What are human’s looking for?
What are human’s looking for?
Purpose? Meaning? Success? Happiness? Love? Wealth? Power? Control? Instant Gratification?
“We are conditioned to strive for instant happiness and satisfaction at the least...so we don’t know what we are looking for, we are just continuously learning and observing each other and trying to achieve more than others do. Those who succeed become glaring examples. There are few, who figure it out, that what is the purpose of their lives and if you put them aside, the rest of of us are just living our lives for the sake of it, following standard targets of getting well educated, then getting married, have kids and then help your kids do the same, while feeding your family and one day you get old and unwell.” (Vineet Bhatnagar)
Although the lay public is very interested in the topic, funding has lagged for supporting science aimed at gaining a better understanding of the underlying social and other factors that may promote greater well being, greater resistance, and optimal physical functioning. As a result, the research resides in disparate pockets of psychology, public health, and medicine. While we pursue the wealth of “wellness programs” and self-help books and programs promising to make us healthier and happier, there is still much we don’t know. Finding the answers to these and other questions around psychological well-being and health have potentially profound, moral, and practical implications. What are the key ingredients of psychological well-being that are linked with improved health? How do people achieve those desired psychological states?
The goal of Nature’s Alignment is to design and develop individualized evidence based recommendations for wellness, which may lead to happiness.There is certainly no “one size fits all”, so this wellness portal is to help individuals explore themselves and “know thyself” to build a personalized program that is meaningful and helpful to their unique self and experience.
As young children, most of us are happy the majority of the time. Playing, laughing, pretending, imagining, making friends, playing on the playground, etc., what happened to us? We were so free as children, so authentic, so beautiful, so open minded, so green. Why as adults do we become impostures, not expressing our souls that are yearning to shine? Perfection? Caring what others think? Rejection? We have learned many things in this world about perfection, or what should be or what we think is “best”, “cool”, “good”, or “appropriate”. We learn these things formally and informally from our parents, others, education, television shows, movies, we are absorbing these “perfection norms” like a sponge everywhere we explore in the world, dimming our shine little by little, each time we looked, behaved, or spoke out from the mass crowds. No wonder we are all pretending to be perfect, when no one is. We all have flaws. We all have weaknesses. We all have vulnerabilities. We all have strengths. We all have a uniqueness about us. We are all like snowflakes, not a single one the same. This is truly what will help us feel happy. Expressing our true being, and being our true authentic self. This is scary though, to be ourselves. Why?
I believe naturally we all want to fit in, feel connected, and find our tribe, so we will do whatever it takes to fit it, even if it means not being ourselves. This is what creates unhappiness. This is suffocating to the soul. How does this relate to happiness and wellness? When we do not live our full expression and let our natural energy flow, it gets stored, congested, and blocked in the body. This flow of energy has also affected our feelings, traumas, negative thoughts, judgements, criticisms, assumptions, sorrow, anger, resentment, hate, fear, bitterness, etc. As children, we were able to let things go so quickly and rarely held on to any hurt feelings, allowing us to let this energy and emotions flow through us and out of us. As adults, we seem to have let all these instances pile up, add up, tally up, and guess what, it is all stored in our minds, hearts, and bodies, ultimately causing a blockage of flow of energy, ultimately causing pain and “dis-ease”.
How do we unblock the flow and alleviate ourselves from pain, suffering, disease, and unhappiness? Consciousness, a clear mind, an open heart, and flexibility. Albeit, most of us have manifested our stress in physical pain and/or disease, so how do we alleviate it? We find the seed.
Sigmund Freud said we walk around with our conscious mind knowing less than half of what we are doing or why we are doing it. Freud explained that our unconscious mind is really in control, and that deep dark part of us is a “churning cauldron” of destructive impulses battling anything good within us. Freud believed that those destructive impulses feed on our repressed emotions. There is science backed research, studies, books, journals, blogs, all confirming this.
For example, Dr. Meyer Friedman studied the effects of stress on the heart after an upholsterer pointed out to him that the fronts of the seats and arms of the chairs in the waiting room of his clinic were wearing out much too rapidly. Dr. Friedman discovered “Type A Behavior”- “The Hurry Sickness”. These individuals avoid dealing with feelings of anger and fear, so they jump on the treadmill of life. “If we can go faster, we don’t have to deal with anything”. “The faster we go, the more things we ignore, the more we experience anger or fear, and the faster we have to go in order to avoid these emotions”.
Another example, Dr. Carl Simonton found a similarity in cancer patients. The first trait he and his team of researchers found to be at the root of cancer is a great tendency to hold in resentment and anger. Dr. Simonton goes even further when he asserts that all illnesses ranging from cancer to the common cold or a stomach ache, is a result of the interaction of our bodies, our minds, and our emotions. According to Simonton, the path to health and wellness begins when we take responsibility for our own sickness. In order to do this, we must begin to work through the buried emotions of fear and anger. This is not a comfortable concept. We may be able to help others through their anger in order to prevent illness, but working through our own anger is another matter. This is probably why it stays hidden for so long.
