There's lots you can do to prevent and deal with Road Rage. If counting to 10 hasn't worked for you, pick your level below - choose from Beginner, Intermediate or Expert - and try one of the following techniques. Each one is designed for maximum satisfaction and earns karma points.
BEGINNER: HEART BOMBS
Technique Conjure up a bucketful of bombs and launch 'em at that guy who just cut you off… make sure the bombs you're using are shaped like full, red heart-shaped water balloons and imagine them bursting all over the guy's head as they land one satisfyingly whack after another.
Satisfaction Quotient Oh yeah… that's what I'm talking about!
Karma Points Quite a few, because while you're still indulging in your anger, you recognize that your anger shouldn't hurt or endanger anyone, including yourself. And love bombs, while still bombs, explode with love. So that's a start.
INTERMEDIATE: ONE BREATH BIG BELLY
Technique Through your nose, breath in as much air as you can. Make sure to fill your lungs from the bottom up. If you're doing this right, your belly should significantly expand (try to get your belly to look at least 15 months pregnant). Now hold it for bit, maybe 5 to 10 seconds. (Not until you pass out, please. Be sensible.) Then let your breath out through your mouth, bringing in your belly as you do to push out every last bit of air, and at the same time, imagine that your exhale is actually coming out of your chest. Rinse, repeat.
Satisfaction Quotient: Wow... that feels soooo much better!
Karma Points: Many, because you didn't engage at all with the guy who just cut you off, recognizing that allowing any situation or person to "make" you mad is just giving up your personal power. And why would anyone do that? Celebrate your masterful self!
ADVANCED: CALMING COMPASSION
Technique There isn't one; there's just you and the moment.
Satisfaction Level Complete.
Karma Points Infinite, because you are now beyond technique, beyond allowing external events and people to control how you feel and act. And that guy who just cut you off? You recognize that his bad driving isn't personal and has nothing to do with you at all. He's simply unaware, wrapped up in his own problems and needs, just like you used to be, so you can relate. You drive along calmly now, grateful that you have a car (lots of folks don't) and that you've figured this all out. And then, for old time's sake, you heart bomb the guy with love, because the way he's driving, he probably needs all the love he can get.
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Hemi-Sync based Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She co-facilitates meditative retreats, including the popular Living From The Heart weekend workshop retreat.
Research has now shown that through thought, intentionality and heart centered techniques, we have the ability to change the very structure of our DNA.
Think DNA is the sole determinant of who you are? What you're capable of? Even what diseases you may get? Then here's some good news; while science has for decades touted the all-encompassing rule of DNA through the theory of genetic determinism, it turns out there's more - quite a bit more - determining our phisiologic fate.
Enter Epigenetics, which since the 1950s has studied the effects of our environment - including our emotions, intentions, and thoughts - on our DNA structure and expression. And what they've recently proven is astounding; we possess the ability to effect and change our very DNA.
Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., cell biologist and bestselling author of The Biology of Belief states the distinction between genetic determinism and epigenetics is vitally important. Says Lipton in the online magazine, Superconsciousness: "The difference between these two is significant because this fundamental belief called genetic determinism literally means that our… lives are being controlled by things outside of our ability to change them. This leads to victimization that the illnesses and diseases that run in families are propagated through the passing of genes associated with those attributes. Laboratory evidence shows this is not true."
Simply put, epigenetic research demonstrates that your positive (or negative) thoughts, emotions, and intentions can significantly effect your body and your health… all the way down to the cellular level. So while cancer may run in your family and be coded in your DNA, there's quite a lot you can do - and think about - to avoid it. And it may be the heart - not the brain - that delivers the most effective results.
Researchers at the Institute of Heartmath have found that individuals can intentionally change DNA through the generation of heart coherence, a beneficial state reached through specific breathing and meditative techniques. In one study, an individual, directed to enter the state of heart coherence while holding three DNA samples, was asked to intentionally unwind two of the DNA strands while leaving the third untouched. Amazingly, the individual succeeded, demonstrating that "individuals capable of generating high ratios of heart coherence were able to alter DNA conformation according to their intention" and that individuals who showed low ratios of heart coherence (which defined the study's control group), could not. (Modulation of DNA Conformation by Heart-Focused Intention: McCraty, Atkinson, Tomasino, 2003)
This is really is big news, folks, and I urge you to start using it to your advantage. So grab some food for thought and start munching, because you're not just what you eat, you're what you think, too.
