Several years ago, my doctor diagnosed me with fibromyalgia. We tried pain pills for about a year, but I didn’t want to be on that merry-go-round, so I stopped taking them. I’ve been able to control the pain fairly well with exercise and cutting back quite a bit on sugar.

Now, as I’m getting older and have a bit of arthritis, too, I’m finding the pain management to be a bit more difficult to handle. And, my sweet spouse is working hard to deal with his own aches and pains from working a labor intensive job for 30 years.

As is my nature, I’ve embarked on a learning and practice adventure consisting of many different spokes to the health and aging wheel, and I thought you might like to join me. We are going to look at pain management through diet, exercise, sleep, meditation, water, holistic health alternatives, and attitude.

Let’s start where many of us don’t want to start – our diet. I don’t know about you, but I like to eat and I want my food to taste good.  In addition, I don’t have a large repertoire of fruits and vegetables. I grew up in Nebraska; a land of beef and grains, steak and potatoes. With this, we drank gallons of milk, and our regular treat was ice cream. We never had a garden, just a small bed of tomatoes and cucumbers. My mom loved to bake and we always had fresh bread, pies, cakes and cookies around the house. And, of course, chocolate is one of the four main food groups. This has been the way of our food for a very long time. What we didn’t know was the damage we have been doing to our bodies for over 50 years!

If you have fibromyalgia or arthritis, you are already painfully aware of how inflammation affects you. As I talk to people with fibro, they often speak of “flare ups” that rival Mt. St. Helen with the explosive power of pain. But, even more critical is the silent stealth of the inflammation attacking us at the cellular level, playing a significant role in developing heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, allergies, arthritis and prostate disease.

Your body uses inflammation to signal you that something is wrong, and you should stop doing whatever it is that you are doing, or it sends millions of white blood cells to overpower whatever bacterium or virus has invaded your body, or your immune system raises the temperature of your body so high that whatever bug has hold of you dies of heatstroke.

It stands to reason that you don’t want your body to stop protecting and healing you, but you do want to get rid of the excessive, chronic and inappropriate inflammation. What is causing the malfunction in your body? You are out of balance! And, so are are millions of other people!

Our cells produce chemicals (prostaglandins) to create and quiet our inflammatory responses. These chemicals are produced by using the nutrients in our food, more specifically our bodies use the fatty acids in our foods to make prostaglandins.

Omega-6 fatty acids make inflammatory prostaglandins.

Omega-3 fatty acids make anti-inflammatory prostaglandins.

Those of us living in modern industrialized nations consume about twenty times more omega-6 as we do omega-3. In order for us to be in balance, we should be eating roughly equal amounts of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.

Since most of us aren’t nutritionists, you are probably asking just like I did – ‘splain please!

When you go to the store, what do you buy? Boxes of processed food, some soda (which has it’s own problems), crackers, pasta, a jar of spaghetti sauce, maybe some cookies, breakfast bars, bread, cereal, milk, a little beef, and because we are eating healthy – chicken and/or turkey.  Most of us will get some vegetables, salad, salad dressing, etc. And, if you are single, and hate to cook for one – you may get some frozen TV dinners, pizza, and other assorted frozen items.

Today’s modern diet includes too many grains.  They tend to be high in omega-6 fatty acids.  We don’t eat as many fresh vegetables and legumes, which give us high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids.  More importantly, our livestock and even our seafood (farm-raised) are consuming high amounts of grains as well rather than their natural diet, so the milk we drink, eggs and meat we eat are lower in omega-3  and higher in omega-6 fatty acids. The end result?

Higher omega-6 + Lower omega-3

=

Higher pro-inflammatory prostaglandins + Lower anti-inflammatory prostaglandins

In part 2, we will talk about additional factors that can throw us out of balance, but this is enough to start with.

For the next week, when you go to the grocery, pay careful attention to what you are putting in your cart.  You don’t need to change anything, just write it down to increase your awareness. We are creatures of habit and we tend to walk through the aisles of the grocery and pick up what we are familiar with.

Once you are really paying attention and have increased your awareness, shift to more fresh vegetables and legumes, along with free range beef, chicken and turkey in lesser amounts that you might have eaten before.  Eliminate as much sugar as you can, and move toward a fresh diet rather than processed foods.  Let’s start there, and begin paying attention to what your body is telling you.

