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Emotional Stress Release for Stress and Muscle Tension

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It is natural for muscles to tense up when there is stress on line. It is also natural for muscles to release and relax when you are not in stress. So tension can come and go with different ups and downs of life. Muscle tension is how your body tells you that you need to do something to change what is going on so you are not wearing yourself out or making yourself sick.

Trouble is we often don’t recognize that we are carrying stress as muscle tension. Because it can be such an every day part of life it feels “normal”. We are often hurrying to get things done, get kids off to school, be on time, arrange events, keep appointments, complete work tasks, plan projects, or whatever. We may be dreading some coming meeting. We may have stirred up old fears. Our thinking and self-talk can easily reinforce stress and make it all worse.

Some people are habitual worriers and always stressed to some degree, and it shows in their muscle tension. Our muscles can be 75% contracted and that tension can still be out of our conscious awareness, till someone touches a tight muscle and we become aware it is hard as a rock. Or we are snappy or irritable and realize we are “holding our self together” with muscle tension.

So once you are aware of muscle tension, or stress, or worry, you can consciously choose to do something about it. Sometimes it is when there are headaches, or shallow breathing, or tight chest, or some other symptoms that finally you have to take the time to deal with the cumulative effects of daily stress.

When you realize muscles are tight you can take the tension out of the tight muscles with Emotional Stress Release, a technique from Touch For Health Kinesiology, as a first step to reduce muscle tension.

For Example, you may have been rushing to get things done before closing time. Following is what you can do to ease muscle tension gently.

Emotional Stress Release technique for Stress & Muscle Tension

First is always to acknowledge what is, the truth of your current experience.

Place one hand across your forehead and say to yourself:
1. “My muscles are tense, and my breathing is shallow and tight. (breathe in & out).
2. “I can feel the tension as I focus on it and realize my breathing is tense too. (breathe in & out).
3. “I recognize the tension has been building for a while.” (breathe in & out).
4. “The tension is adding to my tiredness / irritability / muddle-head feeling / etc.” (breathe in & out).

Acknowledge till the tension in your thoughts and your body starts to reduce and your breathing becomes a bit easier. You may need to repeat steps 1 to 4 a couple of times. Be sure to pay attention to your breathing between each statement. You may notice the warmth increasing under your hand on your forehead. That’s a good sign.

Next accept what is.

5. “Its not surprising there is tension in my muscles, its been a busy time, I’ve been rushing.” (breathe in & out).
6. “I’ve got some things done and there’s more to go.” (breathe in & out).
7. “I’ll be glad when its done.” (Breathe in & out)

Notice as more of the tension leaves, your voice becomes less harried, your body eases and your breath slows down.

Next look forward to when you will be more at ease.

8. “The more efficiently I get it done the sooner I can wind down.” (breathe in & out).
9. “Then I’ll have a cup of tea / glass of wine / ring a friend / smell the roses / or whatever.

The stress goes down as you acknowledge the problem, accept it, and look forward to when its over and dealt with. You have diverted your brain blood flow away from stress survival program area to problem solving front brain.

I may not have covered your particular cause of muscle tension so I hope you can get the idea of the process that you can apply to your situation. There are more techniques in Touch For Health Kinesiology you can use to help yourself.

Let me know how you go with this.
Cheers
Anna

PS. Emotional Stress Release was covered in a recent Touch For Health 1 workshop presenting several ways to rebalance stress and tension. Contact me for more on theses workshops.

Patti wrote: “Thanks so much for the wonderful learning experience, I thoroughly enjoyed it and am so looking forward to our next course.”

Are You Easily Offended?

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What gets under your skin? Are you easily offended?

We are interesting beings, each of us with our past individual experiences and family heritage as reference points of how to live this life. Often we don’t make sense to each other at all and are a complete mystery to ourselves. There are many clues to help unravel the mystery.

Lets look at the experience of being touchy, very sensitive, easily upset, often feeling offended. According to Bob Proctor, it is linked to humility. So what’s your definition of humility?

“True humility is believing the truth about who you are,” writes Bob Proctor. He says, “If you are easily offended you have a humility problem.”

I looked up the meaning of humility: deference, lowliness, meekness, modesty, obedience, self-abasement, servility, submissiveness, unpretentiousness. (Opposite was listed as: arrogance, assertiveness, pride)

I looked up the meaning of offend: hurt, annoy, displease, fret, insult, irritate, miff, outrage, pain, provoke, rile, snub, upset, wound, wrong. (the opposite was listed as: please)

If you are easily offended or even occasionally offended, it is worth exploring what that is about for you. Being offended leads to either getting angry at, or withdrawing and hiding from the “offender”.

Bob Proctor says, ”Being easily offended comes from comparing self with others.” Offended can mean feeling humiliated.

So I looked up humiliate: bring low, chasten, confound, crush, debase, deflate, discredit, disgrace, embarrass, humble, mortify, shame, subdue. (the opposite was listed as dignify, exalt, vindicate)

To take offense we feel, either inferior or superior, otherwise there would be no reaction just interaction. Reaction means re-enactment of a past feeling and its behaviour. It’s not new, has happened before, is an instantaneous replay, before any thought can occur. And the reaction can take us by surprise or be a regular and familiar occurrence.

