Start with either bare feet or stockinged/socked feet so that you can feel the ground under you.  Plan a path where you will be walking either in nature or indoors.  Even if the path is relatively short, you can traverse this distance and redouble on your tracks without a problem.  Just plan your path out in advance so that you don’t need to worry about where you will be going.

As you begin the exercise, remember to start with the fundamental of your breath.  Focus on the rhythm of your breathing and allowing yourself to breathe more quickly or more slowly depending on your body’s needs.  As you breathe, enjoy the rich breath that is giving you nourishment and life.  Then start to focus on your legs and toes as you walk over the terrain and enjoy the feeling of the ground under your feet and the related sensations.  As you walk, enjoy the feeling of walking.  If your mind wanders, bring it back to the focus of walking and the feeling of the air against your face if you are outside and the sounds around you or if you are inside just stay centered on your breathing and walking.  As you conclude the exercise, return your thoughts back to your breathing and finish with your breath meditation.

Here is a video guide to help you with this meditation.  Namaste.

We begin with the fundamental exercise, which is our breathing, enjoying and focusing on the rise and fall of our breath and the natural cadence that our breath takes.  From there, as our mind travels, we do not constrain it but let it be.  Wherever our mind goes, we allow it to “daydream” and when we arrive at a thought, we don’t judge the thought or deny the thought, we just allow.  We label the thought as “thinking” and we allow the thought to exist without force or implication.  If our mind goes elsewhere, we allow the thought to blossom.  If it is a negative thought, we do not label it as such but we allow it to be just there floating in front of us and around us.  We allow the thought to just be withholding fear, anxiety, or judgment.  We accept the thought as being part of us, our nature, our being.  We then close the exercise with a return to our breathing, focusing again on each in-breath (inhalation) and each out-breath (exhalation) before we return to our world.  

The following video is a guided tour to help you stay on a budgeted time of under 10 minutes and to help you stay on track during this exercise for those who can have the luxury of playing the video in their quiet place of meditation.  Namaste.

Also, I just started a new Facebook group that is non-profit (don’t worry no donations), non-sectarian (no religious affiliation), non-political and that is dedicated to promoting love and peace to everyone in the world.  I would greatly appreciate it if you joined the group and then invited ALL of your friends to join.  Let’s start a revolution!  Spread the word!  Here is the link to the page.

When I encounter nervous patients, I use this exercise as the middle of 3 as I need to.  I start with the breathing exercise and call it quits there if that is sufficient to get someone relaxed.  If not, I move onward to the body scan to help them relax each part of their body going from one muscle group to another.  I then work with them on a visualization exercise if they need it.  I think some of you remember the beach visualization exercise I did.  I actually helped another patient of mine who was a professional ballet dancer in youth return to her days of glory on stage through this exercise.  Okay, that is another meditation so let’s return to our hatha yoga exercise.

With this meditation, you can either stay seated or you can be fully recumbent (just don’t fall asleep!).  If you are in a cool place, make sure that you have blankets or whatever you need to make sure you stay comfortable and warm during the meditation.  The video I shot will help guide you in this exercise but for those who cannot watch the video or choose not to do so, let me summarize what I would like you to do.

First, calm your breathing and focus again on the primal breath.  Allow yourself a minute or two to just focus on the breath and your breathing, naming each breath as it goes in and out.  Then center your mind on each of the following body parts. Begin on your forehead and allow yourself to sweep your mind back and forth over each body part and allow yourself to start to relax your muscle and let go of the tension.  Repeat that same exercise as you move from your forehead to your nose, left cheek, right cheek, jaw (let your jaw go lax), neck, spine, right shoulder, right arm, right fingers, left shoulder, left arm, left fingers, chest muscles, abdomen, pelvis, right thigh, right leg, right toes, left thigh, left leg, and then left toes.  Bring your focus back to your breathing as you finish your meditation.

Namaste.

Most oftentimes, we do not work at self-improvement but look at everyone around us as needing work.  Maxwell says that when we criticize someone else, that is called constructive criticism.  However, when someone criticizes us we call that destructive criticism.  I am certainly not perfect at taking criticism, but I am a lot better today than I was even last year and last year I was better than the year prior.  Remember from the 4 agreements, “never to take anything personally”.  That is very important in this case.  Too often when we judge others, we judge them by THEIR actions, whereas when we judge ourselves we judge ourselves by our intentions.  This two-tier system of criticism leads us to failure because we never meant anything by what we did or so we rationalize, but that person certainly should have known better.  We must strive to create a harmonious congruity by how we perceive ourselves and others.

Maxwell, a former preacher, still says that he ultimately does not trust himself to lead himself.  That is why he has established external accountability for his actions.  That is why I wrote about accountability a couple of weeks ago and why I emphasized how I am accountable to other business leaders/owners in my EO forum group.  How have you made yourself accountable?  To whom?  What interval?

