would have wildly outstripped supply, we would have seen food riots in many places throughout the world and more failing states as governments proved unable to cope with the internal pressures.

With the world demand for food rising as population increases by about 219,000 per day, grain production goes down, fish stocks are depleted and fuel prices rise, the natural support systems that underlie the global economy are fast unraveling, said Lester.

As we continue to pour carbon emissions into the atmosphere, climate change accelerates, cutting into grain production (a 1 degree Celsius rise in average temperature means a 10% drop in harvest), melting polar ice sheets and advancing the spread of desert lands.

If we lose the Greenland ice sheet, ocean levels worldwide will rise by 7 meters. Aside from inundating many coastal cities, this would be catastrophic for global rice production, further endangering the food supply and showing just how interconnected the factors of food, water, population and climate change really are.

When massive floods hit Pakistan in 2010, as the Indus river and its tributaries overflowed during heavy rainfall, 2 million homes were destroyed, 2 thousand people died and one fifth of the country was inundated. But was it really a "natural" disaster? Global warming had already driven the ambient temperature to record levels, accelerating glacial melting in the Western Himalayas, where the Indus begins. Combine that with practically no investment in the kind of reforestation and soil conservation that could have mitigated the flooding and you have the greatest "natural" disaster in the region's history.

Plan B - Digging Our Way Out of This Mess

Sounds pretty bleak, doesn't it? Good thing Lester came with a plan to save us! And saving us is where it's at, according to him. Although we often hear talk about "saving the planet", the real point is to save civilization. After all the planet will still be spinning merrily through space. Question is... will we still be on it?

The truth is, we don't know exactly where the tipping points are, the points at which human actions will have so severely crippled the ecosystems that these ecosystems are no longer recoverable on a time scale that means anything to us.

In 2009, John Beddington, chief scientific advisor to the British government, said that the world was facing a "perfect storm" of food shortages, water scarcity and rising oil prices by 2030.

Soon after, Jonathan Porritt, former chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, said he agreed, except that the date would be more like 2020.

Fortunately, the measures we need to save civilization are within our grasp. The Earth Policy Institute's Plan B has four pillars:

Cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2020.
Stabilize the world population at no more than 8 billion.
Eradicate poverty worldwide.
Restore the natural support systems of the world economy.

Can it be done within the limited window of opportunity open to us? Easily, but only if we're willing to make the tough decisions right now. Otherwise it's the usual "too little, too late" and we'll all be in line for a collective Darwin Award.

Doing this will require us to redefine national security and realize the greatest threats we all face are no longer armed aggression, according to Lester. If we restructure the tax system, use our industrial capacity properly and move to the sustainable fuel sources of wind, sun and geothermal energy, we can accomplish all four priorities for a mere $250 billion per year - peanuts in the great scheme of things.

What Do YOU Think?

Resilience and Sustainability are fast becoming the watchwords of our time, and with good reason - you can't have one without the other. An unsustainable world economy based on consumption, environmental destruction and resource depletion will never produce a resilient world.

Weight lifting and distance running have proven to be non-sustainable forms of exercise for so many, leading to long term physical damage that actually undermines our resilience. If we're running our entire civilization based on this same kind of short term thinking, then it's obvious we're undermining our collective resilience.

So what do YOU think of all this? What will YOU do to help reverse the trends before we reach the point of no return? Use the comment function below and share your views with all of us - we would love to hear from you!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

The Documentary "Openings" and How to "Open" Your Own Heart and Mind

2011-06-19T18:45:00.000-07:00

You can read the text below OR listen to this post on audio here:

Last week I spent a couple of days in beautiful Denver, Colorado, filming my segments in the upcoming docudrama "Openings" (You can watch the trailer here).

The producers spent hours before the actual filming going through the "brutal" creative process of "teasing" out of me what they considered the golden nuggets they wanted to capture on digital celluloid. One of our discussions revolved around the whole question of how we human beings can become open enough to experience a significant shift in our lives....

The Space of Freedom

As a human being, you're only free to the extent that you can free yourself from your previous programming. And the only place you can do that is in the "space" between stimulus and response. The only way to become a truly free and therefore truly functional and happy person is to expand that space.

For example, if you have no psychological "distance" between the two, your responses will be distressingly predictable and egocentric - someone insults you and you retaliate, someone compliments you and it goes to your head, etc. At this level, you're basically a lower animal, fleeing pain, seeking pleasure and incapable of amassing enough personal integrity to follow higher principles when the going gets tough.

So, needless to say, you'll never experience personal growth of any kind without expanding the distance between stimulus and response.

The 3 Keys to Expanding the Space

The good news is there are only three things you need to do in order to cultivate and build up true internal freedom.

The first is simply that you need to make a decision to do so - you have to decide you want to grow beyond your own programming, free yourself from the emotional chains imposed on you by other people, their emotions, ideologies and delusions. And, while a simple decision on your part won't achieve deep transformation on its own, it's a step that everyone of us must take.

The second step is that we have to be willing to humble ourselves. When some jerk cuts us off in traffic, we have the opportunity to stifle that string of four-letter words, for example. And that takes guts.

The third step is simply to practice over and over again. Good thing life presents us with unending opportunities to do just that!

If you look at the three keys carefully, you'll notice that all of them have one thing in common - they contradict your ego. So opening yourself to a larger universe takes a decision to work against your ego, as well as determination and work.

The Magical Results

As you expand the distance between stimulus and response, you'll find that you become more open to and accepting of other people. Your responses to life's situations become more flexible, appropriate and successful. Your old programming no longer determines your words or actions. And, perhaps for the first time, you sense a real change in your world as you let go of old baggage.

This means your capacity to be aware of, to accept and to deal with your own emotional content will expand. So, naturally, your compassion for and empathy with other people will go way up. After all, if I can't feel my own heart, I sure can't feel yours. And all deep human communication is, in reality, a heart to heart connection between us.

This means the quality of your relationships will improve and, in fact, the quantity likely will as well, since people will be increasingly drawn to you. Another way to say this is that your interpersonal skills will improve even though, paradoxically, these aren't "skills" or "techniques" that can be taught at all.

Besides all this, your overall level of psychological and physical resistance to life's challenges (which I discussed in a previous post) will drop, thereby reducing your stress levels and improving your health.

And, by the way, don't ever think that you can grow spiritually if you haven't grown emotionally first. That's a common delusion in our culture and is plain wrong.

That then is what it means to open your heart and your mind, to expand your consciousness and acquire true inner freedom and spontaneous happiness. Sound good to you? Then you're probably asking yourself how you can do this even faster and more effectively...

Accelerating the Process

If your body is significantly uptight and inflexible, if you're storing emotional tensions throughout your body's energy system and muscular structure, then any attempts you make to become more open psychologically will likely hit the wall pretty fast. So yes...