So if you feel superior, above others, you may take offense if someone believes they are your equal, or actually value themselves or their ability more than yours, or whatever. If you feel inferior, below others, you can feel offended by everything you relate to as a criticism or put down of any kind. Feeling offended is always about relationship within self, it’s a feeling already in you waiting to be triggered.

Once triggered it’s the perfect opportunity to deal with feeling offended in a way that sets you free, so it no longer lives in you in an active form. It becomes part of your history, something you know about and lived in the past, a reference for compassion as others struggle with it, but it no longer carries charge, does not get under your skin.

Feeling offended for various reasons can be acknowledged, sorted, balanced, defused, dissolved, so it doesn’t control your behaviour. Kinesiology is a valuable tool to help you take charge, be proactive, create change, so you can choose how you want to be, how you want to behave and feel, instead of offended.

Feeling offended will always go with beliefs about self. Inferior and superior are flip sides of the same cause, the same issue. It’s all about measuring up against other people. Often we measure our self against others achievements, skills, abilities, talents or appearance. Measuring against others is about not believing that you have value and can bring value, not believing the truth of who you are. Its about believing you are more than or less than others, either superior or inferior compared with others.

Now we don’t all have the long legs of a long distance runner or a fashion model, or the voice of a famous singer, or the grace of a dancer, or the mind of an Einstein. So we are not all equal in those terms. But we’re not supposed to be. We are not supposed to be anyone else, only our unique self. And we have this lifetime to develop the uniqueness we are, to recognize our inbuilt strengths, to develop them into our personal power, choose which of our talents we can hone, and decide what we can practise until we achieve mastery in that area.

To be able to admire and enjoy the contribution of others while also acknowledging you yourself are growing and flowering and expanding the expressions of who you are and what you can contribute, is the life journey you, and all of us, take. It’s not about being like others. It’s about being your real, whole self.

Key belief to consider and embrace: we are each magnificent and life events give us endless opportunity to unravel the mystery of who we are, to discover and grow into that magnificence.

Have fun and enjoy being you.
Cheers
Anna

Hay Fever – Food Allergy In Disguise

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Here is a novel idea, for some, and just common sense for others. A professor tells us if you have food allergies or sensitivities, when you reduce overall stress load on the body, very often the food reactions disappear. Hmmm. How come this works?

Hans Selye was a pioneering endocrinologist who was one of the first to demonstrate the existence of biological stress. He wrote about General Adaptation Syndrome which showed that early stages of disease produced similar symptoms, involving adrenals, thymus, and digestive system, even though the diseases were different. Later Selye wrote of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis as the body’s coping program. (more on that another time)

He noted there were three stages that lead to disease:

First is the alarm reaction. Your system puts up a fight to defend itself from the stress reaction caused by physical or emotional triggers. You breathe faster, your heart pumps harder, blood pressure goes up, digestions cuts out.

Second stage is resistance. With no relief you continue to resist the stress and keep up with daily functioning. Your immune system keeps defending while you keep on with life demands. You adapt to working under the stress load. It becomes your “norm”. You just keep on keeping on without looking at how to reduce the stress.

Third stage is exhaustion. You run out of steam, don’t have enough energy to fight and work at the same time, and the last straw results in a mental, emotional and/or health breakdown.

This is a common pattern leading to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and is associated with conditions like hay fever and asthma.

Hay Fever is often worse at certain times when grasses are producing pollen and being spread by winds or even gentle breezes. If you are plagued by hay fever in the spring for instance, Professor Keith Scott-Mumby says, “Stop eating grass.”

“Now hang on. I don’t eat grass,” you might say. Well you may not eat your lawn grass, but wheat, corn, oatmeal, rice and rye are all part of the grass family. You may often include foods like bread, pasta, corn, polenta, rice or rye bread on a daily basis. If that is the case, then your body has adapted by putting lots of energy into keeping symptoms at bay. If you are already resisting the stress caused by these foods in your system, then the spring conditions can be the last straw that collapses the resistance. Now the symptoms become very obvious, with no ability to adapt and disguise the internal stress.

So it’s not the fault of spring winds and pollen that you now have hay fever with streaming eyes and nose and feel lethargic and muddle headed. It’s the fact that you body has for a long time been resisting the stress of foods your body is sensitive to.

An asthma attack is very similar to seasonal hay fever except it is happening in every season for the sufferer. The body is adapting to functioning, even if poorly, but the last straw can be the final overload of adaption energy and an asthma attack is the result.

Well that’s interesting to know, but what can you do about it? You don’t want to spend the next two or three months in total discomfort and functioning under par for the season or having asthma attacks on a regular basis. Professor Scott-Mumby in his book Diet Wise says to take the grass foods out of your diet, at the very least during the season that highlights the stress and overloads your ability to cope or adapt.

His advice is reduce those foods in all seasons, but at least to definitely cut them out totally during your worst season.

