Prepare to start 2015 off on the ‘right’ foot and engage your right brain to establish new habits towards improved health, greater balance and satisfaction in life!  Two brand new evening seminars are now available at the Coquitlam campus of Douglas College:

Mindfulness: Manage Stress and Increase Your Sense of Inner Peace  It is a known fact that stress compromises our health and immune system.  In a world that relies heavily on external remedies and medicine, it is reassuring to know that we can enhance our own physical health and emotional wellbeing by adopting a certain state of mind.  Journey into the gifts of mindfulness and discover the fundamentals of practice that literally transforms your life from the inside out.  Learn effective strategies for managing stress and experience a powerfully effective and simple meditation that can be easily incorporated into your daily life.  Your path to inner peace starts here!      Weds., Jan. 21, 2015    6:30 – 8:30 pm    

A Symphony of the Mind: Elevate your Consciousness for a Happy, Healthy Life   Happiness and health go hand in hand.  The degree of success you experience in each of these areas depends largely on your ability to balance both your inner and outer worlds.  Your inner world, comprised of spirit and emotional energy, thrives on right brain thinking and creative thought processes while your outer world requires left brain thinking and rational thought processes.  A symphony of the mind is necessary to achieve a happy and healthy life.  Join engaging discussions to discover essential ingredients for mastering the art of living well.  Just as a conductor orchestrates a magnificent overture, you too can command your mind to create a grand symphony.   Weds., Feb. 4, 2015     6:30 – 8:30 pm

Location: Douglas College, David Lam Campus, 1250 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam, B.C.   Room #C1002  (in new Health Sciences Wing)

Register before Jan 1, 2015 for discount:  $50+GST/2 seminars or after Jan 1, 2015   $30+GST/seminar

Click here to register for Mindfulness/Stress

Click here to register for Symphony of the Mind

Listening is an art that can be surprisingly difficult.  How often have you caught yourself wandering off in distraction while another person is speaking to you?  For example, you might have drifted off into problem solving, planning for the next day, or even daydreaming.  Listening becomes even more difficult when the environment is filled with noise and activities.  Overwhelming sensory stimuli hinders our ability to receive information clearly and accurately.  This can be detrimental especially if the information being conveyed is important.

Mindfulness is key when it comes to effective listening.  Mindfulness helps you to stay in the present moment and bring full awareness to what the other person is saying.  In the next few weeks,  you will find tips for practicing mindfulness while developing the art of listening.  The benefits are profound since the better your listening skills, the better others will listen to you as well.

Relationships have a life of their own.  Relationships are cyclical and never static, with times of ease and times of struggle, times of closeness and distance, times of growth and repose.  Some relationships last a few days, weeks, months or years while others last our entire lifetime. The practice of mindfulness brings awareness to the quality of all of our relationships as we grow through life.

Mindfulness allows us to be present and cultivate life enhancing relationships. Perhaps some relationships require serious conversations to evolve them while some are long past their ‘best before date’. Respect the life of relationships. Honour yourself and others with intentions of highest good. Have the courage to end those relationships where life enhancing energy no longer exists.

The benefits of practicing mindfulness in relationships are immense.  Mindfulness allows you to steer through difficult situations with integrity and dignity.  It helps you to become more aware of your feelings, thoughts, behaviours and important details of the situation.  As you expand your awareness to include the big picture, you open yourself to other perspectives and even empathy for the other person.  Above all, mindfulness empowers you with an open mind for inner peace and harmony with those relationships most important to you!

Assertiveness is a valuable skill that is worth its’ weight in gold!  Being mindful when asserting yourself means knowing how you feel and having the ability to communicate your feelings to the other person, tactfully and respectfully.  Practice saying what you need to say with the intention of maintaining harmony or negotiating a compromise.  Focus on win-win outcomes.

Use ‘I-statements’ without the need to defend or confront the other person.  For example, “I feel sad when you talk to me in that tone”.  You do not need to explain yourself unless you choose to do so.  Simply let the other person know how you were affected by their words and actions.

The practice of asserting yourself goes far beyond setting limits.  Assertiveness involves awareness of your feelings, speech, tones, and actions.  It involves your ability to truly know yourself and assess situations to respond consciously.  With awareness of your true feelings and unconditionally accepting them, you can then move beyond limiting habits that impede personal growth.  Remind yourself that feelings are okay and they are merely energy moving through you.  They are neither good or bad.  Be mindful of when you fall back into the habit of discounting or obsessing in them.  This is your turning point!

Relationships are tricky and sometimes sticky!  Think of a situation where you and another person were not in agreement.  Bring mindful awareness to your patterns of communication with this person.  Jot down the following:

• what happened prior to the disagreement
• what you most wanted from the other person
• what the other person most likely wanted from you
• your feelings at the moment of disagreement
• your level of awareness regarding what was really happening
• the outcome

Be as honest and objective as possible.  Refrain from judging yourself or the other person.  You may want to shred or trash the paper after you have processed the experience.   Once you have acknowledged and accepted your emotions, ask yourself what you could have done differently to contribute to a more harmonious outcome.

If it involves setting limits, give yourself permission to do so.  Allow yourself to take care of yourself and honour your personal wellness.  If it involves embracing greater patience and a more open mind, commit to practicing loving-kindness meditation every day.  Repeating phrases such as “May I be peaceful.  May I be happy” and “May you be peaceful.  May you be happy” offers immense healing powers and builds your capacity for unconditional love and acceptance.  For more information on loving-kindness meditations, Mary Brantley and Tesilya Hanauer have written a wonderfully inspiring book titled “The Gift of Loving-Kindness”.

Relationships offer some of the greatest lessons in life.  Whether they are voluntary or involuntary, professional or personal, relationships can be immensely rewarding and extremely challenging.  For those times of great challenge, mindfulness is paramount for dealing effectively with relationship stress and achieving harmony.  Mindfulness allows you to develop greater awareness of your patterns of communication, identify problematic thoughts, and respond consciously and respectfully for mutual benefits.  In the next few posts, there will be several tips for applying mindfulness to relationship challenges.

Tears are healthy.  Tears are a healing.  They help us to release dark emotions from within.  Our body holds hurt until it is released.  How can you release tears from past hurts when you do not feel the urge to cry or if the hurt has been suppressed for so long that you cannot access the hurt buried deep within?

There are several ways in which you can release the hurt.  These include body therapies such as reiki, massage therapy, kundalini yoga, and physical exercise you enjoy.  Other sources include music, movies, and stories with words and images that resonate with your heart.  Explore a variety of ways to find out which method will provide the cathartic release you need.   The most important thing to remember is to continue engaging in life and not to withdraw.  Life is for living and emotions are the essence of being human.  Honour all of your emotions, dark and light, and honour your one great life.

Processing emotions in a healthy way involves adaptive strategies that support long-term wellness.  Along with physical exercise and enlisting a confidant, meditation and  journaling are two other effective strategies proven to heal emotions.

Journaling may involve both writing and drawing.  Creative journaling is a highly effective process that allows insights to be revealed through images.  Enter the sphere of infinite possibilities and potential when you access this right brain approach to wellness.  Try using your non-dominant hand for a change and see what comes up!