Vital Elders

Who is Responsible?

“In the present circumstances, no one can afford to assume that someone else will solve their problems. Every individual has a responsibility to help guide our global family in the right direction. Good wishes are not sufficient; we must become actively engaged.”

“Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us.” — The Dalai Lama

Another path to inner peace

Here is a wonderful series of lectures that gives the wisdom of inner peace from a Jewish perspective:

Meditation can increase compassion

Can we train ourselves to be compassionate? A new study suggests the answer is yes. Cultivating compassion and kindness through meditation affects brain regions that can make a person more empathetic to other peoples' mental states, say researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Published March 25 in the Public Library of Science One, the study was the first to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to indicate that positive emotions such as loving-kindness and compassion can be learned in the same way as playing a musical instrument or being proficient in a sport. The scans revealed that brain circuits used to detect emotions and feelings were dramatically changed in subjects who had extensive experience practicing compassion meditation.

http://www.news.wisc.edu/14944

21 Ways to Stay in the Peace

I don't know about you, but slipping out of peace is something I find easy to do!

So anything that helps me understand how I do this and what's needed to help me stay in peace is a real bonus. I found these 21 Ways to Stay in Peace and think they give a tremendous overview of a wide range of techniques and practices.

However, like most of the help in this area, it's simple but not easy.

What do you find helps you stay in peace?

Breathing for Inner Peace

I was at my doctors recently for a minor surgery to have a small growth removed off my face (no, not my nose!). I knew this was likely to disturb my inner peace so I used a way of slow breathing that I learned a while ago from a presentation I saw about the effect that even mild stress has on our heart rate.

The presenter wired a woman volunteer up so we could see her heartbeat monitored on the screen. When her heartbeat settled down the presenter announced that he was going to ask her to count backwards from a 100 in threes. Immediately he said this her heartbeat jumped through the roof but she was not aware of it.

It not being aware of our heart rate that can be a real challenge for us because when our heartbeat goes up like that the front part of our brain, the neo-cortex, shuts down and we lose our capacity to think straight. Have you ever tried to speak when confronted with a challenging situation only to find a lot of gobbledegook comes out of your mouth? Most of us have at some time and this is the effect of our front brain disconnecting itself.

So the solution that works for me it to breathe slowly – about a count of six to breathe in and the same out again. It was so effective that the doctor asked me twice if I was alright as I lay there with my eyes closed, aware of what was going on, but still in a world of my own.

How do you maintain your inner peace? Do click on Comments below and let us know.