Transcending Pain

One of the more important processes that I think is life enhancing is the ability to control the states/feelings/emotings in your mind, heart and body.

And a key paradigmatic skill in this domain is the ability to control pain. I have always planned to blog on this, 'cause I think most people shy away from consciously skilling themselves in this area, or even thinking about it very deeply. Which means that when inevitably they experience a period in their lives in which paining is occurring, they are unable to cope and transcend the experience.

So I've become a 'collector' of strategies and skills for controlling paining and have done a number of ascetic practices to build and consolidate these skillings. I enjoy transcending paining. It's a skill that allows me to know that no matter what happens in life, I'll be able to cope with it, learn from it and transcend. In today's blog I'd like to share some great strategies for overcoming pain and describe what/how specifically to use your thoughts, mind and neurology to do controlling of paining.

I've personally used all these techniques in situations such as surgery without anesthesia, dental surgery without anesthesia or pain relief, meditating naked in the snow, plunging into ice cold water and deliberately burning through the flesh on my arm as a means of indelibly proving to myself that I know how to control my paining circuits and neurology. Thirty years on, the scar on my inner forearm stands as eloquent testimony to how learnable it is to transcend pain, and I am justifiably proud of this skill. (Though let me make it clear, I'm not a proponent of self-harming.)

Pain as a signal

PAIN = Please Acknowledge Information Now

Pain is a signal from one part of your brain/mind/body that there is something not right and needs attending to. This signal can be a message to your immuning processes to do healing, it can be a message from your muscles that you are overdoing an activity and need to slow down or even a message from your heart that one of your relationships needs attending to.

As long as you ignore the message - the signal - the emotional experience of pain will continue and will increase in intensity and salience. However, once you acknowledge the signal, acknowledge the part of your unconscious multi-mind that is attempting to communicate the message of dis-ease or dis-order, then the emotional valence of the signal will disappear. It's quite amazing how this works. Controlling pain is in large measure a process of acknowledging and negotiating between parts of your mind/body.

I always find that there are two key components to any pain experience - the nervous system signal of information and the 'hurt' or emotional/feeling component of the paining. When you can learn to separate these, acknowledging the first, you'll find you can easily dissipate and transcend the second.

De-nominalising Pain

Another key insight into 'how' to do this process is to realise that 'pain' is a disguised verb, it's a nominalisation, a process turned into a noun, a thing. You don't 'have pain' instead, the reality is that you 'do' paining with unconscious competence.

Paining is a skill. And the power of this insight is that the skill has structure and sub-skills. By learning and refining your abilities in paining you can easily learn to transcend the experience and gate on and off both the signal, the outcome of the signal and the emotional valence of the signal.

You have to do this ecologically however, otherwise your powerful unconscious mind/body system will do whatever it can to attempt to get you to shift the behaviours that are causing the issue. Pain communicates that all is not right in your world and you need to make some changes.

Acknowledging the signal and setting the appropriate changes as outcomes typically shifts your phenomenological experience of the paining and allows you to free up your energy and resources to make the required changes.

Techniques

Based on these insights and distinctions, here are some of the more useful techniques and strategies that I've found to work very powerfully, and along with each one I've provided a link to a reference book in which you can learn more if you choose to do this:

Thong Len – Tibetan technique of breathing in pain from someone else and breathing out healing and wellness. The technique is based in part on the emoting of love and compassion.

"Thong Len is a meditative technique developed by Tibetan Buddhists almost 800 years before the discovery of anesthesia. It's explained in that classic of Tibetan Buddhist thought, the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. It works by imagining someone else's pain, like a burn, and drawing it into oneself. As you take the pain from others, your own hurt disappears."

[From: What Buddhists Know About Science]

Mental Ataraxis – Psychiatrist Ainslie Meares' technique of systematic relaxation of mind and body. This is a particularly powerful technique and a delightful experience. It's a life enhancing skill that I think every intelligent person should learn and practice. I can't recommend his book 'Relief Without Drugs' too highly and have bought many many copies over the years for friends, colleagues and family.

Third Position/Dissociation – American Indian technique of floating up above and looking down on your body [From: Education of LittleTree, by Forrest Carter].

NLP Burn Off in the Sun Swish Pattern – Based in part on the NLP Swish Pattern and NLP Submodality shifts. Make an image of the pain and then shoot the image off to the Sun and burn it up in the image of the Sun way in the distance, make a zooming and burning up sound as you zoom that image into the distance, getting smaller and smaller till it disappears in the Sun. Repeat 3 or more times.

Submodality Shifting and Message Acknowledgement of Pain Signals

– “Healing starts when pain is complete. Pain is completed when you look at it in detail.”

Examine the submodalities of the colour of the pain signal, the size/bigness/smallness of the pain signal and the weight of the pain signal in order to acknowledge to the unconscious mind the message of the signal. Ask yourself "How big is the pain? What colour is the pain? How much does it weigh?" Make a guess at these.

Once the message has been acknowledged, the pain signal has done its work and is no longer as painful or as necessary. After you have asked and answered the three questions, examine the paining again. Ask the questions a second time. You'll find the colour, size and weight have changed and become less intense and more manageable. Repeat a third or fourth time, till the paining has diminished. [Technique from: Enemy Mine, by Barry Longyear and Edward Khmara, Charter Books, 1985]

Self Hypnosis – Deep Relaxation and talking to the Unconscious Mind to remove pain experience and feel relaxed and at ease.

TENS Technology

Another very useful tool for controlling pain is a TENS device. TENS stands for Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation - and is a great technology that can be used to gate off and control pain and help relax and induce healing. These inexpensive devices are life saving if you ever get a pinched nerve or pulled/strained muscle. I would never be without one in my medicine cabinet. They really work! Yes, I could use the other techniques described above to control and transcend the paining of a pulled muscle. However, it is far more effective to combine the mind techniques with the healing massage effects of a TENS.

