Tag Archives: #meditation

Personal Growth

5 Ways to Never Be Bored

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O. looked at things in a funny sort of way, even going home from school with her was an intellectual research of a peculiar kind.

Introduction

She was curious about every little thing which made an ordinary spider seem an amazing creature. Her sense of humor made a simple sentence from a school dull textbook an anecdote that made us laugh till stomachache and we often ended up expelled from the class. She always knew what to say at the right moment. I do not think she ever had that notion of coming out with a trenchant response, but the dispute was a week ago. 

Imagination helps to cope with everyday repetitive activities. It gives flexibility to your dreams, form to your ideas, and direction to your actions. Good humor in the face of boring certainty spares you the anguish of delay. You see success in every direction if you accompany your actions with delightful excitement.

1) Collect a Good Bunch of Friends and an Imposing Burst of Laughter

We shared one desk for three consecutive years in 7th, 8th, and 9th grade. These years were the most refreshing from all my school experience. Being best friends while sitting together, we didn’t even talk much neither before no after those years. I believe some people come to our life like a fresh breeze from the sea and as easily go away. They bring that cooling sensation to the skin and mind, fill in the world around with stars you haven’t seen, juicy grass you haven’t touched, and aroma of wild flowers you didn’t pay attention to before.

Do not fail to find words of comfort and encouragement when your friend needs it. That same person will do justice to you when an unfortunate time comes. The depressing influence of loneliness brings a grim look on everything. Joyous laugh in a good company makes you feel untiring. And a constant repetition that is going on in life will not be able to disquiet you when a warm company is present. 

2) Wrap Your Senses in New Fresh Sensations

Being a shy teenager, I came to be boisterous with her. She used to shake any mishap rather as a terrier shakes himself with ease and grace. The moment I used to start to complain about being bored she would raise her voice so either by hook or by crook I had to hear what she was going to fire on me. “What the-dickens, did you imagine this thing dull? Let me put you wise how things are,” she used to say in Agatha Christie’s perfect traditions way. And in a telegraphic manner she recounted the same events I was perfectly aware of, but word by word her interpretation served to whet my curiosity to hear more and learn her version of the same scene.

Give a new turn to your thoughts and senses. Decorate your days with fresh sensations. Open your eyes to see the scenery around you. You need to tear away the veil of monotony that obscures your view. With a deeply positive turn of mind your cheerfulness will be growing bigger by the moment.

3) Let the Faintest Thing Amuse You

The simplest pleasure was a trip home from school in her company. Every time adjusting the root O. brought a different perspective to the view I used to consider established. I became a fan of a village humble life when I saw back allies and sheds along an earth road, the smell of fresh cow’s milk and newly cut grass, potholes of rainwater with flashes of the afternoon sun in them. I had half a mind she had some magic stick in her sleeve as every time she managed to show me something new in a place I considered completely explored a long time ago. O. helped me to learn how to break some routine behavior and recharge my mind so that it starts to function in a manual mode rather than living on autopilot.

Habit is rust that eats through steel. It can be the most dangerous thing in the universe. Often it denies the possessor from the joy of seeing the beauty of life when you look it in the face.

Little pleasurable moments appear as merely part of the background if you do not pay attention. Let small things find an echo in your soul. This will help you to kill the dullness. Do not receive life gruffly, bear philosophically the rain and wind, and smile to the sun and breeze. 

4) Venture Dreaming and Achieve an Inner Burning Desire

I remember on one occasion when we decided to have a day off school, my mom at that time trusted me with such decisions, as I used reason explaining why the history lesson and coming right after the one on physical education ccould be missed, and the time could be employed with so much more profit at home getting ready for some interesting project or other.

O. came to my place, most likely not letting her parents know that she was going NOT to school, and we had an interesting conversation about our plans for the future. Time suited perfectly as we were in the 9th grade when a lot of students decide to enter a world of professional education and leave school behind. I was still in black on what to do with my life, but I thought my idea of O.’s future was clear enough. So, I laid out a plan for her life adopting her way of telegraphic speech. I said: “Future is flexible. Project it in your mind. Start acting today. Make your dreams come true. You want to share how you see things. So, do it.”

I used to outwear through the books about the power of attraction and considered myself an expert in those things, so my language flourished with affirmations like ‘thought vibrations’, ‘energy’, ‘manifestation’ and the like. She said she wanted to break from the strong hold of her parents rather sooner than later and would rather go to college that year. We’ve looked through the list of opened professions and picked newspaper editor, radio host, and TV host. Although, I’ve lost sight of her when she left school that year, for some reason I was almost sure she succeeded to fulfill our plan for her future. But to learn for a fact what became of her I managed only very recently.