...to open yourself emotionally, you have to open yourself physically as well. The most effective way to do this is to use some form of what I call "internal exercise", such as Qi Gong, Tai Chi or Hatha Yoga, for example.

The great emotional benefit of these exercises is that they put your mental attention inside your body and help you process emotions and traumas locked in your bodily tissues in a gentle and natural way. For instance, you cannot possibly do Hatha Yoga's sun salutation properly and stay in a bad mood, nor can you do Qi Gong's organ meditation and feel like a victim. Not going to happen!

As every teacher of any of these three methods knows from experience, the more physcially flexible you become, the more emotionally calm you become.

So if you would like to become more open to divine guidance (one of the main themes of Openings), enjoy far better relationships and improve your health on every level, then just start doing what's outlined here and enjoy the process!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

2011-06-16T05:04:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest problems we all face is finding time to "get everything done". And that's a challenge that I had been struggling with over the last few months in the race to get a new segment of business up and running - just when the heck was I supposed to find the time??

Well, turns out that I had been making the single most elementary mistake in life-management. Yes, it's a mistake I know all about, teach to my clients and I've even shared it with you before.

Did that stop me from falling right into it? Hell no! To see this mistake in what NBC used to call "living color", just have a look at Stephen Covey's demonstration right here:

How to Identify YOUR "Big Rocks" and Avoid My Mistake

Here's a devastatingly effective planning procedure for you. Try it next week and you're sure to see the difference:

Ask "What?" - what's your goal? Can you define it exactly? Are there time parameters? Can you measure it? The purpose here is be as exact as you can and as clear as possible.
Ask "Why?" - then do it again. Get someone else to quiz you on this until THEY are satisfied with your answer. Their job is to keep asking "why?" until YOU begin to make sense. This will frustrate the hell out of you, but it's more than worth the pain. This will help you to connect to your deep inner motivation, your wiring, your "passion". And if you can't, maybe you should rethink the goal. If you can't connect with it on a deep level, is it because you feel you "should" do it because of social pressure or guilt? Or is the importance and urgency you're attaching to it built on some unexamined assumptions that won't help you in the long run?
Ask "How?" - Get someone else to do this to - they can sense when you're underestimating the time and effort, over-committing, being unrealistic, etc.

Part of the lesson here is to ask yourself if you're really living up to the principles you know. I was truthfully a little shocked to find I was falling into the trap of scheduling the minutiae of life first and then struggling to find room for the things that really matter in the long run. But it can happen to any of us.

So when you get ready to plan the upcoming week, take just a little extra time to make sure you put in your "big rocks" first and use these simple questions to get the clarity you need. You won't be sorry you did!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

You're Nowhere Near DEEP Relaxation Yet, Grasshopper....

2011-06-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

Following last week's encounter with the Russian martial art of Systema, I've spent much of my time focused on the value of inner surrender and non-resistance.

When I was training with some special forces people earlier this year, one of the surprising things I was able to share with them was the fact that several classic martial arts holds and locks only work IF your opponent is resisting you - if he relaxes, the technique doesn't work at all!

How Tension Enters Your Life

Here's a really tough truth for you: most of the tension you experience, whether physical or emotional, is produced by YOU and no one else. It's not the jerk who cut you off in traffic and it's not your circumstances. Rather, the tension is caused by your resistance to all this.

And every time you resist psychologically, you produce stress and tension we could measure physically if you were hooked up to the right equipment. Your blood pressure and possibly your heart rate will elevate, the electrical resistance of your skin may change, some muscles may tighten and your metabolism and energy circulation will suffer.

So when you worry about a situation, react impatiently with someone or dread going to that family picnic, your inner resistance will manifest physically even if it does so in a way that's too subtle for you to notice.

The Two Doors to DEEP Relaxation

Deep relaxation is a state all of us can enter into - we're actually built for it. And the way to get there, the only way, is by passing through the two doors of Non-Resistance.

The first door, as the world's authentic ancient traditions have long since proven, is your breath. If you can stay gently focused on your breathing as if it is the only thing that matters (warning: if you're new at this, don't do it while driving or doing anything similar), you'll quickly discover two things:

1. You'll become much more relaxed.

2. You'll notice inner tensions and disturbances much faster.

The second door builds on the first. This is when you spend most of your time focused on your inner world because you've finally understood your inner world is not only more important than those "external circumstances", but also that by practicing non-resistance internally, your outer world changes for the better with very little effort on your part.

In fact, as long as we see our problems as "external" and as circumstances we have to change by force and manipulation, we remain stuck in "resistance mode" and experience unending tension in our lives. As soon as we realize that our outer world or at least how we experience it is based on our own mind and that changing our mind will cause a corresponding change externally, we begin to relax and start working on the "one thing needful" - ourselves.

Here's a great video with Bob Proctor's take on "non-resistance". Enjoy!

A Challenge For You

How do you reach non-resistance? Well, first you have to become aware of all your resistance! So try this and see what happens....

For one full day at least, track your perceived levels of emotional and physical resistance on a scale of 1-10, where 1 is negligible and 10 is very severe. Make a point of taking a reading of your condition at least every two hours. Between those times, try to be aware of and note down all the resistance you find within. Don't try to resist the resistance; just notice it and let it go.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Dynamic "System" to Return You to Your Natural State

2011-06-01T04:17:00.000-07:00

These days we're all on the lookout for tools that can help us relax, discharge the tensions of mind and body, and eliminate the traumas that hold us hostage physically and emotionally. After all, if we can't do this, we'll never become truly resilient, functional and happy people.

I've just found what may be an incredible set of tools in the most unlikely place...

Some months ago I began investigating the Russian martial art of Systema. Pronounced seess-TYEM-ah and simply meaning "the system", this is the martial art taught to the Russian Army's elite special forces or "Spetsnaz". So naturally I expected it to be completely brutal and vicious. I couldn't have been more wrong...

Systema's Principles

Systema is a breathing-based art. Everything it does revolves around breathing and teaching you to breath properly. Naturally, this allows you to switch to your parasympathetic nervous system and cultivate deep relaxation even in the midst of physical movement.

Systema is holistic. It has been developed with the total you in mind and is not interested in making you tough or fit at the expense of your joints, nervous system or consciousness, like some other approaches. Its basic principal is "do no harm" to yourself or your training partners, so all the movements and techniques are designed with that in mind.

The real point here is that Systema is about returning you to your natural state of innocence and spontaneity. To do that it has developed specific training methods to help you let go of all the fears and tensions that stand in your way. And yes, some drills are specifically designed to bring up old traumas and allow you to breathe through them until they no longer affect you.