Why learn these skills?

For me, the larger more encompassing issue of why you would want to learn to control paining, is the life enhancing importance of learning to control the states/feelings/emotings in your mind, heart and body. When you are able to control your own states, you are no longer at the mercy of the contingencies of reinforcement around you. Other people and situations no longer have the power to negatively impact you. When you can calm abide through the vicissitudes of life, you can more easily do compassion for yourself and others. This truly enhances your life.

So I truly do recommend that you start to learn and practice controlling your mind/body state. Pick one of the strategies above and begin to learn about it in detail and practice it. Once you've mastered these skills, you will thank yourself again and again. State control is incredibly life enhancing.


wishing you wellness and love
Grant

Life Enhancing Devices

Ok, thought it was time I listed out my favourite LEDs (Life Enhancing Devices) and why I think they're so good. Some of them I've already specifically blogged about. Some of them I'll blog about in detail in coming entries.

As you read the list, think about the devices in your life that really add value to it and to you. What are they? How do they enhance and augment your life?

Read the list I've shared here and then please leave a comment about what's on your list. What are the most Life Enhancing Devices you own and wouldn't be without? What would you recommend?


Mind Machine - Brainwave Entrainment Device

Number one on my list. This is the most Life Enhancing Device I own. It's fantastic. At the touch of a button you get transported into the selected mind state, drifting off and returning at the programmed time. It's relaxing and revitalising. It feels wonderful. I LOVE it!!! (Read more about it here)

emWave Heartmath Biofeedback Device (and other similar biofeedback devices)

A great LED for controlling your autonomic nervous system and getting in touch with your heart-brain. This technology allows you to access deep meditative states and relax your whole mind/body. I highly highly recommend biofeedback devices such as the emWave.

Sound machine & Delightful Wakeup Device

Ahhhhh, the peaceful sound of the surf, a waterfall, or even the delightful tones of rain on the roof, all at the touch of a button. Such a great way to sleep and to overcome the inevitable ambient noises of living amongst other humans. Combine that with a clock that allows you to wake up to your own choice of CD or MP3 or Nature Sound and you have a wonderful way to start your day, peacefully refreshed and delightfully awoken. I mean, who the hell likes to be alarmed by the rauckus sound of an alarm clock or some radio announcer telling you the terrible news of the day...

Motorbikes

Yay! Petrol-sexual devices. I love them! Motorbikes, sportscars... LED's that allow you to move through space, go places and are optimised for fun, acceleration, control and connecting and enhancing yourself through velocity, movement and space.


Kayaks

Watercraft such as kayaks and canoes are such wonderful LEDs for gliding across the liquid medium, enjoying meditative experiences, while getting great exercise and seeing places that are not accessible otherwise. I can't recommend kayaking as a life enhancing sport too highly. Give it a go. You'll likely enjoy it immensely.


Computer/Internet

Yup, if computers and the web aren't life enhancing, then I don't know what is :-) They have opened out, expanded and automated our lives in ways that were almost unimaginable 50 years ago. We can now connect around the world, cheaply and interactively. The web is like a giant brain, filled with information and knowledge that you can google in a second. Whether its buying stuff you would never have been able to source previously, connecting with people of similar interests that you would never have been able to find previously or finding answers, advice or information that you would never have found before the web, the internetworked mesh of computers and minds is the most incredible Life Enhancing Device we have. My advice is to keep riding the wave of accelerating change and stay up to date with your web technology. Lead the change and reap the benefits.


TENS

Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation - a great technology that can be used to gate off and control pain and help relax and induce healing. These inexpensive devices are life saving if you ever get a pinched nerve or pulled/strained muscle. I would never be without one in my medicine cabinet. They really work!

MP3 Player

Wow! The ability to take my whole music collection anywhere I go - to listen to anything I want, whenever I want. Small, light, inexpensive and portable. I can listen to music, personal development talks, academic lectures and historical recordings of famous people. Do I need to say more? The MP3 player is truly a Life Enhancing Device.


Massage Chair

Gotta love a leather reclining swivel chair that has multiple levels and modes of massage. Sit back, set the program and for the next 20 minutes be massaged and relaxed. It's heaven! Combine this with the Mind Machine, and you are transported to another world!


Snowplay Equipment

Snow is the most magical material. It transforms the world into a fairyland. And the ability to ski or board on it... to glide down slopes, x-country through trees and forests. To camp in it. Play in it. It's one of the most wonderful and life enhancing experiences I can think of. If you've never learned to ski or snowboard, do yourself a life enhancing favour, and do it. Book in for a snowplay holiday, take lessons and enjoy the ride of your life!


Musical Instruments

The ability to make music is wonderful. To lose yourself in the sound and the auditory-kinesthetic experience. Combined with modern digital technology and given how inexpensive musical devices and instruments have become, you'd have to be crazy not to add some to your life and learn how to use them. Whether its a traditional acoustic guitar or an electronic drum machine, it's a wonderful life enhancing and expanding experience to be able to create music and melody in your life.


Wilderness Hiking Equipment

I love being out in nature, in the wild. Just me, the equipment I'm carrying on my back and wilderness. I love the immediacey of it. I love how you have to respect it and move intelligently through and with it. Nature can kill you if you don't pay attention. There's no abstractions here. No buffering. It makes me feel so alive and refreshed. And wilderness hiking equipment LED's allow me to control the risk of the experience and to move safely and comfortably through the environment.


