Tag: anxiety

The Eden Magazine September 2017 issue Proudly presenting Luca Bosurgi an Inspirational mind-spirit coach and healer

The Eden Magazine September 2017 issue Proudly presenting Luca Bosurgi an Inspirational mind-spirit coach and healer

The Eden Magazine - Luca bosurgi

The Eden Magazine September 2017 issue

 

The Eden magazine -Luca Bosurgi

Inspirational mind-spirit coach and healer, author and visionary speaker, creator of Mind Fitnes, CognitiveOS Hypnosis and the founder and CEO of the Mind Fitness Lab Corp.

 

The Eden Magazine - Luca Bosurgi

Luca Bosurgi was born in Rome, Italy, to an aristocratic Italian family, the descendants of the Marquis Bosurgi who have a 1,200-year history rich in art, engineering and enterprise. In the early 1890’s, Luca’s grandfather invented concentrated orange juice, and established himself as one of the first Italian Industrialists.

Luca’s history is an eclectic mix of experiences that mesh perfectly with his passion to increase human happiness and self-reliance. At an early age, Luca began receiving extensive spiritual teachings from a channeled holy master. By the time he was becoming an adult, Luca had acquired groundbreaking knowledge about the meaning of life, the spirit-mind hierarchy, the mechanics of the mind and how it relates to mankind’s journey of spiritual evolution.

Luca studied Business & Law at the University Bocconi in Milan. At 23, he was called on to rescue his family company,  Sanderson   & Sons in Messina, Sicily. In three years, Luca saved 1,500 jobs and secured the continued production of approximately 25,000 citrus farmers. This experience launched Luca into his first career, Investment Banking. At 28, Luca established his investment portfolio in Luxemburg with offices in London and New York. His company focused on Portfolio Management, VC Investments and M&A.

In 2005, after more than two decades of sharing his life between  his healing mission and the world of banking, he sold his business and moved to Los Angeles to establish his Mind Fitness™ School and Los Angeles practice. This was the beginning of Luca’s 11-yearlong journey towards perfecting Mind Fitness™, and it has allowed him to enhance and refine his method, improving his success rate from the initial 65% to more than 95% in the last five years. Today, thousands of people have experienced the Mind Fitness™, not only with Luca, but also with the approximately 20 Mind Healers that he has trained.

In 2014, Luca identified Virtual Reality as an effective channel to bring Mind Fitness™ to the public. This motivated him to build a team, and based on the Mind Fitness™ method, develop a Virtual Reality Mind Training solution. The efficacy of using VR as a delivery mechanism for the Mind Fitness™ was tested and proven out in beta testing, showing results that equaled those he obtained in his practice – exceeding 95%.

Additionally, Luca is a Medicine Man (Shaman) empowered with the gift of vision, known by his Native American spiritual name Red Cougar Mountain Spirit. He is also highly trained in ancient combat and martial arts (black belt in judo and karate), and initiated in Western and Easter mind-body disciplines.

Luca consistently seeks effective ways to impart greater balance and healing to those in need. He discovered the power of Clinical Hypnosis in the early 1990’s in London.

He was individually trained by Michael Joseph, Founder and President of the British Society of Clinical Hypnosis and publisher of the European Journal of Clinical Hypnosis. Clinical Hypnosis combined with his comprehensive knowledge of computer and digital science, metaphysics, psychology and ancient mind/spirit healing techniques, became the foundation of Luca’s new form  of psychotherapy and mind training, Mind Fitness™. Luca lives with his wife and three children in Santa Monica, California.

The Eden Magazine - Luca Bosurgi

 

Tell us about Luca Bosurgi?

Hmmm, where do I start? I’m Italian. I was born in Rome from an old Sicilian family. I lived an extraordinary life, jam-packed with the most complex and challenging experiences from which I’m  so deeply grateful.   I traveled the world, lived in many towns, met thousands of amazing people from different cultures, social status and beliefs, and learned from each one of them about   life and human behavior. I received vast spiritual training by a holy master, and great initiations by wonder-   ful teachers. I’ve  been an Investment Banker for over    25 years, and for the last decade I have been, and continue to be, a spiritual and mind fitness coach. My life has been a blessed journey of discovery and understanding of spirituality, integrated with the human nature and behaviors. I’m now based in Santa Monica California, where I see my clients, bring forward my mission, and enjoy my 3 young kids, who are the best teachers I ever had.