Try it out and find out for yourself what many of his patients have learned from their own personal trials, that hay fever can be food allergy in disguise.
Cheers
Anna

PS You can use Kinesiology to reduce overall stress load: apply Emotional Stress Release technique, balance meridians to increase energy, muscle test to identify foods that deplete your energy and drop them out for now, identify the foods that regenerate and lift your energy and increase them in your diet – all are a useful steps in reducing food reactions.

Play Secret Revealed

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There are some secrets that can make all the difference in your life. And when you find a key secret it’s worth cultivating it to ease and abundantly enhance your life experiences. I recently found someone on a mission, devoted to revealing a key secret. Let me include you in what he found.

What is it that enables us to innovate, problem-solve, and be happy, smart, resilient human beings? What allows us to cultivate the skills necessary to handle changing times? Like many secrets, it’s often right before our eyes. But to see it you need to “see it” with “new eyes”.

Now, make sure you’re not looking with “old eyes” or you’ll miss it. And stop long enough to register and experience this amazing influence. Just watch young children and happy puppies and baby animals play with total enthusiasm. They have fun. They play. And in the process they prepare for life.

Dr Stuart Brown, the leading expert in his field in US explains, “play is anything but trivial.” It is a basic biological drive as integral to our health and functioning as sleep and nutrition. That means it is essential to our physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.

Through play we spark new insight, open new thinking and possibilities. Play joyfully weaves us together with family and friends, and without bonding through playing together we drift apart and lose connectedness. Play allows us to foster relationships that engage individual strengths and strategies into group outcomes, to form communities where all can contribute and thrive.

Play, How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul is a book by Stuart Brown, MD, founder to the National Institute for Play, with science and medicine writer Christopher Vaughan.

Stuart Brown, as well as being a medical doctor, is also a psychiatrist, clinical researcher, founder of the National Institute for Play, former clinical director at Mercy Hospital and Medical Center in San Diego, and Associate professor at University of California, Dan Diego. “... The latest advances in neuroscience, biology, psychology, and social science illuminates the role of play as nature’s most advanced process for promoting brain development and social integration across species. … Even the lowest creatures on the evolutionary spectrum have a play mechanism. But humans are the biggest players of all – we are meant to play though out life.”

“Play is the single most significant factor in determining our success and happiness.” Dr Stuart Brown’s research proved that when we play we release dopamine, oxytocin and other reward neurochemicals, and those crucial for regrowth of brain cells.

Norman Doidge in his book The Brain That Changes Itself highlighted the plasticity of our brain. The more we use it the more connections we build in the brain, at any age. The more varied and unusual ways we use the brain the more connections are created. Stuart Brown’s research shows joyful experiences are crucial to the creation of synaptic connections.

Play is as integral to our health as is sleep. Play is a biological drive, opens to possibility and sparks off new insight and lines of thought. Play is the glue for relationships and releases creativity. We are designed by nature to play and flourish. Play is nature’s most advanced process for promoting brain development and social integration in all species. Humans are the biggest players of all and we are designed to play all through our lives. Play is hardwired into our brains.

Notice what happens when you take your dog to the park and let it off the leash. The exhibition of pure exuberance, speed and athleticism of a dog at play, when released from hours in confined space, be it the back yard or the back seat of the car, is a joy to see. The moment is captivating and gleeful. We laugh, our spirit lifts, tension and fatigue drop away, we breathe deeply.

Play is intensely pleasurable, energizes us and enlivens. It eases our burdens, renews our natural sense of optimism, releases stress, and opens new curiosity and interest. It shapes the brain, fosters empathy and encourages socialization. Creativity and innovation often comes out of play.

Play weaves memories and binds us together emotionally. Fulfillment is linked to our ability to enjoy and play, feel a sense of happiness, release creativity and spark solutions. Comedy, irony, daydreaming, imagination, art, music, books jokes, drama played to the max lift us out of the mundane.

Where Did Play Go?
How did we lose our sense of play over the years? When does play become unproductive? When is play relegated to unimportant? When do we consider play as a poor use of our time? When does daily life and responsibility crowd out the spontaneous outburst of pleasure through unexpected happenings? When does the fear of not enough time to do all the necessary and important things consume every thought and plan and action, till exhaustion overtakes us? Where do we find joy if we don’t play?

When your life feels hollow, routine, demanding, pressured, predictable, full of chores, or without value or meaning – add some play, fun, laughter, frivolity, joyousness, exuberance to lighten the load of responsibility, commitment or emotional darkness, to create space for creativity and insight.

The Essence of This Secret
The key secret revealed is that play makes us better people, brings us together in exuberant co-operation, and makes the world a better place for all. It’s there right before your eyes. Adjust the meaning of “play” in your life, re-tune your eyes and ears, and reconsider your beliefs and priorities.
And if you can’t update play on your own, see a Kinesiologist.
Cheers
Anna
anna@annamcrobert.com.au
PS. Science is also exploring the outcome of being “play deprived.” These are the youngsters at risk of isolation, not fitting anywhere, and violence. More on that another time.

