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.
======================================================================

Could the World Stop and Let Me Off?

Have you ever had one of those days... or several in a row... where everything seemed to come crashing down around you?

Well, that pretty much describes last week for me. Here's a brief synopsis for you. Hopefully, you'll feel blessed by comparison ;-)

1. Wednesday: major plumbing disaster in downstairs bathroom, coming from leak in shower pipe above it. Real cause was hidden faulty workmanship under previous owner.

2. Thursday: Plumber comes and diagnoses problem. Whole shower fixture has to be replaced for about $500.

3. Friday: Plumber comes and does the job

4. Friday night: old family friend, age 90 +, suddenly shows up in town, totally unannounced, and wants to see the whole family. We arrange to have supper on Sunday.

5. Saturday: family member who was dogsitting for friends out of town gets sudden symptoms of vertigo and is taken to hospital. I spend Saturday driving all over the place because of this.

6. Sunday: New plumbing disaster, unrelated to the first one - the laundry tub overflows during a wash cycle.

7. Sunday night: Old family friend is totally unreachable from Saturday night on. We all arrive at the hotel to have supper with him on Sunday evening, only to discover he's already left town in the early afternoon. I'm thoroughly confused and still trying to figure this one out.

So when stuff like this happens - and it will from time to time - what do you do? Here are some
suggestions that work really well:

• Build your ark before the flood (Noah was a smart guy...). In other words, make sure you personally are in great shape physically, emotionally and spiritually. Nothing at all can substitute for personal resilience when the sky falls in and lots of extra demands are suddenly placed on your stamina.
  
• Focus on your inner world: cultivate inner peace and harmony even though the walls are falling down around you. This sounds counter-intuitive but, then again, most winning strategies do. This keeps you from focussing too much on what you don't want, which improves your spirits a whole lot.
  
• Relax and go with the flow of events. That doesn't mean you don't try to control what you can; only that you recognize what you can't control and learn to surrender to it with faith. After all, stressing about what you can't control is simply wasted energy.
  
• Remember Winston Churchill's famous maxim: "If you're going through hell.... keep going!"

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go home and meet with the next plumber ;-)

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Pandemic Update - May 5/09

Well, we're into day 11 since the news broke of the H1N1 Swine Flu viral epidemic in Mexico. And it's been quite a rollercoaster since then, at least for those of us who consult in emergency management!

The best line I've heard so far was from a local news broadcaster who was heard to say, "Fear of the pandemic seems to be spreading quite a bit faster than the pandemic itself."

Thanks largely to the media and occasionally to the odd politician or bureaucrat, people were pretty scared for a few days, at least until a few things became clear:

First, that the Mexican stats on infections and deaths were exaggerated out of the park. Once the lab tests were in, the story was a lot different.

Second, the steadily climbing number of cases in Canada and the USA that clearly has had the public on edge is more the result of labs catching up on their test results than of genuinely new infections. The disease is spreading, but at a rather slow rate.

Third, the disease is barely more serious than the common cold or seasonal influenza. For those of you wondering why all the fatalities have been in Mexico (except for the one Mexican child who died in Texas), the explanation is very likely this:

They didn't die from the swine flu.

Instead, they died from a secondary bacterial infection of the kind easily contracted in unsanitary living conditions. Combine such bacterial infections with a lack of readily available medical treatment and you'll definitely get casualties. In fact, this is the reason why the 1918-19 flu killed so many. Those people didn't die from the flu either, but rather from a strep infection.

Nowadays it's much easier for us to prevent those bacterial infections or treat them successfully.

So the bottom line is this may not develop into a full blown pandemic. At this point I'd be a little surprised if it did. That doesn't mean we're out of the woods, of course, since this virus could come back in the fall for our northern hemisphere flu season.

Just remember - by far the best way to protect yourself is to strengthen your own immune system. Make yourself a really tough target. How?

• Get regular fresh air and exercise
• Get regular sun exposure to improve your vitamin D levels
• Eat right - avoid refined sugar, flour, and all harmful foods
• Use the world's best immune-boosting supplements

http://wci.mionegroup.com (note, NO www in this address)

www.NCDpro.com/drsymeon

• Meditate - cultivate inner stillness
• Manage your stress and your emotions
• Watch the videos I'm sending you over the next week or two

Just follow those steps and you'll be healthy as a horse. Then, even if you do get sick with any virus, you'll shake it easliy.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

On Pandemic Paranoia...

Hi all,

The idea that the Swine Flu epidemic in Mexico will turn into a worldwide pandemic is not totally unfounded. The fear that it will is unfounded and unhelpful.

Now, why should you listen to my take on the current pandemic threat? Well, for one thing, I'm up to my neck involved in preparing for it. You see, part of Warriorship - for me personally, at any rate - is knowing all about and planning for contingencies.

