“
6 Ways To Give Your Mind A Break:
1. Stop stressing
2. Stop worrying
3. Give rest to the problems weighing you down
4. Lighten up
5. Forgive yourself
6. Forgive others
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Germany Kent
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When you have a persistent sense of heartbreak and gutwrench, the physical sensations become intolerable and we will do anything to make those feelings disappear. And that is really the origin of what happens in human pathology. People take drugs to make it disappear, and they cut themselves to make it disappear, and they starve themselves to make it disappear, and they have sex with anyone who comes along to make it disappear and once you have these horrible sensations in your body, you’ll do anything to make it go away.
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Bessel van der Kolk
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Closing The Cycle
One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.
Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?
You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.
None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.
Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.
Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.
Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the "ideal moment." Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.
Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.
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Paulo Coelho
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It's me," a deep voice rumbled.
The hands released me and I turned. There stood Derek, all six foot of him. Maybe it was just the thrill of seeing him, but he looked better than I remembered. His black hair was still lank, and his face was still dotted with acne. But he looked...better.
~~~~~
Tori waited until Derek was gone, then shuddered. "Okay, Derek always weired me out, but the wolf man stuff is seriously creepy. Suits him, I suppose. A creepy power for a creepy guy."
"I thought he looked better."
She stared at me.
"What? He does. Probably because he's starting his wolf changes and he's not stressed out about being in Lyle House. That must help."
"You know what will really help? Shampoo. Deodorant - "
I raised my hand to cut her off. "He smelled fine, so don't start that. I'm sure his wearing deodorant and - for once-it's working. As for showers, they're a little hard to come by on the street, and we won't look much better soon."
"I'm just saying."
"Do you think he doesn't know you're saying? News flash-he's not stupid.
”
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Kelley Armstrong (The Awakening (Darkest Powers, #2))
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You are that which you seek, but you have left your own deepness and are looking elsewhere. The stress of not finding it creates its own need to be released. And so the cycle continues. You are chasing your own tail, and much of the time that tail looks suspiciously like a woman.
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David Deida (The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire)
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Avoiding problems doesn't make them go away - you think it does, but it really doesn't. They're just postponed. Those problems just stay inside your subconscious and brew until your body gets to a point where it's had enough and decides to release some of the stress itself. That's what an anxiety attack is! It happens when you don't know how to vent your frustration, fears, stress, sadness, madness, whatever it is that bothers you, the things you should be confronting and getting closure with. If you don't confront these things and deal with them, your body does it for you.
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Sully Erna (The Paths We Choose: A Memoir)
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If you could do one thing to improve yourself today, it would be this:
Rid yourself of bias.
If you can do this, you can learn to listen.
If you learn to listen, then you can learn to communicate.
If you can communicate, then you can begin to verbalize your feelings.
When you verbalize your feelings, then you can release stress and frustrations.
When you free yourself of what bothers you, then you can fully give yourself to others.
When you come this far, then you have learned to grow spiritually.
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Shannon L. Alder
“
Remember that forgiveness is something you do for yourself, not the other person. When you forgive, you are releasing yourself from the stress and energy of resenting and blaming the other person.
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Nick Trenton (Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress, Stop Negative Spirals, Declutter Your Mind, and Focus on the Present (The Path to Calm Book 1))
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You also get the benefit of feeling that you’re doing good by picking on someone evil—it can even be a kind of stress release. Once you’ve done it, though, you may find that you want that feeling again—that you need someone else to accuse just to get the rush back.
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Kanae Minato (Confessions)
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The sooner you can remember to bring your conscious awareness to your anxious thoughts and feelings, the sooner they can be released. Through practice and over time you’ll be able to recognize anxiety even before it arises.
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Todd Perelmuter
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The health benefits, both mental and physical, of humor are well documented. A good laugh can diffuse tension, relieve stress, and release endorphins into your system, which act as a natural mood elevator. In Norman Cousin's book, Anatomy of an Illness, Cousin's describes the regimen he followed to overcome a serious debilitating disease he was suffering from. It included large doses of laughter and humor. Published in 1976, his book has been widely accepted by the medical community.
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Cherie Carter-Scott (If Life Is a Game, These Are the Rules: Ten Rules for Being Human as Introduced in Chicken Soup for the Soul)
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• The effect of laughter on the body is immediate. Laughing actually lowers blood pressure, reduces stress hormones, and increases muscle flexion. • Laughter increases your resistance to infections. • Laughter also triggers the release of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers, and produces a general sense of well-being.
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Joyce Meyer (I Dare You: Embrace Life with Passion)
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There’s a destructive power in unforgiveness and unforgiveness controls you in a negative way. It’s time to let it all go! You become strong when you genuinely forgive. You become empowered when you genuinely forgive. You gain back your inner peace when you genuinely forgive. You release stress, bitterness and anger when you genuinely forgive. But most importantly, you’re able to live your best life when you genuinely forgive. Give yourself permission to live life free of toxic thoughts, feelings, and energy. Forgive!
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Stephanie Lahart
“
#96. Spend a Few Minutes Cuddling Your Significant Other/Child/Pet Physical touch is hugely important to our wellbeing. Cuddling releases oxytocin, the “happy hormone,” which can help reduce stress and even boost your immune system. Physical touch can also make the bonding process easier and improve communication between couples or parents and children.
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S.J. Scott (Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less)
“
We complete the stress cycle when we release our trauma response mechanisms by moving the stress-related energy out through the body.
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Hillary L. McBride (The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living)
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You see, what we think about the majority of the time, what we think about all day long, is what we will ultimately become.
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Brendan William (Meditation Mind Tricks: A Meditation Guide to Release Your Stress, Gain Success and Increase Peace)
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Stress and anxiety cause our brains to release chemicals that put lines in our faces and tear us down emotionally and spiritually.
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Chris Prentiss (Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life)
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One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” It you’re not using it, release it graciously to someone else—and make some money at the same time.
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S.J. Scott (10-Minute Declutter: The Stress-Free Habit for Simplifying Your Home)
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Support is not always easy to come by if you wait for the world to see your worth. Discover your own worth and the world will indeed follow your lead. Its the law of cause and effect! It has to happen. Support yourself.
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Sereda Aleta Dailey (Stress Relief for Your Body & Mind)
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And when you’re chilled out and relaxed, breathing deeply, your body releases less cortisol, the “stress hormone.” With less cortisol in your system, your digestion improves, your metabolism speeds up, and your body stores less fat.
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Susan Hyatt (Bare: A 7-Week Program to Transform Your Body, Get More Energy, Feel Amazing, and Become the Bravest, Most Unstoppable Version of You)
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Toxicity is often released through the tear ducts as part of the body’s natural genius at flushing itself out. Casual use of antidepressants is unwise for just this reason—feeling the full extent of your sadness is sometimes the only way to heal it. In the absence of the feeling, you miss out on the healing. The body does not make distinctions among physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual stresses. It is equipped with the natural intelligence to address them all.
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Marianne Williamson (A Course In Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever)
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It is impressive to see how people work hard to transform their lives, their bodies, and their relationships to become the best version of themselves. Release the layers that weigh you down and hold you back. Release the past and re-emerge to begin your next chapter.
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Susan C. Young
“
Here's how it works. Your immune system protects you from all kinds of nasty bugs and helps repair tissue that has been damaged by injury or surgery. When a problem develops somewhere, your body does the equivalent of calling 911. The alarm sounds, and the immune system springs into action. The first responders, the white blood cells, travel to the site of the problem. As weapons, some of the cells released a shower of powerful free radicals (called an oxidative burst) that aids in the destruction of invading microorganisms and damaged tissue.
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Jed Diamond (Stress Relief for Men: How to Use the Revolutionary Tools of Energy Healing to Live Well)
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TIDY UP YOUR WORKSPACE BEFORE YOU CALL IT A DAY. When you go to an office, you can leave your messy home, well, at home. Not so for remote workers. And this is a problem, because working in a messy space zaps your concentration. Research shows clutter can trigger the release of cortisol (the stress hormone). Messy homes are also linked to increased procrastination. Before you clock out each night, spend five minutes putting things away, organizing your papers, and removing dirty glasses. You’ll appreciate your efforts when you sit down to your desk the next morning.
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Aja Frost (Work-from-Home Hacks: 500+ Easy Ways to Get Organized, Stay Productive, and Maintain a Work-Life Balance While Working from Home! (Life Hacks Series))
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Ultimately, if the Lord doesn’t build the house (or the Sunday school class, or the church, or the family, or the business, or the relationship, or ), we are laboring in vain anyway (Psalm 127:1). We release the burden of stress when we release the responsibilities for the outcome to the Lord.
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Paul Chappell (The Burden Bearer: Who’s Carrying Your Load?)
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Reading is healing. Reading has effects that exceed our expectations.
It calms the mind and purifies it, recharges your energy, expands your horizon, activates brain cells positively, adds to your experience, and releases your stress.
Take a vacation from electronics once in a while and grab a good book to recharge your soul.
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Noora Ahmed Alsuwaidi
“
Meditation is about letting go of what has happened. The past is gone and no matter how much you dwell and complain, these things will not change. You will be doing yourself one of the greatest favors by releasing all guilt, regrets, and shame. You will be doing yourself one of the greatest favors by letting go of the past.
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Brendan William (Meditation Mind Tricks: A Meditation Guide to Release Your Stress, Gain Success and Increase Peace)
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For a short time, one or two hours, stress does wonderful things for the brain,” Sapolsky told the conference. “More oxygen and glucose are delivered to the brain. The hippocampus, which is involved in memory, works better when you are stressed for a little while. Your brain releases more dopamine, which plays a role in the experience of pleasure, early on during stress; it feels wonderful, and your brain works better.