Georgia Feiste, owner of Collaborative Transitions Coaching, Inc., located in Lincoln, NE, is a personal growth and leadership coach, writer, and workshop facilitator.  She is also a Usui Reiki Master and EFT practitioner, living with Fibromyalgia.  While Georgia specializes in career, business and personal life transitions for people seeking change in their life, she is also passionate about working with people with chronic pain associated with FMS.  She is uniquely skilled in providing support and encouragement as her clients set intentional goals to attain their desires, holding open the space they need to stretch and grow. Her passion is success grounded in purpose and passion, standards of integrity and priorities in life.    Her websites are http://www.collaborativetransitions.com, where you can find her blogs about business and career, http://www.rainbowbridgecoach.com , where she and many other coaches blog about mind, body, spirit and emotion, and http://www.georgiafeiste.com where you can catch her thoughts on a wide variety of topics.  Georgia can be reached at (402) 304-1902 if you wish to schedule a 30 minute consultation.

Not every man can say these powerful and difficult things…but these men are saying it now.

When was the last time…

You danced with a flower?
You fell in love with a tree?
You sang to the stars?
You saw the good in every encounter?
You found peace in forgiving another?
You listened to the rhythm of your heart?

Every moment is an opportunity to experience expansive love. When we stop seeking (or expecting) love or approval, we can begin to love ourselves in deeper ways.

As Pema Chödrön says, “The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eyes.”

Wow!  You will find emotion, thought-provoking ideas, and many tender stories packed into a short 110 page book that will take you just a couple of hours to read.  Beyond Reason is a book about the loss of a gifted child, and his father’s search for light and meaning over the next fifteen years. 

As a physician, Gregg Korbon approached many things in life from a scientific viewpoint.  His life was harried, and without depth in terms of human emotions and connection.  Dr. Korbon was immersed in academics and spent his professional time buried in facts and scientific proof.  He spent much of his home life dealing with two children who did not come in to this world in the best of health.  After the death of his son, Brian, Dr. Korbon began to open himself to the embracing warmth of love and the magic of the universe.  Reaction to Brian’s death took his father down many paths, from metaphysics to psychic phenomenon, learning about the waves of energy flowing around and through us as we dance our life’s story.   

Two concepts really stuck out for me as I read of Gregg’s experiences over the years as he sought to relieve his pain from the loss of his child.  First, his thoughts and ideas around the process of letting go are profound and far-reaching.  He concentrated on letting go of fear – the fear of getting close to people, the fear of activities unknown to us, and the fear of dying.  I was struck by what I was reading, and the synchronicity of messages, as I had just completed giving a class in which I had shared Deepak Chopra’s Principles for Spiritual Optimism.    His third principle is that “you belong in the scheme of the Universe.  There is nothing to be afraid of.  You are safe.  Fear cannot be trusted.”  The tenth and final principle is letting go – the path to freedom.  I have been experimenting with this concept in my own life recently – letting go of the fear, knocking down walls, being who I really am.  It has been surprisingly liberating and has drawn people in to my life I might never have met before, and deepened relationships that go back forty years and more. 

The second concept that held deep meaning for me calls on us to believe in magic and re-learn what we have forgotten as we trained to become adults in a weary and cynical world.  We won’t re-learn this magic through the teaching of other adults as much as we will by allowing the children in our lives to teach us.  They are in tune with the Universe, and speak of it’s miracles through their actions, their words, and their wonder.  If we only sit down and really listen to them, we will remember.  Deepak Chopra’s first principle of Spiritual Optimism says that the “healthiest response to life is laughter.  It is an antidote for fear and sorrow.”  Remember the laughter of your small children as they danced and played through their days?  They are full of imagination and have the answers to our problems.  We steal that from them by subjecting them to hours and hours of television rather than reading to them, doing crafts with them, and talking to them about magic and miracles.  The next time I am spending time with my grandchildren, it is my intention to really pay attention to our conversations – knowing that I have much to re-learn about the joy and power of the Universe.

Georgia Feiste, President of Collaborative Transitions Coaching, Inc., located in Lincoln, NE, is a personal growth and leadership coach, writer, and workshop facilitator.  She is also a Usui Reiki Master and EFT practitioner.  Her passion is success grounded in purpose and passion, standards of integrity and priorities in life.  You can also find Georgia on her website, Collaborative Transitions, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.   Georgia may also be reached at (402) 304-1902 if you wish to schedule a 30 minute complementary consultation.

Have you ever noticed that when people expect you to behave in a certain way, or to look a certain way, that you often slip into that behavior even when it is not really who you are?  Somehow those expectations cause us to become a chameleon – acting out a role based on an expectation.

