Life’s Little Lessons

I met up with some Kinesiology friends last night to celebrate the end of our course, have a Christmas drink and watch an old black and white movie. It was a lovely night and there were lots of take aways from the movie :

1) Law of attraction – What you give out, you get back in return.

2) Sometimes you have to let go to gain.

3) People are people and can choose to be defined by their life so far.

4) If you didn’t have a past what would your future look like.

5) Love comes from within.

6) No one does to you, unless you let them.

7) Life’s riches can be measured in more than money.

8) Trust yourself as you know the answers.

Don’t you just love a movie that makes you think. What was the last movie you watched that made you think?????

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The 12 things the girls came up with to look for in a good guy to date

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There is a certain time in life when you decide you want to meet a person of the opposite sex but don’t want to go to clubs or bars and your friends just don’t seem to have ‘Mr or Mrs Right’ to introduce you to.  So, what do you do?

More and more people are logging on to look for a partner and getting comfortably uncomfortable in the online dating world. After a glass of wine or two with some girlfriends we traded some funny dating stories (what go’s on tour !!), had a few laughs then for some reason got all serious and discussed what was important to look for in a guy to date and came up with the following list:

 1) Attitude About His Attractiveness
So you have found a  real hottie. The question is:  How does he handle that?  What he thinks of his attractiveness and how he acts about it is very likely more important to the situation than what you think of it and how you act about it.

Just how tied to his physical appearance is he. Lets face it do you really want to be with a guy that is more of a woman than you are and spends more time preening than a peacock?  If so, you will likely find that he is obsessed with his looks and interested in little else.

This kind of man might look great by your side, but you will end up seriously disappointed in nearly every possible way aside from being physically attracted to him. Even if you are shallow enough to think that looks might be enough, you will most likely find that even your physical attraction to him will wane over time when he has nothing else to offer.

The best men are the ones who don’t realize how gorgeous they are.

2)Integrity and Character
A lack of integrity can even be tied to his attitude about his attractiveness that I mentioned above. When it is, you could be in serious trouble. It’s one thing for a guy to know he’s hot and focus on it way too much, but it’s quite another if he also lacks integrity and turns towards the dark side of using his looks in manipulative and self-serving ways.

For example, a hot man who is accustomed to having women kowtow to him could very easily become one of those men who will throw a huge fit if he thinks he sees you barely glance at another man, but, in the same breath, will insist that his huge group of girl friends who flirt and get frisky with him when you are standing right there is nothing and that you have no right to get upset over it.

This is a prime example of a man who went from being shallow to some full-on double standard behavior somewhere along the line. A lack of integrity can cause this – and plenty of other things that you don’t want to deal with.

3)Emotional and Physical Strength
Yeah we all like a man with physical strength who has a great six pack, but physical strength can also come in different forms like having the physical strength and energy to at least share household duties or head out for the occasional outdoor adventure. Being strong and physically fit isn’t all about looks either; it also has to do with overall well-being and health, and you do want a healthy partner.

When it comes to emotional strength, there is something sexy about a man being a leader who can show that he can provide, protect and handle any situation. A life partner who can stand beside you and handle things with you, rather than just making everything worse by falling apart every time something comes up.

4 )Complaining, Contention and Combativeness
All of us woman should be seeking out strong men, but strength should not be confused with contention and combativeness. You want the kind of strength that allows him to be upfront with you about issues that come up, to always mean what he says and say what he means, and to stand his ground when necessary without being overly forceful.

Unfortunately, too many guys get all confused when it comes to strength and exhibit contention or downright combativeness and this will get you nowhere but miserable. Partners need to support each other in their hopes and dreams, as well as the day-to-day stuff that comes with life. If you choose a man who is constantly complaining or takes every chance to shoot down your ideas and criticize you, you are going to be miserable. No one is happy in a relationship like that, always feeling like they can do nothing right and continuously frustrated by everything the guy does.

5)Lifestyle Cohesion
While you will never hear me say that you need to start dressing in matching outfits and should have the exact same interests, there is something to be said for having cohesive lifestyles. Things like constant schedule conflicts, vastly different religious beliefs and hugely different lifestyles can be tough to overcome when establishing or maintaining a relationship.

