Meditation and Mastering Your Life

After watching the amazing video below, one Youtube viewer appended this saying from Milarepa, perhaps Tibet's most beloved sage:

If ones tries to vanquish foes in the outer world,
They increase in greater measure.
If one conquers his Self-mind within,
All his foes soon disappear.
~ Milarepa (A tibetan yogi)

So enjoy this beautiful and profound animated video and ask yourself afterward, "How does this apply to MY life?"

To Learn Meditation

...and to begin to taste the incredible experience of life that proficiency in meditation offers to every human being, including you, join me this coming Thursday night at 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific, for a special multi-media presentation on:

The Meditation Miracle

4 Steps to Transforming Every Moment into Rock Solid Inner Peace, Health and Happiness

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Thursday October 7 at 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific

http://attendthisevent.com/?eventID=15305691

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Watch your email for further information!

~Dr. Symeon Rodger

Meditation: Why You Need to Change Your Paradigm

One of the greatest RESILIENCE-BUILDERS out there is the regular practice of meditation. More and more people are taking up meditation for a variety of reasons, ranging from stress-management to seeking inner peace to enhancing their spiritual life to controlling their inner energy (Qi).

Unfortunately, most people are not getting nearly the benefits their meditation practice has to offer simply because they're making a culturally ingrained mistake that every Westerner is pretty much bound to make...

...they meditate when they meditate; then they get up and switch their brain into the same old stressed-out "daytime" mode they're so used to.

Hear this: your meditation's effectiveness can be easily quadrupled by simply avoiding that habitual mental shift.

"Great," you say, "but just how am I supposed to do that? My kids need their lunches made and a ride to school. My boss is on my case about that report and I'm run off my feet!"


SHIFTING YOUR FRAMEWORK

Fair enough. Let me explain... You're obviously familiar with the idea that whatever you focus on, especially with strong emotion, grows and eventually becomes your reality.

So if you insist on focusing on how insanely busy you are and how everyone is making demands on you, then that will become your reality. Let's call it the "fundamental background" of your life. Incidents will come and go throughout your day, but this "fundamental background" will always remain -ever-present and unchanged.

Suppose you decided to change that. What if the calm and centeredness of your meditation practice could be the NEW fundamental background of your life? What if your focus were constantly on that instead of on your problems and challenges?

For one thing, you'd have a lot less stress. Unpleasant incidents during the day would barely phase you. You'd be more effective and productive, since the meditative mind is always more effective than so-called "waking consciousness". And you'd be more deeply relaxed, so your health and resilience would naturally improve.


"YOU STILL HAVEN'T TOLD ME HOW, DOC!"

Mea culpa - guilty as charged! So let's get to that part now...

Here's a step-by-step method you can use to get started. Keep in mind this won't change your life overnight because your old habits of mind and body are SOOO deeply ingrained.

1. Meditate first thing in the morning

2. When you're ready to finish your meditation session, remind yourself that maintaining your meditative mind, the awareness of your inner being, is going to be the "fundamental background" of your day.

3. Become aware of the delightful PHYSICAL sensations of meditation as you go through your day - the rhythm of your breathing, the inner energy contracting and expanding, etc.

4. By focusing on these sensations, strive to keep your mind and emotions clear and calm.

"Can't be done," you say? Nonsense! Generations of experience show that people living in far more challenging circumstances than yours and mine trained themselves to do this and reaped the awesome benefits of health, immunity, longevity, inner peace and spiritual insight. That's why...

...you can too!

To learn about the SILVER BULLET for mastering meditation, whether you're sitting, standing, moving or doing anything at all, go here:

http://www.warriorcoachinginternational.com/hara.html

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Want Inner Equilibrium? Go Outside!!

I don't know about you, but the first thing I do every morning is head downstairs, throw open the patio door, go outside and BREATHE.

If you want energy for the first half of your day, just head outside first thing in the morning - the earlier the better - and take some deep breaths. I'll tell you how in a moment.

Deep levels of inner peace and harmony are not just emotional states unrelated to your physical body and your place in the cosmos. They're not just the result of attitudes and they can't be produced simply by mind games, as some people are telling you.

