Positive Health Online

One way to deal with Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Sadness and Depression

… and …

Learn how to learn to manage, ground and balance ourselves - and each other

Introduction

I hope that this short article will show you how to empower yourself, ground and relax yourself and come back down-to-earth.  During my career I have found that most people are ‘freaked out’ and anxious and feeling out-of-control a lot of the time.

I am an eclectic magpie … I never stop looking for tried and tested tools to help myself, my family, my friends and the best teachers of all … my clients.

It sounds very hackneyed, but we are all on a journey of discovering ourselves, empowering ourselves and constantly perfecting ourselves. I'm just turning 69 and I'm still learning and growing - and the happiest I ever been in my entire life.

I'm not ‘broken’ and I never have been (though – like everyone else, I am sure - there have been times when it felt like I was). Like many of you, I am sure, I have spent my life ‘trying too hard’, putting my heart and soul - at the expense of my heart and soul - into everything I've ever done.

Thankfully, I have finally come to my senses and all the ‘efforting’ is largely behind me. Instead, I am allowing myself to express my creativity, joyfulness and playfulness and to fulfil my role on the planet … to have fun and to be of service in the process.

In short, I have come to understand that we are all active creators of our own reality and that we can begin - just like a sculptor or potter – to deliberately shape our own reality and despite anything and everything that has happened before.

To ‘realize’ (make a reality of) our dreams

I believe that like everyone else on the planet I am a spiritual being having an earthly experience … as opposed to a human being striving for a spiritual experience.[1]

Our ‘Job’ if we have one is to realize (to make this a reality) that by bringing our innate wisdom (aka our Higher Self /Soul/Spirit/Spiritual Perspective/Inner Being …. whatever non-reactive word you choose to use) ‘down to Earth’ we can BE more in control of our lives … as opposed to being like leaves blown in the wind.[2]

It is about allowing ourself - surprisingly simply - to become ‘Self-Realized’. It is not hard, it is simple. It is who we really are.

It is who we truly are when we ‘wake up’ from the soap opera in which most of us live most of the time.

How?

‘Trying to’ isn't going to work.

‘Thinking’ - alone - isn't going to work either.

Nor will beating yourself up.

‘Allowing’ will work, however.

It will put you back in touch with who you truly are … the wonderful, lovable and loving, confident, creative and assertive Higher Self.

In short, you can begin to discover the missing piece of your jigsaw, the part of you that you deep-down miss, that you have yearned to be reunited with, seemingly forever, the lack of which makes you feel ‘less than’, not good enough, undeserving, incomplete, vulnerable, anxious if not downright fearful, judged and found wanting.

By the end of this article I hope that you will begin to realize and understand how relatively easy it is to habitually keep in contact with your higher self.

Suddenly, like with any good map, you will have some steps to begin to change your mind.  Life becomes very simple and you finally relax and feel so much happier.

From NOW on, like more and more of us, you are in a position to begin to deliberately create the changes in yourself and in the world.

In essence, it is about - samurai-fashion - cutting through the intellectual complexities of all of the many practices that exist out there. Another analogy is that of the Gordian Knot, where Alexander the Great took his sword and – with one blow – untied the ‘untie-able’ knot.[3]

Using tried-and-tested energetic tools which automatically and deliberately calm and centre yourself (leaving your Ratty Mind out of the equation!) you can more and more rapidly reach a calm peaceful – and yet dynamic – state of being … allowing you to more easily attain the Holy Grail of “BE HERE NOW” that is referred to in many Eastern Teachings.

This is not meant to disparage any other practices or approaches but rather to demonstrate that there are simple and accessible tools that anyone can employ to take control of their life … and from this balanced state follow whichever other pathway in life that they choose to follow safe in the knowledge that they already have the tools to maintain their balance and stability

How? … and what was that about a Cosmic Unicycle?

I do not know how many of you are able to ride a unicycle. (It is on my bucket list, especially as I will need to be able to ‘walk my talk’!)

Riding a unicycle requires balance, focus and awareness … Until, finally we are able to simply do it effortlessly and automatically … And yet it will still require balance, focus and awareness!

Imagine you are sitting in the saddle of a unicycle, with a supportive friend on each side of you enabling you ‘stay in the saddle’. To just stay like this is tiring for everyone. You can be said to be “In the Now”, though. Ideally you will start moving forward in The NOW towards “The Future”. Eventually, you will be able to keep moving forward without the need of those two friends, and able to steer in whichever direction you like.

Figure 1

If you start to move backwards – into “The Past” (where you have come from) the odds are that … you will fall off your bike!

If you ‘lean forward’ - over-pre-occupied … mentally and emotionally – into the “Future” … you will fall off your bike!

