Beautiful Life, foundations I, foundations II, foundations III, foundations IV, foundations V, Unity Radio

March 16, 2020 (cynthiaoccelli.com)

Sweet friend,

I care about how you feel right now. My goal for this note is to anchor you in your center, empower you to choose your strongest self, and soothe and steady you.

This note is a work in progress and I will continue to add resources to strengthen and ground you during this challenge. Please leave your comments and questions or use the contact us button on the bottom of the page. We are going to get through this. How you feel as you get through it is my concern.

xo,

Cynthia

Virtually the whole world is experiencing the impacts of measures to control the current viral pandemic. It’s alarming to witness entire countries close borders and stores and cancel flights, services, and events. It’s tragic that some people who contract the virus do not recover. All of this is factual and beyond your control.

Many people are cascading through intense cycles of fear in reaction to these out of control events and they’re panicking, hoarding, feeling paranoid that their very survival is at stake. Feeling and behaving this way is not beyond your control. In fact, this is the area you have great dominion over, your internal state.

Emotion is moving energy. It moves in our bodies and is highly contagious. Sadness, anger, joy, patriotism, and celebratory feelings are all examples of emotions that spread when enough people feel them. Fearful emotions spread like wildfire.

Check-in and Change

Before you read on, check-in with yourself. Be honest, no stiff upper lips or stoicism. How are you doing? Do you feel safe? Are you a little off? Or is everything inside you spiraling? Whatever your answer, it’s okay. Recognize it without judging it. Observe it. It’s not you. It’s a feeling.

This page is a resource designed to guide you to a grounded, centered state of fortitude.

Let’s get to work.

Listen to this show for audio to go with this page: Be the Eye of the Storm

Prime Yourself To Grasp This Information – Breathwork

Okay, I am working from the premise that you have done the breathwork in the drop-down above.

Right now, in the midst of change and uncertainty, you can work to help yourself into an increased state of calm and centered wholeness.

This note is broken into sections to speak to different aspects of this challenge and your mind. All of them are designed to put your feet on the ground and pull your mind out of fear. You can read it in order, or go to a header that feels interesting right now. Go to whatever you can grasp and then go back to what you skipped.

Challenge Navigation Guidelines

Here are some guidelines for handling this and most any significant challenge. Click the rule for an explanation of the guideline. Take them slow. Read each one and reflect on it. Take one into meditation. See yourself becoming better able to control your inner world. Your outer world will reflect your changes. This is the most important work.

I understand how my thoughts interact with my body and health.

Nothing happens in a vacuum; there is a connection at every level. Every act impacts someone or something else. This is true within our bodies too.

The CDC cites stress at the leading cause of disease. If you are living in stress, it is exacerbating all of the challenges you’re facing.

“Certain types of chronic and more insidious stress due to loneliness, poverty, bereavement, depression and frustration due to discrimination are associated with impaired immune system resistance to viral linked disorders ranging from the common cold and herpes to AIDS and cancer.  Stress can have effects on hormones, brain neurotransmitters, additional small chemical messengers elsewhere, prostaglandins, as well as crucial enzyme systems, and metabolic activities that are still unknown.  Research in these areas may help to explain how stress contributes to depression, anxiety and its diverse effects on the gastrointestinal tract, skin and other organs.” Stress.org

In addition to causing physical aging and disease, stress blocks inspiration, creative flow and the ability to see the bigger picture. From this contracted space we cannot create success, happiness, health or joy.

What is stress?
Stress is the result of your thinking. It comes from your thoughts about what you’re focusing on. Whether something is stressful or not is highly subjective. Many people experiencing today’s global challenge are not feeling stressed. I am among them.

I am not superior. I don’t have special qualities. I have lived a life that’s presented massive upheaval and life-changing challenges and it taught me that I can control what I allow to occur inside of me. I can control what I focus on. I can choose not to undermine myself or allow outside influences or circumstances to undermine me. I have worked myself up into frenzies that left me trembling in corners and relegated to desperation so intense that I just gave up.

At the bottom, I discovered how to operate my mind and body. I learned how my systems work and that if I wanted to thrive and connect with higher forces, I had to live at that level of energy.

The good news is you can learn and practice this for yourself and change the way you show up and feel during challenges.

Here’s a look inside the body’s response to your thoughts about events. Remember when you perceive life as scary and threatening you feel stressed. When you perceive life as an experience with challenges that you can handle you feel empowered. The state you end up in dictates your what how your autonomic nervous system responds.

Your body’s autonomic nervous system is made up of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. Here’s a table and a graphic to illustrate their different effects. While you read, consider which system is most often activated in your body?