Several years ago, Jennifer, a young team lead at a company I was working with, came to talk to me about how her supervisor had just told her that she thought she was a trouble-maker and caused a great deal of disharmony with her fellow team leaders.  Jennifer was in tears, and ready to quit, because she believed she was working hard to improve the way things were done within her department.  But, the more she tried to do what she thought her supervisor wanted her to do, the worse things got.  The day she came to see me, a loud argument had taken place between Jennifer and Sally, another team lead within the department.  Jennifer had been called on the carpet, and put on notice.  She came to see me because when we talked, Jennifer never felt like she was a trouble-maker.  She felt encouraged and strong every time she left my office, and knew that she brought good ideas to the forefront.  The conversation that day was centered on why she felt like two different people depending upon who she was working with.

I explained to Jennifer that it could be a difference in how she was being perceived.  When we look upon someone with a limited set of expectations, good or bad, that person invariably rises to the occasion.  The key is in remembering the potential that is inherent to that person.  Remembering a person’s potential changes how we value them, and how we react to them.  And, consequently, it changes how that person thinks and feels about themselves. 

There is an ancient Hindu greeting “Namaste”, which is given in lieu of our more common “Hello” or “Hi”.  Roughly translated, it means “I see and greet the soul, or divinity, within you.”  I have thought long and hard about the meaning of this greeting, and I believe that what we believe about another person may be mirrored back to them when they are with us and may affect them in ways it is difficult for us to comprehend.  That sense of possibility, our perception of that person, may be communicated by our tone of voice, our facial expression, or even in the words we choose to use.  Sometimes I wonder if I’m not communicating my expectations simply by the visual image I hold in my mind’s eye.  If, as we interact with people throughout our days, we greet their soul – their authentic self, full of potential and grace – with no expectations, will we be blessed with an amazing gift?  

As I have lived my life, I have become more in tune with the infinite possibilities within each person I meet.  I find it exciting to hold no expectations (just so you know, I’m still working on this).  It is an amazing experience to let the uniquely individual growth take place without knowing what direction it may go.

On the flip side of this, it is important to be aware of how we might be reacting to others’ expectations of us.  What if we were to disengage from the feelings we have, and look at those same feelings from a detached point of view?  What would we see?  Is our behavior who we really are, or are we behaving in a manner that has become an expectation of us?  When we are able to look at “how we are living up to expectations” as an outsider looking in, what might we do to change those expectations? 

Let’s walk through a practical example of how this can play out in a relationship.  Let’s say that Jennifer is used to envisioning projects, making plans, and then implementing them with very little help.  Sally, her peer, would like to be included in the brainstorming, planning and being a real part of the implementation.  Because that doesn’t happen, Sally is getting hypercritical of everything Jennifer  does, and feels left out.  Because this situation plays itself out over and over, Sally has become resentful enough to turn away from all projects, and Jennifer doesn’t understand why Sally doesn’t want to help with the implementation.  Jennifer begins to expect resentment and withdrawal behaviors from Sally, and Sally begins to expect Jennifer to leave her in the dark, and pulls away from the project.  This is a catch-22, creating a considerable breakdown in the relationship.  

 As a coach, I would ask both of them to lay out what they really want to happen in the future and to have an open conversation with each other so they might begin to change their expectations.  There are tremendous growth possibilities available for both parties in this situation, and the fate of their ongoing relationship may lie in the balance.  If Sally were to let Jennifer know that it is her expectation to be included in the projects from the very beginning, and how happy she is to participate in all aspects, Jennifer is more likely to begin to have the expectation of Sally to be excited about the projects, and interested in participating.  This creates a win-win for both of them, and will begin to stabilize the relationship.

How are you “living up to expectations” and what expectations do you have of others?

I am more than the expectations others have of me, and I am open to the possibilities expressed by everyone. 

Georgia Feiste, owner of Collaborative Transitions Coaching, Inc., located in Lincoln, NE, is a personal growth and leadership transition coach, writer, and workshop facilitator.  She is also a Usui Reiki Master.  Georgia specializes in career, business and personal life transitions for people seeking change in their life.  Her passion is success grounded in purpose and passion, standards of integrity and priorities in life.  You can also find her on her websites http://www.collaborativetransitions.com and  http://www.georgiafeiste.com.  Georgia can be reached at (402) 304-1902 or you can schedule a 30 minute consultation via Automated Appointment.

I received this lovely note from our dear friend Mary Anne Flanagan at Toning the Om today.  I am thankful for her constant wisdom in her communications to me.  Listening has been difficult for me lately because of the inner chatter of my monkey mind.  Yet, listening is what I do, and do well, as a coach.  I love the concept of listening to the essence of the person, not just the words that are coming out of their mouths.  Listening for the “words” underneath the words that tell you the feelings, emotions, and monkey mind your client, friend, or family member have invested in the story they are telling you. 

I offer to share this lovely letter from Mary Anne – so that you too may close your eyes and listen with your heart instead of your ears. 