 

Tell us about your mission.

I’ve been passionate about the mind and human behaviors from childhood. I always loved observing people, imagining their thoughts and predicting their reactions; it was a fun game and I loved the challenge. Soon it became more than a game. I spent hours analyzing and comparing my own behaviors with the ones of others, trying to link the purpose of life with our desires and needs. A lot of it made  sense  to  me,  but  something was off. I trusted natures work to be perfect, our bod-   ies to be naturally healthy and balanced as well as our minds. But, most of my friends, and a lot of the world around me, were overwhelmed by emotions, battling anxiety, fear and stress, or  addiction  and  depression, and this was dramatically reducing their  performance and happiness. This was odd, and against the law of nature.  Emotions are meant to be at our service, not  our enemies. So, I embraced the challenge to identify   the cause of this widespread emotional disease, and possibly engineer solutions to clear this off so that people can live an easier, more effective, and happier life.

In  the  middle  of  my  thirties,  after  I  had  been  rack-ing my brain for years, I finally discovered the cause of these issues, a condition that I named Adult Emotional Dependency (AED). This is a mental disorder that compels emotional dependency from the people around us, causing a variety of emotional distress. In fact, the true hidden cause of most anxiety and fear is choking our society. Its consequences are so severe that the annual  cost of stress and anxiety in the US alone is estimated    to be $300BN in healthcare and lost productivity. I guess it remained undetected until today because it’s like the elephant in the room, such a common condition that    its symptoms are considered the ‘normal’ consequences  of modern society and are treated with drugs and symptom specific therapies, instead of hitting the root-cause.

This discovery changed my life. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The awareness that I had a rather easy solution to resolve and prevent such a globally devastating condition took over my life and became my mission. After a few years of dividing my time between my financial business and AED, I sold my company and came to California to dedicate all of my time to developing and testing   a program able to clear the condition and related consequences.

I achieved what I set out to do and as a result, the solution that I identified has already proven successful with over 3,000 clients. The next step is to broadcast this awareness to the world and help people  to  create  all sorts of educational and therapeutically approaches to eradicate Adult Emotional Dependency from our world. This will bring the world to the next evolutional stage where survival is used only in real threatening situations, where drugs and alcohol are used only for recreational purposes, where people can use all their undistracted brainpower to create, succeed, love, and where we can   all join our resources to clean and rebuild our world to be decent and kind.

 

Can you define Adult Emotional Dependency and Self-Reparenting?

In brief, AED is the consequence of a missing emotional development in young adults, where we are meant to self-reparent our bodies and minds into becoming emotionally self-reliant. The lack of self-reparenting shifts our emotional needs from our parents to the world around us, with consequences such as fear of judgment, fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, anxiety, stress, addiction, depression, sadness, poor performances, people  ‘pleaser’, procrastination, self-doubt, neediness, social anxiety, poor  confidence,  lacking  an  identity,  loneliness, angerand so many more…

Self-reparenting is the act of self-adoption, where we assume a maternal and paternal role over our mind and body, becoming the sole indispensable provider of our own emotional needs. This transforms dependency to interdependency, needs to choices, and removes all the mental loops and distress related with the need for others as our essential emotional suppliers. You can read more about self-reparenting and AED at www.selfreparenting. org

 

The Eden Magazine - Luca Bosurgi

Do you mean, to take care of our wounded child within?

No! Proudly reparenting our body and mind as our own son or daughter of our actual age. We  don’t have in us    a wounded child, we own a superb life equipment (our mind and body) that requires our leadership and emotional supply.

Let me expand on the theory of self-reparenting. Our   life on Earth is a journey of learning and understanding, often defined as spiritual evolution. To enable us to live on this planet, we receive equipment (our mind and body) purposely built to give us a physical existence and to harvest awareness through experiences.

This equipment is built like a highly sophisticated biological robot, with eyes as cameras, ears as microphones, mouth as speaker, hands as tools, legs as transport system. Our brain acts as the board computer managed by our mind, the software that operates the entire system.

Our equipment has physical and emotional vital needs, these are meant to be satisfied by our parents during childhood. Around puberty we are meant to take charge of these needs, self-reparenting our body and mind. The level of success we achieve in our self-reparenting process is determined by the life-models we learned from our parents.