Home Theatre

Amazing. A theatre in the comfort of your own home. The BIG screen and surround sound, with Active Sub-Woofer experience, anytime you feel like inserting a DVD and hitting the remote control buttons. Gotta love that! No hopping in the car and driving to a Cinema. No lines. No noisy, feet on the back of your seat, rustling of pop-corn distractions. No waiting for the movie to start. Get yourself a couple of Gold-class leather recliners, a home theatre system with a roll down screen and digital projector. Damn inexpensive these days. And you're in movie heaven. Now that is Life Enhancing! :-)


Breadmaker Machine and Coffee Machine

You wake up to the mouth-watering aroma of fresh baked bread and freshly brewed coffee. All automated and programmed the night before. I mean, can the day start any better than that? Yep, I think I have to add these to the list of totally Life Enhancing Devices.


Spa and Sauna

Lay back in the warm bubbly water. Relax. Let the jets and bubbles soothe those cares away. A home spa and sauna has got to go on the list of LEDs. These days they are quite affordable and definitely worth the investment in pampering yourself and delighting your senses.


Digital Cameras

How cool is it to be able to take photos and videos of pretty much any aspect of life you want! And so damn cheaply. Then to be able to display them immediately. To back them up. Print them out on your own printer. Display them on your home theatre. Or, (and here's another LED) display them on a LCD Picture Frame. I loooooove digital cameras. They've allowed me to capture images of so many of my adventures and life experiences that I would otherwise never have been able to afford to capture in the days of analogue/film cameras.

These days I've got underwater POV digital cameras, that strap on my helmets and can record full audio visual capture of my kayaking, snow boarding and motor bike riding adventures. I've got a watch that's a digital camera. A dental digital camera for looking at and recording my teeth with 40x zoom (go figure, it was so damn cheap I figured I may as well have one, so I can look at what's going on in there). And a myriad of other digital cameras. Combine all these with some good Video editing software and you can create wonderful movie and slide show experiences to capture and share your memories. My helmet cam even has a button that allows me to automatically upload the vids to Youtube. Gotta love that :-) Yup, I truly think digital cameras are life enhancing.


Mobile Phones

Yeah, I know. Everyone has one. But if you are old enough to remember BM (Before Mobiles), you'll know just how life enhancing they are. The ability to connect via phone, txt and email, anywhere, anytime, has to be up there as life enhancing. And with mobiles now becoming full-on entertainment devices and rolling in a lot of the functions of the LEDs described above, means they just get better and better.



Ok, there's my list. So what's on your list? What are the 3 top LED's in your life?

Please click on the comment icon below and share your list. I'd love to hear your thoughts and learn what you and other people think or feel are life enhancing devices.


smiles and cheers
Grant

Future Pacing is Life Enhancing

Blu-tacked high on my bedside table, in a position I can easily see every morning when I awake and every evening before I drift off to peaceful slumber, is a delightful sign that my beloved made, that says:

"Future Pace for a life of Excellence!"

The sign is filled with stars and sparkles and beautiful artistic colours, and reminds me to do 'Future Pacing' each morning and every night.

Future Pacing is an NLP technique that is incredibly life enhancing, so it's time I shared it with you. It's also quite germane to the beginning of the New Year - a time when people do a usually ineffectual form of future pacing called the 'New Year Resolution'. Hopefully, by understanding the components and competencies involved in effective future pacing, you will be better placed to do a much more life enhancing version and begin to future pace a wonderful year ahead.

You cannot NOT Future Pace

You know... Future pacing is also an underlying and ongoing process by which we construct and create our reality. You cannot NOT future pace, you are doing it all the time...

So what is Future Pacing? Let's explore that in some detail now.

Future Pacing as Mental Rehearsal

Future Pacing is a technique of mentally rehearsing and guiding your unconscious mind to produce a desired behaviour and intended outcome in a future situation. It's a request that directs your unconscious mind to generate specific patterns, behaviours and results in your life.

As Wikipedia describes it:

"Future pacing can be used to 'embed' change into the contexts of the future. It gives a person the experience of dealing positively with a situation before they get into that situation in reality. This is based on visualization where the mind is assumed not to be able to tell the difference between a scenario which is real and one which has been clearly visualized. The theory is that, having visualized positively, when the subject encounters the situation again in reality the visualized experience will serve as a model for how to behave, even though this experience was imagined. The mind cannot tell the difference between the visualization and reality so it accepts the visualization as reality and makes the change."

"Future Pacing gives your Unconscious mind the roadmap needed to easily accomplishyour goals and dreams."

So how do you do it?

First see a picture of yourself in the context or situation that you want a specific behaviour or outcome to occur. Notice how you look, what you are doing, how you sound, the qualities of your movements and actions that are occurring as you achieve your outcomes. Then step inside yourself and be associated into this experience, see what you'll see in the situation, hear what you'll hear, and feel what it's like to be successfully performing and achieving your desired outcome now.

The idea is to rehearse and associate your new behaviour to the external cues that naturally occur in the situation in which your change is desired. That way the environmental cue serves as a natural and unconscious anchor or trigger for your desired outcome.

It's similar to the NLP New Behaviour Generator technique and is most powerful when enhanced using the NLP model of hypnotic languaging that Bandler and Grinder, the developers of NLP, created through behavioural modelling of Dr. Milton Erickson - The Milton Model.


NLP Milton Model - Hypnotic Languaging

In a sense, every word you use is a hypnotic command to your unconscious mind to re-evoke the experience that is associated with the word. When you hear or say the word 'lemon' your brain re-evokes the full Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic (feelings), Olfactory & Gustatory (VAKOG) associations and experiences that the word represents (re-presents to you).

So you know that the set of phonemes that make up the word or label 'lemon' mean a yellow fruit, that tastes sour, has a tang and a citrus fragrance, can be used in cooking etc. You are likely to remember times when you tasted a lemon or had lemon juice on your tongue. You may also notice that just reading the above has caused you to start salivating, as your brain remembers what the sour taste of a lemon does on your tongue. The word is a powerful anchor that re-evokes the experience.

