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Personal Growth

My Mentor Was Dyslexic and Taught Me The Value of Smart Reading

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What quality reading does to our brain

I wanted to be a creature whom ‘Smart’ does not even slightly describe… – Olya Aman

Many years prior to the days of our acquaintance, my mentor was considered a dyslexic child. He had trouble matching the letters, struggled to read fluently and spell words correctly.

My mentor, Maks, can intoxicate every person individually with his great bright voice, hoarse and rich, sudden, and intensely accurate. Saying things enlightening and captivating, he can describe any event from his life and the life of the world around fully and without hyperbole and still catch unmitigated attention of everybody around.

My notebooks, one in particular, are covered with expressions of his wisdom. I’m the witness of his ineffable teaching — How to eliminate our troubles by growing a hunger to read.

I will put you wise using his own words:

Read a Good Book and Energize Your Brain

Reading makes our brain omnipotent. By processing written material, we encourage our brains to work harder and better. Almost like after a visit to a gym, when our muscles still remember the strenuous stretch and weight, our brain expresses a shadow activity at a specific region that was stimulated.

Maks has a great understanding of the brain and his learning disability. He explained to me that dyslexics are visual and multi-dimensional thinkers.

“Although I excelled in hands-on learning and was highly creative, I needed to put a certain dangerous effort into mastering the art of reading. I was long past the school-age when I finally could claim a label ‘normal’ for myself.”

Maks was hard, immeasurably hard on research, finding the best ways to rewire his brain. “I tried all kinds of remedial reading programs that could help me become a better reader. Every single day I was working on changing the way how my brain was processing information.”

Remedial Reading Helps to Diminishing Confusion in Our Lives

Reading decreases stress. You transport yourself into a different situation and positively affect your daily life with uplifting literature.

Maks made his Dyslexia (‘word blindness’ — how it is called sometimes) not an insurmountable obstacle in a process of education, but a problem to be solved — an opportunity to express personal motivation; a trigger to combat an enemy and win the battle on the arena of education.

“I’ve discovered the relationship between reading and stimulation of particular regions of the brain. Today it is a base for the emerging field of literary neuroscience. My life is an example that even a dyslexic reader can fix his problem with the right approach to a book.”

Maks often stresses that by challenging our brain, we keep ourselves upright together with our cognitive abilities. “There are many benefits in the ensemble of mind improving reading exercises. It even can ward off dementia.”

“Behind our eyes lives a world of undiscovered. And to start a journey of self-digging and improvement is never late. There are special techniques, new emerging programs, even specifically created fonts to help us become better readers.”

The Value of Close Reading

Reading is not just fun, it is beneficial for our mental health. Reading stimulates our analytical abilities, heighten our focus and concentration.

Breakthrough information emerges every day. Maks keeps finding new ways to improve memory, reduce stress, decrease depression, enhance imagination, improve sleep, and many more — all with the help of books, chosen smartly and intentionally.

“Reading every day not only makes our feet travel in countries not easily imagined but also explore the grounds of our abilities.”

Methods of Keeping Our Brain Active

When crossing the threshold of a new book you should think what benefit you are expecting to get from it. Making a choice in a library, you pick, quite literally, a kind of cognitive brain training, a way to use new brain regions, and it is in your power to decide where to put your focus on.

“Scientists work extensively, developing new ways to train our brain.” says Maks. “There are numerous books on simple math problems and short brain-training sessions with puzzles. By challenging ourselves, we strengthen the connections between brain cells. Devoting our time to learning something new and complex like a foreign language can protect our brain from aging.”

Conclusion

My mania for the world of reading results from the prolonged conversations with my mentor. I love the state of focus and concentration I feel every time we meet.

I think that being a victim of a great book is an honor, and I wish to get into such captivity often and do so at my leisure. There is about the entire process of reading something irretrievably and positively self-imaginary. It punctuates our lives with novel ideas and educates us in unknown areas of life.