Plan For Your Best Year Yet

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First, do brag, at least to yourself, about the year that was. Make a list. Even surviving and coming through relatively sane are both achievements to brag about. And brag too about what the difficult times allowed you to learn or the new doors that opened as a result. And the things that fell into place, that flowed easily, the smiles you brought to others, the joys you shared, the surprises that uplifted you, the garden that flourished, the cuttings that took root and became whole in their own right, plant cuttings and human cuttings, brag about them too. And all the personal and group pluses of 2010, list them all.

Now list what is still in the making, what is to be adjusted, improved, increased, decreased or eliminated. List what you want to put energy into for 2011.
Consider categories like:
– What you want to complete or end
– What you want to continue as is or to adjust
– What you want to start

Rule a page into three columns for above categories: Complete, Continue, Start. In each of those categories you include sections down the page for: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual needs, wants or goals. Some of these items will be personally for self, some for, or with others. Colour code the items in each category so you can see at a glance items for self, for others, with others.

Now prioritize these, starting with a priority in each category, then your top priority over all can reveal itself as you do this. This is your conscious choosing for 2011. Does it also match your unconscious priority? How will you know?

Align Conscious and Subconscious
Well, think back to last year and what you had planned to do versus what you actually did do. Did it match? If it did then you know yourself well and your beliefs, expectations and actions are congruent with your outcomes.

If there is a mismatch between what you had wanted and outcomes achieved there’s more for you to become aware of. Unforseen events can occur which change your focus. But in general, a mismatch can show what was your unconscious priority, based on beliefs that motivate you towards or away from creating what you wanted in various areas of your life. These beliefs may be hidden from your conscious self.

Does that mean you can’t uncover these beliefs? There are ways to get to the bottom of motivators and de-motivators. You can do it on purpose or by accident.

Consult your Subconscious
The quickest way is to actually ask your subconscious and pay attention to the reply. Some folk are well tuned to this inner guidance that is audible when the din of every day life is allowed to recede. Some people are even honest enough with their inner self to hear and recognize what is behind their own outcomes or lack of, and to acknowledge the inner knowing, and change their action for 2011.

For most of us humans, others often see more about us than we see about our self. As parents, it is often obvious what our children could change or adjust to get more satisfying results. And as adults, others around us can often see how we can help ourselves and we can often see how others could help themselves. But to see for yourself about yourself is not so straight forward.

Kinesiology is a Tool
We all look at our life through the filters of our beliefs reinforced by our experiences. So when we look at self, through our own filters, the obvious may be totally filtered out. This is why I am so grateful for Kinesiology muscle response testing as this is the “voice” of the subconscious “speaking” through muscle change. It is one of the quickest ways to identify priorities out of a list of possibles.

It can be very enlightening to have your own muscle response make its priorities clearly known so that any conflicts or even reversals can be immediately attended to. A Kinesiology session can be very illuminating. You can test the stress relating to the items on your lists, they will vary, and then test the priority stress to defuse.

Then on that priority, muscle test “100% willing to let go of the need for this stress about —-“, and your muscle test will agree or not agree. This uncovers any unconscious conflicts or even reversals about letting go of the stress. Attending to this will often reduce the overall stress on the priority item. As you reduce the priority stress the stress on other items on your list changes too. Reducing stress to 0% and ensuring positive motivation is 100% is what we aim for in a Kinesiology defusion session.

Now the path is clear to create a plan of action that is aligned with both your conscious and subconscious self, with a far greater possibility of staying on track for success and fulfillment.

You can even test for which personal inbuilt strength will assist you on this journey, aligning your natural gifts and preferences to be engaged for the greatest flow with the least energy expenditure. This is such a worth while procedure, reducing wear and tear on your nervous system and your relationships.

Summary of Steps
To start your 2011 as you intend to live it:
– List your fulfilling successes from 2010
– list your wants, needs, preferences in each category: to end, to continue, to start
– in each category list items under sections: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual
– prioritize in each section, identify the top priority
– ask subconscious if is in agreement with top priority
– defuse any conflict of reversals
– keep applying tools to reduce stress till down to 0%
– plan 2011
– identify your key strength, ability, gift to engage in following your plan
It’s worth getting the priority clear, the direction clear and clearing the path to set up a year with greater flow and best use of your creative and productive energy.
Ring and make an appointment to get you off to a good start. 3378 2050

Plants Are Essential To Human Life

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Plants are essential to human life, providing food, medicine, shelter and very importantly, oxygen. Of course you already know about these gifts from nature. But there’s more.

NASA has been researching how to keep the air quality in confined spaces, like a space crafts and space station for instance, suitable for maintaining human health. So what does that have to do with you when you are unlikely to be travelling in a space-rocket or to stay on a space station?
Well, you might be surprised how what NASA discovered may apply to your daily life. A basic on our planet is that plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, and that humans do the opposite, release carbon dioxide and take in oxygen. So plants and people are a perfect synergistic combination providing mutual benefits. But plants do us humans a further great service.

