OWN HANDS

By Julie Potiker

Did you know there's something you can do anytime, anywhere, to get calm and restore a sense of peace when you feel under stress?

Being touched in a comforting way by others helps us cope with stress, and it turns out we can give ourselves the same kind of comfort through self-soothing touch.

Research shows that placing our hands over our hearts, or wherever it feels comforting, reduces the stress hormone cortisol that our bodies produce when we feel threatened. It also prompts our body to release feel-good hormones like oxytocin and endorphins to begin helping us calm down.

"When we soothe our painful feelings with the healing balm of self-compassion, not only are we changing our mental and emotional experience, we're also changing our body chemistry," says Dr. Kristen Neff, author of Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. "An effective aspect of self-compassion practice, therefore, is to tap into our body's self-healing system through physical sensations."

Dr. Neff is a pioneering researcher in the field of self-compassion and co-founder of the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion with Christopher K. Germer, Ph.D., a leader in the integration of mindfulness and psychotherapy and author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion. They created the curriculum for Mindful Self-Compassion, under which I am trained as a certified MSC Teacher.

People who treat themselves with compassion are less likely to be depressed, anxious, and stressed and more likely to be happy, resilient, and optimistic, she says. Touch- ing ourselves in a soothing way is an easy way to practice mindful self-compassion.

Gentle and supportive touch works by activating our mammalian caregiver response, which evolved to keep infants safe and calm our nervous system.

When an infant cries and is cuddled or soothed by a caregiver, a cascade of feel-good hormones (including oxytocin) and endorphins get released in the infant and the caregiver.

This counteracts the threatdefense system that Paul Gilbert, the creator of Compassion-Focused Therapy, explains happens when we criticize ourselves or when we feel under attack. When we feel attacked by others or by our own self-critical thoughts and words, it triggers the primitive part of our brains, the amygdala, to release cortisol and adrenaline to get us ready to fight, fight, or freeze. Touching ourselves in a soothing way when we feel stress, worry, anxiety, or sadness is an effective way to stem the flow of those stress hormones.

Some people tend to do this instinctively. I recently saw this article titled "Pedro Pascal Has a Great Tip for Managing Anxiety – Here's Why It Works." It describes how Pascal, star of the hit TV series "The Last of Us," puts his hand on his heart when he is feeling social anxiety.

The article quotes James Milford, head of behavioral sciences at Wellbeing Partners in the UK, which delivers courses for anxiety management. He explains one reason why comforting yourself in this way is effective: It's acknowledging that you feel vulnerable while at the same time supporting yourself.

"The hand over the heart is allowing the anxiety, not seeing it as an enemy to defeat, and it is also a physical manifestation of support," he says. He goes on to advocate a couple more of my favorite forms of mindful self-compassion: a "grounding object" (I recommend carrying a "Here and Now Stone" that you can rub when you feel anxious or agitated) and mindful breathing — taking deep, slow breaths and focusing on each inhale and exhale to calm your fightor-flight reflex.

Soothing touch doesn't always involve placing your hand over your heart. Try different forms to find what works best for you, such as:

• Cradling your face in your hands

• Placing one hand on your heart and one on your belly

• Lacing your fingers with both hands on your belly or over your chest

• Holding one hand to your cheek

• Gently rubbing your chest

If you are in the workplace or otherwise feel self-conscious doing this around others, you might choose a stealthy form of supportive touch placement like holding one hand in the other or crossing your arms so that your lower arms are applying gentle pressure on your ribcage with your palms and fingers giving yourself a low hug.

Supportive, soothing touch is the "S" in my four-step SNAP method:

1) Soothing Touch: Place your hand over your heart or wherever it feels most comforting. Oxytocin and endorphins will be released, helping your nervous system calm down.

2) Name the Emotion: Label the emotion, such as "I am feeling worry" or "I am having anger." Locate it in your body. The mere act of labeling the emotion helps you to step back from it.

3) Act: Ask yourself these two questions: 1) What do I need to hear right now? Then tell it to yourself! Examples might be "I love you; you'll get through this," or "It's tough to feel this way, but you are not alone." 2) What do I need to do right now to shift my mindset? Choose the appropriate mindfulness tool from your toolbox and do it! You could start with a breathing exercise, breathing in for a count of four and out for a count of six, doing this for three to five breath cycles. After that, your body will be in a calmer state for you to choose another Mindful Method tool, such as taking a walk outside for a few minutes, having a cup of tea, spending a few minutes listening to a guided meditation, etc.

4) Praise: Pat yourself on the back for managing your emotions! Thank your practice, your teachers, and your deity of choice. When you feel a positive mental state, like the love is working, let it fill you up for a breath or two. Doing this will help you wire a new neural bridge in your brain.

