We all have a natural rhythm. Being able to follow this natural rhythm can make us much happier, and it can allow us to fulfill ourselves in ways that we didn’t think we could. Following your natural rhythm is really a way of being more natural and being kinder to ourselves; by considering ourselves important enough to be able to do what we want to do when we want to do it.

In order to follow your natural rhythm you must begin by asking yourself what you want to do at the moment. You must do something that most people are not used to doing, which is to ask yourself what your desires are at this moment. Most people are not used to doing this because they have become insensitive to their own needs; this happens because many people are so focused on their responsibilities that they have forgotten how to create pleasure for themselves. It is your first task then to try and become more sensitive to your own needs by discovering your desires at every moment.

By trying to satisfy your desires in the moment, you begin to follow your natural rhythm. Most of us are aware of our big desires, we all know that we would like to have more money or that we would like to have a new house, etc. Following your natural rhythm means that you have to be far more aware of your own feelings and therefore your own desires even of the small seemingly insignificant things. In order to become more natural you must become more present in the moment and through careful personal awareness find out what your body is telling you to do. It begins with something as simple as deciding where you want to be; do you want to sit down, do you want to stand up, is there a place that you want to go?

Contemplating such small things as this, will allow yourself to begin to really find out why you do everything in your life. For example most people will sit somewhere or be somewhere because they believed that this is the right thing to do, and not so much because this is what they want to do. We are all restrained by obligation and by what we think others want us to do, or what we think is proper. To truly be yourself you must find out what you truly want to do, not what you think others think you should do. You must do this with all the small things in your life and work your way up, but following your natural rhythm means that you will need to be far more aware of how you feel at every single moment of your life.

Another good way to discover your natural rhythm is just to be able to relax. Being able to relax in the moment and just let go, opens you up to your internal feelings and makes you far more aware. Open up yourself to the awareness at this moment and learn to just relax into it; first by understanding that every moment is special and has its own unique beauty, and by realizing that if you just let things happen naturally, all  will work out perfectly in it’s own way.

If there is something that you need to do, define it. By outlining exactly what it is that you need to do and making it concrete in your mind, you start the process of channeling your energies towards getting this goal accomplished. It is true that natural rhythm is all about spontaneity but natural rhythm also encompasses the ability to plan ahead and to get goals done. Many believe that it is impossible to be spontaneous and still get things done but it is easy to do this if you learn to define your objectives.

In order to get things done and still follow your natural rhythms, begin then by defining and planning your goals to the best of your ability. Now it is possible that you might define a task but that you might not want to do it in the moment. This is quite all right and you should follow this natural desire, true spontaneity is really the ability to decide for yourself, using your internal guidance, what it is that you want to do. If you don’t feel like doing something at the time then don’t do it.

The natural way to do something is to define your goal and then to vividly imagine yourself getting this goal done. If you don’t feel like doing something because it possibly bores you to death to even think of doing it; imagine yourself doing it as vividly as possible. In a very nice and casual way, imagine yourself doing this as often as you want to. Eventually by vividly imagining, you will find something very interesting, and that is that you will actually desire to do the things that you imagined. If you have become very good at being naturally spontaneous, you might find that you just get up for no particular reason and start doing what it is that you wanted to get accomplished.

Accomplishing goals in this way will begin to teach you about how we create our entire reality. You will realize the full power of your thoughts by seeing how they change your personal desires and put them in line with your intended, and vividly imagined, goals.

Following your natural rhythms means learning to do what you desire at every moment. Being your natural self can free you and make you feel incredibly happy because you discovere just how free you are at every moment. Spontaneity means that you can do anything at any time, that you have an incredible amount of freedom at every moment to do whatever you desire.

By vividly imagining your goals instead of trying to push or force yourself to do them, you discover the power of your thoughts to change your reality. In a natural way you accomplish things that in the past might have been difficult, because you grew up with the notion that in order to accomplish anything there needs to be pain and great effort. This effort is of course a lie, and is just a side effect of you not following your natural inclinations and not knowing how to use your mind properly to motivate yourself into action.

Next time that you feel resistance, do not push against it. That part that pushes back is actually a part that is reminding you of your natural self and your natural rhythms. Listen to what this part of you has to say and if it wants you to do something else then consider doing that something else, because this part of you is very wise and is only trying to help you. Feeling a huge amount of resistance means that your natural self trying to tell you that you are doing something that you don’t want to do. The harder that you push against this resistance, the harder that it will be to do anything. To force yourself to do anything is really an egotistical inclination that happens because we think we know better than our natural selves. This inclination is wrong of course. We are not being strong or wise here, what we are really doing is saying that; the world out there has told me that this is so and I trust them more than I trust my natural self.

