ReportWire

Tag: mindfullness

  • Creating Inner Harmony In 30 Seconds

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    Have you ever heard the term ‘coherence’ as it relates to inner harmony? Perhaps, simply reading the words ‘inner harmony’ and ‘coherence’ bring about a desire to feel a little more firmly planted within yourself?

    It’s not easy right now. I mean, life is rarely what anyone would describe as easy – but as far as my lifetime goes, it’s never been quite this challenging to navigate while maintaining any sense of calm. I have come to trust that things unfold as they need to for our own greater evolution. To try and change what we cannot control is the greatest source of our self-inflicted suffering.

    What I can change are my mind, my heart and my response in any given situation. This is well within all of our control and this is why understanding coherence and inner harmony is so critical right now. We need it more than ever.

    A lot of us have a vision of what a happy life looks like. It might include a dream home, a vacation, a certain type of partner, or perhaps a certain level of wealth and financial security.

    The reality is that none of that is the ticket if we can’t calm the nerves and flow more effortlessly through life. The desires for those things that we think will bring us greater happiness are not really what we need or want. What we truly crave is to feel at peace. It’s a lot easier and more obvious to crave material things or extravagant experiences than to sit for five or ten minutes, focus on our breathing and allow what we really want to wash over us. And what we want is that inner harmony.

    What Does It Mean To Be In A Coherent State?

    We know that the brain sends signals to the body. As I type this, my brain is telling my fingers to get to work on my lightning-fast, slightly manic, two-finger typing to get these words on my screen. That’s the brain sending a message to the body.

    We also know that if we witness a scary or startling event, we feel a jolt of fear and our heart rate elevates. These are the efferent pathways of the nervous system: brain to body.

    Very few of us actively acknowledge that the heart sends more signals to the brain than the brain sends to the heart and the rest of the body. These are called the afferent pathways.

    When we can tune into that rhythm of the heart and bring it into coherence, we can directly impact how we feel from a nervous system perspective (anxious vs. calm) as well as how the frontocortical and motor cortex of the brain functions (responsive vs. reactive).

    Optimally, we want to be in a coherent state where we feel calm and peaceful and where we are better able to make mindful decisions, allowing for critical, creative and solution-oriented thinking to dominate. As you might now be seeing, this is not the state most of us are in as we go about our day.

    Most of us, most of the time, are operating in an incoherent state where we are experiencing stress, overwhelm, anxiety, uncertainty and fear. When we are in this state, our ability to think clearly, be compassionate, kind and caring is impaired. In short, we are not remotely at our best.

    To be compassionate, one of the most critical heart-based emotions that we all need to be embodying right now, means tuning into the heart and bringing ourselves into coherence. What’s really amazing is that being compassionate brings us into coherence, and when we are in a coherent state, we are more compassionate, loving, kind, appreciative, grateful, calm and peaceful. A beautiful thing about this is that when we are in this state, we also directly invite others to feel more heart-centred as well.

    Our level of coherence has been shown to directly impact the heart rhythm of those around us.

    How Do We Cultivate Inner Harmony?

    What I love about the technique I’m about to share is that you don’t have to sit quietly in meditation for 20 minutes to get there. You don’t need to remove yourself from life. Don’t get me wrong: it certainly helps to develop a dedicated meditation practice, as that will make the 30-second doses of coherence easier to achieve, but it’s not essential for impact.

    The technique I’m sharing below is based on the teachings of the HeartMath Institute. There is no right or wrong way to be proactive; it’s all about steadying your heart rhythm and bringing your mind and body into coherence.

    Getting Into Coherence

    1. Take a few moments to focus on and slow your breathing. Consider trying an inhale for a count of 1-2-3-4 and then a 1-2-3-4 exhale.
    2. Once your breath has steadied, envision this breath coming in through your heart and out through your heart. Continue with your slower than normal breathing.
    3. Now, as you continue breathing slowly in and out through your heart, embody the feeling of love, compassion and appreciation. Feel in your body how it feels to be deeply cared for, appreciated and loved. I find it helpful to turn the corner of my mouth into a smile as I embody this feeling.
    4. Sit with this feeling for as long as you have time for.
    5. If you want to extend your practice, after a few minutes, you can extend that feeling of love, appreciation and compassion outward to someone you know, to a community or to the planet as a whole. Continue focusing on your breath, coming in and out through your heart and embodying these heart-centred emotions.

