Author: manabunnow4zph

What is, you are now wondering, the deeper meaning behind a challenge which suggests that you always say “Yes” no matter what is suggested or what opportunity might become available to you.  It is the case that persons in some occupations tend to be oppositional.  Certainly that is the job of lawyers. Certainly that is the job of academics who are always looking to see the flaws in what study is being suggested to be published.

Why did I personally decide to become qualified to be become an academic and receive appointments at the large state universities?  The real reason I think, in retrospect, was job security.  I did not want to be poor; I did not want to be dependent on others.  I wanted to be able to take care of myself.  How about a different reason for pursuing the life of an academic?

I could have pursued that particular profession because I loved teaching, or I loved writing.  In retrospect, however, those weren’t the reasons.  May I remind you I resigned my position as a full tenured professor at the University of Kentucky just ten years ago.  The reasons that motivated me to become a professor were not good enough reasons to hold me in for a lifetime doing the work of an academic.

Being oppositional clearly takes us up into our heads as we rattle about one possibility after another before we either say yes or no.  We are always pondering. We are always evaluating. We are always looking for flaws.  That approach, that set of skills has a very different feel to it, a very different energy than the energy associated with just saying yes.

What has happened when you have said yes to situations these past few days that you normally would have paused and said no to?  Is it possible that saying yes has alerted you to when you realize that your real answer is an immediate “No.”  In other words, by saying yes you can immediately realize,

“Oh, heavens, that is not something I would ever really want to do.”

Alternatively, you might have spent hour after hour pontificating whether it would be a good decision or not.  By simply saying yes your body told you no way should you pursue that possibility.  Perhaps just saying yes alerted you to as to  how you actually make decisions.  Perhaps the reason why you can’t decide to do something that you really do want to do is because you already have made so many prior commitments. You immediately say no because of those commitments. The idea is you must honor those prior commitments always takes priority over a new opportunity that arises in the moment. Do you dismiss opportunities out of hand because of prior commitments?

“No. Sorry. I can’t go on that 3 day trip tomorrow to Hawaii with you all expenses paid because I promised to make a chocolate cake for my Uncle.”

Really?

Perhaps saying always yes alerts you to the endless hours that you actually spend in your head just as like hamster who spins around and around and around its wheel pondering, figuring, assessing, creating cost benefit analysis, weighing a decision, when the obvious answer for you is an immediate yes.

“Of course that is something I would love to do.”

Just saying yes then allows us to begin to examine the energy behind resistance as contrasted to the energy behind moving forward in life.  What does this all have to do with experiencing the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease?  Many people are focused on the symptoms and saying “No” to the symptoms, ”

• No to the fact that this left arm happens to be tremoring day after day. 
• No to the fact that I can’t swallow as I used to just one year ago. 
• No to the fact that I can’t talk loudly and clearly. 
• No to the fact that I have pain in my right thigh. 
• No, no, no, no.

The focus is on the negative rather than saying “Yes” to life and all that it affords.

The amazing discovery that I have made over the last six years of my research on Parkinson’s is when individuals pursue an activity that they truly love, symptoms totally and completely dissolve.  It doesn’t matter what the activity is.

• I’ve seen people in wheelchairs who, when afforded the opportunity to line dance, slowly got out of their wheel chair, held on to another person and by George, line danced up and down the dance floor. 

• I’ve seen people who had serious symptoms associated with the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease who were able to play championship ping pong games without showing any evidence of symptoms whatsoever. 

• I’ve seen painters with  serious symptoms who-  once they launch a painting project – do not experience any tremoring or any other symptoms whatsoever.

In activity after activity I hear report after report of people who report back, “I don’t seem to have any symptoms whatsoever when I am with my granddaughter or grandson or son or daughter.

I invite you to seriously ponder what you genuinely love to do.  What haven’t you been doing recently that you always loved to do years and years ago?  Start focusing on the ‘yes’ of your life. Start doing what it is that you truly love to do.

When you begin to spend and allocate your thinking energy on the “Yes to life,” I suggest you will see the problematic symptoms be less and less worrisome and bothersome to you personally.  Saying yes has a far more energetic charge than saying no.

Saying no creates a diffusion of energy. It creates equivocality. It creates hesitation.

It paralyzes. We are not moving forward when we are stopping to evaluate.  We are not moving forward when we say no.  We do move forward in our life and we do have a surge of delicious energy when we say yes.

Clearly you don’t want to say yes to everything. That is not the point of this mindfulness challenge. The point of this particular mindfulness challenge is to tease out the difference between when you do say “Yes” and when you do say “No,” and to shift your responses moment to moment so that you are riding on the waves of a joyous life that refuses to go to sleep at night because you’re having so much fun.