Give free play to your imagination. Turn your life into a romance with the flexible flow of your dreams. Bend a listening ear to the faintest lovely vision. And a sudden fit of joyful spirits will come over you. You should hear yourself repeating, like a man conversing with yourself about his bright future. 

5) Rush to Attack Your Dreams with Plans and Actions

Since the time of my move abroad I stopped following the development of television life. I find myself watching some show or other only when I visit my parents. A year ago, I happened to stumble on a TV program which the first time in many years gave me a vague desire to put a huge cinema set in my apartment when I get back home just to be able to see the landscapes of my native country in that interpretation. The notion that the voice behind the camera was painfully familiar almost tickled me to death, and I tried to rack my brain in vain hopes to remember where I’d heard it before. What my amusement was when I read the name of my school friend in the movie ending credits.

O. was in her yarn being a well-known journalist that traveled the country and showed the ordinary life of simple people in her signature TV show. I knew her medical family wanted her to continue the family tradition, and I’m happy she finally did what she was intended to even against her relatives’ wishes. She might not have confidence at the time in the success of that new plan we drafted, but she was stubborn enough to act without the belief, knowing that faith would pave the way from words to the heart later, over time. Her bold determination opened the door to her dream life. The one in which she can share her inexhaustible resource of vigor that always was contagious to the ones around her. The way she chose to spend her life proved to be the best as now she could reach more people, showing them the way how to look at the familiar scenery in a new refreshed way.

Your customary activity may fatigue you, do not lose yourself in this dreary feeling. Add sunlight to your days by planning things you like. Schedule steps that will get you closer to something you like. 

Restore your energy with an activity that always makes you feel good. It may be a desire to shoot your own movie, a dream of your own book published, or simply a refreshing vacation. Enjoy making plans and start implementing those little by little. 

Conclusion

Even now many years after when the ongoing every day routing becomes unbearable and the feeling that everything should be turned upside-down immediately – for example, I crave to bring down the sky to the earth and see what happens – then simple delight can be found for me in choosing a different route to a known place so that life can be seen through the eyes of new impressions, spooning with mysterious turn in an unusual place, holding hands with a randomly picked way that leads only home. A minor change in things that used to be boring repaints those in fresh colors and it comes to be an interesting task to observe familiar repeated life so recently you’ve been fed up with.  

A dull, dreary life is an impossibility and can exist only in the minds of people. If you want to be a true master of yourself you need to rule over your thoughts first and foremost. The imminent danger of boredom is a possible condition of clinical depression. You need to take every precaution that is possible to add a cheerful touch to your daily life. The wearing elements can be great, but if you let yourself to be every now and then lost in dreamy wonderings, you will feel like an air of ease is winning the mastery. 

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Personal Growth

A Beast Bit My Face and Changed Me For the Better

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My face is different. But ‘different’ doesn’t always mean ‘worse’

Olya Aman

I was shocked and, due to that, felt no pain at first. People were shouting and gesturing to one another, trying to figure out how to distract the furious beast. Somehow, I do not recollect exactly how it was pulled from me. The man who helped me in an old blue ‘Zhiguli’ and drove to the village dispensary and later to the nearest town hospital was the owner of the dog. In the hospital, I got nine stitches in four places on my face.

The doctor that performed the work of reconstructing my face did not know about cosmetic stitching. He simply decided the way he would do it was going to be sufficient. During the procedure, I concentrated on his deep, fine-tuned voice. To listen to him was like drinking warm ginger tea on a frosty winter day, and very likely it served as the best anesthetic for me. His work was not bad, just not good.

I have the scars, one is very visible, and people often ask about it. I consider it a part of my unique personality. I like my face. I love myself the way God created me and the way life, not always gentle, adjusted the sacred work.

Thoughts about my mother, her loving face darkened by suffering because of the incident, overpowered the fear of thread, needle, and pain. And even during the recovery, when the only recollection of the event made me shake with uncontrollable sobbing — the result of a great fright — I tried to compose myself with enormous energy. One glance at my mother’s eyes with a distinct element of worry pulled me together, and I did my best to laugh.

Providence is often a cruel teacher. The life-threatening experience I went through was there to spirit me for what was before to come. I had bad days, but not too many. I had loss enough, but too much. Although, I feel completely miserable at times, I do my best to not feel depressed, rather unite the best blessings of my nature and learn to be a gainer in every situation.