This deep inner peace and harmony is the direct result of you inserting yourself in the currents of harmony that blow through all creation all around you at every moment. You want to feel these currents? Good. Then go outside first thing in the morning and to this:

1. Put your hands on your hips, bend forward keeping your back straight and exhale through your mouth, totally emptying all the stale air out of your lungs.

2. Return to an upright posture, inhaling through your nose. You'll find you really don't have to inhale - your lungs will fill up again automatically. Repeat steps 1 and 2 three times - don't hyperventilate.

3. If the sun is up, feel its warmth on your skin and gently "breathe in" its warmth.

4. Do some light stretching, enjoying the crisp, clean air.

The early morning air is first of all the cleanest air of the day, if you live in a city as most of us do. It's also thoroughly charged with Qi, according to Chinese medicine and ancient Taoist research. And that explains why parks throughout China and in Chinese communities abroad are often packed with people doing Tai Chi, Qi Gong or related exercises at dawn.

Of course, you can and should get outside anytime you can, especially to places where you can be in a more natural environment. I realize that can be tough if you work downtown in the concrete jungle. I'm very fortunate in that there are two sets of woods within walking distance of my house, woods thick enough that when you're in them you can't even see the rest of the city! It's a great place to do Qi Gong.

Whenever you can go for walks through a park or even through your neighborhood, do it. Just follow your breath with your mind and bathe yourself in the harmony you feel. This will calm your mind, calm your nerves and, from a physical point of view, give you some natural vitamin D and fresh (non-recirculated) air.

As you pursue inner peace and harmony as goals in your life, you'll find yourself spending more and more time outdoors. This is one addiction you don't want to put off!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Putting "Strength in Your Belly"

"If there is no strength in your dantien, vices such as jealously, envy, anger, greed and distrust appear."
~ Okado Torajiro

We could also add "stress", "anxiety" and "fear" to the list.

Everything I've shared with you over the past week has been to prepare you for today.

If you've been practicing this stuff daily you can't help but feel a whole lot better. That would be impossible. Our problem these days is that nobody will practice anything consistently and diligently. Instead, they just dabble, and dabblers don't get results in any area of life.

Okay, so we've already talked about your breathing and how you need to learn Normal Abdominal Breathing in order to stop creating stress accidentally.

When you're practicing this kind of breathing during meditation, you want to bring your breath down into your "lower dantien". Dantien means "elixir field" and it's your body's main energy storage area just below your navel. This will help you to put strength into your dantien, as Torajiro says above.

It's easy to feel the breath filling the dantien because your abdomen is actually expanding as you inhale.

We've also talked about how you can learn to integrate your mind, breath and physical movements into one. The next part of that equation is to learn to move from the dantien. In other words, you should feel every movement you make coming from the dantien, as if it moves a nano second before the rest of your body.

That kind of movement may seems strange to you, but keep in mind that all of Tai Chi (and other internal martial arts) and most of Qi Gong are performed just this way.

Go "play" with these approaches and you'll soon experience a world of difference!

~Dr. Symeon Rodger
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Disclaimer: This material is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical condition, nor toreplace the advice of qualified medical practitioners. You should not engage in any of the exercises suggested here without consulting your physician, particularly if you have anychronic medical issues or have reason to suspect these exercises could cause injury to you. If you are pregnant or think you might be, do not attempt any of these breathing or movement exercises without the express permission of your medical doctor and a licensed practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
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The ONE Thing I Want You to Really "Get"

Okay. I’ve spent the last few days giving you some concrete strategies for greatly increasing your sense of inner peace and harmony.

And, from what I’ve been hearing, that’s really helped you.

My real purpose, though, my “hidden agenda”, has been something a little different:

I’ve been trying to get you to engage your life in a different way, to sense a new possibility within yourself by rebuilding your lost mind-body connection.

Authentic Ancient Traditions all over the world have done this for millennia, with amazing results. The Taoists have called this overall process “self-cultivation” or “self-refinement”.

SELF-REFINEMENT

Look at it this way: your mind-body organism is meant to function in a certain way. When you use it in the proper way, it naturally stays healthy and functions optimally, so you’re physically healthy, emotionally happy and “in the zone”.