Namaste, Georgia

As I stood in the subway car, a lady started talking to me and I realized after a few moments I had stopped listening. She was complaining about the delays and it seemed like she would never stop talking. By the time I reached my office, I realized I heard what she was saying, but not really listening to what she was saying.

There are days when listening seems more difficult – due to the noises outside and all the chatter going on inside. Some of my best listening happens when I am using my whole body – when I can let go of any response of what I need to say and just listen.

As Peter Senge says, “To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the ‘music,’ but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow our mind’s hearing to your ears’ natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning.”

When we are truly listening, we become present to all that is around us. Noise can transform into sounds. Listening requires us to pay attention and gives us the ability to have greater focus. Are you willing to listen below the noises?

Practice: Close your eyes, take a soft breath, and listen to the sounds surrounding you. Can you hear the leaves, the birds, or a sunrise? What is your heart saying?

And remember the advice of Native American seers: speak only half as much as you listen.

 

Life is speaking, are you listening? 

by Andrew Cohen

With meditation, you can’t push.  Meditation is one of those things that cannot be forced.  You just have to make yourself available, and we do that by being still, being at ease, and paying attention.  The depth youa re looking for comes from letting go, not from “pushing deeper.”  But in any case, you shouldn’t be so concerned with how deep your experience is.  Consciousness is infinite.  You could have a more powerful, more profound experience of it, but it is still the same infinite ground that you are speaking about.  That is why, when we try to describe the experience of consciousness, words always fall short.  We might use words like “powerful”, “profound”, or “deep,” but the words are only a metaphor, a quantification of infinity, for that which cannot be measured.  A little bit of infinity or a lot of infinity — it’s the same thing.

So you shouldn’t worry about how meditation is supposed to feel, or spend too much time comparing your experience to what you may have heard from others or even to what you may have experienced yourself in the past.  You are entering into a realm where measurement doesn’t mean anything.  Dwelling upon too many ideas about what meditation is supposed to be like is just a distraction from your own direct experience.  Just make yourself completely available and then see what happens.  The state of meditation is an immediate one.  It doesn’t require time.  But if you’re holding on to an idea of a particular kind of experience that you are convinced you need to have, you are not going to be able to see deeply into the experience that you are having right now.

Meditation — and indeed, the recognition of enlightenment itself — doesn’t have anything to do with any kind of experience that you can imagine with the mind.  The state of meditation, which is synonymous with enlightenment, is the freedom from experience, and that freedom is always imminent.  But it does require a ceaseless willingness to relinquish any ideas you have about how it is supposed to feel.  Then you will discover the englightened mind.  It’s right here.  It is always already the ground of your experience in each and every moment.

–Andrew Cohen, in “Being and Becoming”

Forgiveness takes a lot of Faith

That faith comes more easily if we are not fully buying into the system of separation. But it also has to do with the heart.

Often it is an intuitive flash that tells us that not forgiving, but holding vengeful, hateful thoughts, is actually more damaging to our own system. This poison of hate and resentment will also affect the person we are projecting those thoughts onto, but in the end it is going to hurt us more.

So forgiveness is the willingness to let go–of our self-importance, our pride, our hurt, our resentment, and the feeling that we have to get our pound of flesh.

Deep inside us we do know the truth, that we are not separate and that we are love. When we awaken to the truth, about our real self and thus to love, we do not proudly and self-importantly pamper and cherish ourselves. We love ourselves in a much more respectful way, all the while knowing that our and others’ baggage does not matter. It does not have to be important. That is true nobility of soul.

As Alexander Pope said, ‘To err is human, to forgive divine.’ Learning to forgive is the very real awakening of our divine nature.

October 30th is National Forgiveness Day

The Center Of Unconditional Love (COUL) is dedicated to creating as awareness and understanding of the power of love and the joy of forgiveness in producing good health, happiness, and stress-free living in the lives of individuals and in our home, work, and worship environments.

With this mission in sight, we celebrate October as Forgiveness Month, the week of Oct. 24-31 as Forgiveness Week, and Saturday, Oct. 30, on the 5th annual National Forgiveness Day.

Volunteers and organizations such as yours will celebrate the joy of forgiveness by publishing/printing/distributing/sharing forgiveness information and copies of the “Power Of Love Joy Of Forgiveness Health & Wellness Plan” with as many people aspossible by email, newsletters, publications, worship center bulletin inserts, flyers, word-of-mouth, etc.   Please enjoy www.unconditionallovelive.com.   The goal is to reach 5 million people this year.

