Questions about how to restore inner peace, how to avoid stress and how to eliminate it are perhaps the most frequently asked. Well, here it is. In this episode I am talking about some principles and techniques I’ve learned, used and taught over the last three decades. Of course, this is not the whole program. This are just some points, but you can take and use it. They work, at least for me and for people I taught them to.

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As far as I see it, Everything we do in life is a part of cause and effect chain. This includes any disbalance, any accidents, illnesses, as well as any preventive measures or remedies. Sometimes we don’t even look at them as preventive measures because they become part of how we live. Try to drive or ride a bike with your eyes closed. It may sound silly. Don’t you think that keeping your eyes on the road while driving is a pretty good preventive practice? What happens if you don’t? You may….. ehh…. you fill in the blank yourself. Don’t you think washing your hands is a preventive measure? Sometimes it can even be a matter of survival. As well as quality of food we put in our body. Hopefully we won’t need to deal with these kind of extremes, but I guess I made my point.

Our mind works the same way. Our mental health depends on two major factors: what we put into our mind, and, as a result – where we keep our consciousness. If you close your eyes while driving on a freeway, it makes no difference for how many decades you have been driving. If you stop following basic hygiene rules, you body won’t care for how long you’ve been good before. Same with your mind. Once you get your eyes off the present moment, you start getting off the road. Usually drifting away is not as obvious right away as driving off the freeway, getting into the accident or feeling sick from food poisoning. But inner disbalance will manifest itself the way we discussed in my previous episode. And it is not always pretty.

Everybody gets an equal opportunity to get out of balance regardless of the length of practice. One Zen teacher told me once, that Zen teachers lose it sometimes as well. They just know better how to get back into present moment and not to judge anybody, including themselves. I don’t know if it makes you feel better or worse knowing that you have to follow certain guidelines for the rest of your life. Or for as long as you like keeping your balance. Well, that is your choice. As well as washing your hands, brushing your teeth, taking a shower, exercising, choosing the food to eat and many other daily things we do.

When I started my training, I did not know anything about motivation or keeping myself on track. I was a teenager. One thing I remember which was important for me then, and which is still number one rule for me, is having fun. I cannot over-emphasize the importance of having fun for me, in order to keep doing what I am doing. However, the definition of fun can be different for different people. I read years ago that all, and I mean ALL behavior is motivated by some kind of positive emotion. Maybe one day I will bring a guest to talk about psychology of motivation. But today let’s just keep it simple, keep it fun. I like changing my training routine, by using different sequence of exercises or using a totally different approach. Yes, this requires educating myself constantly. For example, I just recently bought two new videos produced by one of our coaches about using medicine ball for body conditioning in Russian Systema. And it is fun for me. Constant learning may not appeal to everybody, but I really like it. Find out what is fun for you, and find ways to implement it. You may need to talk to several different coaches to find a style that fits you.

There are several fundamental principles for techniques I use to help me restore inner peace

1. Our body is just a machine, and our brain is a dash board of this machine. Neither our body nor our brain have any thoughts, make any judgements or decisions. Our mind does. The brain does not know the difference between real and fake. It will follow the lead of our mind. Whatever we tell ourselves, will go.
2. Every thought creates some kind of body response. Moving eyebrows, clenching your teeth or fist, moving your tows, shrugging your shoulders. Those are too obvious. But there are also micro movements. One of assignments I got from my Zen teacher is to identify where in my body I feel every thought I have.
3. Mind-body connection is bi-directional. Emotions will trigger physical response, and physical movement will create emotional response. There is even exercise that teaches to mirror your partners body position and facial expression in order to try sensing their mood. When you feel good, you may smile. Have you heard that smile is contagious? You smile at somebody, and the person get the smile. That smile will affect other person’s mood. Just another example of this bi-directional connection. You might have heard about diaphragmal breathing. Use your diaphragm. There’s a lot of tension in those muscles in case of stress. Putting them to work during breathing will release the tension, and will diminish the strength of the though that created the tension. Again, bi-directional connection. Circle walking I described above is based on the same principle: neutral movement creates neutral body response.
4. Finally, as I already mentioned previously, don’t fight with your thoughts. Bi-directional connection comes very handy in this process. When our thoughts and emotions get out of control, we still have some control over our body. Even if we don’t know how to identify and relax specific muscles.

