Walking For Mindfulness

Walking For Mindfulness is my topic for today, Mindful Tribe. I look forward to sharing with you, ‘Five Benefits of Walking'. You may already include a regular routine of walking in your life, or you may decide to start a walking practice. There are lots of benefits including the five I will outline today. I am convinced that
your life will improve as a result of 30 to 60 minutes of daily walking. You may decide to walk 4 or 5 days a week rather than daily, and that will be a benefit as well.

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1/ Walk Almost Anywhere

Whether you're at home, or you're traveling, there are all sorts of options as to where you can walk. Maybe up and down the stairwells if you're in a hotel room or conference center. If you're in a hotel, ask about the location of safe pathways to walk where there are some parks and forests. Do some research to find where you can walk in the area of your home. A lot of towns and cities have pathways that are specifically designated for walking.

2/ Creates Focused Thinking

Your brain will begin to work better if you take some time to go and have a walk. How many times have you been in a stressful situation and somebody will say, Well, I'm just going for a walk. That's because a walk will release some of the pressure. Research has shown that it actually promotes the release of brain chemicals including endorphins that stimulate relaxation and can improve our mood. A walk at a comfortable pace can promote relaxation and release serotonin and dopamine to help you feel better. Dopamine is the hormone that gives us the pleasurable feeling after receiving a reward. If you're like me, you may be surprised how much better you'll feel after a walk and you'll want to continue walking for mindfulness.

3/ Increase Your Fitness Level

Walking gives you a chance to focus on your breathing, take deep breaths, get your body moving, and increase circulation because that's what we need to increase our fitness level. Walking will help increase your mindfulness and your mental fitness. It can help with stress, depression, anxiety, and it can also improve your sleep, which is a big deal because a lot of people struggle with having deep sleep and struggle with falling asleep. In the last five or six years since I've been walking and running on a daily basis, I don't have any trouble sleeping. I encourage you to start this practice of walking on a regular basis.

4/ Closer To Nature

As you walk, pay specific attention to any natural elements, including trees, or plants or water. Even if you're walking in a city there will be certain aspects of nature that you can focus on including the sky, the sun, the moon, and the stars. And as well as that, notice your own natural rhythm including your breathing and your heartbeat. Take time to notice as many elements of nature as you can while you walk.

5/ Mantras or Affirmations

Walking gives you a chance to focus on one or several mantras. Let the affirmations flow in your mind over and over. There are several that I use when I walk or run including, ‘My life is renewed daily; mentally, physically, emotionally'. I think of that sentence over and over and also the following sentence; ‘My life is renewed daily, mentally, physically, emotionally'. Another affirmation I like is; ‘Creativity helps me grow and thrive'. By repeating this mantra, it reminds me to include as much creativity in my life as I can. Another mantra that I like, includes the word compassion, because I believe that the more we can live our lives with compassion, the happier we'll feel, and the more contented we'll be. Thinking of compassion for others, and compassion for other things and situations truly can help us feel more compassion for ourselves. So here's the mantra that I suggest on that topic; ‘I see everyone and everything with compassion'.

And this gives me a real chance to, to stretch and exercise my ability to truly see everyone and everything with compassion. The more we can do this, I believe, the better you'll feel about yourself. It's a mindfulness exercise that really pays off.

A Walking Life

I interviewed viewed a guest named Antonia Malchik who wrote a book called A walking life; Reclaiming Our Health and Our Freedom One Step At a Time. I enjoyed this interesting, in-depth book about walking, so you might want to check it out. The link to the book and the episode is below. She focuses on walking for mindfulness along with many interesting details and facts about walking.

Suggested Resources

• Book: A Walking Life: Reclaiming Our Health and Our Freedom One Step at a Time by Antonia Malchik
• Book: Walking: One Step At a Time by Erling Kagge and Becky L. Crook
• Book: In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration by Shane O'Mara
• App: Insight Timer

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• 435 Reclaim Your Health and Freedom With a Walking Life;  Antonia Malchik
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Holistic Parenting Simplified; Julie Hatch

Julie Hatch is a pediatric nurse practitioner, an acupuncturist, a parenting specialist, and a mom. She is a traditional western medicine practitioner, turned alternative holistic practitioner. Her passion has always been helping kids. She spent many years working in pediatrics, first in pediatric intensive care, then in neonatal intensive care. Eventually, her focus shifted, and she found her way into the realm of eastern medicine and holistic health. Julie finds that blending both traditional western medicine with traditional eastern medicine is ideal in her work to promote health. She finds there is great merit to both approaches. She believes that in parenting, following a more holistic path not only makes sense in working with kids, but it also makes parenting life a whole lot easier.