When one partner works nights and the other works days, resulting in barely seeing each other, this can have a detrimental effect on the relationship, particularly over time. While you both might think you can work through something like that, lifestyles that are that different can cause problems faster than you might think – no matter how devoted you are to ignoring your differences and making it work.

I have been witness to relationships where women have tried way too hard to make it work with a hot guy who simply wasn’t a good match for them.

It just isn’t going to work. The things you love and value need to be complemented by the things he loves and values. It’s as simple as that. And if your lifestyles are vastly different, it is going to be hard to get – and keep – things going.

Avid travelers don’t do well with partners who won’t set foot on a plane or boat; fourth-generation farmers don’t do well with partners who refuse to get dirty; and teetotalers usually don’t mesh well with hardcore partiers.

Some differences are great for growth and keeping things interesting, but if your lifestyles are truly night and day, some serious consideration is in order.

6)Common Sense and Judgment
We all went through that phase in high school or college when we were having crushes on the rugby captain or the best lokig guy in our year but quite often we would also have confusion about their lack of common sense. They were usually pretty hot and always pretty fun, but most of us grew out of that phase about the time we realized that sometimes having an actual, intelligent conversation with a man is a plus.

While it might have been cute the first three or four times one of those guys did something less than brilliant, it eventually starts getting old, and no woman wants to spend her life constantly making sure her partner isn’t blow drying their hair in the bathtub or washing his red sweaters with his white undershirts.

Common sense is required to get through each day making good judgment calls and handling all of the little situations that come up in normal life. Pay attention to whether or not he seems to be able to make good decisions and handle life’s little issues. If he can’t, it might seem cute in the beginning, but it will end up driving you crazy down the line.

7 )Social Skills 
Humans are social animals as a whole. This means that we enjoy being around other people, which is also how we continue to learn and grow throughout our lives. The problem is that you will start to notice your social circle getting smaller and smaller the longer you are in a relationship with a man.

Even if you fight it, it always seems to end up that you will end up drifting away from your friends who are single. This always happens once you are part of a couple, and it creates the situation where you and your partner now need to work on establishing friendships with other couples. If your guy isn’t that great at making friends, you are going to have a really difficult time finding couples who want to hang out with you. Conversely, if he is a bit of a social butterfly, you can be sure that you will establish lasting friendships with other couples that will end up being really great.

8)Knowing His Way Around a Kitchen

I’m not still stuck in the 1950s and certainly don’t think women should be chained to the kitchen sink, in fact, there is nothing sexier than a man who knows his way round the kitchen.

Having a man who can cook shouldn’t be your number one goal when finding the right guy for you, but it’s certainly a trait that helps in the long run. This is particularly true if you are both busy at work and been hitting the fast food joints every night on your way home from work for as long as you can remember and are feeling fat and unhealthy. Sharing some time making a meal can be a real turn on – even more so if he actually likes doing it.

If he’s the type who also likes hosting dinner parties for all of those couples he has acquired as your new friends, you might just start thinking that life can’t get any better.

9 )Cleanliness and Neatness
Women should not be solely responsible for picking up after you, cleaning the house, cooking every meal and making sure you have clean clothes to wear to work.

But you also probably don’t want it to be the other way around either; unless, you are a complete neat freak and want to be in charge of all of that stuff so that you can be sure it is done perfectly. Of course, if that’s the case, then that brings up other issues. For example, if you are a neat freak and he is a total slob, that is going to cause both of you quite a bit of misery. The same holds true if it’s the other way around and you are a slob, and he is the neat freak.

In a perfect world, both of you will be fairly neat and clean without falling to far towards either extreme.

10)The Little Things
The man you are with might be gorgeous, smart and good to you, but if he has one or more annoying bad habits that drive you crazy, this could be a problem.

Most of us will overlook odd little quirks or annoying habits in the beginning of the relationship because the man is hot or because we think we are being shallow or too picky if can’t get past it. We are even more likely to overlook these little things if we think that he meets all of our major needs. But that is not necessarily a good thing, since those little things can really wear on you – and the relationship – over time.

