Positively useful and productive
My initial title for this post was going to be "Why I'm afraid of meeting people who do martial arts" but I scrapped the ideas because it wasn't going to be positive, entertaining or useful. Most of you can read my mind about what I would have written anyway.
Going by the last three ideals, I'll be making this year's blog posts focused on those three themes.
Let's take a look at what I mean by "positive"; Experiencing, promoting and showing others the values of being positive, having positive behaviour, being saturated in a positive environment and so on.
I was recently asked about how to handle negative energy. In one example, a client related how I would handle a situation where something bad happened to him and how badly he did during some martial arts sparring practice even though he experienced a lot of rage and anger resulting from the incident.
Nothing positive can come from any action or thought that has been fueled or determined by negative energy. His fruitless martial arts sparring performance was a direct reflection of his state of being. He was just expressing his anger in a physical dimension and was being angry at "anger". Possibly for revealing a weakness in his otherwise calm exterior. Using "anger" in a physical aspect is not going to leave you feeling good even if you succeed in achieving your goals because anger has just become validated and justified, but you will feel tired and unresolved.
One of the important concepts I learnt about anger or negative feelings is to recognize it (with consciousness, thereby be present), and let it be. Observe it as you would a park bench or a grain of rice that has fallen on the ground and it will quickly go away and not manifest itself into something else. This is hard for many people when they are not 'present'.
Related to this is that the body is a reflection of the mind's intentions. For example, if you are feeling angry, your physical actions and body language will 'speak' louder than words. If you become vocal during an angry time, the volume, pitch and choice of words will reflect your feelings just as when you are happy or sad.
The interesting thing about all this is that the brain cannot differentiate between what is 'real' and what you 'think' or 'believe' or for that matter, what you 'dream'. To the brain, these thoughts are as real as flying pink elephants in a dream. The body will reflect what you 'dream' too. Try to recall how many times you jolted awake from a scary dream, to find yourself with a racing heartbeat and sweaty palms or times when you dreamt of a sad incident to wake up finding yourself crying for real.
You can exercise control over what you choose to think and believe. Choose positively and be present.
More in the next post!
Going by the last three ideals, I'll be making this year's blog posts focused on those three themes.
Let's take a look at what I mean by "positive"; Experiencing, promoting and showing others the values of being positive, having positive behaviour, being saturated in a positive environment and so on.
I was recently asked about how to handle negative energy. In one example, a client related how I would handle a situation where something bad happened to him and how badly he did during some martial arts sparring practice even though he experienced a lot of rage and anger resulting from the incident.
Nothing positive can come from any action or thought that has been fueled or determined by negative energy. His fruitless martial arts sparring performance was a direct reflection of his state of being. He was just expressing his anger in a physical dimension and was being angry at "anger". Possibly for revealing a weakness in his otherwise calm exterior. Using "anger" in a physical aspect is not going to leave you feeling good even if you succeed in achieving your goals because anger has just become validated and justified, but you will feel tired and unresolved.
One of the important concepts I learnt about anger or negative feelings is to recognize it (with consciousness, thereby be present), and let it be. Observe it as you would a park bench or a grain of rice that has fallen on the ground and it will quickly go away and not manifest itself into something else. This is hard for many people when they are not 'present'.
Related to this is that the body is a reflection of the mind's intentions. For example, if you are feeling angry, your physical actions and body language will 'speak' louder than words. If you become vocal during an angry time, the volume, pitch and choice of words will reflect your feelings just as when you are happy or sad.
The interesting thing about all this is that the brain cannot differentiate between what is 'real' and what you 'think' or 'believe' or for that matter, what you 'dream'. To the brain, these thoughts are as real as flying pink elephants in a dream. The body will reflect what you 'dream' too. Try to recall how many times you jolted awake from a scary dream, to find yourself with a racing heartbeat and sweaty palms or times when you dreamt of a sad incident to wake up finding yourself crying for real.
You can exercise control over what you choose to think and believe. Choose positively and be present.
Comments
Nice post Vince, the past few years I've been appreciating more the virtues of patience and tolerance. Even blog bout it here: http://4nobletruth.blogspot.com/2008/12/khanti.html
Wish I had a classmate like Jessica Alba though... hehe...