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Contact Info

• Website: www.juliephillipshatch.com
• Blog: www.juliephillipshatch.com/blog
• Podcast: Mums on a Mission with Julie Hatch
• Book: A Parenting Revolution for Higher Evolution: Raising Resilient, Responsible, Compassionate Kids from the Inside Out

Most Influential Person

• Eckhart Tolle
• Ram Dass

Effect on Emotions

• If you can start to be able to, I'm still learning mindfulness, I think we all are trying to practice it and perfect it, which probably will never happen, perfect. But it helps in centering yourself, not letting your emotions take over that are trying to get out of here where your emotions are thinking about your emotions and your fears, and your worries, and your anger and all that.
• But to be centered here, and to breathe, and to focus on the breath, and let try which helps to let those emotions go and then come back and deal with them when you're in a better place. So it's more responding to emotions and reacting to emotions also,

Thoughts on Breathing

• I've just started doing an online program with a Buddhist teacher who's all about breathing, and the whole thing, the whole course is on breathing, I only just started. So I can't tell you everything that it says. But the breath has any app that uses breathing and teaches you how to just close your eyes and breathe and pay attention to the breathing. And it takes practice at first you know, you're even when the app is talking to you.
• You're hearing all the chatter in your head. But with practice, they teach you to learn how to go back to your breath. And that's the fundamentals I think mindfulness is one of the basics.

Suggested Resources

• Book: A Parenting Revolution for Higher Evolution: Raising Resilient, Responsible, Compassionate Kids from the Inside Out
• Book: The Blessing Of A Skinned Knee: Raising Self-Reliant Children
• App: Breathe

Bullying Story

•  It's important to listen to your child, hear what they're saying and what their version of the story is. Give them your feedback. Listen, and pay attention to what they're saying and what they're feeling.
•  I have heard that bullies are victims of being bullied themselves, certainly. 
• If your child is being bullied, if you can convince them and help them to learn how to stand up for themselves.
• I know a lot of our kids benefit from martial arts for many, many reasons. But one of them is that they can stand up for themselves in a very healthy way. And it adds a lot of confidence usually too. Martial arts are really helpful in all kinds of ways, probably for all kids.

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Innovation For All; Costa Michailidis

Costa Michailidis has spent his career consulting with some of the brightest minds on some of the world’s toughest innovation challenges, from NASA scientists and big tech companies, to young entrepreneurs and nonprofits. He has worked on initiatives to build synthetic cells, improve cybersecurity, and reform life science education. His focus is always on cultivating the kind of innovative thinking required for making breakthroughs. He has spoken at the United Nations in New York, served as a TEDx organizer and emcee, and helped accelerate innovation across industries. He co-founded Innovation Bound and has joined a team of academics, entrepreneurs, consultants, and other creativity & innovation experts just like him to help accelerate innovation efforts in science, business, and beyond.

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Contact Info

• Website: www.innovationbound.com
• Podcast: Are You Innovation Bound?
• Innovation-101 Course: www.innovationbound.com/101

Most Influential Person

• Dan Millman, Author

Effect on Emotions

• So for me, because mindfulness was originally something I learned in sport, it changed my conception of emotions to emotional fitness. So I think of emotional fitness rather than emotional intelligence.
• And fitness means you have to work out to stay in shape. If you don't work out, you're gonna fall out of shape. Having a good coach is useful. So fitness is a metaphor; if you use good techniques, you're likely to do it. Well. If you had bad techniques, you can get injured. So I think of it as emotional fitness, and that came from mindfulness in my sport.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Focusing on the breath and staying in the moment is tremendous. And what's really wonderful about free-diving is you learn specific breathing patterns that can reduce your heart rate. The reason we do it in free-diving is; to do a more efficient free-dive allows you to be able to go longer on that single breath-hold.
• So using those techniques from free-diving, ultimately using breath to become calm, to develop a tremendous sense of calm in order to achieve that.

Suggested Resources

• Book: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives by Dan Millman
• App: Loop Habit Tracker

Bullying Story

• So the thing that came to mind for me for this was about bullying with love. And I think there was so mindfulness there. So my brother and I have about seven and a half years difference. So anybody with an older brother knows, they're your bully. You sort of inherit them when you're born. It's great.
• And so we'd get into a scuffle here and there. It was just sort of a natural environment. But he was much bigger because he's seven and a half years older. And there was one time he was hanging on a pull-up bar, you know, one of the ones you set up in the doorway.
• So he's kind of kicking at me, just sort of kicking me away, and I'm trying to get at him. I don't remember what we were arguing about. And he comes off, and I  swing to punch him and I end up hitting him in the nose. And he's got a nosebleed. He's checking his nose.
• I said real loud, still yelling, I'm sorry, I was aiming for your stomach. His response was to laugh and be kind of proud of me that I was standing up for myself. So I think on his part, not retaliating was the mindful thing to do, and was ultimately good for our relationship.
• I think when that sort of aggressive or assertive part of our nature comes at us, but it comes from a place of love, in this case, two siblings and whatever we're arguing about, you know, ultimately, we have long since forgotten.

