Category: Movement + Mindfulness

When the Facts Aren’t the Facts: Depression, Drugs and Exercise

Posted on March 16, 2015 by - Movement + Mindfulness, Nutrition + Food

When it comes to facts, we don’t always get the real story. In fact, recent findings show that what we’ve been led to believe about antidepressants was cleverly skewed to favor drug companies. Surprising? For us, not so much.

Drugs, while they can be of great benefit and are sometimes necessary, are also extreme. Rarely do they work harmoniously with our organism—instead, they’re usually aimed at specific symptoms or intended for isolated results.

It was interesting and illuminating to discover this video about the real data on antidepressants. What’s the upshot? Antidepressants work primarily as placebos. Yes, that’s right. Placebos with a host of unwanted side effects.

Do Antidepressant Drugs Really Work? from NutritionFacts on Vimeo.

Reprograming-the-addictive-brainEven more, some side effects have only recently come to light with respect to age and antidepressants. The adolescent brain reacts very differently to antidepressants than the adult brain. In a Harvard School of Public Health study led by Dr. Matthew Miller, a careful review of over 162,000 pharmacy records revealed “that people under the age of 25 who received a higher initial dose of antidepressants were twice as likely to try to harm themselves, while that wasn’t true for people 25 and older.”

An increased suicide risk was also discovered in younger people taking an average dose. (See the NPR article Higher Doses of Antidepressants May Raise Teen Suicide Risk, also Dr. Frances Jensen’s book The Teenage Brain is a fascinating and excellent resource.)

So how can we affect depression positively, in a way that does us more good than harm? In a real way? Exercise!

Exercise has countless benefits—among them:

  • Elevated mood
  • Increased muscle tone
  • Decreased body fat
  • Better sleep
  • Increased energy
  • Heighted libido
  • Disease prevention (heart disease, stroke, diabetes and certain cancers)

The number of benefits trumps what any pill could offer, and even better: in most instances, moderate exercise complements any medicine, supplement or wellness plan.

1408574069790_wps_5_Teenage_girls_racing_in_tMotion is an integral part of our work with Being Energy for a good reason. Daily activity brings increased vitality as natural result. This is why we offer daily movement classes (Mind + Body + Spirit). In these classes, we share what we do every day to be well and stay strong.

We also incorporate evidence-based into our Nutrition + Health classes, and it informs our work in general. It’s important to consider the whole being for true wellness.

Yours in whole health,
Aerin and Dr. Miles

Harness Your Sexual Energy

Posted on March 2, 2015 by - Movement + Mindfulness

Does engaging in sexual activity energize or deplete you?

Becoming aware of how your energy level rises or falls in relation to sex can help you increase your vitality bank account.

Outside of cultural or moral ideas of sex, there is the reality of how it is in your body, for you uniquely and individually. Sexual intimacy can be a wonderful thing, and yet the physical implications of orgasm may or may not serve us at a given time.

Considering your energy in relation to sexual intercourse is a practical, functional approach to your overall health and wellbeing. It’s very useful to take an account of your energy in relation to intercourse. It’s also easy to do.

So let’s put some attention on it. A little awareness can go a long way to energizing our bodies, minds and spirits!

Think about:

  • How often and with whom to you have sex?
  • What time of day?
  • How do you feel afterward?

How you feel immediately afterward is one thing, but how you feel an hour or two or three later, and how you feel the next day can tell you whether sex energizes or depletes you.

Did you know that sex at night can be more draining that sex earlier in the day? This is because at night, the body restores yin energy in the kidneys and orgasm is a release of yang energy, which can disrupt this energy restoration. It has less impact on your kidneys if you have sex in yang time of day—the morning time.

If you have kidney challenges (inflammation, for example) or kidney yin deficiency, this is especially important to pay attention to. Examples of kidney yin deficiency include dizziness, poor memory, low back pain, knee pain, ringing in the ears or hearing problems, spontaneous sweating, constipation, dry mouth and throat and aversion to cold.

If these symptoms sound familiar, you might want to experiment with favoring the morning over the afternoon or evening for sexual activity. Or if orgasms make you feel drained, you might consider abstaining for a period of time.