You can get yourself to naturally do anything you want by using the imaginative technique that I mentioned above. There is no need to create resistance and to feel that you need to push yourself to get the right things done. Learn to follow your natural rhythms and you will greatly decrease the kind of resistance that you feel in life. This will increase your happiness, creativity, health, and competence. Learn to follow your natural rhythms and you will be reborn.

The only way to truly become excellence is to develop your intellect. You must learn to keep your mind occupied and to always give it new things to work on and new ideas to contemplate. Excellence can be achieved by exercising your brain, developing your mind, and always working on expanding your intellect. In this way you will develop new levels of excellence in all your personal endeavors.

There are many forms of excellence, but all have a direct link to your intellect and the kind of level of consciousness that you can bring to anything in your life. Even strictly physical endeavors can benefit from the development of your intelligence because this increased intelligence will allow you to find better ways to achieve better results. Greater intelligence will teach you how to focus your mind better and therefore allow your body to function better.

Always try to keep your brain occupy. Exercise your brain by doing things that tax it capabilities just like you with tax your body’s physical capabilities in order to improve its function. The simplest way to do this is to get yourself a book on mental games which you can do on your spare time. Try to find an exercise that you find fun but at the same time difficult, it is an interesting realization that a game like this will create a regimen of exercise that you can actually feel. You should be able to notice larger amounts of blood rushing your brain, which means that your brain is using more oxygen in order to perform whatever task you are asking of it. Think of your brain as a giant muscle that requires regular doses of exercise, just like every other muscle in your body.

You have a natural desire to want to learn and try new things. It feels good to try new things and learn new things and if you follow your natural inclinations you will see that you will naturally want to exercise that big gray muscle in your head. There are many benefits to exercising your mind and trying to grow your intelligence; you will be able to contemplate new ideas, expand your ability to perceive, find solutions to problems, feel freer and more powerful. If your mind is kept busy trying to learn new things it will not focus on the negativity that you might be finding around you and it will instead focus on solutions not the problems.

Make a list of all the things that you want. Think of all the things that you might want to have in your life and write down this list on paper for your reference. Once you have this list, use your mind and your intellect to try and creatively attaining your desires. Focus your intellect and your creativity on ways to try and fulfill your desires and to bring the things that you have written in this list into your life. Your mind is an incredibly powerful tool and if you start to focus it into the things that you want, you will have a powerful ally the will do everything it can to make all your desires come true.

A good way to try and figure out how to attain your desires and goals is to think about these desires and to work your way backwards so that you can construct a plan that will get you to where you want to go. Using this method and others, focus on your ingenuity. This is a wonderful exercise because it does two things; first it is a great way to start getting the things that you want in life, and second it is a wonderful way to tax your intellect and mind.

In order to become excellent, you must begin to develop your brain, your mind, and therefore your entire intellect. Keeping your mind on an objective, taxing yourself in order to attain your objectives, using creativity and ingenuity, you become more powerful and more yourself. Excellence comes through the development of personal consciousness, expanding your being by becoming more yourself.

Making eye contact when you are interrelating with others is very important. Eye contact is the most important physiological aspect of interrelating with others. In many ways it crosses the boundaries between internal feelings and external actions. The saying goes, “the eyes are the windows to the soul”, and truly they play a key role in how others perceive us and how we perceive them.

It is always very important that you make eye contact when you’re speaking to someone else. There are many rules about how long this eye contact should be, but this is actually a very touchy thing because even experts are not exactly sure about the length of time that you should look at someone in the eye. Most of the studies into this time frame are not broad enough and they tend to only include people in certain areas and of a certain race. It is much better that you learn to feel out for yourself how long it is that you should look straight into the eyes of someone else. These times will always be different depending on who you’re talking to, where you are, and where the person is from. It is much better that you learn to develop a personal feel for this so that you are able to create the kind of results that you want from others.

Eye contact establishes trust, creates dominance, increases mutual empathy, and develops the tone for the interaction. In order to develop the best way to know how and when to look at someone, you must develop an empathic sense, so that you can see or feel what your gaze is doing to the other person. This empathic sense is developed by paying close attention to the other people that you are interrelating with, and by trying to put yourself in their place; trying to imaginatively feel what they must be feeling as they are looking at you. If you take the time to develop this empathic technique, you will soon surprise yourself with how well you can tell what others are thinking and feeling.