The beauty of SNAP is that you can tailor it to any situation, including the form of soothing touch you choose and the mindful action you take to help you in the moment. The P (praise) is usually the same for me — thinking about and feeling gratitude for my practice, my teachers, and my life.

So the next time you feel tension, anxiety, worry, or unrest in your body or mind, try practicing SNAP. Start by supporting yourself with comforting, soothing touch, just as you would for anyone you love, and see what a difference it can make.

Julie Potiker is a mindfulness expert with extensive certifications and teacher training in a variety of tools and methods, including Mindful Self-Compassion.

Her new book is "SNAP! From Chaos to Calm." Through her Mindful Methods for Life program offerings, Julie helps others bring more peace and wellness into their lives.

Julie's first book, Life Falls Apart, but You Don't Have To: Mindful Methods for Staying Calm in the Midst of Chaos, is now available on audiobook.

Learn more at MindfulMethodsForLife.com

Asha means “hope” in Sanskrit. Asha has been a Spiritual seeker since her early youth. Today she travels around the world teaching those seeking inspiration and support from her. She is a spiritual director of Ananda Sangha of Palo Alto.

By Phyllis King

With warmth and wisdom, Asha weaves spiritual teaching into daily ordinary life. She is a master teacher, considered by many to be one of the most nuanced and clear teachers of Yoga in the world today. Asha is a lifelong disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda.

She studied and worked closely with his direct disciple, Swami Kriyananda, for 45 years. Her teachings are non-sectarian-sharing truths that underlie the great religions. She draws freely from both the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita. She has video talks on YouTube and audio recordings, which are a spiritual lifeline for people of all faiths around the world. Her unusual insight and clarity have immeasurably helped thousands of students.

How did you come to the spiritual path?

I was always an extremely serious-minded person. Our family is Jewish in heritage, intellectual by orientation. It was a strong moral and ethical upbringing. I was good in school, and in our society, all doors can open for you. I was in the difficult position of knowing I had the opportunity to do anything I wanted, but I didn't want to do any of it.

I never felt I would be satisfied if I became a doctor, a lawyer, a professor, a business person, or any of those things. I was, in a very quiet way, absolutely desperate. By the grace of God, when I was 18 years old, I was given a book by Swami Vivekananda, the great disciple of the master Ramakrishna from India. I read a few pages and knew, "This is what I've been looking for." For the next several years, I avidly read books about spirituality. I was convinced that the spiritual life was the true life.

I have to add this was the 60s. This was Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, LSD. This was when the whole idea of consciousness was just breaking into the American scene, and I was part of that scene. I never liked drugs, though, because I liked my brain. I didn't want to mess it up. But the whole message of the times told me, "Change your consciousness, and you can change everything." I started reading the life stories of various masters. It's quite impactful when you read about the extraordinary things that have been done by Christian missionaries, Christian saints, Yogis in the Himalayas, and Tibetan Yogis.

By that time, I'm a nice Jewish girl living in California. I can't be a Christian missionary or a Christian saint. The idea of going to a cave in India seemed really hard and uncomfortable. I was now 22, It was 1969. I was living in Palo Alto, California — which, as it happens, is where I still live. Swami Kriyananda was invited to give a program at nearby Stanford University. I had been a student there but dropped out after just one year.

Swami Kriyananda was an American disciple of the Indian Guru Paramhansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi. Kriyananda, at that time, was in his early forties, twice my age. He walked into the room, and I felt his consciousness before he spoke even one word. It had no boundaries. His vibration was pure joy. My inner voice said, to my total surprise, "He has what I want." It was the first time in my life I had ever seen anything I really wanted.

That was that. Here I am, more than 50 years later. I have never deviated. I have done my best to follow what he taught me up to this very minute.

People want to understand why there is so much suffering in the world.

To understand suffering and what's happening in this world, you must look at the big picture. Does God exist? And if so, what is God? Many in the West have to look to the East, especially India, to find satisfactory answers to these questions. In the truest ancient tradition of India, it is called Sanaatan Dharma, which means simply" That which is." It's the way we are made. Human beings find happiness in certain ways, and other ways bring suffering. It isn't dogma. It isn't even really religion. It is "That which is." Everything is interrelated. The idea that the ego self is a separate, independent entity disconnected from the rest of cre- ation is a profound misunderstanding. We have to start with the nature of creation itself. Where does creation come from? This is where we get into words like God, consciousness, universal energy, and even science. When did consciousness begin? How long have we existed? Is death the end? Does the baby come in as a blank slate? Or are we on a very long journey, much longer than just one lifetime? All these questions lead to the answers to the most important questions: "What brings happiness? What causes suffering?" Every difficult experience that any human being goes through is because there is something we have to learn about what brings happiness and what causes suffering.