    Inner Harmony In 30 Seconds

    I have been doing this practice daily – sometimes for 5 minutes, sometimes for 20 minutes – for several years. It’s a bit of a personal check-in. Lately, however, I think I’m likely clocking in a lot more time because of my ongoing 30-second practices all day, throughout the day.

    See, as I mentioned earlier, it’s tough out there. Tension is high, resilience is low and most people are going about their day operating from an incoherent state, making them reactive, short, fearful, and lacking patience and compassion. And I do my best to blast it out. I picture it a bit like the Care Bear Stare.

    inner harmony

    When I am standing in line, waiting at a red light on my bicycle, or even when my son is exhausted after a day of school and melt-down-ready, I mindfully slow my breathing and embody compassion while sending this emotion out to whomever is near me.

    Imagine for a moment if 5% of us did this. Or what about 10%? If every 10th person we encounter was embodying love, compassion, empathy and care, we’d be living in a very different world.

    If happiness is really what you’re after, you’ll get there a lot faster – in fact, you’ll get there today – if you take a few moments to get into coherence. It’s literally your next breath away.

    And, well, this is my goal. Inner harmony and coherence will be playing a big part in the new program I’m developing. If you’d like to learn more about the evidence and experience coherence, I have this 20 minute training you can check out here. In these sessions, I will also offer the science that supports what I’ve shared above in greater detail. Learn more and get on the list here.

    Getting Into CoherenceGetting Into Coherence

    On My Mind Episode 20: Creating Inner Harmony In 30 Seconds

    Subscribe today on your favourite podcast app and never miss an episode.

    If happiness is really what you're after, you'll get there a lot faster if you take a moment or two to get into coherence.If happiness is really what you're after, you'll get there a lot faster if you take a moment or two to get into coherence.

    Header Photo Credit: Nikki McKean

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    Meghan Telpner

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  • Embracing Heart-Led Living Amidst Divisive Influences

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    It is a significant task to tame our minds and connect with our hearts, especially amid external influences that divide and manipulate. As we navigate complex beliefs and divisive rhetoric, fostering unity and compassion becomes paramount for our shared humanity. Let’s step back from the chaos, find inner harmony, and strive to spread love and peace in our daily interactions.

    Heart-led living requires us to tune into the whispers of the heart and invite those messages to be amplified. Easier said than done, no doubt, especially when we’re inundated with thousands of messages everyday triggering us to do the exact opposite.

    To be clear, this isn’t about becoming ‘soft’ or weakened, or needing to hop onto the woowoo train. No. Leading and living from the heart invites us to tune in to the root of our confidence, where we are in complete alignment with our soul and becoming wildly strong.

    To tune into our hearts, we must first quiet our minds and reflect on our core beliefs, and distinguish between those rooted in love or fear, abundance or lack, unity or division. Failing to do so makes us susceptible to societal chaos and propaganda, disconnecting us from the source of universal love and reality.

    We cannot tune into our hearts when we have never taken a moment to try and tame our own minds, to ask the most basic of questions: 

    What do I believe?

    Why do I believe what I believe? 

    Are the core beliefs I have built my life upon based on love or fear? Abundance or lack? ‘Us’ vs. ’Them’?

    Without asking big questions of ourselves and sitting quietly to explore the answers honestly, free of ego, we become easy prey. 

    When society is in chaos we get swept into the game. We easily become manipulated by the propaganda, the fear, and internal soul conflict that becomes reflected in our day-to-day interactions. 

    Our pain points have been tapped and we are lost- further disconnected from the heart, the source of universal love, as our minds become less hinged to what is real.

    We all have our inherent biases, but it is only when a foundational truth is challenged that more people wake up and rise up against the new agents of war: manipulative messaging, catch phrases, trending hashtags, and cancel culture, where every mobile device is the weapon. 

    The thing about propaganda is that most people can only see it conflict strongly with a pre-established belief, and in most cases, there is a pre-existing social network that is also in agreement.