Sometimes I think, I am made practically entirely from one heart, and often it thinks itself far too clever and shuts the rational mind up. But it did me a good service so far by helping me to get over emotionally and physically painful moments.

3 Lessons I Learned

  • Painful experience often is the strongest building block of a prominent personality.
  • Everything happens for a reason and your inner and outer looks depend on it.
  • Moments of struggle open the best (or the worst) in people.

I didn’t react to those unfortunate circumstances with deliberate self-pity. I thought of my mother and not of myself. From then on, my desire to give overpowers the desire to take. Lack of selfishness gives me the strength to withstand many of life’s calamities.

Whatever happens, I only need to understand how things are and accept the change, because ‘different’ doesn’t always mean ‘worse’.

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Mental Health

5 Essentials for Building Inner Happiness

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I act often with fear and bravery chasing each other in my eyes… – Olya Aman

Introduction

L. is a good nurse, and that alone tells a lot about her. She was born in Rwanda, adopted and raised in Europe. L. moved back to Rwanda when she learned her way and made sure that helping her patients was her aim in life. After the genocide her native country needed support, her least lucky people needed her knowledge.  

You must not grudge me a little pomp and ceremony about this story. L. is a fine creature, her big almost black identical in size and shape eyes cause people to confide in her. She learned early on to listen, and this skill proved to be invaluable in her profession. 

“Every day is like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again,” she says. “I begin my harum-scarum day and see the transformation, one person at a time.”

People often live with the brow of an optimist above and the jaw of a pessimist below. To make one dominate another is to create real value in life. A positive approach to everything one does helps to build a skill set that makes a smile last a lifetime. Whereas, one sardonic smile can bring gloom that blankets everything around.

1) Negative Thoughts Are as Bad as a Dangerous Plague, and Infinitely as Harmful to Your Health

“I was 12 when my new parents took me to Europe. I have my first memories linked with horror and fear, loss and grief. Those memories shaped my personality and in some way, I am grateful for the background I have. Although, gratitude was not speedy enough to visit me.”

“My good, generous and loving parents had to put up with a lot. I was not an obedient child, rebelling at anything and everything. I was in constant emotional pain at least first five-six years or so. The lesson of the genocide period in Rwanda left my whole being in ruins. Nearly one million people were killed. I lost my family, my friends, everything I ever loved.”

When we feel negative emotions, they surround our brain by a mysterious halo, which shuts off the outside world, limiting our ability to see the way out. Our brain finds it easy to see the raw afternoon and the dense fog, the muddy streets, and the bleak houses. 

You need to make an effort to not letting bad things alone take their own bad way. The world takes gloomy and bright passages, and if you take it off-handedly, it will never go right for you. That is why in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog you need to force yourself to see the light, to shake the negativity off. 

Procrastination, spoliation, evasion, botheration blind your brain, depriving you of the ability to see the options and choices that surround you.

2) How Positive Thoughts Color Our Life in Healthy Beautiful Shades

“Love and patience helped me to gradually come back to believing again. Jane and Matt – my stepparents – are my rocks in life. I owe them my new self, or, rather, the return of my old happy before-the-horror-self. I remember and I mourn, I often cry, but now mostly because of happy memories. I have more of those, you know, and the rest is still here in my heart, but not pressing and as vivid anymore.”

“This transformation came with the knowledge that I wanted to make a change. I was sick for a while at some point. A woman that nursed me in the hospital imprinted the longing for the same profession in me. By that time I knew that Rwanda was in the reconstruction period and the system of health needed human resources. I was going to come back home.” 

The impact of positive emotions on the brain and overall health is hard to underestimate. Joy, contentment, and love open endless possibilities in life, they broaden your mind, make it more prone to new innovative solutions. 

When you seem to be a mass of dull, complaining feelings everything you do may seem distasteful. Gift yourself with optimistic thinking by identifying areas of your life that usually upset you. Each time your thoughts distress you, drive them out or find a way to put a positive spin on them. 

A smile during difficult times lightens the burden of troubles. When you humor everyday misfortunes, you feel less stressed. A good laugh is a luxury, the radiating waves of it break the toughest walls of desperation. 

Our social barometers always should stand at ‘sunny’. Negative people continually war with your happiness. Surround yourself with positive, supportive people who can give help with advice and action. 

3) Motivation is Another Definition of Positive Thinking

“The desire not only to see my country again, but to be able to bring good – my skillset and knowledge – was driving me in my studies. I followed the efforts of Dr. Binagwaho, who spent years helping to rebuild the country’s health care system. She is my hero.”