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John J. Ratey (Go Wild: Eat Fat, Run Free, Be Social, and Follow Evolution's Other Rules for Total Health and Well-Being)
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When you let others be who they are, you’re making an active, empowered choice to release control you never truly had. You’re freeing yourself from the endless cycle of stress, frustration, and emotional upheaval that comes with trying to manage everything and everyone. The beauty of Let Them and Let Me is that it helps you master these practices, so you can stop being ruled by emotions and start living a more peaceful, intentional life.
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Mel Robbins (The Let Them Theory)
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Adrenaline increases the sugar in your blood. Her stress response, overactivated by the recent trauma, increased her adrenaline—hence much more sugar in her blood. The dose of insulin that had worked in the past was no longer adequate. Furthermore, when she was exposed to any evocative cue, such as the sirens, her sensitized system had an overreaction, releasing very high levels of adrenaline and, in turn, leading to a huge release of sugar.
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Bruce D. Perry (What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing)
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One of the common behaviors seen with a desensitized dissociative response is cutting….Cutting can be very confusing from the outside. We’ve talked about how your stress response systems can become overly reactive, how anyone experiencing inescapable and unavoidable trauma will dissociate-and how, if the pattern of this trauma is prolonged or extreme, the dissociative response becomes sensitized, overactive, and overly reactive. Remember that dissociation releases opioids (enkephalins and endorphins), your own painkillers. If a person with a sensitized dissociative response cuts themselves, their body releases a little bit of these opioids so that they can tolerate the cut; the amount released would be pretty small and proportional to the little cut. But when someone with a desensitized-overly reactive-dissociative response cuts themselves, they release a lot of opioid. It’s almost like taking a little bit of heroin or morphine.
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Bruce D. Perry (What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing)
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Emotions, at their most basic level, involve the release of neurochemicals in the brain, in response to some stimulus. You see the person you have a crush on across the room, your brain releases a bunch of chemicals, and that triggers a cascade of physiological changes—your heart beats faster, your hormones shift, and your stomach flutters. You take a deep breath and sigh. Your facial expression changes; maybe you blush; even the timbre of your voice becomes warmer. Your thoughts shift to memories of the crush and fantasies about the future, and you suddenly feel an urge to cross the room and say hi. Just about every system in your body responds to the chemical and electrical cascade activated by the sight of the person. That’s emotion. It’s automatic and instantaneous. It happens everywhere, and it affects everything. And it’s happening all the time—we feel many different emotions simultaneously, even in response to one stimulus.
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Emily Nagoski (Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle)
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#96. Spend a Few Minutes Cuddling Your Significant Other/Child/Pet Physical touch is hugely important to our wellbeing. Cuddling releases oxytocin, the “happy hormone,” which can help reduce stress and even boost your immune system. Physical touch can also make the bonding process easier and improve communication between couples or parents and children. Cuddling doesn’t have to be limited to romantic partners—you’ll get the same effect from hugging a friend, a child or even your favorite furry animal.
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S.J. Scott (Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less)
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There’s a destructive power in unforgiveness and unforgiveness controls you in a negative way. It’s time to let it all go! You become strong when you genuinely forgive. You become empowered when you genuinely forgive. You gain back your inner peace when you genuinely forgive. You release stress, bitterness, and anger when you genuinely forgive. But most importantly, you’re able to live your best life when you genuinely forgive. Give yourself permission to live life free of toxic thoughts, feelings, and energy. Forgive!
”
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Stephanie Lahart
“
Here we’ll describe four signs that you have to disengage from your autonomous efforts and seek connection. Each of these emotions is a different form of hunger for connection—that is, they’re all different ways of feeling lonely:
When you have been gaslit. When you’re asking yourself, “Am I crazy, or is there something completely unacceptable happening right now?” turn to someone who can relate; let them give you the reality check that yes, the gaslights are flickering.
When you feel “not enough.” No individual can meet all the needs of the world. Humans are not built to do big things alone. We are built to do them together. When you experience the empty-handed feeling that you are just one person, unable to meet all the demands the world makes on you, helpless in the face of the endless, yawning need you see around you, recognize that emotion for what it is: a form of loneliness. ...
When you’re sad. In the animated film Inside Out, the emotions in the head of a tween girl, Riley, struggle to cope with the exigencies of growing up....
When you are boiling with rage. Rage has a special place in women’s lives and a special role in the Bubble of Love. More, even, than sadness, many of us have been taught to swallow our rage, hide it even from ourselves. We have been taught to fear rage—our own, as well as others’—because its power can be used as a weapon. Can be. A chef’s knife can be used as a weapon. And it can help you prepare a feast. It’s all in how you use it. We don’t want to hurt anyone, and rage is indeed very, very powerful.
Bring your rage into the Bubble with your loved ones’ permission, and complete the stress response cycle with them. If your Bubble is a rugby team, you can leverage your rage in a match or practice. If your Bubble is a knitting circle, you might need to get creative. Use your body. Jump up and down, get noisy, release all that energy, share it with others.
“Yes!” say the people in your Bubble. “That was some bullshit you dealt with!”
Rage gives you strength and energy and the urge to fight, and sharing that energy in the Bubble changes it from something potentially dangerous to something safe and potentially transformative.
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Emily Nagoski (Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle)
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Shutdowns are physically similar to meltdowns, but they look like the complete opposite on the outside. A shutdown is when a person has experienced sensory overload and their body responds by dissociating and shutting down. Shutdowns are tricky because, to the outsider, you likely look calm. During a shutdown, your body is taking in the sensory stress and freezing it—but the situation is still very stressful. It’s very important to realize that your body is in a state of stress and your body needs to complete the stress cycle and release the stress when it is safe to do so.
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Megan Anna Neff (Self-Care for Autistic People: 100+ Ways to Recharge, De-Stress, and Unmask!)
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In the long term, if you have a habit of working through lunch, then science shows us you’re more likely to be emotionally exhausted, suffer sleep problems, and you’ll take more time off due to illness. Leave your work behind at lunchtime to release the brain into its most relaxed firing patterns: memories form, emotions settle, thoughts consolidate, tense muscles relax, and stress responses calm. Wherever possible, taking a lunch break outdoors and around green spaces enhances its restorative effects. Bosses take note: a team lunch results in improved teamwork, morale, and productivity.
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Stuart Farrimond (The Science of Living: 219 reasons to rethink your daily routine)
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Even in the best of times, when we’re not stressed or needy, many of us enjoy petting our dogs as much as any other aspect of dog ownership. This is not a trivial need. Quiet stroking can significantly change your body’s physiology, lowering your heart rate and blood pressure. It releases endogenous opiates, or internal chemicals that calm and soothe us and play a significant role in good health. Lucky for us, most of our dogs adore being touched. Most normal, well-socialized dogs cherish getting belly rubs and head massages and butt scratches. Many dogs like grooming so much that they’re willing to work for it, pawing or barking whenever needed to remind their human not to stop.
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Patricia B. McConnell (The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs)
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Watching violent, arousing shows may actually contribute to suppressing your immune system. As you identify with the anger you see on the screen or read about, stress chemicals called catecholamine and cortisone are released that can adversely affect your immune system. The effect of exposure to both anger and love on the immune system was shown in research by Harvard scientist David Mclelland, and later reproduced by the Heart Math Institute in California (Bhat 1995). Watching an anger-provoking movie suppressed the immune system (as measured by chemicals in the saliva) for five to six hours in study subjects. However, watching a movie about the compassionate work of Mother Teresa caused elevation of the immune level in the participants.
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Ted Zeff (The Highly Sensitive Person's Survival Guide: Essential Skills for Living Well in an Overstimulating World (Eseential Skills for Living Well in an Overstimulating World))
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Do you like Phil Collins? I've been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that, I really didn't understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual. It was on Duke where Phil Collins' presence became more apparent. I think Invisible Touch was the group's undisputed masterpiece. It's an epic meditation on intangibility. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. Christy, take off your robe. Listen to the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument. Sabrina, remove your dress. In terms of lyrical craftsmanship, the sheer songwriting, this album hits a new peak of professionalism. Sabrina, why don't you, uh, dance a little. Take the lyrics to Land of Confusion. In this song, Phil Collins addresses the problems of abusive political authority. In Too Deep is the most moving pop song of the 1980s, about monogamy and commitment. The song is extremely uplifting. Their lyrics are as positive and affirmative as anything I've heard in rock. Christy, get down on your knees so Sabrina can see your asshole. Phil Collins' solo career seems to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying, in a narrower way. Especially songs like In the Air Tonight and Against All Odds. Sabrina, don't just stare at it, eat it. But I also think Phil Collins works best within the confines of the group, than as a solo artist, and I stress the word artist. This is Sussudio, a great, great song, a personal favorite.
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Bret Easton Ellis
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The role played by stress in the causation of cancer is so great that it would not be an exaggeration to say that 80% or more cancer cases have their immediate origin in some form of mental pressure or strain. Grief, distress, fear, worry, and anger are emotions which have horrible effects on the body's functions. Researchers have discovered that these emotions cause the release of chemicals from the brain called neuropeptides. These potent compounds have a profound immune-suppressive action. Scientists have traced a pathway from the brain to the immune cells proving that negative emotions can stop the immune cells dead in their tracks. This results in part from the release of chemicals from nerve endings. Once this happens, harmful microbes or cancer cells can invade any tissue in the body.