Parasympathetic Response – Relax and Renew	Sympathetic Response – Stress and Defend
decreased blood pressure	increased blood pressure
hormones of relaxation and regulation flow (acetylcholine, oxytocin)	stress hormones spike and circulate (cortisol, epinephrine)
body relaxes and feels safe	body readies to flee from danger
digestion increases as blood flows	digestion slows as blood is diverted
feel calm, relaxed, able to assess circumstances patiently, reasonably, flexible thought, open to higher solutions, responsive	feel anxious, charges, unable to rest, or think with altitude, hyper-vigilant, and over-focused, reactive

There’s a lot you can do to help reduce stress reactions and move back into a state of relaxation and renewal. Here are some approaches:

1) The breathing process shared at the opening of this page when practiced for more than four minutes helps move the body from a stress reaction to the relaxation response.  Click here to go to it.

2) Meditation. Meditation is not thinking with your eyes closed. That’s actually going to allow you to stay stressed and will not create any changes. Meditation is a fast from thinking. Focus on your breathing. If you find it challenging to get quiet. Follow a guided meditation. I have some free ones here.

3) Massage and touch. If you’re home with healthy loved ones massage each other. If you have a pet, devote 10-15 minutes to just petting and connecting with them. If you’re alone, use a pleasant oil and rub your own hands, arms, neck, and shoulders. All of these bring you into the present and help the body relax.

4) News and media fast: Smartphone use has been shown to increase heart rate and lower autonomic nervous system activity. Take a break from all electronics and get back in touch with living in the present without being bombarded with fear-inducing information.

5) As mentioned in another section of this note, exercise has a miraculous effect on relaxation, hormones, depression, and well-being. It’s like taking anti-depressants. Find something that works for you at this time. Yoga (I do video classes on Youtube). Walking in nature. Stretch and do 20 push-ups, 50 squats, and 30 sit-ups (work up to this and take your time). Repeat 2-4 times if you’re conditioned. Clean your house with passion. Dance. Get creative.

6) Get into nature. If this is possible for you, do it. Get out under the sky and trees. Breathe and let nature restore and ground you.

7) Cultivate pleasure. What makes you feel really good and has no negative consequence? Do that. This rules out barrels of bonbons and a 72 hour Netflix fest. Consider being creative. Do you like to draw, paint, write, dance, sing?

I distinguish between what I can and can’t control.

Let go, release, step-away from everything that you have no influence over. Say a prayer and take your focus off of fear-based what if’s. Invest that energy into something you can impact (your health, your home, your mind, helping others in safe ways). 

Do something about what you can control.

What you can control:

– CDC’s recommendations for preventing the spread of the virus (click here to see them). It’s wise to be informed and to take proactive precautions. Take them for yourself and for your fellow humans. Accept them. Practice them. Move forward.

-Your emotional and behavioral response to this event.

-Who you talk with about this event.

-Your mental diet. This includes what you watch, read, and think about. Choose a reputable source of information and check it once or twice a day for information that may be relevant to your area and situation. Do not leave the news running, repeatedly check it on your phone, listen to news radio shows or other mediums that deplete and incite fear. Listen to my podcasts and radio shows here. I promise to leave you better off at the end of every show.

-Your physical diet, activity level, sleep hygiene, and internal well-being.

-The kindness, care, love, generosity, and compassion you give yourself and others.

–Your ability to find positive ways to use this time at home. Clean up. Organize. Exercise. Write. Read. Learn a language. Grow.

What you can’t control:

-The media and its scare tactics

-Panic-stricken and hysterical people. Your best chance to change them is to model being genuinely grounded and centered. Invest in you.

-Events outside of your home, family, or business. Let go.

-Politicians and community leaders. Do vote for what your calm heart and rational mind tell you.

-The daily shifts, surprises, and changes inherent to this event. Let go.

I know that my sound mind makes better choices and creates better outcomes.

Worrying, agonizing, doomsday prophesying, dark fantasies, and other wild rides into the abyss of your creativity, negativity, and imagination do nothing but weaken you mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Hypervigilance and worrying do not stop events from happening in the future. They rob you of present joy, sap your mental capacity, drain you emotionally, and undermine your health with stress hormones.

To thrive in the face of challenge and go on to better days, you must assert authority over your inner world and all that you can control.

Mental discipline is key here. If you tend toward spiraling out of control, interrupt the pattern by taking your attention completely off of the crisis. You do have the power to do this. Do the breathing exercise at the top of this page. You cannot successfully do this exercise and continue to ruminate or analyze in your mind.

Remind yourself often that by remaining gripped by negative thoughts and imaginings you are reducing your ability to make good choices and handle challenges. Further, your upset doesn’t change the events at all.

It is as though you’ve shown up to a battle with an opponent you have a strong chance of defeating and instead of dealing with them, you attack yourself.

Don’t empower the challenge.