We as leaders (and that means all of you too!) must hold ourselves to a higher level of accountability.  Linda, who is my spa director, asked me last year why I have apologized to my staff for seemingly small infractions, and I explained that as a leader I hold myself to a higher level of accountability of who I am and who I should aim to be.  There is no other person that can truly hold you to that level of accountability than yourself.

When we first lead ourselves, we can then have a chance at leading others around us.  I have learned a lot about real-life leadership this past year and have worked even more diligently at becoming a more centered leader.  By virtue of that, my patients and my staff and everyone around me has benefited.  I must start with myself.  You must start with yourself.  We must start with ourselves.  I look at my readership as part of my extended team at LFP because I would love for all of us to grow as humans in our common fraternity.

A somatic marker originates in many cases from our childhood filled with memories and with an instinctual system of reward and punishment.  If we smelled a wonderful roast as a child and opened the oven and reached in to touch the piping hot Le Creuset pot and instantly recoil in pain, do we not have that experience linger with us for quite some time?  These visceral subnotes that underscore how we behave today have a lingering legacy.  Why do we think German cars are better?  Why do we think a camera from Japan must be better than one purchased from another country?  These somatic markers lead to a certain irrational way that we create shortcut stereotypes that influence our buying decisions.  Interestingly, as a baby, my mother used to slather a whopping dollop of facial cream on me all the time.  I still am not comfortable with facials, especially when a lot of heavy cream is used.  I shutter when I think of thick facial cream.  Fortunately, I have mitigated my irrational feeling and can use moisturizer every day!

These somatic markers that influence our buying decisions are more powerful than we as thoughful consumers would own up to.  In England, the tissue brand Andrex outsells Kleenex brand by almost 2 to 1.  The rationale for why this might be the case stems from the use of a small labrador puppy that slides down snowy hills on long trails of toilet paper in the commercials.  The puppy has been casually associated with new families and toilet training and there might be something indelibly linked at a conceptual and emotional level that Kleenex does not offer the UK buyer.  For all of these emotive connections, we as consumers should be more explicitly thoughtful in our buying decisions to overcome these subversive tendencies.

I just finished the book, The Art of Happiness, which involves teachings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his conversations with Phoenix psychiatrist Howard C. Cutler, M.D. Dr. Cutler tries to explore the ideas of Buddhist thought as preached and practiced by the Dalai Lama, as they would be explicable and applicable to non-Buddhists in the West. During this time of financial vicissitudes, we can perhaps learn a lot from global thoughts that antedate and continue to flourish during our lives from the Far East. I will not summarize the book but focus on select topics that have personal resonance for me that I thought would be helpful for my readership. These blogs represent an attempt for me at personal growth and self awareness and are letters written to myself that if burnished well will radiate to all those who are interested enough to read them.

The Dalai Lama believes that happiness is the singular purpose of life that supercedes all other concerns or at least represents the fundamental distillation of what our life should be about. At first glance, this comment seems to belie a monkish disposition and compel one to think that a monk is advocating some kind of dissolute, hedonistic life. Rather, as you read through this 5-part series, you will see that in fact the opposite is the case. In short, altruism and compassion are rooted in one’s own inner happiness.

As mentioned, we think that if we are to pursue happiness, we are in fact elevating our selfish nature. However, if we stop to think of how truly happy individuals can radiate kindness, compassion, and love to others; whereas, unhappy people pass on their disgruntled demeanor and horde and heave hatred and displeasure to all who encounter them. If we start with understanding how to reach a deep and meaningful happiness, we can use that as a launching point to help others. In fact, the act of helping others can be a truly happy action to take. But more about that later this week.

If life is for living, how else can we live but in a happy state. Living in a depressed, angry, or self-tormented condition will only lead to an unbearable state that contravenes our very nature. We were not born to live in misery. In fact, in one part of the book when Dr. Cutler asks the Dalai Lama about self-hatred, he received a befuddled silence in response. The Dalai Lama simply could not understand what this concept meant, as he had never encountered it in his sheltered world. If our fundamental nature is designed for happiness, then how can we achieve it? We will explore the following concepts over this next week: contentment, intimacy, compassion, and confronting suffering to draw broad strokes within which you can create finer etchings that will define your own existence.

Time truly flies. I literally cannot believe that 2008 has drawn to a close and the new year is already upon us. I think today should be a time of both reflection of the past year and what we have in store for us in the coming year.

Although 2008 has been a rocky year in the world, I am grateful that LFP has been relatively shielded from the effects so far of the economic downturn. Instead of dwelling on the negatives, I would like to focus on some of the positive milestones of this past year. First, I finished writing my 5th book in 5 years, Aging Face: The New Paradigm, which I am very proud of. This should be my last venture into the world of hard-core academic publishing besides ongoing book chapters and scientific papers. In a way what I foresee for myself is to transition from an ensconced academia into the mainstream (more about that in a moment). I am also proud that a year ago I took 4 months out of my life and studied hard to sit and pass the American Board of Hair Restoration Surgery and am now a diplomate with only 120 others in the world. This past year I had the good fortune of completely filling my building but then losing ground with the closure of the lap-band center and vein center upstairs. Nevertheless, my spa opened and is growing by leaps and bounds and the anti-aging center and rolfing center are going like gangbusters. Although in 2007 LFP had 1 or 2 slow months, this is the first year that we had complete uniformity with no slow months and bookings several months out in advance. I am very proud of the accomplishments of my staff and my building.