By mastering a new field of study, we heighten our opinion of ourselves and our capabilities. Reading manifests refinement to our brain and enjoyment to our life.

A final work from Maks:

When working with great workout tools our body responds more quickly and easily to the exercise, the same happens with our brain when we chose a quality book to read. You may even feel a bit exhausted at the end, as if your body went through the exercise along with your mind.

Stay tuned…

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

6 Ways to Keep Happy Attitude in a Disabled Body

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

Introduction

T. is a lean, long-backed, large-headed Lebanese, with surly tones of his voice and coarse features of his face. We scour the country together every now and then: I – on my feet and he – on his wheels. His wheelchair is a speedy little beast, accelerated by his mighty hands and skillfully maneuvered by his flexible torso.

T. is my dear friend. I can drop a curtsy each time I see him hurrying to greet me in his very wealthy manner. You would never believe looking at his expressive and full of exhilarating energy face, that death had been hovering over him just three years ago.

1) A Rushing Torrent of Grateful Feelings

The dark night in T.’s life crept slowly on, unexpected and unwelcomed. The sun rose and sank, and he was dwindling away beneath the dry and wasting heat of fever, trying to understand the reasons why he was still alive…

A weak, thin, and pallid face was looking at him from the multi-squared mirror lights of the hospital ceiling. Outside the window the mean-looking portico showed strangers in and out, smiling and crying, old folks and newborns – all colors of countenances and personalities were passing through his painful perception for forty-three thousand agonizing wakeful minutes of his confinement to the bed.

When starting to sit down to his meals, still dispirited and sad, the realization that the chains of grief were the heaviest of all fetters came to T.’s mind. He knew that the mournful spirit he was in would only bring the end of his life closer. The belief in a higher intelligent plan and purpose was still holding him tight, not letting him sink into that despair completely.

T. needed to return to the world he belonged. And hour by hour the drop of every happy memory brought back first feeble streams of life. The fairest consolation came in disguise of a prayer. He applied himself with assiduity to the task of reviving his inner and outer strength so his family, always supporting and loving, could be proud of him.

Every generous impulse and feeling of his heart were acknowledged to bring him back from that low and solemn air to the full and blooming life around. He made off as fast as he could to lay his spirits to the ground and managed to get himself out of the bed and on his wheels with surprising speed. Every morning he called before his mind’s eye a vast amphitheater of loving faces of his dear people: his mom and dad, his brothers and sisters, his cousins and dear friends.

Grateful Feelings remind us that dear people and happy moments in the past and present should wrap us in their loving warmth and console the wounded body and soul. Regret and grief bruise the heart, making things in the world dark and gloomy. These feelings may force hate to prevail, so that the person that is suffering would condemn himself to abhor life and think that it pays him by the same coin. One should love life worse than it loves him and live only by that motto.

2) Life and Death in Opposition

The beauty beyond the tomb, when it is accepted in the very heart, can shed a gentle glow upon life and bring a quiet happiness. T. didn’t make a coffin of his heart and sealed it away. He didn’t let his life be buried in the pages of a death book. The gift of life is enormous and the only way to make an effort to pay back for it is to try your utmost to live to the fullest contentment, so that the bliss of your love towards the world around charges it with positive energy.

The contradictory emotions T. felt brought greatest interest and eagerness to his life. Sorrow still was tingling through his veins, but it raised the rattling exaltation at the every notion that perception was able to fill his senses with. He didn’t feel his legs anymore, but that missing part of his body was substituted by strains of overly agitated nerves of his arms and spine. He followed on the track of strengthening his torso every instant he felt the need to hue-and-cry to the missing limbs.

Comparison and Contrast of life and death teach us that life is a poem and it ought to be sung down to the very bottom. Because to cease to love is worse than to die, and death is worse than suffering. We are sorry for the men and women who forced to linger here in constant pain. This feeling of compassion revives willpower of a soul, and chains of indifference, for say what you will, are the exact heaviness as chains of hovering death.