Sealed Spaces
In a confined and sealed space, like offices in high rise buildings, or in enclosed shopping malls, and in our homes too, people are breathing out carbon dioxide and breathing in oxygen all day without any or with very limited top up of fresh oxygen coming in. The air can become stale and stuffy and the oxygen levels low. What is the side effect of that?

We close up the house and use air-conditioners to either cool and dehumidify in the worst of our subtropical summer in Brisbane, or warm up the house mid winter in cold regions, day and night, keeping out the outside air at all costs. But the cost long term could be our health.

Toxic Air
Our internal environments accumulate toxic gases from chemicals contained in perfumes, deodorants, body lotions, shampoo, cleaning products, solvents, plastic paints, plastic containers and products, synthetic fabrics, synthetic carpets, timber floor sealers, glues, dyes, photo copier and printer inks, you name it.

These pollutants remain trapped in unventilated buildings. Anything that has a toxic chemical component will gas off and you breathe it in as part of the air in your environment, along with the oxygen you need.

Up to 95% of what we use to keep ourselves and our homes and offices clean and attractive contain synthetic chemicals, most of which are toxic. Many products are petroleum derived, like acetone, camphor, benzenes, aldehydes, ethanol, g-terpins and others. Then there are pesticides for flys, ants, cockroaches, silverfish, and other insects.

In Australia about 75% of buildings are affected by “sick building syndrome” and 9% of the workforce takes off at least one day from work every fortnight because of sickness connected to this. And the indications are that our homes are no better, possibly even worse if your house is locked up all day while you are at work and the kids are at school.

Symptoms of Toxic Air
The signs that you are inhaling these gases into your lungs and they are entering into your blood stream and your brain, what are they? Common reactions to toxic chemicals in the air you breathe are fatigue, disorientation, muscular pain, joint pain, eczema, eruptions, dizziness, somnolence, nausea, body swelling, accelerated breathing, flu symptoms, asthma, palpitations, high pulse, sinusitis, eye irritation, anxiety, pneumonia, headaches, memory loss, decreased focusing capacity, insomnia, irregular heart rhythm, gut issues and mood disorders like depression and mood swings plus a whole lot more.

Personal Experience
For nine years my clinic was in a gym where I did massage and kinesiology. Later I shared rooms with an osteopath for a number of years. Both of these environments were internal rooms, with no view of sky or trees or plants. The rooms were artificially lit and air-conditioned. At times I would get quite desperate to be out of the “tomb” environment, and always took my breaks outside to reconnect with the world, breathe in the air, and be in the light.
That was long before NASA research was available. My desperate need to be outside as often as possible was my body communicating its need, and I instinctively rebalanced my energy and oxygen levels by getting out of the enclosed space, into the open air.

Bone density also suffers in high chemical, low oxygen, acidic environments. In Save our Bones, author Vivian Goldschmidt, MA, with a Master of Arts degree in Nutritional Sciences and Biochemistry, explains that exposure to carbon dioxide increases bone loss. The toxic chemicals have an acidifying effect in your body and as your blood operates in a very specific pH range, your body automatically alkalizes your blood in a variety of ways, including by drawing on alkalizing elements calcium and magnesium from your bones. Acidic internal and external environments can cause bone density loss.

NASA space station research has yielded new information about bone loss. One of the problems is the loss of bone density of people out in space for an extended time. “Results of this research, which may aid people on Earth who suffer from similar conditions, including osteoporosis, are being shared with the medical community’” said Guy Fogleman, director of Bioastronautics Research in NASA’s Office of Biological and Physical Research, Washington.

Nature’s Solution
In terms of the quality of the air we breathe, NASA research points to an unexpected, cost-effective, low energy, environmentally friendly, and completely natural method of detoxifying the air in our houses: the common indoor plants.

NASA aimed to assess environmental issues, both on Earth and in space habitats, and this new study has been led by Dr. Bill Wolverton, formerly a senior research scientist at NASA’s John C. Stennis Space Center, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. He has co-authored a book with Kozaburo Takenaka called Plants, Why You Can’t Live Without Them.

Plants, more specifically the leaves, have been known to function like air pumps. Under the influence of sunlight, they take carbon dioxide from the air to use in photosynthesis, releasing oxygen as a byproduct. Plants also sweat, mainly through their leaves and this helps keep the correct humidity levels in an enclosed room’s dry conditions.

“The study has shown that common indoor landscaping plants can remove certain pollutants from the indoor environment. We feel that future results will provide an even stronger argument that common indoor landscaping plants can be a very effective part of a system used to provide pollution free homes and work places,” said Wolverton, involved in this kind of research for over 30 years.

