Simple Steps To Relieve Stress and Uncertainty

From a young age I was drawn to the image of the Buddha. I wanted to be like him, sitting peacefully with a smile on his face. But I couldn't understand why, when I sat to meditate I had so many thoughts whirling around in my head and I felt anything but peaceful and smiling. So one day I went and asked my teacher, 'How can I be like the Buddha?' He smiled and said, 'You already are. The Buddha is in here.' And he pointed at my heart.

Don't get put off by the term Buddha. If you are not a Buddhist then you can call Buddha "inherent nature" or "God" or "love". We don't have to be a Buddhist to want peace, happiness, security and good health. And we don't have to be a Buddhist to realize that the external world can only give us security and happiness for a short time. True confidence, security, and happiness come directly from our mind. The Buddha said, 'It is our mind which makes the world." If we are feeling down then even blue sky and sunshine won't be able to cheer us up. It's only our mind which has the ability to do this, which is why it's so important to have a regular practice to help us come back to ourselves .

Having some kind of internal practice can help us greatly with this current climate of insecurity and loss of jobs. Being a Buddhist disciple I've never had a job or a steady income but I realise from talking to my students that they are worried about their future and so I offer a little advice from my own personal experience.

There is a famous Buddhist quote which I try to live by:

If you can solve your problem,
Then what is the need for worrying?
If you cannot solve it,
Then what is the use of worrying?

This quote reminds me to do everything I can with my life and let the rest go.

In our quest for peace and security we tend to want to control every aspect of our life but this only takes us further away from happiness. We need to relax and let go of the need to control. Next time you feel anxious, don’t give in to it but go and do some Kung Fu or Qigong or running.

Keep your awareness on both your practice and your anxiety. Try to find the substance of your anxiety. Where is it? Can you point to it? Does it feel like it's in a particular part of your body? Sometimes this search helps the anxiety to automatically disappear like darkness disappears when we turn on the light. We don't want to repress it or push it away because this will make it stronger. We just need to gently acknowledge it. As you move through your Shaolin practice, watch the emotion shift and change shape.

Qi is energy, emotions are energy, beliefs are energy, they change thousands of times a day and we are much more than them. We are also much more than our job or financial solvency.

Remember that Buddha never gives us any more problems than we can handle and every event that happens to us is our inner Buddha challenging us. Don't worry. Every so-called negative experience can be a benefit if we view it positively. Every event a teaching.

The Biggest Health Problem Today? Stress

Stress has been in the news as a health epidemic since the
early eighties and this situation continues to worsen as an
increasing number of workers say that they are suffering
increasing stress in the workplace. Indeed work is now the
leading environment for the development of stress in adult
Americans. However levels of stress have also been rising
for children in the past few years and many people now link
this to a loss of religious and family values, isolation,
insufficient social support and simple corporate greed.

Nowadays, stress is far more of a danger than it was just
ten years ago and looks to be more extensive and more
invasive than ever with a lot more stress coming from
psychological instead of physical threats.

Stress causes a rise in heart rate and greater blood flow
leading to higher blood pressure. Levels of blood sugar also
increase to give the body the extra fuel which it needs to
fight stress, and the body is designed to push blood away
from the stomach when we are stressed in order to provide
extra strength for the legs and arms as part of what is
often called our "flight or fight" response.

Stress contributes to anxiety and chronic depression
together with skin and gastrointestinal problems, and
interferes with the workings of a lot of the body's major
organs. It can also create an impairment of the immune
system, which cannot shake off viral disorders from the not
particularly serious cold to very serious diseases such as
AIDS and cancer.

Stress in the workplace directly influences such things as
employee absenteeism and productivity and the business
climate progressively worsens with competition today at an
all-time high. The pressure placed upon employees to produce
and the continual concern about job security can produce a
number of conditions including neck pain, back pain, stroke,
hypertension, diabetes, ulcers and heart attacks.

All sorts of things can create stress including just sitting
in front of a computer for six hours every day or more,
meeting deadlines or having somebody continually monitoring
you. In this case the results are frequently seen as
depression and a range of physical ailments which give rise
to lost work time.

Taking the steps to manage the stress in your life may well
be the nicest gift you can give yourself and just a few
quite simple alterations to your lifestyle can make a big
difference to how you handle stress. For instance, taking
just 20 minutes out of your day to walk will lower your
level of stress as will talking to other people, prayer and
meditation and following a healthy diet. Take the time
necessary to master a few relaxation techniques because deep
breathing and relaxation exercises can do a great deal to
reduce your level of stress.