So whatever you think -- verbally, visually and kinesthetically -- acts like a future pace and embedded command to your unconscious patterning system. In that way, you cannot NOT future pace. Every thought is like a piece of programming to your unconscious mind. If you are about to hit a golf ball, and you say to yourself 'Don't choke, Don't miss, Don't stuff up' then your brain will picture the very thing you are saying you don't want to do, and it will act like an embedded command, a future pace, to produce the requested pattern...

There are a lot of distinctions in the NLP Milton Model on how certain sorts of words and ways of expressing yourself can act much more powerfully with the unconscious mind. Not all words or all ways of expressing yourself are as equally effective at programming the patterning system of the unconscious mind. And in future blog entries I'll talk more about the life enhancing details of this.

For now though, the life enhancing take home message is....

Everything you think acts as a Future Pace. It guides and requests your unconscious mind to produce the requested outcome. This means you have to listen to and watch what you say! And use your languaging carefully, thoughtfully, ecologically and powerfully to guide your life to what and how you want.

As Robert Anton Wilson points out in his wonderfully life enhancing book 'Prometheus Rising', our brains contain two powerful agents - a thinker and a prover - and:

"As the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves!"

There is a part of your unconscious mind that generates and recapitulates your thoughts. You bring forth into your world that which you think about.

Obviously there are physical constraints on this. It's not some mumbo-jumbo magic. You can't future pace an elephant into your living room just by thinking or saying the words. However, when it comes to generating mind/body states, to influencing your Psycho-Neuro-Immunology (the influence of the mind/body loop on health), to guiding the emotions you feel, to altering your moods and perceptions and the myriad other patterns that generate your phenomenological world... Then, as sages have pointed out over the ages, your thoughts are powerful!

So... Future Pace for a life of excellence! Every night and every morning, before sleep and before arising. Think through, plan, project and ask your powerful unconscious mind for what specifically and how specifically you want to generate your ongoing future.

It works!!! Well, it works for me and for those I've taught the technique to. And it really is incredibly life enhancing.

Future pace the quality of your sleeping and dreaming. Future pace your healthing. Future pace the quality of your waking and your day. Future pace your loving and interacting with those you care about. The more you future pace, the more successfully you'll continue to generate a wonderful life.

Future pace!!!! It truly is life enhancing.


Want to learn more, get a copy of my book: Avoiding the Enemies to HAPPINESS!

many smiles and great wishes for the year ahead
Grant


I highly, highly recommend reading RAW's wonderful and life enhancing book:

and if you are interested in reading about the powerful NLP Milton Model:

Knowledge is life enhancing

Knowledge is power, knowledge is life enhancing and I can assure you, ignorance is NOT bliss! Our brains and minds are optimised for creativity and learning. When we stop learning we stop really living. So embrace a life enhancing love for learning in your life!

Research on neurogenesis has now shown that learning stimulates the growth of new neurons. You can actually increase your brain power through learning. Research has also shown that the neural pathways through which we learn about the world tap into the same pleasure networks in the brain activated by sexuality and drugs. Learning actually produces a physical and psychological ‘high’.

So learning can be fun! Learning can be filled with pleasure! It opens you up to new opportunities. It gives you greater knowledge and skill, providing more choice and control in life. We are in a time of massively accelerating change. Learning helps keep you on the leading edge of that change.

Enhance your life by filling it with learning and on-going personal development. Read books, go on courses, take up new hobbies, gain new skills. Expand your creativity and your horizons. There’s so many fascinating new things to learn about. Enhance your life by embracing the opportunity to learn!



So what will you do? Think about it now. What new thing could you inspire yourself to start learning? What short course could you do? What non-fiction book could you read? What could you google and learn about right now?

Do something now that increases your learning and knowledge, because knowledge really is life enhancing!


Want to learn more, get a copy of my book: Avoiding the Enemies to HAPPINESS!

AND Here's some fascinating learning about your brain and neurogenesis:

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

For years the doctrine of neuroscientists has been that the brain is a machine: break a part and you lose that function permanently. But more and more evidence is turning up to show that the brain can rewire itself, even in the face of catastrophic trauma: essentially, the functions of the brain can be strengthened just like a weak muscle.

Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves

This book is a fascinating and convincing account of recent discoveries in brain neuroplasticity (i.e. its `pliability') even into old age, and the amazing implications of such discoveries.

Heart Coherence

Today I'm going to introduce you to an incredible Life Enhancing Device (LED) called the emWave. It's a biofeedback tool that you can use to powerfully control your heart coherence and therefore reduce stress and fill you heart, mind and life with positive, peaceful calm.

The effects of stress are largely due to the sympathetic nervous system’s response to perceived threat. Our autonomic nervous system is comprised of two sub-systems – the sympathetic system which is responsible for the fight and flight response; and the parasympathetic system whose role is to bring your brain and body back into homeostasis, into balance.

As you know, your gut and heart both have a brain. Each has a large independent chunk of neural tissue that acts like a little brain, taking in and processing information from your environment and responding to protect you. When the heart and enteric (gut) brains perceive a threat, they kick the sympathetic system into action and your heart starts beating faster, adrenalin and cortisol are released and all the physical stress responses fire up. It’s nature’s way of helping you get ready to fight or run.


If you looked at your beat to beat heart rate when you are in a stress response, when you have sympathetic nervous system dominance, you'd see a very unhealthy jagged graph as your heart speeds up and slows down and speeds up again, erratically racing to ready you for fighting or flighting. Conversely, when you are calm and in balance, when your sympathetic and parasympathetic systems are in balance, your heart beat traces a very smooth sine wave like curve. You can see this in the graph below, which is a screen shot from a HeartMath monitor, of my heart when I was meditating. Notice how smooth the graph is.