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Cass Ingram (Eat Right or Die Young: When Will Your Biological Clock Stop?)
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Enjoying the taste of toasted raisin bread or the humor in a cartoon may not seem like much, but simple pleasures like these ease emotional upsets, lift your mood, and enrich your life. They also provide health benefits, by releasing endorphins and natural opioids that shift you out of stressful, draining reactive states and into happier responsive ones. As a bonus, some pleasures—such as dancing, sex, your team winning a game of pick-up basketball, or laughing with friends—come with energizing feelings of vitality or passion that enhance long-term health. Opportunities for pleasure are all around you, especially if you include things like the rainbow glitter of the tiny grains of sand in a sidewalk, the sound of water falling into a tub, the sense of connection in talking with a friend, or the reassurance that comes from the stove working when you need to make dinner.
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Rick Hanson (Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence)
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As explained in the first chapter, human beings are physically hardwired to constantly move about and exercise. Every day, we build up a lot of stress, and physical exercise provides an outlet to get this out of our system so we can stay healthy. In the modern world, our stress is exacerbated by our incessant consumption of negative news and by rapid changes in our culture and norms. Negativity and confusion add stress to the body. Exercise will help manage this by releasing neurotransmitters, called endorphins, into our body to manage our response. Exercise temporarily mimics the fight-or-flight response that you may feel when you are stressed. But in the long run, it will help calm and de-stress you. Endorphins help calm your responses and ultimately result in removing the built-up stresses from our lives. Studies have shown that people experience positive changes after just one or two cardio sessions. Exercise will also help you sleep, which is directly correlated with lower stress and anxiety.3 Exercise
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Paul Uponi (Muscular Christianity: A Case for Spiritual and Physical Fitness)
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Stalling. Buying time. Gray chuckled, releasing me with one last nudge to my chin. “But are you afraid?” he asked, tilting his head as he knowingly looked at where I’d burrowed my fingers into the base of the tree, melding the wood around me so that I could become one with it. “Or are you just pissed?” “I’m always pissed,” I snapped, clenching my teeth together as I sank into that anger. Into the feeling of being so fucking tired of being somebody else’s puppet. If I’d been stronger, I’d have let Gray take my magic and walked away as soon as I had the chance, but I was too afraid to live with the hole inside me. “You wanting to fuck me when I’m afraid doesn’t exactly put me in a good mood.” “I don’t want to fuck you when you’re afraid, wife,” he said, stressing the word. I flinched, as I suspected I would do every time he called me by the term that I was so certain couldn’t be possible. I didn’t pretend to know the intricacies of demon marriage rites, but it seemed like even for the evil creatures from Hell there should have been some level of consent involved. “I want to fuck you when you’re so mad you try to claw my eyes out. I want to fight you, and then I want to fuck you while you direct all that anger toward me.
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Harper L. Woods (The Cursed (Coven of Bones #2))
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So how much sleep is enough? Generally, sleep specialists recommend that adults get between seven and nine hours of sleep per night, though there is no perfect number for the amount of sleep you may need personally. Doctors and scientists agree on one thing overall, however: Getting too little sleep—five hours a night or less for most people—results in a wide range of cognitive and physical impairments. Neurons in the brain can’t consolidate the information you’ve taken in, so you don’t store memories and you lose the ability to use this information. Add to this the compromised motor control, lack of focus, and difficulty with decision making and problem solving that come with sleep deprivation, and you may think twice about catching The Tonight Show and choose to turn in earlier than usual. Stress When your brain is bombarded with stimuli that trigger anxiety, you experience stress—a series of biological and chemical processes throughout your body that initiates a fight-or-flight response. In a nutshell, here’s what happens: Your sympathetic nervous system, commanded by the hypothalamus—a small area at your brain’s base—releases stress hormones that ready you to deal with whatever threat has emerged. First, your adrenal glands (on top of your kidneys) release adrenaline, which causes increases in breathing rate, heart rate, and blood pressure. These glands also release cortisol, which increases
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Calistoga Press (Memory Tips & Tricks: The Book of Proven Techniques for Lasting Memory Improvement)
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DRY SAUNA Numerous cultures use sweat lodges, steam baths, or saunas for cleansing and purification. Many health clubs and big apartment buildings have saunas and steam baths, and more and more people are building saunas in their own homes. Low-to-moderate-temperature saunas are one of the most important ways to detoxify from pesticide exposure. Head-to-toe perspiration through the skin, the largest organ of elimination, releases stored toxins and opens the pores. Fat that is close to the skin is heated, mobilized, and broken down, releasing toxins and breaking up cellulite. The heat increases metabolism, burns off calories, and gives the heart and circulation a workout. This is a boon if you don’t have the energy to exercise. It is well known in medicine that a fever is the body’s way of burning off an infection and stimulating the immune system. Fever therapy and sauna therapy are employed at alternative medicine healing centers to do just that. The controlled temperature in a sauna is excellent for relaxing muscular aches and pains and relieving sinus congestion. The only way I made it through my medical internship was by having regular saunas to reduce the daily stress. FAR-INFRARED (FIR) SAUNAS FIR saunas are inexpensive, convenient, and highly effective. Detox expert Dr. Sherry Rogers says that FIR is a proven and efficacious way of eliminating stored environmental toxins, and she thinks everyone should use one. There are one-person Sauna Domes that you lie under or more elaborate sauna boxes that seat several people. The far infrared provides a heat that increases the body temperature but the surrounding air is not overly heated. One advantage of the dome is that your head remains outside, which most people find more comfortable and less confining. Sweating begins within minutes of entering the dome and can be continued for thirty to sixty minutes. Besides the hundreds of toxins that can be removed through simple sweating, the heat of saunas creates a mild shock to the body, which researchers feel acts as a stimulus for the body’s cells to become more efficient. The outward signs are the production of sweat to help decrease the body temperature, but there is much more going on. Further research on sauna therapy is destined to make it an important medical therapy.
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Carolyn Dean (The Magnesium Miracle (Revised and Updated))
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Ryder! What’s taking you so long?”
“I’m on my way!” he yells back.
It feels like forever before he pushes open the door and ducks inside. Then I see why it took him so long. He’s somehow got the three cats tucked under one arm and the cake plate clutched in the other hand. No spare for a flashlight or lantern--so he accomplished this all in the dark.
“Here,” he says, handing off the cake to me before releasing Kirk, Spock, and Sulu into the crate and latching the door.
“Seriously, Ryder? You brought the cake?”
He shrugs. “I was hungry.”
Hmm, I guess all that kissing worked up his appetite. For cake. I’m not sure if I should be offended or not. On the plus side, he doesn’t look like he’s about to puke. So we’re making progress as far as his fear of storms goes. I guess that’s something.
“Did you happen to bring a fork?” I ask, setting the plate on the makeshift tabletop.
He produces two from his pocket, holding them up triumphantly. So we eat cake while the sirens blare. Actually, it doesn’t sound that bad out there. Still, the fact that we’re so calm--that Ryder’s so calm--should tell you how routine this is getting. As long as we don’t hear that awful freight-train sound, we’re good.
“What happened to the cake?” he asks between bites. “It looks like someone mutilated it while I was gone.”
“Sorry,” I mutter. “Guess I did some stress bingeing. You realize you’re not wearing a shirt, right?”
He glances down and shrugs, his cheeks flushing ever so slightly. “Sorry ’bout that.”
It might seem silly that he’s apologizing, but at Magnolia Landing, you don’t come to the table unless you’re fully dressed. It’s one of Laura Grace’s most unbendable rules--you dress for meals, even breakfast. Not that this counts as a meal, and I’m not sure you could call this plywood-on-top-of-a-crate thing a “table.” But still…
By the time the sirens shut off, we’ve completely cleaned the plate, even scraping off the hardened frosting with our fingers. “That was quick,” I say, setting aside the now-empty plate.
Ryder nods. “I guess we should give it a minute or two. You know, make sure it’s not coming back on.”
So we wait. Silently. Ryder can’t even meet my eyes, and all I want to do is stare at his lips. This is crazy. I mean, what do we do now--now that the sirens are off and the cake is gone?
Apparently, the answer is pretend like nothing happened.
”
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Kristi Cook (Magnolia (Magnolia Branch, #1))
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Wake up every day, expecting not to know what's going to happen, and look for the events to unfold with curiosity. Instead of stressing and managing, just be present at anything that pops up with the intention of approaching it with your best efforts. Whatever happens in the process of spiritual awakening is going to be unpredictable and moving forward, if you're just the one who notices it, not fighting or making a big project out there. • You may have emotional swings, energetic swings, psychic openings, and other unwanted shifts that, as you knew, feel unfamiliar to your personality. Be the beholder. Don't feel like you have something to fix or alter. They're going to pass. • If you have severe trauma in your history and have never had therapy, it might be very useful to release the pains of memories that arise around the events. Therapy teaches you how to express, bear witness, release, and move forward. Your therapist needn't know much about kundalini as long as he or she doesn't discount that part of your process. What you want to focus on is the release of trauma-related issues, and you want an experienced and compassionate therapist who sees your spiritual orientation as a motivation and support for the healing process. • This process represents your chance to wake up to your true nature. Some people wake up first, and then experience the emergence of a kundalini; others have the kundalini process going through as a preparation for the emergence. The appearance happens to do the job of wiping out, so is part of either pattern. Waking up means realizing that whoever looks through your eyes, lives through your senses, listens to your thoughts, and is present at every moment of your experience, whether good or bad, is recognized or remembered. This is a bright, conscious, detached and unconditionally loving presence that is universal and eternal and is totally free from all the conditions and memories you associate with as a personal identity. But as long as you believe in all of your personal conditions and stories, emotions, and thoughts, you have to experience life filtered by them. This programmed mind is what makes the game of life to be varied and suspense-filled but it also causes suffering and fear of death. When we are in Samadhi and Satori encounters, we glimpse the Truth about the vast, limitless space that is the foundation for our being. It is called gnosis (knowledge) or the One by the early Gnostics. Some spiritual teachings like Advaita Vedanta and Zen go straight for realization, while others see it as a gradual path through years of spiritual practices. Anyway, the ending is the same. As Shakespeare said, when you know who you are, the world becomes a stage and you the player, and life is more light and thoughts less intrusive, and the kundalini process settles down into a mellow pleasantness. • Give up places to go and to be with people that cause you discomfort.