This is one that you will have to determine on a case-by-case basis. You will have to determine whether or not he can easily change those habits if you say something to him, or if it is just part of who he is. And, if it is part of who he is, you are going to have to decide whether or not you can live with it long term.

11 )Consistent Behavior and Reliability
This one is pretty simple and a bit complicated at the same time. First off, the simple part is just about things like showing up on time and being someone reliable whom you can count on.

The more complicated part is about observing his behavior and how he interacts with people to see just how consistent he is. For example, can you always be sure that you are going to see the same man every time you go out, or does he seem to have some kind of Psycho thing going on? If you never know which version of your guy is going to show up on your date, that just might be a deal breaker right there.

Another important thing to note is any differences between how he treats you and how he treats everyone else. This is how you are going to figure out just how much of what you think is his personality is actually an act that is meant to draw you in.

Check out how he treats bartenders, restaurant servers, colleagues and children. If he has kids, make sure you really pay attention to his interactions with them. Does he interact with other people in a way that is respectful and appropriate? Or does he boss around or walk all over anyone he perceives as beneath him?

This is going to tell you how he is going to act towards you once the newness wears off and he is no longer trying to impress you.

12 )Health and Wellness
Mental and physical health is important. They just are. But this actually goes beyond the surface of someone having relatively good physical health and not being sick or tired constantly.

Obviously mental health is a big one. It is a huge one, really. There are some girls out there who really enjoy a guy who has a little crazy about him, but if you are looking for a long-term mate, someone who is rational, reasonable and levelheaded is going to be a far better bet.

Additionally, you might want to at least give a moment’s thought to how his health and wellness could affect yours. For example, if you are used to being really active, and he prefers to stay indoors and watch movies all day, your physical fitness is likely going to suffer at least somewhat.

I know it can be hard to look past the hotness and really make a good assessment of whether or not the guy you are just starting to date is the right one for you. But you have to believe me when I tell you that it’s worth it. Weeding out those who are not high quality men and potential mates will save you time and get you that much closer to finding the partner you want and deserve.

While some of these things might not be among your top priorities when searching for a potential partner, you are going to thank me for pointing them out later on down the line when you realize just how important some of the less obvious things can be.

What else do you think is important to look for in a hot guy to date?

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40 Ways to Let Go and Feel Less Pain

Eckhart Tolle believes we create and maintain problems because they give us a sense of identity. Perhaps this explains why we often hold onto our pain far beyond its ability to serve us.

We replay past mistakes over and over again in our head, allowing feelings of shame and regret to shape our actions in the present. We cling to frustration and worry about the future, as if the act of fixation somehow gives us power. We hold stress in our minds and bodies, potentially creating serious health issues, and accept that state of tension as the norm.

Though it may sound simple, Ajahn Chah’s advice speaks volumes:

“If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.”

There will never be a time when life is simple. There will always be time to practice accepting that. Every moment is a chance to let go and feel peaceful. Here are 40 ideas to get started:

Let Go Of Frustration with Yourself/Your Life

1. Learn a new skill instead of dwelling on the skills you never mastered.

2. Change your perception—see the root cause as a blessing in disguise.

3. Cry it out. According to Dr. William Frey II, PH.D., biochemist at the Ramset Medical Center in Minneapolis crying away your negative feelings releases harmful chemicals that build up in your body due to stress.

4. Channel your discontent into an immediate positive action—make some calls about new job opportunities, or walk to the community center to volunteer.

5. Use meditation or yoga to bring you into the present moment (instead of dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.)

6. Make a list of your accomplishments—even the small ones— and add to it daily.You’ll have to let go of a little discontentment to make space for this self satisfaction.

7. Visualize a box in your head labeled “Expectations.” Whenever you start dwelling on how things should be or should have been, mentally shelve the thoughts in this box.

8. Engage in a physical activity. Exercise decreases stress hormones and increases endorphins, chemicals that improve your state of mind.

9. Focus all your energy on something you can actually control, instead of dwelling on things you can’t.

10. Express your feelings through a creative outlet, like blogging or painting. Add this to your to-do list and cross it off when you’re done. This will be a visual reminder that you have actively chosen to release these feelings.

