RELAX ~ does anyone have any good techniques to relax?

No way, it's not only exclusive to ambience.  As you know, Doc, I was in a dark place and this is helping me come up from the doom and gloom of my life.  So, perhaps you were just a bit too uptight to relax.  Try it now.  Hopefully, you've come up as well!

<3

frustrated xx

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frustrated xx

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I am glad of that, frustrated. So, it was the gloom that was holding me, keeping me even from helping myself with relaxation. I was so alone there in the gloom. All, the whole Universe, people, everything against me. But it was a lie. My very soil was being screwed. I fear to be alone there again, frustrated. Now, when I am me myself, happy, strong, resolute, I can prepare. Any ideas, frustrated? my many friends on the forum? Many of us have similar problems with our medication. Ideas but not of more medication. I fear doctor's  pills. I have reacted badly to them too often.

Not sure why you felt everyone/thing was against you.  All I know, when I'm at my very darkest or gloomiest, it's me who has to help myself up and try and relax.  The techniques here have helped me so much and I use them daily.  

I still stand by it's not exclusive to ambience.  I believe if we're in a place of darkness, we can rise above with our own self worth and of course a gentle word here and there helps as well. 

But to relax, one is one when it comes to that area.  However, like I said, this discussion is full of awesome ideas that have proven to work for me.  Try them or even just one and see how you're feeling afterwards.

XxFrustratedoO

Hi frustrated. Whoever suggested that I had CAUSE to FEEL everyone was against me. I hope I did not. Sorry if my language was clumsy. No I was hiding away from all who would help me because I felt they and everybody else, were all against me. Of course i was all nonesence. Hormone therapy plays arround with your emotions and unpredictable upsets ensue occasionally. This should get better as I get used to my new hormone levels. I am beginning to understand why many have, not necessarily the same reaction, but reactions they report as very unpleasant.

Doc

All, the whole Universe, people, everything against me.  Guess I misread this.  Wasn't trying to get a rise out of you.  Perhaps I misunderstood (again?). and You said it again, I was hiding away from all who would help me because I felt they and everybody else, were all against me.  I'll shut it now.  Sorry if I offended you, not my intention.  I always and only wish you well, my dear, Doc.

XxFrustrated

Thank you frustrated. No, you did not offend me; you underlined and enphasised the point. Thank you , frustrated. (Besides I am on hormone therapy so you won't get a rise out of me. )

LOL you silly nut!  <3

frustrated>

frustrated>

Can I respond this one, Doc...? (are you a doc as in doctor or just called Doc by Frustrated?) (I admit, our names are sometimes a hilarious tangle!)

This is for you, too, Frustrated.

Doc George's question: "Is relaxation only achievable within a happy ambience?"

My response...

It's probably the other way around. The happy ambience is acheived through relaxation...

What I am really saying here is that the thing we call ambience as something outside yourself is largely imagination.

I'm not saying there aren't delicious scented candles and seamless music we can immerse ourselves in to create a soft and receptive atmosphere (in contrast to surrounding ourselves with nauseating smells and blinding headlights, for example....)

But in a true existential way, we do largely create the ambience that we love.

Put it another way:

When we are relaxed and happy any ambience is a good one.

So...here's a truth rarely understood:

Meditation (what I'm calling your "toes to head relaxation") can appear to create a gloomy mood. Sadly that is the truth which turns people away from it.

But in fact it is only an appearance: it's how it seems to us as we go through it.

What is really going on is that we are much of the time anyway full of gloom and misery, and meditation just makes that apparent.

In other words it doesn't create anything, it only moves away all the blocks and coverings that normally hide the gloom.

I'm not saying we are naturally gloomy. On the contrary. I'm saying we are naturally joyful.

But in order to reach that natural joyful state we often have to go through a considerable amount of unhappy feelings and painful memories of wounds that may have been lurking inside us for years.

Usually most of us reject anything that touches on our deepest fears, pains, dreams, past sufferings, hurts, you name it...even boredom is a kind of rejection of whatever is really there.

So when we meditate, at first we're fidgety and restless. And then we begin to relax. As we relax, we let go and open up, and as we open, all those demons we've been suppressing start heading to the surface, like the pus on a wound that's healing.

Theyre the ones creating the gloom.

But they have to come up so what's really ours underneath or behind it all, can also come up. And then there's joy and wonder and – dare I say it? – even bliss.

And along with that elusive thing I call bliss, is total relaxation.

Full relaxation, possibly even all the time.