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Adrian Satyam (Energy Healing: 6 in 1: Medicine for Body, Mind and Spirit. An extraordinary guide to Chakra and Quantum Healing, Kundalini and Third Eye Awakening, Reiki and Meditation and Mindfulness.)
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All traditions of Buddhism stress the importance of first practicing calm abiding meditation (shamatha) and then insight meditation (vipassana).
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Rob Nairn (From Mindfulness to Insight: Meditations to Release Your Habitual Thinking and Activate Your Inherent Wisdom)
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Neuropeptides that have a healthy effect on your immune system include serotonin, dopamine, and relaxin; these are released whenever you feel relaxed and happy. Neuropeptides that have a weakening effect on your immune system, especially over an extended period of time, include cortisol, epinephrine, and adrenaline; these are known as the stress hormones. What makes stress—or any emotion, for that matter—so powerful is that almost every cell in our bodies has the ability to both produce and receive these neuropeptides.3 In other words, the
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Kelly A. Turner (Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds - Uncovering the Nine Key Factors of Spontaneous Remission Through Holistic Healing Practices and Survivor Stories)
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Our body responds to those feelings by releasing hormones such as cortisol and neurochemicals such as dopamine that fundamentally change our cellular chemistry. We now need to seek out the same kind of emotional hit again and again. Even if an emotion makes us stressed or sad, it often feels familiar and safe because it provides the same type of release that we experienced as children.
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Nicole LePera (How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self)
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Physical exercise deepens sleep and improves mood by releasing neurochemicals in the brain, including dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine, which all make you feel happier and less stressed.
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Nicole LePera (How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self)
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Norepinephrine: The Wake-Up Neurotransmitter One of norepinephrine’s effects on the brain is to sharpen attention. As we saw earlier, norepinephrine (aka noradrenaline) can function as both a neurotransmitter and a hormone. When we perceive stress and activate the fight-or-flight response, the brain produces bursts of norepinephrine, triggering anxiety. But sustained and moderate secretion can also produce a beneficial result in the form of heightened attention, even euphoria, and meditation has been shown to produce a rise in norepinephrine in the brain. A modest dose of norepinephrine is also associated with reduced beta brain waves. 5.11. Norepinephrine: your wake-up molecule. Notice the paradox here. Norepinephrine is associated with both anxiety and attentiveness. How do you get enough to be alert, but not so much you’re stressed? Surrender is the key. Steven Kotler, co-author of Stealing Fire, says that stress neurochemicals like norepinephrine actually prime the brain for flow states. At first, the meditator is frustrated by Monkey Mind. But if she surrenders, despite the perpetual self-chatter of the DMN, she enters the next phase of flow, which is focus. She has hacked her biology, using the negative experience of mind wandering as a springboard to flow. Norepinephrine’s molecular structure is similar to its cousin, epinephrine. While epinephrine works on a number of sites in the body, norepinephrine works exclusively on the arteries. When both dopamine and norepinephrine are present in the brain at the same time, they amplify focus. Attention becomes sharp, while perception is enhanced. Staying alert is a key function of the brain’s attention circuit, which keeps you focused on the object of your meditation and counteracts the wandering mind. It also stops you from becoming drowsy, an occupational hazard for meditators. That’s because pleasure neurotransmitters such as serotonin and melatonin (for which serotonin is the precursor) can put you to sleep if not balanced by alertness-producing norepinephrine. Again, the ratios are the key. Oxytocin: The Hug Drug 5.12. Oxytocin: your cuddle molecule. Oxytocin is produced by the hypothalamus, part of the brain’s limbic system. When activated, neurons in the hypothalamus stimulate the pituitary gland to release oxytocin into the bloodstream. So even though oxytocin is produced in the brain, it has effects on the body as well, giving it the status of a hormone. It is one of a group of small protein molecules called neuropeptides. A closely related neuropeptide is vasopressin. All mammals produce some variant of these neuropeptides. Oxytocin promotes bonding between humans. It is responsible for maternal feelings and physically prepares the female body for childbirth and nursing. It is generated through physical touch but also by emotional intimacy. Oxytocin also facilitates generosity and trust within a group. Oxytocin is the hormone associated with the long slow waves of delta. A researcher hooking subjects up to an EEG found that touch stimulated greater amounts of delta, with certain regions of the skin being more sensitive. The biggest effect was produced by tapping the cheek, as we do in EFT. It produced an 800% spike in delta.
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Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
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They demonstrated that the elevated emotional states described by mystics weren’t just subjective fantasies; they were grounded in objective molecular interactions that could be measured and quantified. INGREDIENTS OF THE BLISS BRAIN COCKTAIL Research has shown that each one of the seven bliss neurochemicals is associated with meditation. A review and synthesis of the research literature found increases in serotonin, GABA, vasopressin, and melatonin. The dopamine levels of meditators rose by 56%. Cortisol dropped, and norepinephrine declined to levels appropriate to focused attention without anxiety. The rhythms of the brain’s production of beta-endorphins changed. Heightened oxytocin mobilized the synthesis of anandamide in the nucleus accumbens. A number of studies and reviews show that meditation stimulates the production of nitric oxide, providing meditators with the health benefits of better circulation and brain neuroplasticity. Nitric oxide release is closely coupled with anandamide production; thus meditation and other stress-reducing activities may stimulate the synthesis of both together. Anandamide can also improve cognitive function, motivation, learning, and memory, while triggering the growth of neurons in the brain centers that govern those functions. A blissed brain is a learning brain; meditation cements our feel-good experiences into brain hardware through increased neuroplasticity. Anandamide also relieves anxiety and depression while stimulating closeness and connection with others. The scientific literature shows that oxytocin is increased by meditation. As we saw earlier, oxytocin triggers the release of nitric oxide and anandamide, providing the meditator with a trifecta of pleasurable brain chemicals. 5.18. The only way to get all the most pleasurable neurochemicals surging through your brain at one time is the ecstatic flow state found in deep meditation. Each of these neurochemicals is pleasurable in its own right, and you can get them from activities that stimulate their production. These activities might get you one or two but not all seven in one package.
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Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
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There’s only one activity that stimulates the brain to produce all seven at the same time, and that’s the ecstatic state of flow. The shortest way there is deep, alpha-driven meditation. When you blend all seven into a single cocktail, the result is euphoria. Let’s see: What might a combination of the first letters of each drug look like? Serotonin, Oxytocin, Norepinephrine, Dopamine, Anandamide, Nitric oxide, and Beta-endorphin? Just for fun, let’s combine them, and call our cocktail’s special blend SONDANoBe. This is the magic formula that, produced inside our own bodies in the proper ratios, bathes the brain in the chemicals of ecstasy. GETTING HIGH ON YOUR OWN SUPPLY When I meditate, I can feel the moment when each drug in the cocktail kicks in. First, I use EFT tapping and release any and every negative thought, emotion, and energy. This drops my level of cortisol, along with suppressing the high beta brain waves of stress. I now have a molecular substrate in my brain upon which I can build a deep and focused meditative experience. Next, I close my eyes and focus. Dopamine kicks in as I anticipate the delicious hormone and neurotransmitter drug cocktail I’m about to be rewarded with. The dopaminergic reward system of my brain fires up and the “body learning” of how to meditate—stored in my basal ganglia, which memorize frequently performed actions—comes online. Ingredient one. My mind starts to wander. My email inbox. The morning’s first meeting. The laugh line of the movie I watched last night. An overdue deadline. Damn, I’m way out of the zone already, cortisol rising, and I haven’t been meditating more than 5 minutes. Dopamine brings me back to focus, aided by norepinephrine. I’m motivated. I want Bliss Brain more than I want an endless loop of the Me Show. I return to center. Cortisol drops. Ahhh, I’m back. Norepinephrine stimulates my attention. Ingredient two. Then I realize that my body is uncomfortable. I have a twinge in my right knee. My lower back hurts. My tummy’s rumbling because it’s empty. I consciously shift my wandering mind back into focus. Back in sync, my neurons secrete beta-endorphin, which masks the pain. The discomfort drops away, and being in a body feels wonderful. Ingredient three. I tune in to each of the archetypal strands that guide me. Mother Mary. Kwan Yin. Healing. Strength. Beauty. Wisdom. I imagine myself meditating in a field of a million saints. I’m lost in Bliss Brain, as serotonin, the satisfaction drug, kicks in. Ingredient four. I feel one with the universe. Oxytocin starts to flow, as I bond with everything. Ingredient five. That releases nitric oxide and anandamide. Ingredients six and seven.