Actually, I'm rather well trained in the whole field of emergency management, including pandemic planning, and I spend part of my time teaching this stuff and building emergency response plans for organizations. As a matter of fact, I've been hired to produce a pandemic plan for an organization later this year (though something tells me they may want a draft a little sooner ;-)

Your worst enemy in any emergency is fear. Fear is a funny thing. The more you deny it, suppress it and refuse to face it, the more it controls you. And fear is an uncomfortable feeling, so we always tend to suppress it. The Warrior approach is to acknowledge your fear, stay present to it and discover that it's not really such a big monster after all. It's a bit of a cosmic joke, really.

Will the current epidemic turn into a catastrophic pandemic? I don't know the answer to that. What I do know (and what you probably don't) is this: we're FAR better prepared to meet a threat like this than at any time in history.

How so? Whenever there's a big emergency now, including pandemics, there's a whole apparatus throughout all levels of government and including many NGOs that swings into action behind the scenes. Numerous "emergency operations centers" have been activated, pandemic plans pulled off the shelf and supplies readied. The public perception that their government is just bumbling through could not be more mistaken.

Does this mean the politicians and bureaucrats will make the right decisions? Not always. Someone once said the history of the Western world is politicians and bureaucrats doing too little, too late. And there's lots of truth there, of course.

To be fair, these folks are going to have to make some tough calls in the days and weeks ahead. And, in hindsight, some of these decisions won't come out smelling like roses. That's inevitable.

When the SARS outbreak hit Toronto (from Hong Kong) a few years ago, we did a lot of things wrong in our efforts to contain it. And despite the screw-ups, we wrestled SARS to the ground in a matter of weeks.

The fact is, today we have much better early warning, diagnosis, containment measures, command and control, emergency stockpiles, decision-making processes, etc, than we've ever had before. Keep in mind that if this current Swine Flu outbreak were happening 100-150 years ago, you still wouldn't know about it and there wouldn't be any coordinated international response to it that meant anything. It would be free to spread like wild fire. Not so today.

So what should you do? Get informed. There are a zillion good websites to give you the facts and tell you how to prepare yourself, your family and your workplace. Use those resources.

And beware of the mainstream media. The media are not the unbiased purveyors of facts they fancy themselves to be. The media are collectively an interest group. And they love to sell you a product called "fear" because fear sells. Please don't fall for it.

Best wishes,

Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

Why the Spartan Beat the Ninja...

So there I was last night flipping channels (a bad habit) when I got "trapped" by this fascinating show on Spike TV about who's the "deadliest warrior", the Spartan or the Ninja.

They were out to establish with ruthless scientific rigor who would have won in a 1-on-1 battle to the death between a single Ninja and a single Spartan soldier.

And scientific it was: they had living practitioners of both fighting systems, all the authentic weapons and equipment, 2 kinds of test dummies, equipment for measuring weapon speed and penetration, and two medical experts to assess the effects of individual blows.

Artificial, Of Course...

Yeah, the premise was a bit artificial in that the Spartan of c. 500 BC and the Ninja of c. 1500 AD were obviously never going to run into each other. Still, each in his own time had the reputation as the most feared adversary alive.

The other part of the artificiality was they would never likely face off anyway, since the Spartan was a soldier who fought conventional battles in large formations, whereas the Ninja was much more akin to a modern Special Forces guy who operates alone or in small groups. And tossing your Special Forces folks onto a conventional battlefield is a giant no-no ;-)

The Tests

These guys tested all manner of weapons and protective equipment from both sides for over 3 long days! They concluded the Ninja's sword - the "ninjato" (basically a straight version of the Samurai's "katana", itself the most lethal sword every devised) was FAR superior to the Spartan's shorter, bronze age sword.

The Ninja's weaponry was generally more robust and inventive. It included a lethal and accurate poison blow gun, the deadly "shuriken" throwing stars, and even the ability to attack the opponent's eyes with crushed glass or primitive pepper spray. He also wielded a ball and chain device that could deliver a killing blow right through the Spartan's bronze helmet.

So you'd think after all that the Ninja would win, right?

Guess again. After all the data was in, they fed it into a computer and then ran the 1-on-1 combat simulation 1000 times. And the Spartan won 65% of the time!

How???

Simple, really: he was better protected than the Ninja. Yes, the Ninja had great weapons, but his bladed weapons couldn't penetrate the Spartan's bronze body armor and he could never get to the soft, unarmored spots because of the Spartan's expertise with his massive 4-foot diameter shield.

In other words, the reason the Spartan won comes down to one single principle; the same principle I've been trying to get you to pay attention to for a long time now...

RESILIENCE

So despite all the sophisticated weapons and strategies employed by both sides (and especially the Ninja), it all came down to resilience. And that principle says, "if your opponent can't hurt you, but you can hurt him, you win."