3) Elbowing Hard upon Goals

T.’s life hanged heavy on his hands even before the turning point that left him without legs. He used to ruminate long and hard trying to decide what direction to set his life forth. Being 32-years-old, he had been poring over various subjects and not over anything with enough time. He rambled at his pleasure too long, mostly spending time in the gym listening to his favorite music. It seemed a matter of impossibility to center his life around fitness and body healing strategies now when he lost almost half of it, but this idea was firmly impressed upon his mind. T. became transfixed with the desire to achieve the heights he didn’t even think possible for his fully-functional healthy past-self.

So vigorous a pursuit of a dream that T. started would make anyone wonder at the beaming of energy that he possessed. He was not ignorant of his own mind any longer: his heart was set firmly on a goal to become a physical therapist working in amputee rehabilitation. He was not mistaking the impulses of his soul – he became a world known inventor of dynamic specific strengthening exercises that flex and tone the muscles. His online teaching courses are empowering. His own experience gives him psychological advantage to motivate people who suffered a loss to set goals and move on with their lives.

4) Issuing Forth with a Mentor Beside

The impressive stateliness that radiated from T. was adopted from his mentor. The multifarious influence this person had on T.’s life helped him to not only look on nature and his fellow-men with positive reflection but gave him a clear vision of himself.

The simplicity of his mentor’s life stirred T. profoundly. This person was happy, chasing his dreams and loving his family. With neither legs no arms he was shining with heart strength and will-power. Every trace of T.’s essence strove to be worthy of the second chance he was given and to live his life limitlessly. He had that example of extraordinary idyll and threw himself headlong into the task of bringing purpose and happiness into his life.

A Person Beside that shows an example of indefatigable hope makes us forget about the despair and misery. Hope is the light that dwells in all hearts. We need to be reminded as often as it is possible about possibilities and discoveries. Life is not stationary, it drives us to new interesting days and when we see how other people manage to live those happily despite any limitations we strive to do the same.

5) Power of Giving Others a Heart to Live

T. still had a realizing sense of his weakness and captivity. But he was recovering his life-balance by an effort of willpower and desire to set an example for others. There was a dash of the divine in it – to be smashed from monotonous and tiresome life in a healthy body by a fall of a tree on a thunderous day, and to be revived to the beautiful and happy life in a wheelchair.

T. decided to never be lost amid a host of distressing feelings and regrets. He wished that something partaking of the unheard-of dream-like life would happen to him. The desire to become a role model for others gave him that spiritual illumination that shifted his life and he was ready happily to face his past, present, and future.

6) Let Only Love to Hold Your Body Prisoner

T. didn’t think that he was more than other people. He was a man like every other man and that by itself attributed exceptional importance to the task he set for himself. He conveyed a message that whatever happened to him was not a run of ill-luck but a fortunate wakeful blessing. He shared many talks on how to accept the past and devotedly love your-past-self and present-self.

He received many compassionate comments on his media channels. The influence which his sincere contented personality exercised was deep and lasting. People saw a humble person just like themselves, never repenting on his helplessness, but actually claiming to be powerful enough to uplift his own spirit and inspire others to do the same.

Love-Centered Life is a masterpiece. The creative force is in everyone and everything living on this earth. Our hopes and wishes when driven by love transform the world around us into an art gallery where you and only you make a choice what to hang on the wall of your life. Make the exposition marry and colorful. Conquer death by the force of loving ecstasy.

Conclusion

Often, we find ourselves at a crisis in our lives. The loss takes many forms: ruined health, missing limb, beloved person that was forsaken… The union of fate and belief can give us the most poignant bliss. And the passion to live life to the fullest is only gaining in strength fueled by grateful feelings, love to the life itself, and love towards yourself. The birth of day is growing brighter, more from accomplished goals than from the sun rising. The purest and most amiable generosity of other people, their truest, warmest, soul-felt teaching of flourishing despite any limitations serve as the greatest power that alleviates the sinking of soul and spirit.