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Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
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Peak performers engage the caudate nucleus to keep themselves in states of flow. They “throttle down” emotions such as fear and anger so they can engage fully with the task at hand. When meditators use the caudate nucleus to throttle back their negative emotions repeatedly, the process becomes automatic, like riding a bike. This makes them resilient in the face of stress. We encountered the nucleus accumbens, another important part of the striatum, in Chapter 2. It’s associated with rewarding experiences and the reinforcement that reward produces in the brain. It’s activated by pleasurable experiences, during which it secretes large amounts of dopamine, the brain’s primary reward neurotransmitter. This reward system plays a role in addiction. Drugs like alcohol, heroin, and cocaine trigger the release of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. It also kicks in when you find a $20 bill on the beach, have an orgasm, or help yourself to a generous portion of cherry pie. But when a meditator contemplates altruism, her nucleus accumbens lights up. She gets the same rush of dopamine that an addict gets when he sniffs a line of cocaine. Same for the chocoholic unwrapping her Ferrero Rocher truffle. Meditation makes meditators feel good using the exact same neurotransmitters and brain regions active in the addict, as we’ll see in Chapter 5. This reward system explains why long-term meditators maintain a regular practice. They’re addicted to feeling wonderful!
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Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
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The hanging technique 1. Approach and strike to the opponent’s kidney and wrap your other forearm around his neck. 2. Pivot your hips back and bend your knees, joining your hands and locking them together. 3. Roll your opponent on to his back, to the opposite hip, lifting his feet off the ground. In this position it is very hard for your opponent to escape. 4. Look at his heels and wait for them to drop. When they drop, he has probably fainted. Note: This is a favorite skilled technique. While there are easier, more effective, and less risky techniques, I wanted to use this technique to stress the importance of a quick reaction. Many times, this hold can end on the ground, or be accompanied by a knife threat. However, anything less conclusive would make it easier to escape. Keep in mind that if your opponent is grabbing you with one hand while holding a weapon with the other, he cannot strangle you, and you should concentrate your efforts on preventing injury before thinking of escaping the hold. Release from neck hold from the rear 1. First move both hands towards the opponent’s eyes in an attempt to poke them. 2. Land your hands on the opponent’s wrists, pulling them down as you gain your breath. If the grip is too forceful to pull down, use your hands to attach the attacker's hands to your chest and lean your head backward to release the pressure on your neck. 3. Pivot your body and your chin to the direction of the opponent’s hands, easing your head out. 4. Push with both shoulders, making room for your head to exit. 5. Let go of your right hand and use it to grab the attacker’s elbow before standing up. That would surely keep him down. Hold the opponent at the wrist and elbow and kick to his face. 6. You can kick his coccyx bone or the groin according to his position.
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Boaz Aviram (Krav Maga: Use Your Body as a Weapon)
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When you forgive, you are releasing yourself from the stress and energy of resenting and blaming the other person.
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Nick Trenton (Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress, Stop Negative Spirals, Declutter Your Mind, and Focus on the Present (The Path to Calm Book 1))
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When a child with ODD feels stressed, it affects how their brain processes stress and how they respond. Combined with their inaccurate view of themselves and others, they act out violently to release that pent-up stress.
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Lauren Douglas (Defiant No More: The Unconventional Guide to Help Your Children Overcome Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Anger, Build Good Relationships and Grow Self Esteem (Parenting Plan))
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Because we are energy imbedded in a physical body, all of our bodies ' cells are like pieces of a hologram, storing the memory of anything that has happened. So it happens that those places where energy, pain, memory, or contractions are stored will respond as the energies which aim to transform us pass through the body. It's what we feel when there are pains, jerking movements, heat, vibrations, rushes, and other phenomena that arise during and after a kundalini. Most people have connected certain of these events with the raising of the chakras, which is another term for suggesting that new possibilities arise as contraction escapes. People carry their stress in different ways, just as we live our lives in different ways, and so there may be a wide variety of reactions to this energy revolution or clearing process. If an old injury causes physical problems, it can be particularly sensitive. When our diet is poor, or our environment allows us to live where emotional energy is dangerous, this may make us more vulnerable to difficulties. If any kind of trauma has happened or there is a history of drinking or substance use, this transformation will specifically threaten the body, which is trying to clear it from the previous memories and experiences with which we are associated. If there's a psychological propensity to contract and a deep desire for control, the cycle can be very difficult due to our aversion to it. These are just a few guidelines for these and other reasons that can help you move through this experience and find inner peace. • At times the energy will feel coarse and heavy. But it is uncommonly intense. Normally it is the anxiety that causes pain, and the attempt to stop it. If you have a lot of body movement, place yourself on the bed once or twice a day and allow the energy to move through you and clear up anything that doesn't belong to you, and anything that's in your best interest to release at that time. It will usually run for a few minutes— may be up to 20— and then stop, and you'll feel more relaxed. Especially if you work in an environment where you may pick up negative energy or other people's pain such as healing or therapeutic work, or in places where alcohol use is high or in hospitals, you need to do this. If this process involves persistent physical pain, you should have a medical evaluation. • Find out what your body wants to eat, really. Individuals often need to make major dietary changes such as giving up intake of alcohol and recreational drugs, eliminating red meat, consuming smaller and simpler meals. If you have a recurring energy problem that is too serious, do detective work to see what could cause the problem.
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Adrian Satyam (Energy Healing: 6 in 1: Medicine for Body, Mind and Spirit. An extraordinary guide to Chakra and Quantum Healing, Kundalini and Third Eye Awakening, Reiki and Meditation and Mindfulness.)
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However, the improvements to your mental health are even more valuable than these physical changes. Strength training has been shown to decrease anxiety and depression,5 in part due to the endorphins released during exercise, but also by improving sleep and exposing your mind to repeated physical stress.6 It also improves your mood and attitude by providing “an opportunity to overcome obstacles in a controlled, predictable environment.”7 Strength training creates a simple opportunity to accomplish a set of short-term goals in a controlled environment. The sense of accomplishment you feel when you achieve these goals increases self-perception and confidence. This confidence encourages you to aim
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Nate Clark (How I Did It: A Fitness Nerd's Guide to Losing Fat and Gaining Lean Muscle)
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Give yourself some pleasure: wash your hands in warm water, eat an apple, or listen to music. Pleasure releases natural opioids that soothe and settle the brain’s stress machinery. Think of things you feel grateful for or glad about, things that bring a little smile. Connect with someone you like, either directly or in your imagination.
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Rick Hanson (Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness)
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When we are in high-stress situations, large doses of cortisol and adrenaline are released, which activates the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response. The average person is unable to control this process, but the Navy SEALs are capable of doing so because they have been trained to, and depending on the situation, their responses to stressful situations could mean the difference between life and death. They use several techniques to do this, including box breathing. When a SEAL starts feeling stressed or overwhelmed, they focus on their breath to regain control. They take a series of breaths for four seconds at a time—they breathe in, hold their breath, and then breathe out. This process is repeated until the heart rate returns to normal
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Daniel Walter (The Power of Discipline: How to Use Self Control and Mental Toughness to Achieve Your Goals)
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First published in 2020 this book contains over 560 easily readable compact entries in systematic order augmented by an extensive bibliography, an alphabetical list of countries and locations of individuals final resting places (where known) and a day and month list in consecutive order of when an individual died.
It details the deaths of individuals, who died too early and often in tragic circumstances, from film, literature, music, theatre, and television, and the achievements they left behind. In addition, some ordinary people who died in bizarre, freak, or strange circumstances are also included.
It does not matter if they were famous or just celebrated by a few individuals, all the people in this book left behind family, friends and in some instances devotees who idolised them. Our heartfelt thoughts and sympathies go out to all those affected by each persons death.
Whether you are concerned about yourself, a loved one, a friend, or a work colleague there are many helplines and support groups that offer confidential non-judgemental help, guidance and advice on mental health problems (such as anxiety, bereavement, depression, despair, distress, stress, substance abuse, suicidal feelings, and trauma). Support can be by phone, email, face-to-face counselling, courses, and self-help groups. Details can be found online or at your local health care organisation.
There are many conspiracy theories, rumours, cover-ups, allegations, sensationalism, and myths about the cause of some individual’s deaths. Only the facts known at the time of writing are included in this book.
Some important information is deliberately kept secret or undisclosed. Sometimes not until 20 or even 30 years later are full details of an accident or incident released or in some cases found during extensive research. Similarly, unsolved murders can be reinvestigated years later if new information becomes known. In some cases, 50 years on there are those who continue to investigate what they consider are alleged cover-ups.
The first name in an entry is that by which a person was generally known. Where relevant their real name is included in brackets.
Date of Death | In the entry detailing the date an individual died their age at the time of their death is recorded in brackets.
Final Resting Place | Where known details of a persons final resting place are included.
“Unknown” | Used when there is insufficient evidence available to the authorities to establish whether an individuals’ death was due to suicide, accident or caused by another.
Statistics
The following statistics are derived from the 579 individual “cause of death” entries included in this publication.