Next Step: Use + Share This Important Info
1. Learn To Live From Your Heart
2. Review The Research
3. Read The Biology Belief by Bruce Liption, PhD
4. Watch 1 Minute Healing
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Hemi-Sync based Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She co-facilitates meditative retreats, including the popular Living From The Heart weekend workshop retreat.
How does your fear of death effect the way in which you live? And here's a question... if you could actually embrace your eventual death with at least neutrality or even - can this be possible - joy, how might your life and your choices be different? Better? More vibrant? Richer? There are other cultures which do not seem to shy away from death the way we westerners do, whispering in the shadows, covering children's ears and planning for it only furtively, like a victim unaware of when the final onslaught will come reaping its defenseless harvest.
It was about 5:30 in the afternoon in February many years back. It was of course already dark, as late afternoons are in Maine's darkened version of winter. I had just walked from my kitchen to my living room and sat down on the couch. It was white, the couch. Crazy color for a couch, I know you're thinking that. But it was slip covered, so I could stain treat and wash it. The fabric was a thick slightly off white basket weave. I still have it, in fact. It is as warm and inviting, and stain free as it was when I first purchased it, thanks to the marathon stain-treating I gave it while watching the super bowl.
But this isn't so much about my couch as it is about my death. So to continue... I sat down on the couch. I hadn't had anything to eat for about 3 hours. About two hours earlier I'd taken some stuff for a headache - a nicely rare event and the headache was gone. But my skin started to feel strange; I started to feel strange. Then I looked at my skin and watched as a small section turned red and puffy. I touched the skin beside it, and a new red puffy patch appeared. And then a third, and a forth, and a fifth... I was breaking out in hives and they were appearing anywhere I touched. I had never had an allergic reaction. I had never had hives. Nothing new had been introduced into my system or environment, nothing had changed... at least nothing I could see. But something must have. I was being quickly covered in hives.
"An allergic reaction," I thought to myself. "To what?" I retorted.
"That doesn't matter," my survival instinct said. "What comes next could be a swollen throat and suffocation. This could be Anaphylactic Shock."
My survival instinct called 911. In minutes, our town ambulance - which happens to live up the street - rushed me to the hospital with rising blood pressure, horrible shaking, and anxiety that was getting more severe by the minute. I was very, very frightened. I was shaking uncontrollably and my teeth were chattering by the time I reached the hospital. They asked me if I was cold. I remember thinking that was an odd question. You don't call 911 when you're cold. Obviously the shaking and chattering had something to do with the hives. Right? Regardless, my body began to calm down and eventually normalized. They were unable to determine what had caused my reaction and sent me home, where I felt fine, but baffled.
For days following the emergency trip to the hospital, I continued in bafflement. Not so much by my physical reaction, but by my emotional one. I was so very, very afraid. And the thing I was scared of was death... my death. But I'd always been fine with death. I'd thought - or thought I'd thought - it was an adventure, something which might reintroduce me to realms of spiritual majesty, wisdom and joy. Sounds like a good time at least. And yet when I thought I might actually be going there, I was petrified.
How could I have been so terrified of something I thought I believed might at the very least be interesting? Was I that unknown to myself? Now both death and my lack of self awareness bothered me. It was then I really started to search... inwardly, around me, observing and questioning. How does my fear of death effect the way in which I live? And here's a question... if I could actually embrace my eventual death with at least neutrality or even - can this be possible - joy, how might my life and my choices be different? Better? More vibrant? Richer? There are other cultures which do not seem to shy away from death the way we westerners do, whispering in the shadows, covering children's ears and planning for it only furtively, like a victim unaware of when the final onslaught will come reaping its defenseless harvest.
My quest to understand the abject fear I felt back on the white couch watching hives appear unbidden on my body led me to study death and its role in my life. And I have an idea that perhaps death isn't an event, but a process, and one which starts the moment our hearts first beat in our little chests. It is there that we are introduced to life and in that introduction is perhaps not so much a tacit goodbye, but an understood commencement... a mental, emotional, spiritual and certainly physiological understanding that just as we had our first heartbeat, we will one day also have our last. But like all commencements, it is just the beginning.
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She co-facilitates meditative retreats, including Looking At Death, where she shares her journey in coming to terms with death, and therefore in the process, her graduation to living life more fully.
LOOK WITHIN TO LIVE IT UP!
Does your conscious awareness "live" in your head, behind your eyes? Is this the perch from which you view the world? It's where most people do, except for folks like Helen Keller who said: "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart."
This might just be true.
When we were developing the weekend retreat, Living From The Heart, one of the most amazing things we included was a technique for moving one's awareness from the head, behind the eyes, to the heart. Sounds weird, right? Or impossible. Or both. Yet while it may be odd, it's very possible and it changes everything.