The measure of how smooth and evenly repetitive your heart beat is, is called Heart Coherence. It's a mathematical measure and indicates how balanced your autonomic nervous system is. It's also correlated with heart health and with a decreased stress response. So the higher the coherence score, the better it is, and the better you feel.

You can learn to bring your sympathetic and parasympathetic systems into balance and calm your head, heart and enteric brains down through a technique called the ‘heart-breath’. This is a way of focussing and breathing that sends powerful messages to your whole cybernetic loop and increases your heart coherence so that your heart, body and mind remain healthy and resilient. Given the usefulness and importance of this technique as a mechanism to control your mind/body in a very powerful way, I'm going to describe it in detail in this blog entry. Before I do though, I'm going to tell you about the emWave LED.

You can now buy a fantastic bio-feedback tool from the heartmath.com organisation that helps you learn and reinforce your skills in heart-breathing and easily allows you to see just how much heart rate coherence you are generating. I highly recommended owning and using this tool to enhance your life and happiness.The tool is called the emWave. It's a small portable device that allows you to see at a glance what your heart coherence is. It has a breathing pacer function that helps you to pace your heart breathing and a number of modes and functions to help you learn to increase your heart coherence. You can also buy a PC based version that shows you the second by second graph of your heart rate along with your coherence score and cumulative coherence score. It comes with a number of games to help you learn in a fun way to become more coherent, calm and balanced.

(And no, in case you are wondering, I have no shares or affiliation with the Heartmath organisation whatsoever, I simply think their tools and systems are Life Enhancing Devices and I’ve been using and recommending them for a number of years now. Their tools are powerful and in my experience really do work to help you quickly learn to control your autonomic nervous system responses.)

The thing I like about LED's like the emWave, is they allow you to use modern technology to learn quickly and amplify positive skills and states in your life - they are life enhancing! They cost relatively little, yet provide large positive returns in the quality of your life. They also provide objective measures of how well you are doing in controlling your mind/body. I really can't recommend highly enough that you invest in enhancing your life and gain the benefits of biofeedback technology. And now, let me share with you the details of the heart-breath technique, which you can use with or without the amplifying effects of biofeedback.

Heart-Breath

1. Imagine your breath coming in and going out through the area around your heart, in the center of your chest. Make each in-breath and out-breath last about 5 to 6 seconds.
2. As you continue to breath through your heart, recall a fun, loving or positive time in your life: A favourite friend, a special vacation a deeply loved person or something you adore. Fully re-experience and hold this positive feeling in your heart as you continue to breath through your heart.
3. Notice the emotional, mental and physical shift that occurs as your heart coherence increases and your autonomic system comes into balance.

That's it. Three easy steps that can be done free of charge, any time, any place, and no batteries required.


wishing you life enhancing balance,
smilings, Grant


And in case I've inspired you to buy yourself or someone you love the gift of an emWave:

emWave Personal Stress Reliever

http://tinyurl.com/heartmath-special

The Heart's Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy

The HeartMath Solution: The Institute of HeartMath's Revolutionary Program for Engaging the Power of the Heart's Intelligence

From Chaos to Coherence (The Power to Change Performance)

Pampering your self

You deserve to be pampered! Indeed, even more than that – you require pampering. It’s life enhancing, healthy and rewarding to enjoy a good pampering, a relaxing massage, a sublime facial, a life enhancing session of caring self indulgence.


Too often, we are bombarded with messages from society that pampering is wrong or sinful. That we don’t really deserve it. That it’s a sign of weakness. These messages are rubbish!

Pampering is about experiencing human touch and caring. Pampering is about support. It’s a reward for being alive. It stimulates your immune system. It supports feelings of warmth and lovingness which in turn heal the heart and mind.

Pampering is a celebration of being alive and enjoying the sensuousness of life. Cherish your body. Pamper it with massages and spa treatments. Have a hand, foot or scalp massage. Relax back into a warm scented bath. Surround yourself with candles and gentle sounds.

Feel good about your pampering. Every human deserves it!

Your health and balance require you to enjoy and stimulate your senses and every part of your body. This gentle, pleasurable stimulation sends messages to your heart-brain and gut-brain and brings balance to your autonomic nervous system. Pampering provides parasympathetic signaling and buffers against stress.

Make pampering a regular part of your wellness and health maintenance. A healthy mind requires a healthy body. So give yourself the life enhancing gift of joy and pleasure.

Positive psychology has scientifically shown that positive feelings and emotions produce spirals of mental and physical well-being. You truly do deserve and require a deliciously life enhancing pampering. So schedule one in right now!!!


Want to learn more, get a copy of my book: Avoiding the Enemies to HAPPINESS!

wishing you much life enhancing wellness,
smilings, Grant

Life Enhancing Dreams

“There is nothing like a dream to create the future.”

Without dreams, what is life?

Our dreams and desires create our life. They lead us to our goals and outcomes and ultimately inspire us to create the life we live. At least they do when we put life enhancing actions to our dreams.

“The only thing that will stop you from fulfilling your dreams is you.”

There’s so much that’s important to explore and understand here. So let’s dig deeper…


Dreaming Big Dreams

Dreams come from your heart’s desire. They’re motivated by your values and strengths. What is important to you? What do you value? The first step in dreaming big and inspiring dreams is to work out and get clear on your values.

You know we have a fully functioning brain in our heart – a ‘heart-brain’. Neuroscience has recently discovered that we actually have a functioning system of neural tissue consisting of over 40,000 neurons in our heart. This heart-brain connects to our head-brain and other body systems and integrates information and sends messages out across our mind and body.