Though this is Nature’s plan, it frequently fails because our parents and/or guardians have not achieved emotional independence themselves, so they cannot model and teach these essential life skills to their children. Without good parental models of self-leadership and self-reliance we become either unaware or unable to make the vital self-reparenting step. This obliges our starving mind to shift the seeking of our emotional needs from our parents to the people around us. But people are not surrogating parents, bound by parental love, thus are usually unwilling and unable to satisfy our emotional needs. This is felt as rejection and lack of support triggering all the harsh emotional responses presently choking our society.

What is Mind Fitness?

Mind Fitness is the therapeutic program that I engineered with over 25 years of research and that I use with my clients to help them to implement and enhance their natural self-reparenting process and to remove past traumas.

The basic program spans on 12 sessions of spiritual teaching, life coaching & CognitiveOS Hypnosis®. Spiritual teaching helps implement self-reparenting, enhances self- love and self-leadership–this sets the natural spirit-mind’s alignment and instinctively promotes healthier choices. Life coaching helps to embrace more efficient and healthier behaviors – this fast-tracks the path to emotional freedom. CognitiveOS Hypnosis® helps integrate organically these new tools and models in my clients’ daily routine – this boosts their performance and effectiveness in just a few weeks. Each session is 60 minutes long and combines 30 minutes’ of spiritual-mind-life coaching with 30 minutes of CognitiveOS Hypnosis®, the results are fast and life-changing. It’s a flexible method that I offer in person or remotely via phone or Facetime. I embrace each healing journey with a deep sense of respect, love and responsibility, therefore I only  admit  clients that I strongly believe will gain results exceeding their expectations. My best candidates are highly smart people, technical enough, however, open to spirituality and ready to embrace their own emotional needs.

 

In your practice you use Hypnosis, how can this help people?

Hypnosis helps people to enter into the same deep state of meditation used by Buddhist monks in their practice. It  can be used for a variety of purposes. I use hypnosis   to reduce our natural doubts barrier to the new or unproven. This allows the mind to listen and eventually implement new behavioral models. My proprietary form of hypnosis keeps my clients relaxed and aware of their surroundings, while remaining under their own control and able to regain normal consciousness at any time.

 

What does CognitiveOS mean?

CognitiveOS Hypnosis is my proprietary language under hypnosis that I refined with over 30,000 sessions. It’s a communication protocol that the mind understands and responds positively. I believe that our mind is perfect and always strives to provide the best possible service trying to keep us safe and operate efficiently. Therefore, if we establish proper communication with the mind, offering safer and more efficient behavioral models, the mind will evaluate them and it will agree on their value, and will implement them in a very short time.

 

The Eden Magazine - Luca Bosurgi

Who can benefit from Mind Fitness?

We can all benefit from a good physical or mental workout, however the areas where Mind Fitness has demonstrated life changing results are with people suffering from anxiety, stress, PTSD, fear, alcoholism or depression, or with the ones that want to improve confidence, gain high-performance, better their relationships and their quality of life. Gaining control over our mind, allows us to gain control over our life, and this improves every aspect of our existence.

 

What inspired you to write your book “The Mind Shaman?”

I wrote The Mind Shaman as my first intent to bring awareness about self-reparenting to the world. It was written about 4 years ago. The terminology has changed and I progressed extensively in my research and thera-   py from then, but the basic concept of self-reparenting and the vital value that is represented and depicted in   the novel are all taken from a variety of real-life stories. Most of the stories described in the book are real events, experienced by me or my clients, of course the names  and locations are different, but the full content of the book refers to the dramatic transformations that I saw happen in me and my clients when we embraced self- reparenting.

 

Do you practice Shaman sessions?

I was reconnected with my past-life’s shamanic powers about 9 years ago by a powerful Apache Medicine Woman. I don’t  do ceremonies, but every day in my practice,  I connect the world of spirits with the world of matter, helping my clients to embrace the two realities and fuse them in one. In each session, I guide my clients in the Sacred Healing Space  of  the  Montaigne,  where  magic happens, and then inside their own beautiful mind, where more magic occurs.

 

How do you plan to expand your practice in the future?

In fact, I’m planning to reduce my practice to just a few clients and dedicate most of my time to educate our communities about self-reparenting and engineer tools like the Virtual Reality app that can help people worldwide.

 

How is your healing method different than other methods?

 

I guess the main difference is that most healing methods are symptom or behavior driven. Meaning that they focus on alleviating symptoms, or substituting behaviors. My method instead aims to restructure the needs and the priorities  of  the  mind.  This  consequently  removes the negative symptoms and promotes healthier behavioral choice, a much faster and long-lasting solution.