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Breath and Fire; Michelle Hillier

Michelle Hillier is trained in movement, meditation, and mindfulness and is a certified yoga teacher, trauma-informed movement educator, and meditation and social-emotional instructor. Using her personal story, she helps people to see that it’s possible to lead the life you dream of. Her journey has given her the gifts of insight and compassion, deepening her commitment to helping others connect to their breath—their calm—and ignite their fire and their passion. From large group activities to intimate training workshops, Michelle gives her audience a transformative and unforgettable experience with concrete tools and messages to practice in their own lives.

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Contact Info

• Website: www.breathandfire.com

Most Influential Person

• Thich Nhat Hanh

Effect on Emotions

• Awareness of my emotions and being okay with sitting in them is important. The thoughts will come and they'll turn to an emotion that could turn to action. But it's been like a-Ha, there it is, there's that thought, there's that feeling, there's that emotion.
• Either I like it, or I don't like it. I'm just gonna sit in it, and let it either pass or act on it.
• So I'm just more highly aware of my emotions through doing mindfulness practices.

Thoughts on Breathing

• I've just got into breathwork and I have an amazing teacher, Rebecca Llewellyn, Shamanic Breathwork. So I actually experienced a full hour of breathwork. I never thought that was a thing until I got into it. Wow, the breath is powerful.
• So I like to think how one breath can make a difference in a moment that you're feeling so that you're in that fight, flight, or freeze state where something's going on.
• When your body's going into something, one big inhale can completely reset you physiologically. It just tells your body you're okay. So the breath is super powerful.
• There are different breath forms, of course, that I like to share with people in my ‘Breath of Fire' workshops, including circular breathing. The traditional ‘let's just breathe' is also great.
• I like to share the power of one breath, and how that can change your body.

Suggested Resources

• Book: The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (Shambhala Pocket Classics)
• App: Insight Timer

Bullying Story

• I personally haven't had a bullying experience. When I look back, I may have been a bit of a bully. The competitiveness was sort of part of me.
• When I look at my son, I can use him as an example. He's not in an actual bullying situation, but the mindfulness piece around awareness of self and the work I've done in schools with kids around mindfulness. I think it's good if we're just mindful and present and tapped into who we are.
• That authentic self, I think that's where the heart really shines, and we can't do that to somebody else. I think it's a bullying prevention mode. I don't think it's like, oh, I'm being bullied, I need to meditate. It's like if we can teach our children especially if we can get them to understand mindfulness and awareness of self and love for others, we can prevent bullying.

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A Tribute To My Mom

My mother, Edith Langford, passed away this week and today’s episode is a tribute to my mom. The funeral was yesterday and as you can imagine, I'm flooded with emotions. There are so many sad thoughts and emotions that I feel as I create this tribute to my mother. We had a very special relationship, a lot of great talks and special times together. I thought back to something she told me a few years ago, which had a huge impact on me, and a huge impact on the direction of my career. I was talking to her about the past and I said, remember back in the 1960s, you had a lot of a lot of trouble with anxiety. You really had a tough time. You had psoriasis as a result of it. It seemed to go on for a long time and it was a real problem. I asked her, what was the thing that ended this part of your life, that situation where you had so much anxiety?

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5 Words of Wisdom

She answered this question in five words, a five-word sentence. I thought so much about this afterwards. I thought, wow, this is staring me in the face. Every time I look at an appliance, an LG appliance, I realize the LG stands for their slogan, Life's Good. The five words she told me were, “I learned to let go”. So when I said LG, let go, every time I look at one of those appliances, I think, “Let Go, Life's Good. And letting go allows our life to be good. And I thought, wow, that was incredible.

Beautiful Smile

I asked my mother, ‘how did you come to that conclusion?’ I wanted to know how she landed on those five words. But to her, there wasn't really a lot to say, she just said ‘I learned to let go’. And then she looked at me and she smiled that familiar smile. I said to mom, you know, that's mindfulness. That was long before I started working in the field of mindfulness. And she looked at me in a quizzical way and I said, Yeah, it's a thing they call mindfulness. It's about letting go. It's about not being so concerned about the past or so concerned about the future. It's about living in the moment, and letting go of so much of what holds us back and causes anxiety and issues. And she was good with that.

