Managing Stress Class: What is Stress

For the rest of this month, every Monday night at 7pm, I will be attending a stress management class at the Brahma Kumaris Meditation Center (San Francisco).


I've already gone to the first class on Nov. 3rd, and it was amazing!


Everyone in the class was so nice, kind and warm. I already love the little group of nine people that gather around this young (or at least she looks it) woman from India that is here to teach us all about what stress is. But like I said, I really just love the people in the class because everyone is so diverse, and from a different age group.


My favorite quote of the whole class:
Stress is just a messanger that has brought the message something needs to change

Reasons why stress happens:

• Have forgoten we are responsible for how we feel
• Have learned to absorb negative images and information
• Are not able to increase our response rate to keep pace with the rate of change in the world around us

Waiting on the World to Change

Well, I didn't want to make my blog about anything political of course-but I guess I had to do it since I wrote about voting. It's just an update that most likely isn't needed. Our new president will be Barack Obama!

It is amazing because he won in a landslide of 349 electoral votes to McCain's 147. Wow, are we ready for change? Yes we are!

I keep watching all of these interviews about what people were thinking before they voted for the next president, what they felt. I listened to many answers that sounded the same.

What was I thinking before I put in my vote? I thought about the Mayan calender their 2012 prediction of the end of the world (well my interpretation of this is just that they meant the end of the world as we know it now-not literally the end of the world as in kaboom! we're all dead). I thought of the Mayan calender because I though who I would want to be president in 2012 which is the mark of a great change of consciousness on this planet of how people think, function, and believe-and you know what? I think that Obama would be the perfect person to bring part of the change in human consciousness, in human thinking, that the Mayans predict for 2012!

I look forward to seeing what happens next! It will be exciting!

Yoga, Meditation, Tea

Today is November the fifth- a complete week from the day I started Yoga, Meditation and Tea! I have to say, wow, wow, wow! Just doing this for a week has changed my life!

Here are some things that changed in my life with yoga:

• more energy!
• more relaxed!
• easier to laugh throughout the day!
• more of a sense of well being
• more flexible (I can almost do the splits-almost)
• stronger !
• less tense!

Here are some things that changed in my life with meditation:

• calmer
• more of an ability to step back from problems
• easy going
• less quick to anger
• less annoyed
• easier to focus on my self-my well being

What happened to the Tea? Well it sort of disappeared! I couldn't take drinking tea after fifteen minutes of concentrated meditation. Drinking the tea was almost like another form of meditation which was too much for me-at least for now!

I think I am going to try my hardest to continue with the meditation and yoga. I just got an additional job to the one I have, and I think I will need to have my center before I go out into the world of two jobs!

What was my Yoga, Meditation, and Tea schedule like?

• Thirty minutes of yoga (Three full sun salutations)
• Sometimes listening to music during the yoga while singing really helped
• Being concious of the breath during Yoga helps make sure you are doing the same amount of time on each side of the body

• Mediation for 10-15 minutes (really dependent on how I felt)
• Concentrate on the breath
• Feel the inner body
• Listen to the silence around me

*I have to note that with feeling good through yoga and meditation, my body seemed to crave foods that were better for it-most of the week I started my day off with water, then a fruit smoothie, and two bowls of salad somewhere in between regular eating. I also found that it was easier for me to know that I was full, and not overeat-maybe it came from the yoga, the meditation, or maybe its harder to overeat healthy foods that are harder to chew!

Is my Vote November 4th 2008 worth Dying For?

Yesterday, a young man approached me late at night at a bus stop. He was deeply disturbed and began to talk to me about what was on his mind, and what was on his mind were very troubling issues about tomorrow's election.



Apparently, if Obama wins, groups of people are planning on harassing people, killing people, and assassinating Obama. Well, this young man was just trying to warn me that I should vote with a group of people because I may be harassed when I come out of the polling booth, or I may be kidnapped, or even killed-and he wanted me to warn other people as well.



Then he went on to talk about slave labour in prisons, how unfair life is, how life is a battlefield, and how he is trying to survive with three children. I sat and I listened to him talk to me for fifteen minutes, not saying a word.



And then eventually, our paths parted. But what struck me during the conversation was that people are afraid of the worst to come for this election. People may be too scarred to vote, too scarred to leave their houses, afraid that someone may kill them if Obama wins.



So, this is my opinion of the whole matter:



Don't be afraid. You don't have to be afraid. Before anything great can actually happen there is always turbulence, but once you get past the turbulence good things are waiting. In almost any situation where great change was about to take place-for instance civil rights in the U.S-there is always resistance to the change, there is always a point where someone will oppose what is happening. But these are just growing pains. The resistance is a sign of growth, the turbulence is a sign that things are happening! The turbulence can show that it is actually positive, something great is about to happen! Please, don't be afraid of the growing pains that are happening with the upcoming election, it is expected and it is something that must happen for change to occur and it wont last forever-nothing ever really does, and eventually life will move on to even greater things!