Using your own empathic sense, you will know how to develop your eye contact to a very powerful level. There are times when staring is a good thing and it creates the kind of dominance that you want, there are also times when looking away creates just the kind of feeling that you want by making you seem weak. Gazing at others in just the right way makes them feel like you are interested in them, that you care about what they are saying or doing. Eye contact is an incredibly powerful tool and the shades and variations of it are too numerous to put down in a small article. All of these things must be taken into consideration when you ponder the power of eye contact in human interrelation.

If you are interested in developing the power of your gaze in interpersonal relations, I suggest that you read the two following articles:

The Power of the Eye to Persuade

Empathy

We all have a lot left to learn. Through many stages in our lives, we believe that we know all there is to know about everything. This sometimes happens when we are young and we believe we have everything figured out, and it also happens as we age and we believe that we know everything because we have experienced everything. Anytime that we let ourselves believe that we know everything and we have nothing left to learn, is the time when we’re the most vulnerable. The reason for this vulnerability is the fact that this is the time we can be blindsided by something that we just did not see coming.

The world is and will always be a world of infinite possibilities, anytime that we are not believing this to be the case is a time that we have deluded ourselves. This delusion is usually created by lack of awareness, where we are not able to see things outside of our routine understanding. This routine is a great friend and can bring us great comfort so that we are able to experience our lives in an emotionally stable environment. But this same routine, that creates so much emotional comfort, also cuts us off from seeing new things; which are usually unexpected and chaotic and therefore create emotional instability.

No matter what our age is, we all have a lot to learn. In order to keep learning we must therefore try not to implement such rigid personal beliefs and routines. This can be a scary thing because as I said it can take us out of our comfort zone, but this is a small price to pay to overcome ignorance.

You must constantly pursue ‘the new’. New ideas and things represent new energy that has just been introduced into your mind. They are good because they remind you there is more to life than you are currently perceiving. New ideas also allow you to make connections and create new possibilities. Any new thought in your mind will expand your mind and this expansion will be like scaffolding that allows all sorts of new concepts to be incorporated. Without this expansion of the new, there is a type of stasis created where new concepts have no place to tether themselves to your mind making new growth impossible.

Try not to judge things so quickly. Personal judgment is a very quick way for you to stop yourself from learning new things. By judging the new, you make it common place and therefore make yourself feel better by thinking that you have it all covered. Judgment means that you are taking old ideas and you are trying to impose them on new ones. Judgment is inherently not a bad thing in and of itself of course, it is the way that you express your individuality; by placing a personal touch and all things that you experience. This judgment can become a hindrance to new thoughts and to new ideas though when it is allowed free reign without objective control. You must always ask yourself whether the judgment that you just made, of the new, is just old mental routine or objective thoughts on your part.

The old adage goes, “you can’t teach old dogs new tricks”. This is very true if the old dog will not allow old routines to be replaced by new ideas and concepts. We all have a lot to learn we do not have enough time in our very short lives to let old stagnant routine control how we see the world. Take the time to contemplate and question, both your own thoughts and beliefs, and anything new that you discover. Keep your mind fresh by always learning as much as you can about the reality around you.

In this article I would like to share with you a very powerful technique called Bone Breathing.  It’s an ancient technique that goes back to India and to China, it has been practiced by both Yogi’s and Chi Kung masters in different variations.  You can also see variations of it in the west and in all different parts of the world.  The reason for this is that it is an incredibly powerful technique that allows you to literally suck in energy from the environment around you.

In order to understand how this technique works you must first understand a little about the concept of ‘prana’ or ‘chi’.  These words are used to name the vital energy that can be found in the breath.  Most ancient mystical groups believe that there is a power all around us, and that it is this power that allows us to function in the physical world.  We are born into the world with some of this power and we also ingest this energy in order to survive. We usually ingest this energy through eating and other natural methods, but the most powerful way to suck up large amounts of this vital energy is through breath.  Breathing then becomes a mystical function that is responsible for how much energy and power we have in our bodies and can then use in our lives.

The bone breathing technique allows us to ingest large amounts of this vital energy or ‘prana’.  We can use this energy to stay healthy, get motivated, strengthen our sense of purpose, and generally become more powerful.  Before you begin this exercises I suggest that you consult your Doctor; if you suffer from high blood pressure, heart problems, or are at risk for aneurisms, then I suggest you talk to him before you start.

