Finding Your Flexibility

My wife Dar­bel­la and I were asked to lead a 3‑hour Med­i­ta­tion Prac­tice sem­i­nar on alter­na­tives to drugs for pain man­age­ment, this for Ontario’s Work­place Safe­ty & Insur­ance Board (WSIB.) At the end of the sem­i­nar, we offered to run an all day workshop.

We end­ed up cre­at­ing online videos and book, fea­tur­ing the best of what we teach around here—self-responsible liv­ing and being.

Through­out Find­ing Your Flex­i­bil­i­ty, we con­trast­ed East­ern and West­ern approach­es to liv­ing, to Body­work and exer­cise, and to life flexibility.

We recent­ly re-struc­tured the entire project, mak­ing it per­fect for any­one who wants to cre­ate a new way of being, while gain­ing phys­i­cal flexibility. 

This down­load­able e‑book, com­bined with online videos, is tru­ly life-changing. 

• I includ­ed all the East­ern philoso­phies and tech­niques I’d learned. I real­ized that there was a direct and fun­da­men­tal con­nec­tion between what peo­ple thought (clung to) and what was hap­pen­ing in their bodies.
• I added in a West­ern ver­sion of Body­work. Body­work the­o­ry states that our bod­ies hold with­in their phys­i­cal struc­ture the sto­ry of our unre­solved issues and past trau­mas, phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal. A trained Body­work prac­ti­tion­er can sim­ply look at how you car­ry your­self and can there­by tell you much of your life story.

So, let’s apply this to you. You might ask yourself:

“What, specifically, might I do differently, to create more spaciousness in my life and flexibility in my body?”

East­ern meth­ods assume that the body is filled with ener­gy. This ener­gy can be direct­ed, and used for heal­ing. You’ll hear us talk a bit about merid­i­ans, about ener­gy (called chi or Qi,) and about how ener­gy block­ages cause the body to be “out of balance.” 

In East­ern thought, our bod­ies are seen holis­ti­cal­ly, as Body­Mind­Spir­it. We are designed to nat­u­ral­ly be in bal­ance. Inter­nal ill­ness­es and exter­nal injuries cause the ener­gy to flow un-nat­u­ral­ly, and this in turn leads to pain and inflexibility.

One goal of this program is greater energy flow—we assume that this will happen as the body comes more and more into balance.

In oth­er words, through spe­cif­ic exer­cis­es and Med­i­ta­tion Prac­tice, we’ll treat the imbal­ance, and allow “bal­ance” to take care of itself.

We men­tioned that there are things you’d need to “get,” and here’s the first one. 

• You will need to accept the idea that your body is hold­ing unex­pressed emo­tions and trau­mas. These unex­pressed items almost always start small, are unno­ticed and ‘stuffed,’ and grow larg­er, until we can ignore them no more.
• We call this under­stand­ing “the core of self-responsibility.”

In oth­er words,

“I am how I am, right now, because of how I thought, acted, and dealt with my life, up to now.”

Find­ing Your Flex­i­bil­i­ty will help you to “meet” your­self, to iden­ti­fy areas you have been ignor­ing, and to gen­tly turn your atten­tion to those things. No one but you can turn the tide. You’ll have to break habits and learn to think and act in a new way, but hey, the way you were doing things hasn’t exact­ly panned out, now has it?

The real work is always self-work.

Pain and Suffering

Pain is one real­i­ty that touch­es all of our lives. For all of us, there will be the emo­tion­al pain of grief and loss. If we are injured, there must be phys­i­cal pain. In every life, pain is not optional.

Suffering, however, is optional.

All suf­fer­ing is self-imposed. The Buddha’s first truth is, “Life is suf­fer­ing.” But his sec­ond truth is, “All suf­fer­ing is caused by cling­ing and aversion.”

• One root of suf­fer­ing comes from cling­ing to the past—wanting every­thing to be the way it was before the ‘bad things’ hap­pened. This, of course, will not and can­not ever hap­pen, no mat­ter how much you wish it were so. And so, you suffer.
• The oth­er root of suf­fer­ing comes from dread­ing the future—and mak­ing that future as grim as pos­si­ble. I won’t get into why we do this—it’s not worth the read­ing. This imag­i­nary sto­ry caus­es us to phys­i­cal­ly tight­en up, and to dump a load of adren­a­line into our systems—and this, in turn, adds to our inflex­i­bil­i­ty and misery.

Most choose hard­en­ing and tight­en­ing around their mis­ery, while adding in the “This isn’t fair” litany. And so, they suffer.

So, what is the alternative?

The Buddha’s third truth: If you let go of cling­ing and aver­sion, and live your life ful­ly and com­plete­ly, you can let go of suf­fer­ing (but not pain, sick­ness, and death—this is not optional!)

In other words, situations do not change—you do!

I am not min­i­miz­ing your pain—I am sim­ply say­ing that it is ‘how it is.’ There will always be phys­i­cal pain, and there will always be sit­u­a­tions that are ago­niz­ing. There will always be depraved peo­ple prey­ing on inno­cents, and tragedy and death are as much a part of life a blue skies and sun­sets. Bemoan­ing the exis­tence of such painful sit­u­a­tions changes pre­cise­ly nothing.

Cre­at­ing anoth­er way of being with the sit­u­a­tion is always pos­si­ble. The key to liv­ing life with a min­i­mum of suf­fer­ing is to hold life, and your opin­ions, loose­ly. While it is tempt­ing to play the “It’s not fair” game, it is essen­tial to remem­ber that this accom­plish­es noth­ing in the real world.

Our Finding Your Flexibility Program is a Great Alternative! You’ll find Peace, Presence, Contentment — and Will Learn to Drop the Stories That are no Longer Working

Build­ing upon the insights con­tained in my pop­u­lar book, This End­less Moment, this down­load­able book and online video com­bi­na­tion pro­vides an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to find peace, pres­ence, con­tent­ment, by devel­op­ing a ground­ed, cen­tered med­i­ta­tion practice.

You’ll learn flex­i­ble body move­ment, (Qi Gong, Sup­port­ed Yoga, and walk­ing med­i­ta­tion), Body and Breath­work tech­niques, and Zen-based Mind­ful­ness approach­es to liv­ing life ful­ly and deeply. 

You will dis­cov­er a pow­er­ful Zen Med­i­ta­tion Prac­tice and Mind­ful­ness relax­ation tech­niques, geared toward find­ing inner peace and tranquility.

• You will explore tra­di­tion­al East­ern approach­es to the move­ment of Qi Energy.
  
• You will learn two yoga sets designed to increase your flex­i­bil­i­ty and lev­el of relaxation.
  
• You will dis­cov­er how to breathe effi­cient­ly and deeply.
  
• You will dis­cov­er how to see your body’s hold­ing pat­terns, to learn to adjust your body pos­ture, so as to reset your­self to “neu­tral.”
• You will learn Qi Gong tech­niques that will allow you to devel­op and strength­en your Qi, as a heal­ing, calm­ing, and med­i­ta­tive force.
• You will learn to look at your life differently.
• You’ll learn to be self-responsible—to take an active part in how you view and live your life.

You will find a new sense of freedom, as you accept yourself, as you are—where you are.