    We think we see it so clearly as we ask:

    How is everyone being manipulated by this? it’s so obvious… 

    How can you of all people not see?

    They’re spreading lies.

    Can’t they see how clearly this stance contradicts what they were outraged about last month?

    It takes a lot ego-checking to see the persuasive messaging and manipulation when it aligns with our existing beliefs and confirms our own biases.

    We especially love when a person who, for all superficial reasons, should be with the ‘other side’ but instead affirms our beliefs and views. We love that. That gives us an I told you so and even one of *yours* says I’m right affirmation.

    Challenging this is hard work for the brain. 

    We watch the news networks, follow the accounts, and now it seems, keep only the friends that affirm us. 

    We share the stories that make us right and call ‘misinformation’ to those that make us wrong. We immediately say the other is lying (and they may very well be), doing whatever it takes to make us feel more and more right. 

    With all of this, what we are actually doing is disconnecting further from the heart. Without realizing it, as we feel so empowered and right, we too have become agents of division.

    What a thing to witness, watching people shuffle around every other week to work out the new “team” they’re on with whatever issue we are to be outraged about, and working out who from the old team is coming along to this new one. Along with this, we now check in on who we are now disappointed by and must separate ourselves from.  It’s a rapid action of follows and unfollows to remain in our safe, belief affirming echo chamber.

    It gets tricky though. 

    For when we are persistently swayed by the all mighty external messaging powers, we lose our way, don’t we? 

    Many of us can see it. Having complex beliefs around complex topics is complex to reckon with.

    When you can see it from the outside, what you are witnessing is a complete loss of self as the heart and mind cannot contend with the ridiculous hypocrisy and most basic impossible conflict of how one stance can’t actually exist in alignment with the last one taken. 

    We lose the ability to tame our own minds, to tune into our hearts, and to truly know thyself.

    We forget that we are all human, and we are all connected. 

    The human species requires deep connection for basic survival, but the ongoing need to align with a side only causes more division- especially when that alignment is based on what was read in memes or trending videos (which are, of course, just more of the aforementioned tools of control). 

    To continue creating separation from others only serves our own growing sense of aloneness and separation from our own souls, while feeding the thin veneer of righteousness.

    What we are all feeling is our basic sense of humanity:  outrage at the suffering, and a yearning for justice that will never come through aggressive, divisive action. 

    Where does it end? 

    We choose.

    The answer to all of this is easy to speak, but takes a monumental amount of work to accomplish.

    It can end when we all find ourselves standing alone, completely divided over the abundance of very real issues we are told to take a side on to the point where we each exist utterly and completely alone, afraid to broach difficult topics and have the necessary difficult conversations. The result of this culture, of course, is that we silence the now nearly inaudible wise whisper of our own heart, and give in to the pull of the tide, the all encompassing, ear splitting roar of the media machine. 

    Or it can end when we decide to join hands, tune in and live and lead from the heart, to not allow that external voice to get any louder and instead work to amplify the whisper of the heart. It ends when we choose to love, allowing the infinite tidal wave of compassion that exists within all of our hearts to take the lead. 

    It ends when, in our everyday lives, not as keyboard warriors, we are walking embodiments of peace. 

    It ends when we look up from our screens and into each others eyes and see that we all want the same thing.

    We smile.

    We serve.

    We love unconditionally.

    We aim to be the joy, the delight, and the inspiration in someone else’s day.

    We operate from kindness.

    What if we extricate ourselves from the nitty gritty horrific details? Yes, you can know the news, but then step back and get centred. Get into coherence, into harmony, and ask, what can I do today to be an agent of love and peace? How can I choose, in this moment and the next, to live and lead from the heart?

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    Meghan Telpner

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  • The Time In Between: How To Be Present

    The Time In Between: How To Be Present

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    The time in between is where the magic is. It’s what I am learning to live for and be present for. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard though. It’s hard to get there. Now more than ever perhaps.

    In fact, for me, writing is one of those things that fills a need for my mental wellbeing. It’s how I process ideas. Some of it you get to read, some of it never sees the light of day. I go into the zone where my heart and brain are in full coherence. I am in flow. You know this feeling, but perhaps haven’t given it the acknowledgement and appreciation it needs. If you have young children, it’s an absolute joy to witness them in this state. They’re focussed, calm and often can be found humming or singing, or even talking to themselves as they go about doing whatever it is they’re doing.