In order to begin let us imagine that the air around you and the air that fills up your lungs is actually a kind of light, you can think of this vital energy as a type of vapor or gas that is slightly thicker than the typical air around you.  With this imaginative construction in mind, try to fill your lungs completely from bottom to top, just like the glass fills with water.  Then try to empty out your lungs completely, just like a glass, from top to bottom.  This is correct breathing and how you should be breathing all the time. Keep that imaginative construction of the vital vapor or “prana’ in mind, it will teach you how to begin to use this ‘prana’ properly and will allow you to develop your own imaginative ideas on how to move this force through your body.  I am certain that you will feel incredibly revitalized after breathing like this for a while.

In order to do bone breathing, you must begin to channel this vital energy throughout your body.  Bone breathing is mostly concerned with sucking in that vital energy through different parts of the body and is therefore used while inhaling.  To begin imagine that you are breathing through the bones in your arms; think of your arm bones as being giant sponges that suck in the vital ‘prana’ through the force of your inhale.  As you do this you can imagine that there is a bit of resistance because the bones in your arms are thicker and therefore harder to breathe through than your throat.  Imagine sucking in the vital energy through your arm bones and filling your lungs from bottom to top just like before.  When your lungs are completely filled, you can exhaled in a quick sigh and either stop there or begin to inhale again and repeat the process.

If you have done this correctly, your arms should feel almost tingly, your blood pressure will have gone up, and you will feel more alert and energized.  Now try to do the same breathing through the bones of your legs.  Do this for about 10 breaths and relax for a while.  Try next to do 10 breaths through the bones on your back and then take a break for a little while.  Try 10 breaths through the bones in your skull and take your brake.  Finally try to do this breath technique by breathing in through every pore in your body for 10 breaths.  After this completed routine you should feel amazingly strong, and light as a feather.  Keep practicing and developing your technique; the key is to combine your imagination and your breathing in order to be able to suck up huge quantities of this vital energy that is all around you.

The benefits of this exercise are many as I have mentioned, but it is also a very powerful technique that allows you to pull in energy into one specific area and therefore supercharge yourself in that area.  For example, let us say that you went for a very long walk and your legs are incredibly tired, you can try bone breathing through the bones in your legs.  Doing this for 10 breaths and taking a break, doing it again for another 10 breaths, and continuing to do this until you feel better. You don’t have to just breath like this through just your bones of course, you can breathe in through any part of your body that you think might require a large flood of vital force.

This amazing technique can be used to relieve pain, speed up healing, and revitalize energy.  It can be used anywhere and at anytime that you wish.  This is the first step in learning to control this ‘prana’, ‘chi’, Odic force’, or most simply; the vital force of life.  Through bone breathing you can revitalize your energy and increase your power.

We all have a limited time on this earth.  There are only so many hours in a day.  We all have personal values that are very important to us, and we all have personal desires that we wish to satisfy and goals that we wish to accomplish.  Is very important that we schedule our time properly so that we do not waste any of the small amount of time that we have on planet earth.

You must schedule your time or else you will wake up one day and you will realize that most of your life has passed you by, and all the things that you wished you had done will go unaccomplished.  You can waste a huge amount of time watching TV and playing video games. Now I am not saying that watching TV or playing video games is bad, but what I am saying is that doing this type of stuff too much can make you feel like you wasted your life away.  We all need fun, entertainment, and play.  These things are the foundations of our lives and they are in many ways the best reasons for living.  What you need to do though is to make sure that you give yourself time to accomplish those things that might bring you even greater joy.

We are all different and we must choose for ourselves what we want from our lives.  I can’t tell you what to do or what is most important in life, we all need to choose these things for ourselves. What I think will make you happiest though, is to try and fulfill those things that bring you the greatest joy.  Nothing is off limits and if you wish to play video games then it is quite possible that this will be how you satisfy all your needs.

What I am suggesting is that you take a good look at what you wish to accomplish, and you do your best to try and accomplish these things because this is what you really want to do.  Once you know what you wish to do, and you are confident that it is your desire and not the desire that someone else has imposed on you, try and learn to schedule your actions.  Only by creating a schedule and by staying on this schedule will you be able to do all the things that you want in this life.  Without the schedule you won’t have direction and your life will seem to end way too quickly.

The best use of your time in my opinion is to educate yourself.  To learn as much as you can about all the things that you love in life and to teach yourself how to become more and more successful with every passing day.  Try to become the best that you can at one thing that will bring you money and that will allow you to have the resources that you need to do anything that you want in life.  Scheduling time for this purpose will set you free and inspire you with the knowledge that you can accomplish anything that you want in life. 