Figure 2

If you suddenly come to a ‘halt’ - and move your focus of attention into your Rational Mind (what I like to call the “Ratty Mind”) which is broadly speaking on the LEFT hand side of your head – the left hemisphere of your brain - … you will fall off your bike!

Equally, if you suddenly come to a ‘halt’ - and move your focus of attention into your Emotional Mind which is broadly speaking on the RIGHT hand side of your head – the right hemisphere of the brain - … you will fall off your bike!

TIP: You can use a deliberate nostril-breathing technique to balance each hemisphere. https://cosmic-unicycle.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Balancing-our-bodies-using-right-and-left-nostril-breathing-PDF.pdf. It takes as long as it takes to breathe in and out 28 times!

Figure 3

To be able to deliberately stay in the saddle you need to be ‘present’, focused and in the NOW and moving forward joyfully and deliberately into your day.

However, if you lose focus and become irrationally preoccupied (left hemisphere FEAR) or emotionally distracted (right hemisphere), or if you start thinking about the PAST or become fearful or anxious about the future … you will fall off your bike!

… And now for the good news!

Every time that any of us ‘falls off our bike’ it is a Win-Win Opportunity! It is not a major disaster. It is not a big deal but rather it is a chance to notice – to become mindful of – habitual ways of thinking that may have served us in the past but no longer serve us in the present.

Eventually, when you master a few very simple and straightforward techniques which I will show you in a minute, getting back on your bike becomes – relatively – pretty well instantaneous.

More important than anything, it also turns our way of looking at life no longer as a huge mountain to climb but rather a joyful daily adventure that is … FUN … Riding The Cosmic Unicycle!

Okay … Why Cosmic?

Many of you in my generation will remember a singer called Donovan. One of his songs is called: “Cosmic Wheels”. You can find it here on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbKldILIjfo

 …. God is playing marbles
With his planets and his stars
Creating havoc through my life
Through his influence on Mars …
That's why I'm stumbling down the highway
On my boots of steel …
I should be rolling down the skyway
On my cosmic wheels …

As a therapist since 1983 I began assembling a toolkit of useful technique for my clients. Gradually the concept of staying in balance crept in, followed by Past, Present and Future and completed by the bipolarity - left and right hemispheres of the brain – Rationality versus Emotionality. The similarity between maintaining balance and riding a bike followed next. This was followed by the even more difficult unicycle as a concept … then Donovan’s Cosmic Wheels!

Okay … let’s start with the basics

I would love you all to try this before we even get into this article.  This way you will be calm and grounded as you start to read. You will absorb the information because you are focussed.

Why not start out as we intend to continue?

The quickest way to take healthy control of your body that I have ever found - and which puts you straight back in the saddle - is this 5,000 year-old Yoga Mudra (or finger pose/position).

Looking Down at Your Own Hands!

The secret is not to let go of the ‘link’ between index fingers and thumbs ... see what happens as soon as you do! (Ask someone to gently lean against the side of your shoulder as you hold the Lock ‘properly’ and, when steady and strong, then break the contact and simply watch yourself become ungrounded … and a pushover! (See Assertiveness, below)

I cannot explain precisely how it works, but experience and that of 100’s of my clients over the years has shown that it does work. (The complexity of the body never fails to impress me. Especially where the energetic aspect comes in, it is still likely to take many generations before we can even begin to say: “We are now beginning to understand how the body – and the mind - works”.

One analogy is: try holding a box of heavy books above your head and then bring the box down and hold it below your waist! Which is more grounded? 

In Aikido they say: “where the mind goes the body follows …”)

Here is a fuller explanation from my website: https://youtu.be/NPEfswtKHE8 

For our Purposes

Essentially it ‘locks’ our aura and energy bodies in place.

We have 3 major energy centres or ‘dantiens’.

They are either in place and we are naturally ‘centred’ or we are ‘freaked out’ and we are far from calm, happy and grounded. We could be said to have leapt out of our skins!

This groundedness is what is taught in either Tai Chi, Qi Gong or - where I learned it - in Aikido, to give three examples. When centred, we simply ARE calm, stable and strong. Not ‘trying to be’…

The energy lock (from yoga) puts you automatically in the ‘state’ of a martial artist … but a calm, compassionate and assertive one. ‘Mastering’ it takes time … but even an 80-year-old taught it for the first time, however ‘frail’ they appear, can be there, with gentle coaching. (It takes no more than a minute or so to calm them down – even those on the verge of a panic-attack.)

Another Indispensable Tool – The OMG Points

This was taught to me by Brian H Butler via his excellent book. [4] Every one of my clients is taught this technique too. Kinesiologists like Brian refer to them as the M.S.R. (Mental Stress Release) technique. I have renamed them as the OMG Points. (It sounds somehow friendlier and who never says “OMG”?)