“The most precious resource of the post-genocide Rwanda was its people. Thousands of community health workers traveled from home to home providing the necessary care. I willingly joined the rural health tribe.”

Life has many costumes and only by looking at it with optimism one can truly value it. Positive emotions prompt useful and valuable everyday activity. Encouraging thinking is a sophisticated weapon in a battle with monotony. 

Building anything requires patience and motivation, both are synonymous with optimism. Only in a state of appreciation you can spark massive changes that can lead to new developments in life.

The ability to stay enthusiastic and hopeful is always located within. Whatever happens outside should not determine your state of mind, for that power rests with you only. So, does not allow an external event to be a disturbance.

4) How to Allow Positivity Reign Amid Chaos

“The health workers were selected by the villages they served. The people of my native village decided that I would care for them. It was the happiest day of my life.”

“The country’s health system has managed to achieve so much progress on a very limited budget. Other poor countries often call this achievement miraculous, I call it challenging. Our dedication to delivering effective health care improves the lives of the poor and that is the best reward we need.”

Do not blame yourself for the lack of calmness, doing so will never bring you to the state of inner joy. Practice awareness of what makes you feel good. Immerse yourself in this activity. Meditate if that makes you display more positive emotions, increased mindfulness, and decreased illness symptoms. 

Explain your inner state of mind in writing. If you note your positive experiences, you will have a better mood level and fewer health problems. 

We are all rooted to our social environment, meeting people we like and … not so much. Schedule fun time with optimistic people. Positivity attracts more of its own self, just being optimistic will make lovely, cheerful people your reality.

 5) Happiness and Success Come Together

“At the end of every day, I am tired and full of joy and sorrow. Both mixed together comprise my life and make it unforgettable. I take both and grateful for both. The new coming day is ever more incredible because of this mixture of emotions and I always start it on a positive foot.”

“I am happy to be home. To lead the life of purpose is stimulating. I often in a state of inward merriment and I encourage myself to prolong this feeling because it is contagious. People around me can feel it and, consequently, become happier from my presence in their life.”

L. is very contented in her profession. She is a link in a chain of remarkable alterations for the better. 

In a positive state of mind you can withstand the passing disappointments and pain. You become a strong personality, the only one controlling your inner state of mind. Happy you, develop new skills with joy, that activity leads to success and that all gives you more reasons to be even happier. Serenity and peace are on your way when you remind yourself of your unbroken positivity.

Conclusion

L. confided in me and gave her permission to share her story. She only asked to make an emphasis on the happy side of it, showing to my readers the importance of positive, grateful approach to life. She mentioned several times that love saved her sanity, and optimism of her parents, being contagious, helped her to get better physically and emotionally.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of positivity. The most deplorable and irreparable results come from deeds made in a state of pessimistic rejection of bright and jolly in life. Whatever comes your way, allow it to be, but experience it with inner belief in a good outcome. A positive approach to life helps you to be preserved and unbroken. It reminds you that what seems distressing at one point in time is a blessing at another. 

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Mental Health

She Got Her Back Broken to Realize She Was Happy

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The power of giving others the heart to live

To linger here or to feel that you belong… – Olya Aman

My sister Tanya is a lean, long-backed, large-headed girl, with surly tones of her voice and coarse features of her face. We scour the country together now and then: I — on my feet and her — on her wheels. Her wheelchair is a speedy little beast, accelerated by her mighty hands and skillfully maneuvered by her flexible torso. You would never believe, looking at her expressive and full of exhilarating energy face, that death had been hovering over her just four years ago.

A rushing torrent of grateful feelings.

The dark night in my sister’s life started from an unfortunate fall from a high staircase. Her brain stopped triggering signals responsible for the muscle movement and she didn’t feel her legs anymore.

When starting to sit down to her meals, still dispirited and sad, she used to say to me, but truly to herself, “Nothing happens without reason. There should be a higher intelligent plan and purpose in it.” The fairest consolation came in disguise of a prayer. It was holding her tight, not letting her slip into that despair completely.

My sister didn’t feel her legs anymore, but strains of overly agitated nerves of her arms and spine substituted that missing sensation. She strengthened her torso every instant she felt the need to hue-and-cry to the missing control of her limbs. She got herself out of the bed and on her wheels with surprising speed.

Elbowing hard upon goals.

Before the accident, my sister used rambled at her pleasure, mostly spending time in the gym listening to her favorite music. Being 32 years old, she still had trouble finding her place in the grownup world.