More deeply than mere outer events — many of which are self-evidently joyous or painful — what we have to develop is our inner consciousness. We are one with infinite spirit. We have the opportunity at any moment to perceive not only the limited reality of the individual body but the infinite reality, which is our true nature.

Every apparent suffering is a challenge for us to expand our awareness so that we can be simultaneously conscious of both the infinite and the finite. That may sound very complicated, even confusing. But that's what makes the spiritual path so fascinating. It takes us far beyond the obvious into an open-ended awareness of our own potential.

How do we know if the choice we're making is the right choice or a good one and if it will take us to happiness instead of suffering? We make lots of terrible choices. We always do. We can only do the best we can do at the time. Pay attention to what happens afterward to know if you are making the right decision. Do your sincere best to tune in to higher principles, to overcome selfishly based ideas. But you also have to be realistic about your own capabilities. You have to be authentic and have the self-honesty to know your limits.

When we pay attention to how decisions feel on a vibrational level, we will know when we're holding anger, revenge, hatred, and selfishness. Those vibrations don't work out well. The next time we can be more aware and try to choose differently.

I have a couple of made-up mantras that I use. One is, "If I could have done better, I would have done better." "If I could have been wiser, I would have been wiser." Then the corollary to that is, "It seemed like a good idea at the time." "No matter how it turned out, it always seemed like a good idea at the time, or else I wouldn't have done it!" That's how we learn.

How do we heal from a broken heart?

Very slowly. Heartbreak changes us. It makes us different. But different can be better. Kinder. More compassionate. More grateful. If your heart has been broken, it means that something you felt was essential to your happiness isn't going to be there anymore because of death, time, or change. You must find other ways to bring back the joy that has been taken away. Reality may be hard to accept, but reality always wins. Better to cooperate with what is. Otherwise, you will be sad forever, which is very unfortunate.

Here is an interesting principle of Sanaatan Dharma: We learn from being disappointed, but we learn more from being fulfilled. We long for that which we believe will give us happiness. When our desires are fulfilled, we get to drink that cup of happiness to the last drop. And that experience can be beautiful. But we find that nothing external to our consciousness is ever enough. The great Christian mystic, Saint Augustine, said, "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee."

A broken heart is always there, an unchangeable fact. What we have to do is become bigger in relation to it. That's how we heal.

What is the point of meditation?

One of the reasons we suffer in this world is because we don't understand "Who and What I Am." We define ourselves by our limited characteristics, which begin with having a physical body. We think of our physical body as the first reality, but we are an inverted pyramid. The physical body is our most contracted self. When we meditate, we expand into the non-physical portion of that inverted pyramid, which keeps on expanding to infinity.

I used to be quite discouraged by all the injustice the world. My heart still breaks from it, but I'm not at all discouraged anymore. I’ve come to see that there are many, many great light workers on the planet now, doing really good work.

We can step back a little from emotional reactions, fears, worries, physical discomfort, or pain through meditation. We discover an inner dimension of self that is always at peace. When we learn to take that inner calmness into the tumult of life, we are much more likely to make good decisions. Meditation enables us to stand closer to our calm center, making everything different.

Why do some people have wealth and abundance and others do not?

Karma always plays a role. If you are doing everything right, and it still isn't bringing the results you want, it is because you have built up momentum from the past, pulling in another direction. That is what karma is: momentum, not yet re-directed. If you unplug an electric fan with a spinning propeller, it will keep spinning for a while. But if you cut off the electricity, eventually it will stop. Sometimes, even after your intentions are set and your actions are aligned, it still takes time to shift the momentum from the past. Don't give up! Keep on, and eventually, things will change. What we are is an energy pattern. It is completely within our power to shift that pattern. But we have to put out energy to make the change.

Whatever abundance you are seeking — emotional, monetary, talent, or love — one of the foremost laws is to appreciate what you have. When you are careless with the abundance you have or ungrateful for what has been given to you, you are not setting up a magnetic force to attract more.

Let's say a friend gives you a present. And you say, "I hate it. It's not what I wanted!"

How likely is it that they will go shopping for you again? Too often, instead of being grateful, we rebel against what has been given to us.

We mistreat it, abuse it, and thus dissipate the little abundance we have.

Or we are irresponsible in our thinking. We take credit for it ourselves rather than thanking our Divine Mother for Her generosity. We think of ourselves as powerful prosperity generators. Which we are, but it is still a misunderstanding. Everything that comes to us is a gift from the Divine. Even the opportunity to learn and practice the principles of prosperity is a gift from a higher reality. When someone gives you a gift, you should be very appreciative of it. Find a way to be grateful.