When you abuse your organism through your thoughts, your emotions, your diet, your physical movement (or lack thereof), you suffer the consequences.

Millennia of research have gone into figuring this out all over the world. Contrary to the modern “religious” idea that everything comes down to what you BELIEVE, ancient traditions knew – and still know – that the mind and body are interdependent.

They realized that if your energy or Qi (to use the Chinese medical term) is weak, dispersed or blocked, then your thought processes will be effected too. So you don’t have a hope in hell of governing your thoughts and emotions if you ignore your body.

The process of “combining energy and spirit” is a miraculous tool to help you enter into a whole new world, the world of self-refinement.

In the world of self-refinement, we do what makes us stronger. In the mundane world of the everyday, people do what makes them feel better (get pleasure and avoid pain) in the short term.

There’s only one small problem with the latter – it leads to weakness, illness and death. Self-refinement leads to the reverse, and that’s why the Taoists called it that path of “reversal” – reversing all the damage you’ve done to yourself up till now ;-)

When you seriously apply “combining energy and spirit” during your meditation, prayer and as you go through your day, several things start to happen…

• You learn to separate your SELF from your THOUGHTS, which is the key to spiritual development. And it happens naturally, without special effort.
  
• Your thoughts and emotions quiet down; you become peaceful and tranquil
  
• Energy (Qi) starts to build up in your lower “dantien” – the area below the navel, which is your body’s main energy storage area
  
• This clears out blockages in your energy system, so you naturally experience much improved health and immunity
  
• Your central nervous system switches over from the stressful “sympathetic” circuit to the tranquil “parasympathetic” circuit more frequently and, eventually, at your command
  
• As you pay attention to your breathing and your bodily structure, you start to experience not just levels of harmony I can’t describe, but also physical processes you never noticed before, trapped tensions and traumas you can release, the presence of energy fields around you, and more.
  
• As you learn to keep your energy flow even and undisturbed, you become very sensitive to anything that has an impact on it – among highly developed people this could include even events you wouldn’t normally notice, like someone walking on your shadow, the presence nearby of someone you can’t see or the influence of stars and planets.
  
• You start to rely on your intuition more and it gets a lot more accurate
  
• You experience increased mental capacity and improved memory
  
• Warmth and love toward everyone and everything starts to flow through you almost automatically
  
  Self-refinement is the key to everything I’ve been teaching you. Now I’ve given you the key to the door. No one can go through that door for you – you’ve got to do it yourself ;-)
  
  Consider that my challenge to you!

Blessings!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

The Second Key to Inner Harmony, Health and Energy

Last time we talked I introduced you to one of the most fundamental methods for cultivating deep levels of inner peace and harmony. And I promised to show you how to take that to the next level.

Okay... by now you've had time to practice a bit of "Normal Abdominal Breathing". And, let me guess, you found it "awkward"??

If so, don't worry. Anything you're not used to will seem that way at first and the right way to breathe is no different. Of course, if you've had any experience before with such things as Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Yoga and even if you've been properly taught how to sing, this kind of breathing won't be anything new to you.

You may have noticed how easy it was to feel peaceful and relaxed while you were sitting and doing your meditative breathing practice, and how quickly that state disappeared the moment you got up. That's the catch...

How do you keep your mind centered and your breath relaxed while you go about your daily tasks?? Is it really possible?

Yes, and it's simpler than you think. It still takes practice and persistence, but it really can be done. And here's the method that so many ancient traditions have used so successfully for millennia in one form or another:

1. When you get up from your sitting practice, do your best to continue your Normal Abdominal Breathing.

2. The important thing here is to "watch" your breath. In other words, do what you can to keep your mental attention on your breathing, just quietly following it and turning away all other thoughts.

If you're new to abdominal breathing and this new-to-you breathing pattern presents an obstacle for you, just forget about it entirely for now and watch your breath. Forget about whether it's abdominal or not, whether you're doing it right or not. Just pay attention to the ebb and flow of your breathing.