It seemed a matter of impossibility to center her life around fitness and body healing strategies now when she lost control over almost half of it. But she couldn’t get rid of this idea. Tanya became transfixed with the desire to achieve the heights she didn’t even think possible for her fully functional, healthy past-self.

Tanya set her heart firmly on a goal to become a physical therapist working in amputee rehabilitation. She learned with passion about specific strengthening exercises that flex and tone the muscles. Her own experience gave her a psychological advantage to motivate people.

Issuing forth with a mentor beside.

She adopted this impressive stateliness from her mentor. The simplicity of her mentor’s life stirred her profoundly. Tanya used to preach to me, “This person is happy, chasing his dreams and loving his family. With neither legs no arms he is shining with heart strength and will-power.” Every trace of my sister’s essence strove to bring purpose and happiness into her life.

Power of giving others the heart to live.

My sister still has a sense of weakness and captivity sometimes. But she is recovering her life-balance by an effort of willpower and a desire to set an example for others.

Tanya always says to her patients that whatever happened to her was not a run of ill-luck but a fortunate wakeful blessing. She teaches them to accept the condition and devotedly love their past and present selves. People in her clinic see a humble person just like themselves, never repenting on her helplessness, but being powerful enough to uplift her spirit and inspire others to do the same.

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Personal Growth

The Power of Tenderness and Compassion in My Relationship

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Secrets about water that my life put to the proof

The voice of natural water sounds silver and life… – Olya Aman

Water can rise through the trunks of gigantic trees against tens of atmospheres of pressure. What is more surprising, though, is the faculty of a human being to rise over hatred and aggression in the world, indifference and treachery towards himself, and still be loving and empathetic.

“What the dickens do you drink this water for?” I said deprecatingly, when my dog fired ahead to the water that was spilled on the floor. The bottle it came from was a gift that I didn’t appreciate enough. I considered it a wired birthday present. My dog was a much better expert in a healthy way of life, eating only food in green packages with the logo “organic” on it. And he never before ate anything from the floor, preferring his silvery plate to any other vessel.

I felt that I had to learn more about THIS water. And I discovered that I, being an educated twenty-two-year-old lady at the time, knew nothing AT ALL about this substance. Magnetism and energy locked in this bottle transformed my life.

The honored man that presented the fortunate flask became a source of happiness for me. His kind soul wrapped in a beautiful body opened a new world of love and shared happiness. I went from enchantment to enchantment, scenting compassion in the air, and this feeling of admiration gave a new turn to my thoughts.

The imminent danger of water’s memory.

Experiments in many countries around the world have shown that water remembers everything that occurs in the space that surrounds it. The water structure of each person’s body is identical to the water structure of the place where he was born. Our internal connection to our homeland is depicted in the water of that place. And our inner water-based computer records the entire history of our relationship with the world around us.T

Marat is my future husband, and his story is a vivid example of a ‘movie-like’ experience that is unforgettable and needed to be shared with others.

He seemed to have everything but for the memory of his early childhood and youth. That was strange. Marat possessed the knowledge and education to be adequate and navigate his way in the world, but he could not remember the words said by his mother, and the school games went to with his father.

That happened after the car crash that left him, a single child of a happy middle-aged couple, an orphan. Doctors said it was a post-stress reaction of his brain. The neatly structured organ in his head tried to protect him against his own will. Marat longed to remember, but not any conventional or alternative medicine could help him do so.

One day, about 11 years ago, his best friend came back after a long journey to far-away countries. He brought exclamations of praise and deep respect for the elderly healer he met there. Marat didn’t believe it could work and agreed to go only for the sake of adventure.

The ceremony of their encounter reminded a scene from a mystery movie. Marat and a small wrinkly guy in a dress-like white shirt were staring at one another blankly without words. Then the old man showed Marat to his chamber. The cave was dark and cold and full of small and big glass jars with water. He filled Marat’s little cup from almost every container. And at the point of over dense tension in the easy to guess area in his belly, something extraordinary happened. Marat suddenly remembered. Springwater from a distant mountain village in Kyrgyzstan brought relief to his tired from searching brain.

It happened so that his father was born in that village. His parents, being almost desperate to conceive, went there and spent almost a year in that remote place. They came back to the States to give birth to their beloved son and get the benefit of traditional high-quality medical care. The water from that village remembered Marat, or, rather, his body remembered that water. Some impulse, the life force coming from this water, triggered the processes in his brain. It made the memory of his past a charming reality that he could take into his present.

No wonder, when Marat fell in love with me, from the first sight, by the way, he presented me with the most cherished gift he could imagine. Yes, he gave me a bottle of that pure spring water from far away Kyrgyzstan.