In contrast, if you run hot, and tend toward restlessness and a fiery temper, a release of yang through sexual intercourse can be centering and calming. You might need a sexual release to keep your energy from stagnating.

Like everything else, what is best for you is a personal, individual thing, and something that you have the power to discover for yourself.

So when you take an accounting, does an orgasm give you a boost in energy, or does it drain you? Does the time of day make a difference in your experience?

While our experience has a physical reality unique to each of us, social and religious ideas can have a distinct impact on our experience of our sexuality. What mental noise do you have about sex? What energetic entanglements restrict you? How do ideas of power play into and affect your experience?

Becoming aware of your stories about sex gives you the power to embrace or rewrite those scripts for your mental, emotional and physical benefit. Adding this to what you learned about whether you feel energized or depleted physically gives you a wealth of information to move forward with for energy.

You might want to alter your patterns, and even:

  • Have time away from sexual activity for a while to see what happens with your energy or
  • Engage more often in healthy sex

There are definitely things that you can do to enhance your libido and your sexual organs and essences. Learn more about herbs, supplements, exercises and more in the Nutrition + Health class Sexual Energy: Our Life Force.

The class airs live on March 7, 2015 at 8:30 a.m. Pacific Time. Learn more and register.

Boost Your Immunity in ONE Simple Step!

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - Movement + Mindfulness, Nutrition + Food

Imagery for Immunity

Research shows that our thoughts and feelings impact our physicality, from increased cortisol levels when we’re stressed to lowered immunity if we’re feeling depressed. Most of the time, we don’t consciously direct our thoughts for the benefit of our health, but we do have the power to do just that.

Visualization is a practical tool we can use at any time to deliberately and positively influence our immune system. When we say “visualization,” we really mean much more than seeing with internal eyes. Some of us are not visually oriented, and may not connect to the idea of seeing images with our eyes closed. Instead, let’s think of visualization as image-feeling. The feeling, whether we can cognize images or not, is really what we’re after. The emotion is what has the greatest influence on our health. (For more on that, see Dr. Reid’s blog post: The Power of Words.)

For example, visualize a tree. If you can’t see the trunk, branches, etc. in your mind’s eye, then cognize the feeling of a tree. In either case, when we imagine a tree, there is a feeling that we likely associate with concept of tree. This is what we mean here by visualization. So even if you can’t see that tree, you can still use visualization techniques for your benefit.

How does visualization impact us physically? It becomes part of the chemical conversation going on in our body, creating a blueprint that influences our neuro- and immunotransmitters.

Dopamine_and_serotonin_pathways

From our earliest moments of life, the brain and immune system are engaged in a constant dialogue. Each influences the other by means of chemical messengers. In fact, the immune system has neurotransmitter receptor sites in white blood cells, lymph nodes and elsewhere, and the brain has receptor sites for immunotransmitters called cytokines.

Three important cytokines are:

  • Interferons
  • Interleukins
  • Tumor necrosis factor (TNF)

Examples of neurotransmitters include:

  • Seratonin
  • Norepinephrine
  • Dopamine

Neurotransmitters circulate throughout the body with specific immune system receptor sites, as mentioned. Emotions impact neurotransmitters and thus affect immunity specifically, and our health generally.

coverimage

The immune system responds to messages from the brain formed by images or emotions. We can deliberately create mental images or encourage emotions to impact our immune systems in a positive way. Instead of letting our unconscious thoughts steer our health, we can consciously direct thoughts and feelings for greater energy and vitality.

You can use visualization in any moment to influence your experience, or you can use guided visualization for a different and often deeper effect. One of the simplest approaches is to use a counterbalancing visualization. Let’s say, for example, that you feel nervous—you can imagine yourself being calm and strong. Or maybe you feel tired—consciously imagine yourself being active, feeling what it feels like to have more energy. If you’re cold, you can imagine sitting in the sun on a tropical beach, or if you have high blood pressure, you can visualize your blood pressure going down.