NASA’s Recommended Plants For Purifying the Air:
Botanical Names – Common Names

Philodendron scandens – Heartleaf philodentron
Philodendron domesticum – Elephant ear philodendron
Dracaeana fragrans – Cornstalk dracaena, happy plant
Hedera helix – Common European ivy
Chlorophytum comosum – Spider plant
Ficus benjamina – Weeping fit
Epipremnum aureum – Golden pothos
Spathiphyllum Mauna Loa – Peace lily hybrid
Philodendron bipinnatifidum – cut leaf philodendron
Aglaonema modestum – Chinese evergreen
Chamaedorea sefritzii – Bamboo or reed palm
Sansevieria trifasciata – Snake plant or mother-in-law tongue
Dracaena marginata – Red-edged dracaena
Gebera jamesonii – Gerbera
Chrysanthemum – chrysanthemum, pot mums

Three common offenders in our interiors that NASA tested are:
– formaldehyde, an extremely toxic chemical used in water repellents, fire retardants, adhesive binders in floor coverings, permanent press clothes, also in natural gas and kerosene
– trichloroethylene used in dry cleaning, printing inks, paints, lacquers, varnishes and adhesives, and
– benzene, the most common solvent in gasoline, inks, oils, paints, plastics, and rubber and also in detergents, foams and dyes.
It is likely that most plants can help to detoxify the air to make it safe for human consumption, but some are more effective with specific chemicals so the research continues to add to those already identified.

How to Keep Your House Healthy
For your house always have a clean air intake opening year round. Air your home regularly if it has been closed up. Open windows and doors to get a draft going to clear out the accumulated gases trapped inside the tightly closed rooms. Avoid cleaning agents containing multiple chemicals. Look for cleaners using natural ingredients.

How to Keep You Healthy In and Out of Your Home
To help your body to stay healthy and excrete toxic gases and chemicals
– eat an alkalizing diet including fruit and vegetables and
– drink plenty of water
– sleep with a window open
– physical exercise and saunas to help you to sweat toxins out through your skin
– empty the bottom of your lungs regularly with long exhalation followed by deep inhalation to ensure a regular turnover of what accumulates in your lungs
– daily take a walk around the garden or just spend time outside around trees and shrubs.

Plants are essential to human life as they produce oxygen through interacting with sunlight so get into and around abundant foliage, that’s a good place to breathe deeply. And of course, it’s not just plants that need light and water. We humans do too. More on that another time.
Cheers
Anna
anna@annamcrobert.com.au

The Every Day Miracle – Healing & Regeneration

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Healing happens all the time, naturally, and generally it is out of our conscious awareness. The body takes care of itself day in, day out. If your body wants you to know of a problem, you experience symptoms of pain or discomfort. That’s a message from your body to your brain and to you.

Pain and other symptoms are to make you aware of trouble. They are your body and brain’s request for support to sort out a disturbance, to slow down and check in, gather resources, and direct energy to healing and rebalancing.

We know nerves are communication lines between body and brain and are essential for tissue regeneration, yet I was surprised to read nerves carry no message during the healing process itself. How curious! When nerve endings are destroyed at the extremities for example, as can happen with diabetes, the limb fails to repair or heal, gangrene sets in, and amputation becomes necessary to save the patient.

That’s a scary prospect. I watched my mother go through this. She refused to take into consideration her poor circulation or blood sugar imbalances and ended up in hospital with a very painful foot. Gangrene was setting in. The doctors were planning to remove her whole foot if she did not respond to blood thinners to improve circulation. In the end she had her big toe removed as reversing the damage reached an impasse and the toe had to go.

So how is it that nerves are essential yet not part of the healing? What else is involved? How does healing happen?
Research into the steps the cells go through to heal is on going. My interest was peaked by the research into the electrical input in the whole process. Being a kinesiologist for almost 30 years now, and working with meridians and acupuncture points, I am particularly interested in our electromagnetic nature and the role of energy flow in healing.

Correction procedures I learned through Three In One Concepts Kinesiology required me to test if a positive or a negative or a neutral input was required at specific acupuncture points. To do this I would touch an acupuncture point with one finger only, then with the next finger only, which would be the opposite polarity, then both fingers together, which was neutral. Whichever touch reversed the muscle indicator was the polarity required to create change. So I knew the body could be very specific in what electrical input it required for energy to move and for healing to take place.

Robert Becker MD had his laboratory activities in the 60s and 70s written up by Gary Seldon in their book The Body Electric, Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life. The San Francisco Chronicle review was, “an astounding and thought provoking book” and I agree. Let me share a little of this work.

Western medicine has focused on the biochemistry of the body since the Second World War. “Modern medicine’s … cures too often have turned out to be double-edged swords, later producing a secondary disease,” to quote Robert Becker.
But there is a lot more to our body than biochemistry. “… there appears to be one fundamental force that heals, although the myriad schools of medicine all have their favourite ways of cajoling it into action.”

The brain and parts of our spine are positively charged and the extremities of our body are negatively charged. The further towards the extremities the more negative the charge. Amazingly a damaged area of the body changes polarity from negative to positive initially, for the first few days after injury, to breakdown the damaged tissue and remove all debris. That is the job of our white cells, phagocytes. They are actually part of our immune system and break down foreign invaders like bacteria.

The white cells having done their job and cleaned up the area, the polarity now changes from positive to negative to begin the regeneration process. Without this polarity change healing does not proceed.

And all this happens in the local area, with cells doing what is needed, with no neuron activity involved. How amazing!
… more on how the meridian system is involved next time.
Cheers
Anna McRobert
anna@annamcrobert.com.au

Who You Hang Out With Counts

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I am always fascinated by what makes us tick, what drives or motivates us, why we choose a specific behaviour. I know who you hang out with counts, but who you think about can count even more that you realize.