There is wisdom in your heart – in your heart-brain. Your heart is the seat of your desires and many of your emotions. Learn to tune into its signals and messages. Trust your heart. Ask it:

“what will make me happy and fulfilled?”

and then listen and look for the answers it provides. It will tell and show you your dreams and yearnings. And as it does, write them up on a Dreamlist. Create a list of all the things you dream about and want – a list of what’s important and inspires you. Make a collage of photos and pictures from magazines of these things. Make it beautiful. Put it up on the wall as a poster of dreams.

Notice also whether the things you’re dreaming about are based on ‘shoulds’ versus ‘desires’. Society, family and culture fill your head with generalisations and stereotypes about what’s right and what you ‘should’ want and do in your life. Some of these ‘shoulds’ are useful, but some are restrictive and will dampen and minimise your life - they are life denying rather than life enhancing.

Question all your rules, beliefs and ‘shoulds’. Make sure your dreamlist is truly filled with what you want for your life, with what will motivate and inspire you. Remember it’s the life you lead – it’s your life and you might want to dream BIG and amazing dreams and then lead yourself in achieving them.

Dreams versus Outcomes

Here’s an important distinction: dreams are not outcomes.

Yes, that’s right, there’s a huge difference between dreams and outcomes. Dreams are those things that you desire and would love to have or do in your life. But making dreams into reality takes time, effort, money and resources. Not all dreams can come true.

For a start, some dreams are incompatible with others. I’d love to spend my life traveling the world, not living in any one place, just wandering like a gypsy from experience to experience. I’d also love to live quietly and peacefully on a mountain retreat. Living and meditating in a cave, living an austere and transcendent existence. But then, I also dream of living in a city like Tokyo or London, filled with people and life and adventure and stimulus. I can’t live all three dreams at once. They don’t match. And of course, your dreams don’t have to match. They don’t have to be sensible. That’s what outcomes are for.

You need to begin by prioritising your dreamlist. Given the time limited lifetime we have and given the cost/risk/benefits involved in achieving your various dreams, which dreams would you most like to live first? What is the one dream you’d choose if you could only choose one? What would the next one be? What sequence do you want to achieve your dreams in? Prioritise your list.

Now, let’s talk about outcomes. Outcomes are those things that you are actively working towards achieving in your life. They’re the goals, plans and results that you’re making happen in your life. Outcomes set directions that you action. And according to NLP, for success in life you need to set well-formed outcomes. A well-formed outcome is one that:

• Is positive, worded positively and says what you want rather than what you don’t want.
• Is specific and behaviourally measurable – you can see, hear and feel what it would be like to have achieved the outcome.
• Is self-initiating and self-maintaining – only relies on yourself, not on others.
• Is supported by positive beliefs.
• Is ecological – has no negative consequences to you or the people you relate with or the systems in which you live.
• Is sufficiently resourced – you have all the resources, money, time and skills you need to achieve the outcome.
• Doesn’t have anything that can prevent it – it’s physically possible and you can overcome any obstacles.
• Is linked to and motivated by a clear purpose and set of values.

You see, the way to work with dreams and outcomes is to keep dreaming big dreams, making a prioritised list of them and then when you are ready, moving your dreams one at a time into becoming clear and well-formed outcomes.

Once you have set an outcome, use the NLP Success Formula to make the outcome happen. Remember, the Success Formula is:

1. Clearly know your Outcome – know exactly what you want and ensure your outcome is well-formed, that it’s positive, achievable, believable and ecological.
2. Take positive Action – congruently and wholeheartedly take action to achieve your outcome.
3. Learn from Feedback – use your sensory acuity to determine if your actions are moving you closer or further away from your outcome. There’s no such thing as failure, just great feedback, cause if what you are doing is not moving you closer to your outcome then you need to perform the next step –
4. Flexibility – change and adjust your behaviour (step 2) till you move closer to your outcome.

To know which dreams to make into outcomes do a cost/risk/benefit analysis of each dream at the top of your list. Grab a piece of paper and put 3 columns on it, then list each of the Costs, Risks and Benefits that the dream entails. Note that costs include more than money – there are costs in time, effort and the loss of other things that achieving the dream will cost you. Note also the distinction between ‘risk’ and ‘risky’. Some things are risky – that is, they involve risk that cannot be mitigated or controlled. Other experiences have associated risks, but these can be controlled.

For example, rock climbing using a rope and protection has an element of risk that is controlled by how much protection you use and how well you place it. Free climbing with no rope, no partner and no protection is risky. You just don’t know what is going to happen and have no mitigation against accidents and harm. If a rock dislodges and causes you to fall or be knocked unconscious then you suffer the fatal results. If you used a rope and protection to control the risk, an accident will merely leave you dangling from the rope and able to be lowered so you can climb another day. It’s important to ensure that your dreams are not risky before you move them to outcomes.

Once you’ve analysed the cost/risk/benefits of your dreams you can decide which ones are worthwhile turning into outcomes. Then think them through clearly to ensure they are well-formed and redesign them or fine-tune them until they are. Now you’re ready to take action. And that’s where being gutsy comes in.

Doing Gutsy'ness

Just like we have a brain in our heart, we also have a brain in our gut – it’s called the ‘enteric brain’, and consists of a functioning neural system of over 100 Millions neurons that thinks and communicates with the other brains in our body and head.

Being ‘gutsy’ - doing gutsy'ness - involves aligning your gut with your heart and your head. The gut-brain is attuned to fear and danger and is used to evaluate and prepare for risk. It’s also the seat of courage, strength and determination.

To help yourself do ‘gutsy'ness’ – to have the courage to make your dreams into outcomes and then live them – you can use your heart-brain to talk to your enteric-brain and get all of your brains aligned.