In treating cancer patients, Dr. Simonton combines conventional medical treatment with psychotherapy. He and his associates insist on the psychotherapy in order to deal with buried anger. Often they see amazing remission of the disease and the person begins to deal effectively with their anger. “Any treatment plan must include treatment of anger and fear, if the healing process is to be complete.”- Carl Simonton
This next example is based on a psychotherapist Roberta Tager, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the central nervous system in which hardening of tissue occurs. She described her experience this way: “I saw some of the subconscious patterns that had shaped me, causing my disease. My thinking was rigid; my focus on the proper way to do most things was narrow. I wasn’t aware that there were options in any situation. My emotional energy would build up as I needed to find a solution. When none presented itself I felt my energy turn inside me. I felt frazzled! The energy going down my spine burned. There was no place for this energy to go, no way for me to use it. I believe that had a literal affect on my nervous system: frazzling and frying the nerves, and triggering my MS symptoms.” A lot of mental energy fueled Roberta’s seed thoughts and she manifested a physical disorder.
Another example, psychiatry at UCLA, studied patients with rheumatoid arthritis- a disease that results from aberrant immune function. These patients showed more “masochism, self-sacrifice, denial of hostility, compliance-subservience, depression and sensitivity to anger than their healthier sisters, and are described as always having been in a nervous, tense, worried, highly strung, moody individual.
“It seems that a combination of “physical disposition and a breakdown of psychological defenses leads to manifest disease.” - Barbara Hoberman Levine
Flexible Thinking Creates Flexible Bodies. Subconscious patterns that shape us, cause dis-ease. "If you don't let it out, you are going to let it eat you away." -unknown
Here is an example of unconscious seed thoughts manifesting into shoulder pain, and some exercise to help manage and reduce pain:
When we feel run down from the way we’re living, we often underestimate our ability to cope with so many responsibilities; we overburden ourselves. This results in feeling anxious, stressed, and tired, taking a toll on our upper back and shoulders. Shoulder pain can also be caused by being too set in our ways, rebelling against change and resisting new possibilities and perspectives. When we resist, we tense our upper body as a means of trying to maintain control. Wanting to control things, people, and events, often results in chronic tension of the hands, arms, and shoulders. Also, negative self-talk and berating oneself causes tightness in the body, especially the shoulders, trapezius, sides of the neck, below the rib cage and the solar plexus.
Stiffness in the shoulders can also mean we are unable to see our options clearly, we are frustrated by our personal limitations and tormented by either indecision or of making the wrong decision. This creates a tremendous feeling of stiffness and pressure and the desire to escape from deciding.
The shoulders get tense and rigid when we are not expressing our real needs, when we are doing something we would rather not be doing, when we feel we have too much to do, or when we feel scared of reaching out and want to pull back into safety and do nothing. The muscles correspond to mental energy, so we manifest that energy as knotted and tight shoulder muscles, for they contain so many burdens and longings. The shoulders indicate resistance, perhaps to responsibilities we feel we must maintain, or the pressure we put on ourselves to perform.
(Metaphysical Cause of Shoulder and Upper Back Pain, Your Body Speaks Your Mind)
Reflection:
Are you carrying too much on your own?
Do you really want to say to other people, "please look after me, please give me some caring and nurturing"?
Have you been carrying other people's problems for too long?
Is it possible for you to offload some of your responsibility, so you don't have to do all the heavy lifting?
Video Clips: Demo shoulder pain reduction exercises.
“There is a term in Buddhist psychology that can be translated as “internal formation”, “fetters”, or “knots”. When we have a sensory output, depending on how we receive it, a knot may be tied in us. When someone speaks unkindly to us, if we understand the reason and do not take his or her own words to heart, we will not feel irritated at all, and no knot will be tied. But if we do not understand why we were spoken to that way and we become irritated, a knot will be tied in us. The absence of understanding is the basis for every knot.
If we practice full awareness, we will be able to recognize internal formations as soon as they are formed, and we will find ways to transform them. If we do not untie our knots when they form, they will grow tighter and stronger. Our conscious, reasoning mind knows that negative feelings such as anger, fear, and regret are not wholly acceptable to ourselves or society, so it finds ways to repress them, to push them into remote areas of our consciousness in order to forget them . Because we want to avoid suffering, we create defense mechanisms that deny the existence of these negative feelings and give us an impression we have peace within ourselves. But our internal formations are always looking for ways to manifest as destructive images, feelings, thoughts, words, or behavior.” - Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step
The way to deal with unconscious internal formations is to find ways to be aware of them, practicing mindful breathing, and ask ourselves questions of why we felt a certain way, such as: Why did I feel uncomfortable when I heard that person say that? Why did I say that to a person? Why do I always think of my mother when I see that woman? Why didn’t I like that character in the movie? Whom did I dislike in the past that resembles this person? Observing objectively can help process these feelings and gradually bring internal formations that are seeded in our unconscious into the realm of the conscious mind.
In conclusion, we are all on our individual journeys to contribute to the collective. What is meaningful to me is to search for meaning in our bodies, mind, and spirit. I know our bodies speak our minds, our bodies believe every thought we think and every word we say, we are what we think, and we are all looking to live a full and meaningful life. We will experience the full range of human feelings and experience every emotion from joy and love to fear and anger, and willingly make room for them all. We can resist chasing the “good” feelings and resist avoiding the “bad” feelings. The goal is to allow our emotions the freedom to move, not wasting any time and energy fighting or avoiding them, we allow this energy to move freely and openly throughout the mind and body, then we release this energy, and let it all go. We live presently, not dwelling on the past, not focusing on the future. We are present. We are content. We are grateful. We aren’t searching for anything. We are in rest. We are breathing. We are at-one-ment with God, the Universe, the Creator. We are Conscious. Living our purest form, expressing our true self, and generating and spreading love. This is energy. This is healing. This is empowering. This is love. Self-love. Loving others. God like love. Love is the answer. Love is all we need. Namaste.