This is more than physical, though, because as the practitioners train, they become more humble and open to the power of unconditional love. Systema is said to be based on the spiritual principles of Orthodox Christianity, so imagine my surprise when a practitioner told me that in all his years studying various martial arts, Systema was the first one that taught him to feel something deeply spiritual. It reminded me of the words of Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido:

"Aikido does not rely on weapons or brute force to succeed; instead we put ourselves in tune with the universe, maintain peace in our own realms, nurture life, and prevent death and destruction. The true meaning of the term "samurai" is one who serves and adheres to the power of love. "

You may be thinking that "returning to your natural state" sounds great, but it sounds more like Yoga than martial arts. And you're right. However, the underlying idea is that people in their natural state knows how to protect themselves, heal themselves, heal others and care for others, and this is what Ueshiba was hinting at as well. Once you understand your own body mechanics by experience, you'll instantly understand the opponent's as well and you'll be able to control him quite effortlessly.

After the workout I did feel unusually relaxed and "pliable" and I'm pretty sure I've found a resilience tool set that's worth further exploration!

Till next time...

~Dr. Symeon Rodger

Develop Piercing Insight into Yourself and the People Around You

2011-05-24T17:35:00.000-07:00

Recently I was invited to attend a very special training. At first I was pretty skeptical because the course was about a personality / behavior profiling system and I tend to shy away from those because all the ones I've been exposed to in the past - and there are about 200 of them out there - have been pretty inaccurate and useless in my estimation.

It didn't take me long to realize, though, that this one is different. This system is astonishingly accurate and has to be, given that the guy demonstrating it used to use it as a handler in human intelligence operations, where there's definitely no margin for error.

The system is called DISC and it is dynamite! In addition to providing a really accurate assessment of all of us on the course, it helped me finally understand one of my own kids! The system maintains that all of us are a blend of four different personality styles and the predominance of one or two of those styles explains what we most tend to want, need, fear and get motivated by.

The DISC test:

The DISC assessment for adults consists of just 24 questions and can be done in about 10-15 minutes. There are also specialized versions for teens and younger children.

Each letter stands for one of the personality styles. When the four are placed in the "disc" formation, below, the styles on top (D and I) tend to be more outgoing, while those on the bottom (S and C) are more reserved. However, the I and S styles share a tendency to focus on people and relationships, while the D and C styles are more task-oriented.

The tendencies of each style, briefly summarized, are:

D - dominant, direct, demanding. These people need choice, challenge and control. They take charge, want results and have high self-confidence. Their downfall can be a lack of empathy and ability to relate, not to mention arrogance. People with a very high D profile represent only about 10% of the population.

I - inspiring, influencing, impressionable. The "I" folks want to be the center of attention and the life of the party. They're motivated mainly by fun, and thrive on recognition, approval and popularity. Warm and friendly, they run the risk of being ruled by their unpredictable emotions. About 25-30% of the population have "I" at the top of their DISC profile.

S - supportive, stable, shy. The "S" types among us are status-quo people, very security oriented, sentimental and often the sweetest people you'll ever meet. They need lots of TLC, appreciation, assurance and to know their own situation is secure. They're steadfast, dependable, great listeners and super team players. When their "S-traits" get out of control, they may be indecisive, inflexible and seek peace at any price. 30=35% of us are "S" dominant.

C - cautious, cognitive and critical thinkers. The "C" types are highly analytical and if you want to persuade them about anything, you'd damn well better get your facts straight, because they're not pushovers. They run on reason and expect intellectual quality from others. They pursue excellence and if you don't, then try to stay out of their way. Orderly, conscientious and precise, they're an asset to any endeavor. A "C" who goes off the rails, though, may be just annoyingly critical and inflexible, worshiping procedure for its own sake. About one in every four to five people has a "C-dominant" personality style.

So How Did Yours Truly Fare?

Well, as a child and adolescent I was a very high "S", with strong "C" undercurrents. Right now I'd say C is definitely giving S a run for its money and when certain situations bring out my D traits, the people closest to me have learned to duck ;-) As for "I", that's the lowest of the four on my chart.

Keep in mind that none of these styles is either "good" or "bad". They're simply descriptions of how we are "wired" from our nature (DNA) and nurture (experiences). Of course, as we work on ourselves and our mindsets throughout life and go beyond our comfort zones, we gain flexibility and self-awareness, so we can grow beyond our instinctive "wiring". That said, the wiring is still there and we tend to revert to it in times of stress.

Advantages of DISC

The class was unanimous that DISC is an unusually useful tool for understanding yourself, others and how you or they interact and behave. Using DISC you can not only gain insight into the previously puzzling behavior of those closest to you; you can also learn to size up new acquaintances very quickly.

The DISC tool can help leaders and managers understand and work through some of their challenges and assign the right kind of work to different team members based on what really motivates them. The system works really well for conflict mediation and can enable you to "connect" with people you may have thought were just "impossible". Teachers can more easily assess students' learning styles and make learning fun as well as effective, as this video with DISC founder Dr. Robert Rohm explains...

So, all in all, DISC is a remarkable tool for improving your personal resilience, since it helps you understand yourself and others, create better relationships and make decisions based on who you really are, rather than what others think you should be. If you'd like to do the DISC assessment for yourself or have your spouse, kids or colleagues try it, just go here.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

This Colon Cleanse Gave Amazing Results!

2011-05-16T17:13:00.000-07:00

NOTICE: Just a friendly warning to you that if you're really put off by explicit talk about human bowel functions, this post sure isn't for you! On the other hand, if you're intensely interested in radically improving your overall health, immunity and longevity, read on...

It feels so strange... moving my jaw up and down in order to pulverize food for easier digestion. The action stirs distant memories of a time long ago... five days ago, in fact, which was the last time I chewed anything!

The Past Week's Adventure in Resilience

That's because I've spent the last week doing Blessed Herbs' Colon Cleanse, and what a super cleanse it is! What basis do I have for making that claim? Simple, by the visible results.

You see, with a colon cleanse, seeing is believing. What you're out to eliminate from your system is the toxic mucoid plaque that's lining you colon / large intestine / bowel. And it's easy to identify because it's totally different in color and texture from your usual bowel movement. Here's what it looks like (no, this isn't mine ;-)

Mucoid plaque is long, rubbery, usually somewhere between very dark green and black. This was the first time using an all-herbal colon cleanse that I've been able to eliminate this stuff.

Previously, I was convinced that the only way to do this was by doing colonic hydrotherapy - that is, using water under pressure to flush out the colon. The only problem with the latter is convenience, because it will probably cost you a few hundred dollars to have it done professionally, or you can probably get set up to do it at home for a couple hundred or so.

So kudos to Blessed Herbs for a really effective colon cleanse that's so convenient to use and doesn't require colonic hydrotherapy!

Why Bother Cleansing Your Colon?

Of course, the begs the question of why you would want to cleanse your colon. Well, if you're a reader of this blog, you probably already know, but briefly, here's why:

As the plaque builds up over time, it leaches toxins directly into your blood stream, compromising the function of all you cells and significantly increasing the toxic load on your system
The plaque inhibits your ability to absorb nutrients from your food, creating a kind of internal "malnutrition" no matter how good your diet is
If you have spent any of your life on the "Standard American Diet" (SAD), you can be sure you're carrying around some unwanted pounds of this stuff (consider that even though my diet is heavily organic, mostly follows the rules of food combining and that I've done colonic hydrotherapy in the past, I still eliminated about eight feet of plaque this time around!)

