Wholistic Health and Wellness Practicer

EAR Statements are similar to active listening and reflective listening, but they go one step beyond, showing that you heard clearly. They show that that you give the other person your empathy, attention, and respect. This giving of yourself often strengthens your connection with the other person, yet it doesn't have to be deep or complicated. It often helps to practice giving an EAR Statement before a difficult conversation. Role-play an upcoming situation with a friend to get comfortable saying the words you want to use. Setting Limits With an EAR Statement One of the best situations to use EAR Statements is when you have to set limits at work, home, or elsewhere. You can say something like this: “You may not realize it, but when you do _______, you may offend some people. I can understand that this may feel frustrating [empathy] and I respect your good intent [respect]. So you may want to do _______, instead. Of course, it’s up to you. I just want to help. What do you think?” [a...

When we feel pain, our first impulse is often to eradicate it with medication. This is an understandable response, but sometimes in our hurry to get rid of pain, we forget that it is the body's way of letting us know that it needs our attention. A headache can inform us that we're hungry or stressed just as a sore throat might be telling us that we need to rest our voice. If we override these messages instead of respond to them, we risk worsening our condition. In addition, we create a feeling of disconnectedness between our minds and our bodies.  Physical pain is not the only kind of pain that lets us know our attention is needed. Emotional pain provides us with valuable information about the state of our psyche, letting us know that we have been affected by something and that we would do well to focus our awareness inward.  Just as we tend to a cut on our arm by cleaning and bandaging it, we treat a broken heart by surrounding ourselves with love and support. In ...

Can you reduce your own stress and anxiety by saying just one word? You can -- and there's scientific research that shows how it works. That insight comes from Marina Harris, a sports psychologist at North Carolina State University and a former competitive gymnast who retired from the sport due to an injury. In an article at Psychology Today, Harris describes how she struggled with anxious thoughts herself until she discovered cue-controlled relaxation.  Cue controlled-relaxation is a technique that pairs a calming relaxation exercise with a specific cue, such as a word or phrase, until one evokes the other in a conditioned response. If the mere smell of coffee brewing in the morning makes you feel more alert, that could be an example of a conditioned response you've already learned. The cue-controlled relaxation technique Harris used has been shown in experiments to help people with anxiety around things like taking tests or going to the dentist. It's so logical that it se...

If you look around you, there are some people who generally seem happier than others. If you’re not as happy as you’d like to be on a daily basis, is there anything you can do about it? That is a big question, because there has been a lot of discussion among scientists about how much of the difference between people in their overall level of happiness is a result of a genetic lottery that leads to a “set point” that people tend to return to. If you look across studies, there is definitely evidence that some people just are happier than others. Like a thermostat that helps keep the temperature in a room relatively constant, there are mechanisms that people have that lead them to return to a baseline level of well-being. At the same time, there are also habits that will affect how happy people are—and there are some things you can do about it. THEY SET THE RIGHT TYPE OF GOALS The goals people pursue affect their long-term happiness. In particular, people are happiest when they pursue goa...

Many people began meditating during lockdown, seeking inner peace and harmony, and as lockdown restrictions lift, they intend to continue. At both the religious and secular heart of meditation is a focus on breath, which is particularly poignant during the Covid-19 pandemic. Focusing attention on breathing is common to Hindu and Buddhist practices and to Jewish, Christian, and Sufi traditions. They all offer different meditative techniques, including chanting, meditating on visual artforms and sitting in silence, alone or in groups. Religions have their different approaches to prayers and worship, but meditation illustrates that there are also significant commonalities. It is sometimes assumed that meditation only exists in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, but meditation also is rooted in the Abrahamic faiths. In Judaism Abraham Maimonides commented that the biblical prophets “did not prophesy at will. Rather they focused their minds and sat joyfully and contentedly in a state of medita...

All over the past year and a half, as the nation’s physical and mental health has been subjected to a historic assault, I have found myself asking many of the people I know for their tips on how we might best hold ourselves together. One word has popped up again and again. The Royal Marine who has built a career advising businesses and the England football team; the New York scientist who is a world expert on women’s brains; and the dog owner looking to calm her pooches — all had one thing in common. They swore by the wonders of meditation. Now science has caught up with what many of us already believed. A study of students in New York state has found that 10 to 15 minutes a day of meditation can boost the brain’s ability to concentrate on tasks. Students at Binghamton University had brain scans after taking up meditation five times a week for eight weeks. These showed changed brain patterns that indicated that the students could switch faster between the state of consciousness in whic...

What is The Myers-Briggs Indicator Test? Many people have taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator at some point in their life. The Myers-Briggs is used a great deal to help people understand their personality, particularly in work organizations to help employees understand how they differ from their coworkers.  It helps people recognize differences in how people approach situations and problems and thus helps people work together more effectively. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is, as its name indicates, a type indicator. It tells you what type of person you are on four characteristics: extrovert vs introvert, sensing versus intuition, thinking versus feeling, and judging versus perceiving.  You don’t need to understand what those terms mean, but after people take the Myers-Briggs, they get a four letter code that tells them which of 16 types they are. If you have taken the Myers-Briggs, you can probably remember your type—you’re an ISTJ, an INFP, an ESTP, or whatever, and that...

The trait of openness involves the degree to which people are generally open or receptive to all sorts of things.  This isn’t about interpersonal openness—being open in how you interact with other people—but rather an intellectual and experiential openness or receptivity to new things.  Stargazing at night to appreciate the beauty of the universe and enjoying the experience.  Openness to Experience Openness, as it applies to this trait should be interpreted as something like receptivity, as in the sense of being open to trying a new experience or being receptive to a new idea. Now we come to the fifth and final trait of the big five: openness or sometimes researchers call it “openness to experience.” The term, openness, as it applies to this trait should be interpreted as something like receptivity, as in the sense of being open to trying a new experience or being receptive to a new idea. People who score high in openness are more intellectually curious and imaginative th...

The problem with so much of the meditation and mindfulness we see today is that it does just the opposite.  Why include the body in meditation?  Many of us are disconnected from our bodies. This leads to a sense of not feeling whole, being ill at ease, and often just being unhappy. Being cut off from ourselves, also leads us to disconnect from others, leading to everything from loneliness, to intimacy issues, to violence.    We ignore our bodies at our peril – pushing ourselves too hard, suppressing emotions, creating imbalances in our nervous system, ignorant of our bodies’ innate wisdom. Critically, when we are distant from our primary “home”, we lose touch not just with ourselves, but also with our values, other people (empathy is embodied), and the natural world. Embodied connection isn’t just central to a healthy life, it is the essence of being alive, and what makes life worth living. Many people have started practicing mindfulness in recent years in a quest to...