Share With The World

I was working in the field of bullying prevention at the time and I just thought so much about what my mom had said to me about this. I had already been thinking about the fact that with bullying prevention, if I can teach children and teachers about mindfulness then bullying would decrease. And I thought, wow, this worked in my own mother's life. She was able to come to this conclusion without meditating, without reading self-help books. She didn't listen to podcasts. She just came up with this herself. “I learned to let go.” I thought, what if I could share these five words with the world?

A Visual Gift

My mother has always been a visual person. Whenever I watch the sunrise, which is many, many mornings, I think of her because she loved the colors. She loved orange, brilliant yellows, golds, pinks, fuchsias. All colors I see in the sky when the sun is coming up; brilliant, beautiful colors. She loved these colors and she used her incredible skills to weave and to crochet and to create beautiful items like placemats, dishcloths, and tea towels. She seldom used a pattern and even if she had a pattern, it usually ended up being adapted to the ‘Edith Version’. She had her own thoughts and her own ways of doing these things and she would work away until she had something beautiful.

The Edith Basket

She always had a basket of placemats and dishcloths and she would always get this basket out and offer something. And she made 1000s of finger puppets. So every night, after supper, she would sit down and she would crochet a finger puppet. It was for children in the hospital who were about to have their finger pricked or have blood taken and so the nurse would give them a finger puppet.

Vesta Love

One of the things that came to mind about my mom was her special love for her aunt Vesta. Vesta was also my great aunt. She was such a special person. And so my mom would go visit her and very often when it was time to leave Vesta would say a few lines of a poem to her. The poem became a favorite of my mother's and when aunt Vesta died, my mom decided to make a needlepoint out of the lines of this poem that were so very special to her.

Meaningful Words

The poem was written by Charles Kingsley; 1819-1875. He was a clergyman and novelist whose many stories have become famous works of fiction. He was also a writer of poetry. The poem my aunt recited is called A Farewell. Here are the four lines that she sewed with needlepoint; Be good, sweet maid and let who can be clever; do noble things, not dream them all day long. And so make Life, Death, and that vast forever, one grand, sweet song. Those words are so special to me and I'm happy to say I have that needlepoint piece that my mother created, and it's beautiful. These words are a tribute to my mom.

Gratitude

Thanks for letting me share this with you today in memory of my mom. As you know, I think about the special times and how special she was, and the love I had for her and have for her. It hasn’t ended.

Foot Bliss

She came to live with us at our house for five weeks in 2020, when she was preparing for a heart valve surgery. It was a special time for us to get to know her even more, in a different way. So we had a lot of special times and one of the things that she loved was every night, she would get a foot rub. And she would kind of look at me in a special way and say something that I knew meant that she would really appreciate a foot massage with lotion. When I would do that, she would have this look of ecstasy on her face and a beautiful smile. It was a special thing between us, and I was able to give her a foot rub just a couple of days before she passed, which was a beautiful experience as well.

These are some personal thoughts that I wanted to share with you today. As always, I thank you for tuning into mindfulness mode and thank you so much for being a part of the show. All the best to you. Bye now.

Suggested Resources

• Book: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life by Thich Nhat Hanh
• App: Insight Timer

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Enjoy The Gift Of The Present; Jennifer Ibbotson Rodriguez

Jennifer Ibbotson Rodriguez is a consulting hypnotist who works with trauma survivors to help them heal, thrive and enjoy their lives. Her longest recovery came as a result of the collapse of the ‘twin towers’ back in September 11, 2001, after which she married a disabled combat veteran who was struggling to heal his own traumas. For years Jen has been fascinated by the brain and the power of mindset, so it comes as no surprise that she will be delivering a presentation at the National Convention of The National Guild of Hypnotists this August called: Hypnosis: The Bridge Between Neural-plasticity and Quantum Realities.

Listen & Subscribe on:

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Contact Info

• Website: www.HypnosisHaven.com
• Podcast: Hypnosis De-Mystified

Most Influential Person

• Above all, it's my father. He handed me the book, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior back in 1991 or 92. That is to say from that point on, we always said, What time is it? Now? Where are you? Here.

Effect on Emotions

• Emotion comes in and emotion goes. Likewise, the breath, there is no start and there is no end. Therefore, it is cyclical, so whatever I'm feeling in the moment, is the gift of life.
• I know what numb feels like so I think it's as close to death as we can get. Therefore with every feeling I'm blessed with at the moment, I accept it for the wisdom that it is sharing.