So naturally, when you cleanse your colon of mucoid plaque build-up, you eliminate all these problems and return your metabolism to a higher level of functioning and overall resilience.

Know What You're Getting Into...

Now, before you run off to grab their kit, let me tell you up front that this does require some adjustments to your lifestyle for the duration of the cleanse. You go through three stages:

Stage 1: The 3 day pre-cleanse, where you eat ever decreasing portions of raw, organic food.
Stage 2: The 5 day liquid-only cleanse. That's right, NO solid food, for reasons I'll explain below. And as my business advisor, Kathy, so kindly reminded me last week, "liquid only doesn't include having a beer on your patio!" You'll be on water and organic fruit juice, with some vegetable broth if you want it. Even my traditional fruit smoothie was out of bounds.
Stage 3: The 1 day break-the-fast, where you start slowly (since your digestive system has been largely in shut-down mode for several days), with a diet of fresh fruits and veggies, steamed veggies, brown rice or baked potato.

Just to clarify, the reason for no solid food is simple: their Toxin Absorber, that you'll be taking every three hours mixed into apple juice, binds to the mucoid plaque and escorts it out of your body. If you still have solid food in your digestive system, the Toxin Absorber will bind to that instead and leave the toxic garbage inside you - not a great idea!

So there you have it - nine days invested total and well worth it!!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Why the Key Life Skill of Leadership is Vital to YOUR Personal Happiness

2011-05-10T16:54:00.000-07:00

Just a few quick thoughts on why leadership is a key life skill you need to live a deliberate, powerful and stress-free life and experience maximum fulfillment and success in everything you do...

...even if you don't think of yourself as a leader.

And there's a special leadership challenge waiting for you below...

You are a leader - almost everyone is at various times in their lives
You may be a leader within your own family, your community, on a sports team, at work, at your place of worship or in lots of other venues
Leadership isn't always a position with a title - Gandhi was one of the greatest and most successful leaders of the twentieth century, yet he had no position and no formal authority at all
I submit that you have probably found yourself taking on the informal role of leader on many occasions in your life, however humble
Leadership is seldom easy - as a great fictional character once put it in reference to leaders in training, "You will be tested, well beyond your current limitations."
Every parent is a leader and every parent can attest to the truth of those words!
I just watched last year's best picture, The King's Speech
There you see King George VI, the most reluctant of monarchs, who has leadership thrust upon him and who overcomes a devastating handicap to become a powerful symbol of resistance during Britain's "finest hour"
Leadership is a key life skill, not just something for rare people at rare times
How so?
Without it, you can neither pull your own life together nor can you help others meaningfully
Now think about that and consider the consequences for a society that does not train its people in leadership - what hope could there be for such a nation?
And yet, everywhere around us we see the failure of key institutions, including governmental institutions, financial institutions, religious institutions and, of course, corporate entities
Close examination will reveal in nearly every case a catastrophic failure of leadership - people in positions of authority failed
Failed at what? Did they just make mistakes?
No. In nearly every case they failed the test of character - they too self-interested to tell the plain truth and do the right thing, or too proud to listen to anyone's advice
Personal integrity is the rock upon which leadership is built - that is an unalterable principle that history has shown us time and time again
As one great fictional speech on leadership puts it, "I am not interested in the names of your fathers, nor in your family's lineage. What I AM interested in... is your breaking point! How will you conduct yourselves in battle? How far will you go to preserve your honor, to fulfill your duty? These are simple questions that will decide the fate of our empire."
It is through the skill of leadership that these same questions will determine the fate of every civilization
Leadership begins with resilience and no one without resilience can succeed as a leader
Notice in today's two videos - to be a leader, you have to lead from the front, be willing to show the way, get your hands dirty
This means you have to be a role model - the people you lead must see in you what they wish to become
So if you're flabby, self-indulgent, too timid or self-interested to make tough decisions, or lack the personal integrity to tell the plain truth every time, then you'll fail
So leadership depends on self-leadership - your ability to be the leader of your own life, to get your act together, to become a person of character
Of course, without resilience, you cannot acquire self-leadership
Resilience means Psycho-Physical Resilience, Character-Value Resilience and Spiritual-Noetic resilience: without these, you can't get your act together, and hence self-leadership becomes impossible
So, in the final analysis, leadership itself depends on cultivating your personal resilience
Now you can see why the critical life skill of leadership is vital to living a deliberate, powerful and stress-free life and to maximizing your own personal fulfillment and happiness
So if you're ever again tempted to think of yourself as someone who is "not a leader", slap yourself upside the head and think again
You've been a leader before and you'll be one again
And since that's the case, you have a responsibility to the people you'll lead - and to yourself for that matter - to become the very best leader you can be
===============================================
Leadership challenge - identify at least one situation you are in this week in which you function as a leader (formally or informally) in some capacity, and apply just one of the principles in either of these videos to yourself while in that situation and watch the difference it makes!
===============================================

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Identifying "Spiritual Life Gone Wrong" - Part 2

2011-05-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

Identifying "Spiritual Life Gone Wrong" - Part 2

As it has been so wisely put, "You can be sure your religion has gone off the rails if its 'god' hates all the same people you do!"

And that pretty well defines what the media usually labels, though somewhat simplistically, as "religious extremism" or "religious fanaticism". Whatever you call it, though, it's all around us today and it's attempting to redefine our world, often through violence, coercion and intimidation. So today we're going to look at the five main symptoms or manifestations of this kind of "perverse spirituality".

Just before we get there, though, I thought you'd enjoy this break with British comedian John Cleese, who explains very clearly why being a religious nut-job is so much fun:

So just what are the five main features of religious extremism?

1. Divine Fascism

Divine fascism is the ridiculous belief that the divine being is so insecure and neurotic that he has to demand total conformity from you in all aspects of your life and will punish you if you don't.

Contrast this with the viewpoint of Authentic Ancient Traditions (as I've called them in The 5 Pillars of Life) that the divine being or Absolute is overflowing love. As St. Silouan of Athos (d. 1938) put it, based on his own mystical experience, "God is love insatiable".

If you belong to a religious group that preaches "divine fascism" and you're using it as your personal worldview, then you must believe that:

Your religion is totally, 100% correct and those who don't follow it are somehow lesser human beings
Your mission is to bring these lesser human beings under your religion by whatever means you can
For anyone to deny the truth of your religion is an insult that your (insecure and neurotic) god can't bear - they must be punished
Everyone within your religion must conform rigidly to its norms of behavior
No one is allowed to leave the group - there are severe penalties for "apostasy"

All of these presuppositions set the stage for the next feature of religious extremism:

2. Religious Violence

Once you subscribe to religious fascism, it's a very simple leap of logic to convince yourself that you're doing God's will and creating God's kingdom on earth by using violence to get your way. And there are many forms of violence, including intimidation (making people afraid to speak out), direct threats, verbal violence and, of course, physical violence itself, whether that's organized military violence or not.