If a person is dealing with cancer and thinks “I’m doomed,” it certainly doesn’t help the immune system. Indeed, fear may be the most weakening emotion for immunity.

If we let negative thoughts run unchecked, they can weaken us, versus consciously visualizing life and vitality. We can use the tool of directed visualization on the spur of the moment when there is a need or when we notice an unhelpful thought.

We can also use guided imagery to potent effect. Being Energy, our educational program on health on vitality, recently released the CD Into Your Heart, a guided visualization from Dr. Reid.

The visualization is designed to help you regulate the flow of your hormones and neurotransmitters in a way that reduces stress in your body and increases happiness. Dr. Reid guides you to opening yourself to the energy of your heart, to heal emotional hurts and find out what really matters to you.

Available for purchase from the Being Energy online store, it’s a tool that you can turn to again and again. Listen to a sample:

Dr. Reid also created a wonderful CD entitled Guided Explorations to Our Internal Organs, which is also available from the Being Energy online store.

In addition, you can try this guided visualization, or “recapitulation” for resolving past hurts. It guides you to evoking the feeling of safety and nourishment that one experiences in the mother’s womb for greater energy and vitality in daily life:

Remember that you can use visualization to benefit your life any time you like, whether it’s a quick image that you form in your mind to help you manage a situation, or whether you sit down.

Realize your New Year’s Resolutions in 2015

Posted on December 28, 2014 by - Movement + Mindfulness, News

Most of us start each year with one or more resolutions that we hope to accomplish. Maybe you want to shed extra pounds gained over the holidays, or to get to the gym more regularly. But by the time March rolls around, these resolutions can seem like a distant memory.

What happens? Usually, other things take our attention. To successfully meeting our goals, it helps to have support and information to inspire us to continue to improve our lives.

Being Energy is here to support and inform you! Our community is diverse and its members often far distant from one another, but we come together with the goals of realizing our potential and feeling our best.

Each year, for example, regulars return and new people jump on board for our group Detox Program. Though you do Being Energy’s Detox Program anytime of year, the group support seems to make it all the easier to stick with it so you can enjoy its benefits. The results from the detox are often amazing—more clarity, better focus, deeper sleep and more.

The group Detox Program is part of our Nutrition + Health online class series. We also have new great classes planned throughout the coming year to give you tools and practical information for improving your health and wellbeing.

Find out about your ideal body weight, how to apply your sexual energy to activate your life force even more, what it means to breathe for greater vitality (with a special guest teacher) and what neuroplasticity means and why it’s important, and more.

In fact, the research is in—our lifestyle choices do make a difference in our health, even at the level of our DNA. Learn simple things that you can incorporate into your daily life in our online Nutrition + Health classes. Plus we’ll have time for questions and answers after each class.

Recordings of past classes are also available in our online store for purchase.

Being Energy at the Benjamin Center, Los Angeles, CA Presentation by Dr. Miles Reid

Posted on December 4, 2013 by - Movement + Mindfulness

We are excited about our recent Being Energy presentation to the Cancer Support Community at the Benjamin Center in West Los Angeles, CA. The audience of cancer patients, their relatives and educators, enthusiastically received the three-part series.

We introduced the basic concepts and philosophy of Being Energy to first-time listeners, and shared an introductory set of Being Energy® movements. We explained the essential elements of the practice and origin of Being Energy, emphasizing both the physical and energetic benefits of the movements such as increased vitality and optimism.  We focused on how these movements shift our thoughts and perceptions, enhance a state of well being, and benefit the immune system.

We filmed the presentation and have divided it into several parts for your convenience and enjoyment. The videos offer a useful introduction to what Being Energy is, making it easy to share with family, friends and the community.

Here is a first-glance experience of Being Energy!

A complete introductory practice that you can follow:

Three Being Energy principles presented in five-minute segments:

I: Physical Body and Energy

II: Using Intention to Change the Body

III: We Shape Our Bodies with Our Thoughts

View the Full Presentation

Can Movement Define Emotion?