Moving your consciousness from your head to your heart isn't imagining that you are doing it (although when you first try it, faking it till you make it is a great first step), it's really and truly moving it.
Once you experience awareness from your heartspace, instead of your head-space, things "look" different, feel different… in fact when perceiving from this place of nonjudgmental acceptance, things actually may be different.
And isn't that amazing? There are so many little - yet pretty profound - things we can do to make our world, and even the world, a better place. And as Buddha said: "The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart."
Stop looking up, and instead look within.
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Hemi-Sync Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She co-facilitates meditative retreats, including the popular Living From The Heart.
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Summary: Cindy Swan, diagnosed with cancer, is recently back from Brazil where she met renowned spiritual healer, John of God, credited with hundreds of miraculous healings. Come hear what happened next.
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Camden, Maine: For the last 40 years, millions of people worldwide have considered João Teixeira de Faria, internationally known as John of God, the most powerful healer alive today. ABC News, 60 Minutes, CNN and The Oprah Show have all done segments on this man who calls himself a simple farmer, but who is none-the-less credited with countless healings.
Thousands, including presenter Cindy Swan, have sought the healing of physical disease, including cancers, tumors, and birth defects, traveling to the Casa de Dom Inacio de Loyola in Abadiania, Goias, Brazil to attend one of John of God's free clinics.
“I do not cure anybody. God heals, and in his infinite goodness permits the Entities to heal and console my brothers. I am merely an instrument in God’s divine hands.” – John of God: JohnofGod.com
On Sunday, March 4 from 1 pm - 4 pm, Rock The Path, a not-for-profit retreat and mediation center in Camden, Maine, will present Cindy Swan, recently returned from the Casa in Brazil where she met with John of God. Ms. Swan will share her experience, present a slide show, and show a short film. The event is free with donations gratefully accepted. Please RSVP for this event online at www.RockThePath.org or by calling Rock The Path at 207-236-7459
As a facilitator and director at Rock The Path and as an intuitive medium, I'm often asked questions like... Do I have a spiritual guide? How can I connect? Are angels guides?
Most people I encounter on this topic are curious and interested, wanting to know who their guides are and wondering how best to connect with "higher guidance". But sometimes I encounter folks who don't believe in guides. Yet whether or not you actually believe in a separate entity, energy or spirit with the label "guide" is really irrelevant.
We all have Guides or Inner Voices, or Muses, or Angels, or a Higher Self or a connection to Spirit or God, or to use a Jungian term, access to the collective unconscious. What we label this interaction is no where near as important as participating in it. It's natural and healthy to want to know, and connecting is an endeavor truly worthy of our time and effort - it is also one very likely to be richly rewarded.
In my experience, we need only set our intention and put in a little effort regarding the things we want to accomplish, and our efforts and intentions are matched, multiplied and expanded to give us the requested experience. So, should you wish to "make contact," all you need do is clearly set your intention to do just that.
Guides are there to personally assist you, and so getting to know them is a personal quest. Therefore, get quiet and listen. A regular meditation practice is an excellent way to both initially connect with and then deepen the relationship. Start with a few minutes a day of simply getting quiet - meditation truly doesn't have to be a "big deal" and any way you personally find to "do it" easily and comfortably is the right way. Simply find a quiet space, maybe play a little soothing music and definitely unplug the phone.
When I was initially searching for contact with my guide Elvin, I used the book Opening to Channel: How to Connect with Your Guide - this is an excellent manual for finding, connecting and communicating with your guides. Through insightful discussion and simple exercises, this book takes you successfully step-by-step through the process. And don't be surprised if you meet more than one guide in your meditative travels - your guide is likely part of a group, although s/he is also likely to be your 'primary' at the moment.
Remember to call in love and light and be in a state of gratitude before your meditations, and clearly set your intention before you begin. You can also ask your guide - even if you have yet to consciously "meet" - to direct you to resources (be on the lookout for signs, synchronicity and "coincidences" in your daily life after you ask), which will aid in communicating and deepening your relationship with her/him.
And have fun for Pete's sake! Connecting with your guides is truly an incredible and rewarding journey.
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About The Author CJ Kenna holds degrees in psychology and business, is a certified psychic medium, and is a founding director at Rock The Path, a nonprofit Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She meditates a lot and facilitates several self discovery workshops, including Get High, a workshop for consciously connecting to higher guidance.
||| DO YOU YOI?