Thoughts on Breathing

• I was very fortunate very early to learn Buddha belly breathing, but I was confused. In the beginning, I thought that's how we were supposed to breathe all the time.
• It wasn't something I was able to do all the time. And as trauma overtook my body I learned that breathing became shallower and shallower.
• However, trauma-responsive breathing doesn't allow for the holding of the breath, because that actually increases adrenaline. So the way that I choose to breathe when I need to breathe out trauma, and breathe in peace happens when I release my jaw.
• I exhale first because the body can always exhale even when it can't inhale. And then after the inhale, I exhale for as twice as long as the inhale. To sum it up, it always starts with an exhale, whatever the inhale is to the belly, and then exhale twice as long. That's me, that's my breathing technique and how I

Suggested Resources

• Book: Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
• Book: You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter
• Book: The Hidden Messages in Water

Bullying Story

• Certainly, the story that I was coming to was that gentleman with his dad.
• Every single one of my clients, technically bullies themselves until the day they stop and enjoy the gift of the present.

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The Path To Kindness; James Crews

James Crews is the author of THE PATH TO KINDNESS – a collection offering more than 100 poems of connection and joy from a diverse range of voices…including a poem by the current U.S. Poet Laureate – Joy Harjo. He has also authored 4 prize-winning collections of poetry and is the editor of the best-selling anthology, HOW TO LOVE THE WORLD – more than 90,000 copies in print and featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, in Boston Globe, and The Washington Post. Crews' work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun Magazine, Ploughshares, and The New Republic, as well as in former US poet laureate Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry newspaper column.

Listen & Subscribe on:

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Contact Info

• Website: jamescrews.net
• Book: The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy by James Crews and Danusha Laméris

Most Influential Person

• Ted Kooser

Effect on Emotions

• I'm able to name the emotions. However, I think it wasn't ever the case before. Likewise, anxiety and shame. It's so useful to be able to name what's coming up and to really distinguish. My marriage has helped with that, too.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Most importantly, the kind of meditation I do tends to really focus on the breath.
• I usually, when I'm meditating, have a very busy mind. For instance, I count my breaths, you know, one in-breath, out-breath, one in-breath, out-breath two, and do that in sets of fours, when I'm especially caught in my mind and my thoughts.

Suggested Resources

• Book: Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems by Phyllis Cole-Dai
• Book: The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy by James Crews and Danusha Laméris
• App: Headspace

Bullying Story

• Firstly, I was never really the recipient of a lot of bullying. I think that was the result of real efforts that were not very healthy to kind of hide myself and be as invisible as possible, and to be quiet.
• I was already shy and introverted, but I think I made myself even quieter, and really tried to blend in, and not call attention to who I really was, or what I really loved doing.
• Therefore, I don't have a lot of stories about that as a kid. I will say one memory that came when you talked about bullying; it's not quite the same thing, but when I was in grad school in Nebraska, I was walking down the street, and just feeling really happy. I was really embodying who I was at that point, teaching poetry, writing poetry, not being afraid to dress a certain way.
• As I was walking down the street to the pharmacy, and these guys in a pickup truck that was passing by called out these terrible names, just like these anti-gay epithets and I sort of stopped for a minute, but then, didn't want to engage or anything like that. But when I got home, I realized how much that affected me.
• That is to say, I was more in tune with that, probably because I had been meditating and was really practicing mindfulness. But it really disturbed me. And not just that I had to experience it, but that other people, especially younger people, were probably experiencing that all over the country and the world at the very same moment.

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Reaching For Joy; Zehra Mahoon

Zehra Mahoon is a master mindset and law of attraction coach and manifesting expert. She is the author of twelve books on these subjects including Reaching For Joy and the creator of the Unlimited 40-day law of attraction workout and the Unlimited 365 Mastermind. After committing to completely transforming her self-worth in 2006, she went from being massively in debt to owning multiple properties and creating a thriving business, as well as healing her relationships and reaching for joy. Zehra’s books are based on a visual, diagrammatic approach to the law of attraction. She breaks down complicated concepts into small bite-size pieces linked to analogies that make them easy to remember and apply.

Zehra’s courses and programs help individuals to identify the blockages that are keeping them from achieving success. She helps them to change their self-talk and develop new thinking habits that open up a world of new possibilities.

Zehra believes that all things are possible in other words you can start from where you are and create a better future once you start understanding how to use the basic law of attraction concepts. She is committed to making it easy for you to understand and apply the law of attraction.

Listen & Subscribe on:

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Contact Info

• Website: www.zmahoon.com
• Blog: www.zmahoon.com/blog

Most Influential Person

• Dr. Wayne Dyer
• Abraham Hicks

Effect on Emotions

• I'm a totally different person.
• There is no such thing as procrastination in my life anymore. Therefore, ideas and creativity flow freely, and my anger issues are gone. However, if you ever wanted to meet someone with a bad temper, you should have met me when I was much younger.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Firstly, breathing is the easiest thing for us to focus on. Breathing is important because you can take all your five senses and focus them on breathing. After that taking your five senses away from the world around you, is what is the basis of bringing peace into your heart and reaching for joy.
• Certainly, you can take all five senses from the world and focus them on the sound of your breath. Your breathing is always with you and you have to breathe in order to come down and reach for joy because when you breathe in deeply, you automatically open up your connection with the source.
• Our breath is the channel of communication with the collective consciousness. After that, my consciousness is connected to me as a drop of water is connected to the ocean, all because of my breath.