The top five causes of death are,
Heart attack/failure 88 (15.2%)
Cancer 55 (9.5%)
Fatal injuries (plane crash) 43 (7.4%)
Fatal injuries (vehicle crash/collision) 39 (6.7%)
Asphyxiation (Suicide) 23 (4%).
extract from 'Untimely and Tragic Deaths of the Renowned, The Celebrated, The Iconic
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B.H. McKechnie
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Heart Center. (Thoracic segment including hands, arms, and shoulders) Positive position seat. Relationship confidence, and sensitivity developed. Empathy, honesty, trust and love of self and of others. Kindness, openness and generosity. Adaptability and flexibility. To reach out and to accept. Positive aspects: self-love, compassion, trust, empathy, optimism, generosity, high levels of excitement and joyful excitement accessed and supported by the hara (abdominal segment) and the Speed Bump unhindered. With inner strength and creative compassion, understanding, compassion, wholeness balanced. You're wondering what you want. Healthy aggression when the second and third segments are supported. Negative aspects: Constant sorrow, guilt, indignity, desire, remorse, isolation, a heart of "blindness." Often accompanied by arms and hands holding down, rounding or locking shoulders blocking an expression reaching out or wanting. External Negative Aspects. Shoulders bent, stooped, or rounded, flat chest, general breathing problems, lung and skin diseases. Segment of the solar plexus/diaphragm. A central release point for all body stresses. The marionette's hand that tightens or loosens the cords, including legs, attached to the pelvis, waist, neck, arms, shoulders, mouth, ears, jaw, and head. The fulcrum or balance point of sympathetic high chest/parasympathetic abdominal response; the balance point with the (upper) caring, sincere, trustworthy, empathetic self with our "lower" rooted, erotic, arrogant, imaginative selves; They meet and balance, or complement each other as required or desired. Positive aspects: it supports the balance of brain hemispheres when eliminated. Capacity to communicate or regulate strong emotions, whether negative or positive, either instinctively or willingly; faith in improvement, concentration, desire to transcend physical and mental challenges, ability to resolve disputes, more in tune with emotions. Contentment and a sense of lightness, understanding, fulfillment and recognition of oneself. Firm digestion. Powerful, energetic performance. Physical symptoms: Fatigue, agitation, frustration, fatigue, muscle tension, stomach problems, digestive and lower back issues. Negative aspects: Defense, insecurity, a lot of boredom, chronic sadness. Less able to secure peace of mind from passion, or vice versa. Being stuck in emotions, fear, or anger, whether negative or positive (power hunger or zealotism). Expressive inhibition; sexuality with little or no joy; Selfishness, and unrefined emotionality. Physical Negative Aspects. Rigidity and rigidity. Little lung capacity. Distress of the heart. Body acid / alkaline acid imbalanced. Miserable circulatory system.
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Adrian Satyam (Energy Healing: 6 in 1: Medicine for Body, Mind and Spirit. An extraordinary guide to Chakra and Quantum Healing, Kundalini and Third Eye Awakening, Reiki and Meditation and Mindfulness.)
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Sugar releases serotonin in the brain, a “feel-good” brain chemical that helps to soothe worries, boost self-confidence, and create a feeling of “okayness” in the world. Bad fats release dopamine, an energizing biochemical we all need to function during stressful situations and exciting challenges. Over time, these sugars and bad fats were shrinking my brain, but the serotonin and dopamine I got from food made this codependent relationship hard to leave.
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Mike Dow (Sugar Brain Fix: The 28-Day Plan to Quit Craving the Foods That Are Shrinking Your Brain and Expanding Your Waistline)
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ChiroCynergy - Dr. Matthew Bradshaw | Pregnancy Chiropractor in Leland, NC
Back Pain
30 million people nationwide suffer from neck and/or back pain, and this year alone, they will spend $40 billion to try and solve it. ChiroCynergy can help, whether the cause of your pain is down to a muscle/ligament pull or because of a subluxation (misaligned bone) in your spine. Let us help you get back to a pain-free life – by getting to the root of the problem instead of relying on painkillers and anti-inflammatory.
ChiroCynergy - Pregnancy-Induced Back Pain Chiropractors in Leland, NC
Back pain is common during pregnancy due to the changes occurring in your body. As your baby grows, the biomechanics of your body and your posture alter to make room for the baby. The additional weight and change in posture can lead to increased stress on the spine.
Chiropractic can help ease the pain and prepare the body for a more natural birth process by keeping the spine and pelvis in optimal alignment for your baby’s journey. Let us take care of both you and your baby during and post-pregnancy with safe and specific hands-on care.
Call ChiroCynergy the best pregnancy chiropractor in Leland, NC to schedule your free consultation with one of our doctors. We can properly assess any injuries you may have suffered – and possibly save you from years of chronic arthritic pain in the future.
Call us: (910) 368-1528
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ChiroCynergy - Dr. Matthew Bradshaw | Pregnancy Chiropractor in Leland, NC
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I chose a new story, and turned the tragedy of Chapter 1 into the posttraumatic growth of Chapter 7. We’ve all had tragedies in our lives. You’ve had tragedies in yours. What insults still run riot in your Default Mode Network, transporting the misery of your past into the promise of your future? Cementing the suffering of yesterday into the mystery of tomorrow? Guaranteeing that you suffer subsequently the way you suffered previously? I invite you to examine every old suffering story of your entire life, and open your mind to the possibility of a new narrative. We can’t change the past, when miserable things happened to us. But we can change our story about the past. This exercise aligns us with the power of possibility; we embrace redemption and growth. Changing our stories doesn’t mean that we justify the actions of the people who hurt us. We don’t need to forgive till we’re 100% ready. And our forgiveness doesn’t excuse what they did to us. What it does accomplish is to release our own stress. We’re not changing our story to help them. We’re doing it to help ourselves, and liberate our own future from the suffering of the past. While we can’t change the past, we can change the story we tell ourselves about the past. That creates a new future.
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Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
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If the situation is one in which you’ve been wronged, acceptance may take the form of trying to find a way to forgive. Remember that forgiveness is something you do for yourself, not the other person. When you forgive, you are releasing yourself from the stress and energy of resenting and blaming the other person.
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Nick Trenton (Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress, Stop Negative Spirals, Declutter Your Mind, and Focus on the Present (The Path to Calm Book 1))
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The same people with the same intelligence have wildly different potential under different circumstances. And the circumstances that tend to produce the biggest innovations are those that cause people to be worried, scared, and eager to move quickly because their future depends on it. “Nothing can become truly resilient when everything goes right,” Shopify founder Toby Lütke said. “The excess energy released from overreaction to setbacks is what innovates!” wrote Nassim Taleb. Stress focuses your attention in ways good times can’t. It kills procrastination and indecision,
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Morgan Housel (Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes)
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BREATH 1While seated or lying down, take 30 to 40 full conscious breaths: Breathe fully in to the belly and the chest, then letting go, without force. 2On your final exhale, let the air out and hold it out for as long as you can without discomfort. Listen to your body and don’t force it! 3When you feel the urge to breathe again, take a deep breath in, hold for 10 to 15 seconds. Then release and relax. 4Repeat the steps above two or three more times, paying attention to how you feel and adjusting your breath as needed. 5Rest in this elevated state until you are ready to move on with your day. Alternatively, use the energy you just generated for your morning workout or yoga practice. Experiment with what feels right for you. Congratulations! You just influenced key drivers of your health, increased your vitality and focus, busted your stress, reduced inflammation factors, and optimized your immune system. FOR COMPLETE WHM BREATHING INSTRUCTIONS AND SAFETY GUIDELINES, SEE CHAPTER 4. MIND Your post-breathing practice state is the perfect time to program your mindset. Try this: 1Before you get up from your breathing practice, bring up a thought in your mind like “Today I’m going to stay in the cold shower for 15 more seconds than yesterday,” or “I feel happy, healthy, and strong.” 2Reflect on this thought and notice how your body feels. 3If you identify any inner resistance to your intention, just keep breathing steadily until you feel an alignment between your body and mind. With practice, your sense of your inner experience, or interoception, will sharpen, allowing you to more consciously observe and control your body and mind. SEE CHAPTER 12 FOR DETAILS. COLD 1At the end of your warm shower, turn the water to cold. 2If you like you can start by first putting your feet and legs, than your arms, then your full torso under the water. 3Do NOT do the WHM Basic Breathing Exercise while standing in the shower. 4Gradually extend your exposure every day until you can handle two minutes in the cold. 5If you are shivering when you get out, try the horse stance exercise. (See “How Long Can You Hold a Horse Stance?” for details.) Success! You just improved your metabolic efficiency, regulated your hormones, further reduced inflammation, and are enjoying the endorphins and endocannabinoids released in response to the cold.
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Wim Hof (The Wim Hof Method: Activate Your Full Human Potential)
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Surrender: Trusting that Nature has more information than you do; the act of releasing yourself to something bigger, wiser, and more powerful than you. It does not mean giving up or quitting—it means trusting that a higher power (God, Nature, the universe, whatever term you use) has your back! The
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Emily Fletcher (Stress Less, Accomplish More: Meditation for Extraordinary Performance)
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Brain Rule #4 Stressed brains don’t learn the same way. •Your body’s defense system—the release of adrenaline and cortisol—is built for an immediate response to a serious but passing danger, such as a saber-toothed tiger. Chronic stress, such as hostility at home, dangerously deregulates a system built only to deal with short-term responses. •Under chronic stress, adrenaline creates scars in your blood vessels that can cause a heart attack or stroke, and cortisol damages the cells of the hippocampus, crippling your ability to learn and remember. •Individually, the worst kind of stress is the feeling that you have no control over the problem—you are helpless. •Emotional stress has huge impacts across society, on children’s ability to learn in school and on employees’ productivity at work.
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John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
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First, the brain sends a message to the adrenal glands that results in the release of adrenaline, also called epinephrine. This triggers your heart rate to increase as blood is directed to your muscles in the event you need to flee. When the threat is gone, your body normalizes again. But if the threat doesn’t go away and your stress response intensifies, then a series of events take place along what’s called the HPA axis, short for hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, and which involves multiple stress hormones.