You do this by thinking of times and situations in which you’ve been positive, strong and courageous. Fill your heart with positive, strong and loving feelings. Amplify and centre those feelings. Breathe them into your heart and chest. Then when you are really feeling the positive heart feelings, move them slowly down into your gut. You’ll experience an amazing flow of strength and motivation in the pit of your stomach, across your torso. Some people feel it as a warmth or a tingling or an uplifting sense of positive courage.

This is how you build courage in yourself. It’s how you flood your life with the passion and strength to live your dreams. Hold your dreams on high. Make them into compelling and inspiring outcomes. Align your head, heart and gut. And move yourself forward into an enhanced life of loving and fulfillment.

Invest in your Self

It is the life you lead! So lead it well. Invest in enhancing your life and your future. Build up your knowledge and skills. Determine your strengths and then build on them. Focus your life. Gain as many and as varied experiences as you can. Educate yourself. The more you invest in your self and your life, the more you’ll be able to live life enhancing dreams. Life is a wondrous adventure and there is nothing like living an amazing dream to create an amazing future now.


Want to learn more, get a copy of my book: Avoiding the Enemies to HAPPINESS!

Wishing you awesome, life enhancing dreams!
smiles, Grant



And here's some great books to help you dream BIG dreams and put them into action...


"Live Your Dreams... Let Reality Catch Up helps you discover who you are, what really motivates you and provides you with the knowledge and tools for you to choose what you want in life."

21 Days To Creating Your Dream Life

"This empowering book shows how changing the way a person thinks can radically transform their life; it is an excellent guide to help get anyone on the path to creating success and abundance. It is a step-by-step inspirational guide with real life examples to leave a powerful and lasting impact in the readers mind. It takes the reader through the necessary steps to start changing their thoughts and beliefs so they can achieve their dream life. You will learn more about how your perceptions control everything you see and hear, while providing useful life tools to create a better life."

You Can If You Think You Can: Rebound From Adversity And Follow Your Dreams

"Our true worth comes not from what others may think or say about us, but from what we believe about ourselves. Hope, encouragement, motivation and practical strategies to overcome adversity, rebuild self-esteem and fulfill one’s most cherished Dream goals is what this book is all about. It will change your attitude and change your life."

Experiencing the World

We live and experience the world through our 5 senses – indeed, we make ‘sense’ of the world through them. The more distinctions and exquisite awareness we can make through our senses the more life enhancingly we can live. Sense-uality is your ability to use your senses, to revel in them, to embrace them and the world through each and every one of your senses.


Western society has a love-hate relationship with sensuality. At one extreme, it is denigrated and seen as a selfish, frivolous waste of time. At the other extreme, the rich and famous invest incredible amounts of time, money and resources indulging in stimulating their senses and sensuality. They pamper themselves, and the rest of us look on with envy.

So what’s this all about?

Why is there such guilt and conditioning around sensuality?

Sensuality is linked strongly to pleasure. It’s also linked to sexuality. There is a fine line between sensuality and sexuality. Stimulating your senses brings you alive. It expands your awareness. It enhances your life. It allows you to connect with the world, with other people and with various parts of your own multi-mind.
Unfortunately, the Judaeo-Christian philosophy that the western world is mired in, sees sexuality and therefore sensuality as evil and sinful. This is a paradigm of coercion and control that is more about ensuring people live programmed lives in obeisance of the central authority of the church and those in political power. It is opposed to personal freedom, to personal understanding and does not encourage free thinking or the questioning of the rules and social moirés.

When you love your life sensationally, you realise and desire more freedom, choice and personal power. It’s your life, so live it well and live it in your own way. Find and follow your own destiny, not the proscribed behaviours of a societally controlled existence.

One of the keys to living a great and enhanced life is therefore to embrace your sensuality. Develop each of your senses and your ability and experience and explore the world through them. Increase your awareness to make distinctions with every sense. Let go and relax into your senses. Reprogram your habitual ways of using (or limiting) your sensing of the world – your sensuality – by doing adventures that stimulate your senses. Really celebrate and revel in your senses and sensuality. Look for what is sensuous and accept it into your life.

Of course, control and balance is vital for wondrous living. So ensure that your sensuality is balanced and grounded. Stimulate your life but don’t over-stimulate. Find the bliss-point, the sweet spot that adds value to your life’ing rather than takes away. A glass of great wine can really add to a delicious meal; a flagon of wine indulged beyond sensibility will leave you hung-over and degraded with no memory of the meal it was consumed with.

Surround yourself with beauty. Listen to uplifting music. Use aromatherapy and incense to scent your life with wonderful fragrances. Light scented candles of an evening to combine the delight of flickering ambient light with the stimulation of perfume. Step away from family rules and stereotypes to find new ways to evoke your senses. Art, photography, food, clothing, fantasy – love your self in new ways, pamper and pleasure your world with new experiences. Let go of any societally conditioned feelings of guilt about sensuality and instead embrace a life enhancing attitude of being proactive and explorative with your senses.

Your sensuality is a deep expression of your joy in being your self. So open your self to the world, accept your body through your senses and be life enhancingly ‘sensible’. You really only ever experience the world through each of your senses, so enhance your life more sensationally and you’ll gain a sense of self you could only otherwise dream about.

Want to learn more, get a copy of my book: Avoiding the Enemies to HAPPINESS!

Sensationally yours,

Grant :-)



Some sensational reading you may enjoy:

“A meditation on sensory experience that weaves personal experiences with history, science, philosophy and theology for a wide-ranging approach to our centuries-old but undissipated curiosity about the origins of pain and pleasure…. An erudite work.”

“Come to Your Senses is a unique approach that can change your life. These simple techniques may even save your life!”

