May 14
4
Integration of the Mind – Part Twenty-One
-Good Stress, Bad Stress, Tension and Disease-
No problems stressing you, no dis-ease.
If you followed my suggestion to engage in a little research about the deleterious effects upon the human body that are caused by constant stress and tension …and hopefully you read the referenced article (see the link provided in the previous segment) at the American Psychological Association website – which just as almost all Medical practitioners agree – the article clearly points out that the primary cause of ill health and disease is stress.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a health provider to let us know that not only do we feel better and have fewer bouts with illnesses, allergies and other interruptions to good health, BUT we also think more clearly and make better decisions in an atmosphere of calm and relaxation instead of anxiety, stress and tension.
What's keeping you awake? Ask Source.
Just yesterday a client, a business person in the construction industry, told me that he had been losing sleep due to anxiety and told me what he thought was the cause: He was afraid of losing all the business of a commercial builder, which supplied him with a continual flow of subcontracting projects; the feared loss was due to one project that was suffering delays because the manufacturer wasn’t keeping its commitment as to timely delivery to the jobsite.
As we discussed the situation, it became clear to me that there were other factors involved – conflicts over other business and personal issues. I pointed out to him that anxiety in this particular case was “GOOD” because it was serving as a messenger that he needed to look at the other issues.
Once he welcomed that idea he was able to quickly resolve the conflicts. He called me later in the day to tell me that the builder was happy with his services in spite of the delays.
Now with that latter bit of information we might be tempted to say that he had been anxious over nothing, perhaps that is true, BUT THAT WOULD ALSO BE MISSING THE POINT!
The common anti-stress tools, only work for a short time.
The anxiety that was waking him up at 2:00 in the morning and causing him stress and tension throughout the day brought him finally to the awareness that he needed to deal with other issues in his business and personal life so that he could resolve them.
When we resort to prescription drugs, alcohol, and other (both legal and not quite so legal) tranquilizing substances (including the “natural remedies” to which Ryan and I admit to, i.e., endorphins and adrenalin), we are engaging in the age-old habit of the medical industry responding to symptoms and not getting to the root of the problem.
For many years, I also admitted a dependency upon alcohol as an antidote to stress. When I asked what to do about it, I was quickly shown that alcohol wasn’t the problem; it was another substance …caffeine.
Another misunderstood drug. It works just like the rest.
Looking at either “uppers” or “downers,” in isolation, is just the same as judging anything as “good” or “bad” …both in small to moderate quantities can even be beneficial to the body. Drinking pots of coffee or liters of diet cola as an “upper” contributes to stress – and I hardly need “my doctor” to tell me that trying to kick the dependency on alcohol or other tranquilizing substances without dealing with the caffeine or other “uppers” is an exercise in futility.
Let’s get back to the bold and capital POINT that we continually miss when dealing with symptoms rather than the cause. What now?
Bulletin: Chemical antidotes to chemical poisoning are often just as poisonous. An interesting sidebar to this bulletin is that toxicity in the human body often boils down to cells and organs not receiving sufficient oxygen. As I have pointed out previously, one of the reasons for the effectiveness of both Reiki and Yoga is the emphasis on deep breathing.
Blood and other cellular testing have proven that deep breathing contributes to the body processing oxygen efficiently into cells and organs, but then so does long distance running and other endurance exercise that is aerobically oriented. The flip side of not having enough oxygen is having too much …a bit of surfing the Internet about hyperventilation will disclose that danger.
This could be dangerous or life saving.
Too much of a “good” thing, as we’ve all heard, isn’t so “good” after all. It is time to deal with the issue I said I’d get to later …later is now.
Hypnosis …remember I made reference to an incident that after a group of patients of my psychiatrist friend, business associate and mentor were adjudged, by him, as “healed” and he had made the statement that what I had done in his view was like “mass hypnosis.”
My reaction at first was defensive and I simply denied it. Later when I asked him what he meant, he made reference to his own training in hypnosis during his residency at a large State Hospital in California.
In the early years of his practice he had applied hypnosis selectively with some patients he was treating, when he felt it was appropriate.
Later, after about fifteen years into private practice, he discontinued using hypnosis altogether because of what he felt were the inherent dangers from one limited perspective, particularly when using hynosis with patients suffering from schizophrenia. By his definition schizophrenia means someone who is out of touch with reality.
His comment to me was intriguing on several fronts. If you and I have a difference of opinion about what either of us considers to be reality or truth and those opinions are strong enough, is it not possible that we might consider one another as being out of touch with reality?
This could be dangerous or beneficial? Ask Source.
I’m being guided to not go too far afield here and stick to the question many people ask and that, of course, revolves around, is hypnosis dangerous?
I’m going to make a bold statement by way of explaining my point of view …it isn’t hypnosis that is dangerous, but rather the suggestions that are made while a person is in a hypnotic state, that may be dangerous to that particular person (period).
Couldn’t the same be said of anyone following suggestions that aren’t appropriate, again, for that particular person?
Those of us who were around in 1978 have a vivid memory of almost a thousand followers of Jim Jones drinking grape Kool-aid laced with cyanide …three hundred of those who died were young children. Based on that fact, do we want to say that all religion and religious leaders are dangerous?
As I said in an earlier segment, in my view, the cries about hypnosis being dangerous are overdone, but I don’t think they should be swept under the rug either. In #22 we will take a much closer look and you may be surprised in the direction we take. See you there.
NEW PODCAST: 99 – Integration of the Mind part 21