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Kelly Brogan (A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives)
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When you are feeling hurt, anger, stress, jealousy, rage, competition, or frustration, on the other hand, the signal from the heart to the brain becomes incoherent, and this triggers the release of approximately 1,200 chemicals into the body equal to those feelings.17 This chemical dump lasts approximately 90 seconds to two minutes. In the short term, these stressful feelings are not harmful; in fact, if they’re resolved they improve your resilience. However, the long-term effects of unresolved survival emotions put the entire body into a state of incoherence, making you vulnerable to stress-related health challenges. These survival emotions draw from the field around your body, causing you to feel separate and materialistic because you are putting most of your focus and attention on matter, your body, the environment, time, and of course, the source of your problems.
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Joe Dispenza (Becoming Supernatural: How Common People are Doing the Uncommon)
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Here are several ways to try brain dumping: Task dump: Write down your to-do list to tidy your mind and prioritize tasks. Free-association dump: Write down all the thoughts in your mind, even if they are not connected to one another. Idea dump: Note all your creative sparks, big and small. Organization dump: Draft a mind map or concept map to systematically arrange your thoughts for a task or project. (See the Map Out Your Thoughts entry in this chapter for instructions.) Stress dump: List all the things stressing you out. This will help declutter your mind and clear mental fog. Gratitude dump: Write down everything you’re grateful for. This process shifts your focus from negative thoughts to more positive aspects of life. Emotional dump: Without judgment or analysis, note all the emotions you’re experiencing. This exercise can help you gain clarity about your emotional state and identify and release suppressed feelings. Nighttime dump: If a bustling mind is making it hard for you to sleep, consider writing down whatever is in your brain before bedtime.
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Megan Anna Neff (Self-Care for Autistic People: 100+ Ways to Recharge, De-Stress, and Unmask!)
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Impact of Stress on Glucose: One of my highest glucose spikes ever was after an argument with my brother (my coauthor!). We hear examples of this all the time from Levels members: stress alone can raise glucose levels, regardless of your diet. The reason is that a key stress hormone, cortisol, signals our liver to break down stored glucose and release it into the bloodstream to fuel the muscles, anticipating a threat that we’ll need energy to physically move away from. In the modern world, however, the “threats”—like arguments, emails, honking, and the alerts on our phones—that cue our stress pathways rarely require our muscles to be active. As such, that mobilized glucose sits in our bloodstream, causing more harm than good. CGM can be a powerful tool in teaching us how stress impacts our metabolic health and motivates us to address acute stress in healthy ways, like deep breathing.
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Casey Means (Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health)
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When you don’t get enough sleep, your body is stressed out and releases a hormone called cortisol. This hormone leads to weight gain indirectly.
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WILLOCK BEN (75 DAY MENTAL CHALLENGE: From flab to fab 100 weight loss ideas went from a probability to a possibility, and then to a reality)
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After ACTH is released into the bloodstream, it reaches the adrenal gland and, within a few minutes, triggers glucocorticoid release. Together, glucocorticoids and the secretions of the sympathetic nervous system (epinephrine and norepinephrine) account for a large percentage of what happens in your body during stress. These are the workhorses of the stress-response.
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Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping)
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Your body reverses all of the storage steps through the release of the stress hormones glucocorticoids, glucagon, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. These cause triglycerides to be broken down in the fat cells and, as a result, free fatty acids and glycerol pour into the circulatory system.
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Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping)
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The combination of too many free radicals, oxidative stress, and glycation leads to a generalized state of inflammation in the body. Inflammation is a protective measure; it’s the result of the body trying to defend against invaders. But chronic inflammation is harmful because it turns against our own body. From the outside, you might see redness and swelling, and on the inside, tissues and organs are slowly getting damaged. Inflammation can also be driven up by alcohol, smoking, stress, leaky gut syndrome, and substances released by body fat. Chronic inflammation is the source of most chronic illnesses, such as stroke, chronic respiratory diseases, heart disorders, liver disease, obesity, and diabetes. The World Health Organization calls inflammation-based diseases “the greatest threat to human health.” Worldwide, three out of five people will die of an inflammation-based disease. The good news is, a diet that reduces glucose spikes decreases inflammation and along with it your risk of contracting any of these inflammation-based diseases.
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Jessie Inchauspé (Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar)
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None of those things would have happened, however, if I did not believe they were possible. If they can happen for me, they can surely happen for you, too. You’ve just got to believe. You’ve got to believe, with all of your heart, that you can make it happen for yourself. You must believe you are worthy of your desires, and that you have all the tools within you to achieve success. You must release blame, guilt, fear, stress, and any other negative emotion that does not serve you.
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Cara Alwill Leyba (Girl Code: Unlocking the Secrets to Success, Sanity, and Happiness for the Female Entrepreneur)
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A bit like a bouncer in front of a nightclub, who controls how many people enter the club depending on its capacity, our vagus nerve controls how we react to stress and helps up- or down-regulate the nervous system accordingly. When there is too much activity within the club, as in too many people (too much stress), the vagus nerve restricts new people from entering (sympathetic fight or flight response). Once things get a bit quieter inside and more people have left the club (coming back up the ladder), the vagus nerve allows for new people to enter (ventral vagal social engagement response).
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Calvin Caufield (Polyvagal Theory Made Simple: 70 Self-Guided Exercises to Quickly Stimulate Your Vagus Nerve for Nervous System Regulation & Help Release Trauma (PTSD, Anxiety & Chronic Pain Books Book 2))
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Do workout or Yoga in the morning: According to me, the real meaning of the morning is to get ready for your entire day. You can charge your body through workout or Yoga, whichever inspires you. When you work out or do yoga, your blood circulation improves and all parts of your body get good amount of oxygen.
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Samir Kunvaria (Feel Happy and Stress Free - 25 ways to release stress in everyday life)
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All your stress, pain, suffering, misery is due to your attachment with it. If you don’t attach with the things, that doesn’t serve you, either in your internal or external life, slowly those things lose grip on you, and you release yourself from it forever.
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Roshan Sharma
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when you breathe in your air, it is going to be clean. Imagine the color of clean. This is so clean and so pure that when you feel it enter your body, it wants to get out anything that is bad. As you breathe out, it gets rid of the bad air that dissolves into nothing. Then you breathe in some crisp, pure air and breathe out the bad nasty air again. Just focus on your body and breathing. Good in, bad out. Feel it go through your entire body, especially up through your head. We are going to start going into your brain. Imagine a hallway, it is a long hallway. Picture it. Is it tall or short? Wide or narrow? It has a lot of doors, see the details on the door. The handle is made of what material? Any particular designs? See the hinges, the numbers and vividly see all of it. How much detail can you put into this? Find the detail. You walk down the hall you will notice some doors have a good energy coming from them while others do not.
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Charles Thornton (Untethered Mind Meditation Release your Brain from Stress (Mindful Meditations for Life Book 2))
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Sit and let your body relax. Find the rhythm of deep breathing that has worked best for you so far. Breathe in, breathe out. Be aware of your breath as we continue with this meditation. Close your eyes if you wish. Let the muscles in your face relax. Release the tension in your jaw. To release tension in your neck, let your head hang forward, and then roll it gently around, making sure to stretch your neck muscles often. We are going to empty your mind. Empty it of worries. Empty it of cares. We are going to just let go. With your eyes closed, feel your mind become a void. Let your concerns and stress slip away. You may wish to visualize darkness or light filling your mind. This is not a painful emptiness. It is a soothing absence of thought. Your mind is calm. Become aware of your body. Notice your breathing and heartbeat. Breathe and relax in the silence until you are ready to open your eyes. Repeat again for three minutes later in the
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Alexis G. Roldan (Zen: The Ultimate Zen Beginner’s Guide: Simple And Effective Zen Concepts For Living A Happier and More Peaceful Life)
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Breathe in through your nose for four counts, “One, two, three, and four.” Try holding the breath in for four counts, “One, two, three, and four.” Exhale through your mouth for four counts, “One, two, three, and four.” You should feel your body begin to relax. Repeat this cycle. In through the nose, “One, two, three, four.” Hold, “One, two, three, four.” Release, “one, two, three, four.” With each cycle of breathing, you will feel your body release built-up stress, and your mind will starts to clear. Repeat this until the time is up or you are ready to return to your day. You can repeat it throughout the day as needed. I always recommend this type of breathing before a stressful event, such as a public presentation, since it helps you release anxiety and regain focus.
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Alexis G. Roldan (Zen: The Ultimate Zen Beginner’s Guide: Simple And Effective Zen Concepts For Living A Happier and More Peaceful Life)
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Sit and let your body relax. Find the rhythm of deep breathing that has worked best for you so far. Breathe in, breathe out. Be aware of your breath as we continue with this meditation. Close your eyes if you wish. Let the muscles in your face relax. Release the tension in your jaw. To release tension in your neck, let your head hang forward, and then roll it gently around, making sure to stretch your neck muscles often. We are going to empty your mind. Empty it of worries. Empty it of cares. We are going to just let go. With your eyes closed, feel your mind become a void. Let your concerns and stress slip away. You may wish to visualize darkness or light filling your mind. This is not a painful emptiness. It is a soothing absence of thought. Your mind is calm. Become aware of your body. Notice your breathing and heartbeat. Breathe and relax in the silence until you are ready to open your eyes. Repeat again for three minutes later in the day.
