The magic of human touch or don’t be afraid to handwork! April 9, 2012

Our advanced modern life has made us extremely lazy: by pressing  a button we can get so many things done. We invent gadgets that free us from physical work. We make our life easier and easier – but what about making it truly beautiful? I think that what gives a true beauty to life is something many people afraid of/or even hating that: a hand work, a physical effort or any kind.

Let’s see what impact physical work can make on things:

 NATURE

Cultivated gardens not only look pleasant but also emit peace. Forest taken care of by foresters look softer and more friendly that totally wild ones. Amazon river is full of dangerous fishes and animals because its banks are not crowded with people. On the contrary, the river Ganges has an amazing water quality and is not dangerous because since millenia human beings have been living and worshiping there.

OUR LOOKS

Even combing your hair can soften the expression of your face in the morning. There is an old beauty advice saying one should not look in the mirror in the morning before combing hair. Styling your hair properly will make you look as another person – if done everyday, works miracles on your good mood and positivity! A face given some basic care (oil or crème at least) daily is easy to differentiate from the one which is not treated that way. For women: Putting make up if not only a pleasant act of creativity like body painting but it adds to a face certain “value” which everyone can feel.

A way out of depression February 4, 2011

image by axinia

Depression, the greatest soul plague of modern humans… I wonder is it really a modern phenomenon or it is just better documented nowadays that in earlier centuries?

What defines depression? It is the act of depressing and the condition of being depressed. Depression is characterized by lack of activity, self-worth, dejection, sad feelings, gloom and inadequacy. When the people are in depression, then their life becomes negative. People in depression often face hopelessness, passivity, indecisiveness, suicidal intentions, loss of appetite, weight loss, sleeping disorders.

Here are some statistics on depression:

• Main reasons of depression in men are separation after marriage, widowed, divorce
• In US nearly 7 million women are clinically depressed
• One in seven men will develop depression within 6 months of becoming unemployed
• Mostly 15 percent of women suffering from severe depression will commit suicide
• Nearly 10 percent of women experience postpartum depression after birth of a child
• 2003 National Comorbidity Study, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health 16% of the population that is nearly 35 million Americans suffer from severe depression
• in Austria: every 5th person is clinically depressed and under medication

I guess the statistics on other countries will be not much different. By simply observing that one can get depressed!

Although I am not an expert on this subject,  I would like to share one unique experience I had about being depressed. May be it will help someone out.

All we need is… a grandmother revolution! September 21, 2010

For those who have seen the film “Patch Adams”, starring Robin Williams, the interview below would be an added value to this amazing film. And the value of the film itself is high indeed, especially because it’s based on a real-life story.

Today I came across one interview with the film protagonist. The real person turned out to be even more fascinating than the film character (often it’s just vice versa).

Hunter Doherty “Patch” Adams, M.D. (born May 28, 1945 in Washington, D.C.) is an American physician, social activist, citizen diplomat and author. He founded the Gesundheit! Institute in 1971. Each year he organizes a group of volunteers from around the world to travel to various countries where they dress as clowns in an effort to bring humor to orphans, patients, and other people. Adams is currently based in Arlington, Virginia. In collaboration with the institute, he promotes a different health care model (i.e. one not funded by insurance policies).

In his interview to one Italian financial newspaper Patch Adams gives a genius in its simplicity answer of how to change the world to a place, full of love and compassion:

and enjoy the second part, that’s brilliant!

Mastery: Why people like to get better at stuff May 28, 2010

Mastery seems to be a basic need. Each human being sooner or later likes to succeed in something: either it is one of the most useless and stupid record from the Guinness book or just a karaoke singing, obviously people just  like to get better at stuff! The point is that mostly they do not gain anything from it, and possibly nobody will even ever hear about their mastery or pay for that… And yet, people do it. Why?

The interesting answer I found in the video I posted earlier was: “getting better is satisfying”. Yes! As simple as that.

