LIFE IN FOCUS

Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body.  - Thich Nhat Hanh When life feels heavy, overwhelming , stressful or maybe just a little off, connecting to your breath may be the most effective intervention you can do in that moment. By accessing a deep, diaphragmatic breath, your entire internal chemistry can shift.  Breathwork is an ancient practice found in various cultures and traditions, extending from yoga's pranayama to modern therapeutic interventions aptly labeled breathwork. It involves managing the breath through various techniques for the purpose of releasing  stress ; bringing the mind and body to a state of calm and serenity.  Breath awareness is always available to you, whether in times of calm or when experiencing uncertainty, stress or fear.  Many believe that breathwork needs to be connected with meditation and/or   yoga to be helpful. Whereas I am not downplaying the benefits of either as both meditation and yoga involve ...

Bookbaby       Amazon ENERGY Everything comes down to energy.  Health (both mental and physical) is about energy. Time management is about energy.  Productivity and efficiency are about energy. Relationship building is about energy. Learning, attention and concentration are about energy.  When low, very little happens. When mindfully high, you become unstoppable. YOUR LIFE FEELS JOYFUL!  You experience what the French so beautifully coined: Joie de vivre! In today's busy world, it's easy to get caught up with endless to-do lists and mindless engagements that serve little purpose other than to keep you on the proverbial hamster wheel of busy-ness.  Jumping from thought to thought and task to task keeps you from silencing your mind for even 30 seconds to catch your breath . Today's hectic, high-tech lifestyle of constant distractions has turned most of us into human DO -ings rather than Human Be -ing...

Your brain is constantly processing information,  and does so with lightning speed.  It quickly decides what stimuli to attend to and what to ignore.  Emotions play a large role in the brain's filtering process.  How the information is processed will determine the degree to which you  feel focused, serene, calm, anxious, stressed, and/or discombobulated. Your executive functions are key to critical reasoning and problem solving.  Critical reasoning and problem solving are negatively correlated with  cognitive distortions.    As one goes up, the other goes down.  Everybody cognitively distorts! You can't always think clearly, logically and productively. But, you can help notice when thinking goes awry. You can learn to mindfully halt a runaway thought process that is taking  you down a dark and deep rabbit hole.  You can learn to leverage your executive functions and mitigate  cognitive distortions.  Th...