January, 2012  will be the beginning of my 35th year of experiencing being captured by the God of my understanding. The first year, I didn’t have any labels for it. If you are a mystic, you generally have to be told by someone else that you are a mystic and find out for yourself what that means. It was only after I read William James’s book, The Varieties of Religious Experience that I had a label of “radical conversion”. Soon after this, someone asked me if I knew what mysticism was and I was able to add another label. I am a Christian but have gained much insight from studying all religions and incorporating other practices into my spiritual experiences.

Mystics are found in all faiths and/or religions. Beginning the mystic journey, each pilgrim has an individual journey yet all will have some common ground with other mystics. For my 35th-year journey, I have let go of most of my earthly ties to family and friends. I felt an extreme urgency to experience and study my inner experience. So, although God’s gift is free, it isn’t cheap. I have lived without most of my family for most of the 35 year experience. I have never made a lot of money or taken the time to climb the ladder. I have driven cheap cars and owned very little materially. But I did what I wanted to do–follow the God of my understanding as best I could. My reward has been Heaven on earth–the peace, love, joy, contentment, fun is amazing. And I look forward to life’s greatest adventure–giving up this bodily burden.

Some of the spiritual techniques that my help for your spiritual journey are:

(1) centering prepares us for the Presence of God;

(2) deep breathing helps us to quiet our mind because we can only think one thought at a time–when we are counting our breaths in and out, our mind is focused on one thought relieving our anxiety;

(3) meditation and prayer;

(4) mindfulness.

According to Carl McColman, who writes The Website of Unknowing, a soul friend is a friend who provides others with coaching, support and guidance as they progress along the path toward fulfilling their spiritual and mystical potential.

“Of Mystics and Activists”  by Peter J. Leithart

‘The Challenge of Understanding Mysticism” by Richard D. Engle

“Understanding Mysticism” by Matthew Bingley

Mysticism: General Information

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However, it wasn’t until June, 2009. when my husband left me for another woman that I hit my emotional bottom. Bill W., the cofounder of AA, wrote in a letter reprinted in the Grapevine dated July of 1956 that he believed the next frontier of AA would be emotional sobriety.

The main emotional support system I had in June, 2009, was my husband’s (now my ex) large extended family. The night he left, 60+ people left my life. I had no warning of this complete abandonment. Today I am grateful for this experience. I finally had to give up my “prideful self-sufficiency”. As Bill W. wrote about in his letter about emotional sobriety, I had become dependent on the family and gave up that complete surrender to the God of my understanding.

Bill W. writes in that letter:

The following excerpts from a letter of Bill Wilson’s was quoted in the memoirs of Tom Pike, and early California AA member. Tom did not use the name of the person addressed — perhaps because he was still living.

“Tom said:
Here in part is what Bill Wilson wrote in 1958 to a close friend who
shared his problem with depression, describing how Bill himself used St. Francis’s prayer as a steppingstone toward recovery:”

Dear …
”I think that many oldsters who have put our AA “booze cure” to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA … the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.”

“How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result and so into easy, happy, and good living … well, that’s not only the neurotic’s problem, it’s the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness to hew to right principles in all our affairs.”

“Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. That’s the place so many of us AA oldsters have come to. And it’s a hell of a spot, literally.”

“Last autumn, depression, having no really rational cause at all, almost took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for another long chronic spell. Considering the grief I’ve had with depressions, it wasn’t a bright prospect.”

“I kept asking myself, “Why can’t the Twelve Steps work to release depression?” By the hour, I stared at the St. Francis prayer … “It is better to comfort than to be comforted.” Here was the formula, all right, but why didn’t it work?”

“Suddenly I realized what the matter was … My basic flaw had always been dependence, almost absolute dependence on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them. And when defeat came so did my depression.”

“There wasn’t a chance of making the outgoing love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away. Reinforced by what grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed upon any set of circumstances whatsoever.”

“Then only could I be free to love as Francis had. Emotional and institutional satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love, and expressing a love appropriate to each relation of life.”

”Plainly, I could not avail myself of God’s love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me. And I couldn’t possibly do that as long as I was victimized by false dependencies. For my dependency meant demand … a demand for the possession and control of the people and the conditions surrounding me.”

”This seems to be the primary healing circuit, an outgoing love of God’s creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the real current can’t flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken, and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what adult love really is.”

After I completed a 5th step about my part in creating the abusive marriage that I was in up to June, 2009, I realized that I still wasn’t getting to the source of the matter. I no longer feared abandonment—I had survived. But why didn’t I feel completely free?