Is YOUR Christmas shopping complete? Have you on hand plenty of "Yardsticks of Impossibility" (also known as "YOIs") ready for use this holiday season? If you're human, you probably do.
They're really rather useful, and a snap to gift. You can use them to measure yourself (and your performance, your behavior, that thing you said a few minutes ago, what you look like, how much you weigh, etc.) quickly, easily and conveniently in pretty much any situation.
And what's more, once you've consistently applied YOIs to yourself, it's a cinch to effectively apply it to others (like your spouse, children, friends, that guy over there you've never met but you're darn sure he's a bozo).
Contrary to popular belief, and despite its widespread use and almost infinite adaptability, it's not actually beneficial; in fact it can be harmful to both the one being measured, and the one doing the measuring.
And here's why.
No matter what, YOIs will never measure fairly, or even realistically. Cleverly, they deceive by falsely making the "measurer" feel powerful, strong or like they've got it all together, while they destroy by consistently finding those they are applied to ineffective, inadequate, and "less-than." Fortunately, there's a better yardstick - available absolutely everywhere - but perhaps a tad harder to apply, at least at first: Acceptance.
This Christmas (not that getting a Kindle Fire wouldn't be cool), consider a rather radical, one-size-fits-all gift... Acceptance. Just for a day, or as the perfect stocking stuffer, pick someone you wish were different in some way, and get out and apply your "Yardstick of Acceptance" (YOA). With it, you'll be better able to see them clearly - not as you want them to be - but for who they actually are. And, like all really good presents, might just make them feel really good come Christmas morning.
It's an amazing gift, acceptance, and one most of us dearly want. So do make sure to apply it to yourself first, because once you've tried it, you'll be excited to share it. And then you'll know first hand that there are very few gifts (including the aforementioned Kindle), that can rival it.
Need more gift giving ideas? Consider compassion, love, and (all right, fine) the Kindle Fire.
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About The Author CJ Kenna holds degrees in psychology and business, thinks Radical Acceptance is a really useful idea, and is a founding director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She meditates a lot and co-facilitates residential self discovery workshops, including the popular Excursion Retreat.
For The Love of CAN'T
Whether you think you can -- or you think you can't -- you're right.” - Henry Ford
Do you enjoy CAN'T? The security of it? The relief CAN'T brings? The plausible excuse it offers?
CAN'T is so darn useful. It gets us out of so much, doesn't it? Yet how can just a little word accomplish all this? Simple. Just say or think you CAN'T do something, and guess what? You CAN'T! Voila! It's that easy.
But wait! There's more!
CAN'T is especially effective if you both say and think it. And want to get a real boost from this powerful word? Repeat it often. Nothing works quite as well, except maybe this word:
----> CAN <----
Like its negative counterpart, CAN is incredibly effective and very powerful in programming yourself to do just about anything. Why, just try saying CAN a few times out loud and see if you don't begin to believe it yourself! Just a snare and a delusion you say pessimistically?
Not if you believe it. And you CAN.
You see, something interesting happens to us humans when we have decided on something. Most of what we experience reinforces, rather than challenges, our beliefs and ideas. It's not that the challenges aren't out there, it just that we don't see them. Scary, huh? But also very good! This means you CAN change your mind, you CAN change your attitude, and you CAN change your reality and your life anytime you'd like, and then magically most of what you then experience will reinforce this new CAN DO idea.
Neat, huh?
Try it. Try it now. Just for this one day. If it doesn't work, you can always retreat to the comfort and safety of CAN'T. But if it does work -- and it does -- you've just changed your whole life with one little word. And you wouldn't have had to go to the gym or even eat your spinach to do it. It's a relatively easy change with literally astounding results.
So get out there and do it. Start right now. Why? Because you CAN.
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She co-facilitates programs and retreats for self-discovery, including the popular Excursion Retreat.
I'd like to tell you a story. A really interesting story. A story about Meditation's
Wild Side, which allows us to have meditative experiences with others not physically, but in the esoteric realm of shared consciousness.
It was Thursday, October 12, 2006 and I was at the end of a weeklong group workshop called Lifeline at The Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia. As a meditative exercise, I was learning to access a specific state of consciousness known as Focus Level 27. My previous attempts at accessing this state had been intriguing, entertaining but not all that successful. For instance, I was having trouble accessing a spot in Focus Level 27 called the Healing Center. I could get into the focus level, I could find the Healing Center and I could touch the "doors", but try as I might, they would not open for me. I found this both amusing and annoying. But on this morning, during this specific exercise, I was finally able to open the doors and enter the Healing Center.