Human power both whitens and darkens water and souls.

Nowadays it became clear that positive and negative human emotions are the strongest elements of influence on water. Water, experiencing fear, aggression, hatred, projected on it, is suffering. Those feelings deform its structure and reduce its energy. Love, on the contrary, increases water’s energy. The power of tenderness and compassion is yet unexplained, but accepted by almost everyone’s intellect.

I became the most negligent person when it came to the choice of food after I broke up with my ex. He took excellent care of his diet and very little of my emotional state. I was devastatingly unhappy in our relationship. He was a handsome, cold-hearted person, which made me detest anything good-looking, tasty, and healthy. I developed a belief that things, being eatable or not, are pretty on the outside and empty on the inside.

After our separation, I was rebelling my past healthy lifestyle, and I became a regular visitor to fast-food places. That made me look 10 years older and 30 pounds heavier. I thought badly about the food I ate and drinks I consumed but continued to do so to prove some wired point, the meaning of which I couldn’t explain even to myself. All those substances I swallowed made me feel even more depressed until the day I met my future husband, Marat.

He is incredibly plump and extremely cheerful. His spirit is contented and grateful. Nothing can spoil his positive attitude to life, even my negative connotation of every aspect of it.

First few months we ate at the same bad-quality-food places I favored. Surprisingly, I felt my body not as heavy and my mood not as gloomy anymore. Somehow, Marat’s uplifting spirit charged every eatable object with his life-giving energy.

When we started to live together and Marat became a master of the kitchen space, life became almost an unbearably sweet experience. Both of us fell in love with new aspects of vigorous and healthy life. By degrees, we started to spend quite ridiculous money on food, and water was the number one investment in our list of the most important things.

Water combats behavior and life itself with music and love.

Classical music gives water an occasion for displaying the splendor of symmetric beauty. As if choosing music that uplifts and rejuvenates us, we should be spellbound listening to a loving person, and determined to run away from a twisted and vengeful one.

I love music, and I am a skilled pianist. I and my husband attend musical events as often as we can. My best friend, but for my husband, is a magnificent instrument in our living room.

Every day I hurry home to my soulmate and discuss Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven with it. The decanter full of water is on the nearby table and it witnesses all my musical performances. I have a habit of taking it to our dinner table and later to our bedroom. This water seems to be full of notes of love and care, beauty, and affection. I take excellent care of my water and fill the vessel with the best of the best. Play music to it and make every note enter my body and my soul. I drink it with satisfaction and feel refreshed, delighted, invigorated. I am forgetting my cares, feeling as if I had wings to my feet.

No thing about water is an illusion. Nothing in the world is softer and more yielding than water. We do not realize how close and almost identical we are. Water wears down the hard and strong, and none can overcome it. When our strength husbanded, we are capable of glorious things just the like.

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Mental Health

5 Nature Healing Techniques

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Receive life with much philosophy and nature… – Olya Aman

Introduction

G. shuffled through life most of the time being far gone indeed. His mood being as dark as the grave, his face being as weary as the days of his past, and his voice as harsh as the hollow moaning of the damp unwholesome wind.

He was not yet past 36 and the earth and life itself seemed not his element anymore. The expression in his eyes was scarcely of his age or of the world. So many shadows from the past played about his face that G’s smile, above all, was the worst evidence of artless pain and misery.

The horrors of the war left no trace of the memory of a happier existence, long gone by and forgotten, vanished in the scenes of fighting and killing. These marks of cruelty and anger buried every trace of love and affection he had ever known. It seemed that nothing in this world would be able to recall any positive emotion in his soul. Darkness and nightmares watched G. as he slept and was awake.

The sinking of soul and spirit is alleviated by an emergent field of ecopsychology. It awakens the remembrance of our connectedness to the web of life. We need to be careful about how we deal with nature as we are an inseparable part of it.

Blithesome environmental music and freedom in the landscape carry thoughts of recreation and peace to the hearts of people. Remorse may seem unavailing, but it creeps away when met with brightness and mirth in the scenes of brilliant sky, vast fields, and high mountains.

Our relationship with nature should be explored, and nowadays mental health practitioners pay more and more attention to the aspects of ecotherapy. The inner impulses of every person’s soul long to be connected to the environment.

1) Connectedness to Earth as the Core of Ecotherapy

G. was a true personage of an uncouth man with sharp eyes and rough hands. The fervent prayers, gushing from the hearts of his many relatives, overcharged with wild nature and simple close to deprivation and far from cruelty life, were his daily companions in his youth.