Let go of Anger and Bitterness

11. Feel it fully. If you stifle your feelings, they may leak out and affect everyone around you—not just the person who inspired your anger. Before you can let go of any emotion you have to feel it fully.

12. Give yourself a rant window. Let yourself vent for a day before confronting the person who troubled you. This may diffuse the hostility and give you time to plan a rational confrontation.

13. Remind yourself that anger hurts you more than the person who upset you, and visualize it melting away as an act of kindness to yourself.

14. If possible, express your anger to the person who offended you. Communicating how you feel may help you move on. Keep in mind that you can’t control how to offender responds; you can only control how clearly and kindly you express yourself.

15. Take responsibility. Many times when you’re angry, you focus on what someone else did that was wrong—which essentially gives away your power. When you focus on what youcould have done better, you often feel empowered and less bitter.

16. Put yourself in the offender’s shoes. We all make mistakes; and odds are you could have easily slipped up just like your husband, father, or friend did. Compassion dissolves anger.

17. Metaphorically throw it away; i.e., jog with a backpack full of tennis balls. After you’ve built up a bit of rush, toss the balls one by one, labeling each as a part of your anger. (You’ll need to retrieve these—litter angers the earth!)

18. Use a stress ball, and express your anger physically and vocally when you use it.Make a scrunched up face or grunt. You may feel silly, but this allows you to actually express what you’re feeling inside.

19. Wear a rubber band on your wrist, and gently flick it when you start obsessing on angry thoughts. This trains your mind to associate that type of persistent negativity with something unpleasant.

20. Remind yourself these are your only three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it. These acts create happiness; holding onto bitterness never does.

Let Go Of Past Relationships

21. Identify what the experience taught you to help develop a sense of closure.

22. Write everything you want to express in a letter. Even if you choose not to send it, clarifying your feelings will help you come to terms with reality as it is now.

23. Remember both the good and the bad. Even if appears this way now, the past was not perfect. Acknowledging this may minimize your sense of loss. As Laura Oliver says, “It’s easier to let go of a human than a hero.”

24. Un-romanticize the way you view love. Of course you’ll feel devastated if you believe you lost your soul mate. If you think you can find a love that amazing or better again it will be easier to move on.

25. Visualize an empowered single you—the person you were before meeting your last love. That person was pretty awesome, and now you have the chance to be him or her again.

26. Create a space that reflects your present reality. Take down his pictures; delete her emails from your saved folder.

27. Reward yourself for small acts of acceptance. Get a facial after you delete his number from your phone, or head out with friends after putting all her things in a box.

28. Hang this statement somewhere you can see it. “Loving myself means letting go.”

29. Replace your emotional thoughts with facts. When you think, “I’ll never feel loved again!” don’t resist that feeling. Instead, move on to another thought, like “I learned a new song for karaoke tonight.”

30. Use the silly voice technique. According to Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap, swapping the voice in your head with a cartoon voice will help take back power from the troubling thought.

Let Go Of Stress

31. Use a deep breathing technique, like ujayii, to soothe yourself and seep into the present moment.

32. Immerse yourself in a group activity. Enjoying the people in your life may help put your problems in perspective.

33. Consider this quotation by Eckhart Tolle: “Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.” Questioning how your stress serves you may help you let it go.

34. Metaphorically release it. Write down all your stresses and toss the paper into your fireplace.

35. Replace your thoughts. Notice when you begin thinking about something that stresses you so you can shift your thought process to something more pleasant—like your passion for your hobby.

36. Take a sauna break. Studies reveal that people who go to sauna at least twice a week for 10-30 minutes are less stressed after work than others with similar jobs who don’t.

37. Imagine your life 10 years from now. Then look 20 years into the future, and then 30. Realize that many of the things you’re worrying about don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

38. Organize your desk. According to Georgia Witkin, assistant director of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, completing a small task increases your sense of control and decreases your stress level.

39. Use it up. Make two lists: one with the root causes of your stress, and one with actions to address them. As you complete these tasks, visualize yourself utilizing and depleting your “stress supply.”

