Forward Steps Self Improvement Blog

Do you meditate?

If you answered no, guess again!

Every night you go to sleep you engage in the most natural form of meditation your body can experience, says Qigong master and healer Chunyi Lin, creator of Spring Forest Qigong.

“Sleeping is a natural form of meditation and a form of Qigong,” he says, “It’s the perfect way to balance yin and yang energy in the body.”

Traditional Chinese Medicine says too much yang energy or too much yin energy can cause blockages in the body’s energy channels and lead to health problems.

“But ‘Qi sleeping’ helps to balance your energy. During sleep, the energies of the heart, mind, body, and spirit unite,” Chunyi says. “It’s so wonderful because you are practicing Qigong while you sleep!”

To help you sleep like a baby—and fine-tune your energy while you do it—consider these tips from Chunyi:

• Exercise daily to detoxify acidic energy in the body. Walking, slow running, weight lifting, Qigong, yoga, or tai chi can all help you go deeper into sleep so the body can balance more quickly.
• Eat a light meal in the evening, and stop eating two hours before bed.
• Consider eating a small baked potato as part of your evening meal. This calms the energy of the brain and pancreas, helps balance hormone energy, and helps the body relax.
• Don’t drink any tea, coffee, or alcohol at least two hours before bed.
• Avoid watching violent movies or TV shows before sleep. “As you sleep, those images are still processing in your brain, in every cell in your body,” Chunyi says, “It can prevent you from having a peaceful sleep.”
• Before bed, take a hot bath filled with a handful of sea salt, or soak your feet in a basin of hot water with three tablespoons of sea salt.
• Go to sleep and wake up the same time every day to allow your body to align with its natural body clock.
• Sleep on your right or left side or on your back. This helps balance the Qi better.
When sleeping on your side bend your knees, Chunyi says, “and sleep like a shrimp, or like a baby in the womb.”
Avoid sleeping on your stomach, which can cause your neck to twist and energy blockages to develop gradually in your body.
• Put a smile on your face as you close your eyes. Smiling causes your brain to send out endorphins that help you feel good.
• Visualize you are sleeping in the cradle of the moon.
• Relax your body from head to toe, breathing slowly, deeply, and gently.
• Focus your attention on your lower dantian, the energy center deep behind the navel. Imagine bright, loving energy there. Send unconditional love energy to your lungs and to any part of your body where you have pain. Allow your body to feel the love.
• Send a message to your body. For example, say to yourself, “Tonight I will sleep in eight hours of Qigong meditation. Tomorrow when I wake, all my channels are open. All the blockages in my body are gone. I am completely healed, and I feel happy and healthy.”
• When you wake in the morning, don’t spring out of bed right away. Lie still as you take three deep breaths. Then rub your hands and massage your face. Massage your ears. Then get up and enjoy your day.

“When you sleep well and feel peace in your body,” Chunyi says, “every cell has time to rejuvenate. The next morning you wake up with good energy and are ready to go!”

You can learn many other ways to balance your energy and help your body heal during the free online Spring Forest Healingfest in June. Chunyi Lin will even guide you in gentle exercises and two Sitting Meditations that develop your mental concentration and help clear your body’s energy channels to promote healing.

Are you suffering from back pain? Help is on the way…

 
Does your back hurt? If so, you aren’t alone. 80% of us will suffer from back pain at some point in our lives. Around one third of the adult population of the US and UK will experience back pain in any given year.

Conventional medicine doesn’t know how to deal with chronic pain. Pain pills are a short term fix, but not a solution, even if you manage to avoid the many problems they can cause. Surgery isn’t the answer in most cases either. It’s risky, expensive and just not very effective.

Dealing with chronic pain requires a holistic approach. You have to look at the whole person – the physical, emotional, mental and even spiritual aspects of who and what we are. This is why the car mechanic approach of conventional medicine – which is brilliant at fixing broken bones and patching up injuries – fails so miserably when it comes to chronic pain.

There’s no quick fix, though there are solutions. There is hope….

Where do you find it? Right here!

You’ll hear from well known experts like chronic pain specialist Dr. Norm Shealy, the inventor of the TENS device. Fibromyalgia and nutritional specialist Dr. Rodger Murphree. Cranial Sacral Therapist Dr. Ingrid Bacci. Acupuncturist and TCM “ambassador” Dr. Nan Lu. “Longevity Rescuer” Alison Heath. Quantum Touch founder Richard Gordon.

This event isn’t confined to the U.S. either. Alexander Technique teacher and trainer Richard Brennan joins in from Ireland. EFT Masters Tania Prince and Karl Dawson, and holistic pain specialist Jonathan Shaw live in the UK, as does the host of the event, Fiona Truman.