Suggested Resources

• Book: Unlimited By Zehra Mahoon
• Book: Thrive By Zehra Mahoon
• Book: Peace Within: A Law of Attraction Guide to Meditation By Zehra Mahoon
• Book:How to pray so that God listens (B/W): 100 prayers for ultimate joy & success in life By Zehra Mahoon
• Book: Reaching for Joy: A Law of Attraction Workbook for Alignment & Manifesting
• Book: The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself By Michael Singer
• App: Rain Sounds

Bullying Story

• I was talking to a neighbor who just had major surgery and was telling me about the medical system. After that I went away from that discussion, thinking, sweetheart, if I could just explain to you that you create your own reality. That is to say,  if you encountered that experience, you created it, it didn't come to you out of the blue, it came to you because you created it.
• What we really need to look at is what is your habit of thought that resulted in the creation of this experience. It applies even to little children. Moreover when a child is fearful of something, everything in that child's life will gravitate toward the vibration of fear, and will bring those people into that child's life that will subject the child to bullying.

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Shadow Work To Nourish And Grow: Winnie Chan Wang

Winnie Chan Wang is a lover of science and spirituality. Her vision is for all medicine to join as One! She is a trauma-informed licensed acupuncturist, teacher, shadow worker, Reiki, and open-hearted Tao healer. She is also a professor in acupuncture at Alhambra Medical University. She is passionate about empowering people with chronic pain to step into their source power to heal themselves. In her book “Honoring Darkness: Embrace Shadow Work To Nourish And Grow Your Power”, she and her co-author searched deep into their traumas and made lemonade out of the lemons. As they navigated the darkness, they gained trust and purpose.

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Contact Info

• Website: www.mindfulhealingheart.com
• Podcast: Integrated Healing Circles
• Book: Honoring Darkness: Embrace Shadow Work To Nourish And Grow Your Power By Winnie Chan Wang

Most Influential Person

• I'm gonna say me, okay. You know to clarify, it's choosing me over and over again. Because we all have a tendency to check out Brene Brown who talks about showing up in the arena. It's kind of like, okay, well, I checked out of my mindfulness yesterday.
• But today, I'm gonna see if I can stay in the mindfulness longer. It's this idea that I'm just going to keep showing up day after day. That's just like my discipline, you know, no matter what, I'm gonna stand behind myself, Yes, I'm gonna say me.

Effect on Emotions

• Emotions are full of gifts. Right? For example, anger is when I feel anger, that's when I should set boundaries with the bully. So it's really funny, Bruce, as an Asian girl growing up in Asia, I was told I have to be nice and people-pleasing, and I was completely disconnected from my anger.
• I talked about this in my book, how, even in the moment of rape, I  shouldn't be angry. But I am not angry. So like, I should fight back, but I don't. Therefore the gift of anger, you know, my trauma responses, freezing and thawing. You know, those are kind of like the conditioning, but if I own my anger, I can really love my emotion.
• Emotions are the most powerful thing. Definitely embrace and appreciate all the protection that comes from your emotions.

Thoughts on Breathing

• One of my favorite breathing techniques is to put one hand over the heart and one hand below the belly button. And just really picturing myself as Santa Claus with a big belly. So when I breathe in, I'm like, okay, when he gives me the biggest Santa Claus belly you can, because the lower abdominal breathing really grounds and anchors.
• I want to talk a minute about the recycling program. Shinzon Jung talks about this; we have all the positives in the world. That's like loving forgiveness, compassion, and light. And then we have all the negatives in the world, like shame, fear, anger. We don't actually get to the emptiness condition by love and light, we get to the emptiness condition or the oneness condition or the zero, by mathematically adding all the plus, all the negative, then we get the zero.
• So true power, true source. Certainly, true oneness is when we put together all the positives and all the minus and get zero. So how we do that actually is below the belly button. In Chinese martial arts, we call that the dantian. And in yoga they call it the Kundalini center navel point. There's a lot of different names for this practice.
• That is to say, when we breathe in, we breathe all the love and light. And we can source and connect to all the anger and fear and all the negative things in our body; cancer, whatever you want. Channel that into the dawn tan, and mix the light and the dark together into oneness.
• Above all that is how I want all the listeners to try breathing. You know, when you feel angry, or scared, be like, Oh my god, I have the raw ingredients to make a powerful ball. You know, it's kind of like if I'm cooking a pot of soup. I need all the ingredients. I need the sugar, and I need the lemon to make lemonade.