40. Laugh it out. Research shows that laughter soothes tension, improves your immune system, and even eases pain. If you can’t relax for long, start with just ten minutes watching a funny video on YouTube.

It’s a long list, but there’s much left to be said! Can you think of anything to add to this list—other areas of life where we need to practice letting go, and other techniques to start doing it right now?

Can we escape from our biology and become more evolved?

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My blog today is written from a place of seeing the pain that some people close to me are going through……..love and light to them.

Can we escape from our biology and become more evolved? – To coin a very well known phrase “YES WE CAN”

Why is it that when 2 factory workers sit side by side and are exposed to the same carcinogenic chemicals for 20 years that one manifests cancer and the other doesn’t? Maybe, just maybe, there is some kind of internal order at work that supersedes the  continual environmental exposure to harmful chemicals which are known to genetically alter tissue. Is it possible that managing our own internal environment, regardless of the external environment we can maintain or change our genes?

There is a growing body of studies & evidence that points to the effect of stress on our bodies and it points to the fact that most species live in a primitive state of survival. This limits our evolution as the chemicals of stress alter our internal state and pull the trigger of cellular breakdown thus chronic long term stress weakens our bodies. Over a period of time we begin to like and cannot shake the internal state of turmoil and we rely on the chemical state that drives us to experience confusion, unhappiness, aggression even depression etc.

So, why do we cling to relationships or jobs that that logically no longer work for us? If it is the conditions of our job that we dislike so much, why don’t we just get another one? If there is something in our personal life that causes us to suffer, why don’t we change it? why does changing ourselves and our conditions in life seem so hard?

The answer to those questions are that we choose to remain in the same circumstances because we become addicted to the emotional state they produce and the chemicals that arouse that state of being. Is change easy? For most people I would say the answer to that is no which is why some people choose to stay in situations that produce the kind of troubled states of mind that plague them for their entire lives – Ouch, that’s gotta hurt!  People choose this state of ‘ being stuck’ partly because of genetics and partly because a part of their brain has become hardwired by their repeated thoughts and reactions that limits their vision of what is possible. Everyone probably knows someone that isn’t happy unless they are unhappy !

When it comes to evolution, change is the only element that is universal, or consistent to all species on earth. To evolve is to change by adapting to the environment. Our environment as human beings is everything that makes up our lives. You know, all those complex circumstances that involve us, our loved ones, social status, where we live, what we do for a living, how we react to those around us & even the times we live in.

When we change something in our life, we have to make it different than it would be if we left it alone. To change is to become different, it means that we are no longer who we used to be. We have modified how we think, what we do, what we say, how we act and who we were being. Personal change takes an intentional act of will, and it usually means that something was making us uncomfortable enough to want to do things differently. To evolve is to overcome the conditions in our life by changing something about ourselves.

We have an innate ability to be neuroplastic – the ability to rewire and create new neural circuits to make substantial changes in the quality of our lives. Our ability to be neuroplastic is equivalent  to our ability to change our minds, to change ourselves and to change our perception of the world around us; that is, our reality. In order to accomplish this we have to change how the brain automatically and habitually works. When you effect neuroplasticity your brain has permanently changed; it neurologically tracked a new way to fire off circuits, by making new neurological patterns that work in a different pattern.

Here is a great example… what do you see when you first look at this image? Now, look at it again and what do you see?

Maybe you first saw a candlestick or maybe you saw 2 people looking at each other !

What you first see in the form of a picture will be what is the most familiar pattern in the shape you are looking at. Just above your ears, the temporal lobes (the brain’s center for decoding & recognsing objects) locks in a memory. The picture activates a few hundred million neurological circuits, which fire in a unique sequence and pattern throughout specific parts of your brain, and you are reminded of a candlestick or 2 people looking at each other – cool !

So, going back to neuroplasticity,  what if you saw the candlestick and I told you to no longer see that object and to see 2 people looking at each other instead. For you to accomplish that feat, your frontal lobe would have to force your brain to “cool off” the circuits that are related to candlesticks and reorganise it’s circuitary to imagine 2 people looking at each other instead. The ability to make the brain forgo it’s habitual internal wiring and fire in new patterns and combinations is how neuroplasticity allows us to change.