Not surprisingly, a good deal of the violence inherent within religious fascism is actually directed within. And here we're not talking about the good and beneficial violence of spiritual struggle you find in authentic traditions. Instead, this violence is about enforcing conformity within the group, keeping the group's social order and putting down any tendencies toward asking the wrong questions or other forms of "free thinking". Naturally, most of this falls upon the most vulnerable segments of the group's own population - women, children and minority groups like gays, intellectuals and dissidents.

Notice that authentic traditions create an atmosphere of unconditional love and acceptance, and their most serious ("extreme") practitioners are deeply humble, whereas religious extremists have a strong tendency towards arrogance and violence.

3. Victim Syndrome

This tendency towards violence is helped along by the group's standard narrative, which is really good at establishing the existence of strong and powerful "enemies" that are out to destroy the group. And since the group is somehow chosen by God above the rest of humanity, this forms a kind of siege mentality where everything that goes wrong for the group, all of its intractable socio-economic problems and the rest, can all be blamed on these powerful "enemies".

So it really is just like John Cleese says: when you've got your list of enemies, you can start blaming them, abdicate all responsibility on your own part and start the violence.

4. Sexual Repression

Another frequent manifestation of religious extremism is its total inability to deal with one of the most basic forces of real human life - sexuality. Since the group narrative often puts forward a divine basis for circumscribing human sexuality and confining it within some socially acceptable boundaries, any attempt to question these boundaries or break out of them is seen as pretty close to apostasy.

This is very convenient too, because when the group's sexual norms are different from those of surrounding cultures, the group can paint those surrounding cultures as licentious and immoral, further reinforcing their own siege mentality and sense of victimization.

This repression of sexuality has some hideously violent outcomes around the world and is creating untold misery on a daily basis. These outcomes include:

Forced marriage (where women have no say in deciding whom they will marry)
Violence against women (regular beatings sanctioned by the religious group)
Female Genital Mutilation or FGM (surgical removal of the clitoris and labia in a usually unsuccessful attempt to remove female sexual desire and capacity for pleasure. This is usually performed on young girls without their consent, without anesthetic and in a non-sterile environment)
Honor killing (where male relatives will murder a young woman for losing her virginity, having a boyfriend or otherwise violating the group's sexual norms)
Sexual neurosis (repressing sexuality always leads to significant neurosis, as it is deeply disruptive to human emotions and the human energy system)

5. The Vice of "Identification"

The easiest way to understand the problem of "identification" is probably from what I've written about the "warrior's way of life" in The 5 Pillars of Life:

What Warriors seek to avoid and to root out of themselves is the neurosis of identification – the psychological need to belong, to be validated, and to identify with one’s own culture, which is the matrix of opinions, attitudes and values comprising the worldview of those around you. But as for the inability or unwillingness to understand others, the psychological need to be right and have others be wrong - the Warrior’s life is directly opposed to all this.

The identification that the Warrior is against is not the conscious and deliberate adherence to an authentic tradition. He is only against a semi-conscious, neurotic, ego-driven and insecure identification of self with any given set of values, attitudes and opinions, however “right” it may be.

So "identification" is essentially a neurosis where you have a deep psychological need to belong, but also a need to be right and therefore have others be wrong. In other words, you need an external enemy to validate your own victim status.

Look closely and you'll see that religious extremism ALWAYS has external enemies whom it blames for everything from its own poverty and powerlessness to the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami.

All of this begs the question: "If your god is as angry as you say he is and as powerful as you say he is, and if you're as righteous as you say you are, while your enemies are as evil as you say they are, then why doesn't you god just ZAP the bastards and be done with it??" Since this isn't happening, could it be that the universe is just a little more complex than you think?

The ONE Thing No Society Can Tolerate

Tolerance is a great virtue. Truly. For all its faults, Western civilization is the beacon of hope to the world primarily because it has set up not just a prosperous economic framework, but a political model that allows you to be who you are and to put forward your viewpoint without fear. However, there is still one thing that Western civilization cannot be expected to tolerate - the existence within itself of religious or any other kind of extremists who do not accept the fundamental values on which it is based, including individual rights, freedom of speech, separation of church and state, and equal rights for all social groups. Tolerating intolerance is NOT a virtue; it's a fundamental stupidity.

With some thoughts on that, here's author Richard Dawkins. Since Dawkins is a well-known proponent of atheism, I naturally don't agree with everything he says, but I deeply appreciate his commitment to the fundamental value of free speech and his willingness to listen and respond thoughtfully and rationally to anyone:

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Identifying "Spiritual Life Gone Wrong"

2011-04-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

Today we begin a two-part series on something at the very heart of the issues of our time all over the world: what happens when religion goes wrong...

In its most extreme forms, we see the results worldwide every day - radical evangelicals preaching violence against gays, a papacy in deep denial over the scale of sexual abuse in its midst, mass rioting and random killings throughout the Muslim world at the mere rumor of an anti-Islamic publication in the West, and the list goes on and on.

Those extreme forms are just symptoms, though. They're symptoms whose causes remain largely hidden from us as a civilization because we no longer understand a fundamental truth - not everything that passes itself off as "spiritual" is good, healthy and beneficial. Far from it...

In fact, as a civilization we've become so divorced from real spiritual life that our ability to sort out false spiritual paths from healthy ones is marginal at best. We no longer know the distinguishing criteria of each, the questions to ask or the tell-tale signs of each.

In reality, asking most people today to distinguish real spiritual paths from false ones is about as useful as asking a Kalahari bushman for advice on your next family car.

The Vital Importance of Spiritual Resilience

To get anywhere close to figuring out what spiritual resilience means, we first have to define the word "spiritual", which is no simple task.

So let's put it this way: just as resilience itself is a path toward maximizing your potential on all levels (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual), spiritual resilience is the act of opening yourself to the deepest truths of your existence in this universe so that you can become everything you're meant to be.

Not surprisingly, you can never become truly resilient and fulfilled as a human person if you ignore your own spiritual dimension, since that is, in reality, the deepest layer of your own being.

What I've called "authentic ancient traditions" in my bestseller, The 5 Pillars of Life*, are ancient, tried and proven approaches for doing exactly this. And, contrary to what we assume, they have a boatload of evidence to back up the authenticity of their discoveries.

Religion vs. Authentic Ancient Traditions

Here's a short excerpt from The 5 Pillars of Life* to help you wrap your head around the differences between what we usually call "religions" and something much deeper:

*************

All fantasies, especially that of religion, are caused by a short-circuit at the centre of the human personality. This short-circuit, which exists between the heart which pumps blood (the circulatory system) and the spinal cord which circulates spinal fluid (the nervous system) is only repaired by ceaseless prayer in the heart. It is only when the short-circuit is repaired that you begin to be liberated from the realm of fantasy.

