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I recently saw a banner hanging across the road - “Crop Walk - End Hunger,” it said, and it caught my attention because it focuses on the wrong thing.

I’m not saying that I think there should be hunger. What I’m saying is that putting energy into what you don’t want actually adds power to the wrong side of the issue. To say “End Hunger” actually gives energy to hunger; this is focusing on what’s not wanted. “Feed the hungry,” on the other hand, focuses on the desired outcome.

Think of it this way: studies have shown that when a group of people get together to collectively pray for the recovery of a seriously ill person, their prayers get results. These prayers are not said against the ailment or injury from which the person suffers; the prayers are said for the healing of that person. In other words, the prayers that work focus on what’s wanted (healing), NOT on what’s not wanted (illness, injury, disease).

Putting energy into what you want - individually or collectively - creates an energetic shift that makes it more likely that you’ll get it. This is why I tell all my clients to focus on what they want. This works on a group basis too, so whether it’s a political candidate, war vs. peace, illness vs. health, or hunger vs. food, put your energy into the one you WANT. Envision your favored candidate winning, peace where there’s conflict, health where there’s illness, or food where there’s hunger.

A nice side effect - it feels good! It literally feels better to focus on what you want rather than focusing on the opposite. It’s a subtle but very important shift in attention, INtention, and energy - try it!

Just what does it take to change your life? Where do you start? What do you do? I get asked these questions by those who never gave it a thought before that moment, and by those who have read every self-help book they’ve come across and still couldn’t find the starting point that worked for them.There are definitely some concepts to understand and accept if you want to change something in yourself and your life. Over the next few weeks, I’ll tell you about some of them, beginning this week with The Mind/Body Connection.

The mind/body connection is created by naturally occurring chemicals in the brain called neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters communicate your emotions, among other things, to every one of the trillions of cells in your body. Each cell has a physical reaction to every thought and feeling; subsequently, your thoughts and feelings have a direct impact on your physical well-being as well as your reality.

If you experience very strong negative feelings (emotions) often enough and for prolonged periods of time, your immune system can be compromised - things happen in your body that can result in a weakened ability to fight off disease or other health-related problems.

Consider this: physical pain is your unconscious mind screaming that there’s a negative emotion that you’ve ignored long enough to push it into physical manifestation. So remember that negativity is unhealthy for mind and spirit, and also for the physical body. When you experience it, ask yourself if it’s worth it - you may find that it’s not, & you’ll know that you’re on the path to change.

You’ve been practicing the first three steps in managing stress quickly when you’re on the run. BREATHING oxygenates your brain and body, having the DESIRE to deal with the stressful situation rather than hide from it shifts your energy into a more active state, and LETTING GO OF THE EMOTIONAL CHARGE of the situation helps you calm and center yourself; it also helps you obtain OBJECTIVITY. Now, let’s do something!

Feel yourself re-asserting control, and know that you’re in control of the elements of the situation that are yours to control. Picture yourself taking the appropriate action and dealing with the situation objectively, with impartial thoughts instead of emotional ones. See yourself getting the results you want; feel what that would feel like. You can do this is in the same way you imagined the water clearing the emotions from your body.

This is the point at which you move forward to TAKE ACTION - using what’s available to you for dealing with the situation in some constructive way. Remember, this is stress management on the run, so an interim, short-term improvement may be all that’s possible at the moment. That’s better than no improvement at all, and it’s certainly better than being drained by the mental/emotional/physical roller-coaster ride of stress!

This segment completes the series Stress 101 - Managing Stress on the Run. Use it in good health!

You’ve been making sure to BREATHE and face up to the situation causing the stress, and you have the DESIRE to deal with it effectively, thereby freeing yourself from its unhealthy aspects. What’s next?We’re generally not too effective when we’re letting our emotions run wild, and emotions are experienced by both mind and body. If you’re in a situation that’s putting you under severe stress you’re most likely experiencing emotions, even if you’re not consciously aware of them.

Anger, resentment, fear, guilt….any or all negative emotions can be running rampant through your mind and body, making you feel awful and having an unhealthy impact on you physically and emotionally. Also, thinking clearly and objectively is impossible when on an emotional ride, so LETTING THE EMOTIONS GO is step three in managing stress on the run.

How you let the emotions go depends on your relationship with your unconscious mind. Sometimes you can just ask it to release the emotions. Other times you need to give it a visual - a picture - to help it understand what you want. Try this while you’re taking some deep, lung-filling breaths: visualize light coming in to your body as you inhale, then when you exhale, envision the light coming out of the top of your head like a fountain, then falling down around your body, washing your body clean of emotion. Another technique is to imagine that you’re under gently running warm water that washes the emotions off your body and carries them away.

Create your own representation - it will be perfect for you. Do you think you can’t visualize? That’s OK - use your imagination to sense one of those scenarios, imagining what it feels like, sounds like, smells like, tastes like, to have your emotions washed away from you. Your unconscious mind will get the message.

Once the emotional charge is gone, notice how different the situation looks, and how much easier it is to consider solutions now that you’ve used the first three steps to move yourself toward a calm and centered state of mind, free of unpleasant emotional distress.

You now have 3 sequential steps to use in conquering the stress of the moment. BREATHE, take ownership of the issue and acknowledge your DESIRE to address it, and LET THE EMOTIONS GO so you can be calm and centered.

Part Four will let you know what to do next. Until then, practice handling your stress using these tips.