When I walked through the front entrance, the space looked exactly like a hospital, but was a study in complete whiteness. The walls were white. The floors were white. The ceilings were white. And the people in the center, who looked like doctors and nurses, all wore white, and wrote on white charts with white implements, some of them sitting at white tables or leaning on white counters. It was not stark - it was bright and peaceful and incredibly friendly. As I walked through the entrance and down the first main hallway, various people glanced up and smiled - with their mouths and with their eyes. Genuine, lovely and warm, those quiet smiles made me feel completely at ease and totally welcome.
As I reached the end of the hallway, I saw Reggie, a member of my workshop group, who was at the time doing the same meditation I was, though he was in a different part of the building. I wasn't surprised to see him; I often "encounter" people I know during meditations. Over six feet tall and stocky, Reggie reminded me of a football player. He was gentle and several times during the weeklong workshop we'd had many long conversations about everything from politics to the strength and frailty of the human heart. In this meditation, Reggie was standing at the end of the hallway. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was about to go into a room and nodded to his right, indicating a large, white hospital room, complete with a bed, table, lamp... I commented that I thought the room was pretty stark and he said, "So change it." And I realized I could - I could make the room or anywhere else here look exactly as I wished - afterall, it was my meditation - and with that I resolved to create exciting forms with a little less white.
Before I left him though, I spontaneously took my right index finger and touched between the brows on his forehead, at what's known as the area of the Third Eye, and said "Remember." I then went off on my meditation, to a healing pool in the middle of which was a giant crystal and floated for a time, gazing through the glass domed ceiling of the watery oasis.
At the end of the meditation I returned to normal waking consciousness and, so as not to forget, furiously scribbled down my experience, including my conversation with Reggie in the hallway of the healing center. Just as I'd finished getting it all on paper, Reggie walked in, pointed directly at me and said: "I remember." He then told me of the white healing center and the conversation we'd had in the hallway. He also said he later saw me in the pool and described it to a tee. Incredible. And exciting. And what the heck are the potential implications of this amazing experience?
This was the first time I'd consciously had a corroborated shared meditative experience. It was not my last. And when they occur, I wonder what kind of reality allows for this type of experience? Certainly not the reality I live most of my waking conscious life in. In this reality, the one of alarm clocks, deadlines and traffic jams, I am separate from everyone else. But these glimpses of something... more... something... deeper lead me to think that perhaps reality is grander, broader, much more multifaceted and dimensional then I realize, and it is through meditation and other non-usual channels that I and all of us, can experience the greater reality where we share experiences not just when in physical proximity, but through thought and energy too. When we are paying attention to these oft ignored channels of existence and communication, we learn that separation may actually be false. Perhaps we are all connected, sharing a nonduality which simply allows for us to merely think we are actually very separate individuals on very personal quests, when we are actually not. And if this is so, it is this kind of construct which would explain and allow for things like shared - and corroborated - meditative experiences. And perhaps a lot of other rather esoteric experiences as well.
Hmmm. I think I'll meditate on it.
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Hemi-Sync Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She co-facilitates meditative retreats, including the popular Excursion Retreat, where participants have also had shared meditative experiences.
The Healthy Mind Platter includes the essential activities that your brain needs to function at its best today and stave off serious health issues tomorrow.
Developed in conjunction with the NeuroLeadership Institute in Sydney, Australia and the University of California-Los Angeles School of Medicine, the Healthy Mind Platter involves seven daily activities - or habits - to bolster both your brainpower and level of happiness.
Do you get enough of them? No? Then make time. You'll be happier and healthier.
1. Time In: Time for Meditation (Try it now), Yoga and Prayer.
Do this daily to build neuronal connections that may reduce your risk of dementia.
2. Play: Time to laugh and simply enjoy.
Playing, doing spontaneous things, ejoying the moment sparks new connections in the brain.
3. Focus: Time to freely focus on whatever you're doing
Paying close attention stimultaes brain cell connections, keeping them strong and growing.
4. Connection: Time to relate, visit, and connect with others.
Making personal connections releases stress reducing, mood enhancing brain chemicals, like oxytocin and serotonin.
5. Exercise: Time to get moving.
Exercise releases chemicals that help the brain produce new cells, to improve improve memory and learning.
6. Down Time: Time to do nothing but just be.
Giving your mind a break recharges your brain circuitry.
7. Sleep: Time to rest and recharge.
Not getting enough spikes cortisol, lowers immunity and dulls creativity.
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Hemi-Sync Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She facilitates meditative retreats, including the popular Excursion Retreat.