Suggested Resources

• Book: Honoring Darkness: Embrace Shadow Work To Nourish And Grow Your Power By Winnie Chan Wang
• Book: Tao Te Ching (Dao De Jing)
• Book: Unbinding The Soul: Awakening Through Crisis and Compassion by Dr Raven Lee
• Book: Tao Science: The Science, Wisdom, and Practice of Creation and Grand Unification
• App: Headspace

Bullying Story

• I've had verbal abuse, emotional abuse, gaslighting, and all kinds of humiliation in my life. So I'm going to start with the other counterpart. My teacher calls this the ABCDE method.
• First, A is aware, right? Your mindfulness is like, oh, I'm aware that this is happening, or I'm aware that I'm triggered as something happened, and I'm triggered back to the trauma that I was bullied. But A is also to accept, right?
• This is the equanimity part to accept that this is happening. And actually to appreciate. Appreciate the sensation inside my body, okay, maybe my throat is choking. Meanwhile, I am shivering, maybe I'm even peeing in my pants, you know, like, appreciate that my body is doing what it needs to be and also appreciate that God doesn't give us bullying to punish us.
• God gives us bullying, to help us learn how to make lemonade out of the lemons, so that we can make connections and spread love and feel the belonging. That's the other thing is that intimacy happens when we have vulnerable and difficult conversations.
• If we just talk about hey, how's your golf game? Oh, yeah, the Lakers won, whatever. Hey, how's your food? How's the movie? If we just talk on a superficial level? We're never gonna get intimacy, right.
• So but if I share with you my rape story, my abortion story, my bullying story, then I have a connection. So almost think about I'm not stuck as the victim. Because whatever lemons that happened to my life, I can make lemonade out of it.
• Next is B which means breathe. Whether you're in the middle of being bullied, or you're being triggered back to a memory of bullying, you breathe.
• C is the compassionate witness. In short, compassionate witness is our ability to validate the victim. Oh, you know, yes, you are bullied. It makes sense to me that you're feeling cold and shivering and palpitations and all of that.
• But also the witness word is very important because that's like the observer. If we only have compassion, we actually dwell on victimhood. We're like, oh, yeah, you know, it sucks that I'm bullied. I'm a victim, I'm a victim, but the minute we bring the witness, it's like okay, I am detaching from the story, the victim card, and I become the witness.
• C means compassionate witness. If you get to see the amazing job, okay, it took me a lot of time and years to proceed.
• D is dialogue within and what it means to dialogue within. So meditate and reflect on what is really going on. For example, let's say I am the victim of the silent treatment, okay? Shadow Work To Nourish And Grow. Somebody is emotionally bullying me with the silent treatment. Okay, so on the top level, I am feeling abandoned, rejected, sadness.
• When we do the shadow work, we dive deeper into our subconscious. We're like, okay, what is beneath this thing that I'm experiencing? And you check-in and you're like, oh, because deeper down, I have a thought that I'm not lovable. And I'm not worthy of my respect. I'm not worthy of other people's respect.
• I don't know that I'm a gift to the world, and I just feel utterly worthless. Okay, so d is when we don't look at, like, okay, that person hurt me. But really go down into what is my core source fracture? Do we call this? Yes, you're unworthy. And when this one, the fact that you don't love yourself, you don't respect yourself that causes the manifestation of the bullying, right?
• Lastly, E is an effective response. So that's when you be like, Okay, well, now that I've done ABCD, what is the effective response? So instead of reacting out of the trauma of being a bully, being bullied, it's like, well, how can I empower myself? You know, having done all the shadow work, how having empowered me, what can I do?
• How have I disempowered myself to manifest this bullying situation? Maybe if I really own that, you know, I can work on loving myself, respecting myself, feeling that I am a gift to the whole universe, I am a legend.
• As a result, I'm here. I'm authentic. And you know, from a place of strength and power, how am I going to respond to this bullying situation? Oh, and I do want to reference if you like the ABCDE method. It's by Dr. Raven Lee. And her book is called Unbinding The Soul: Awakening Through Crisis and Compassion by Dr Raven Lee.