Breaking the habit of thinking, doing, feeling, perceiving or behaving is what allows you to see the world and see yourself differently. You change your mind by altering the brain’s typical firing pattern and by strengthening new chains of brain cell connections, and thus who you are has changed as well.  Umm, does this then mean that change, neuroplasticity and evolution all have similar meanings?

Put Yourself in Good Hands – Your Own !

www.chi-me.com.au

How Men & Women Handle Stress Differently

Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus when it comes to handling Stress….

Amanda Ezman’s life is a little on the stressful side these days. She’s a first-grade teacher to a classroom full of rambunctious 6-year-olds, she’s planning a July wedding, and she’s house hunting with her future husband. So it’s a common occurrence for her to come home after a harried day and feel stressed. What does she do?

“When it all piles up, I usually need to cry and get it all out,” says Ezman, of Sherrill, N.Y. “I talk and then talk some more and then some more, and then once I’ve had a chance to talk through all the things that bottle up inside me during the day, I usually feel better.”

 Andrew Flynn’s pregnant wife and 5-year-old daughter have relocated from Long Island, N.Y., to upstate N.Y., while he still works on Long Island. He commutes once a week back and forth, and in the meantime, tries to get his family settled in their new house near Syracuse. Stress is unfortunately a part of his life for the time being.

“I don’t talk about my feelings when I’m stressed,” says Flynn. “It’s easier just to let it pass and move on.”

Clearly, men and women tend to deal with stress in very different ways — but why? WebMD talks to experts who explain why stress affects the sexes so differently.

Men vs. Women and Hormones

One of the most important reasons why men and women react differently to stress is hormones. Three play a crucial role: cortisol, epinephrine, and oxytocin.

When stress strikes, hormones called cortisol and epinephrine together raise a person’s blood pressure and circulating blood sugar level, and cortisol alone lowers the effectiveness of the immune system.

“People used to think there was a difference in the amounts of cortisol released during a stressful situation in women,” says Robert Sapolsky, PhD, professor of neurobiology at Stanford University. “The thinking was women released more of this hormone, and that produced all sorts of nutty theories about why women are so emotional.”

But the fact of the matter, explains Sapolsky, is that there is no consistent difference in cortisol production at all between men and women. It really all comes down to the hormone called oxytocin.

In women, when cortisol and epinephrine rush through the bloodstream in a stressful situation, oxytocin comes into play. It is released from the brain, countering the production of cortisol and epinephrine, and promoting nurturing and relaxing emotions.

While men also secrete the hormone oxytocin when they’re stressed, it’s in much smaller amounts, leaving them on the short end of the stick when it comes to stress and hormones.

Tend and Befriend, Fight or Flight

While most people are familiar with the fight or flight theory (when confronted with stress, do you stay and fight or turn tail and run?), there’s a new theory in town tailored just for women.

An influential study published in the July 2000 issue of Psychological Reviewreported that females were more likely to deal with stress by “tending and befriending” — that is, nurturing those around them and reaching out to others. “Tending involves nurturant activities designed to protect the self and offspring that promote safety and reduce distress; befriending is the creation and maintenance of social networks that may aid in this process,” write researchers, including Shelly E. Taylor, PhD, a distinguished professor in the department of psychology at UCLA.

Why do women tend and befriend instead of fight or flight? The reason, in large part, is oxytocin combined with female reproductive hormones, explained researchers in the study.

Men, on the other hand, with smaller amounts of oxytocin, lean toward the tried and true fight or flight response when it comes to stress — either bottling it up and escaping, or fighting back.

Demand vs. Energy

“The major sex differences I see have to do with the management of demand and maintenance of energy,” says Carl Pickhardt, PhD, a psychologist and author ofThe Everything Parent’s Guide to Positive Discipline. “Because male self-esteem is often built around adequacy of performance, and female self-esteem is often built around adequacy of relationships, overdemand and insufficient self-maintenance tend to cut somewhat different ways for women and for men.”

A woman, explains Pickhardt, is often at risk of letting other people’s needs determine her limits, while her own needs are ignored.

