Changing Habits

Telling yourself to “stop stressing out” or “quit worrying” doesn’t work – it only creates anxiety and stress.

If you intend to change conditioned tendencies and habits of any kind, you’ll need to change your perspective from: needing to ‘stop’ something – to ‘doing’ something else.

Don’t quit habits – transform them into new habits.
When changing any habit – direct your attention toward a different activity and concentrate on doing it.  Learning “what to do” creates the impetus that produces change. Completing the steps for “how to do it” redirects your thinking from “what you don’t want” – to a focus on what you “do want”. You’ll create another behavior to replace the behavior you want to change.

Technique for Changing Habits & Creating Relaxation – Holistically

Learning to breathe correctly is the easiest and fastest way to change a habit
. . . and, as a side-benefit, produce an anxiety and stress-free state.

This concept has a funny sound to it, because breathing is something that comes naturally so, it’s more than likely you have never considered, or been taught ‘how’ to do it, correctly.

Someone, sometime, during a moment of high stress – told you to “Take a breath!” As it turns out, that is good advice. By focusing your attention on your breathing – it redirects your attention inwards so you become anxiety and stress-free and transforms your habit at the same time.

Breathing affects all mental, emotional and physical functions of your body.

1. Taking 3 or 4 deep breaths regulates your breathing, which can then allow you to fall into a smooth and consistent rhythm.
2. By breathing deeply, extending all the way into your abdomen, you are able to influence all major body systems with the same rhythmic motion that, in turn – synchronizes them.
3. When you inhale deeply, then pause in a slight hesitation before exhaling, then slightly hesitating again before drawing in your next breath, it prevents hyperventilating and also introduces a form of timing, that calms the mind and relaxes the whole body by way of the same double count.

You’ll notice that just by regulating your breathing in a conscious way it will simultaneously calm your mind, release emotional tension held in the body and slow your heart rate. As your heart rate drops to a relaxed state, your blood pressure drops with it, and more tension is released

1. If your mind starts drifting away from your breathing, simply redirect your attention back into the rhythm of your breath and become present once again in your body
2. As you continue breathing in a relaxed pace, bring your attention to how different parts of your body feel. Get a good sense of anyplace in your body that you’re holding tension of some kind.
3. Then, become aware of your feet, place your attention on your feet, and set the intention to relax them, and gently, but firmly tell them to relax. Feel them relax.
4. Tell yourself, my feet are relaxed. Then become aware of your calves, and mentally direct your calves to relax.
5. Repeat the same process to relax your legs. Then, repeating this process move systematically through your thighs, hips, abdomen, back, up your spine to your shoulders, into your chest, your arms, shoulders and neck, up the back of your head, your ears, jaw, face and eyes.
6. Systematically, use your mind to relax your whole body.
   If you notice at any point that some part of your body already relaxed is starting to tense back up, simply stop and relax that part again, then pick up where you left off.
7. Once your whole body is relaxed, just take a moment to notice how it feels. Be present with the feeling of your body, and sense yourself in a fully relaxed state.
   Notice that as your body relaxes, so does your mind. It’s because they share the same feeling state.

1. Then, move your attention outward, expanding into your peripheral while staying centered in your body – simply ‘feel’ everything around you.
   Notice how it feels to be there, to be present “in it” and a part “of it”.
   Notice the things around you, while refraining from “thinking about them”, and instead simply notice how they feel and how that feeling resonates in your body as you give them your attention.
   Notice how, when you calm your obsessive thinking and focus on how it feels to be in the present – time seems to stand still – your awareness expands out away from you – and you become intimately part of the space around you.
2. When you’re no longer focused on listening to your own thoughts and blend into the silence outside of you, you’ll begin realizing that there’s a whole reality going on, that, for the most part, you’re completely unaware of – because you normally exist in the reality produced by your own thinking and imagining mind.And, while you hear the sounds around you, simultaneously feel the pulsation of your own heartbeat and feel an inner silence that brings a strange feeling of contentment and inner peace. Content . . . to JUST BE.

This is because most emotions, particularly negative ones, form tension in your body. When you experience strong emotions, your whole body tenses up – with distinct concentrations of tension and strong sensations in particular parts of your body.

I am a Natural Health Consultant and Holistic Health Practitioner. I help people:  Uncover patterns & habits that are producing physical decline, sickness and disease Discover new patterns that will produce health and healing Using holistic methods, natural remedies and practical tactics more … Appointment »