Your mental focus on your breathing should be "light" and natural. Don't focus so hard you tense up. As you can probably guess, that kind of defeats the purpose ;-)

3. While you're focusing on your breath, you'll eventually notice physical feelings of harmony all over your body. You may notice various parts of your body and skin seem to "breathe" in conjuction with your inhaling and exhaling. Feel free to pay attention to those feelings as they arise.


Combining Energy and Spirit

Although many traditions used this procedure, only the Taoists gave it a name. They called it "combining energy and spirit". What's that mean?

Simple. "Energy" is your breathing, since breath relates to and controls energy (Qi). And "spirit" is your mental attention.

This simple procedure - paying continuous attention to your breathing - is so profound that it was often referred to as "the true path". Why? Because by doing it for a few months you could easily:

1. Banish negative emotions - all your doubts, fears, confusions
2. Gain complete control over your inner world (and therefore a lot more control of your outer world, since the former dictates the latter)
3. Increase your love for all people and all creation naturally, without much effort
4. Eliminate stress and discover levels of inner peace you didn't know existed
5. Regain your health and banish diseases arising from emotional factors

Let Me SIMPLIFY This For You...

All you need to do is get used to watching your breathing with your mental attention. It's that simple.

Of course, at the beginning you'll lose track of your breathing every time something distracts you - a chance conversation, spilling your coffee, memories of a negative emotional state, or just about anything else.

As long as you persevere, though, it won't be long before you can even do intellectual work like writing this article without losing track of your inner world!

Next time, I'll show you how to reduce some of the unseen stresses you're putting on your physical body. Until then, enjoy the wonderful practice of "combining energy and spirit".

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

The First Key to Inner Harmony, Health and Energy

As I was saying...

Over the next few days I’m going to show you exactly how I approach cultivating deeper levels of inner peace and harmony, based largely on the wisdom and actual practices of Authentic Ancient Traditions. There are several pieces to the puzzle, but I’ll give them to you one at a time.

As I said earlier this week, the purpose of all this is to take you to a level of internal harmony and equilibrium that surpasses what you experience every day (as if that would be hard!) and that probably exceeds anything you remember experiencing at all.

And, of course, it has a few wonderful side effects, like more robust health and immunity, more energy, greater control of your moods and emotions and lots more.

To learn about the first step in the process, keep reading…

RELAX AND BREATHE…

The first thing is that you’re not going to find DEEP inner harmony or deep levels of relaxation until you connect with your breathing.

The first part of that is learning to breath properly, because if you’re habitually breathing high in your chest, you’re artificially creating low-level anxiety on an ongoing basis. It’s like having one foot on the accelerator while the other one’s on the brake.

So you need to return to natural breathing, the way kids breathe before they’re taught the wrong way to do it. That means that when you inhale, your lower abdomen should expand and when you exhale it should contract. If you notice your shoulders rising when you breathe, you’re definitely breathing into your chest, which over-stimulates your rational mind (that means it stirs up thoughts and emotions) and wastes lots of physical energy too.


BASIC DIRECTIONS

1. Go find a place where you can sit with your back relatively straight. It doesn’t particularly matter if you’re sitting cross-legged in some form of meditative posture or if you’re on a chair.

2. Close your eyes and call to mind your mental image of inner harmony, the one we talked about last time.

3. Then practice the “Normal Abdominal Breathing” outlined above for a few minutes. If your mind wanders, just bring it back to your breathing. Just do your best to keep your mental attention on your breathing. When a thought says to you, “you’re not doing this right,” pay NO attention to it.

4. Repeat as often as you can during the day. You can even do it during corporate meetings (without closing your eyes, of course. No one will notice), while standing at the bus stop or when you’re taking a walk.


Remember to renew your decision to make cultivating increased levels of inner harmony your main objective for the next few days, __________. That’s indispensable.
Tomorrow we’ll talk more about the dramatic effects of the practice I’ve outlined above and I’ll show you how to take it to the next level.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

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Disclaimer: This material is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical condition, nor to
replace the advice of qualified medical practitioners. You should not engage in any of the
exercises suggested here without consulting your physician, particularly if you have any
chronic medical issues or have reason to suspect these exercises could cause injury to you.
======================================================================

Recovering Childlike Wonder

In the story I shared with you in today's email - about the child who boarded a plane for Jamaica one night and thought he was moving through outer space because all he could see out the aircraft's window were stars - we have a vivid reminder of how WE ourselves used to see the world around us... as a wonderous and magical place...

