Aging: Senescence as Creative Inspiration
[Exploring Life] It is strange to contemplate aging. The process of getting older often seems so gradual as to be imperceptible. The idea of getting older can create a sense of discomfort since the very mention of it requires us to come into closer proximity with the reality of our own impermanence. We have an [...]
Aging: The End of Retirement
[Exploring Life] To retire means to withdraw, retreat, or remove oneself from a particular circumstance in order to engage in something different. The traditional view of retirement is that it brings one period of life to a close while simultaneously ushering in a new beginning in some other mode of life. The origins of retirement [...]
Food: Eating Healthy to Alleviate Anxiety Disorder
Ryan Rivera is the publisher and founder of the Calm Clinic, a website designed to help people find valuable information about anxiety disorders. Ryan speaks directly from personal experience. After spending seven years suffering from panic attacks, severe anxiety, agoraphobia, social anxiety, unbearable physical symptoms, headaches, neck pains, constant tension, diarrhea, palpitations, pounding heart, Ryan [...]
Breathing – A Confluence of Body, Mind, and Spirit: Breathing Into Experience
[Exploring Life] Breathing Into Discernment: Breathing affects everything in our experience, and our first task is to be able to witness and observe how the flow of breathing is altered by the endless variations of moods, reactions, worries, behaviours, expressions, and attachments that conspire to shape our orientation to and presence in the world. Breathing [...]
Mental Degradation: Toxic Food Toxic Mind
[Exploring Life] What we eat has a direct and immediate affect on how we behave. Though we may practice relaxation, mindfulness, and meditation in order to foster a sense of equanimity in our body and mind, we completely undermine our efforts by eating food additives (i.e. – chemical additives that are not really food) and [...]
Optimal Breathing: Stress
[Exploring Life] What makes you hold your breath? describes the importance of optimizing our breathing pattern in order to promote healthy digestion as well as calming the nervous system. The authors recommend that the stressors that are the root cause of holding the breath be identified as they happen. This brings us to the threshold [...]
Optimal Breathing: Pilates Breathwork
[Exploring Life] Correct breathing is a primary goal and basic fundamental in the Pilates method. Practicing Pilates exercises while using abnormal breathing patterns can be very detrimental to both the body and mind. Unless a student is capable of breathing correctly under normal conditions, the probability of breathing correctly during exercises is poor. Breathwork is [...]