Physical control over body, combined with distraction created some techniques I call collateral relaxation techniques. In my video I will show the one I use called “Calmness”. It combines gentle facial self-massage, breathing and visualization. I visualize quiet morning lake when I do it. The technique starts with touching my forehead between my eyebrows with all 5 fingertips put together. As I inhale, I open my hand and very lightly massage around my eyes. On the exhale I massage around my nose and mouth, ending up under my chin. So I get figure 8 massage pattern on my face. It is much easier to show than to talk. So stay tuned for a video. The shape of the move is not critical. Touching the face does help relaxation. The specific move we do was designed to make sure it is not used in every day routine, like washing your face, for example. By combining physical movement, breathing, light massage, touching facial acupressure points, visualization and even words like “I am relaxed”, we program our body to associate this specific move with all those factors of relaxation. However, this move has to be practiced long before it is needed. Like I said before, dig your well before you’re thirsty. And you need to practice it when you are indeed relaxed, so body will remember that relaxed state.

What happens when you need to relax? You just use physical component of the exercise. You perform the move several times, just the move, and muscle memory triggers those images of relaxed body and morning lake. And, what is really important here, you don’t fight with your emotions because don’t tell yourself to relax if you don’t feel like relaxing. You don’t go agains your emotions, frustration or anger. You just let it be there, and you do something totally unrelated to anything you do, since the move you do is not used for anything in your daily routine. It is not attached to anything at all, other than your relaxation experience. And, what is so great, we can take it and use it anywhere! This is some kind of miniature escape we create in our mind.

But when it doesn’t work, then we may need a real escape. Forces of Nature may be a good resource to use. Nature is the best to begin with. That’s why even in our calmness exercise we  visualize a quiet lake. In a nutshell, the Nature is using the same mechanism as we use in a previous exercise. Or rather we model it after Nature. But the magnitude of those emotions created by magnificent World around us is so great, that it overpowers our own emotions. And it does not contradict with our feelings. I guess even if it did it would not make much difference because of the power of the World. But it doesn’t. It just fills us up with really amazing vibes and takes us away from what we were up to.

Real Nature escape is not always possible. But visualization can be a pretty helpful replacement. I’ve used the painting technique quite a few times, and I taught it to other people.

If I have a strong emotion, or thought that just doesn’t go away, I visualize the picture this emotion was created by. Maybe family situation, personal or business matter. Whatever that was, I visualize it. Then I take an imaginary brush, which is always with me, of course, and I cover the image that boggles me with imaginary white paint. I can add physical hand movement like I am really painting. Usually it takes more than one layer to cover the picture. I go up and down and side to side. Then repeat until the image is completely gone in my mind. I remember getting to the point when I could not even make myself remember what the picture was before I painted over it. So I can testify that it really works. After the picture is gone, I take another imaginary brush, usually smaller, and paint some nice landscape. No, I am not an artist, and I don’t paint in real life. I just pretend I paint, and I imagine something beautiful. I like Nature, and this is what I replace the annoying image with. For me it may take several applications, and I do it as needed.

I tried several variations. For example, I can imagine a fire hose in my hand, and I wash annoying picture off like a gratify on the wall. Or I can imagine the troublesome image as a drawing on the large piece of paper,  which I can rip off the wall and find a window behind through which I can see a nice landscape. What do I do with a paper? I tear it apart, through it in the trash can and sometimes burn. Use your imagination.

Notice, that none of these tricks is suggesting telling yourself that your feelings are not real. They are. We just get them out of the sight. Let them be there, unnoticeable, invisible. And if they come back into your sight like bullies, we are not gonna push them away. We will go away, we will distract our mind with another imaginary picture. Remember what I said before, our brain does not know the difference between imaginary and real. It will make real whatever you say.

As I mentioned before, these are all just simple exercises to help maintaining the center and dealing with small emotional distractions and temporary inner disbalance. Kinda an emotional fitness. But I am not a shrink, and I do not diagnose or treat any psychological or emotional disorders, nor do I give any psychologist advices. If you feel like things are totally out of control, please find a specialist to help you.

There’s much — much more to this than just a short talk on the internet. Eventually I will talk about various meditation techniques I’ve learned. There will be audio and video. In the meantime, I’d like to hear from you. Tell me if you have any experience with downtime and/or negativity in your life, and what did you do to get out. If you have questions, feel free to contact me at HealthyPositiveLifestyle@gmail.com. You can find me on the FaceBook as Healthy Positive Lifestyle or you can follow me on Twitter @HPLPodcast