“Self-sacrifice in relationships is how many women enter stress,” says Pickhardt, who is a spokesman for the American Psychological Association.

Men, on the other hand, are often at risk of letting challenge and competition set the pace.

“Men tend to let their rival’s efforts or their employer’s agenda set the level of their demand, losing focus on the self to preoccupation with winning or attaining an extrinsic objective,” Pickhardt tells WebMD. “Achieving a winning performance at all costs is how many men enter stress.”

What is the greatest stressor for women and for men? Not surprisingly, “Relationship loss for women, performance failure for men, are often the greatest stressors each sex experiences,” says Pickhardt.

Managing Stress

When it comes to managing stress, men and women just handle it differently. Take Amanda Ezmen and Andrew Flynn, for example. Both lead stressful lives, but both handle it in their own way.

“Managing stress is very different by sex,” Pickhardt tells WebMD. “Women often seek support to talk out the emotional experience, to process what is happening and what might be done.”

Whether its friends, family, or a support group, women like to tell their stories.

“Men often seek an escape activity to get relief from stress, to create a relaxing diversion, to get away,” says Pickhardt.

Golfing is a common example of how men escape — they’re acting out their stressful energy in a challenging way while enjoying the companionship of other men. They typically, explains Pickhardt, don’t take time out of a round of golf to discuss their feelings or stress amongst each other.

For both sexes, stress has evolved from the days on the savannah when we were running for our lives. Now, it’s mortgage payments and childcare that keep us up night after night.

“The single most important point to make is that stress has evolved from dealing with a single short-term crisis to the ability to turn stress on in a chronic way,” says Sapolsky, author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.

Unfortunately, because the hormonal result of stress is increased blood pressure and circulating blood sugar levels, and a less-effective immune system, chronic stress can lead to serious health problems.

“Men and women need to find ways to deal with chronic stress. This is not what the body has evolved for, and it can increase a person’s risk of everything from heart disease to metabolic disorders to impaired wound healing,” Sapolsky tells WebMD

Give me a P, Give me an H

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It appears that taking small steps to change your body’s pH will give you more energy, increase mental clarity, improve digestion and stabilise your weight naturally.

Foods are classified as either acidic or alkaline according to their own intrinsic acidity or alkalinity but nutritionists often speak of acid and alkaline forming foods, referring to the overall effect of the food after ingestion.

A diet high in acid-forming protein, sugar, caffeine and processed foods disrupts pH balance.

Herman Aihara, a leading educator in Western and Eastern health science, writes in his book Acid & Alkaline:“The condition and constitution of body fluid, especially blood, is the most important factor in our life: that is to say, for our health. In man, organs such as the kidneys, liver, and especially the large intestine throw out waste and toxins and maintain our internal environment in as ideal a condition as possible. However, there is limitation for this. If we eat too much poison producing foods, or not enough materials which are needed to clear out the poisons, then our internal environment becomes beyond control, and away from the correct condition in which our cells can live. The cells become sick and die. Many sicknesses are a function of the body’s attempt to clean up this internal environment. Cancer is a condition in which body cells become abnormal due to the abnormal condition of body fluids.”

What is pH?

All organic matter has a pH level, including humans. Maintaining the correct pH level is vital. A pH under 7 is considered acid, while a pH over 7 is alkaline. The pH of our blood must remain constant between 7.35 and 7.45. The condition of body fluids, including blood, should be alkaline. The pH level (the acid-alkaline measurement) of your internal fluids affects every cell in your body. Extended acid imbalances of any kind are not well tolerated by the body. Indeed, the entire metabolic process depends on a balanced internal alkaline environment. Every cell burns fuel to create energy. Most of this cellular waste is acid and is released into the blood for elimination from the lungs in the form of carbon dioxide and from the kidneys via the urine. In this way, the body regulates the acid level so that it does not become dangerously concentrated.

The body has an alkaline reserve that can neutralise acids. This excess of alkali is only a backup system with limited supply and the, more acid-forming foods eaten, the weaker the system becomes, so following a more alkaline-forming wholefood diet is essential to maintaining a healthy pH balance.

