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108 days

What Drives You?

In August, Briana and I released a book called Rituals for Transformation. It’s a three-month process in which you read a short lesson each day about the body, mind, or… Read More

Who am I and what role do I play in my various communities?

How have I been affected by the genuinely happy people I’ve known?

What do I believe stands between me and being one of those happy people?

What happens when I make a conscious choice of how I’m going to show up in a given setting?

When I give, what do I receive?

How do I feel when I put myself in service to others?

Where could I dedicate myself to more actively resolve any unhealthy patterns of thought, communication, or behavior?

How will I be different as I heal, and how will I affect my community differently as I release my baggage?

When will I choose happiness?

Be well, Peter [post_title] => The Best Thing You Can Do For the World is to Be Genuinely Happy [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => the-best-thing-you-can-do-for-the-world-is-to-be-genuinely-happy [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2022-07-14 20:31:48 [post_modified_gmt] => 2022-07-14 20:31:48 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://thedragontree.com/?p=8701 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 2 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 8927 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2023-01-13 19:52:57 [post_date_gmt] => 2023-01-13 19:52:57 [post_content] => I recently came across this statement on the U.S. Department of Agriculture website: “About 90% of Americans do not get enough dairy.”¹ A review of dairy consumption by country shows that the United States ranks 17th in the world with an average intake of 560 pounds per person per year.² In comparison, the average Japanese person consumes about 158 pounds annually, ranking Japan 109th on this list. Meanwhile, Japan ranks first in the world for life expectancy. The United States is 54th.³ If a country that consumes 28% as much dairy as we do outlives us by an average of eight years, is it accurate to say, “90% of Americans don’t get enough dairy”? Who defines “enough”? It's questions like these that inspired me to create a new kind of course in nutrition – one that teaches people how to think critically, listen to their bodies, and develop a healthy relationship with food. In How to Eat, I explain how to achieve your optimal weight without counting calories or eating in a totally unnatural way. I lead students to a way of eating that promotes abundant energy and a clear mind without having to wade through all the contradictory information out there. Through a combination of modern science, psychology, and a strong foundation in traditional Eastern systems of medicine, I’ll teach you that it’s not just what you eat, but how you eat that matters. For today I want to offer you just one simple piece of nutrition advice: stay conscious while eating. We all tend to think about things other than the act we’re currently engaged in, and this is an especially bad habit while eating. We daydream, we work, we read, we watch TV, we talk, we drive, we play on our phone. This causes us to miss out on many of the benefits of eating, and it also makes us more likely to eat in ways that aren’t healthy. There are three good things that happen when we stay conscious (i.e., mindful):

The eating process tends to work better. We're relaxed, we consume at a healthier pace, the body assimilates it better, and I believe we probably derive more nutritional value from the food.
We notice and can respond to the subtle (or not-so-subtle) messages our body is giving us, such as, “I’m not hungry anymore” or “This food is not compatible with me” or “Slow down.” You can learn virtually everything you need to know about how to best feed yourself – both the specific foods and the ideal time and manner to eat them – just by giving all of your attention to the act of eating.
We have an amazing opportunity. Truly. I believe that most people may never experience just how profound the act of eating is. This profundity is only available when we give it our full attention. Then we start to get an inkling of it . . .

. . . the complexity of colors, textures, flavors, and nutrients in the food . . . the incredible sophistication and intelligence of the human body; its ability to extract what it needs from the food and turn it into energy, blood, muscle, bone, and the capacity to remain conscious and sharp . . . the whole ecology we’re part of – the sun and the almost magical ability of plant cells to turn its light into biological energy; the constructive roles of soil and water; the human labor and the care that was taken to cultivate this food; and the lineage of thousands of generations of plants and animals that were intentionally chosen for the purpose of nourishing us. When we have an experience of just how special this is, eating is no longer just about making the hungry feeling go away or getting a good taste in your mouth. It can be calming and centering. It can be a beautiful spiritual practice. It unites us with our environment. If you’re ready for a new way of relating to food and how you feed yourself, check out my course, How to Eat. It’s on sale for 60% off right now. Be well, Peter ^{1. https://www.myplate.gov/eat-healthy/dairy} ^{2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_milk_consumption_per_capita} ^{3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy} [post_title] => How to Eat: Discover a New Way of Eating [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => how-to-eat [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-01-13 20:03:28 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-01-13 20:03:28 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://thedragontree.com/?p=8927 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 8933 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2023-01-19 19:24:36 [post_date_gmt] => 2023-01-19 19:24:36 [post_content] => When I first delved into cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as a psychology major, I remember thinking, “This is an evolution for humans.” CBT focuses on examining and challenging one’s thoughts and beliefs, changing related behaviors, and building coping skills and emotional regulation. Of course, there is a long philosophical tradition of examining the nature of human thought and behavior, but the advent of cognitive and behavioral psychology in the past couple centuries infused these concepts into mainstream culture in a profound way. It’s now common for people to talk about their thoughts as something separate from themselves, and to routinely employ behavior modification techniques in all areas of life. I had a mentor in my early 20s who was a big advocate of CBT, and at the time I told her I had been exploring methods for healing the memories of traumatic events. I felt both rebuffed and inspired when she said, “You’re wasting your time. We don’t need to go back and relive our childhood or spend the rest of our life lying on some shrink’s couch analyzing everything that ever happened to us! All that matters is, right now, are you going to be at the mercy of your thoughts and automatic behaviors, or are you going to manage whatever comes up in a conscious, intentional way?” I’ve thought a lot about this in the decades since. My mentor was of the mind that we don’t need to figure out why these painful or dysfunctional patterns keep coming up, we just need to change our response to them, and eventually we’ll transform our psychological makeup in a permanent way. I believe there is real value to this approach, and also . . . sometimes I think we need to go back. When it comes to our healing and growth, here are three good reasons to revisit your past: (1) If you’re constantly managing your response to a recurrent pattern, it might be more efficient to get to the root of the pattern and dismantle it (or at least mitigate it) so that it doesn’t come up much, if at all. Of course, you can also use cognitive and behavioral strategies if it does arise. (2) There is potential for deeper self-awareness, insight, and growth through visiting your past and coming to understand the factors that went into making you who you are. These are opportunities to forgive, correct misunderstandings, reframe our stories, and revise or erase beliefs. While it’s totally possible for many people to be happy without going there, it’s probably not possible to be self-actualized without making peace with your past. There are some caveats. Analyzing your past can be taken to a self-indulgent degree. It can retrigger old trauma. And most common, it can make us feel worse as we work through it (and experience it without resistance, perhaps for the first time) – though this usually gives way to greater freedom. Thus, it’s important to do this work when you’re feeling relatively stable, with a clear sense of why (what you hope to accomplish), and with the tools and/or support to do it in a way that’s likely to turn out well. (3) Finally, some people seek total liberation from our programming, i.e., the ego. Once this urge awakens in us, it often never goes fully back to sleep. If you’re in this boat, you may find value in recapitulation. I read about recapitulation in a Carlos Castaneda book when I was 18 and it seemed unfathomable. Castaneda, a Peruvian anthropologist-turned-apprentice of shamanism, was instructed by his teacher to write down his entire life story, from his very earliest memories, including every person he had ever met. This process, he was told, was necessary to free him from his worldly attachments. It took him years. I remember thinking, “I could never do that.” Since then, I’ve encountered various forms of recapitulation in my other studies of shamanism, and I now feel it’s more doable than I previously believed. Could it take years? Absolutely. But you’ve got time, and it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. Every time we release some piece of baggage, it’s like dropping a sandbag from a hot air balloon. We’re that much lighter and freer – even if we’re not “done.” As we go through our history, we find countless moments that have a certain weight or charge. They exist in a state of incomplete resolution. Taken together they have a powerful influence on how we show up in the present. They can make us dwell in the past and fear the future. They can cause us to live within a fraction of the spectrum of what’s possible. In short, they limit our freedom. As we loosen our history’s grip on us, we thus loosen the grip of our ego, and we more readily access our true essence and potential. I stumbled upon my own recapitulation process while doing somatic releasing practices. In a nutshell, all our history with a charge – everything that doesn’t sit neutrally in us – can be experienced through the body. There is a physical expression and felt experience to all of it. And in willingly visiting it, experiencing it without resistance, and accepting it, we promote its resolution. If this is unfamiliar territory for you, just try this: Bring up something about your current life or your past that you wish were different. While holding this in mind, expand your awareness to include what you feel in your body. You will perceive a certain unease. As you meet it and even invite it, the unease loosens. (Sometimes this takes a little practice, especially if you’re not accustomed to feeling your feelings. If you’re interested in diving deeper into this process, check out our workbook called Freedom.) When we do this work we inevitably find layers of holding. We release one layer and discover another layer, and so on. In my case, I began to recognize the layers faster than I could process them, so I started writing them down. Hundreds of cords, linking me to my past, pulling on me, distorting my present self. The list grew at the same rate that I crossed things off it. I’m not nearly done, but I feel much lighter. I’m not saying a person can’t show up in a clean and authentic way until they release every conflict or resentment they’ve ever had. What