“In Meta-Magick, Philip Farber combines traditional ritual sensibilities with contemporary concepts of neuro-linguistics.”

“Professor Lingis shows how new conceptions of sensation, sensibility, sensuality, and susceptibility enable us to discover the intelligibility of our sensuous environment.”

Loving your mind

"The key to success is to focus our mind on things we desire not things we fear."

Brian Tracy

As I've said in a previous blog entry, television, newspapers and the media exist to make money. They do this by focusing on FUDGE – Fear, Uncertainty, Disaster, Greed and Envy – in order to grab your attention and influence you both through editorial and advertising. They take existing negative values and amplify them.

Because of evolved processes and mechanisms in the neural patterning system of the brain, we are strongly attentive to danger and negative stimuli. The media makes use of these processes and mechanisms to garner your awareness and attention. They celebrate fear and failure. Good news is NO news. Papers are filled with disaster and despair.

The Research is in...

There is a huge body of research showing the influence of television and video on human behaviour. The preponderance of evidence from more than 3,000 research studies over two decades shows that violence portrayed in the media influences the attitudes and behaviour of those who watch it.

Television is filled with violence and aggression. For example, an American Psychological Association report on television showed that by the time the average child leaves elementary school, he or she will have witnessed at least 8,000 murders and more than 100,000 other assorted acts of violence on television.

This is not something you would subject your loving self to when you give yourself the gift of life enhancing!

We become what we focus on...

We become what we focus on, and we’re influenced by the messages and environment around us. Television sends a mixed bag of messages, the majority of which are negative and filled with stereotypes of selfishness, greed, demeaning sexuality and shallow values. Are these the messages you want to imprint in your unconscious mind? No!

The great personal development motivator Zig Zigler says that we are all:

“SNIOP – Susceptible to the Negative Influences of Other People”.

We are social beings and our brains are optimised for tracking and responding to the behaviours and social messages of others.

Television and the media present distorted views of others; they show us either the worst of human behaviour to which we either become desensitised or have our innate ‘out-group’ fears amplified, or they show us the very small percentage of special, ‘beautiful’ people – ultra-thin fashion models or ultra-rich greed models.

None of these are healthy messages for your mind. None of these are healthy messages for life enhancing.

I stopped following the media...

I well remember the day I decided to stop buying and reading newspapers. I was doing my Masters degree in Applied Physics. A National newspaper had decided to report on the research being done by our group. The reporter came and interviewed us all. This would be a minor article that would be printed in the back half of the paper – not earth-shattering news, more a general interest section.

We eagerly awaited the following day’s paper to see our small piece of fame. What a surprise we got. Almost nothing in the article was correct. We had been misquoted, the facts were wrong, the article was a load of rubbish. “Wow”, I thought, “How can they have gotten something so simple and so un-political, so wrong?” There was no benefit or purpose in how inaccurate the piece was. This was not something that had political or monetary motivation.

It was then I realised, that if something so trivial was so badly distorted, what was happening with the more important stories – the ones that carried social importance and influence? How were they being distorted and misreported?

Read something more useful instead...

I decided that in future I’d use my time to read a varied selection of non-fiction books and non-fiction magazines like ‘New Scientist’ to gain the important information about what was happening in the world. Society changes through the impact of science and technology. I would be better served learning about the coming advances that would change our world, rather than reading inaccurate and biased editorial from media designed to amplify FUDGE and serve the interests of power groups and money-lords.

What's your choice?

It’s up to you. How do you want to invest your time? Who do you want to be influenced by? What sort of influences – positive or negative – do you want in your life? Choose carefully.

In this massively changing and accelerating world, where information is bombarding and coming at you faster than you can filter it, do you want to carefully choose the media that’s sending messages throughout your mind and life? I sure do!

Living an enhanced and enhancing life means giving yourself the gift of positive influence. Loving yourself and supporting yourself means being careful of what information you allow yourself to be bombarded with. Stay away from television and newspapers – there are much better ways to learn about the world and learn about and create your wondrous and enhanced life.

Loving Your Mind... Loving Learning and Knowledge

Knowledge and choice give you more power and control in your life. You gain knowledge through reading. Reading brings the thoughts and ideas of other minds into your life. It’s an incredible way to absorb vicarious experience. Think about it. Most books, even fiction books, represent months and sometimes years of work and distillation of ideas and thoughts by another human being.

People write books because they have something to say or share. In a couple of hours reading you can experience what another person took a lifetime to accumulate and learn. Books and reading are an amazing way to quickly live aspects of another person’s life, to absorb some of their experience and wisdom.

Reading also increases your vocabulary. And research has shown that people’s perception of intelligence is correlated strongly with vocabulary. The larger your vocabulary, the more you will be perceived as intelligent by other people. This can be important because it has also been shown that income is linked to the perceptions of others. The take home message here is that reading can actually lead to more opportunities in life, a higher income and ultimately a better life.

Read often!

So read widely and read often. Go on an Accelerated Reading course. Learn to read swiftly and with increased memory and retention. Once you’ve mastered the skill of accelerated reading you’ll find that reading is immense fun. It takes you into a ‘zone’ of flow, where the words disappear and instead the ideas and images go straight from the page into your brain and mind.

It feels fantastic and the research from Positive Psychology shows that this experience of flow actually creates lasting positive spirals of creativity, clarity of thinking and emotional resilience. How cool is that? Reading is not only fun, it’s actually good for your mind and body!

Value reading

So make time to read in your life. Make it a positive habit. Pick up a book, a novel or a highly valued magazine, rather than turn on the idiot box television or video. Be thoughtful and selective in your reading. Stretch yourself.

You’ll be grateful to yourself for loving and supporting your brain and mind more wondrously. See yourself as a great reader and make it a permanent and proud part of your identity and life.

Now that is life enhancing!