The first step of managing stress on the run is to BREATHE, deeply and fully, so brain and body are supported by the breath to function optimally. The next step is a little more personal, and it involves the DESIRE to resolve the stressful situation.It’s tempting to think that if you ignore something it will go away, and sometimes it even works that way, at least for a while. Not so much with stress. Stress may seem to go away if you ignore it, but what really happens is it goes “underground,” perhaps lurking somewhere in your body where it can cause long term damage. Like it or not, once you’ve become stressed, whatever the cause of that stress is now owned by you. There’s no way around it - you let it in, now you have to deal with it.

This is where DESIRE comes in. In order to deal with something effectively (note the word “effectively”), you need to want to handle it; it must be your intention to deal with the situation and put it to rest. To do this you need to acknowledge the issue, face up to it, accept that it’s real for you (regardless of what others think or feel), and know that you can handle it and find the best possible way to do so.

The next time you realize you’re experiencing signs of stress, stop and BREATHE, and open yourself up to the DESIRE to resolve the cause easily, effortlessly, and effectively, and save your mind and body from the unpleasant effects of stress.

Meditation is incredibly effective in managing stress overall, and I highly recommend it, but it takes some time, some quiet, & a setting conducive to going within and listening to the silence. What can you do, “in the moment,” to get through stressful situations? Stress 101 is a series of easy tips for dealing with stress when chaos strikes.

You know how stress makes you feel - the rapid heartbeat that seems to make it hard to breathe, perhaps a mild shaking of the hands, or sweaty palms; the feeling that you can’t think straight, and if you’ve carried the stress long enough, you may have lost sleep because of it. Stress begins in the mind, but what you may not realize is that due to the mind/body connection, your entire body experiences it too, within seconds after you become aware that you’re stressed. Stress can eventually compromise your body’s defenses in many ways, and it can kill, as the American Medical Association noted in the 1960’s.

One of the first things many people do when they become stressed, is “chest-breathe,” breathing in a shallow way that brings air into the very top of the chest, but doesn’t inflate the lungs fully. When you do this, you don’t bring in the amount of oxygen your body needs to function optimally, and this especially affects your brain, which uses a large amount of oxygen. If the brain doesn’t get the oxygen it needs for optimal operation, even more stress is created, coping with it becomes even more difficult, and there can be a tendency to react with more emotion than reason.

So the first rule of dealing with stress on the run is BREATHE. Fill your lungs as much as you can, breathing in deeply and slowly, then exhale slowly and completely, picturing tension leaving your body as the breath leaves your lungs. Do this three or four times, or until you start to feel calmer. This helps prepare you for taking the next step, but is itself a powerful way to help your body cope with a situation that it finds uncomfortable.

From now on, when you realize you’re feeling “stressed out,” take a moment to breathe mindfully, with deliberation and the intent to rid your physical body of tension and bring light and air in to every cell. And stay tuned for Part Two of Stress 101: DESIRE.

I met a man the other day, a U.S. military veteran of the wars in the Middle East who has come home & returned to the workforce. He said that no one returns from that conflict unmarked; actually, he said everyone returns “not quite right,” including himself. He’s been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the bane of warriors since the beginning of time, and he sees a therapist in his home city of Chicago.

In April, the Rand Corp. released the results of a study of returning veterans. The study showed that about 300,000 U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan (about 18.5%) suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, roughly the same results of a government study released in February. The Rand study goes on to conclude that only about half of these returning veterans receive care, and that in half of those cases the care is only “minimally adequate.”

With few exceptions, humans have to be “psyched up” for war - physically, mentally, emotionally, & yes, even spiritually. Does this preparation just evaporate when the need is over? Absolutely not. The conscious mind rationalizes that “I’m home now; it’s over. I can get back to my life…,” but the unconscious mind, which was the target of the preparation, has to release not only the conditioning (training), but also the post traumatic stress itself. You don’t just talk yourself out of it.

The ancient Hawaiians knew that warriors returning home couldn’t just lay down their arms and return to society as if they’d never left. There were places of refuge in the Islands where the warriors went for a period of adjustment; where healers helped them clear their minds and emotions, balance their energies, and remember what it was to be the husband, father, son, or brother, and member of a community. They didn’t go home until this process was complete, for it was understood that it could be disastrous to release a warrior still in battle condition back into society - disastrous for both the citizen and the society. In their culture, there was no mental illness, no “depression”, no post traumatic stress, and outside of war, rare violence against members of their own society.

We tend to think of post traumatic stress as strictly a result of war. This is not so - victims of violence, especially children, often experience this malady. In my study and my work, I’ve found that the post traumatic stress that surfaces during or after a war experience often has its roots early in life. I worked with a veteran who had been in traditional therapies for this disorder since returning from Vietnam in the 1970’s. It was his war experience that resulted in the diagnosis, but his first experience with post traumatic stress occurred when he was five years old.

We continue to work together occasionally; and he’s made what he considers amazing progress over the course of 15 months when compared to the previous 36 years of treatment. The commonly used Western therapies have proven to be largely ineffective in terms of significant relief or resolution. On the other hand, holistic techniques such as NeuroLinguistic Programming, hypnosis, and energy work are highly effective in releasing the wounds and bringing a person back into balance in a relatively short period of time.

If you or someone you know is struggling to find relief and release from post traumatic stress, find a practitioner of these holistic methods, the sooner the better, so the programs of war and violence can be dismantled.

And to those who serve on our behalf, I send the Light of love, compassion, and gratitude, and wish you many blessings as you remember your way back home.