There's a lot of cruelty in the world, including to animals. Why is that? Is there something we can do to make it better for animals and all living beings? The level of consciousness on this planet is not particularly high. It used to be much worse. Looking back even a few centuries, you can see we're moving upward. Being on a planet like this provides many opportunities to build righteousness in a rather unrighteous society.

If people are being cruel, they're cruel because they are suffering. They inflict pain because they mistakenly think it will lessen the pain they feel inside.

In 1986, I went to India for the first time. I'd never seen poverty as I saw it there — beggars, diseases, people living on the sidewalk. I thought, "We have all the resources to fix this. What we lack is the collective will to do it." It isn't a matter of technology or money. It is a problem of the human heart. We have to awaken human hearts to our unity with all creation. We must awaken in people to the desire, the capacity, and the courage to be instruments of light.

On a planet like this one, at a time like this, many of Divine Mother's naughty children have incarnated with us. I call them the shadow people. I prefer the word "shadow" to the word "dark." Shadow merely blocks the light. It cannot destroy it. Shadow depends on light. God equally loves every human being. Divine Mother loves her naughty children as much as her good ones. It is hard to understand, but it is true. And the naughty children have an equal divine right to learn the lessons they need to learn.

Part of what makes a world like this so difficult is that such an enormous spectrum of light and shadow exists simultaneously. Many very light souls are incarnating, but there are also many shadowy souls coming here because it is a good place for them to find out if being in the shadow is going to fulfill them or not.

Planet Earth is at a point where a higher age is replacing a lower age. But a lot of people prefer the lower age of fixed material realities — religions, races, and ethnicities all held distinct and separate. And those shadow people are trying as hard as possible to make the future look like the past. The forces of light are too strong for the shadow to win, but the shadow is not going to go away without a struggle. So it is a great opportunity for light workers to become courageous and strong. And for shadow people to learn what they came to learn.

This is a very big perspective, extremely hard to hold onto when you see cruelty inflicted on humans, animals, or Nature itself. Extremely hard to hold. But that's one of the reasons we're here. To face something very hard and to be victorious within ourselves - to stay in the light.

And in the process, we can do a tremendous amount of good. Every revolution in history starts with a few committed souls. Consider Jesus Christ. Crucified. He was thrown into a cave. Most of his disciples ran away. Everyone expected that was the end of the story. But it was just the beginning.

We should do what we can to bring more light onto the material plane. To work for positive change in the causes that we believe in. But in all these efforts, we have to be faithful to the high ideals that motivate us. We have to act with the consciousness and the vibrations that we are trying to bring into manifestation. Even our thoughts have great power.

I used to be quite discouraged by all the injustice in the world. My heart still breaks from it, but I'm not discouraged anymore. I've come to see that there are many, many great light workers on the planet now, doing really good work. We're all learning our lessons, doing what we came here to do. The shadow, in some form, will always be with us. This planet is a school. It will never be perfect. But as we work to uplift the planet, we are also changing ourselves, lifting our vibration to uplift others.

What's next for you?

I'm closer to the end of my incarnation than to the beginning. I love being older. Older is better. I hope that what I feel now is wisdom, not just old age! And that if I have another body in another incarnation, even when I'm young, I'll be old in the sense of wisdom.

Swamiji was extraordinarily generous in his teaching and training. I feel it as a debt that must be balanced by generosity of heart. In the last year of Swamiji's life — he passed in 2013 — he gave me my instructions: to travel as much as possible, sharing all I have learned from him. In many ways, the whole world is the same to me.

I still have a home in the Ananda community in Palo Alto, where I have lived for more than three decades. I have deep and wonderful friendships here and many equally dear friends elsewhere. I am a Sanyasi, a renunciate. Wherever I can serve best is where I want to be.

Right now, that means traveling around the world, meeting devotees of Paramhansa Yogananda or others interested in hearing what Swamiji taught me about this excellent teaching of Self-Realization. I go where I am invited. It is a privilege and a blessing to serve.

You've written many books, is there one you want THE EDEN MAGAZINE readers to consider?

The foundation book behind everything I do is Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda. That book helped launch and continues to inspire a worldwide spiritual revolution.

My teacher, Swami Kriyananda, was his direct disciple. His autobiography, The New Path: My Life With Paramhansa Yogananda, is mostly about what it was like to be with the great Guru.

My small contribution is a book about my life with Swamiji. It is called Swami Kriyananda: Lightbearer.

Special Thank you to:

Asha

Ananda Sangha

Dina Morrone

JSquared Photography @j2pix