    As adults we’ve been trained (and perhaps conditioned) to fill all the time we have. We fill it with perpetual busyness and when we don’t have something to do, we get twitchy. Hello phones! We scroll, we click, we formulate comments, we scroll and click some more until it’s time for us to do something else. More time filled.

    With what? Every moment that passes us by, where we fail to be present is a potential wasted opportunity of just being; of enjoying that time in between where we experience absolute joy and happiness.

    Look around yourself right now. If you’re in your home, consider that everything that surrounds you, all the stuff, was once money. And that money was once your time. Is it all worth it? It might just be. The next question of course is if you’re mindfully enjoying what your time and effort has provided for you, or have you already moved on to the next distraction? The next need?

    As the weight of the world continues to feel heavier and heavier upon all our shoulders, it becomes ever more critical to create the headspace and the physical space in our lives to be able to be present for the time in between. We cannot do this if we are overwhelmed by jumble in our minds and homes.

    Time in between

    When it can be exquisitely easy to be consumed by the chaos, the fear, the tragedy and the overwhelming feeling of helplessness, we can also choose joy. We can choose to find the times to be present with the big and small joys in our life. It always begins in our mind. Yes, some moments will be easier than others.

    Here is what I can promise you: with your effort, you will reap the benefit. Maybe today it’s two minutes of just walking hand in hand with your child. Or maybe it’s looking up from your computer to watch a bird on a tree. Maybe it’s that first embrace with someone you haven’t seen in a long time. And maybe it’s taking a half day off of work to sit and read a book on the grass.

    Stopping to enjoy the time we create to be still might just take the most discipline of all. But for those of you who are productivity junkies like me, here’s a tip – when you take those breaks, everything else works more efficiently. Your body, brain, and whatever it is you seek to create.

    Take a pause.

    And when you’re done, if you’re still reading, you’ll want to take a moment to look at how I’m working to help guide people to more peace, calm, and compassionate leadership. It takes time between the doing to do it all with heart.

    On My Mind Episode 30: The Time In Between: How To Be Present

    time in betweentime in between

    Subscribe today on your favourite podcast app and never miss an episode.

    Photo Credit: Nilkki McKean

    [ad_2]

    Meghan Telpner

    Source link

  • Embracing Heart-Led Living Amidst Divisive Influences

    Embracing Heart-Led Living Amidst Divisive Influences

    [ad_1]

    It is a significant task to tame our minds and connect with our hearts, especially amid external influences that divide and manipulate. As we navigate complex beliefs and divisive rhetoric, fostering unity and compassion becomes paramount for our shared humanity. Let’s step back from the chaos, find inner harmony, and strive to spread love and peace in our daily interactions.

    Heart-led living requires us to tune into the whispers of the heart and invite those messages to be amplified. Easier said than done, no doubt, especially when we’re inundated with thousands of messages everyday triggering us to do the exact opposite.

    To be clear, this isn’t about becoming ‘soft’ or weakened, or needing to hop onto the woowoo train. No. Leading and living from the heart invites us to tune in to the root of our confidence, where we are in complete alignment with our soul and becoming wildly strong.

    To tune into our hearts, we must first quiet our minds and reflect on our core beliefs, and distinguish between those rooted in love or fear, abundance or lack, unity or division. Failing to do so makes us susceptible to societal chaos and propaganda, disconnecting us from the source of universal love and reality.

    We cannot tune into our hearts when we have never taken a moment to try and tame our own minds, to ask the most basic of questions: 

    What do I believe?

    Why do I believe what I believe? 

    Are the core beliefs I have built my life upon based on love or fear? Abundance or lack? ‘Us’ vs. ’Them’?

    Without asking big questions of ourselves and sitting quietly to explore the answers honestly, free of ego, we become easy prey. 

    When society is in chaos we get swept into the game. We easily become manipulated by the propaganda, the fear, and internal soul conflict that becomes reflected in our day-to-day interactions. 