Stay tuned…

Personal Growth

Enrich Your Sense of Beauty. Triumph Over Any Fashion

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How to be a WOMAN in the most beautiful sense of this word

Olya Aman
A woman dressed in confidence and love is always elegant. – Olya Aman

I was in my fifth edition, and that outfit looked just as good as four others I’d tried. I and my girlfriend have been going through my wardrobe for a good half hour now, and each succeeding combination was even braver than the previous one.

“It will be rather a lark if you wear this one to work,” she said succinctly. “I’m just in my yarn when I put things like that on,” said I, covering my bare shoulders with a gorgeous handmade shawl in pastel purple, beige, and blue flowers.

Natasha is my closest friend. The one I see only once in a few years, do not talk for months, and always feel closely attached to. She knows I follow no trends in style and look stunning in my very few outfits, bought years ago or presented by dear people. I am a minimalist when it comes to wardrobe computation. But each article of clothing is most adored and cherished by me.

I’m not beautiful in a way people used to consider facial attractiveness. Just a shade below average height, I nevertheless convey myself with an expression of assurance far beyond the ordinary. The faintest curve of humor never deserts my lips, making my face — sweet in expression, but somewhat irregular in features — charming.

Conversation

Natasha pulled out a leather pocket-book: which, like herself, was very petite, and got ready to listen. She thinks every idea I share with her can be compiled to a separate book.

Let’s see…

“A WOMAN that is in love with herself makes everything that she does beautiful. Every move she makes, every, even the most trifling thing, becomes enveloped in meaning. Her life: family, kids, career — for sure is interesting, every aspect of it. Why?”

Pay attention to yourself first.

“Because she cares about her feelings — that attention towards herself in her ‘to do’ list is primary. She gifts herself first and then she has more to share.”

“I love my kids and I want them to have a healthy, energetic, beautiful mother. That is the reason I go to my yoga class, meet my girlfriends at least twice a week, and do my exercises once a day.”

“I often need that time with just me for a company. So, I take a short, usually one-week trip every winter to whatever destination I chose.”

Work on your inner and outer self.

“I want to be interesting, that is why I am interested in many things. I read on various topics. Fashion is just one of the many. I know my colors and how to play with them. It is easy when you give yourself time to research and experiment.”

“I meet new people constantly and find new activities. I used to go to a drawing class, enjoyed it for a while, got acquainted with a couple of great people, and then transferred my attention to private music lessons. Now I can play the guitar, not very well (I need to practice more) but I consider it my personal achievement.”

Find your own style.

“I do not like shopping. But I am attentive to what is pleasing to the eye. I try my outfits, various combinations at my leisure time to get to know them better. I consider my shawls, skirts, and jackets — my friends, that is why I have only a few and love them dearly.”

“At any rate, things change so much. I don’t want to always rush to be in time, in style, in anything. I take my moment as I feel it. I collected a few good quality articles and a couple imposing accessories — and a great variety of charming smiles to my closet.”

Listen to your beautiful self.

“Everyone’s got intuition. The inner voice that never deceives. Some just forgot how to distinguish it in the multitude of whirling thoughts. Women are more sensitive. That time I spend alone helps me to find good grounds with that precious girl in me. She knows what is better for me. I do not want to be one of the crowd, I am to all appearances different, unique — and I love it.”

“I keep a close watch on how I feel in my clothes, bearing philosophically the judgment of others. When freed from the demands and expectations, you live in harmony with yourself. We, by no means, need not lose ourselves in chasing trends.”

My advice to beautiful ladies

A woman dressed in confidence and love is always elegant. You triumph over any fashion when enough time is given to renew your inner tranquility. Labor tenderly in enriching your sense of beauty. Meet with intelligent people, go to interesting gatherings, fascinate your mind with thought-provoking books… and feel good in the garments you wear. Let your inner organization be your guide in choosing a dress as a friend that will be fond of your body and a companion to your soul.

Stay tuned…