How To Stop Worrying By Using the Qigong Release Exercise

How To Stop Worrying By Using the Qigong Release Exercise
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Spirit is always ready to lighten our burdens. Our only job is to ask respectfully. Here is a ceremony for releasing your troubles back to the Universe.

Choose a quiet place, and stand comfortably with feet spread slightly apart. Take a deep breath, and exhale with a resonant mmmm... sound. Bend slightly at the waist and reach down with both hands - with hands facing each other and about 6 inches apart. Choose something that is very important to you and that you don't think you could stand to lose - such as your house, your favorite sport, your pet, your relationship with a loved one, your hearing, your eyesight, your life. Visualize your important something between your hands.

Rise slowly and bring your hands to your heart - still 6 inches apart, and still holding your treasure. Feel intense love and gratitude for every joyful instant that you have spent with your important something. Now slowly raise your hands above your head, spread your hands apart, and RELEASE your treasure back to the Universe. It never belonged to you anyway - it was just on short term loan from Spirit.

Choose another important something and release it. For everything important in your life, pick it up, love it, nurture it, give thanks for it, and then release it.

Do the same exercise for each person that you have ever loved, and that has passed from this life. Hold them, love them, give thanks for them, and then release them back to the Universe.

Now, release your burdens - your fears, regrets, guilts, shames, embarrassments, angers. One by one, pick up each memory or fear that troubles you, hold it close, and release it to the Universe. Release each incident from your past that still bothers you. Release each fear - your fears about your health, your family, your job, and every other fear.

Breathe deeply, and give thanks.

What To Do When Your Whole World Is Falling Apart? 6 Support Ideas To Stop Anxiety and Give You Back Your Life

What To Do When Your Whole World Is Falling Apart? 6 Support Ideas To Stop Anxiety and Give You Back Your Life
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

What if you lost your job, your house burned down, the creditors were closing in, and your marriage had become hellishly confrontational? No, that's not make believe. That's the real life of a real person. How can you maintain a positive outlook under such stress and strain?

Six ways to find joy in the face of overwhelming circumstances:

1. Start by finding things for which to be grateful. Gratitude is crucial to your happiness. If you are reading this article, you are alive and your brain is functioning fairly well. Start your gratitude list with living, breathing, and thinking. Add every blessing, however tiny, to your list. Every moment without pain is a blessing, every bite of food, every bird, tree, and butterfly. Give thanks for every "hello," and every smile.

2. Give thanks, also, for the life lessons. Make a list of what you have learned - yes, a written list. Be grateful for each lesson. Life lessons often come at great cost, but they are priceless jewels.

3. Do you have a support system - friends and family you can confide in? If so, be very grateful, and use that network now. Don't be embarrassed to seek emotional support from those you respect and love. If you don't feel you have a support network, find one in your church or community, and be grateful for those who are willing to be of service.

4. Care for your body and spirit with special attention and gentleness in this time of great challenge. Several times each day, take a moment to breathe deeply and center yourself. Consider beginning yoga or qigong. Eat healthy, keep hydrated. Get enough sleep. If you have trouble sleeping, pay special attention to the rest of the ideas in this article, they will all help you sleep better.

5. Begin each day with a silent walk: Get up a half hour earlier to make time for it. While a walk in a natural setting is ideal, a walk on city streets will do fine. Thoughts, angers, resentments, and fears will form in your mind as you walk. That "mind chatter" is always with us whenever we are not focused on a specific mental activity, and it gets much stronger when we are stressed. Neither resent the mind chatter, nor let it linger. Say "thank you" to each passing thought, anger, resentment, or fear - then release it and return to your silent walk.

6. Release your angers, resentments, and fears by feeding your troubles and fears to the cleansing fire: Light a candle or small fire. Write one trouble or fear on a piece of paper, and feed it to the fire, while releasing the issue to Spirit. Repeat until you can no longer think of another issue that burdens you.

May your days be bright with joy and hope.

Mary Anne Radmacher: USE this time of fresh beginnings

USE this time of fresh beginnings. Use it as an impetus, the force or energy toward change. Become stronger, a better leader, more focused in your thoughts. Exert more influence over your dreams by bringing them closer to your thoughts, every day.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Henry Ward Beecher: Forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.
- Henry Ward Beecher (19th century Congregationalist clergyman and social reformer)

Joseph Campbell: Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it.

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.
– Joseph Campbell

This does NOT mean that life is meaningless or empty. Campbell's point is that we get to CHOOSE the meaning for our lives. Our lives mean exactly what we say they do - no more, no less. Each of us chooses their path in life.