- Rev. Dr. John Romanides in “Religion as a Neurobiological Illness”[i]

Startling, isn’t it? - A world-renowned Orthodox priest and theologian calling religion a “neurobiological illness”! But he’s right - Orthodox Christianity is not a religion in the conventional Western sense of that word. And for that matter, neither are other authentic ancient traditions. What Westerners conventionally call "religion" is a term that applies almost exclusively to their own approach to life as it has developed historically over the last thousand years or so.

"Religion" in the Western sense the word has a number of particular traits. And generally speaking these traits apply to the vast majority of Western people who "practice their religion":

Religious teachings are ideological statements divorced from real life and which people subscribe to based on emotional considerations. Teachings of authentic traditions are based on an experience of true life, and practitioners adhere to them based on observable verification.

Religion provides psychological comfort and self justification in the face of its failure to cure psycho-spiritual (noetic) illness. Authentic traditions take you from sickness to health; religions tell you your sickness is health.

Religion shifts the blame for good and evil, and for the final outcome of life, onto a deity or process (saying, for example, that illness is a punishment from God or that God decides whether to forgive you and send you to heaven or to damn you to hell). Authentic traditions know that the Absolute Reality never does harm and that the only real danger to us in this world or hereafter comes from ourselves.

Religions and authentic traditions both have a ceremonial aspect or some collective manifestation, but the religious version exists to provide psychological comfort or aesthetic pleasure, whereas the authentic version is there to lead you to self-transformation.

Religion is always reduced to a compartment of life, whereas training in any authentic tradition involves every moment of life.

Religion's "transformation" of human life is limited to the superficial aspects of the personality, is often based on a tedious list of prohibitions and is geared toward social acceptability. Religion produces nice people; authentic traditions produce extraordinary ones.

Real self-transformation is not a goal of religion; the knowledge and methods required for self-transformation are absent and there is no access to a lineage of transformed people. Life degenerates into “salvation by association” (I’m saved because I’m part of the group) and “salvation by conviction” (I’m saved because I hold a particular opinion).

Religion is ignorant of the technical terminology of self-transformation and interprets it in a general and nebulous way. The religious version of a tradition will seldom have any real idea what the authentic version is talking about, even if they use the same language.

Religion is comfort-loving and presents no real challenge to its adherents, whereas authentic traditions take you beyond your comfort zone and into realms that religion knows nothing of.

Religion abhors mystery and tries to explain everything with concepts. These concepts can be controlled and manipulated by a cadre of “experts” for the good of the institution, whereas transformed people – saints, immortals or bodhisattvas - are notoriously hard to control.

Given these traits of religion, it is not too surprising that Father Romanides classifies religion as a "neurobiological illness". What this means is that religion has its origin in the fallen state – where the neurobiological malfunction characteristic of life in the fallen world has not been healed – and that it perpetuates this unhealed state as if it were normal. So it is not surprising that religion prevents countless millions of people from finding true fulfillment and happiness. And like all illness, it leads to untold suffering and misery.

[i] Pages 1-3. The order of the elements in this quotation has been slightly rearranged for the sake of clarity. Several Orthodox writers of the twentieth century noted that the word “religion” as commonly used among peoples of European ethnic origin does not correspond to Orthodox Christianity.

*The 5 Pillars of Life is available on the Amazon.ca website or through http://www.the5pillarsoflife.com.

**********

Next time, we'll talk about some of the real "dark side" of the religion and spirituality that's out there now - how to identify it and avoid it.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Fasting Part Two: Fasting for Spiritual Purposes

2011-04-21T05:47:00.000-07:00

===========================================================

Ageless Beauty – Timeless Health:
Building a Lifestyle that Automatically Creates the
Health, Immunity and Longevity You Want

Toronto, Canada: June 4-5, 2011

http://www.harapower.com/AB/

=========================================

Over the course of human history, fasting for spiritual purposes has been at least as widespread and quite probably much more so, than fasting for better health. We also need to remember that non-Western and pre-industrial cultures did not tend to divide life into categories of "physical" and "spiritual" as we do out of (bad) habit.

Goals of Spiritual Fasting

There are many different ones. As I write this, tens of millions of Eastern Christians are beginning their Holy Week fast leading up to Pascha (Easter). For them the goal is to become more open to divine influence and to actually participate in the events they're celebrating. Of course, there are many different spiritual reasons for fasting:

To become more open to divine influence
To receive divine guidance on a particular issue
To receive healing, whether physical, emotional or spiritual
To help someone else receive what they need, whether healing, guidance or protection
To prepare for a spiritually difficult task

In reality, of course, the majority of people who would say they practice spiritual fasting seem to do so on a semi-conscious level at best. They often think they're fasting, when they're simply practicing a form of abstinence, or they're not clear on how fasting works or exactly what they wish to achieve.

Is fasting a form of sacrifice that God demands imperiously? Is it a form of punishment for human sin? Well, if you read the ancient Christian spiritual sources carefully, such as the various collections of "sayings of the desert fathers" from the fourth and fifth centuries, it's quite clear this isn't the case.

What emerges is a bit more complex. Because fasting cleanses the body, it also makes the mind more lucid. If you consider that the desert dwellers who pioneered Christian spiritual fasting were totally dedicated to remaining in an unbroken state of inner "prayer of the heart", this lucidity of mind was very important. The bottom line from their experience is that abstinence from heavy foods and periodic fasting will enable you to maintain focused inner attention and will cut down on the inner dialogue, swirling emotions and physical symptoms that ensnare your attention. That's obviously a vital consideration for any sustained program of prayer or meditation, and explains why spiritual fasting has been so widely used worldwide for millennia.

So if we ask how spiritual fasting works, it's clear the explanation bridges the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual planes of our being, creating a cleansing and unifying effect. It's not simply a matter of fulfilling an abstract divine commandment; it has to do with how your mind-body organism is intended to function. This is something that Orthodox Christian ascetics, Kriya Yoga practitioners and many native American medicine people, to name just a few, will tell you.

Here's a really interesting video on spiritual fasting that also ties in the health aspect in an admirable and well thought out way. Be sure to pause it to give yourself time to read the text, in addition to listening to the excellent commentary:

A Spiritual Warrior's Explanation

Without contradicting any of the foregoing, the Coptic Orthodox Monk, Matthew the Poor, offered this explanation of fasting. When he uses the word "self", he is using it in the sense of the "ego" or "false self":

"[When we fast] we must reach a state of accepting not the partial, but the complete annihilation of the self, and this can only take place by an act of deliberate volition. In other words, if we begin by any exercise, such as fasting, which brings us to the partial overcoming of the self, we need to supplement the feeling of satisfaction that comes from accepting this state with an acceptance of the total destruction of the self. This is obtained by the mental acceptance of death itself, with no dismay or restraint. 'But we received the sentence of death in ourselves' (2 Corinthians 1:19).

