Focusing your life

How focused are you?

How many times of late have you realized your thoughts are chasing their own tails? Jumbling and confusing you or just shifting your attention one way when your intention is trying and failing to think of other things? Can you keep a line of thought through? How about when you are tense or tired?

More and more children and adults are given drugs to help them concentrate. Is there an alternative? Are we malfunctioning or simply lacking the tools to live out a focused life?

There are many tools out there that claim they can help with ADD and other "syndromes" of attention issues. In order for one to know which are effective and good and which are detrimental there are two ways to go: Try them out or ask the right questions and you will know in advance...

Let me suggest a few questions :)

1. Are you living right? is your lifestyle promoting focus or disrupting it?
2. Are you toxic? Lead poisoning (for example) can lead to deteriorated attention capacities.
3. Are you in the habit of promoting your attentive abilities naturally? For example are you meditating regularly?

Many more questions can be asked here and every question above raises ten more on the same issues. Allow me to suggest a few ideas on the matter:

A. When you are tired, undernourished, toxic, stressed out (etc.) you are bound to have  

     issues with you focus.

B. When you tire your mind out but don't take the time to give it a good rest (a.k.a. 

     meditation) your mind is bound to function less efficiently...

A is easy to understand - If you are tired from lack of sleep your mind is less effective. Deficiency in vitamins and minerals cause dysfunctions depending on the deficiency but as a rule effect the mind greatly. My blog series on basic human needs covers this well.

B is somewhat illusive to the western mind. In the east it is common knowledge. So what is it about meditation and other mental practices that can make the difference so much?

Meditation practices are numerous and can be divided into two for the sake of this explanation: Mindful meditation that observes the mind and thoughts and Zen like meditations that seek to achieve a quiet mind. Achieving the goal of a focused and clear mind can be done using both types for different situations but my experience shows that for the main goal of focusing and clarity the Zen type is stronger. It helps us connect with the here and now and put aside the past and the future. It stops the noise of relentless thinking and allows for our thoughts of choice to emerge unhindered and clear.

Whether you are a teenager mid exams or a college student - your studies will improve greatly with a healthy lifestyle combined with meditation training and habit. It is just as valuable to any adult coping with financial / marital / social ordeals. As a matter of fact anyone will benefit from this combination.

Shifting - Moving out of stuckness

Everyone knows what it's like to be stuck. To be addicted or just repeating the same mistakes over and over again… To be in an unhealthy habit, and keep it never-the-less.

The challenge is obvious – how do we move out of this stuckness?

Whether the reason for this was illness, a bad situation in life or just tiredness the basic answer is the same: Choose the right move and do it. Alone this will not work but acting on something we consider of value helps greatly. Choose something that will make you feel happy and is meaningful in your eyes.

To this we must add a few tools to make it work:

1. Meditation: The common denominator of all the stuckness examples above is the circular vibe of addiction. Even repeated mistakes have this scent. The strongest tool for shifting out of this addictive vibe is quiet meditation. The Chinese have a saying that a weak spleen is the source of all addictions and that over thinking weakens the spleen. The best spleen tonifying technique is meditation. My favorite method is Zen style sitting meditation. Practicing this daily for as long as it takes to feel some shifting in mindset is crucial (This can take a few minutes for most people but may take longer some days or for others).
2. Creative work: Whether as your meaningful activity or in addition to it, creativity can do wonders for shifting your vibe. You don’t want to be focused on show art that needs to stand up to any standards, just personal creativity.
3. Physical exercise: Both for the brain chemicals and for distressing as well as to simply clear the mind – nothing works like sports.
4. De-stressing: I cannot stress this enough ;)
5. Focused work on the issue itself: If this is a relationship issue then the relationship itself will need work on your own as well as with your partner. If this is an addiction then clearing the addictive habit requires some focused work (With correlated habits, social addiction etc.). Health issues need treatment obviously and mistake… Well repeated mistakes are obviously something to ponder but just not too much or you will weaken your spleen… There is a Bach flower remedy for those who keep repeating the same mistakes.

Another point to consider in all this is the value of a mentor during shifts. Someone that can look at the issue with you and reflect for you. Give you working tools or just go through the process above with you, meditating together, helping you heal or talking with both sides of the relationship.

