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Sifu Fong

My Favorite Kind of Pain

I had been hearing about an impressive tai chi teacher named Gregory Fong since moving to Portland in 1997. It was about five years later that I convinced Briana to… Read More

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People who believe they’re getting a new drug or treatment can experience improvements in mood or profound relief from pain – even when they’re in the placebo group. Our beliefs can alter how toxins affect us. And on the “nocebo” side of the equation (a negative placebo effect) we can even generate signs and symptoms of diseases we don’t have. In one Japanese study, subjects known to have a strong reaction to poison ivy were told that one of their arms was being rubbed with poison ivy. Yikes! But researchers actually touched them with the leaf of a harmless plant. Every participant broke out in a poison-ivy-like rash. The subjects were told that their other arm would be rubbed with a harmless plant. Instead, the researchers rubbed real poison ivy on them! But only two out of thirteen people had a reaction to it. We can make ourselves sick and we can make ourselves well. The key is the incredible power of belief. It’s been thoroughly and indisputably proven, yet few people consciously exploit this magic on a regular basis. I’d like to change that. As a start, I suggest we practice observing positive belief every time we put something into our bodies. When you eat, try getting yourself mentally and emotionally enrolled in a positive expectation about how you’ll be affected by it. Admire the food. Tell yourself it’s going to be deeply nourishing. Your body is going to efficiently extract the nutrients and deliver them to all your tissues. It’s totally reasonable to expect that it will support clear thinking, high energy and mental calm, glowing skin, efficient digestion, optimal organ function, strong immunity, etc. For best results I recommend building your expectations for a minute at the beginning of the meal, remembering this from time to time during the meal, and then happily anticipating the benefits after the meal. You might even try bringing your attention inward, visualizing the nutrients being absorbed through your intestines and flowing into all of your cells, and telling yourself, “I allow myself to receive the fullest, most complete health benefit from this food” – or whatever words feel natural to you. What happens when you say to yourself or a dining partner, “I feel really good from this food. My body thrives on good food. I can already tell that this meal is exactly what I needed”? This should be even easier to do with supplements, herbs, and drugs, since you’re consuming them with a specific healing purpose and outcome in mind. Don’t forget it. Tell yourself as you swallow them (or apply them, if topical) that they’re going to do what they’re intended to do, that they’re perfectly compatible with your body, that the benefits are already starting (whether you can feel it or not). If you make a practice of priming yourself to expect good things you’re significantly more likely to experience good things, to notice the good things, and to be grateful for them. Be well, Peter [post_title] => Expect Good Things: A Practice for Getting the Most Out of Food, Medicines, and Supplements [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => expect-good-things-a-practice-for-getting-the-most-out-of-food-medicines-and-supplements [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2021-08-04 19:39:53 [post_modified_gmt] => 2021-08-04 19:39:53 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://thedragontree.com/?p=8320 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 8337 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2021-08-27 21:17:15 [post_date_gmt] => 2021-08-27 21:17:15 [post_content] => This time last year we were in the midst of the covid crisis, a race crisis, and an intense presidential race. I wrote that a good plan and a strong foundation in your values and purpose would help you feel more stable, clear, and capable of navigating upcoming uncertainty. (And I explained how the Dreambook is an ideal tool for this.) A year later, circumstances are a bit different, but my message hasn’t changed. Even if covid and climate change were gone, uncertainty is always a constant. So, while it’s impossible to know what the next moment will bring, who you are is a variable you can control. The Dreambook began from my and Briana’s desire to create a life organization system that helps people prioritize wellness and personal growth. But as we began writing it, we realized that the system needed to begin with orienting users to their true selves. Your plans will be limited if you don’t know what your starting point is, what kind of potential you have, and what your “soul drives” are. So the book opens with questions designed to illuminate…

who you are
where you are in life
what kind of person you want to be
what’s most important to you
what gives you satisfaction
the gifts, values, and purpose you’re here to share
what growth might look like

