SUPER POWER: Instant Regeneration Technique- Relaxation

There's a definite line between breathing and relaxing. 

You can do a breathing exercise of a hundred controlled breaths. But if you're not any more relaxed after it then all you did was breathe a hundred times. I know. I've done it. 

You can relax on your exhales but not your inhales. In that case you're just taking a step forward and then a step back. Done that too. 

Interestingly relaxation doesn't actually depend on breath. It's possible to relax when holding your breath, or even upside down, or during a physically active task. 

In all cases it's clear that breath without relaxation is idle. And further, relaxation IS the goal of breath. 

It's a very subtle thing, relaxation. 

Doing this thing that requires the absence of effort. 

Almost paradoxical. 

It's the letting go. 

When you've quieted your mind to the point where you can feel slight changes in the body, try letting go. 

As if you're standing and you close your eyes and fall back. 

If you did it successfully you will feel a slight release somewhere within the body and a correlating emotional sense of relief.

You may feel the release in your chest, your belly, your face, around your eyes, around your nose, your brow, neck, back, shoulders, groin, legs, feet, anywhere. 

Try building up that act of release. 

I find attaching it to my inhale and exhale produces a compounding effect. 

After a few minutes of successful relaxation you will feel physically more energetic as is you've gotten a full nights rest. You'll also feel physically limber as if you've been stretching for an hour. As well as physically stronger. 

Mentally, you'll notice a significant increase in processing. An elevated feeling of clarity. Along with a boost of positive energy. 

You can do this anytime of day and with a bit of practice anywhere too. One of my favorite places is on my commute in the NY subways, sitting or standing. I've also utilized this in getting me through 19 hour jobs with only a few hours of sleep the night before due to being extra social ;)

You can do it multiple times a day for extra boosts. 

It's like taking a coffee break or energy drink without the side effects and you're actually addressing the cause of tiredness, which is simply the accumulation of tension over the course of the day. 

You'll find that the less sleep you go on the easier and faster it is for the body and mind to get tired again after relaxing. So use it for when you need it and by all means if you need to get through an entire night without sleep go for it, but eventually give in to what the body needs and get a full nights rest. 

Which will increase the effectiveness of relaxation for the next time. 

Things get really cool when you can relax while doing things. That is what I believe the Masters at whatever subjects are able to do. They've repeated their act so many times that they are completely relaxed during it. And so can do it with all their attention i.e. excellence. And can get imaginative during the act i.e. creative. 

That's the goal. 

To be a Master of Life. 

Namaste Bitches 🙏

Breath

A belief that my life up until this very moment has helped culminate, which before this present moment I did not have the clarity to formulate into concise verbiage, has managed to conglomerate within the vast abyss of my mind, into a manageable sentence. Perhaps it is still too verbose, but my enthusiasm for its newly born comprehensible form betrays my better senses to sustain until polished. 

So, without getting into details or explanations, yet, here it is:

The quality of your life; physical, emotional, mental, and beyond; is directly proportionate to the consistency of depth and length of your natural, unemployed breaths throughout all your conscious moments. 

P.S. I want to live here. 

A letter for you

Dear friend, 

I want to tell you about a time in my life when I felt completely stuck. Feeling helpless and fundamentally flawed. In a limbo of knowing but not experiencing. Interestingly it came about after some wonderful realizations about life. Insights that I thought would take me to where I want to be. But I was missing something. I want to share that here with you. 

I reached a point where I understood that what other people do isn't a reflection of me but of them. On top of that I recognized I, and I alone, attract every experience in my life, good and bad, by my vibrational attitude I daily emit. So when unpleasant things would happen to me I wouldn't get upset at others or the circumstances, but at myself. "I attracted this in some way, so the fault lies with me", I'd say to myself. 

In a way this insight was worse than before I understood these things, because back then at least I felt a sense of innocence and righteousness. But after the realizations I just constantly felt guilty. Guilty that I was still attracting unwanted things, that I should be better at this; that I know too much to be anxious, self-conscious, afraid. 

It wasn't until almost two years later that I realized the grace I was giving to others I wasn't extending to myself. What changed for me was finally letting go of what I thought I should be, do, have, and accepting my "mishaps" and my "flaws." Just doing this has given me the wonderful sense of knowing who I am and knowing what I want. Which fuels a sense of worthiness and confidence I've never before experienced. 

And so my hope with this post is that it helps you realize that we are all innocent — you included. 