    Our pain points have been tapped and we are lost- further disconnected from the heart, the source of universal love, as our minds become less hinged to what is real.

    We all have our inherent biases, but it is only when a foundational truth is challenged that more people wake up and rise up against the new agents of war: manipulative messaging, catch phrases, trending hashtags, and cancel culture, where every mobile device is the weapon. 

    The thing about propaganda is that most people can only see it conflict strongly with a pre-established belief, and in most cases, there is a pre-existing social network that is also in agreement.

    We think we see it so clearly as we ask:

    How is everyone being manipulated by this? it’s so obvious… 

    How can you of all people not see?

    They’re spreading lies.

    Can’t they see how clearly this stance contradicts what they were outraged about last month?

    It takes a lot ego-checking to see the persuasive messaging and manipulation when it aligns with our existing beliefs and confirms our own biases.

    We especially love when a person who, for all superficial reasons, should be with the ‘other side’ but instead affirms our beliefs and views. We love that. That gives us an I told you so and even one of *yours* says I’m right affirmation.

    Challenging this is hard work for the brain. 

    We watch the news networks, follow the accounts, and now it seems, keep only the friends that affirm us. 

    We share the stories that make us right and call ‘misinformation’ to those that make us wrong. We immediately say the other is lying (and they may very well be), doing whatever it takes to make us feel more and more right. 

    With all of this, what we are actually doing is disconnecting further from the heart. Without realizing it, as we feel so empowered and right, we too have become agents of division.

    What a thing to witness, watching people shuffle around every other week to work out the new “team” they’re on with whatever issue we are to be outraged about, and working out who from the old team is coming along to this new one. Along with this, we now check in on who we are now disappointed by and must separate ourselves from.  It’s a rapid action of follows and unfollows to remain in our safe, belief affirming echo chamber.

    It gets tricky though. 

    For when we are persistently swayed by the all mighty external messaging powers, we lose our way, don’t we? 

    Many of us can see it. Having complex beliefs around complex topics is complex to reckon with.

    When you can see it from the outside, what you are witnessing is a complete loss of self as the heart and mind cannot contend with the ridiculous hypocrisy and most basic impossible conflict of how one stance can’t actually exist in alignment with the last one taken. 

    We lose the ability to tame our own minds, to tune into our hearts, and to truly know thyself.

    We forget that we are all human, and we are all connected. 

    The human species requires deep connection for basic survival, but the ongoing need to align with a side only causes more division- especially when that alignment is based on what was read in memes or trending videos (which are, of course, just more of the aforementioned tools of control). 

    To continue creating separation from others only serves our own growing sense of aloneness and separation from our own souls, while feeding the thin veneer of righteousness.

    What we are all feeling is our basic sense of humanity:  outrage at the suffering, and a yearning for justice that will never come through aggressive, divisive action. 

    Where does it end? 

    We choose.

    The answer to all of this is easy to speak, but takes a monumental amount of work to accomplish.

    It can end when we all find ourselves standing alone, completely divided over the abundance of very real issues we are told to take a side on to the point where we each exist utterly and completely alone, afraid to broach difficult topics and have the necessary difficult conversations. The result of this culture, of course, is that we silence the now nearly inaudible wise whisper of our own heart, and give in to the pull of the tide, the all encompassing, ear splitting roar of the media machine. 

    Or it can end when we decide to join hands, tune in and live and lead from the heart, to not allow that external voice to get any louder and instead work to amplify the whisper of the heart. It ends when we choose to love, allowing the infinite tidal wave of compassion that exists within all of our hearts to take the lead. 

    It ends when, in our everyday lives, not as keyboard warriors, we are walking embodiments of peace. 

    It ends when we look up from our screens and into each others eyes and see that we all want the same thing.

    We smile.

    We serve.

    We love unconditionally.

    We aim to be the joy, the delight, and the inspiration in someone else’s day.

    We operate from kindness.

    What if we extricate ourselves from the nitty gritty horrific details? Yes, you can know the news, but then step back and get centred. Get into coherence, into harmony, and ask, what can I do today to be an agent of love and peace? How can I choose, in this moment and the next, to live and lead from the heart?

    [ad_2]

    Meghan Telpner

    Source link