The clue I found about myself was about always having been socially isolated. I found this out by reading about PTSD. A year later after this discovery and my study of the problem and the solution, I finally found ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics). I had gone to ACOA in the 1990′s and benefitted from it. BUT  ACA and ACOA are completely different. Check out the Laundry List from ACA.

I ordered the Red Book from ACA.

And the rest, as they say, is history. I was finally home. The Red Book told me why.

“The Laundry List represents the fear and distorted thinking which result from being raised in a dysfunctional family. We are not at fault for developing these survival traits, but we are responsible for our recovery. Recognizing the link between our adult lives and our childhood years is clouded by our loyalty to the dysfunctional family system. Even if we seemingly have rejected our dysfunctional family’s lifestyle. We can still carry it with us wherever we go.”

“ACA believes there is a direct link between our childhood and our decisions and thoughts as an adult. A clue that we are affected by family dysfunction can be found in our problematic relationships, perfectionism, addictiveness, dependence, or compulsive and controlling behavior.”

I found the Red Book of ACA—the answer to my prayers for release from my addictive self—in my 34th year of recovery—at the age of 70. Praise God. I am finally free.

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1.  From Shen writing at Reunited Selves: Only and Always:

Last night’s Journal:

It was such a hard day, and it was me that made it hard. I walked away from myself. I refused to even look at any of the tools I could have used to move out of the darkness.

I wallowed in it.

The longer I let it go, the uglier it seemed. Distraction became more and more difficult and more and more necessary. There was no way to look at what I needed – even basic needs like rest, exercise and food. Looking even at that shallow depth forced me to notice how sick I was of myself. I didn’t want to see what I was doing to myself.

Now, as I know I can’t put it off any longer, I have to try to look within, to connect. I have to. The temptation to take two or three xanax and wash it all away for the night, is strong. I couldn’t continue this hiding, this self-abandonment, without some kind of outside help, and that bottle of little white pills is only a few steps away. It would be so easy… so much easier that facing the night head on… but it would only make this worse, tomorrow.

I can’t go through another day like this. I can’t let this turn into a week in that dark pit. I never want to go back there again and I’ve been falling into it all day.

The only way out is to look at it, but I’m so afraid to truly connect with myself, much less God.

“Go to the Source.”

I know. I know that, but I am so afraid…
No, that’s a lie. This isn’t fear. It’s pure shame, or maybe the fear of seeing the shame.
Yes – that’s what I don’t want to face – the shame of who I allowed myself to be, today.

Shame feels like a boulder roped around my neck. It holds me in place, keeping me from moving forward or even looking up.
So, with my head hanging down, I contemplate the choice of trying to drag myself forward with this self-imposed burden, or giving in to ignoring it for a while longer. I always have a choice. I hate that I spent all day making the wrong one. I feel so angry with myself, so disappointed in myself. I don’t want to face it.
Choice.
Choice.
How far are you going to push this? How long are you going to allow yourself to be in this place that you never need to go to?

2.  From Broken Brain—Brilliant Mind: “Back to Basic Breath”:

“I’ve been thinking back on the past few weeks, and all the upheaval that’s been going on. There have been a lot of money problems in my house, and it’s a real problem that’s been spiraling out of control – way past where I’m comfortable. I can’t keep on like this – something has got to give.”

“I feel like I’ve been making some good progress, lately, figuring things out, cutting myself a break, and so forth. But then the flashpoints come, and I feel like I’m back at Square One all over again. And just when I think I’m doing so well… It’s demoralizing, and I don’t care for the experience at all. I know I can do better. I need to do better.”

“So, I sat myself down last night and had a good think, and I pulled together a lot of the things I have learned (and a number of things I already knew) and renewed my resolve to use them all together to get myself of the funk I have fallen into.’

“What I came up with is an even stronger belief in a realization I had some time back — it’s that a lot (and I mean A LOT) of my state of mind is related to how I’m feeling physically. And the times when I am feeling most “down” on myself, mentally and emotionally, are often when I am feeling bad physically — and in my head, I interpret those feelings as mental or emotional. And I get into thinking that there’s something wrong with me, with my spirit, with my essential self.”