Of course symptoms may still be present here and there, but the focus is not on the symptoms.  The focus is on the life that you choose to lead.

May you have a magnificent time this week as you continue to say

“Yes to Life.” 

Robert

© Parkinsons Recovery

What is the deeper meaning behind a mindfulness challenge that asked you to become aware of the territories that you declare for yourself, the labels that you affix to who you are?  Territories are fixed, immutable entities.  They are declarations of how everything should be now.  Territories that are here today however are oftentimes gone tomorrow.

The high school which I attended, Sandy Springs High School in Atlanta, Georgia, no longer exists.  It was torn down and replaced by a Home Depot.  The navy base where I worked as a navy officer in Puerto Rico known as Roosevelt Roads has just been sold to private developers.  The graduate program I attended at Cornell University has been deleted.  It was a Masters of Public Administration in the business school.  They decided that they would only offer a Masters of Business Administration rather than a Masters of Public Administration.  Many of the publishers who’ve published my work no longer exist. They have gone out of business.

Here today. Gone tomorrow.

Our ideas are also territories in themselves.  I have throughout my lifetime possessed many ideas that I was absolutely certain were correct; I knew my thinking was right and the thinking of others was wrong.  I was willing to do anything to assert the righteousness and correctness of my thoughts.  Over time I’ve begun to recognize that many, many – and might I add one more, many – of these ideas have been actually dead wrong.  My thinking was, I must confess––flawed.  What I thought to be true and right as it turns out was just the opposite.

When we get upset about invasions of our territory, we often – and my hand is raised – get angry or irritated.  When my territory is invaded, I feel my blood pressure rise.  I have a chair which I declare to be my chair at the dinner table.  When anyone else sits in it I can feel my blood pressure rise.

Might I now admit, isn’t that reaction absolutely silly?  Consider the many ways territories get invaded.  A neighbor has a dog that barks late at night. The response is to think,

“Now, if my neighbor would just move, all of my problems would be solved.” 

Of course we all know deep down inside that this hope is seldom delivered in reality. If the old neighbor does move for whatever reason, the new neighbor might not have any dogs whatsoever, or camels, or deer, but they may like to have parties that go on until two o’clock in the morning.

Are we going to spend our life hoping that someone will leave and die so that our lives will be made perfect?  We may think to ourselves,

“I look 60.” 

What a label for a person who is 40. That is a declaration that certainly is not in their  best and highest good.  The reality is that most of us are very ignorant about our true self.  The self is always changing.  The body is always in flux. And yes – our age is always shifting.

Take an imaginary super-microscope and apply that microscope to any tissues on your body.  You will see a living organism that has many, many living entities that are interacting, interfacing and communicating with one another.  There are billions and billions of life forces contained within our body.  Your body, my body is not the same now as it was when you began to read this presentation.

We are always in flux. We are always changing.

A thought form that says,

“If symptom X or symptom Y or symptom Z will just vanish I will be good to go.”

is the same as imposing a territorial requirement on your body.  Symptoms will emerge and symptoms will vanish.  Our bodies are in continuous flux.  Our bodies do tend to push out of balance during one point of the day or another.  There are biorhythms that we must respect.  There are cycles of sugar levels in our body that are always moving upward and downward as a function of what we are ingesting.

The body may be able to vanish symptoms, but your kidneys, liver and heart will likely be compromised! That is certainly a side effect no one wishes to experience.

Reifying and concretizing a sense of self only creates anxiety, stress and suffering.  Acknowledge and accept that your body is a miracle, always able to respond and adjust, though at times those responses and those adjustments may create pain, discomfort and even emotional uncertainty.  Respect the self as a living, mutable, gorgeous entity that is changing moment by moment.  Becoming mindful of the current situation (rather than labeling it) reduces anxiety, releases stress and ensures that symptoms are unable and unlikely to flare.

Enjoy the rest of the week as you become more and more mindful of all of the territories that you declare for yourself, of all of the anger and irritation that arises when those territories are invaded.  I say again, much of what I was certain is true turns out not to be true today.

I admit at this place and this time and this hour that much of what I think in this hour may also prove to be untrue and false.

• May my thoughts be fluid.
• May they be agile.
• May I accept my body as a creative entity able to respond to whatever challenges it confronts.

The mantra of the week is –

In this space of fluidity, of flexibility, of malleability, of openness to change, of being in the moment

I declare here and now to be in the present, celebrating all that the present entails.

Becoming mindful is the gateway to true health and wellness.

Robert

© Parkinsons Recovery