"When our father Abraham offered Isaac his son, he did so partially with his hands, but totally in purpose. When Abraham proved his willingness to offer Isaac, his only son, God did not leave him to carry out the slaughter; when the offering had been only partially made on the physical level, God considered the sacrifice to have been actually carried out. This, and only this, is why God redeemed Isaac with a ram - a symbol of Christ - who was to redeem the souls of those whose self was destroyed partially by their actions, but wholly in their intentions."1.

In terms of spiritual fasting, that's certainly "food for thought"! Think about it. Better still, try it. Just remember, though, as with fasting for health, the same advice and warnings apply here, so go back and read the previous post before you start!

Blessings!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

Fasting Part One: Fasting to Improve Your Health

2011-04-19T04:11:00.000-07:00

===========================================================

Ageless Beauty – Timeless Health:
Building a Lifestyle that Automatically Creates the
Health, Immunity and Longevity You Want

Toronto, Canada: June 4-5, 2011

http://www.harapower.com/AB/

=========================================

This is Holy Week for most Christians and a time when tens of millions of people will be fasting. So what better time to do a two-part series on the value of fasting? Why two-part? Because there are two main reasons people fast...

We fast in search of better health or we fast as a method of spiritual purification. As we'll see the two are related. Today, though, we'll focus on fasting to create health, immunity and longevity....

What Exactly is "Fasting"?

That's not as stupid a question as you may think. That fact is, there are lots of misconceptions out there about fasting. Some people believe that simply abstaining from certain foods or food groups, either temporarily or permanently, is "fasting". That's most definitely not fasting. That's "abstinence".

Fasting is going without eating solid food, and sometimes liquid nourishment as well, for a defined period of time. That could be a matter of hours, days or weeks, depending on what you're trying to achieve and how.

The Health Benefits of Fasting

So why would you bother? Perhaps because there are few if any other health tools in your arsenal that give you such bang for the buck. Here are just some of the primary benefits of fasting:

Initiates a detoxification / cleansing reaction in the body, enabling you to rid yourself of accumulated toxins.
Enables weight loss.
Puts the digestive system, and the body as a whole, into "rest mode", allowing the energy usually devoted to digestion to be diverted to healing.
Clears up skin problems and the whites of your eyes.
Naturally lowers blood pressure without drugs.
Makes it easier to overcome bad habits and addictions, and to make a fresh start with a new, healthier diet and lifestyle.
Reduces inflammation throughout your body.
Reduces water retention throughout your body.
Pacifies many allergic reactions and sensitivities.
Historical and biological research strongly suggests proper fasting promotes longevity.

Varieties of Fasting

You may have heard of many types of fasting for health, including water fasts, juice fasts, total fasts and many others. Natural health pioneers like Dr. Bernard Jensen and Victor Irons used fasting together with colon cleansing to achieve remarkable results for their patients and clients for about half a century each! More telling is that both of these great pioneers lived healthy lives to nearly age one hundred.

Here's a video with Dr. Nicholas Tancheff, a chiropractor who has founded a fasting retreat facility in Hawaii. You can learn a lot by listening to how he went from the typically disastrous North American lifestyle to learning how to self-heal...

Warning: Avoid the Traps!

There are several traps with fasting, so here's my advice on how to get started:

Check in with your physician or a licensed health-care provider to help you get started. This is particularly important if you've never done this before or have a pre-existing medical condition.
Be clear on what you would like to achieve with the fast. This will help you select the proper type.
Don't make it up on your own: follow a program based on reliable and tested information.
Don't overdo it. Fasting for just a few days can provide enormous benefit!
Don't become addicted to fasting and cleansing! These are activities you should do periodically, not constantly. Once your fast is over, start giving your body all the nutritious food it needs to stay healthy!

If you would like to learn a whole lot more about fasting and cleansing directly from people with a lot of experience, you should consider coming to the health workshop I'm doing with Michael Morningstar in Toronto, Canada on June 4-5.

As you've heard from the teleseminar we did last week, Michael really knows his stuff. And we are confident that you'll leave our event with the knowledge and the confidence to take your health to a whole new level.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Liberation from the "Shame, Blame and Guilt Game"

2011-04-14T09:36:00.000-07:00

Few psychological conditions in life are as debilitating as what I call the “shame, blame, guilt game”. As you’ll see below and as you may have experienced in your own life, the emotion of guilt can lead to chronic anxiety, mental anguish, depression and worse.

Yet many cultures live on a steady diet of shame and guilt. Sometimes these are religious cultures, sometimes just individual family cultures. Whatever the case, though, if you’ve been a victim of this kind of psychological manipulation – and all chronic guilt-tripping is a manipulation designed to gain and maintain control over you – then you need to know how to free yourself from it.

On the other hand, guilt can also be the inability to forgive yourself for something you’ve done or failed to do. That’s when you feel like one of the characters in this amazing video…

Religious Guilt Culture

The epitome of neurotic guilt culture in the West has certainly been the Roman Catholic Church. Here are just a couple of abridged accounts from emotionally abused “recovering Catholics”:

1. From a young woman:

“I experienced this guilt most intensely during high school. Every morning I would wake up with the most painful guilt. In my mind, I would walk back through the day before trying to remember what I had done wrong, but I could never come up with anything. Then I would get in the shower and say the our fathers, hail mary's and glory be's until the pain had passed. At the time I had no idea why I felt so much pain and guilt.

“I've been trying to understand better how the Church operates psychologically. It most certainly makes claims to Truth where questioning Truth is coded as sin / evil. And the weekly embodied ritual seems to embed Catholic doctrine into people's psyche in a way that people can't explain. The mass also provides an embodied ritual which is meant to both teach people that they are sinned while at the same time relieve people of this sin. It is this aspect of the mass that creates a kind of addiction - I've heard some people state that they just have to be Catholic and receive the body of Christ each week - but they can't explain why. It seems that it is this imparting and relief of guilt and sin that people feel they have to get through the mass each week.”

2. From a young man:

“I consistently beat myself up, and put myself to shame, and live with debilitating bouts of depression and anxiety. Not because of anything I've done, but because I have thoughts and feelings... natural thoughts and feelings that the Catholic church of my upbringing would have called 'sinful'.

“I was raised Catholic of course, and I went to 12 years of Catholic school, during the 70's and 80's. I believe that much of what we were taught to believe can only be described as insane and medieval.

“Let me just say that the Catholic Church has done many wonderful things, in ways of charity and meeting the physical needs of people. Things like creating hospitals, homeless shelters, food-shelf's, etc. But when it comes to meeting the emotional and psychological needs of people, the church has done tremendous damage and abuse to the psyches of millions (billions?)of people.