That’s only scratching the surface of what this event has to offer. It features over 20 topics that cover the physical, emotional, nutritional, and energetic aspects of back pain, not in some dry, academic manner. It’s like having a chat around the kitchen table with a couple of friends. If you have a back, this event will have something for you.

Best of all, it is completely free to attend. No one is “selling” or promoting anything. They are there to share their knowledge and experience.

Click here for all the details

Our most basic freedom is the ability to use the body and mind we were born with fully, to move about and live our lives to the best of our ability. To make choices that are right for us and our families and communities. Without the knowledge to make wise choices, what do we have?

This Back Hope summit will give you a foundation for making good choices. For uncovering new options that you haven’t thought of before. These possibilities expand your range of freedom and open the door to hope.

I hope you will sign up and take part in this fabulous event. It’s an example of the right way to use the internet to spread a “grass roots” program designed to bring health and healing to a lot of people.

Here’s the link again. See you there!

Your life is all about the habits that you run each day and… your “someday” is right now!

Every day when I wake up I go through a similar process…

I brush my teeth, then I take a shower and get dressed, then I get something to eat and then I quickly read over a list of goals that I keep in my wallet.

I’ve been doing the first three habits for years but the last one I started doing just a few years ago.

When I did, my growth in all areas of my life increased exponentially.

Now I’m not saying that you have to do the same and carry around a list of goals… however, it sure could not hurt.

I just want to point out how one little change in my habits has made a huge difference for me.

What are your morning habits? What about your work habits? Or your habits in your relationships, and with what you eat every day and with what you typically think about?

Your life is all about the little habits that you run every day and guess what… little shifts in your habits can make a HUGE change in your life for the better.

I want you to check out this site as it’s all about the importance of your habits and why you should begin every day with a fast start and build performance momentum as quickly in the day as possible.

I wish you a very happy Easter weekend…

The Science Of Getting Rich is a book by Wallace D. Wattles…

 
This week I made a video with some of the most poignant statements throughout that book.

Get this free book and more positive books here.
This video can also be seen at YouTube, plus I have posted it onto a special page for you, here too, which makes it easier for sharing.

The text included in this video, copied below, is for you to refer to whenever you wish…

1. Whatever may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not possible to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich.
2. The desire for riches is really the desire for a richer, fuller, and more abundant life; and that desire is praiseworthy.
3. It is in the use of material things that a person finds full life for the body, the developing mind, and unfolding the soul.
4. There is a science of getting rich, and it is an exact science, like algebra or arithmetic.
5. If getting rich is the result of doing things in a certain way, and if like causes always produce like effects, then anyone who can do things, in that way, can become rich.
6. Any person who has sense enough to read and understand these words, can certainly get rich.
7. Getting rich is not dependent upon your engaging in some particular business, but upon your learning to do things in a certain way.
8. By beginning in your present business and in your present location, it is doing things in the certain way which causes success.
9. There is one original formless stuff, or substance, from which all things are made.
10. Form things in your thought, and by impressing this thought upon formless substance, you can cause the thing you think about to be created.
11. You will have to acquire the ability to think the way you want to think; this is the first step toward getting rich.
12. To think according to appearance is easy; to think truth regardless of appearances is laborious, and requires the expenditure of more power.
13. We must grasp the truth that every thought held in this substance becomes a form.
14. We can so impress our thoughts upon it as to cause them to take form and become visible things.
15. Do not ask why these things are true, nor speculate as to how they can be true; simply take them on trust.
16. You must get rid of the thought of competition. You are to create, not to compete for what is already created.
17. In that moment you drop into the competitive mind, your power to cause creation is gone for the time being.
18. Or worse… you will probably arrest the creative movements you have already instituted.
19. Never look at the visible supply; look always at the limitless riches in formless substance, and know that they are coming to you.
20. After once forming the thought, have the most absolute and unquestioning faith that the thing is coming to you.
21. Never think of it, or speak of it, in any other way than as being sure to arrive. Claim it as already yours.
22. The first step toward getting rich is to convey the idea of your wants to the formless substance.
23. In order to do so it becomes necessary to relate yourself to the formless intelligence in a harmonious way.
24. The whole process of mental adjustment and atonement can be summed up in one word, gratitude.
25. The law of gratitude is the natural principle that action and reaction are always equal, and in opposite directions.
26. See just what you want, and get a clear mental picture of it as you wish it to look when you get it.
27. All you need is to know what you want, and to want it badly enough so that it will stay in your thoughts.
28. Hold steadily to your vision, with the purpose to cause its creation into solid form, and the faith that you are doing so.
29. Use your will power to keep your mind off the subject of poverty, and to keep it fixed with faith and purpose on the vision of what you want.
30. You cannot retain a true and clear vision of wealth if you are constantly turning your attention to opposing pictures, whether they be external or imaginary.
31. Moral and spiritual greatness is possible only to those who are above the competitive battle for existence.
32. The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.
33. Thinking in a certain way will bring riches to you, but you must not rely upon thought alone, paying no attention to personal action.
34. Act upon your present environment with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.
35. It is really not the number of things you do, but the efficiency of each separate action that counts.
36. Remember that in the moment you begin to hurry you cease to be a creator and become a competitor.
37. Your golden rule is, “What I want for myself, I want for everybody”.
38. See that you give others a use value greater than the cash value you are taking from them.
39. Keep your faith, hold to your purpose, have gratitude, and do, every day, all that can be done that day, doing each separate act in a successful manner.
40. Spend most of your leisure time in contemplating your vision, in cultivating gratitude and in reading The Science Of Getting Rich. It contains all you need to know.
41. Hold the advancing thought that the impression of increase will be communicated to all with whom you come in contact.