Good luck with your shift and you are welcome to talk to me if you need :)

Holistic therapy during crisis – on the mind plane

What tools does the holistic school of medicine have for treating mind based crisis?

As a society we are used to thinking of mind based crisis as a job for psychologists and psychiatrists. The familiar arsenal of tools are talks and drugs. What does Natural Medicine have to offer for these situations? What tools can compete with the familiar models? This will be the subject of this article.

Let’s begin with the common ground:

• Psychologists are not the only ones that can use Talks as a therapeutic tool. As a Naturopath part of my daily routine is to have long talks with some of my patients. Many of the “body-mind” practices within the Holistic school scope of therapy are talk based or start with a talk and then use the information for therapies of various kinds. We use talks to train patients in tools that can help them such as stress management (Always useful and twice so in periods of crsis), positive thinking, talks as a destressor and much more. I still find that many patients are surprised when we start talking and they realize this is part of holistic medicine too… It is high time the general public got to know the larger holistic perspective and scope of naturopathy and the other holistic modalities..
• Using drugs is a way to force the brain to “function better” on the mental and emotional planes of the mind. Suppression of anger, the blurring of sadness and depression and the nullification of our awareness to our anxieties. The equivalent tools of Natural Medicine chooses a very different approach. The closest holistic tool is Herbology. There are uplifting herbs, relaxers, stimulators etc. All allow the patient to function better without mind games and illusions (Such as feeling relaxed but underneath the surface bubbling with suppressed stress). One of the greatest advantages of herbs is a unique quality I have yet to find in other tools: Adaptogenic. Adaptogenic herbs help us to better adapt to stressful situations – especially such as one encounters during crisis. The holistic perspective makes use of herbs during crisis in a plethora of other ways: Healing anemia, blood sugar imbalances, general stress reduction, sleep disturbances etc. All these other aspects make coping with a crisis much harder and once healed allow for an easier coping with the crisis itself. This is an example of how important the holistic perspective that approaches the patient as a whole is in crisis management.

Other tools that Natural Medicine has to offer in this case:

• Manual therapies: Holistic massage, Reflexology, Chinese massage, Shiatsu, Thai massage – all these and more in professional hands have the ability to change a lot on the physical and mental planes. You can adapt to the needs of the patient (Fully clothed / oil based / feet only and dry or with cream for the last. Combining Aromatic oils can amplify the effects of the Massage or Reflexology and add the qualities of the oils we choose – relaxing / uplifting / stimulating etc.
• Aromatic oils: Even without the Manual therapies, using oils in a bath or burner or a drop on ones shirt will add a wonderfully scented effect.
• Bach Flowers: This fascinating tool in known for its ability to help alter patterns of human behavior. Most of its focus is on the emotional plane and it allows the patient better emotional coping with the crisis.
• Jin Shin Do: This is a gentle Manual tool that allows emotional and mental work through subtle physical manipulations of 30 of the 365 basic Chinese Acupuncture points. The release this tool enables is a treasure for the person in crisis.
• Chinese Acupuncture: It is common knowledge by now that Needling can assist in anemia, tonification, breaking stagnations and sedation etc. It is less known that Acupuncture can work directly on the emotional plane! There are points that assist in fear, anger and the other emotions directly.
• Meditation: Whether Zen (For the sake of quieting the mind) or Mindfulness (For expanding self-awareness) meditation is an important tool in the understanding of and better coping with a crisis.
• Healing: Balancing the appropriate chakras can do a lot for balancing out mind based crisis situations. Cleaning the aura can remove some of the mental and emotional baggage in a very gentle and effective way. Crystal healing can also be very effective and useful here and can be carried around at all times.
• Art therapy: Using arts / music / dance as therapy can be a wonderful bridge between the mind and the emotions. It has been around and in use since the beginning of human culture. Very important in times of crisis.

This wide array of tools is just the tip of the iceberg and is meant to stress the fact that “yes there are good tools out there in the Holistic field quite useful in times of crisis.

The challenges still facing us in this field are:

1. Raising social awareness to these tools and their value.
2. Integrating the various tools of Natural Medicine.
3. Integrating Natural and Conventional Medicine – or at least to stop the silent battle…
4. Developing protocols for situations yet untested or resolved.

My intention in this series of articles is to address the above challenges and widen public awareness comes first.