manabunnow4zph – Mindfulness Challenges

Deeper Meaning Behind Using Your Non-Dominant Hand

What in the world is the meaning behind doing a silly task like using your non-dominant hand? I interview hundreds and hundreds of individuals every year that have the symptoms of Parkinson’s and ask the question,

“What is it that helps you the most to get sustained relief from your symptoms?”

An answer I frequently hear reported back to me is the following.

“I’ve discovered that really helps is to simply slow down. Instead of trying to move as quickly as I moved when I was ten years old, I’ve learned to take my movements mindfully. When I do this I’ve discovered that my movements become smoother and much more graceful.”

Mindfulness really is the ticket to sustaining true balance and harmony. How is the exercise of using your non-dominant hand coming along? Have you been so frustrated because it has taken so much time to brush your teeth or comb your hair or eat a meal with a non-dominant hand that you’ve just skipped a few days? Perhaps you decided that you just do not have enough time in the day to fuss around with doing such a silly tasks like using a hand that is not your best one?

You see this tasks helps you realize the true degree to which you tend to be impatient. Acknowledge whatever degree of impatience you might have experienced. Honor the value that is inherent in bringing your consciousness to the present moment. When you experience life as it unfolds in the moment the entire experience of impatience becomes irrelevant. Living becomes what is now in the moment and as such, each and every moment is truly magical. Living in the moment and becoming mindful means that all of the imbalances that are currently present in our body are magically resolved.

One golden lesson from this exercise is it affords you the opportunity to be more compassionate. Why? As you become frustrated with being unable to do tasks that are much easier when you use your dominant hand, you transcend back into the time long ago when you were a child, when those particular tasks were much more challenging. This particular task then, you see, teaches the golden lesson to have more compassion for yourself.

How many times have you been frustrated with the fact you

can’t move or
can’t talk or
can’t function or
can’t think or
can’t swallow?

Everyone has symptoms of one type or another but if you currently have a diagnosis of Parkinson’s, some symptoms are truly frustrating. When a symptom rears its ugly head, what is your gut reaction? To get frustrated with yourself? To get upset, to go into fear about the long term consequences? Hum, that’s interesting because you’re not having very much compassion for yourself.

I have a statement to make that I think is pretty universally true of many individuals with Parkinson’s. You’re really good at helping other people and being compassionate for the struggles of other people. But you do not extend that same compassion to yourself. My guess is that you are awfully hard on yourself.

Switch that around. Even out the compassion you have to offer. Be just as compassionate to yourself and to your own struggles as you are to the struggles of others. Add up the compassion you offer to family members who are having difficulty to the compassion you offer to strangers who are having difficulty with all persons you encounter day in and day out who are having difficulty. Take that total energetic surge of compassion you extend generously to others and turn it inward. Be open to becoming more compassionate to yourself.

Delight in the magic of each and every moment without agonizing over what has happened to you or your family in the past. The past is over. There is nothing you can do to change it. Fears about the future are almost always unfounded. All such worries are entirely irrelevant to what is happening now in the present. Bring yourself to the magic of the moment as you continue undertaking the challenge of using your non-dominant hand for the rest of the week.

Another revelation that you will discover is, yes, it is very difficult to do these exercises: brushing your teeth, combing your hair and eating with a non-dominant hand in the beginning. But guess what? It gets easier. You get better at it if you will continue doing these simple exercises not just for the rest of the week, but next week and the weeks to follow.

You see, it is possible to be able to get sustained relief from the symptoms of Parkinson’s by giving yourself a heavy dose of compassion, by being patient to what is happening in the moment and by being totally and completely present to the moment you experience second to second.

May you have fun
May you enjoy this exercise
May you invite others to join in the fun for it can be truly revealing and instructive.

It will transform your attitudes toward yourself and toward the possibility of recovering fully and completely.

Robert

Use Your Non-Dominant Hand This Week

I have a warning before I now explain the mindfulness challenge for the week. This week’s challenge will take an additional 15 to 30 minutes of your time every day. It is, in a way then, indirectly a lesson in learning to be more patient. Here’s the challenge if indeed you wish to accept it.

The challenge is first of all to acknowledge which of your two hands is the non-dominant hand. One of the hands for most people is the hand you use most frequently; the other hand is the hand you use less frequently. Which of your two hands is the non-dominant hand? The challenge is to put that non-dominant hand to greater use in three very specific tasks I will now describe.

Task One: Brushing your teeth. Instead of using the hand that you usually use, use your non-dominant hand when you brush your teeth everyday this week.

Task Two: Combing your hair. Instead of using your dominant hand as you customarily would do while combing and brushing your hair in a way that you have probably combed your hair for many, many years now, use your non-dominant hand to comb your hair this week.

Task Three: Eat with you non-dominant hand. This is one task that may require extra time and concentration. Place your eating utensil in your non-dominant hand as your eat one entire meal each day this week.

I fully realize that you will be particularly challenged this week if your non-dominant hand happens to be a hand where there is tremoring which will make it particularly difficult and frustrating to use your non-dominant hand for any of the three tasks. I offer one suggestion for being able to activate energy in a hand that may also be associated with some motor dysfunction.

With your intention, take the strong and vibrant energy from the other side of your body where the symptoms are not as prevalent or troublesome and – using your intention – shift the strong and vibrant energy over to your non-dominant hand. You can accomplish the transfer quickly and swiftly just as a martial artist would shift energy in their body from one side to the next. Here is the sequence:

Take a deep breath in
Place the back of your tongue up against the top of your throat
Exhale your breath out quickly you (with your intention) shift the energy to your non-dominant hand.