Posted on October 28, 2013 by - Movement + Mindfulness

This fascinating study looked at how posture and movement can effect one’s emotional state. The study measured the effects of movement, motor imagery and observation of whole-body expression (body language) of emotions—happiness, fear, sadness—on the affective state. The findings show that the deliberate control of motor behavior can regulate feelings.

These findings highlight a key element of what Being Energy incorporates into every class and workshop. Read the full article here.

 

The Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico Applied to Modern Health

Posted on June 20, 2013 by - Movement + Mindfulness

By Aerin Alexander

The Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico Applied to Modern Health: Freedom of Perception

Published in Yoga magazine, November 2011, in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Back in the sixties, don Juan Matus described to Carlos Castaneda. the “conditioning of modern man”. He told him to be aware of how we are constrained by social and cultural conditionings and how our inner being (spirit & guide) is forgotten, numb and without purpose. We identify more with the outside world, with our idea of who I should be, (competing: “I’m better/worse than him/her”) and there is little room for, or access to, our inner life.

We are bored when we are not hyper-stimulated. Have you ever concentrated on your breathing for 20 minutes while you were on a bus (or somewhere) without being interrupted by worries of the future or by stressful and repetitive thoughts? How many times during the day do you give yourself the chance to open your eyes and marvel at the beauty of your surroundings?

For the seers of ancient Mexico, we are beings of energy and we come to this planet to increase our awareness through life experiences and interactions with others. One’s self, one’s path, and how we choose to walk it, can be the purpose of life in itself, Carlos Castaneda said. But how do we choose when our attention is being diverted by all the advertisements of a consumer society? We get tense when we think about how to pay the rent or how to make ends meet. It becomes difficult to access another state of consciousness when we are in a mode of survival, worry, fear and scarcity.

What Carlos Castaneda proposed to us was not a “fashion” of the hippy years. It was a mood, the mood of the warrior, of being aware of one’s mortality and one’s approaching death. A spirit that loves and respects the earth and its creatures, and beyond all that, that seeks freedom.

Freedom is not to be understood as “I do what I want,” but as the freedom to perceive the essence of life itself, the freedom to be creative and fluid, cheerful and considerate, without expecting to be applauded or congratulated. Freedom to breathe deeply, to feel the body expand and the heart that opens when you’re in the middle of a business meeting or even the birthday of a family member you may not like. Freedom to recognize the illusion of linear time and space. Freedom to accept everything I am and to enjoy every second of my existence.

Our proposal, based on our apprenticeship and on our own experience of almost 20 years of teaching and researching, is to explore our life’s purpose as energetic beings; to expand our understanding and perception, to free ourselves from the physical and emotional limitations and to thrive in the world.

Our association with Carlos Castaneda and our professional work related to health and welfare have led us to develop being energy™. It takes the form of a series of programs focused on knowledge and education, including ancient and modern techniques of healing and personal care that increase our energy and vitality. These programs have evolved from our passion to combine two interests: expanding the capacity to perceive and improving our health.

Carlos Castaneda loved movement and we practiced movements daily with him—an aspect which we focus on in our teaching. From him, we also learned breathing techniques and ways to call inner silence which are part of the course curriculum.

In these programs we include movements, exercises and sequences of breathing that bring vitality, inner strength and confidence, and which increase our wellbeing and health.

We include information and formation from psycho-neuroimmunology – the relationship between our immune system and emotions and thoughts – dynamic lectures, and the sharing of group and personal explorations, leading to expanded perception.

By reclaiming our energy and integrating a new awareness in our daily lives, we reach a state of wellbeing; we begin to feel the vastness and mystery of the universe living within us.

For more information contact us at:

info@beingenergy.com 
www.beingenergy.com

being energy™ provides a forum for the general public and for professionals who work in the areas of health, education, art and social science, to meet and expand our inspiration and to work together for the development of health and consciousness in a safe and dynamic environment. It is based on the conviction that cooperation and group work is the key to opening new pathways and creating great benefits not only for small groups but for the whole planet.