Georgia Feiste, owner of Collaborative Transitions Coaching, Inc., located in Lincoln, NE, is a personal growth and leadership transition coach, writer, and workshop facilitator.  She is also a Usui Reiki Master.  Georgia specializes in career, business and personal life transitions for people seeking change in their life.  Her passion is success grounded in purpose and passion, standards of integrity and priorities in life.  You can also find her on her websites http://www.collaborativetransitions.com, http://www.rainbowbridgecoach.com , and http://www.georgiafeiste.com.  Georgia can be reached at (402) 304-1902 or you can schedule a 30 minute consultation via Automated Appointment.

Walking Through Illusion, by Betsy Otter Thompson, is a thought provoking book based on the energy of love and the freedom each of us has to express that love. Much of the book is devoted to her thoughts around the physics of action/reaction, and she has chosen to explain those thoughts in the context of biblical stories through a question and answer with Jesus. In each chapter, she chooses a different biblical character and the lessons they learned from Jesus’ perspective. At chapter’s end, she has included several questions to ponder, and what this lesson meant to her.

In the book, Betsy expresses many of the things I believe and work with during my coaching sessions. One of the primary concepts is what she acknowledges (and I paraphrase) as “equal justice prevails in both directions. The more you act in positive ways and enjoyed the results you get, the more you test the power of physics in areas more demanding. . . As you face your actions honestly and acknowledge the mirror returning, you will know that you control receivership, at least in terms of emotion. This will put you in the powerful position of creating what you prefer.”

Many of the chapters spoke to me because of my background in Unity, and the many books I have read over the years. It follows the concept that life is an illusion, and we create everything in it. Additionally, time is based on our memories of yesterday, and what our imagination conjures up for us in the future. All we really have is the moment we are living – and we can choose to fill it with joy or angst. Much of what we dream about in the future is wrapped around happiness and love, unless we are steeped in fear. The question asked within the book is very profound, “If love is in the moment and you’re happy now, why does it matter what the future brings? . . . The moment is everything. Today is the sum total of who you are. To gain more of who you are is a mental discipline. If you see the emotional goodness of now, you’ll be seeing it in the future as well.”

Throughout many of the chapters, the author is speaking of the need to look within rather than to external sources for what we need. The chapter on “Handicaps” caught my attention specifically because my son is blind, and while both of us spent a great deal time looking at this as a handicap, it has opened up multiple possibilities for his life, and is now viewed as a gift. In this chapter, we are taught that there is a truth that is right for everyone. That truth is that everyone is looking for the ultimate in themselves; it is what we all have in common. On page 161, there is a beautiful prayer that was given to Aaron by Jesus to help him as he grew in strength:

Dear God:

My love remains my knowledge forever

My heart remains my friend forever.

My aura remains my self forever.

Help me to share the person I am, so all that I am expands forever.

This is a book you will want to keep close to the place you retreat to meditate and ask for guidance each day. If you choose to read it straight through, I encourage you to go back and work through the questions at the end of each chapter to provide you with the opportunity for more introspection and growth.

Walking Through Illusion can be found at O Books, http://www.o-books.net. If you have questions about the book, contact Betsy Otter Thompason at her web site: betsy@betsythompson.com.

One of the things I came to realize after losing my 20 year old son was that so much of our energies are used up and so much of our small joys are missed because we resist what is.  Our child has been unfairly and unjustly taken away  from us and in the blink of an eye our life has changed forever and we do not want that to be.   So we resist with our hearts, our minds, all of our being and find it uses up the majority of our life’s focus and energy and to what avail it changes nothing except our moments of joy, which go now unnoticed and our life-force which is mostly drained and leaves us feeling as if we are on autopilot.   A mere shell of who we were.  I read once that we as parents soon after the loss of our child operate at 85% less of our previous abilities.  I would believe it! 

What I later learned though is we have a choice in how we will respond to our loss.  Going with the flow means not resisting the direction the flow is taking you whether you are there by choice or not.  It does not mean we choose it nor that we like it but that we are open to the direction we are being taken and learn to  trust that the powers that be or place life is taking us will be OK.  It is like being small again and having our lives directed by adults who are there for us.  Some of these things work and some don’t work for our individual and unique personalities.  But still we live our young lives, and are happy and prosper.  This is the attitude Buddha may have meant when he said “It is what it is.” Sometimes things truly are just what they are and the answer to how to cope with that is to simply ride it out and believe things will be ok again, different without your child, but there will be joys again, and beauty, and love and all the things that make life wonderful and worthwhile. 

 Peace & Light,

Stella Wichman

Certified From Heartbreak to Happiness Coach
 
www.parentsgriefrecovery.com
 

“Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself?”

Thomas Jefferson