This particular exhale sounds something like “Haah…phuh!” That’s what it sounds like. It is a very quick burst.

When you’re eating with family members, you might want to just explain this is just a fun way that you are experimenting with to shift energy from one side of your body to the other. It sounds rather ridiculous I’m sure to many of you, but it actually does work. You can shift the energy and balance out the right and the left sides of your body using this simple technique that is a standard technique used in martial arts practice.

Continue to practice using your non-dominant hand whether it might be a hand on the side of your body that is creating motor difficulties or not. It really does not matter. What you want to do is to exercise the golden and precious practice of mindfulness. Bring your thoughts to the present moment. Live now, not a second before and not a second after. Using your non-dominant hand requires full attentiveness so that you can get the tasks that need to be done of brushing your teeth, combing your hair and eating at least one meal a day.

May you have delicious fun with this activity all week long as you practice the art of mindfulness while using the hand that gets ignored all too often,. May the stress in your life vanish forever more.

Robert

Deeper Meaning Behind Transitions

There’s no doubt about it, our bodies are in a continuous state of transition. One day we wake up and have a mild headache. The next day we wake up and we have a pain in our left leg. The third day we wake up and there is no pain, but there’s a surge of energy that’s running throughout our entire body.

This shifts also happen continuously throughout each day. Every second of our lives there is a ticker tape of messages that are being transmitted by our body to our mind.

What’s the interpretation of all of this? Well, let me offer you this standard response. There’s a shift in what’s happening to the body. A symptom has surfaced that has not yet been experienced. What typically happens for most people is there is an immediate jump to the future. There is an instant transition from one “room” to the next without any thought about what it means to enter into the new room so to speak. There is an interpretation particularly for individuals who have a diagnosis of a chronic condition like Parkinson’s.

What is the interpretation? Well, typically the interpretation is the same,

“Oh my goodness, something else is going wrong with my body. I can’t believe it. Don’t I have enough symptoms as it is? What’s wrong now? What therapy am I going to have to go get?”

And so on and so forth… In other words, We immediately skip to the future without stopping to experience the true meaning of what is happening in the moment. In so doing we miss hearing the message that our body is trying to send to us.

The changes in the body are surely, as you can well understand, not all bad. Many of them are positive, meaningful and useful transitions that the body is making to full health and wellness. With many therapies, you will actually feel worse before you begin feeling better.

When meridians are opened up – when surges of energy begin running through our body – it will very likely feel different and very strange. Yet, when the interpretation is

“What is wrong now?”

rather than pondering …

“Hello. What is here now”?”

We miss being present to the experience. We instantly draw the false conclusion that we are getting bad news. Our body is often giving us signals that are positive, that are rewarding, that are supportive of all the work that we are doing to become symptom-free, to recover, to lead our lives in full and productive manners.

The exercise of stopping before opening any door is an exercise that invites a focus on being present in the moment – of being present to any transition that is made from one state to the next. As I mentioned in the introduction to the exercise, we pass through 200-300 doors often in any one given day. That’s also the case with transitions our bodies are making, though our bodies can potentially make more like 800 or 900 different transitions in a day as it rocks and rolls for us. The body is in a continuous state of change.

The invitation then is to continue the exercise to stop, take a breath and then – and only then – open up each door that you confront. When you confront obstacles – and here the obstacle is a door that is shut – consider an alternative interpretation that you are in a temporary transition. Something has shifted. The invitation is to stop, to take a breath and to say to yourself,

“What’s here now in my body? What wonderful message is my body conveying to me now?

I’ve stopped.
I’ve paused.
I’ve become mindful.

I am listening now in the moment with no bother or worry about whatever implications this experience might have for me in a minute, or two minutes, or tomorrow or next year. It does not matter what awaits me in the next room.
If you take this exercise seriously you will begin to appreciate the many different ways door knobs feel when you touch them. You will begin to appreciate how the new space feels to you when you enter it.

Enjoy the many transitions you will make over the coming days as you pass through one door after another. Enjoy the experience of stopping, taking a breath and then opening up the door that separates the two spaces. When you take mindful notice of the transition – each one will have a different feel to it. Each will be a uniquely precious experience.

Notice that when you enter the new space there is renewed interest and awareness about what is really present. By being mindful of transitions you are able to recognize and honor that the difference in the room to be entered (when compared to the room that is left) can be delicious.

May you relish all of your transitions this week.

Robert

Transitions

The mindfulness challenge this week is admittedly onerous and difficult. If you choose to accept the challenge of the week you will indeed find it to be perplexing and frustrating. You will likely find that you repeatedly forget to actually do what I’m about to suggest.

The focus of the mindfulness exercise this week is on transitions as you move from one space to another. We are in continuous transitions in our life. Because most of us are continually anticipating the future, we miss the experience of the actual transition moment. We are anticipating what we will encounter in the room we are about to enter rather than fully and completely experiencing the transition from one space to the next.

The challenge is the following. For each door that you encounter throughout the week, stop before you open the door. Take a breath in and out. Then open the door and enter the new space. You may well encounter as many as two hundred doors in a single day. You may well forget to stop, take a breath and then open the door for half, three-fourths or who knows, all of the doors that you encounter in any given day, but give it a try.

Accept this as a fun challenge anyway. Each and every door that you encounter that is closed,

Stop
Take a slow breath in – then out
Open the door
Enter the new space mindfully.

Have fun with the onerous and difficult challenge of the week as you begin the most rewarding of all challenges to become present in each and every moment of your life. May you have a magnificent week opening and closing doors of your life.

Robert