“And I was taught that to even think lustful thoughts was the same as doing the act. I was a teenage boy, coursing with hormones and natural impulses on a regular basis. I've read that research shows that young males have sexual thoughts and impulses roughly every 30 seconds or so, and I was certainly no exception. At 15, all it takes is for an attractive girl to walk by, the hormones jack up a bit and boom, mortal sin, eternal damnation, the fires of hell... it's all there. To be able to feel that I was safe from the fires of hell would mean that I would need my own priest following me around so that I could make constant confessions. Not having this accommodation, I concluded that I was doomed... that my soul was destined for hell. Unless I could somehow shut off all of those impulses and feelings, and feel nothing!!! So, I became a robot.

“The only logical way to save myself from eternally being on Satan’s This is the definition of spiritual death and being un-human. And an ironclad recipe for chronic depression, anxiety, self-loathing, self-abuse and self-punishment. In short, not much less painful than Hell.

And to top it off, we were taught that to suffer here on earth, was a GOOD thing, something to be STRIVED for. We were to be martyrs, living in self-induced pain and suffering.”

You’ll Be Shocked to Learn Where This Came From…

The origin of Catholicism’s rampant guilt culture is not Christianity itself and proof of that is the general absence of the neurotic guilt complex in the history of the Eastern Christian tradition (a lot of my own pastoral work as an Orthodox priest has been cleaning up the emotional messes left by the rampant guilt culture).

The guilt culture has theological roots that stem directly from Augustine’s teachings on “original sin” back in the fifth century. Basically, he taught that all human beings have in some mystical way participated in the sin of Adam and Eve, and are therefore automatically “guilty” from birth on. In other words, guilt is a condition you inherit!

Where did he get this absurd notion? Amusingly enough, from an error in biblical translation! You see, Augustine didn’t know Greek and had to depend on St. Jerome’s translation of the New Testament into Latin. Just one problem…

Jerome made a minor error when he translated Romans 5, verse 12. By translating a single conjunction as “in whom” instead of “because of which”, he accidentally provided Augustine with the basis of a wrong theology that has screwed up the lives of countless millions of people ever since.

That’s why the original Christian tradition regards the whole notion of original sin / inherited guilt as lunacy. You can’t be held responsible for something you didn’t do (seems pretty obvious, right?). And, of course, Augustine’s theory requires a judgmental God who condemns your failures, as opposed to the God of direct mystical experience who, as the original tradition says, “only bestows blessings and never does harm”.

Remember, though, that an individual family culture can also be based on chronic guilt-tripping and other forms of dysfunctional manipulation that may or may not have a religious basis. Whether religiously motivated or not, your task is to find your way out of that culture and undo the damage to yourself. So how do you do that? This way...

Freeing Yourself from the Shame, Blame, Guilt Game

If you’ve been a victim of this form of crass psychological manipulation and realize you need to break free, there’s a simple 3-step process to follow. It may still take some time and effort, but the steps will certainly help you get there:

1) Recognize it! Take stock of the full extent to which it has impacted your life.

2) Treat it! The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is certainly one excellent tool you should always have with you. There are also support groups available, and you may derive some value from talking to a therapist or counselor. Be sure to find the help you need!

3) Resolve Not to Play! Identify those people in your life that use this guilt against you and take steps to terminate or minimize contact. If you can't avoid them entirely, learn to recognize their behavior and call them on it.

We are all “guilty” of many things, for sure - that's part of the human condition. However, we’ll never get anywhere unless we free ourselves from the chains of guilt that bind us emotionally.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Learn Life Skills for Extreme Situations

2011-04-12T06:15:00.000-07:00

The sun was blazing, the terrain barren and unforgiving, and the instructors were working us hard. The extra twenty pounds or so of gear we were wearing just added to the fatigue – a Kevlar vest, knee and elbow pads, sometimes a helmet, a pistol strapped to the right thigh and an American M4 or Russian Kalashnikov assault rifle in hand…

At the firing range, carrying an M4 assault rifle

That was last week for me. I was privileged to attend an elite training course down in the deserts of the south-western US, a course taught by special forces veterans and frequently attended by everyone from members of such elite organizations as the British SAS or Canada’s JTF2, to ordinary people facing deployment to the world’s most dangerous trouble spots.

(The trip also allowed me to explore some issues of leadership, teamwork and corporate culture with these people. Did you know that what we consider the most advanced leadership and corporate culture solutions in the corporate world today were actually developed by special forces units decades ago?)

The “Yang” Side of Resilience Training

You may have noticed I like to divide resilience training into its “Yin” and “Yang” aspects. And I tend to talk more about the Yin or “soft” aspects, such as meditation, mindfulness, Qi Gong, Yoga, nutrition, relationship skills and the like.

However, we should never forget the other side of the coin – those Yang skills that will keep us and our loved ones alive when the unthinkable happens.

In North America we live the pleasant delusion that we personally will never face an extreme situation. That situation could be street crime, a home invasion, a natural disaster or something as commonplace as a car accident out in the country, where you’re on the scene and the nearest first responder is still twenty minutes away. Meanwhile, the accident victim on the ground in front of you may only have two minutes to live, not twenty, unless you personally take some very specific and simple actions. Do you have the skill sets required? Do you have the right medical kit with you? What if that victim were your spouse or child?

Rescuing a man down, moving him and applying

a tourniquet to save his life

Our delusion is the ingrained belief that we don’t need those skills because the paramedics will save the day. Likewise we assume we don’t need to know how to carry an unconscious person out of a burning building or know how to defend ourselves because the firemen and police will do it for us.

Yet the stark reality is that when the s**t hits the fan, you will more than likely be on your own for the first five to fifteen minutes of any serious event. And by then, it’s very often too late.

The Value of Acquiring Extreme Skills

One of the most challenging features of last week’s course was that you never knew what challenge the instructors would throw at you next! This is when you find yourself worrying about whether you’ll screw it up and look like an idiot, whether you’ll have the energy, and whether the back muscle you pulled yesterday will hold out…

Participant learns how to escape when tied up

with rope, hand-cuffs, etc.

And then you realize that you just need to surrender. You can either continue wasting energy worrying about what comes next, or you can surrender, live in the present and mentally let it all go. So one of the greatest benefits of the kind of training that tests your physical and mental limits is that you learn a lot about yourself.

Some of the other specific benefits of learning some of life’s extreme skills are:

Improving your personal resilience
Passing on these skills to those around you
Boosting your self-esteem
Becoming a greater asset to your family, workplace and community
Acquiring the confidence to face extreme situations
Learning how to function effectively under extreme stress

Clearing rooms and rescuing hostages (hint:
the way you see it done on TV shows will get
you killed)

So although the Yin side of resilience training (improving your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health) is absolutely vital, it’s important not to forget the Yang side of resilience training, where we acquire the personal power and the critical skills to handle life’s most extreme situations.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger