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What Everyone Should Know About Pain

While I wouldn’t wish pain on anyone, I don’t always think it’s best to make it go away as fast as possible. Sometimes the need to manage pain takes us… Read More

Meditation: Keep it Simple

Of all the things one could do to be healthier and happier, I consider meditation to rank among the top practices on the list. We spend most of our lives… Read More

What’s the Difference Between Dry Needling and Acupuncture?

I am often asked, “What’s the difference between acupuncture and dry needling?” So, I thought I’d answer the question for everyone in our community who might be interested, and offer… Read More

Seven Steps for Managing the Habit of Unhealthy Eating

I love cookies of all kinds. At times my wife or kids have made a batch of cookies and – after they each tried one – I quietly finished off… Read More

How to Be More Alive

Last week I began a series on longevity – the factors that have the biggest impact on our lifespan. I started with what I think is most important – living… Read More

What’s Better than Video Games? Peace, Balance, and Perspective.

One of the things I love about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is its ability to distill complicated problems down to simple ones. If you were to look in a textbook… Read More

I’ve depicted the basic format in this graphic. Take one duality, which I refer to as yin and yang here, and cross it with the duality of desire/fear to produce four states. Here I refer to the states as desire for yin, desire for yang, fear of yin, and fear of yang. This will all make more sense when we plug in an example to replace yin and yang here:

We all contain the four aspects shown in this square. Typically there are two that are easy to relate to, while the others may be trickier to access. In this example we’re looking at the qualities of the self that we consider acceptable and openly express (our light) and those we keep hidden (our shadow). When crossed with the duality of attraction/aversion, we get four states. The first two are attraction to our light (upper right) and aversion to our shadow (lower left). These are easy enough to recognize since that’s exactly the dynamic that sets up the light/shadow split in the first place. Finding the other two qualities in ourselves may require looking a little deeper. At the upper left is attraction to our shadow. This can happen inadvertently as a result of the pressure buildup caused by suppressing it. Our shadow may seem dangerous and forbidden, and we may unleash it to defuse the inner charge of disapproval and rebellion. We may find ourselves expressing it in ways that are painful to us or others, and our regret about doing so may reinforce the urge to suppress it. It’s important to point out, however, that the parts of ourselves we keep sequestered in the shadows aren’t necessarily socially unacceptable. They may in fact be virtuous qualities that we’re simply uncomfortable with. Attraction to our shadow may also occur in a healthy way as we endeavor to be integrated and self-realized beings, in which case we want to know all that we are and to consciously choose which aspects to express. The last quadrant, aversion to our light, is what Marianne Williamson is speaking to in her famous quote: “Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.” Why do we fear our own light? Perhaps we’re afraid of everyone noticing us. Maybe we believe that if we shine, we’ll then do something to let everyone down. If we embrace our light, maybe we believe we’d outshine others. Possibly we don’t believe our light is even real. How can we employ this exercise in a useful way? Start by taking a quality you seem to have an obvious desire for or aversion to. For example: desire to be powerful, desire to be happy, desire to be wealthy, fear of being alone, aversion to being sick, aversion to exercise. This quality and its opposite will form the two ends of the horizontal x-axis. Then the vertical y-axis will have desire, attraction, or wanting at the top and aversion, rejection, fear, or repulsion at the bottom. Fill in the four quadrants so that each of the x-axis qualities gets paired with each of the y-axis dynamics. Then spend some time feeling into each of the four resulting states. Journal about how each state is within you and/or use our book, Freedom, to do a body-centered releasing process on each one. It doesn’t need to take very long, but ideally should be done until you feel a sense of acceptance and a dissipation of the charge associated with the issue. Afterwards, feel into your relationship with the object of this process. What has changed? I hope this method of inquiry is beneficial to you. Feel free to share about your experience with it in the comments section. Be well, Peter [post_title] => Get Through Your Blocks By Seeing All Four Sides of the Coin [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => get-through-your-blocks-by-seeing-all-four-sides-of-the-coin [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2022-02-24 00:02:12 [post_modified_gmt] => 2022-02-24 00:02:12 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://thedragontree.com/?p=8548 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 4 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 7958 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2020-08-01 19:30:37 [post_date_gmt] => 2020-08-01 19:30:37 [post_content] => I was wandering around in a hardware store the other day, feeling rather hot and stuffy in my mask – and also a little anxious – when I realized my mouth was wide open. I shut my mouth, which required me to deepen my breathing through my nose, and soon my mask felt less stuffy and the anxiety was gone. It occurred to me that I mouth-breathe a lot when I have a mask on, and I’ve resolved to stop. A few years after moving to Colorado I realized that I had been mouth breathing while asleep and increasingly while awake, too. During the same period of time, I noticed my sleep had been worse, I felt more anxious, I had a harder time concentrating, my energy was lower, and my gums had receded significantly. It might sound like a stretch to attribute all of that to breathing through my mouth rather than my nose, but I’m convinced that mouth breathing was a contributing factor. Mouth breathing begets more mouth breathing. When we breathe through our mouth over years, the facial structure can change – especially in children. The face may become longer and narrower. The palate narrows too, which causes a higher arch, infringing on the airways above. Teeth become crowded and crooked. The tongue drops to the floor of the mouth all day instead of resting against the upper palate, and this can contribute to sleep apnea and snoring. Mouth breathing tends to be more rapid than nose breathing, which may promote a feeling of anxiousness and may be misdiagnosed as Attention Deficit Disorder. Breathing through the mouth is less efficient at oxygenating the body than nasal breathing. Mouth breathing can raise our blood pressure. It causes dryness of the mouth, bad breath, and increased susceptibility to tooth decay and gum disease. When we breathe through the nose, we inhale more of a gas called nitric oxide (not “laughing gas” which is nitrous oxide) that is produced in the paranasal sinuses. Nitric oxide kills bacteria. The nose also warms and filters incoming air. For all these reasons, nasal breathing reduces our chances of getting sick via airborne germs. In terms of spreading sickness to others, we exhale many fewer “respiratory droplets” through the nose than through the mouth. Some doctors propose that nasal breathing is an easy intervention to reduce your risk of contracting COVID-19. If wearing a mask causes you to mouth breathing, this may partly or significantly negate the protective value of the mask. I recommend trying to remember to breathe through your nose especially in public spaces and when wearing a mask. Nose breathing carries the nitric oxide from the nasal airways down into the lungs, where it decreases blood pressure and increases oxygenation of our tissues. When we mouth breathe we don’t get these benefits. Interestingly, studies have shown that humming increases nasal nitric oxide production, so your homework assignment is to hum throughout the day. For most mouth breathers, switching to nasal breathing is mainly just a matter of remembering to do it. But there are three times when it can be more tricky: while sleeping, while congested, and while exercising. If you keep your mouth closed while sleeping, chances are you’ll sleep better, snore less, wake up with sweeter breath, and without a sore throat. Some scientists have also proposed that mouth breathing during sleep increases the need to urinate during the night, so switching to your nose may reduce your trips to the bathroom. I’ve found that blowing my nose before bed and simply intending to keep my mouth closed while asleep works fairly well. If that doesn’t work for you, consider taping your mouth closed. I know it sounds weird and perhaps unpleasant, but it’s not bad. Just use a small piece of medical tape (about an inch) vertically over the center of your lips. 3M paper tape is a good choice. If this makes you psychologically uncomfortable, try taping your mouth half an hour before going to sleep so you can get used to it. Or try taping just one side of your mouth. (Don’t tape your mouth if you’re drunk or have a health issue that may necessitate an urgent need to open your mouth or an obstruction of your nose. It’s also a good idea to leave at least a corner of your mouth not taped.) Having a bedroom that’s cool, airy, and clean will help. It’s totally normal to breathe through your mouth while engaged in intense exercise. Just watch people jogging down the street and note how many have an open mouth. It takes practice and effort to break yourself of this habit, and it may feel at first like you simply can’t get enough air in through your nose. But you’ll find that your nasal breaths are longer and deeper. Your breathing rate will slow down considerably and so will your heart rate. Plus, you’ll get more oxygen into your body and at the end of your workout you’ll feel invigorated. If you have a hard time breathing through your nose because you’re congested, there are a few options. Obviously if you’re sick you may just have to wait for it to pass, and if you have allergies you’ll have to do your best to avoid allergens and treat your allergy symptoms with whatever works (some natural options include quercetin, nettle extract, liposomal vitamin C, n-acetyl cysteine, and a supplement called Antronex made by the company Standard Process [I have no relationship with them]). But simply breathing through your nose anyway can often encourage it to clear. At the beginning you may have to enlist your mouth to assist, but if you continue to breathe exclusively through your mouth your nose will be less apt to clear. Just try to breathe through your nose and notice its ability to clear itself. Finally, there are some specific breathing techniques for unblocking your nose, one of which is simply to hold your breath for as long as you can while nodding your head up and down or swaying your torso from side to side, then releasing the breath through the nose. Within five breaths this usually works. Here’s a video of it. You may also benefit from nasal rinsing (AKA “neti”) followed by nasal lubrication. We make a Nasal Oil for this purpose which I formulated. I would love to hear about your experience with mouth breathing and nose breathing. Share with us in the comments section. Be well, Dr. Peter Borten [post_title] => The Magic is in Your Nose [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => the-magic-is-in-your-nose [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2020-08-01 19:35:03 [post_modified_gmt] => 2020-08-01 19:35:03 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://thedragontree.com/?p=7958 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 8 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 8470 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2022-01-30 21:17:23 [post_date_gmt] => 2022-01-30 21:17:23 [post_content] => In high school and college, I spent hours every day playing my guitars and writing songs. Music was the main outlet I had for the angst and depression I felt in my late teens and early twenties. In grad school, I began to emerge from those dark days, and as I increasingly found myself in the company of people who were really psychologically healthy, I noticed my music changing. One day I was jamming with a good friend. He would play me one of his tunes and I’d improvise on that for a while, and then I’d show him one of mine and we’d play that for a bit. At some point, I started playing one of the old songs from my troubled period. The best I can remember is that the words had something to do with losing hope. He liked the tune, so I showed him the chords and taught him the words so we could sing it together. Only, as I started playing and singing it, he didn’t join in. He stopped me after a moment and said, “Sorry, man… I’m not singing that.” I really didn’t understand it. “Why not?” I asked. “Because it’s all about losing hope and how life sucks. I don’t want to say that.” “Oh,” I was a bit bewildered. “Okay, let’s try something else.” And we moved on. I was a little bit offended. I didn’t always relate to the subject matter of his songs, but I didn’t mind singing them. It wasn’t like you had to believe what you were saying – it was just a song. And what about all the popular songs that we sing along to because they’re catchy? Lots of them are about topics we might not care for, but they’re still good songs. Well, I let it go and didn’t think about it again for a long time. But years later, I had become more acutely tuned in to my thoughts and words, and I had experienced in a more definite way the way my words affected my experience. One day, I remembered that event and thought, “Wow. Good for him.” You Are What You “Eat” Have you ever used an affirmation? The idea is that by repeating key words, we can reprogram our mind, shift our emotions, heal our body, and even change the circumstances of our life. When done right, they really can work. I wouldn’t place all my eggs in the affirmations basket when I want something in my life to be different, but they have their place. What’s arguably more valuable than the actual practice of repeating an affirmation is what they demonstrate: the thoughts we choose can have a huge impact on our life. Apart from whatever objective ways they might affect our lives, the subjective impact of our thoughts is that they color our experience – our internal environment and outlook – in a way that makes the objective circumstances almost irrelevant. For instance, if you think life sucks, it doesn’t matter whether you have delicious food, warm clothes, people who love you, a winning lottery ticket, and blue skies – life still sucks. And if you think life is an utter gift, you could be in rags and have no limbs, and yet see beauty and grace in everything. It’s difficult for most people to remember to repeat an affirmation all day long, or to choose to focus on a positive idea as often as possible. But it’s quite easy for us to sing a song in our head all day long … say, Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” or Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” (later covered by Johnny Cash). It’s easy to listen to ranting on talk radio. It’s easy to read a daily newspaper that’s filled with more negativity than positivity. And it’s easy to barely register that we are making choices that degrade our lives. If we want our life to go a certain way – happy, healthy, long, etc. – we need to pay attention not only to what good things we’re doing to ensure this, but also to what destructive things we’re doing to sabotage it. We all know “you are what you eat” – that what you feed your body affects the quality of your health. In the same way, the thoughts we cultivate, the way we speak, the media we consume, the people and social institutions we associate with are all part of what we’re feeding our consciousness. So, it should be no surprise that they affect the quality of our experience. When my friend refused to sing the depressing song I had written, it’s because he was tuned into – and respectful of – the effect our words (especially repeated ones) have on our consciousness. We can easily learn to perceive the qualitative differences between certain words, thoughts, songs, movies, and organizations. When we bring our awareness to their influence on us, it becomes clear that the majority of news articles, movies, radio shows, and television programs are relatively degrading to our consciousness (and, therefore, to our entire being). According to a study by the UCLA Center for Communications Policy, sixty-one percent of television programs contain some violence! A common rationale we use for reading, listening to and repeating tragic stories is the necessity of staying informed. In actuality, there is very little utility in keeping up with misfortune and deadly events. This habit speaks more of our collective addiction to conflict and drama. If our consumption of negative media and ideas is not purposeful, it is destructive. It is like eating a rich dessert (but considerably less satisfying): if we choose to consume it, we should stop the moment we have had enough. If we are five sentences into descriptions of dismembered bodies and we have pretty much gotten the picture, it’s time to put the article down. Usually the headlines are more than enough. When we consume media with a violent or hopeless tone, its impact on us is determined partly by our perspective and our psychological health. Sometimes we resonate strongly and persistently with the pain we witness, and other times we are able to remain detached and let it pass through us without being excessively influenced by it. Until we develop our sensitivity, however, we usually can’t perceive how it hurts us. If we are interested in whole health, we need whole honesty with ourselves about our reasons for consuming unhealthy media and surrounding ourselves with people and organizations that propagate negativity. As with diet, I’m not suggesting that we must always make the best possible choice; I’m only advising that we be as conscious and truthful with ourselves as we can be. More important that banishing any destructive influences from our lives is staying aware and honest about the nature of our relationship with these influences. In all cases, we’re better off fully experiencing the effect of a given influence rather than being unconscious of it. I recommend, in the presence of questionable media and conversation, you feel what happens in your body – as willingly and completely as possible. If you find yourself getting tense or tight, or feeling not at ease, listen to your body. Then let these feelings go, and consider altering your consumption. Luckily, there is a world of beautiful, uplifting, positive, healthful stuff out there. Surround yourself with positive people, listen to music that makes you feel good, check out some beautiful art, read some lovely poetry. And notice how it changes your life. Much love, Dr. Peter Borten [post_title] => Programming Ourselves for Misery or Happiness [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => programming-ourselves-for-misery-or-happiness [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2022-01-30 21:17:23 [post_modified_gmt] => 2022-01-30 21:17:23 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://thedragontree.com/?p=8470 [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] => 8548 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2022-03-06 06:00:06 [post_date_gmt] => 2022-03-06 06:00:06 [post_content] => One of the main ways that we get stuck or fail to reach our potential is through persistent psychological patterns. Some would say they’re not just psychological, but psycho-spiritual, or even karmic. Perhaps they’re an expression of what are called samskaras in Vedic thought – ruts or imprints that we’re prone to fall into over and over. The tendency to think and act in a certain way can be difficult to break, even if we know it’s not serving us. Often these patterns are founded in stories and beliefs in which we have a one-sided view, and the single-sidedness gives them a stronger charge that tends to make them more enduring. Here are some examples: I am a victim. I mess everything up. I never have enough money. People are selfish. I’m not disciplined enough to live to my potential. Happiness doesn’t last. Life is scary. Part of why these stories won’t die is because of our inability to see more than one perspective. Often we put ourselves in a certain role, with the opposing role played (usually in our mind) by some adversary, which could be a parent, partner, enemy, God, the whole world, some imagined “lucky person,” or even another aspect of ourselves. We can get invested in playing the bad guy, the hero, the spiritual one, the rebel, the starving artist, or the martyr. This may cause us to suppress aspects of ourselves that don’t align with this role, which serves to perpetuate the one-sidedness of our position. The exaggerated dynamic it sets up is like sitting at the outermost point on a seesaw; we’re bound to get carried way up and down by our emotions. Coming from a Chinese Medicine background, I’m inclined to see this condition as an imbalance of yin and yang. It’s a denial of our wholeness and a limitation on our health and power. Recognizing that we contain both sides of each coin is important and useful work, and it’s a primary theme in many healing modalities. It’s part of the integration of our shadow aspect (a term coined by Carl Jung to describe the parts of ourselves we deny, suppress, or are unconscious of). It’s an essential part of The Work developed by Byron Katie for challenging our thoughts. This process consists of asking questions to determine whether a given thought is true and how you’re affected by believing it, after which you “turn it around” to see how opposing viewpoints are equally true. For users of our body-centered releasing workbook, Freedom, we recommend taking a charged issue or scenario and, after working on it with your usual position, see what comes up when you “try on” the opposing position. Releasing the pattern from both sides promotes a more complete resolution. Similarly, Leslie Temple Thurston teaches that when we identify the polarized aspects of our stories and then figure out what their opposites are, we discover that both sides are within us (and our adversaries). This recognition shifts our position from the outermost edge of the seesaw to the center fulcrum – what Temple Thurston calls the neutral witness state – and the story falls apart. To take this deeper, we can examine the interaction of two sets of opposing charges, which creates four perspectives. Temple Thurston calls this working with “squares.” The mind is rarely in the throes of just one duality. Beyond the charge of the two sides of a story, there is an additional dimension of polarization which is the basic push-pull of attraction and repulsion, also experienced as like/dislike, desire/fear, or attachment/rejection. By examining a pattern through all four sides of these interacting charges, we can achieve an even more complete neutralization.

You may also be interested in:

Get Through Your Blocks By Seeing All Four Sides of the Coin

The Magic is in Your Nose

Programming Ourselves for Misery or Happiness

The Dragontree