No one regrets failing as much as they regret not doing anything that all.  Ask any older person in your life; what they will most often tell you is that their greatest regret was not doing something.  If you waste your time you are really wasting your life, learn to schedule your days so that you are able to get the greatest joy from your life.

The fact of the matter is that diets, per se, do not work. I think that this topic has been given some thought and air time but it is a truth the warrants repetition. The reason for this is that there are still many groups and individuals trying to entice others into participating in this or that diet. The latest of these involve some kind of modification in your eating habit, where you are told that you can eat as much as you want as long as you don’t eat meat, or carbohydrates, or whatever.

One of the big reasons why these diets and others are still very popular is that they offer a simple solution. A panel of supposed experts has already crunched huge amounts of data and lab time, they have come to the conclusion that this particular diet works and will cure everything from high blood pressure to cancer. The thing is that many times these authority figures are questionable. And even when they are not, they tend not to have as much honest to goodness data as they claim. You must always ask yourself how long this diet research has been going on for. Diets tend to be a very fashionable thing, so one that has been kicking around long enough to have long term data is difficult to find. The big question always becomes then; what are the long term consequences of being on this diet?

Another reason I personally think that diets are so popular is that people have a personal desire to suffer. We have all been told all our lives that, “no pain, no gain”. A person with a weight problem, looking for the miracle diet, tends to usually have self esteem issues. A vulnerable person like this tends to believe that they have to suffer to get better. Either they have to suffer for their past sins (supposedly eating too much) or must pay to become the ideal. The diet then becomes the perfect answer; here you are told that you must abstain from this or that and suffer so that you too can enter the kingdom of the fashionably thin.

The unfortunate truth though is that diets do not work. Any attempt to lose weight by controlling food intake will only create more hunger. This hunger of course is not just physiological, it is also psychological. The more that you deny yourself of something, the more that you will crave it. It’s sort of like telling you not to think of a giant pink polar bear. The more you try, that harder it gets. On top of that you have to add the body’s natural physiological need to satisfy itself and you have a killer combination that will destroy any effort to stay on said diet.

The answer then is to change a routine instead of trying to force yourself to follow a regimen. To change a routine you must start out with a positive mind set. You must first do everything that you can to stop feeling bad about your body and start being nicer to yourself. The best way to do this is to try and focus on the ideal body that you want instead of the gross body that you think you have. Tell yourself that you are beautiful and sexy, that you can do anything, and that you do not need to force yourself to do anything to get better. I suggest that you do this until you can let go of most of those feelings of low self worth. If you try, and at least begin to logically understand that you are a worthy and capable person, then I think you will have taken a great step forward.

Secondly take stock of all those foods that you like. Make a list of the things that you like to eat and the things that you eat just because you are bored; what do you really love? Also pay attention to yourself throughout the day. When do you eat? Why? Do you eat because you are hungry, bored, scared, upset? Keep track of your routine. Also make a list of all of the things that you absolutely love to do. This is your list so write down whatever you want, nothing is off limits as long as you are not hurting someone else.

When you know when you eat and why, try to find alternatives to desperate eating. Desperate eating is when you are eating not out of hunger but to satisfy some other craving. Instead of eating things that you don’t particularly like because you are bored or craving an emotional something, do something that you absolutely love to do instead. Eat more of the things that you like and that your body enjoys eating and less of the things that just satisfy your day. Your body, if you let it and pay attention to it, will naturally tell you what you need by making you crave it.

Break your old harmful eating routines by giving yourself creative alternatives to old ruts. Don’t deny yourself anything, just replace it with something even better. Truly pursue your pleasures by first overcoming your self esteem problems and then allow yourself to have the best. Focus on the ideal you and forget what you think you see in the mirror. Eat more of the things that you find awesome and do more of the things the you love to do. Diets suck, they are for people that don’t like themselves. Learn to love yourself and start by giving yourself only the best. Never eat a bag of cheap chips because you’re feeling lonely; get yourself the best sun dried potatoes that you can get and challenge yourself to smile at the next nice person that you meet. Use the list that I had you create above and replace any desperate eating with something on that list that you truly love to do. Instead of controlling your self and trying to eat less, try instead to do more of what you love and eat more of what you love also. Refine your tastes and your palate, turn your eating into art. You are awesome and only deserve the best of everything.