You are doing the best you can, and so is everyone else in their own world. You are enough, you can be, do, have, whatever it is you want. You just simply have to let go of the word "should", and lovingly believe in yourself. Accept you for all of you. It sounds easy, and it is, but we put so many conditions in our way that not until they are fulfilled will we finally accept ourselves. But you can't accept yourself in the future, you can only do it now. If you keep delaying accepting yourself, waiting to achieve this or acquire that, you will always find things to put in front of you before you allow you to accept yourself. 

I'm telling you, you can do this right now. It takes trust in The Universe, God, Life, to let go of trying to control the things in your life in order to get what you want. It takes closing your eyes and falling backwards trusting that Life will not only catch you, but wrap Its arms around you with peace of mind and abundance of all you need and want. 

If you can do this now, wonderful. If not now, it just means you don't yet want to trust that Life will always provide a way, that's ok. 

Once you do let go of control and accept yourself, there is a chance you will wake tomorrow and feel like your old self, but that's just old patterns of thinking. It takes a little bit of time and focus to shift things that have been running on the same neural paths for years. But you'll be surprised at how fast your thoughts will begin to feel like they are on your side again. Yes, you will have days when you just can't seem to change the negativity around – that's ok. It's all part of the process. Keep letting go, keep trusting in Life, keep refocusing on things of positivity. 

As long as your peace comes from your trust in Life and not external circumstances, you will feel invincible. You will want to take score and look at your external life to see if it's bearing the fruit you think it should, but do your best not to. Keep practicing unconditionally trusting that Life always works out for you. And very soon your life will transform to where everything around you supports your feelings of well being and blessings. 

People will become attracted to you in more ways than you can understand right now. Opportunities to make your dreams come true will keep "coincidently" popping up in your days. Your idea of who you are and where you're going will become more and more clear. Your worries will fade until they are distant memories that you deliberately choose not to visit. You will finally feel a sense of Home that you haven't felt since the 90's or childhood. Life will feel right again. 

All because you chose not to delay a day longer and finally, once and for all, wholly and truly accept yourself, and practiced every moment of everyday accepting yourself. Until eventually you fall in love with yourself. And when that happens you simultaneously fall in love with everyone in the world and everything. Love becomes everything. And everything can be seen in the framework of different degrees of love. Love is now the language you speak and you understand events and people as phenomena of love. 

Like how the scientists know there is no actual source of "cold" but rather an absence of heat. And "darkness" is only lack of light. As that with love, all is love. You will see there are degrees of how much love is being allowed to flow in every given circumstance. And anything that feels bad isn't actually bad, but just needs more love. People will become like innocent children in your eyes and blame and criticism will feel completely pointless. You will treat yourself the same way, and when you are on your side, the whole world can't stop you. And in fact, the whole world will conspire to help you. Because the world is waiting for you to believe in yourself. 

You can do it. 

Let go of control.

Trust in Life. 

Accept yourself completely. 

Practice every moment in lovingly accepting yourself. 

Be easy with yourself on bad days when you can't seem to shake it off. 

Keep practicing. 

Watch your life transform. 

I believe in you. 

Now it's time you do. 

Love,

Bart

Nature

I find that Nature hardens the exterior of humans and softens the interior. 

Civilization softens the exterior and hardens the interior. 

Balance is beauty. 

Religion

Story time.

I was raised in a religious home. Being homeschooled for a significant time most of my friends and social outings were from the church. It was a wonderful environment that fundamentally fostered a commitment to loving one another and to deal with each other through compassion. I attribute religion's reinforcing nature for the retention of my best qualities through adolescent's transforming times. Though today I don't identify with any religion. Not to say I fully disagree with it nor have any negativity with anyone who does. Period. In fact I believe when practiced best, religion can still be a powerfully harmonious and collaborative agent in society. Something society desperately needs. I will say however religion has an inherent limit, though depending on the congregation the limit can be reduced. The limit is as limiting as the congregation's inability to recognize all peoples outside its beliefs are the same as those within. It's an interesting phenomenon when religion accepts all who wish to join, but believe(though may never explicitly state but is nonetheless there) that all who believe otherwise are separate and or wrong. To the extent this limit recedes, the congregation abides closer to the ethos of the religion which was inspired by the teacher in the first place. However once fully erased, so will the necessity for a specific label of practice or particular community. And here is where we arrive at the statements in this photo. There isn't any real separation. There is only love.

P.S. I appreciate the communal value of sharing similar spiritual practices and all the cycles of learning and teaching that thrives within religion. Perhaps this was the original purpose of religion: Sharing in similarities. Not judging differences, whether explicitly or in our hearts.