Science tells us from the time we are born we begin to learn by mimicking and mirroring those around us. The first seven years or so a child’s brain is mostly in receptive mode, taking in and copying without questioning what exists in their world. Each child learns through trial and error and instinctively repeats the behaviour that gives them what they want. In emotional terms, this is attention and acceptance.

A child’s brain does not function in Beta rhythms till closer to puberty. Beta is our brain’s active thinking frequency that adults engage most during their working day. But if you think, that just because we have the mechanism with which to think, that we are more discerning of what we allow to influence us, then you may be surprised at some of the more recent scientific findings.
Ap Dijksterhuis, a social psychologist from Holland, gathered data confirming various forms of complex mimicry in human behaviour.
He had one group of participants think about college professors, typically associated with “intelligence”, and write down everything that came to mind about them. He had a second group to write about soccer hooligans, unruly and destructive fans associated with “stupid” behaviour.

Then both groups were asked a series of general knowledge questions. Participants who had concentrated earlier on college professors outperformed those thinking about soccer hooligans. And the “college professor” participants also outperformed a control group in answering the general knowledge questions. In turn this control group outperformed the “soccer hooligan” participants too.
The conclusion: just thinking about college professors makes you smarter and thinking about soccer hooligans makes you dumber!
Who you associate with has a big influence on your behaviour. Each of us from our own experience is likely to recognize that, but we may not have realized the extent of this influence.

“Relevant research has shown by now that imitation can make us slow, fast, smart, stupid, good at math, bad at math, helpful, rude, polite, long-winded, hostile, aggressive, cooperative, competitive, conforming, non conforming, conservative, forgetful, careful, careless, neat, and sloppy,” quoting from Mirroring People by Marco Iocoboni.

I keep going to seminars where I’m often told by presenters to be successful I need to mix with successful people and do what they do. To be happy I need to be with happy people, to laugh and have fun with them. It’s worth noticing who we gravitate towards and who gravitates towards us.

Each of us has mirror neurons in our brain that activate when watching others, be it on the sports field, at a social event, at the dinner table or on TV. Our mirror neurons register another’s muscle activity, anticipate their next move, and feel what another is feeling. And it seems we also have further super mirror neurons that control and modulate some of our basic mirroring. Which is just as well as not all forms of imitative behaviour is good for us as individuals, as a family or as a society.

I recall I chose to keep my two boys away from certain company when they were young as time spend “playing” with them would mean my two would become aggressive and physically fight and argue. That influence would take a week to undo . So there were some friends we would invite to visit with their children and others we socialized with in adult only groups as their children did not respect property or people.

The environment and people in our early childhood, our interaction and experiences with them, their attitudes and beliefs, provide the basis for our adult behaviour. This becomes our norm, what is normal in our world.

“Our instinct for empathy is part of the good news stemming from mirror neurons. Imitative violence could well be he bad news – and there may be more.”

Youngsters who grow up in low income “ghettos” or “slums” mirror and adopt the behaviour of those around them. Yet some escape this influence and take on very different, even opposite, approach to life. How did they find their way out?

This is the wonder of the human race. We are so often extra-ordinary and rise above our beginnings. We are built to do just that. Research on how we do it is ongoing. Kinesiology is a valuable tool for creating change and opening up choices. The purpose for me in following scientific research is to find more ways to help myself and my people create the fulfilling life we each want no matter what our beginnings.
Cheers
Anna McRobert
anna@annamcrobert.com

Stress Release Process

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This is a very effective self-help technique any time you are feeling stressed:
Emotional Stress Release –ESR

– Sit down at the table.  Put your hand on your forehead and rest your elbow on the table.
– Take a breath in, then breathe out, out, out, out, out.  Now breathe in again.  Do this a couple of times keeping your hand across your forehead.

– Run through in your mind or say out loud what is distressing you.  Engage all five senses:
*  who or what is involved
*  where are you
*  what happened or didn’t happen that you wanted
*  what has been said or not said
*  the comments in your own head
*  the feelings that triggered
*  where the feelings register in your body.
This is not about right or wrong, or good or bad.  It is to acknowledge the impact of the stress on you, your experience of stress.

–  Take a deep breath and release if fully
–  Run through the scene again:
*  who is involved
*  what was said or happened
*  the feeling in you and where it lives in your body
–  Take a deep breath, release slowly
– Once again run through the scene, keep it more brief this time
–  Keep repeating the breathing and alternating with acknowledgement of your experience of the stress, till there is no more stress or “charge” in the recall, or till you feel calmer, more grounded.  This could be 3 to 7 times.

–  Put your hand down and recheck how your body feels when you think about the whole issue or the scene.
This will help you to reduce day-to-day stress and the accumulating distress that threatens to overwhelm you.  If distress comes back more often then you want make an appointment to see a specialist.  A Kinesiologist will help you identify further ways to reduce stress so you can free your front brain to engage in problem solving in the unique way that works for you.

More on stress later.

