Intrusive Thoughts and the Fear of Being Unredeemable

Rosalie Stanton recently found my blog and shared a post she wrote about her struggle with intrusive thoughts.

I had no idea my obsessions were perfectly in-keeping with my particular case of OCD until recently. I'm not certain if it helps others afflicted with OCD, but the knowledge that I was NORMAL probably saved my life. For as miserable as I was, thinking I was wrong and twisted and evil, finding out that my disease had a name and there was nothing I could do to prevent it, nothing I was at fault for thinking, was the biggest blessing I've ever received.

The pain of feeling wrong and twisted and evil is something I know as well. When I was 9 or 10 years old, I started having thoughts that most adults would find scary, violent, disturbing, let alone a child. It was as if they were injected into my mind, just suddenly there, in an occupation, a siege. I wondered why I couldn't make them stop. I began to enter the world of my thoughts in a set way, in a ritualistic sequence, as if I was standing in front of a mirror, looking at my face, and crossing through into a world of torture of women, an observer of it all.

How I came back out each time, I don't recall, but I remember feeling defeated when the thoughts came back again. The images spun themselves into a series of stories, expanding seemingly endless to my young mind. It was as if they wrote themselves. They were unfamiliar, alien. Even now, I can't comprehend where they came from. They so crowded my mind, that one afternoon, I asked a friend to play out part of the story where doctors kept women captive. Her look of confusion combined with a stabbing sense of shame, but also gave me a little room, to feel grounded in the actual world, not in my head.

She was completely uninterested in cooperating, and from the day onward the thoughts did not return in that form. I was amazed that I no longer was sucked into the narrative of fear and violence. The thoughts did remain as a memory, as something I wondered about, as a part of my history.

In college, I participated in a survey about women's sexual fantasies, and I was stricken with fear that my old thoughts were a fantasy, that they were something I wanted to think about, something I enjoyed. Filling out the survey filled me with dread about what my thoughts meant. Then I went to a presentation about the destructiveness of hardcore pornography, with a series of slides of some of the most violent images in magazines, and it was as if the images from my past were there right in front of me. I was in a state of anxiety and fearfulness. The slides repulsed me, and yet the old images from my mind were of the same substance. I was startled by the resemblance, and even more troubled about what this meant about me as a person.

I started to worry that somehow I had been subjected to pornographic magazines as a girl, but couldn't remember it. Or maybe I had been sexually abused. Or maybe I was just bad. That all my interest in helping women, the classes I took on women's history, my compassion for suffering, was all a lie and in fact I was twisted, that all girls were twisted in some way. I spent a lot of time in my head, trying to figure out the nature of my soul, the origin of the images, and the new set of horrors that the pornographic slides had introduced into my head, and desperately wanting to make them go away.

To be continued in another post.

The Third Branch of Yoga Asana Being in the Flow

by Ram

The Japanese Bridge by Claude Monet

The underlying principles of the yoga philosophy are to foster the wellbeing of an individual at the level of body and mind and to help the individual re-connect to his/her true nature. One of the yogic methods or practices to achieve this is by adopting Ashtanga yoga, the eight-fold path of self-realization. The first two steps of the eight-fold path are yama and niyama, which serve as your Do and Don’t Lists. They are the GPS of our lives, guiding us to think about ourselves and our actions, and preparing us to act toward ourselves and toward the world. Each sub-limb/sub-step of the yama and niyama is additive as they prepare you for the next higher step. Putting these principles together in the form of a daily practice helps to bring peace, joy, and understanding. Compassion and awareness grows as you bring in more positive changes. Having established the practices of yama and niyama, the individual is now ready to incorporate the third limb/step, asana which means “seat,” “settle” and, in the yoga context, “posture.” 

In the early stages of our asana practice, when we hold a pose, we are simply mastering the skills to sustain the correct posture. As our practice deepens, we blend our asana technique with energy, passion and wisdom and find ourselves fully “in” the pose. When you are engaged in a posture where the asana challenge matches your skill, you have an undivided focus and get totally involved, forgetting everything else but the activity. You are in a state of “flow,” or as Desikachar puts it, “in the zone.” While this state may seem effortless it requires a whole lot of initial effort to make the state accessible (see Positive Psychology vs. Yoga Philosophy). A challenging pose offers you the opportunity to explore and control all mental aspects, including attitudes, emotions, concentration, intent, and faith. As BKS Iyengar explains:

“It must not be just your mind or even your body that is doing the asana. You must be in it. You must do the asana with your soul.

To be in it and do the asana with your soul requires that you let go of the ego, including your body image, and find your true self. It goes back to intention, rather than outcome. Thus, the goal of asana practice is not to assume a physically perfect posture but to fully come into your version of the pose, to feel open and grounded and calm, even if it is a challenging pose. So while practicing your asanas, focus less on a macho (male) or slim body (female), and instead aim your attention on achieving stability, mobility and encouraging integration—gently coaxing all the tight muscles to move and work together. Pay close attention to connections—between one part of the body and another, between thought and action, and between breath and movement. Do not try to think or struggle your way into an asana; instead, just flow into the posture through calmness, love and devotion.

Interestingly while I was writing this article, we received this query from one of our readers:

“To me these two aspects of yoga … achieving a desirable state of physical being through asana and cultivating spiritual growth through meditation, mindfulness and intentional study of yoga tradition appear to be at odds with each other. Does the tendency to ‘use’ yoga (physically) actually impede our ability to comprehend the less tangible, more subtle and deeper spiritual aspects of yoga”?