 

How is the “Virtual Reality Method” different from your one-on-one process?

The ‘Mind Fitness & Detox’ Virtual Reality app is a home Mind Fitness that replicates my program. It implements rather successfully the basics of my program promoting self-reparenting. Of course, it’s not tailor-made for specific client’s needs but does the job. `

 

How do you feel about using Prescription Drugs when a person has depression? Is it helpful?

Sure, if you don’t have alternatives, drugs will help you  to cope. But depression is typically not an organic illness, it’s an overload brain because of excess of anxiety and fear. These burn available brainpower into reducing every other brains activities to a crippling stage. To end depression, we just need to end the causes of anxiety and fear.   I saw dozens of clients that had suffered years of depression and end depression in just a couple of weeks. The main problem with drugs, apart from the side effects, is that they are only targeting the symptoms and altering the chemical of the brain, when the root problem is in the mind.

Photography by: Brenda Saint Hilaire Photography

Suit by: Valentino

Location: Mind Fitness, Santa Monica, CA

THEEDENMAGAZINE.COM  September 2017

To purchase this publication please visit
http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1343112
To view this publication FREE
https://issuu.com/maryam…/…/the_eden_magazine_september_201

 

 

Luca Bosurgi answers Quora’s questions about the mind, anxiety, fear, depression, addiction, etc.

Luca Bosurgi answers Quora’s questions about the mind, anxiety, fear, depression, addiction, etc.

How do you eliminate pointless fear / general anxiety without medication?

Luca Bosurgi

Luca Bosurgi, Mind Fitness, Life & Spiritual Coach
The vertical hierarchy of spirit over mind – explained in simple terms.

The vertical hierarchy of spirit over mind – explained in simple terms.

From the book The Mind Shaman

“The quest started right after she woke up from the surgery. She was still stoned from the anesthesia when she asked me the first question. Her anxiety to know became so urgent that she overcame her physical weakness and stayed up for hours, asking thousands of questions, listening without wasting any time doubting my knowledge, trusting me as her teacher, and allowing my guidance to accompany her through this journey of enlightenment. After a couple of days working together on the vertical hierarchy of spirit over mind, my mom asked me to explain this concept to her in simple terms so that she could gain this notion quickly and move on. I heard myself talking, but it wasn’t me:

“Mom, imagine yourself as a ten-year-old girl walking with your mother through Manhattan for the first time. You feel safe and confident, totally assured by your mother’s leadership, and you love all that is around you—shops, cars, people. What would happen if your mother suddenly disappeared? All your surroundings would suddenly become very scary, and you would feel terrorized, looking for a leader to substitute for your mother and seeking a shelter to hide. If your mother doesn’t come back, you may get used to surviving in fear in the too big and too scary city. If instead your mother returns, you would quickly regain your balance and joy. How did you feel throughout your life, Mom?

“When you came into this world, there were two of you: you in the form of a powerful and very experienced soul and you in the human form as baby in body and mind. In the first part of your life, your parents were entrusted by nature to protect you and educate you, as well as to identify you with your soul and establish and train your leadership over your body and mind. Unfortunately, they were entirely focused on the physical beauty and financial wealth and totally unaware of the concept of self-leadership created by a vertical hierarchy of soul, mind, and body. Therefore, you grew up the same way I did, entirely focused on your body and mind and on their performances, without being trained to activate your spirit to take charge over your physical equipment. The best part of you—your soul—was kept in standby throughout your life in a passive role.

“Therefore, as soon your parents were gone, you felt unled, unsafe, and you sought external leadership wherever it was available to you. This is the result of this new era and wouldn’t have happened in the past. In the past, there were gods that punished and strict cultures and societies that took the leadership roles over the people. People were in the follower roles for every aspect of their lives, and their existence was boring but safe. They didn’t move around much and obeyed the authority over them. Today the world is changing fast; most of us are free to choose our actions and live the life we please. This has ended the collective leaderships, and people are obliged to take care of their own self, and this, of course, feels scary to most. Why? Because we haven’t yet learned how to identify ourselves in our spirit, activating the part of us capable to lead our physical body and mind efficiently and powerfully.