Cheers

Anna
anna@annamcrobert.com.au

Clearing and Cleaning Pain and Suffering by Anna McRobert

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Shelley sent me an email with a link to a remarkable man and his stunning influence that healed the criminally insane.  I had come across this story before, and now he has come to me again.  That can’t be an accident.  I need to learn something from him.  Thank you Shelley.

So what is the story?

A doctor who never saw his patients, a ward of criminally insane patients, but only read their case history and then worked on himself. He was so effective that ward closed for lack of need because the patients got better.  That’s remarkable.

How is that possible?  How did he do it?

“I was simply healing the part of me that created them,” he said.

How incredible!  He recognized we are all responsible for our contributions to the society we live in.

I believe we all contribute to the energy soup we live in.  Consciously or unconsciously we are part of the problems of the world that reflect in the behaviours of individuals on this planet.

And … We are also part of the solution.

Every time you and I are frustrated, fed up, angry, resentful, resigned, hostile, fearful, indifferent, morbid, despondent, self-punishing, sarcastic, vindictive, bitter, disappointed, or whatever… that vibration goes out into the energy soup in which we all live.  And we keep attracting that same energy out there, attract it back into ourselves to feed that same feeling, prolonging it and intensifying it, suffering more … until we choose to cut that outflow and switch frequencies.

And this thought outflow is from so many of us who have no criminal intent, no thought of bringing humanity down, no realization of the harm we do in our moments of pain and suffering.  We think only we are suffering.  We can think we are saving others from suffering by keeping our feelings to our self.  We can think we are correcting a wrong by finding the fault in others.  But collectively over a lifetime each of us contributes much in woes to our energy soup.

We are normal human beings with the range of ups and downs.  Emotional ups and downs are what we are here for as this is what points to what we need to learn.  When we don’t like what is happening or how we feel, then we have the opportunity to choose to do something differently, to learn, to change the energy frequency in our self.

Clients have at times said, “That doesn’t bother me any more.”  Yet Kinesiology muscle testing reveals that it is still a stress within their body.  They are still carrying and radiating the pain, the distress of the issue or situation at a level below consciousness.  Once revealed then healing is an option, a choice.

Having some tools to help shift from negative, stressful outflow to a positive, healing outflow is far easier with some tools and guidance.

When we consciously take responsibility for our contributions to the problems in a family, community, city, and country, and remain aware, we can effectively contribute to the energy soup of healing and wellness.

For this amazing doctor in Hawaii, healing for another means healing yourself … and the greatest healer is love.  So how did Dr Len heal himself and his criminally insane patients?  “I just kept saying, ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘I love you’ over and over again,” he explained.

I hear what he is saying.  His words speak to me.  “I’m sorry” is not an excuse to berate myself or anyone else.  There is no place for wallowing in guilt or pity.  There is acceptance.  “I’m sorry” to me means I accept I have been part of contributing to the environment that brings out the distressing element in myself and others.  I also accept that I can contribute something positive in the moment and on an ongoing basis.

Dr Len gives a beautifully simple way of doing just that.  “I’m sorry” and “I love you”.  This to me is connecting heart to heart.  This is having heart.  Dr Len teaches a clearing and cleansing process to develop a working relationship with the Divinity within, the part of you that is connected to All, whatever you may call that All.

“I’m sorry.  I love you.  Please forgive me. Thank you.”  Please forgive me for whatever role I played in the creation of what I am experiencing.  If it’s in my world its part of what I created and I’m grateful for the opportunity to see what to do better.

In being grateful for this moment you attract more to be grateful for.
Gratitude, being grateful, is powerful energy.

Joe Vitale put it to the test.  [sic] “Turns out that loving yourself is the greatest way to improve yourself, and as you improve yourself, you improve your world. Let me give you a quick example of how this works: one day, someone sent me an email that upset me. In the past I would have handled it by working on my emotional hot buttons or by trying to reason with the person who sent the nasty message. This time, I decided to try Dr. Len’s method. I kept silently saying, “I’m sorry” and “I love you,” I didn’t say it to anyone in particular. I was simply evoking the spirit of love to heal within me what was creating the outer circumstance.

Within an hour I got an e-mail from the same person. He apologized for his previous message. Keep in mind that I didn’t take any outward action to get that apology. I didn’t even write him back. Yet, by saying “I love you,” I somehow healed within me what was creating him.”

Wise Words: Everything is just your thoughts.  How you react to the opportunities that the Universe brings to you is all that matters.

You are free to choose. You can choose to let go, not engage, and set yourself free. When you say “Thank you” to the opportunity, you are letting it go instead of attracting more of exactly what you do not want.

To follow up on Dr Len’s story visit http://www.zerolimits.info/

The book:
Zero Limits, The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace and More  –  by Joe Vitale, teaming up with Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len.

Dr Joe Vitale did follow up and has written about his experience with Dr Len http://www.mrfire.com/article-archives/new-articles/worlds-most-unusual-therapist.html

Video on YouTube: 15 minutes miracle by Dr Joe Vitale

Cheers

Anna
anna@annamcrobert.com.au