A year ago I attended a class on Stress Management by the Penn
Program for Stress Management http://www.pennmedicine.org/stress/. One of the first statements the instructor made
was he can’t guarantee that the program will lower blood pressure, alleviate
anxiety and stress or all the other wonderful things that participants have
stated happened to them. Like the instructor I can’t tell you how, but I know it works.
I do mindfulness mediation every day and have noticed that along with eating
right, exercising and meditation my stress level has lowered. I also attend the Insight
Meditation Community of Washington (IMCW) a spiritual community teaching and
practicing Vipassana mediation. Vipassana, which means to see things as they
really are, is one of India’s most ancient techniques of mediation. It was
rediscovered by Gautama Buddha more than 2500 years ago and was taught by him as
a universal remedy for illnesses.
In the Stress Management class we were told to purchase Jon
Kabat-Zinn’s book Full Catastrophe Living-Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to
Face Stress, Pain and Illness. This is one of my favorite books. I read sections of it the other day as I was feeling anxious about the release of
my new book, Secrets Unraveled. I was
worried that I couldn’t handle all that I needed to do for the release and promotion of the book. In Full Catastrophe
Living, Kabat-Zinn states that no matter what circumstance
we may face in life, we need to believe in ourselves enough to know that we can
deal with the situation, and we don’t have to judge it or ourselves. The key is to be
aware of how you feel or what’s going on in your body. At that moment, I knew everything was in
divine order as the song, Don’t Stop
Believing, by the group Journey blasted from my iPod.
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