Emotional Freedom Part 7 of 17: Knowing Your Type, The Intellectual
July 23, 2009 by dr. lam · 3 Comments
In order to respond to the world’s problems and/or to live life to the fullest, we all must know how we see the world around us. Dr. Orloff breaks us down into four major types, which we will explore over the next few days. By knowing what type we are, we can then see where are strengths are but more importantly find out where our limited world view is cramping us and how to free ourselves from that limitation.
The first emotional type that she discusses is the intellecutal. This individual is very cerebral, as the name implies, usually using the functions from the neck up to answer problems. They cannot handle individuals who are overly emotional and cannot relate to others well emotionally. They are thinkers. They weigh an issue with pros and cons before making a decision. There is no gut decision about anything. They just figure out what they need to do by pure logic, which typically is a very well developed skill set.
For the intellectual, their true weakness is their emotional skills. They have a difficult time connecting the mind to the body. In order to overcome this weakness, Orloff suggests yoga and meditation. Yeah! That is what I suggest for myself and all too. Starting with breath exercises, the intellectual can move away from the purely intellectual habit of thinking and to focus on the sensation of breathing. By using meditation, the intellectual can begin to sense the world rather than think the world. This exercise is vital for me, who has intellectual tendencies but interestingly I am not this type or am not anymore (as I will mention in a moment). The second exercise is yoga. Since yoga requires deep mental concentration to perform, it can stimulate the center of the intellectual’s mind but also free himself/herself from the habit of thinking. As I perform yoga no matter what clouds my mind before entering the room, I can think of nothing else but my poses during the session. Yoga can link the mind and the body during the session and cultivate this linking that can hopefully translate into one’s daily world existence. Finally, the last thing and perhaps the most important is for the intellectual to empathize. Start with the heart and say the simple words, “I know how you are feeling.” With the intention set at the level of the heart, the intellectual can gradually free himself/herself from the shackles of one’s own intellectual qualities.
In the past, I used to adore Ayn Rand for her intellectual prose and world view. I thought emotions were a crippling element but today I realize that I am much more empathic than I would have otherwise believed a few years ago. These blogs are a method for me to express my emotions and thoughts in well, an intellectual way. I guess we all can share some commonalities of different emotional types. I know I certainly do.
Emotional Freedom Part 6 of 17: Unleashing Your Dreams
July 22, 2009 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
Like Dr. Maxwell Maltz, Dr. Orloff is a big fan of the unconscious mind. She believes that our dreams are a central pathway by which we can tap into this energy that we shortly thereafter abruptly dismiss or more routinely forget. Her chapter on this subject is so very rich that I am of course doing a disservice by abridging it here. I encourage motivated readers to obtain her book and read through the thoughts and practices that she suggests in this chapter. But here are the key elements that I gleaned and want to pass along.
First, we must recognize the power of dreams and of the time that we are in a restful repose. We must condition our environment to be adequately soothing to attain the needed information free of distracting sounds, smells, temperature fluctuations, or other physical encumbrances. Then, we must prepare our mind to be receptive for what we are about to receive. Like Maltz has extolled in his book, Psycho-Cybernetics, we can pose a question in this case a question that we want answered before we go to sleep and set the intention to receive the answer to our query. Finally, when we awaken we must be prepared to remember then analyze the message. Too often, our active, alert minds move quickly into our daily routines and we forget our dreams within seconds of awakening. We switch off our message centers. What she recommends is a bedside journal for our dreams that we record immediately upon reflecting upon the dream even if it is in the middle of the night. She cautions an abrupt awakening in the morning but one that is gradual in nature when our minds can be more fertile in remembering our previous night’s jaunts.
She also believes that so-called nightmares reflect a persistent anxiety on our part that if left ignored will both become a recurring theme in our daily lives as well as one in our nightly sojourns. Therefore, we should confront the message of the nightmare as a means to deliver us from its constraints and move us toward emotional freedom. These tools that she suggests are nothing short of brilliant and can be easily incorporated into one’s nightly rituals, as I am planning to do myself.
Emotional Freedom Part 5 of 17: The Psychology Behind Emotions
July 21, 2009 by dr. lam · 6 Comments
This is the fourth “secret” that Orloff describes in getting in touch with our own emotional condition so that we can harness the best of ourselves and dismiss the worst. What she means by psychology in this circumstance is the reasons behind why we do what we do and think what we think. There is oftentimes a psychological impetus for our behavior based on certain programming and conditioning that we are subjected to as we grow up…what Don Miguel Ruiz refers to as domestication.