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Entering The Mind; C von Hassett and Rachel Reid Wilkie

C von Hassett and Rachel Reid Wilkie are, as they say, co-conspirators in all things – with a heavy emphasis on spirit – which together they’ve been exploring since the day they met. Throughout the years they have collaborated on numerous projects in the Arts, both in Los Angeles and New York City. Their time in the East Village culminated in a monumental exhibition, Documents of Love, at the famed Hosfelt Gallery in Chelsea, where the couple exhibited a diverse body of work – poetry, paintings photography, a short film – to the attendance of thousands. Upon returning to Los Angeles, C von & Rachel founded Riot Material magazine, a now thriving and widely read literary-cultural magazine with its eye on Art, Word, and forward-aiming thought.

Rachel and C are the rare married couple who not only work and create together but practice together day after day, side by side, often knee to knee, in the singular pursuit of knowing the deeper self beyond the conceptual self – that timeless, eternal Being which births forth the temporal one. To that end, the Pandemic Years saw the couple in contemplative retreat at their high-desert ranch in the Northern Mojave, a sacred landscape that sits just below the 12,000-foot peaks of the Eastern Sierra Nevadas. Here, beyond their full immersion into meditative practice, C von wrote Entering the Mind, while Rachel delivered to the world her inaugural spoken-song album, titled XI. 

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Contact Info

• Website: www.enteringthemind.com
• Podcast: Entering The Mind
• Book: Entering the Mind By C von Hassett

Most Influential Person

• Norbu Rinpoche, Sonia Rinpoche, and MinGi Rinpoche

Effect on Emotions

• I have found during the last two years  where we have really emerged ourselves into this practice during the pandemic, my emotions have transformed completely.
• I'm a very passionate person. I spent many years in Italy, so I learned from the best. I get ecstatically happy and I get very emotionally sad, but I have an incredible new relationship with them [my emotions]. My emotions are almost like an old friend, you know, waving at me saying, Hey, Rachel, I'm back again. This is happy, this is me, this is happy.
• What happens at that moment is that I'm still within that ecstatic happiness and I'm also calm in the center of that ecstatic happiness. When I feel really, really sad; if I hear some sad news, I get a sense of the deep sorrow within me. But it's still within a calm container. So I've learned that without even trying too hard, this is the practice that has definitely installed itself within me. I've become less much reactive and I don't react instantly to those emotions.
• On the rare occasion, when I do react instantly without a thought, then I recognize it immediately. And I go, oops, okay, I see you, I see where you're coming from. It's okay, let's just sit down. Let's just take a moment. Let's hold hands. Let's see where we're going with this. And so bringing mindfulness to my emotions has been one of the biggest transformational experiences I have had in the last few years.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Up until a few years ago, I really kind of poo-pooed the whole breathing practice. I didn't put much stock in it. I've always been intellectual and I love the intellectual approach to meditation. Over The past year I've just come to recognize the utter importance of the breath. And in fact, the breath is the one thing that transitions between the body and the mind, body and the spirit, the body and awareness. You can be sitting down in a meditation practice and still be fully involved in your day and in your world.
• You have your breath. Then as you settle, and you move into your awareness, the breath is still there. The breath is the beautiful bridge between the two beings. I'm now just absolutely certain that the breath is one of the keys to moving from one perspective to the next. It's like the rope that you pull through in the darkness to get you to the other side if you need it.

Suggested Resources

• Book: Entering the Mind By C von Hassett
• Book: The Boundary Stone By C von Hassett
• Book:The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
• App: onecommune.com

Bullying Story

• It's a personal story. I was brought up by my parents in the countryside of Cambridge. My brother and I were both expected to go to private schools. He went to the private school, which is actually a castle, and at the young, bright age of 11, I wanted to go my own way.
• I asked my parents if I could go to the state school, because not only did I not want to walk in the footsteps of my brother, but I wanted my own space, and I wanted my own independence. So they also had a great art faculty as well, that I really wanted to get into. And so my parents said, yes. So at the age of 11, I went to a public [state] school. I spoke differently from others, I had a rather nice accent.
• A lot of my colleagues at school, my fellow students, they had some really cool accents. [The way they talked] involved a lot of rude words, so I can't do it here.
• So I experienced bullying firsthand. And I started very subtle, and I made friends, I had this really lovely close girlfriend, and we used to walk around together.
• And you know, these long corridors that go on forever, and gangs of girls would be in wait as you walk through this corridor of girls waiting for you. Something's going to happen, you just don't know what's going to happen. And you just brace yourself and you walk through that corridor of girls. Then someone would stick their foot out and you'd fly on your belly down the corridor.
• So I did actually have one other incident, which was where I was actually pinned up against a locker. Then she lost her temper, and she did actually punch me in the face. At this moment, it wasn't so much her actions towards me, but it was the little crowd of other children behind her, as she punched me in the face, that cackled with laughter.
• One person's act of bullying can be one thing, but the humiliation and the shame that I felt from the others witnessing it, and then laughing at it. That contributed to this bullying experience.

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