I myself don’t find these practices at odds with each other as I am aware that the original intention of hatha yoga was to fortify the body for spiritual practices. However, in today’s world, yoga is often thought of as “asanas only”—something like a stretching tool to keep the body limber and agile. People are drawn to yoga as a way to keep fit, even though the idea behind the physical practice of yoga is to help the mind to become clear or pure and develop deeper mind-body awareness. Obviously, the constant barrage of photographs of individuals doing acrobatic poses in precarious settings or skinny young women doing fancy poses in very skimpy outfits are undoubtedly at odds with the aim of the practice. Asanas were originally developed to enable practitioners to become more flexible, stable, and grounded in order to move easily into a regulated breath practice and to develop inner focus and concentration. They were created to prepare the body and mind for going into deeper meditative states. To sit for a lengthy time in a meditative state requires a stable body and a calm mind. So unless you are free of physical distractions and achieve stability in the body, you cannot achieve mastery of senses and mind.

Notice that as we do the asanas daily and regularly, the less mechanical they become. While this happens partly because we are more knowledgeable about the placement of arms, the positioning of the feet, or the rotation of the hips, it is also due to being in zone/flow—creating a balance between our material world and spiritual experience. The idea behind the asana practice is to help the mind to become clear or pure and develop deeper mind-body awareness. A clear mind is not affected by stress and a clear mind produces a healthy body thus creating a greater connection with one's own pure, essential nature. And any individual can achieve mind-body awareness and ultimately attain enlightenment.

As B.K.S. Iyengar aptly says, “the needs of the body are the needs of the divine spirit which lives through the body. The yogi does not look heaven-ward to find God for he knows that He is within.” Do you get the same feeling or experience when you are on the mat?

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Can Acupuncture Greatly Enhance My Well Being

By Dylan Price

Acupuncture is actually indicated for numerous ailments which include

Urological disorders - prostates, long-term pelvic soreness and bladder control problems.

Conditions linked to gynecology - the inability to conceive, dysmenorrheal, pelvic discomfort, and premenstrual syndrome or pms

Neurological disorders - stroke, sclerosis and also Bell's palsy

Mental problems - anxiousness, stress, depressive disorders as well as drug addiction

Australian National Health and Medical Research Council made a research which claims that acupuncture is easily the most powerful treatment for the low back pain, persistent as well as idiopathic headache, post operative swelling and also stress plus nausea or vomiting, neck disorders and vomiting linked to radiation treatment.

Generally, patients find this process as the most relaxing since significant advantages linked to acupuncture such as the absence of adverse effects. Pain, bleeding, dizziness, bruising and nausea are some of moderate and uncommon effects but trauma plus infection are definitely the most serious.

Acupuncture Essentials About 2500 years ago, acupuncture was used and it's among the oldest medical practice known. It involves use of tiny needles put at particular areas on the skin within the damaged regions of the body. The points of the skin where the needles are generally put are called acupuncture areas and are located by the classical technique or even simply by discovering anatomical landmarks. These types of points signify regions of the skin which have least resistance to flow of electric current. Other techniques including rotation or perhaps twisting of the needles maybe used after the needles are left in place for 10-30 minutes. Auricular acupuncture, electro-acupuncture and acupressure can also be included. In order to recover normal body functions, homeostasis should be achieved since there is a distortion of the system's normal condition when a person falls sick. To make internal organs work better, acupuncture rebalances the energy flows. Nourishing and offering oxygen to all the body's organs and tissues may be improved by acupuncture because it works well for chi flow. If any of these processes are blocked, this might demonstrate the growth of illnesses. Blockage can happen because of unbalanced diet plan, stress, trauma as well as lack of physical exercise. Theories have already been made to demonstrate the phenomenon behind acupuncture.

Western Medical Theory

Discharge of chemicals substances into the human brain, spinal chord and the body muscles are the functions controlled simply by nervous system which can be triggered simply by acupuncture. Release of other chemicals that immediately regulates the body's self-defense systems since chemicals change the experience of pain. The biochemical changes that results induce the body's normal process that promotes healing.

Theory of Neurovascular System A state of micro-trauma occurs that causing a sequence of events might be triggered whenever a needle is certainly placed at a specific region as suggested by Dr. E Kendall.. The very first response happens in the local tissue and results in stimulation of the central nervous system via a network of fibers. In the local region as well as in your brain, these kinds of signals are generally integrated. Your brain subsequently responds by initiating a control signal back to the area of insertion. Autonomic motor fibers and also relaxes muscles that improve blood flow and minimizes pain hence normalizing body organ activity because of this numerous changes.

The Electromagnetic theory This theory states that acupuncture points conducts electrical signals upon stimulation. When sent at rates higher than normal, the signals are generally accountable for the flow of biological chemicals that kill pain.

Theory of the Pain killer

Opiods that occur normally in the brain and which reduces pain plus induces sleep might be triggered simply by insertion of the fine needles based on this theory. Pain-relieving effects of acupuncture might be induced by these chemicals.xAll of the intervening and interrupting the abnormal condition that sets in the body causing illness development is among the most significant use of Acupuncture. From this point of view, acupuncture brings into light the experience that a person experiences and just what it means on who they may be.

About the Author:

The writer of the above document has many years of expertise of in particular acupuncture. For anybody who is curious about getting further information in this particular subject you're invited to the website acupuncturedublin.net.