In light of that, Orloff asks her readership to delve into the positive and negative aspects that have been imparted to oneself from parents. We oftentimes can take the best from our parents as well as the worst aspects. Separating all of that out can help us sort through what we should preserve and what we should remove from our lives. She notes that sometimes an individual acts exactly the opposite way of a parent’s coping mechanism in order to distance himself/herself from the parent. This may not always be beneficial either.
She tells the story of Connie, a 23-year-old single working mother, who was a victim of child abuse herself, who passed on that legacy to her children through uncontrolled, violent behavior that she deemed “sickening” but could not resist her actions. With repeated attempts, she failed to disengage. It took recognizing the psychological impetus for her actions and then going through psychological therapy that offered fruitful mechanisms to perform when stressed to help her to fully relinquish her cyclical behavior. Unlike Maxwell Maltz who believes that we can arrive at our destination without regard to our past, Orloff believes that it can be enlightening and instructive..
Some of the negative attributes that i attained from my father was his righteous anger about certain behavior but I have learned to let that go. However, I was able to also take his great humor and love for life. My mother carries with her anxiety about many things, which I am learning to let go (as is she) but she has tremendous compassion and love for others. I hope that by seeing where I have come from that I can celebrate the best of my parents and relinquish any of their foibles, as we all have.
Emotional Freedom Part 4 of 17: The Energy Behind Emotions
July 17, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Emina, my work colleague and friend, has stimulated my interest in the field of emotions and how they can revolutionize our personal and professional life. She has given me the insight to work on an intuitive level with my own emotions so that I can harness them for their positive potential and avoid the destructive negative side that they carry.
A book that I have not read but have seen in movies, referenced by Emina, and Dr. Orloff, is Dr. Masaru Emoto’s book The Hidden Messages of Water that shows his high-speed photographs of frozen water crystals that he observed when people conveyed positive emotions like “I love you” versus hateful tones like “You make me sick”. He found that with positive messages the water crystals appeared rainbow-hued snowflakes and with negative thoughts conveyed appeared like muddled, fractured shapes.
In life, when we speak we can impart with our words and tone an aura of positivity or transmit negativity. When we seek vengeance, we drain our own energy and that of everyone around us. When we pass healing forward, we give that beauty of healing to all those around us. Our energy has unlimited potential when we become beaming towers of “high energy”, i.e., not caffeinated, anxious laden creatures but quite the contrary, ones that radiate peace and love to all. I look forward each day to impart that love to all of my patients whom I cherish as well as my staff and to every single person I encounter for the day. I refer you to perhaps my favorite blog or one of my favorites about energy states for your better understanding if you have not read it before from Wayne Dyer’s Power of Intention.
Emotional Freedom Part 3 of 17: The Spirituality Factor
July 16, 2009 by dr. lam · 9 Comments
If we are consumed with harnessing our emotions just to make our bodies better, then we are quite near-sighted. We are as humans spiritual creatures, yearning for something beyond the mere physical and the mere mortal. God, or if you do not believe in a Higher Power, then a divine unity of all our spirits is an innate part of who we are. Without a spiritual component, we lack in a word meaning. Our emotions are tied to this spiritual yearning.
Orloff says we must ask, “How can a situation–any situation–help me grow and develop loving-kindness toward myself and others?” If we see our emotions as an ability to help ourselves grow and to help those around us, then we can seek a higher purpose beyond our biology and comfort for wanting to only exercise powerfully positive emotions. As a western-trained physician myself, I found my curriculum wholly wanting in this arena, as did Dr. Orloff. I am filling in that gap. I am very “spiritual” with my patients. I love their presence with me, and I love sharing healing and love with each one of them. When people meet my staff, they also say the same thing about them. I think many people notice the spirituality in my staff because they are imbued with the same love that I have.
Whenever we feel small or limited by our own biology, we should turn to a higher spirituality to see the greater PURPOSE of why we are here and we should use our emotions for the greater good, both for ourselves and for others
I will begin posting my blogs routinely every morning at 5 am on an automatic schedule. That way anyone who likes to read blogs very early in the morning can do so. I welcome any thoughts or suggestions about that.