Speaking in term of yoga knowledge, I find the correlation between the Mastery and Satisfaction very interesting, because these two are inborn qualified from the two “neighbouring” chakras: Nabhi and Void (both in the stomach area of the body). Normally responsible for different qualities – Nabhi for satisfaction, Void -for Mastery, in this very case they came up as interconnected and there is  probably even a deeper meaning of this combination… something like that: if you feel unsatisfied in life, try to master something, and more contentment will come to you!

LOVE, axinia

The evolution of business: The PROFIT mode dies out, the PURPOSE mode comes in! May 18, 2010

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I think the most brilliant about this observation is that this is the NEW trend. I am sure that a couple of centuries or even decades away people have been indeed very well motivated by profit only. Now, as a clear advancement of mankind we can see the new motivation, the advanced motivation.

Let me back it up with one fo the most brilliant TED videos – “How great leaders inspire for action”, I guess it is nearly same idea, but from another view-point…

We live in a very interesting time when we can observe the transformation of the whole humanity at the highest speed!

LOVE, axinia

An Amazing speech by a female Aboriginal elder April 6, 2010

It is a beautiful  speech by a female Aboriginal elder by the name of Bilawara Lee, about the powers of women, their place in society and the changes that are happening in the world today.  The speech was made in Darwin (Australia), march this year.  It is very insightful, and worth a read.

“Today we are facing a new Era.  The ancient Mayan culture speaks of this change, the ending of their old calendar in 2012, and the beginning of a new age.  They, along with many other Indigenous cultures, also speak that these times as one of a more feminine nature, based in the heart and unconditional love.

But women in our modern world have a problem.  We have begun to become financially and professionally empowered.  Yet the most important need, for spiritual empowerment, is often neglected or ignored. 

Our world is already in the time of transition and it will be a difficult time until the new era blossoms into an age of peace and understanding.  If our world is to survive, spiritually empowered women must take their place in helping.  It’s time for us to step up and step out.  The time of hiding is over.  

Most “aware” people know that it is necessary to heal our Mother Earth if we are to survive.  However, it is equally as imperative to also heal ourselves and each other through unconditional love, compassion and respect.   Moreover, women also need to help our men and boys develop their own feminine aspects of gentleness and sensitivity, compassion, nurturing, and kindness.  We need to help our male counterparts learn to work from the heart.

It won’t be easy but if we don’t do all of this, we can’t help our planet and humanity risks extinction.

Women you are powerful – truly powerful, with unique gifts that are far-reaching.  That is why we are considered a threat by so many male-dominated modern cultures and religious hierarchies.  Women are especially tuned to walk in both the spiritual world and the everyday world.  I have been taught that we are born spiritual; men have to strive hard to attain that state.

We are particularly adept at creating energy and change.  Our great capacity for bonding has made us especially empathic and gifted at understanding and seeing past surface levels.  Ultimately, our roles as caretakers and nurturers have opened our hearts and awareness to many levels of the universe.  Our spiritual gifts are profound.

Unfortunately, women today have begun to lose that understanding of their gifts as they have grappled to survive in the callous male dominated societies of today.  Many live tentative, cold, and fragmented lives as victims of violence, victims of unspeakable offenses against honour.  Too often, their hearts and spirit have become uncertain and lost, awash in grief and fear.  They have forgotten who they are.  They have forgotten their original instructions as human beings and as women.

POLL: What is your reality? or the String Theory in our earthly lives February 27, 2010

Since my childhood I was keen on understanding human nature. Having lived in various countries, being acquainted in person with several thousands of people and having studied cross-cultural communication, I came to a conclusion that people do not share one reality, each one lives in his/her personal reality with pretty different laws! I noticed that everyone has a certain “line of action” throughout his/her life, a certain pattern of behaviour that make the life of a person exactly to what it is.

Let me give you some examples. We all probably know some people who love fighting: They will fight with a salesman over the quality of a product, with a waiter over the lack of service, with the spouse over just anything… Then you probably know some very lucky people who do not have to move much and yet keep getting attractive bonus from Ms.Fortuna. We can meditate on the reason of such “lifelines” – either it is genes, social background or karma – no matter what, the fact is, we all seem to be living in very particular “realities” that often do not cross! And the more so, it seems that this realities never change: the one who loves suffering will find a reason to suffer in any situation.