If you're saying, "that's all very nice, but I can't remember the last time I was attacked on the street by a Ninja," then consider the following:

Whatever goal you wish to achieve and, by extension, whatever fate you wish to avoid, there are typically only 1-3 key skills that you need to master in order to do so.

That means that if you want to get in great shape, you have to consider only 3 things - strength, flexibility and endurance. And you can get in better shape than 95% of the population by concentrating on only 3 exercises.

If you want to avoid cancer, then you need to boost your immune system to its optimal state. And you can do this by mastering 3 skills - diet, superfoods and undoing the 7 deadly spirals of disease (which is what Rock Solid Health Qi Gong does).

If you want to achieve wealth in your business, then there is only one skill you need to master. That's marketing. Everything else in business is just a postscript to that.

So now here's my challenge to you personally... Think about any one goal you want to achieve and figure out scientifically what are the 1-3 skills you must master to get there.

And that's the lesson from the Spartan warrior. Keep it simple and focus your energy on the essentials.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

When EVERYTHING Seems to Go Wrong...at Once!

Hi there,

As I just described to you in today's email, this year's Holy Week has more than lived up to its reputation as a time of trials and temptations. And it's a fact of human life, no matter what your spiritual perspective, that there WILL be times when you're overwhelmed by one crisis after another.

Fortunately, the world's Authentic Ancient Traditions have some wisdom to share with you that will help you prepare, survive and even thrive in the midst of it all...

First, though, I need to address the obvious problem... most people are under the partly mistaken impression that spiritual life is all about finding PEACE.

Well, yes it is... but...

Keep in mind that for most people around you, their ideas of inner peace don't go much beyond the kind of "peace" you feel when you're sunning yourself on a tropical beach with a good book in one hand and a pina colada in the other.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to point out that that kind of "peace" is superficial. It's really just a temporary absence of trouble.

I think you'll agree, though, that true inner peace would have to be something so strong you couldn't lose it because of changes in your circumstances. Otherwise it wouldn't be true inner peace at all, just an imitation. So let's dig a little deeper.

The next level of inner peace is the deep calming of your central nervous system. This is already a great thing in our culture because so few people ever experience it. Hara is one of the most effective ways to pursue this kind of peace.

Peace in the sense of deep calm in your central nervous system is usually a prerequisite for spiritual progress, but it's not the deepest level of inner peace. And that makes sense, of course, because, no matter how profoundly calm your nerves are, you can still lose that peace.

So the ultimate level of inner peace has to be so strong that it renders you invulnerable. It has to be a peace that "passes all understanding", as Christ said; otherwise it's bogus. This kind of peace only comes as the fruit of consistency in the practice of meditation and/or noetic prayer.

The catch is this: meditation and noetic prayer are tools for bringing the ultimate experience of inner peace. However, they do this by acting as "drills" that dredge up a lot of supressed emotional garbage so that this very garbage can be processed, integrated and transformed.

And that's partly why people in deep spiritual practice feel so "set upon", especially in the early stages. They're dealing with the darkness within. This tends to leave you with the feeling that the universe itself is conspiring against you! Actually, in a certain sense, the universe is conspiring FOR you; it just doesn't feel that way ;-)

You see, all these trials have a huge benefit that you don't sense when you're in the middle of them. Slowly but surely they're detaching you from your attachment to results, your attachment to your own addictions, from your attachment to this short and transitory life itself. This is part of getting you "unstuck" from the world of time and space and focusing your gaze on the transcendent reality.

In other words, you're being pulled towards enlightenment. You're being made spiritually strong, invulnerable to your environment and turned into a tested and proven warrior, capable of leading others.

Here are some tips from Ancient Traditions about how to make the journey easier:

1. Practice your spiritual discipline at every opportunity, whether you "feel like it" or not.
2. Expect challenges more than peace and learn to enjoy and thrive on challenge. This will give you courage.
3. Set challenges for yourself, especially physical ones, and use them to hone your Warrior's spirit.
4. Remember that every challenge conceals benefit for you within it. This will give you fortitude.
5. Keep yourself in good physical shape - without this you automatically begin to feel weak and powerless.
6. Stick to your program of regular exercise, regular spiritual practice and a good diet - this above all functions as a WALL around you.
7. Remember, that in a spiritual battle you can be lose over and over again without being defeated. The only defeat is giving up. Stand your ground no matter what. This will teach you faith, because if you stand your ground - meaning you maintain your meditation / prayer - you'll see yourself miraculously rescued time and time again.

Momentarily I have to leave for our main Easter service. It lasts 4 hours or so, starting just before midnight. Usually a joyful time, this year it comes on the heels of several nasty conflicts in the parish and so for me this service is likely to be a major spiritual trial.

I could choose to cower in my bed and not go. Or I can make the Warrior's choice and "dive in". In the words of a great spiritual guide of recent times, unless a person enters into the sea of trials armed with nothing but faith, he will not advance spiritually so much as an inch.

Diving in...

Dr. Symeon Rodger