What to do when your ‘stuff’ comes up… (an article from my friend Matt)

 
I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

Some of us get depressed. Some of us get upset, jealous, proud, hurt, anxious. Some of us get ________.

Fill in the blank for your own personal pet madness. Mine recently has been “stubborn defiance”. (Actually I wrote most of this email a while ago and things are pretty good right now).

Our “stuff” (that’s a technical term) can come up at any time – either during meditation or throughout the course of our day …

Good news …

There’s a SIMPLE secret that will drastically reduce your suffering and allow you to release it permanently. I want to share this technique with you now, so let me explain how it works …

We all know what it’s like to EXPERIENCE our crazy, dysfunctional ways of being, don’t we? … Or do we?

Actually, NO we don’t.

If we allowed ourselves to experience the emotion FULLY, the madness would begin to disappear faster than a warm British summer (pretty fast).

Let me explain … Our dysfunctional patterns run mostly UNCONSCIOUSLY.

The emotion takes over the body and we get caught up in it. Then what happens is that we end up getting stuck in the resistance. We’re so lost in the fake identity and the story we’re often not fully aware of what’s REALLY happening.

In fact, most people could NOT accurately describe their episode after the fact, even if they wanted to.

Is there another way?

Yes. Next time your “stuff” comes up – let’s play a game. (“Oh yes! We love games,” I hear everyone say)

Pretend that a FILM is being made about you and your life. First of all, you need to pick a cool actor. I pick Hugh Grant but you can pick anyone you like.

To help the lead actor play you accurately – it will be YOUR job to accurately describe the EXACT process of what happens in one of your “crazy” episodes.

The actor will need a step-by-step process. Nothing more and nothing less. Here’s an example of what a “jealousy process” might look like:

1) I see my wife’s face.
2) I say to myself – “You’re a cheat!”
3) I feel a strong, heavy feeling in my stomach.
4) The feeling spreads upwards into my face.
5) I start screaming and shouting.

I made that up of course. I’m not even married. Eligible and attractive women may contact me through my web site. Please include a full length photo.

But seriously though, what do YOU do when your “stuff” comes up? Next time it happens, I want you to pay CLOSE attention.

Get the exact step-by-step process of what you’re experiencing. This requires TWO things (and here’s the secret):

1) You stop fighting it. ALLOW it to be as it is.
2) You WATCH it with awareness. Experience it fully.

Try this for yourself and see.

Be fully present with it. You may be shocked at what happens … or what doesn’t happen.

As soon as you begin to bring FULL acceptance and awareness into a previously unconscious emotional pattern, guess what happens? What happens is it begins to dissolve. It’s the beginning of it’s end.

And that’s what meditation and mind-body training are all about. It’s about becoming more conscious.

No matter WHAT kind of thought, sensation, belief or feeling comes up. Allow yourself to welcome it. Allow it to be, and then let it go as best you can.

Try this for yourself and see. And remember that this takes practice, so be patient with yourself.

I hope you can see the value in this technique I have shared with you today. I hope you will APPLY it in your life and see the results for yourself. Doing so is the first step in living a life of awareness, happiness and emotional well-being.

In my experience, the best way to dissolve all forms of stress and negative emotion is to train your awareness. And a great side-effect of meditation and mind-body training is that you also gain more energy to create what you DO want in your life.

Enjoy your practice!

Source: Matt Clarkson, The Mind-Body Training Company

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