“Here’s an example, to help clarify — I sometimes have panic attacks. I didn’t realize it till within the past couple of years, but it’s been going on for a long time. I get “jammed up” … I get wired … and more and more adrenaline rushes through me, until I eventually melt down and feel like I’m falling into a black pit of helpless despair. It feels awful, and when it starts, it doesn’t feel like there’s anything I can do to stop my fall. After the “fall,” I feel sick on my stomach, exhausted, foggy – just wiped out. I need to sleep, but I’m so turned around and turned upside-down that I can’t relax, and I fall even farther into what feels like an emotional crevasse — a yawning, endless crack in the ice field of my life that I have slipped into… again.”

3.  From the author writing at Through an Al-Anon Filter: “Recognizing Our Own Patterns of Behavior”:

“I had to be willing to say to that prideful self, that angry fearful self – “Enough. I’ve had enough of you being in control here – I want something different.” I thought that humility was humiliation, and that it was kind of nutty to be always wanting to be more humble. But the more I work this program, the more willing I am to be wrong, to be mistaken, to accept that I have screwed up one more time, and I’ve been “deceiving myself with evasions”  – when I see that again, and am willing to accept it, make an amend, and work to free myself of that pride, that lack of humility, my daily life, each chance I am offered to become more loving, and to share that love with others, it’s impossible to describe the feeling – we have to take it on trust, when we’re new, because we can’t picture it at all.”

“I started out in Al-Anon, believing that I hated people – truly, I feared them, and my pride was propping up that shaky fearful self in an attempt to project something that other people would respect. I don’t fear people the way I once did.  I want to be loving, to give love and compassion, give whatever comfort and support I can, to be a conduit of God’s love. That is truly the best way I can imagine living, and it’s so far removed from what I once would have considered success … not even on the same planet. The joy I have received from this, I can’t even describe to you.  Joy, peace, and humility – that’s my serenity, and I have received it all through this wonderful program for living.

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I learned early in my recovery that if I was betrayed by someone that God could still make it OK for me. My acceptance of the betrayal eased the way for Him to work with me to trust others.

I recognize my trust level from a song of Steve Winwood’s. The words I identify with are: “When there’s no one left to leave you, and even you can’t quite believe, that’s when nothing can deceive you.”

Ultimately, I know that everyone pretty much decides for himself/herself whatever he/she wants to believe about me. I like that slogan that whatever you think of me is none of my business.

I’ve also learned to accept that people change their minds about me. The dynamics in relationships are fluid and rarely fixed. So if I keep my trust in the God of my understanding, I have nothing to fear about trusting others.

Will my trusted ones betray me? Possibly, but what hurts worse is that I may betray them also. We never reach perfection in this life. But I am getting better.

Some certain posts about trust include the following:

Ask Maddisen–How to Build Strong Trust Muscles

Word of God Speak

The Teacher Has Arrived…..

Should You be a Tour Guide or an Expedition Leader?

Tangled With a Porcupine

Connecting With Your Heart

Lessons From a Blue-Collar Millionaire

Betrayed by the Office Gossip Girl

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“My support system is led by me” by Jennifer Stuck.

“Ever since I was four years old and my family found me being abused, when their normally loving faces turned cold, I thought that I had to hide what was happening to me. Even more than that, I thought I needed to hide who I was. I thought people only liked the fake me and the masks I put up, but not the real me underneath. It never occurred to me that I trusted in the wrong people and that there might be something wrong with them. I could only blame myself for not being good enough to be loved.”

“Not only was I clinging to the wrong people, I was making them my first and only support system, clinging to one unhealthy person at a time expecting them to fill all my emotional needs. By depending so much on other people I was setting myself up for disappointment. No one person could fill all of my needs, especially if I wasn’t filling my own first.”

“Now I’ve learned that I need a multi-person support system headed by myself. I am the first person I go to for comfort, I can make myself feel better, and I can have fun and laugh on my own. By depending on myself first, I eliminate the need to cling to unhealthy people. If I’m not desperate for love and support I can be choosier about who I invite into my life and I don’t need to look for love from unhealthy, abusive people. I can love myself.”

Stand-In or Star: Taking Center Stage in Your Healing by Bethany Ruck:

“A friend of mine used to be a stand-in on a network show. While the actors were in their trailers, he stood in front of the camera. He was examined from every angle while the crew perfected the lighting and worked out the camera positions before filming. But when the time came for the director to yell “action”, the real actors were brought in to perform.”

“He was the same height and build as the star he filled in for. He had the same hair color and skin tone as the actor. But he was no replacement for the talent. His only purpose was to help the crew prepare before the real work began.”

