Onwards and Upwards No. 14
Hello my healing team,
I hope this update finds you well.
A few more busy, but relatively uneventful, weeks have gone by. I am really getting into the swing of things with work and I am having a great time connecting with, and providing some assistance to some of the charity organisations that assisted me when I really needed support. The charity organisations I am involved with include the Myeloma Foundation and the Leukaemia Foundation. Both of these organisations support Blood Cancer patients and their families. I am sure you will all have seen the ‘Worlds Greatest Shave’ advertised on TV (www.worldsgreatestshave.com). Hopefully you know someone shaving or colouring their hair! This initiative raises money for the Leukaemia Foundation, who support people in my situation. Please give generously to those doing the shave!
During my interactions with these foundations, with my writing, and while participating in different forums, I get a great sense of fulfilment when I get the opportunity to discuss my experiences and learnings. I enjoy talking about the challenges that we all face in attaining wellness, what I have recently learnt whilst overcoming the challenges of cancer, and the ways that I have been able to overcome / manage my challenges in the relatively short time I have had to deal with cancer! With all of these interactions I feel as though I am doing something positive, and in doing so, I am building up a bank of good energy to be used for implementing good initiatives!!
I have recently been thinking about ways to share detailed information with those close to me. As I am from a big family, I thought I would use some of them as guinea pigs. So I have set up the ‘brothers book club’ where we all read the same book on wellness, then come together on teleconference to discuss the latest chapter. It has been a fab success where we all have fun talking, learning and growing together.
Last night we were discussing ‘tuning into your intuition and listening to your body’. Integral to this was the part meditation plays in quieting the mind so that you can actually listen. All of my brothers agreed that whilst quiet meditation may be beneficial, they had a hard time prioritising meditation, but instead preferred to employ other techniques to quiet the mind like exercise, watering the garden, listening to music, sleep etc. I spent some time describing the value I get from dedicated mediation where you sit quietly and actively focus inwards to unravel your challenges, and let your intuition do the talking.
Trying to understand more about mediation, my dad posed the question to me………. “What will I get from meditation that makes me want to dedicate time to doing it”. It’s a great question, but it was like trying to explain to an unfit person the joy of exercise. I had a tough time! So I posed the question to a great bunch of learn’ed people. Here is an excerpt of some of the helpful responses:
- For me meditation was a bit like starting exercise. It took a bit of practice & discipline before I started seeing benefits. I prefer to do in group sessions or be guided so I don’t get distracted. I get distracted very easily!!!
- I think you need to pose it as a challenge. They won’t understand until they try so challenge them to turn everything off and spend 5 mins before they go to sleep. Remind them this is difficult………who can actually do it?
- I was blown away when someone said that it was the 42nd day of using the Chakra Clearing Meditation when everything just clicked into place. I guess everyone is different and it’s such a personal thing so it’s just a case of try it for a period and see what changes occur, maybe challenge them to keep a journal. Meditation simply allows the right brain to charge up while your left brain gets a chance to clean itself and reboot.
- Our brains are incredibly bombarded by stimulation, more so now than ever before.
- I believe there’s a place for active meditation. The space between where we are now and the traditional cave in the mountains where monks meditated is huge. I think knowing that it’s a gentle process of observing rather than stoping thoughts helps learners. Experience is the best convincer. Starting off small works well 3 mins, 5 mins and slowly building on.
- Get them to watch this www.theconnection.tv The doctors and medical rockstars in this doco explain it better than anyone!
- …….you are potentially helping them get on an amazing path and sometimes our job is to do no more than plant the seed 🙂
So all I can do is encourage you to give meditation a try. There are many great guided meditation tools online and in the ‘AppStore’. A couple of guided meditations that I used to learn the art include:
- Chakra clearing album that can be obtained from – http://www.newleafkinesiology.com.au/e-shop
- in the AppStore, Search ‘Yoga Nidra – deep relaxation practice’
I highly recommend doing an introductory course on meditation. These are short supported sessions, often in a group setting, where you can learn a few meditation techniques. For those in SE Melbourne, Lisa from One Sky Wellbeing (www.oneskywellbeing.com.au) runs a great course. There will also be others near you.
Give it a go…….you will be surprised by what you find.
Take care
Geoff