Then whatever the ambience, inside is a perpetual sweetness that no bad energy or ugly vibration or nasty voices can interfere with.

It takes trust and perserverence and a willingness to look in the eye at whatever is there.

I'm sorry if I seem to be talking in a rather grandiose way here, but for this small forum not much else would fit. Only, this has been my own experience – and that of others that I know.

 

Mmmmm thank you Light. 

Yes, Doc is pleasant construct of Frustrated. So I sign off sometimes as Doc and sometimes as George depending on what I feel to be appropriate.

So when we start taking relaxation we have no idea what nasties we mayhave to confront beforebcome really relaxed. 

George, or would Light prefer Doc?

Well said, Light! well said.

Frustrated

relaxtaion is a skill that you have to learn ,unless your the average teenager who spends most ofthere time relaxed.

i use hypnoses relaxtion cds and just concetrate on the voice it took aseveral weeks to be able to block all other noise out , but now i can do it very easly and done on a regular basis they do work

i use self hypnoses relaxtion cds and concentrate only on the voice works a treat for me takes some time to being able to block other things out but once you learn it you can relax any where .and you do feel the bennifit. the trouble in this world is we dont take time to be quite..

 

No, George, it's not as grim as all that...

There will be things to be looked at and if you're 'doing' it rightly, they will come up.

But that is only because most of our lives we have expended a lot of energy suppressing the difficult, ugly events in our experience.

Actually, this method is an exquisite life lesson for absolutely everything that happens to you now and in the future – everything that might happen through the rest of your life, in fact.

I include death in that, since, whether we can bear to look at it or not, we all know that we will die one day.

So, to be blunt, it is the road to freedom.

We call it witnessing or watching or mindfulness meditation.

The 'mindful' part is a sort of being aware of inner stuff without getting attached to it.

You could just as well call it no-mindfulness meditation, or empty-mind meditation, because in fact the focus is on the empty space between thoughts, rather that on the mind's thoughts themselves.

But it doesn't matter what you call it.

We are not only 'not getting attached' to psychological wounds and painful memories, it is just as important to 'not get attached' to beautiful thoughts, and comforting memories – to any thought at all, in fact.

It's a bit like sitting on the bank of a river and looking at the trees on the opposite shore while a boat sails by.

You're looking at something beyond the boat. So though you know the boat's there, imtruding on your mental screen, getting in the way of your view of the trees, you're still breathing into your belly while watching those trees beyond blowing in the wind. And as the boat becomes a screen between you and the trees, you stay in your breath-centre and let the boat slide past and once again enjoy those waving trees.

You are not focussing on the boat. 

You don't turn your head to follow its progress down the river.

You're not really focussing on the trees either, they are just an excuse to stay centred.

Whether the boat is threatening and has guns pointed at you, or whether it is a delicate sailing boat with colourful flags and dancing girls on deck, it makes no difference.

Your attention is always on those trees.

So your thoughts and mental images are the boat and your witnessing self, your awareness, is the trees.

When you close your eyes, images will come up. Let them just be there. They will go. Stay with the up and down of your belly, the in and out of your breath. You witness these things come and you witness them go.

You remain the same.

You can be sure that eventually they will go away altogether when we sit in meditation regularly. And then the vast emptiness behind them will change your interior world – relaxation, joy, love.... all those things will happen by themselves.

And – back to the beginning here – that will change your exterior world, your 'ambience'.

I've never tried to write this out before, so thank you for giving me the opportunity to express something quite hard to articulate!

Thank you Light,

You certainly make the meditation when properly accomplished desireable.

I can see that is much easier for women than men. I did not realise the tyrrany of testosterone until I was freed from it by my hormone therapy. I now have a much better base for learniing to meditate. Dancing girls on the sailing craft. THAT would have got my interest until the vessel was well round the next bend. Now, yes, I think I could keep my focus on the trees. That would be so much more peaceful.

Mmmmm thank you light

George

PS but girls still look pretty.

My neice turned me on to a "relax" yoga video and it's helpful for the music in it is extremly relaxing.  Thank you for your good advice.

Frustrated

Interesting that you think it might be easier for women – the dancing girls, perhaps?

No harm for girls to still look pretty. Think of it like this: All day for the pretty girls, one hour for the trees!

May be Light, maybe. I hope you never have to try testosterone. I think you would be dismayed by its effect. 

A friend of mine asked why men had to be so tiresome about sex. I replied that without testosterone men just would not bother and the human race would have disappeared.