“Here at Overcoming Sexual Abuse, our writing team is like the stand-ins. Having a stand-in allows you to be able to see a situation on someone else before you try it on yourself. You can view it from different angles and see how the same might apply to your life. You have the opportunity to see if you identify with a story, a situation, or an emotion.”

“We have the unique dynamic of being a mother/daughter team. Many readers tend to label me as the child. Since my first post, messages have flooded my inbox. Some of them have been people who wanted support in their healing process, but the majority are survivors who offer to help or comfort me in my own healing.”

“You’re the star of your own healing journey. Healing requires you to allow the spotlight to be on you. Healing means sifting through your past, getting into the character of that inner child and reliving emotions that are dark and painful. Healing takes facing the lies you believed and seeing the truth. Being the star is hard work.  But the star gets the biggest pay-off. Your healing journey is unique to you. Let your healing take center stage instead of being upstaged by the stand-in.”

Cracking Up Keeps Me From Falling Apart: How Laughter is Part of My Healing by Nikki Stone.

“Hello, my name is Nikki Stone.  I am a Mental Health Advocate, Writer, Photographer, Artist, Domestic Engineer (a professional way of saying I am a housewife), Wife, Sister, Daughter, Friend, and ultimately a human being—at least that is what I have recently discovered.

I have Bipolar Disorder that I am in recovery with and I am also a survivor from sexual, mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical abuse.  I know the effects of abuse very deeply.  Three years ago I came to a total standstill in my life—actually I hit a huge brick wall and ended up having a nervous breakdown.”

“I lived in so much fear, anger, denial, shame, and guilt that I could not see any point in living.  To be honest, I would not let anyone help me.  Many tried, but I was in such a thick web of pain and lies that I could not see the truth about me or about my life.  I believed that I was evil, worthless, a waste of space and time.  This belief was built upon years and years of lies I chose to believe about myself.  I believed these lies so much that when someone would tell me the truth I didn’t believe them.”

“Though going through the nervous breakdown was a very dark time in my life, in a way I am kind of thankful it happened.  I know that may sound weird, however, it has been through the process of facing my worst fears and surviving them that I am now beginning to be the “REAL ME”.

“Until then, I was running on automatic. I was whatever people wanted me to be.  I was on a dead end road and I thought that death would solve my suffering.  However, I am glad that I made the choice to live.  I call my life now the gift of a second chance.  Now, I don’t have to be someone I am not just to be a person of value.  I am of value because I am a person.  It has been hard for me to realize this but there is so much truth to that.  I am on the road of healing, recovery, and ultimately living as a whole person and not a fragmented shell of a being.”

“The truth is, being a human means that we have our strengths but we also have our weaknesses.  I am not ashamed to be who I am, because no one else can be me thus no one else can tell me that I am doing it all wrong by being me.”

Coping or Copping Out by Patty Hite:

“I recently moved from Florida to Ohio. My husband and I thought it would be a great move. I was raised in Ohio, so I was ready and willing to move back. He is ill and wanted me to be around my family.”

“It was a hard move. The dream that it would be “greener on the other side of the fence” turned out to be untrue. We drove through snow and ice in a convoy of two U-Haul trucks. We arrived to find that the home we rented has a landlord from hell. Everyday has been a struggle to get things fixed. The weather is too drastic for my husband. We realized that we need to go back home—home to Florida.”

“The thought of going through another move caused many coping mechanisms to surface. I had to choose to succumb to them or to overcome them. Fear was rising within me—fear of having no control over the situation.”

“I’ve been healing from my abuse long enough to know what I need to do in order to feel empowered again, but the truth is, I didn’t want to deal with healing. I’ve already dealt with my past—the dysfunction of my family, the sexual abuse of my sister and me, the physical abuse from my ex-husband and the sexual abuse of my children by their father. I don’t have flashbacks, triggers or nightmares. Anxiety attacks are taken care of, behavior and boundaries are renewed and I love who I am. The past doesn’t hurt anymore. I can talk about it without pain and sometimes it feels like it happened to someone else.”

“But sometimes the patterns from the past, the old behaviors, try to invade my thoughts and try to rule and control my emotions. I am aware of them, I know what needs to be done and I know how to control them. But sometimes, I just don’t want to.”

“The first thing to surface was the desire to dissociate. I’ve dealt with this, especially over this past year. I know when I am being wooed to escape and I have learned to overcome it. This past week, it came in like a flood and all I needed to do was open the gates. Part of me knew that if I gave in, I could escape, but the other part of me knew that it would become my “sick” friend again. I knew that if I invited it in, it would fight to stay. Dissociation is like getting drunk. It feels good at the moment because it offers temporary relief, but I have to face the real world when I wake up.”