Exposure to the wet morning grass, cold fresh mountain air, and many animal-friends brought on belief in good, frank, and honest which hung over him till the first days on a battlefield, those reduced G. and his faith sadly. An effort to come back to his native place was the only way to recover his life force back again.

The earth does as much for us as could be expected in an age when the population cannot afford to stay connected to it for nothing. Relationship among humanity is built on the principle of giving and taking and the same motto we tend to express toward everyone and everything. Nature, though, is worn with use, disheartened with selfishness, and tired of human contact.

We should attribute exceptional importance to the process of creation, the natural forces that govern life. Harmonizing with these systems, we may experience spiritual illumination, improved mental and physical health. Respect in every aspect of life is vital. To cherish nature as we cherish close, loving people is just as important. Love given to the human being revives life forces in that person, and the same emotion granted to the surrounding environment awakens its blooming essence.

Personal well-being is lost amid a host of every-day troubles, filled with artificial noises that stifle and destroy, it becomes empty and arid. To not let it slip away completely, we need to stay connected to planetary well-being. This feeling of union with a greater system of interaction makes a sense of weakness and captivity vanish. Only when seeing ourselves as a part of the world we can recover our balance and will-power.

2) Nature as a Tender Healer of Mental Fatigue

Only coming back home to his old and shabby house, senile forgetful mother, simple-hearted coarse childhood friends, and his ancient failing horse, he began, at length, by degrees, to get better. How deeply G. felt the goodness of his surrounding in his native mountain village, and how strongly regretted he that the ill-advised desire to escape in a search of a better life led him to the war.

Whirred, monotonous and tiresome as a clock life, words thrown out, conversations started, then the concert of mentally fatiguing angry emotions – this existence makes a wall against which one dashes in vain. To stop that deafening and blinding cycle, we need to walk in a nature preserve. No voices for lying, no faces to hide themselves behind – only the vastness of fragrances, nature sounds, and beautiful inspiring scenes.

The atmosphere of inhaled, tasted, touched, heard and seen satisfaction reduces the symptoms of depression. We feel less anger and more positive emotions. All senses participate in the recovering process. Engulfed in the brightness of green spaces, we have a greater capacity for paying attention, delaying gratification, and even less need in pain medications.

Simply calling flowers and plants into view positively affects creativity, productivity, and problem-solving skills. Over-wrought nerves, aggression, and agitation are waved away as if with the help of a magic wand in the presence of animals and under the exposure to the sounds of nature.

3) Activities that Add Variety to Life and Bring Back Glorification

Who can describe beauty and tranquility of a mountain river and snow-covered tops and hollows? Is it possible to imagine life without the pureness of that balmy air full of grass’ and flowers’ fragrance? The green hills and rich animal life, only touched by hunting in necessity degree and never in pleasure seeking unwise killing.

Life as it should be, love as it was created, and friendship as it was intended – healing emotions, and curing energies of nature didn’t wash away crowded, pent-up memories of the war, but a life of toil and peace in the atmosphere of pure, almost untouched plant and animal life made those memories Past, and not Every-Day-Haunting Nightmares of the present anymore.

1. Fresh sensations revealed during meditation.

Even when it seems that the world had been turned upside down, a tranquil moment of abstractedness can put it right-side up again. We are able to come over to the positive way of thinking after reflection on the connectedness of all alive and breathing

2. Horticultural therapy reveals to us the ability of the earth to give a sensation of maternal protection to our senses.

Garden-related activities of digging soil, planting seedlings, weeding garden beds, trimming leaves help to alleviate the symptoms of stress and burnout.

3. Animal-assisted therapy is at the service of reducing aggression and agitation.

Animals are able to pure out more of the treasures of our souls than we could even imagine. Often after the time spent in the company of wild or domestic animals, we feel intoxicated with delight and happy sensations.

4. Physical exercise in a natural setting brings us closer to the feeling of satisfaction with our mind and body.

We become more independent, more inspired and even more In Spirit – inspiration visits us while we are walking, jogging, cycling or doing yoga outside.

5. Increased awareness is reached when we are involved in restoring activities.

A sense of purpose and hopefulness, belonging and connectedness is born during the process of generous improvement done To and For the benefit of nature.

Conclusion

G. started a chain reaction of a nature healing process, in which his own rejuvenated personality was the first link, by contacting his battle comrades and inviting them to visit his poor farm. G. could not even imagine the outcome of his good intention. Now the place is the most blessed, homely ecotherapy healing work-camp known so far.