IN SPANISH

By Aerin Alexander

La Sabiduría de los chamanes del Antiguo Mexico aplicada a la salud moderna: La Libertad de Percepción

Allá por los años 60, don Juan Matus le describió a Carlos Castaneda acerca del “condicionamiento del hombre moderno”. Le dijo que se volviera conciente de como estamos atados a los condicionamientos sociales y culturales. Y como nuestro ser interior (espíritu y guía) queda olvidado, adormecido y sin propósito. Nos identificamos más con el mundo externo, nuestra idea de quién debo ser, (competencia “soy mejor/peor que él o ella) y queda poco espacio y acceso a la vida interior.

Nos aburrimos cuando no estamos hiper-estimulados. ¿Alguna vez te quedaste sintiendo tu respiración por 20 minutos, mientras ibas en un colectivo a Retiro, sin ser interrumpido por preocupaciones del futuro o pensamientos estresantes y repetitivos? Cuanto tiempo, por día, le das a tus ojos la posibilidad de asombrarse ante la belleza?

En la visión de los videntes del México antiguo, somos seres de energía y venimos a este planeta para acrecentar nuestra conciencia a través de experiencias de vida e interacciones con otros. El propósito de la vida misma, Carlos Castaneda decía, es uno mismo, el camino de uno, y como elegimos transitarlo.

Pero cómo elegimos cuando nuestra atención está siendo entrenada por comerciales y propaganda para el consumo. Nos tensamos cuando pensamos en como pagar la renta y como llegar a fin de mes. Se vuelve difícil acceder a otro estado de conciencia cuando estamos con un ánimo de sobrevivencia, de preocupación, miedo y de escasez.

Lo que Carlos Castaneda nos propuso no era una “moda” de los años hippies. Era un ánimo, el ánimo del guerrero, del ser consciente de su muerte y de su tiempo terminable, que ama y respeta la tierra y sus criaturas, y que más allá de todo, busca la libertad. Libertad no entendida como “hago lo que se me da la gana” pero la libertad de percibir la esencia de la vida misma. Libertad para ser creativos y fluidos, alegres y considerados, sin esperar que nos aplaudan o que nos feliciten por eso. Libertad de respirar profundamente y sentir el cuerpo que se expande y el corazón que se abre cuando estás en el medio de una reunión de negocios o hasta en el cumpleaños de un familiar que no te cae bien. Libertad para reconocer la ilusión de la linealidad del tiempo y del espacio. Libertad de aceptar todo lo que soy y de disfrutar cada segundo de mi existencia.

Nuestra propuesta, basada en nuestro aprendisaje con los estudiantes de don Juan Matus y en nuestra experiencia de casi 20 años, es explorar nuestro propósito de vida como seres energéticos. Expandir la respiración y las limitaciones físicas y emocionales y liberarnos del estrés que conlleva el vivir una realidad sólida, sin dicha y sin propósito.

Nuestro vínculo con Carlos Castaneda y nuestras profesiones relacionadas con la salud y el bienestar nos han llevado a desarrollar being energy™, conformado por una serie de programas. Enfocados al conocimiento y a la educación que incluyen técnicas antiguas y modernas de sanación y cuidado personal que incrementan nuestra energía y vitalidad. Estos programas han surgido de nuestra pasión por integrar dos intereses: expandir la capacidad de percibir y mejorar nuestra salud. Carlos Castaneda amaba el movimiento, y constantemente practicábamos movimientos de la energía con él, algo que focalizamos en nuestras enseñanzas. También aprendimos sobre la respiración, y formas de llamar al silencio.

Los programas incluyen movimientos, ejercicios y secuencias de respiraciones que traen vitalidad, fuerza interna y confianza, aumentando el bienestar y la salud. También incluye información y formación de la psico-neuroinmunología—la relación entre nuestro sistema inmunológico y las emociones y pensamientos, lecturas dinámicas, colaboración e intercambio grupal y exploración personal, que llevan a expandir la percepción.

Al reclamar nuestra energía e integrar una nueva conciencia en nuestra vida cotidiana, llegamos a un estado de bienestar. Empezamos a sentir la inmensidad y el misterio del universo viviendo en nuestro interior.

Para más información conectarse a:

info@beingenergy.com