My next year will carry more responsibility in many ways. First, I will be carrying the title of moderator for my Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) forum, which will demand much time from me. Second, I shall be turning up the heat as Editor-in-Chief of the academy’s Face Book that will be published as a major consumer’s guide to facial plastic surgery (don’t worry, we copyrighted Facebook before facebook.com did). My plan over the next two years will involve becoming much more of a mainstream presence on television, public speaking, etc. I am very much interested in getting my vision out to every household to the best of my ability. I look forward to a fun, exciting and growing 2009, and I hope you continue your journey with me.

I can’t help but draw from Gladwell’s Outliers again as source material since it is so rich with ideas that have profoundly shaped my thinking. He talked about why Korean Airlines had one of the worst crash records from the late 80s to the late 90s. Interestingly, what he also found is that when the most experienced pilot flew, there was the highest chance for a crash, whereas when the least experienced pilot flew, it tended to be the safest flight.

What was observed at KAL was that the subordinate or lesser pilot would pay deference to the senior captain so he could almost never overtly challenge the senior captain’s stewardship of the plane. He would then speak in what is termed “mitigated speech”, i.e., very elliptically made speech that never directly attacked the captain. For example, if the plane had too much ice to make flying the plane a safe venture, the co-pilot would say something like, “Boy, it’s cold out there.” Of course, the pilot would have no idea what he was talking about. He could up the ante a bit and say, “Boy, the wings look a bit icy tonight, what do you think?” He might even go so far as to say, “Maybe we should take another look to see if there is too much ice on the wings to fly?” In almost every case, the Korean pilot would be too oblique in his commentary and deferential to change the captain’s mind about something that should have been very obvious.

The Korean language carries many honorifics and many layers of deferential speak that separate societal ranks. Customs further reinforce this behavior. For example, no one can start eating at the table until the most senior person starts. However, the most senior person can start eating way before anyone else is sitting at the table. Gladwell looked at Hofstede’s power distance index of various countries (click here to see Hofstede’s global PDI map). He found that Americans have a very low PDI, i.e., subordinates are very comfortable telling off a senior member whom they found to be wrong. However, even in the U.S., lower-ranked pilots would still at times have trouble telling the captain that there was a problem so that new training required that a lower-ranked U.S. pilot would try 3 times to convince a senior pilot that what he was doing was dangerous and if he could not that he would simply take over the cockpit.

Korean Airlines has become one of the safest airlines today because of a radical overhaul to the culture. All KAL pilots must be fluent in English, which helps them communicate better with international air-traffic control and also minimize the PDI issues. They also trained with U.S. pilots to start breaking down long-held PDI structures.

I have told this story to all of my staff so that they do not engage in a PDI issue with me. I need to know honestly what I am doing right and what I am doing wrong. I have asked them to run my ship with frank candor. I do not hire “Yes Men” and I do not want a “Yes Men” mentality to hold sway over my ship. I have asked the same candor from my patients. Open dialogue is the key to any relationship by breaking down the PDI at a fundamental level.

I don’t think I’ll have a new patient story for you every week, but this one really touched me a lot. I had a patient who was looking for lip enhancement and had called around town. After Marcy worked her phone magic that she does so well, she really believed that I was the best suited to help her out (which I not so humbly believe to be true). She enjoyed most of the day at my spa then came over to my office for some fillers. I explained to her that fillers could also be used in the face, and I discussed with her the merits of Botox for long-term wrinkle reduction. She decided to do the fillers for facial rejuvenation, lip enhancement, and Botox.

I always see my patients back a week later to make sure that they are doing okay and to show them their before and after photographs. When I was taking her photos in the photo room, she said, “Dr. Lam, I know you don’t know this about me, but my daughter suffered anaphylactic shock when she was 15 years old and died in front of me. I got very close to my second daughter, my only other child, but who was then killed with my sister in a car accident 2 years later.” She then said, “Dr. Lam, you have given me my face back as it was before all this happened to me. You have erased 15 years of grief from my face.”

I can tell you it was hard to hold back my tears when I heard that. I told that story to all my staff. Even something “small” like Restylane can have a profound impact on people’s lives. I always say to my staff we are not in the business of plastic surgery but in the business of “taking care of people and transforming lives”. I can think of no better incidence than this one. I am so proud of performing such a small thing that had such wonderfully unintended benefits. I always remember that every person that I treat is special no matter what the motivations they have or the treatments that I perform. You never know when a small thing can mean a lot to the other person you were so blessed to encounter. Wishing all of you a special holiday season, and I hope this story touched you as much as it did me and my staff!