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Alexis G. Roldan (Zen: The Ultimate Zen Beginner’s Guide: Simple And Effective Zen Concepts For Living A Happier and More Peaceful Life)
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With a deep breath you reach down and grab the rope that holds the tether to the ground. You feel the stability that the tether provides. You don’t want to make a choice. The guides look at you with a confident smile on their faces. Stable and grounded. The ground looks rough, though. It is littered with all of your problems. Scattered like junk, thrown about in the wind. From where you were standing you just could not see them. With a confident resigned tug, you pull the tether out of the ground and start to float upwards. Some stress is good. Breathe in and out, Good breath in and bad breath out. You have less stress, and you are lighter than before. In and out. Pure in, stress out. As you leave the ground, then you are unsure that you made the right decision. You are now at the whims of the wind. You can't go back, though. You take an another deep, steadying breath. You proceed to your seat and start to float away. It is pretty simple and floats up gently without incident. The guide looks at you and with a friendly smile and slap on the back says “Well aren’t you brave for trusting the sky. We will do our best to guide you up here.
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Charles Thornton (Untethered Mind Meditation Release your Brain from Stress (Mindful Meditations for Life Book 2))
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crispinrexweb
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Physical or emotional stress Microbiome experiences stress Via the enteric nervous system (the nervous system in your gut) and/or the vagus nerve, the gut alerts your brain, specifically, your hypothalamus, a gland that regulates your body’s hormonal system. Your hypothalamus initiates the stress response (also known as the “fight or flight” response) by alerting your pituitary gland. Your pituitary passes the message on to your adrenal glands (located above your kidneys). Your adrenals release a complex cascade of stress hormones, including cortisol.
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Raphael Kellman (MICROBIOME BREAKTHROUGH: Harness the Power of Your Gut Bacteria to Boost Your Mood and Heal Your Body (Microbiome Medicine Library))
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Massage parlour London:-> We specialize in providing the Sensual Asian massage London has to offer. In this technique, sensual arousal does play an extensive role where our hot alluring masseuses will touch every centimetre of your skin to provide you maximum sexual pleasure possible. All your stress and mind problems will disappear just by one touch of those soothing hands. Here our connoisseur highly qualified Asian masseuse will ease out the anxiety in your body, to start with as this is so relevant to true leisure, massage, in general, keeps you juvenile, supple, clean out toxins, and releases negative vigour.
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alexhaydenweb
“
I was staring at one of the two holes above the bathroom doorframe where Taylor had shot, when his hand grabbed my chin and turned my head to face him. “You okay?” I nodded and swallowed through the tightening in my throat. When I opened my mouth to reassure his worried-looking eyes, nothing came out and tears clouded my vision again. The hand holding my chin released me and grabbed around the back of my neck, bringing me into his chest so he could wrap his other arm around me. “I won’t let them get to you, Rachel. I swear I won’t.” He held me as I cried, and when I could speak again, the questions came out all at once. “W-what is going on? Why am I here? Who were they talking about? Don’t give me your bullshit about not being able to answer! Who are you?” When he didn’t respond for a few minutes, I thought he wouldn’t say anything at all. But with a heavy exhale that hinted at the stress he was carrying, he tightened his grip and whispered into my neck, “I’m just a guy who got caught up in a bad situation a long time ago.” I pulled back and cradled his cheeks roughly as I pleaded, “Then get out of it! Get me out of here; you don’t have to be this guy. You’re not him. I don’t know what you did, but I know what you’ve done for me. I’ve told you, you’re not a bad person, Taylor.” “Trent.” When I just sat there staring at him, he placed his large hands over mine and repeated, “Trent Cruz. That’s my name.” I knew what this meant. I knew how big this was. He trusted me with that; and in giving me his name, he was letting me know again that I could trust him. As bizarre as that sounded. “You don’t like Taylor?” I asked and earned a somewhat-relieved smile from him. “If it’s coming from you, then, yeah, I like Taylor.” Pushing me away gently, he stood from the bed and waited until I was lying down. “Go back to sleep, Rachel. It’s going to be practically impossible for them to get back in, but if they somehow do, I’ll always protect you.” My
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Molly McAdams (Deceiving Lies (Forgiving Lies, #2))
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Third Week of May 2012 …I wasn’t sure if I should contact you after our separation. Long distance communications in the 70’s weren’t as facile as they are now. My daily rowing helped to alleviate my stress during those early years of our breakup. Over time, Mother Nature healed my aching heart. Do you remember Opai, the American Indian shaman we met at Havasu Falls? He came to your aid when you were nauseated and performed a healing ritual over you. He said, “Fly like the condors, swim like the dolphins and slither like the serpents. The creatures of the air, water and earth will guide you back to your rightful place. Release, and let your spirit soar.” My dear Young, I love you and always will. Distance will never keep us apart. I am always with you in spirit. Be well, stay safe, for you and for me. Please send my regards to Walter, whom you claim is a reflection of my “godlike archetype.” Love, Andy.
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Young (Unbridled (A Harem Boy's Saga, #2))
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As soon as you even think about stress, a whole cascade of reactions happen: your thalamus (the relay station of your brain) sends out a wake-up call to your brain stem, signals are sent to all your major organs and muscle groups getting them ready for fight or flight and your adrenal glands release the stress hormones; cortisol suppresses the immune system to reduce inflammation from any injuries and stimulates the amygdala to keep you vigilant, which produces even more cortisol. It also suppresses activity in the hippocampus reducing your memory so you only think about what you did last time you had a similar emergency.
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Ruby Wax (Sane New World: The original bestseller)
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The ability to truly forgive is the richest tool of your soul. By releasing the negative energy that has been attached to you by the free will of another, you are unburdened of emotional stress and are breaking a strong karmic cycle.
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James Van Praagh (Adventures of the Soul: Journeys Through the Physical and Spiritual Dimensions)
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She shivered under his touch, desire dampening her panties and making her clench her thighs together in an attempt to find some relief. His devilish hands relaxed their grip on her hips and slid around to cup her ass, pulling her close. Thick, hard evidence of his desire pressed against her belly. God, she wanted this man, and not just to silent the stressful thoughts always swirling in her head. She wanted him, not just the divine moment of oblivion that blocked out everything else.
The realization scared her and brought some unwanted reality into the room. "We shouldn't be doing this."
"Why?" He made quick work of the buttons on her petal-pink cashmere sweater and parted her cardigan. Sean gave a soft growl as he stared at her silver satin pushup bra that presented her boobs like an all-you-can-lick buffet. "Because I'm your employee?"
He licked his lips and slid his thumb across the satin covering her hard nipple.
"Yes," she said, sighing. An answer to his question or a response to even the lightest of touches? Both.
"Easy fix." He snapped the front closure of her bra and her tits tumbled out. "I quit."
Bending forward, he lifted one heavy globe and took the hard nub into his hot mouth. Fire sizzled through her veins and it felt so good she couldn't wait to burn.
"You can't quit." She reached down for the top button of his jeans and flicked it open. "We need you. I need you."
He released her nipple and she groaned in frustration. Then he found the hem of her skirt and inched it higher and the soft groan that floated out of her mouth was for a whole other reason.
"Hire me back in about an hour or, better yet, a few days."
The cool air caressed her upper thighs as he raised her skirt, but it wasn't enough to relieve the molten heat engulfing her. "I like how you think.
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Avery Flynn (Hollywood on Tap (Sweet Salvation Brewery, #2))
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Physical touch is hugely important to our wellbeing. Cuddling releases oxytocin, the “happy hormone,” which can help reduce stress and even boost your immune system.
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S.J. Scott (Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less)
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Step One Preparing The Mind Anytime athletes compete, they condition themselves that they may win the prize. An athlete is well self-disciplined, and temperate in all things. They tell their bodies what to do rather than letting their bodies tell them what to do. They have self-control and self-discipline in every aspect of life including their diet, in sleeping, in their behavior, in their conduct, and in their exercise. They keep a goal in mind with a plan of attack, and a determination to win. They exercise their bodies with a plan to optimize themselves in strength to overcome. For example a runner will be more concerned with leg exercises and the parts of the body which help run. They will train for endurance more so than strength, whereas some other athletes may be concerned with upper body strength only. Likewise we need to be conditioned in all things and well-disciplined to exercise ourselves towards godliness. Our target workout is not upper or lower body, but the spiritual body with soundness of mind. Without self-discipline it is impossible to memorize the amount of Scripture we should memorize. It goes without saying that mental conditioning should be a primary focus when attempting to memorize. That way, one may be optimized for memorizing the word of God. A runner exercises their legs for optimum performance and likewise we should also exercise our minds in Christ for memorizing and walking in wisdom. To make the most of memorization time one needs to be fully alert. It is best not to do it after a long day of work, an extremely stressful period of time, early in the morning when you’re groggy, or late at night before you go to bed. Rather it is better to pick a peaceful time of day during which you are most alert. Sometimes a small sip of coffee or other mental stimulant can help wake you up enough for meditation time. In order to be well conditioned mentally, first we need to understand how to be at peace within ourselves. If you’re often stressed out it can be difficult to memorize what you need to. Watch your own heart and be certain that you don’t take things too critically in life. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you take it. If you find yourself stressed out often, it may be more of how you’re handling the situation, than what’s happening to you. Although there may be something stressful happening in your life you may not need to take it so hard. In fact, the Lord calls us to always be rejoicing. As it is written, “Rejoice always” 1Th 5:16 The apostles through hardship and persecution were known to give joyous glory to the Lord. After being beaten by the council in Acts the apostles rejoiced in the Lord for the persecution they received. As we read, “…and when they had called for the apostles and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.” Act 5:40-41 Likewise our temperance and spiritual state of mind can help us when it comes to time for memorizing the word of God. There are both short term and long term exercises that we should practice. In the short term we should learn to rest in Christ and release things to Him. In the long term we should grow in meekness, not taking things so critically in life that we can be at peace.
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Adam Houge (How To Memorize The Bible Quick And Easy In 5 Simple Steps)