“Then I had thoughts of “Woe is me!” “This isn’t fair!” “No one understands what I have to go through in order to make this move!” “No one cares!“ I didn’t give any thought to what this is doing to my husband. He is the ill one, yet I wanted to be ill. I wanted all the attention and I wanted everyone to feel sorry for me. I hung onto that for a few days and made life impossible for everyone around me. There was nothing they could do to make me feel better and I rejected every great idea they had. “It’s not going to work.” “There is no way to make this happen.”

“Isolation was another thing trying to woo me. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I wanted to be left alone to wallow in my self pity. When anyone talked to me, I pretended like I didn’t hear them or my answers were so sharp they cut like a knife. I imagined putting on my coat and boots and walking until I got lost. Then everyone would wonder where I was or else they wouldn’t care and be glad I was gone. Would anyone even miss me? I was becoming a stranger to them. They didn’t know who this crazy woman was anymore. Dang. I didn’t know who I was anymore.”

“I hate being isolated. Not only do I stay away, my family stays away. I put up my walls that they won’t cross. Then they feel unwanted and unloved. I understand this pattern since it was a close friend of mine. I always wondered why I wasn’t invited places and why people didn’t want to be around me. I stayed away from them, then they stayed away from me. Then I’d get angry because they stayed away.”

Read them and others at Overcoming Sexual Abuse.

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Most of the sites listed under alcohol, drug addiction are from treatment centers. I believe that treatment centers as well as twelve step groups can help addicts.

My problem with treatment centers is the cost and the medical model they use which means someone has to be “sick”. I believe in the self-discovery model which is the reason I wrote the Changemaker Test. Anyone with compassion can take the Changemaker Test and get a group together and begin learning about themselves.

Of course, I also believe that the AA method of tearing someone down in order to rebuild them loses too many new addicts. It works for the military because the recruits have to stay or go to jail for desertion. Having been sober for 28 years and having been a substance abuse counselor who worked in profit and non-profit centers gives me a unique viewpoint. Someone with an experience is never at the mercy of someone with an argument.

How do you know that someone–regardless of age–is spiritual? Certainly not because they say they are. The best evaluation is to see the fruits of the Spirit manifested by them. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, kindness, self-control, patience, faithfulness, goodness, longsuffering and gentleness as listed in Galatians 5:22-23.

When You Find the Buddha in the Middle of the Road–Kill Him is the wise title of a good book by Sidney Kopp. No one knows what is better for anyone than that person. We each have our own answers. Even those of us trained in counseling techniques can only see what is revealed. Tendencies may be seen and certainly personality indicators will be there. But the work of change is a person’s individual choice.

The opposite of love isn’t hate. The opposite is indifference. When you no longer have feelings for someone, you have no reaction to them. When you feel hate, there is still emotion for that person there. This is the reason abusers can hold on to the abused. Anger may be covering hurt or feelings of entitlement.

Generally, unless the abuser has a spiritual experience, the abused must move either emotionally and/or physically away from the abuser. No real reform comes except from a contrite heart. Separation while recovery is taking place can bring quicker results as this leaves both parties more opportunity for self-reflection.

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Daisy...up close by FlyNutAA

Emotional health is directly connected to our physical health. Choosing healthy ways (exercise, meditation, centering, and deep breathing) to deal with stress go far toward our overall health. The mind-body connection is the way your body responds to how you think, feel and act.

Some of the physical signs that your body and mind may be out of connection are chest pain, headaches, back pain, extreme tiredness, high blood pressure, upset stomach, weight loss or gain, insomnia, etc. Many of these ailments may be helped by learning how to improve your emotions. Learn how to sort out the following emotions: anxiety, stress and sadness.

Too many of us have learned as children to stuff our feelings. Emotional growth only comes after we accept our feelings. Feelings aren’t good or bad or wrong or right. They are simply how we feel. Some people are helped by writing in a journal a short description of how they feel. After you accept your feelings, you can study healthy ways to deal with them.

Unfortunately, many people now believe that they have to continually “vent” all their feelings. In my opinion, vending feelings about the same situation does little good after the first ventings. If, once your feelings are known about a situation to all involved in the situation and everything stays the same, then learn new coping skills such as reframing to change the way you feel.

Remember, you can only change yourself—not others. If you still feel unable or unwilling to change—find out what your unhappiness is giving you. Holding on to old hurts only hurts us.