There is another link on my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/3UcdJoW5G6Y 

Hold the points lightly and breathe gently and deeply down into your belly (into your lower dantien, between the belly-button and the top of the pubic bone). Even better …ask a friend to hold the points while you … hold your energy lock. Doubly effective! Be patient. It may take 1 minute, 2 or longer. Something extremely traumatic might take 10-15 minutes before it resolves and the ‘volume’ has been turned down. You will know when you feel ready to let go.

Congratulations … you are now on your cosmic unicycle! The beauty of this is that these tools are there whenever you feel ‘wobbly’… and you already know what to do when you fall off … and we all do each and every day. (See Win-Win below.)

If you take nothing else from this article, please take these tools and share them as widely as you can. Kids love them, too. The emphasis is on gently, boys and girls!

What is it All About? The Roadmap … A Three-Step Process

Here are the major steps you may choose to take on your journey to deliberate - and healthy - self-mastery:

Roadmap Step 1. Dealing with Yourself … and Staying in the Saddle

• Getting Grounded and Centred … The Energy Lock + the OMG Points thereby
• Taking back control by calming your mind
• Calming and ‘unblocking’ your energy system … meridians and energy areas
• Understanding who The Boss really is.
• Staying on your ‘unicycle’ until you …
• Fall off … and deliberately get straight back on. (Every ‘fall’ is a win-win.)

I have referred to the Ratty Mind … also known as the Monkey Mind in meditation circles.

Crudely speaking, I think that we can generally agree that the majority of us ‘Westerners’ are way too rational or logical ... you might say that we are ‘in our heads’ or ‘out of our minds’ (lost contact with our mindfulness?).  Our ‘centres’ are in our Upper dantiens.  

Similarly, on the other hand ‘Easterners’ (well some of them!) tend to have their energy centred in their Lower dantiens.

Calming and Unblocking Our Energy System … Keeping Things Flowing Smoothly

I mentioned calming and unblocking our energy system. In 2010 I was luckily introduced to Jin Shin Jyutsu (JSJ) by a colleague. (It is not a martial art!) JSJ is an ancient Art … older than acupuncture … which allows us easily to understand our core energy systems [5] and to help to keep ourselves in balance

It has been transformative in my life and in the lives of countless others.

Here is the link to the free introductory E-book that I have created [6].

By holding our fingers and the palms of our hands we can deliberately balance both our major meridians. (We have one meridian on each side of the body … they are single meridians broken down into 12 parts for teaching purposes … heart , liver, spleen etc that flow from one ‘part’ into the next).

As you will see from the next chart, each finger represents part of each flow as well as the different ‘attitudes’ (as opposed to emotions) in which we become stuck.

There is not enough room in this article to do the subject justice, but please visit the following links if you would like to understand more:

https://cosmic-unicycle.com/channel/

There you will discover: The Trinity Flows: videos numbers 4 – 8 … click on them and you will see a clear and straightforward explanation of what these flows are

https://youtu.be/LpgNWJNhT24 

https://youtu.be/8JJMJFOV5uY 

https://youtu.be/rY35xpfiY1A 

https://youtu.be/TlRqziHFXqk 

https://youtu.be/svpXTd51Qw4 

These flows keep our body in equilibrium and ticking over nicely.

Roadmap Step 2. Dealing with the Rest of the World

This is a topic in itself.

• Understanding Assertiveness and the difference between being in balance (grounded and empowered) or flailing around in what I call the Soap Opera …
• Staying centred whatever happens
• Knowing when to run away!

We do not have time nor space to cover this topic here. Instead I will refer you to another free 26-page E-book called “Assertiveness … A short introduction to mastering this vital – and easy-to-learn Tool For Life”.[7] Here is a peek at 2 pages from the E-book:

Un-Assertive                                                                          Assertive

Roadmap Step 3. Developing ‘intentions’ … or rather Creating your New Future … Deliberately

Generally, most of us approach Life as if it were happening to us. For some of you, what I am going to say runs the risk of threatening this status quo that we have come to accept, for others of you, not so much.

1. By using our emotional responses to what ‘happens to us’ as our ‘servants’ rather than our ‘masters’ … we are able to move away from the idea that we are mere leaves being blown in the wind. (When not in healthy control, each situation that triggers an emotional reaction in us will to some degree normally unbalance us and can affect us for minutes, hours, days, weeks … or a lifetime … until we change our response to it.)

Instead of diving down these rabbit-holes we now have a choice. We can immediately pause, centre ourselves and notice our thoughts and the feelings that they produce in us and say to ourselves: “This does not fit with how I choose to live my life; this is not who I truly am. I prefer to think this way instead”.

In short, you might say that each ‘negative’ thought or feeling is actually our ‘friend’ in that it merely demonstrates what is and what isn’t congruent with who we really are.