Besides filling out this part of the Dreambook, I encourage you to meditate on who you would be if you had no fear, if there were no judgment (from others or yourself), and if you had unlimited grace, strength, patience, vision, wisdom, kindness, and love at your disposal. Who would you be if you let your Highest Self sit in the driver’s seat? Clarify this image of yourself. Write about it. Visualize it. When you remember, and especially in challenging moments, ask yourself, “How would Highest Self behave in this situation?” Embody this essence to the best of your ability. You don’t have to be a saint; just remember and trust in what’s possible for you, and steer gently in that direction. The rest of the Dreambook is about helping you to live as this best version of yourself. Follow the prompts to check in throughout the week and each day. Schedule your life in a way that honors the insights you discovered through the self-awareness processes. Every day is full of opportunities to demonstrate that you ARE your Highest Self. There’s no way to get around the fact that the next moment is always uncertain, but you can reside in the certainty of who you choose to be. This essential work will yield a palpable experience of self-trust that means a tremendous amount in a topsy-turvy world. Be well, Peter [post_title] => You are the Certainty in Uncertain Times [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => you-are-the-certainty-in-uncertain-times [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2021-08-27 21:39:52 [post_modified_gmt] => 2021-08-27 21:39:52 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://thedragontree.com/?p=8337 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 8359 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2021-10-01 21:07:41 [post_date_gmt] => 2021-10-01 21:07:41 [post_content] => It’s hard to quantify just how much humans have changed – how we relate to ourselves and our thoughts, how we get help, how we act in relationships, how we communicate, how we parent, how we educate, how we shop – because of the emergence of the modern field of psychology. Even if you don’t think much about psychology, you’ve been affected by it. Common terms and concepts like ego, subconscious, projection, inferiority or superiority complex, anxiety, depression, in denial, being repressed, defense mechanism, introvert and extrovert, stress, antisocial, phobia, bipolar, sociopath, psychosomatic, and narcissist are woven into our vocabulary and culture because of psychology. Did you notice that most of those terms describe pathological conditions? Like the field of medicine, psychology has focused mainly on disorders and how to treat them. Only in the past few decades has the subfield of positive psychology – the study of the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive – gained widespread attention and respect. Thanks to psychologists such as Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Martin Seligman, Dan Gilbert and many others, we’re setting our sights beyond treating pathology – to the ways we can support happiness, resilience, fulfillment, and higher purpose. When it comes to adversity, positive psychology asks, “Can we do more than simply minimize the negative impact of this stress or trauma?” According to Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert, research suggests that even after a major trauma, within three months most people are about as happy as they were beforehand. But is it possible for a person to come out better through their response to adversity? The answer is yes. After a negative event three possibilities can follow: (1) things can stay the same as the were (2) things can get worse (3) things can get better. As author Shawn Achor explains in The Happiness Advantage, most people only consider options 1 and 2. At best, they hope to simply “bounce back” from adversity. But some manage to bounce forward, regardless of the severity of the tragedy. They use the unexpected obstacle to catalyze a needed change, to gain insight, to firm their resolve, to clarify what’s most important to them, or to initiate a breakthrough. When I meditated on the idea of turning a downward fall into an uprising, two images came to mind. In the first one, a person was falling like Alice down the rabbit hole. Suddenly the entire scene was rotated 180 degrees, and from this new perspective the person was falling up. What initiated the flip? A perspective change. In the second image, the person was a ball that had been flung rapidly downward. Then the floor appeared, they bounced off it, and soared upward. What was the “floor” that made the bounce possible? Resolve. A choice to change direction. Achor says, “The people who do the best with adversity define themselves not by what has happened to them but by what they have made from what has happened to them…. It's not that everything happens for the best, but that we can make the best of everything that happens.” Every obstacle (especially the big ones) carries a certain energetic potential. If we see them as bitter injustices, our meetings with them are like hitting a brick wall at high speed. They wreck us. If we see them as portals, the combination of our own momentum and the energy inherent in the “obstacle” combine to make our interaction something like crossing a trans-dimensional wormhole. Resolve and/or a change of perspective is often the key. We all have the ability to do this. Furthermore, the faculties we access in order to turn obstacles into opportunities inform us deeply about our potential. Every time