It appears that taking small steps to change your body’s pH will give you more energy, increase mental clarity, improve digestion and stabilise your weight naturally. The cells in your body function at peak efficiency and achieve peak longevity when bathed in slightly alkaline body fluids.

A diet high in acid-forming protein, sugar, caffeine and processed foods disrupts pH balance. The literature suggests that most degenerative disease attributed to ageing, such as cancer, osteoporosis and heart disease, and ailments such as allergy, kidney stones and gallstones can be linked to mineral deficiencies that result in body fluids becoming more acidic.

There are many factors that create an unhealthy pH level, including stress, certain medications, metabolic and muscular functions in the body, and the food we eat and the liquids we drink. Foods are classified as either acidic or alkaline according to their own intrinsic acidity or alkalinity but nutritionists often speak of acid and alkaline forming foods, referring to the overall effect of the food after ingestion. In other words, limes with a pH of 1.9 contain strong acid yet after ingestion they contribute to an alkaline environment.

In fruit and most vegetables, the organic acid (such as the acidity of an orange, which you can taste) contains many alkaline elements, such as potassium, sodium, calcium and magnesium. Organic acids, when oxidised, become carbon dioxide and water; the alkaline elements remain and neutralise body acid. In other words, strangely enough, acid foods can reduce acidity in your body. This is the reason fruits and most vegetables are considered alkaline-forming foods. An important distinction to keep in mind is there are two types of acid and alkaline foods: one is acid or alkaline foods; the other is acid- or alkaline-forming foods.

I Can Change My Mind

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I invite you to have a single thought, any thought. Whether your thought was related to a feeling of happiness, sadness, anger, inspiration or even sexual arousal, you changed your body. You changed you. All thoughts whether they be “I can” “I can’t”, “I love you”, “I’m not good enough” have the same measurable effects. As you sit here reading this blog, your body is undergoing a host of dynamic changes triggered by your most recent thought.

Your pancreas and adrenal glands are already secreting a few new hormones, your brain just surged with an increase in electrical current releasing thousands of neurochemicals. Your spleen and thymus gland sent out a mass email to your immune system to make a few modifications. Several different gastric juices started flowing. Your liver began processing enzymes that were not present moments before. Your heart rate fluctuated, your lungs altered their stroke volume, and blood flow to the capillaries in your hands and feet changed. All from thinking just one thought. You are that powerful!

Whether we like it or not, once a thought happens in the brain, the rest is history. All of the bodily reactions that  occur from both our intentional or unintentional thinking unfold behind the scenes of our awareness. Amazingly enough the unconscious brain holds 80% of our thoughts and feelings and only 20% sit in our conscious brain. So, is it possible that we can train our body to be unhealthy by our repeated thoughts and reactions?

I want you to pay attention, become aware and listen. Can you hear the hum of the refrigerator or maybe the sound of a passing car or a distant bird? How about your own heart beating? Just by shifting your attention to those moments you caused a power surge of electricity in millions of brain cells right inside your own head. By choosing to modify your awareness, you changed your brain.
Not only did you change how your brain was working moments ago, but how it will work in the next moment, and possibly for the rest of your life. You did that of your own free will, by changing your focus. You quite literally changed your mind.

If are awareness is so mobile, why is it hard to keep our attention on thoughts that might serve us? Right now, as you continue to concentrate on this page, you might have forgotten about the pain in your lower back, or the argument you had with your boss or even what gender you are. It is where you place your attention and on what you place your attention on that maps the very course of our state of being. For example at any given moment you could think about a bitter memory from your past that has been tattooed in the intimate folds of your grey matter and like magic it comes to life. You could also think about something that may or may not happen in the future and anxieties and worries that do not readily exist are conjured up by your mind. Our attention brings everything to life and makes real what was previously unnoticed or unreal.

The good news is that you are a work in progress – the brain cells that make up who you are are constantly in flux. Brain cells are constantly remolded and re-organised by your thoughts and experiences. If you accept the notion that your brain is still changing as you read this blog, you can easily see that your parents, teachers, neighbours, friends, family and culture have all contributed to who you are today. It is our senses through our vast experiences that write the story of who we are on our mind.

Chi Energy Amazing Footage

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