I mean is that a thorough recapitulation facilitates ego liberation – something that’s beyond the scope of CBT and, frankly, not of interest to most people. In my own process, I found that I was sometimes inspired to move my body in certain ways to assist the release of a sticky pattern, which is an integral part of some somatic therapies. Interestingly, it’s also a technique used in shamanic recapitulation. As Sandra Ingerman and Hank Wesselman explain in their book, Awakening to the Spirit World, we can facilitate the “unraveling” of a memory (or the emotional charge attached to it) by spinning. This can also be accomplished by turning the head or twisting the body from side to side, and the authors say they believe this is also why EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) works. They recommend spinning or turning while breathing deep into the memory and its associated emotions, accepting it, and intending to release it. I believe recapitulation also occurs to some extent automatically, especially when we’re ready for it: in dreaming; in meditation, when we are sometimes spontaneously presented with something from the past that needs to be “cleared”; in yoga and exercise; and very often under the influence of entheogenic (psychedelic) substances, especially when used intentionally as medicine. This is why psilocybin mushrooms are rapidly gaining a reputation as one of the most effective therapies for attaining peace at the end of life. I’m curious to hear from readers about your experience with the different approaches I discussed. Have you used CBT, and did it help? Have you dug into your past to heal yourself? What methods did you use, and how did it go? Have you done a large scale recapitulation? What was the outcome? Please share. Be well, Peter [post_title] => Are You Willing to Go All the Way Back? [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => are-you-willing-to-go-all-the-way-back [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-01-19 19:47:15 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-01-19 19:47:15 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://thedragontree.com/?p=8933 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 5 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) ) [post_count] => 3 [current_post] => -1 [before_loop] => 1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 8701 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2022-07-14 19:48:32 [post_date_gmt] => 2022-07-14 19:48:32 [post_content] => Previously I wrote about how community is like medicine. Our circle of fellow humans goes through this amazing journey with us . . . encouraging us, witnessing us, screaming with us on the roller coasters, and holding our hand when we take our last breath. My orientation in that article was toward what community can do for us, but it’s at least as important to look at what we can do for our community. I was reading about a Native American grief ritual described by Black Elk, and while the ritual itself was interesting, what stuck with me was his assertion that long-held grief isn’t good for a person or the community to which that person belongs. That is, when someone is mired in suffering, this can have a negative impact on their community. You can probably think of plenty of examples where a glaring state of imbalance, such as rage or terror, could result in behaviors that are detrimental to others. But the effects of less dramatic, often chronic negative states are subtler. What happens – besides their own discomfort – when a person is trapped in depression, anxiety, or grief for years? One repercussion is that they have a diminished capacity to fully show up in their community. We might think, “Well, the community doesn’t really need me to be at my best,” but imagine going to a place where almost everyone was depressed, afraid, or angry. Such places do exist, of course, and you can feel it as a palpable mass degradation of the human spirit. These days we may feel that we don’t have any real obligation to our community, which is so different from how humans have operated for most of our history. Today community may be seen as an entirely optional part of life. We can live in near isolation while anonymous members of our community manage the utilities that provide us with power, water, and internet, take away our garbage, maintain our roads, even deliver our groceries. It feels like independence, but in truth we’re more dependent than ever on an infrastructure other humans maintain – we just don’t know who those humans are. We’ve lost our sense of responsibility to our community. It’s due in part to the feeling that our government is huge, remote, and corrupt. But if our response is to disengage, the situation can only get worse. If anything, the sense of disconnection from our elected representatives and neighbors should magnify the need to do what we can to make a positive difference. It’s not just an obligation, it’s also an opportunity. If we can recognize and accept that our quality of presence affects others, this may inspire us to be our best selves. And it’s not just a matter of what we do but also who we are and how we are. Becoming fundamentally well inside helps heal the community. Imagine how healthily a community of fundamentally well people manages challenges. If you’ve been struggling, I don’t mean to make you feel guilty as well; that won’t help you or your community. Rather than focusing on the negative impact your unwellness might have on your community, consider that getting well is good for you and it’s good for your community. Sometimes it’s easier to do it for others than for yourself. Years ago, I read A Course in Miracles with friends. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a book on spiritual awakening with a section of scripture and a year-long workbook of daily lessons. It’s not for everyone, but I gained some valuable insights from going through it. One of those insights occurred when I encountered this passage: “Lesson 66: My happiness and my function are one.” Whereas I had tended to think of my happiness as a personal thing – sometimes even a selfish thing – this spiritual book was telling me that being happy (true, causeless happiness) is one of the greatest things I can do for the world. As I meditated on it, I saw clearly that the happy people I’ve known were like lights in every setting they entered. Without even intending it, they had a therapeutic effect on everyone they encountered. Not only did they tend to uplift those around them, in an unspoken way they communicated that this is a possibility for you, too. Happiness is a perspective, a choice. If I can choose it, you can choose it. Being happy makes us more peaceful, compassionate, and creative. It gives us the freedom to see a bigger picture, rather than focusing on what’s wrong or bad. Even just one happy person in a room full of scared people can change the whole atmosphere – and the choices that community makes. So I encourage you to consider this week:

Who am I and what role do I play in my various communities?

How have I been affected by the genuinely happy people I’ve known?

What do I believe stands between me and being one of those happy people?

What happens when I make a conscious choice of how I’m going to show up in a given setting?

When I give, what do I receive?

How do I feel when I put myself in service to others?

Where could I dedicate myself to more actively resolve any unhealthy patterns of thought, communication, or behavior?

How will I be different as I heal, and how will I affect my community differently as I release my baggage?

When will I choose happiness?

You may also be interested in:

The Best Thing You Can Do For the World is to Be Genuinely Happy

How to Eat: Discover a New Way of Eating

Are You Willing to Go All the Way Back?

The Dragontree

108 days

What Drives You?

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