A Win-Win, so to speak.

2. Instead, what would happen if we were to begin to take on the responsibility of being the actual creators of our own reality? (Just planting the seed here... more of this later.)

Once more, I consider myself very lucky (or very creative!) to have ‘discovered’ 4 years ago the final and crucial – hitherto missing – piece of the jigsaw that completes the whole Cosmic Unicycle project.

Ever since a teen I have been a ‘seeker after truth’ attempting to makes sense of this ‘crazy’ world we live in. Various people such as Ernst Schumacher [8] who spoke to us in 1967 at school – talking of overpopulation and its unimaginable growth, and some of the other various teachers … Sri Aurobindo,[9] Ram Dass,[10] R D Laing,[11] Aldous Huxley,[12] Carlos Castaneda,[13] Herman Hesse.[14] There were few rocks I didn’t look under. As an eclectic, gathering tools and insights as we all do, trying to form our World View … it was so often a case of “Yes, but …”

For those of you of a highly scientific bent, before you go screaming off into the woods, please hold your Energy Lock … I am not a ‘follower’ or ‘joiner’ of things or groups, nor of gurus of whatever ilk. I respect their wisdom, but it is not the path for me … I am - after all – creating my own reality!

In short, I tend to hold to this somewhat flippant and irreverent adage … “All -isms are wasms!”

However, finally, in 2016 I was introduced to the work of Esther and Jerry Hicks and their work with the group intelligence calling itself Abraham.[15],[16] (They had shot past my nose a few years before, rather like a very fast Maserati … but patently I was not ‘ready’ or up to speed with them at that time.)

Their work was mentioned in the first edition of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret only to disappear almost completely from subsequent ones! (Hmm! … but that’s another story!)

For me Abraham’s teachings epitomise everything I had always felt at home with. Not being a ‘follower’ as mentioned before, (all isms being wasms etc.) it is so refreshing to hear universal truths or laws[17] being talked about in a non-ego-bound delivery with which I can fully feel truly congruent. It does not tease us or promise us ‘enlightenment’ when you have completed expensive workshops leading to levels of eventual ‘mastery’. (It lacks that horrible word monetisation, that so many other teachings entail! Ahem!)

Their best-known book is Ask and It Is Given[18] about which Wayne Dyer said:

‘The book you are holding in your hands contains some of the most powerful teachings available on the planet today.’

Perhaps at another time we can explore this aspect … I am already rapidly over-running my allotted wordage![19]

I hope that you have enjoyed the journey up to now and will follow the progress of my book-to-be: Riding The Cosmic Unicycle – Staying In The Saddle In Times of Great Change. 

Until it is published please visit www.cosmic-unicycle.com.

I am following the same “Cast your bread upon the waters” model taken by the authors of Chicken Soup For The Soul. Many of the tools in the book are on the website for people to access for free or for a nominal donation. It is getting the information out there – especially during the times of the coronavirus pandemic that is the priority.

Do feel free to give me feedback.

References

1.         Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French philosopher, palaeontologist, and Jesuit priest who thought deeply on the meaning of our existence and relationship with the Divine.

2.         N.B. I am not an adherent to any religion whatsoever. Don’t get me started!

3.         Wikipedia: The Gordian Knot is a legend of Phrygian Gordium associated with Alexander the Great. It is often used as a metaphor an intractable problem (untying an impossibly tangled knot) solved easily by finding an approach to the problem that renders the perceived constraints of the problem moot.

4.         Brian H Butler. Breast Care Manual ISBN 0-9519279–1–4. Currently out of print. Every home should have one. Every woman of all ages should have one. A classic.

5.         Visit www.jsj.org.uk and www.jsj.inc.org  for more details.

6.         https://book.designrr.co/?id=20440&token=2394266292 

7.         https://cosmic-unicycle.com/new-ebook-all-about-assertiveness/

8.         Author of Small is Beautiful. First published in 1973.

9.         Autobiography of a Yogi. First published in 1946. The Philosophical Society.

10.       aka Richard Alpert. Be Here Now. First published in 1971 by Lama Foundation. ISBN 978-0-517-54305-4

11.       Author of The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness 1960.

12.       Author of Brave New World, Island etc

13.       Author of The Teachings of Don Juan

14.       Author of Demian, Siddhartha, Der Steppenwolf, The Glass Bead Game etc

15.       https://www.abraham-hicks.com/introduction-to-abraham/

16.       https://www.abraham-hicks.com/about/

17.       The Law of Attraction or, latterly, the Law of Allowing.

18.       E and J Hicks. Ask and It Is Given ISBN 978-1-4019-0459-3. Pub. Hay House 2004. While you are waiting for your book to arrive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV-tIcNaThc

19.       The Editor is very forgiving … but everyone has their limits!