I have spend 30 years researching, enjoying, and implementing self-help, exercise, diet, food program, spiritual, emotional, mental, psychology and addiction books.  These books are contained in our High Energy Life  Library.

However, we are more focused on holistic healing—helping others to develop mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. So the High Energy Life Library includes the books I have found that have proved to be significant to become my “textbooks”.

Some other posts about healing are:

God Uses Unlikely People in Unlikely Places

Prayer Walk the Scriptures and Heal

Healing Depression with Mindfulness: Boulder Center for Mindfulness Psychotherapy

Cool Art Therapy Intervention #9: Family Sculpture

8 Techniques for Recovering Your Happiness When Life Knocks You Sideways

Sesame Chicken Macro by stevedepoto

Learning to savor the food we eat can help us to learn a new, reflective experience with our food. Emiliya Zhivotovskaya writes about how her first experience with recovery from her eating habits was to eat one meal in complete silence while learning to savor each bite.

She writes:

“I went on to use what Bryant and Veroff call anticipatory savoring, basking, and thanksgiving. I turned gratitude into a meditation tracing the origin of my meal down to its roots. I expressed gratitude to my mother for preparing the meal… to the grocery store for offering the ingredients… to the vendor that sold the produce to the grocery store… to the people and machinery that picked the produce in the field… to the earth that gave rise to the produce… and to the sun for making the growth possible.”

I have been using this technique for awhile and it has helped me learn to pay attention to the food I am eating. Mindfulness teaches us to learn how to stay in the moment and savor what life is giving us every moment of our lives.

For help with mindfulness and eating:

TCME is the center for mindful eating and includes these components:

• (1)  Learning to make choices in beginning or ending a meal based on awareness of hunger and satiety cues;
• (2)  Learning to identify personal triggers for mindless eating, such as emotions, social pressures, or certain foods;
• (3)  Valuing quality over quantity of what you’re eating;
• (4)  Appreciating the sensual, as well as the nourishing, capacity of food;
• (5)  Feeling deep gratitude that may come from appreciating and experiencing food

Mastering the Mindful Meal by Stephanie Vangsness begins with the following:

“Eating while multitasking, whether working through lunch or watching TV while eating dinner, often leads us to eat more. On the other hand, eating “mindfully,” savoring every mouthful, enhances the experience of eating and keeps us aware of how much we take in.”

“Our fast-food culture is one where meals have become yet another task we squeeze in during the day. It is all too common to hear of people grabbing breakfast on the run or attending a lunch meeting, where business is front and center and food is merely the bait to get people there.”

Regular yoga practice is associated with mindful eating is a study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The study found that people who used yoga practice with mindful eating were less likely to be obese.

“The researchers found that people who ate mindfully – those were aware of why they ate and stopped eating when full – weighed less than those who ate mindlessly, who ate when not hungry or in response to anxiety or depression. The researchers also found a strong association between yoga practice and mindful eating but found no association between other types of physical activity, such as walking or running, and mindful eating.”

Mindful eating links:

The Center for Mindful Eating

The CAMP System: The Joy of Mindful Eating

Mindful Eating

Mindful Eating: Get Out of Autopilot

Emindful: Live Interactive Online Classes

NYC Twin Lights by sister72

Millions of images probably exist for 9/11,  but this image of 9/11 as seen from space really captures the magnitude of the devastation. Also the 2nd victim from the rescue workers was added to the New York count as was the 1st. Also lists of all the 9/11 victims. May all continue to rest in peace.

A good resource for healing schools contains all types of schools and degrees in the healing arts. It includes lists by states and then by cities in the states.

The Healing Arts Online has sections on spirituality, emotional healing, nutrition, energy healing, self healing and breathing.

Podcasts help keep many of us in positivity and order and away from the confusion of the rambling, negative mind. We all have one but we can learn to direct that energy in a positive direction. A great source for positive podcasts is Religious Podcasts.

The mission statement for beliefnet.com states the following:

“Our mission is to help people like you find, and walk, a spiritual path that will bring comfort, hope, clarity, strength, and happiness.”

”Whether you’re exploring your own faith or other spiritual traditions, we provide you inspiring devotional tools, access to the best spiritual teachers and clergy in the world, thought-provoking commentary, and a supportive community.”

”Beliefnet is the largest spiritual web site. We are independent and not affiliated with any spiritual organization or movement. Our only agenda is to help you meet your spiritual needs.”