People in mental struggle come from all over the world to find contentment and peace again. Working together, improving their life, cultivating earth and personalities, they share memories and feelings. Here again, they can feel themselves the most blessed and favored of mortals and have a touch of unmingled happiness.

True felicity of pure and most amiable generosity of people around; the warmest, soul-felt gratitude creates an attachment to the place and mental state of peace itself. The earth in her mantle of brightest green is glad to accept wounded hearts and treat them with a cheerful serenity that gives vent to the tears which now a person is unable to repress. And when the eyes are full of water, the remedial river is covering the troubles of today and the worries of the past.

The sorrow and calamity of the world half closes, becomes more distant when you feel that you belong to the bright sphere of nature. There is no pursuit more worthy of the highest nature that resides in every one of us than encouraging the circulation of deep affection and gratitude toward nature. The sacred emotion of connectedness to the earth makes fears weak and selfish regrets feeble.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

How Backbiting and Gossiping Ruined My Happiness

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Why, or rather when the opinion of others matters

Spend precious moments stubbornly biting your lips, speaking sternly, and acting openly… – Olya Aman

Dima was my first boyfriend. A terrible bore as he was, I loved him dearly. I always thought him to be above the average in the firmness of his mind. He read classic literature and spoke the language of 19th century romance. We were young and very much in love.

Dima was a sensible and handsome young boy of twenty at the time. I was a smart, pretty girl of eighteen with merry grey eyes and lofty, intelligent forehead. Today when I see a photo of us together, I remember how contagiously happy we were.

One incident ruined our happiness. Dima thought himself deceived, duped, and hopeless. A slough scandal was spread through the entire village and finally found its way to Dima’s ears. The tempest of doubt and dread, of jealousy and rage, almost blinded him. Some shallow minds believed it right away. People that wished us bad luck were rejoicing.

I got to the root of it only by hints and innuendos, as no one dared to speak openly with me about it. I stopped any intercourse with the poisoned humanity, the ones that readily accepted the circulating vile slander.

Why it is normal to rip up the ties.

Dima’s spirits rose almost to madness when he heard the dreadful story of me being unfaithful to our love. I thought nothing could crush his faith in our shared future. The story was a lame one. Unfortunately, he believed that I could swear love to someone else.

The first night after discovering that his best friend was an instigator of the slander, a paroxysm of anger disquieted Dima’s breathing, and he bitterly reproached himself for the moment of weakness. His friend, a worthless reprobate, an impracticable fool, gave food to envenomed tongues, and they started to talk about me as if I was a little frivolous kitten going around and gifting my love to insipid individuals.

Eventually, Dima cut all ties with that false friendship. Forgot the way to his friend’s house. Wiped him off his phone contacts and social media accounts. He brushed the dirt of this acquaintance from his life. After what happened, Dima knew too well to keep such people at a great distance from his life.

Why, or rather when the opinion of others matters.

My heart rejoiced when my parents and my elder sister took my side in this insinuated story. I felt strong support and stoic faith from them. My close friends showed me the true value of their relationship. People that sincerely wished me to be happy took pains to consider everything thoroughly. They recollected what they knew about me and found not even one reason to surrender to the falsehood circulating in the village.

Why take the reins in your hands.

This occurrence served as a great lesson for both of us. Dima’s so-called friend, being a jealous and wicked person, ruined our happiness. He did his utmost to bring about a fatal collapse to the true love between two faithful hearts. That unfortunate affair taught me to avoid provokingly jealous, heartless, and artificial people. I clean my life from any false attachment.

Today I make my life a pleasant experience, awakened by grand people. The mention of any piece of news that concerns me is heart-felt when coming from a loving soul and easily forgotten when coming from a distant and unimportant acquaintance.

Conclusion

People tend to talk. We may like it or not — but they talk about us. It may aggravate you, but I would encourage you to take no notice of judgments that come from people that do not bring value to your life. Whatever they think should be considered a slight thing. It by no means should disturb the equanimity of your mind or had any injurious effect upon your appetite.

A true friend will cry and laugh with you, not at you. The one that gives you handsome compliments in your face and talks about you with much malicious philosophy behind your back is not a friend. Rejoice when you find out about some false attachment. Let this person go as far from your life as possible and wish him good-speed. Remember that the ones that stay — worth hundreds of those that had left. This is a natural life improving, beautifying process. You multiply positivity but getting rid of negativity.

By the way, it is better to be talked about. That means people find your life interesting and for sure a better topic to discuss than whatever their own existence presents. So, let them do what they please and continue to live as YOU please.

Stay tuned…