we do this we get a little more awake, and it becomes easier to recognize that our Highest Self is simply presenting us with the most potent ways to leap forward. I’d love to hear about the times you’ve turned adversity into a positive experience. Be well, Peter [post_title] => Learn to Bounce Forward from Adversity [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => learn-to-bounce-forward-from-adversity [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2021-10-01 21:07:41 [post_modified_gmt] => 2021-10-01 21:07:41 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://thedragontree.com/?p=8359 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 5 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) ) [post_count] => 3 [current_post] => -1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 8320 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2021-08-04 19:39:53 [post_date_gmt] => 2021-08-04 19:39:53 [post_content] => Countless medical studies have shown just how dramatically our beliefs influence our health. People who believe they’re getting a new drug or treatment can experience improvements in mood or profound relief from pain – even when they’re in the placebo group. Our beliefs can alter how toxins affect us. And on the “nocebo” side of the equation (a negative placebo effect) we can even generate signs and symptoms of diseases we don’t have. In one Japanese study, subjects known to have a strong reaction to poison ivy were told that one of their arms was being rubbed with poison ivy. Yikes! But researchers actually touched them with the leaf of a harmless plant. Every participant broke out in a poison-ivy-like rash. The subjects were told that their other arm would be rubbed with a harmless plant. Instead, the researchers rubbed real poison ivy on them! But only two out of thirteen people had a reaction to it. We can make ourselves sick and we can make ourselves well. The key is the incredible power of belief. It’s been thoroughly and indisputably proven, yet few people consciously exploit this magic on a regular basis. I’d like to change that. As a start, I suggest we practice observing positive belief every time we put something into our bodies. When you eat, try getting yourself mentally and emotionally enrolled in a positive expectation about how you’ll be affected by it. Admire the food. Tell yourself it’s going to be deeply nourishing. Your body is going to efficiently extract the nutrients and deliver them to all your tissues. It’s totally reasonable to expect that it will support clear thinking, high energy and mental calm, glowing skin, efficient digestion, optimal organ function, strong immunity, etc. For best results I recommend building your expectations for a minute at the beginning of the meal, remembering this from time to time during the meal, and then happily anticipating the benefits after the meal. You might even try bringing your attention inward, visualizing the nutrients being absorbed through your intestines and flowing into all of your cells, and telling yourself, “I allow myself to receive the fullest, most complete health benefit from this food” – or whatever words feel natural to you. What happens when you say to yourself or a dining partner, “I feel really good from this food. My body thrives on good food. I can already tell that this meal is exactly what I needed”? This should be even easier to do with supplements, herbs, and drugs, since you’re consuming them with a specific healing purpose and outcome in mind. Don’t forget it. Tell yourself as you swallow them (or apply them, if topical) that they’re going to do what they’re intended to do, that they’re perfectly compatible with your body, that the benefits are already starting (whether you can feel it or not). If you make a practice of priming yourself to expect good things you’re significantly more likely to experience good things, to notice the good things, and to be grateful for them. Be well, Peter [post_title] => Expect Good Things: A Practice for Getting the Most Out of Food, Medicines, and Supplements [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => expect-good-things-a-practice-for-getting-the-most-out-of-food-medicines-and-supplements [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2021-08-04 19:39:53 [post_modified_gmt] => 2021-08-04 19:39:53 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://thedragontree.com/?p=8320 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [comment_count] => 0 [current_comment] => -1 [found_posts] => 263 [max_num_pages] => 6 [max_num_comment_pages] => 0 [is_single] => [is_preview] => [is_page] => [is_archive] => 1 [is_date] => [is_year] => [is_month] => [is_day] => [is_time] => [is_author] => [is_category] => 1 [is_tag] => [is_tax] => [is_search] => [is_feed] => [is_comment_feed] => [is_trackback] => [is_home] => [is_privacy_policy] => [is_404] => [is_embed] => [is_paged] => [is_admin] => [is_attachment] => [is_singular] => [is_robots] => [is_favicon] => [is_posts_page] => [is_post_type_archive] => [query_vars_hash:WP_Query:private] => eab48ed13abec807c417945d7484447f [query_vars_changed:WP_Query:private] => [thumbnails_cached] => [stopwords:WP_Query:private] => [compat_fields:WP_Query:private] => Array ( [0] => query_vars_hash [1] => query_vars_changed ) [compat_methods:WP_Query:private] => Array ( [0] => init_query_flags [1] => parse_tax_query ) )

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Expect Good Things: A Practice for Getting the Most Out of Food, Medicines, and Supplements

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