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Like the oxygen mask… the power of laughter

Remember how, in the safety instructions in airplanes, they always say to “Put on your own oxygen mask BEFORE you help anyone else”. This is such a good metaphor for a fundamental truth about life; we have to help ourselves before we can really help others. Our first duty is to take care of ourselves SO THAT we can care for others, fulfil our potential and contribute to the world.

It is said that the highest forms of healing are those which we do for ourselves. We are blessed in this age, to have so many tools to help us. It so happens that yoga, yoga therapy and hypnotherapy have been the main ones I have found to work well for me and that I use with my clients and students, but there are of course many others.

The basics are pretty obvious. A form of exercise we enjoy and are motivated to do regularly. A diet, which makes us actually feel good, rather than just gratifying an addiction, and is also pleasurable to eat. Noticing what we think about and cultivating thought habits, which generate positive emotions. The causes of dis-ease are from within and well as from outside, emotions affect our biochemistry and thus our health. No matter how bad a day has been it is always possible to find something to feel grateful for and to fall asleep with ‘an attitude of gratitude’.

And finally humour. This may be our saving grace. Laughter, we are told, is the best medicine. When we can laugh, it lifts us out of the situation and ourselves, it gives us perspective and punctures excessive self importance. There is even laughter yoga. In a group you start laughing with the ‘fake it ’til you make it’ intention, then it gets more and more real, because laughter is so infectious and can eventually become uncontrollable.

Click on the image and enjoy what happens as you watch and listen….

 

 

 

 

Change your Mind

It would seem that many of us have developed habits of thinking which generate negative emotions and we thus become rather good at making ourselves feel bad!

“As a man thinketh, so is he” ~ James Allen

Unfortunately the habits are usually unconscious and it requires quite a high degree of self knowledge to become aware of them (let alone to change them). Hence the enormous popularity of many forms of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

Meditation techniques like Mindfulness, TM and Vipassana teach us how to remain steady, calm and detached while being aware of the ever changing current of thoughts and sensations. This is a skill and takes practice.

Personal development teachers such as Anthony Robbins teach us that we can change our moods and thoughts by changing the focus of our thoughts or by changing our physiology. This is relatively easy and many of us do it automatically, such as going for a walk or a run when we need to clear our mind or resolve a problem.

The psychology of Yoga uses all of these approaches. In doing the postures and breathing and observing the effects on our body and mind we deepen our self awareness. If we practise regularly (even if only for a few minutes) we notice how different we are each day. This depends on so many factors; what we’ve eaten, how we slept, what we dreamed about, the climate, the time of the month, the preoccupations we have at that moment….. it usually becomes pointless to try to analyse why a pose, which was easy yesterday seems hard today and simpler to just accept that this is just how it is, this is how the current is flowing at this moment. At the same time, in doing a practice, we notice how it changes us, changes our energy level, our thoughts and our mood.

There is a little bit of extra magic that we can use. We can DECIDE how we want to feel by having an intention a ‘Sankalpa‘. This is a positive resolve which comes from our intuition about what we need. It is best determined by taking a few moments to relax, tune in to how you are and asking the part of yourself that knows, the question ‘if there were something I need right now what would it be?’. Then rather than trying to think of something, you wait patiently for the answer to come. The first thing which arises is usually the most appropriate. I find that 9 times out of 10 people who thought they wanted more energy actually find they want to relax and are often surprised at this. It could be to enjoy your day, no matter what arises, or for the solution to a particular problem to come to you by lunchtime. Imagine, before you do your practice, how it feels to have your intention fulfilled, then look back at the end of the day to see how it worked its magic.