...before we grew up and got "educated".

The question is, can we recover that sense of childlike wonder and innocence or will we spend the rest of our days in the "adult" world of boredom, the world devoid of magic, mystery and finally meaning.

This is a question I've thought about for decades. I guess the first really startling insight for me came from running into people from other cultures who just don't see the world in the same way Westerners do. Whether they're native peoples of North America, the descendents of the Pharoahs (the Egyptian Copts) or people from various places in the Far East, there seemed to be a common thread - this world is not nearly as solid and "real" as our eyes would suggest.

It's really astonishing to hang out with people who think this way. And it's very refreshing!

The fact is, we live in a civilization that, for all its achievements, has some bizarre ideas. For that last few centuries it's been telling us that the world as we see it is indeed very solid and real, and that it's the only thing that is real!

Until now...

As I explained in some detail in the "Gong-Fu" Special Report, science is now doing a "180" and saying basically, "Sorry. About that 'sold and real' stuff... we sort of screwed up. Turns out that everything you see as solid is just energy and your consciousness plays a role in how it manifests itself."

Okay, so far so good. It just means that every habit of perception we've learned since we were pre-schoolers turns out to be dead wrong. A minor adjustment (!) to our daily habits is in order.

But what's this mean in the end? Well, for one thing, it means that recovering childlike wonder isn't about building some escapist fantasy. Instead, it's about learning to see things the way the REALLY are. It's about seeing past what our senses tell us.

The question is how to do that. Fortunately, Authentic Ancient Traditions come to our rescue again, this time with an approach that's found everywhere from ancient Christianity to Taoism, Buddhism and elsewhere.

In the Far East it's usually referred to as "emptiness". It's the process of detaching yourself from the idea the world is solid and real. And there are lots of different methods used worldwide to achieve this, including meditations on emptiness, continuously reminding yourself of the "unreality" of the world of appearances and much more.

You can read more about this in my book, The 5 Pillars of Life, pages 167-170.

What are the advantages? Well, if you see everything that happens to you as "solid and real", then of course life's challenges will rip you apart emotionally because you are giving them the power to do that. On the other hand, as one Tibetan lama describes the perceptions of people who have had a direct experience of emptiness:

"...good and bad external conditions no longer have the power to disturb their mind, because they realize them to be like a magician's illusion, with no existence separate from the mind. Instead of being pulled apart like a puppet on a string, their minds remain free and tranquil in the knowlege of the equal and unchanging ultimate nature of all things. In this way, the person who directly realizes the true nature of phenomena experiences peace day and night." (1)

The catch for Westerners is that until we learn to quiet our mind and thoughts and arrive at the ability to enter into inner silence, at least for short periods, there's no way we're going to detach from appearances and reduce our vulnerability to our circumstances.

Without a doubt, the easiest way to enter into stillness is the ancient Taoist method the Japanese named Hara or Hara-gei. Why's it the best? Because it reintroduces you to the genuine wonder of the universe within you. It allows you to experience the childlike awe of tapping into the rhythms in your own body-mind organism, to feel and sense things you've been totally oblivious to since early childhood.

That takes you directly into stillness, which in turn is the surest foundation for the practice of emptiness, which in turn is the "adult's" recipe for returning to the experience of childlike wonder at and appreciation of the true magic of life.

To learn more about Hara, jump on over to:

http://www.warriorcoachinginternational.com/hara.html

You see, once your mind starts to pay attention to the wonders within you, your endless inner dialogue and your unruly emotions will quiet down without much effort on your part. And from there you just as effortlessly enter into emptiness.

However - and I won't delude you here - it takes a good deal of consistent application to get there. This is no magic pill. It's a wonderous and joyful process, but it's not an instant fix intended that will give you bliss even if the rest of your lifestyle sucks. There is no such thing.

In plain language, Hara is for Warriors, not wimps. Use it with care!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

(1) From Mahamudra Tantra: The Supreme Heart Jewel Nectar, by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. New York: Tharpa Publications, 2005, pp. 137-8.