I am curious to see your response on the small poll I’ve created on that topic.

What fascinates me is the impact on these “lines of action”:

Who needs an extra dose of oxytocin? February 19, 2010

 

Another interesting discovery helps us to realize that the roots of many problems may totally differ from our ideas about them.

If you dislike most people you meet, it may simply lay in… the lack of oxytocin! Check out what a study says:

“A chemical best known for cementing the bond between a mother and her newborn child could also play a part in social behaviour. A new study shows that men and women who inhale a whiff of the hormone oxytocin rate strangers as more attractive.

When oxytocin courses through our blood, “we are more likely to see people we don’t know in a more positive light,” says Angeliki Theodoridou, a psychologist at the University of Bristol, UK, who led the new study.This effect adds to the hormone’s known role in human relationships. One study found that oxytocin levels spike after new mothers look at or touch their newborns and may help bonding.

Other work has hinted at the importance of oxytocin in social situations between adults too. People administered the hormone make overly generous offers in an economic game that measures trust, while men who got a dose of oxytocin proved better at remembering the faces of strangers a day later, compared to subjects who got a placebo.

In the latest trial, Theodoridou’s team tested 96 men and women in a double-blind placebo-controlled trial. After participants got either a spritz of oxytocin or a placebo, they rated pictures of 48 men and women for attractiveness and 30 for trustworthiness.

Today is Forgiveness Sunday February 13, 2010

This special day is my favorite in the Christian tradition. Having an atheistic background, I have been always deeply touched by the candid Christian Orthodox celebration of “Forgiveness Sunday”.

The last Sunday before Great Lent, is the day when Orthodox Christians remember the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. “Forgiveness Sunday” received this name from the pious custom at Vespers of asking each other’s forgiveness for discourtesy and disrespect. People do so, since in the forthcoming fast they will approach the sacrament of Penance and ask the Lord to forgive their sins, which forgiveness will be granted us only if people themselves forgive each other. “If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matt. 6.14, 15)”

Since the 90-s when religion slowly started getting its position back with the peoples of Russia, the tradition of Forgiveness Sunday came back. According to it, you can ask forgiveness of every person you meet this day, but especially people whom you might have really done some harm, or just your relatives and friends (we never know if by chance we could have hurt anyone!).

Conscious Femininity: I’m not talking about gender December 23, 2009

It’s becoming more and more clear that the old way is not going to work. We can no longer say I am right and you are wrong. We can no longer make fun of people who don’t think the way we do. There is a shift in consciousness, and that wave that we are all a part of has radically changed. And if you think back to when you were a child, I’m sure you looked at the globe, you know, the world, and you thought China is a long, long way away, I’ll never see China. And all of these parts were unrelated. Where I see the hope is that we are now one world. We’ve been praying that for a long time, that we would be one world.

Now technology has made us one world. And we haven’t got the slightest idea what to do with it. We don’t know morally what to do. Ethically what to do. Politically impossible. And the dangers are becoming more and more terrifying. And what I’m suggesting to you in that dream of that woman coming in on that wave, it is the feminine principle that can bring a whole different thinking process to the patriarchy, as we have known it. Patriarchy thinking that way cannot work.

I mean you can’t have people worshipping God — and everybody saying they’re worshipping God — with totally opposing ideas. The feminine principle would attempt to relate. Instead of breaking things off into parts, it would say, where are we alike? How can we connect? Where is the love? Can you listen to me? Can you really hear what I am saying? Can you see me? Do you care whether you see me or not? Now, these are very, very serious questions. Because the feminine is so difficult, ladies and gentlemen, to talk about the feminine because so few people have experienced it. What I’m talking about here is presence, and relatedness.

When I use the word feminine, I’m not talking about gender. I’m talking about an “energy”. It’s as ancient as the Hindu religion. Shiva and Shakti. And those two energies go right together. Shiva, the masculine. Not patriarchal. I don’t think patriarchy has anything to do with masculinity. It is a power principle that becomes a parody of itself. You know as well as I do that women that are trapped in patriarchy could be worst patriarchs than men. So patriarchy has done as much profound damage to men as it has done to women…