“What makes it more complicated is the release of the instinct of codependency. In the past, young adults moved comfortably from their parents’ leadership to the collective and strict leaderships of their churches, social structures, and cultures, and their codependency was easily satisfied. Today we can’t count on sustaining collective leaderships, so either we learn how to activate our own soul as leader of our mind and body or we remain stuck with codependency for the rest of our lives. Does this make sense, Mom?”

“That short demonstration changed my mother’s life. She got it straightaway, and she migrated from her mind to her spirit, finally giving her mind proper leadership and taking charge, coddling and supporting her dying body with the love of a mom. From then on, it was downstream. Our conversations became easy and straightforward. She was asking, and I was answering. It was my knowledge, but I never knew I had it. Diana spent long hours listening as well, amazed by the easiness and depth of my teachings. Well . . . I was amazed too, but it felt right, and I kept my ego cool. This was not the time for cockiness; my mother was dying, and I didn’t have any time to waste.

“She left the day of my birthday, and now I feel her with me more than I ever did throughout my life. The service was unnecessarily pompous. I guess it was meant to give John some closure, but I couldn’t cry or be sad. She was so incredibly present with her new self next to me that I felt joyful. And I still am.”

http://lucabosurgi.com

To stay or to leave?..

To stay or to leave?..

How many of us had relationships where this question has never been raised at least hypothetically? We either ask it to ourselves or worry that it may be a concern of our partner. In either case thinking about separation brings discomfort, anxiety, uncertainty, guilt, fears, frustration, etc.

In some of my trainings I conduct a little exercise.  I write ‘separation’ in the middle of a flip chart and ask people to write their association with this word on a post-it note and stick it to the flip chart. No surprise, 95% of the associations are negative. We like to have and we don’t like to let go.

To help you with this struggle, I suggest a different view on separation. In the physical world we live in separation is an inescapable reality. “In the world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.” once said Benjamin Franklin. So why does the most certain thing in the world bring us so much anxiety and uncertainty?

Separation is a basis of our life’s cycle. As we grow up we separate from our parents to live our own lives and create our own families.  We join and separate a lot of educational institutions, groups of friends, clubs, jobs, locations, etc.  Later on in life we separate from our own children when they leave home, from our older family members who pass away and so on until our own death.

So what is the idea behind the separation? A friend of mine, Olivia Bareham, who is a specialist in death and dying said, “We only love and enjoy something because we know that one day it will no longer be there.  That’s why we enjoy fresh flowers and don’t enjoy fake ones.”  Separation, or knowing that one day things will come to their end, changes our perspective, makes us improve, change, do things better, value what we have, enjoy the relationship with another person. Separation is healthy, otherwise our lives will be full of old things, people and situations. Every separation gives us back a part of ourselves and reminds us of our own value, identity and purpose. It helps us break the old dysfunctional patterns and ties, face reality and change it for the better.

So how can we embrace the idea of separation and include it in our life’s journey? First of all we need to realize that the only person who will stay with us till the very end is ourselves. Other things, people or situations are external to us and can change or part from us at any time. Thus the only thing worth investing into is ourselves.

When we create clear and healthy boundaries with the external environment, cutting all the dependencies and assuming ownership and leadership of our own lives, we become the managers of ourselves always choosing what is better for us. Some people call it selfishness, but if you think about it, it’s the opposite. To live the way you want is not selfish, it is selfish to expect others to think and live the way you want.

In the ideal situation our parents bring us to our teen years with enough support, leadership, care and love.  This allows us to separate from them mentally and physically and become self-sufficient. This first significant and important separation in our lives sets the tone for the way we approach and handle ourselves in relationships, personal and professional, and in other situations in our lives. If this separation is compromised, the instinct of childhood codependency stays active which prevents the person from creating a safe and trustful connection with the world.

You may guess what happens next. People grow in age and size, but keep relying on external sources of leadership, guidance, love, attention and validation. This condition is called Bosurgi Syndrome. It creates vulnerability, hence anxiety, fears and make people feel unsafe. In this context any separation is considered by the mind as a threat to the emotional and physical safety of the person creating a lot of pain and discomfort. It also keeps the person in the position of a receiver, e.g. I need to receive attention, validation, love and guidance from others in order to feel safe and good about myself.  Again, separating from the sources of these emotions becomes very stressful.  A self-sufficient person who leads and loves themselves, becomes a giver and views separations not as a personal horror, but as a natural process of life change. A giver doesn’t see in their partner a provider of emotional or physical comfort, but makes a choice based on the qualities supporting a strong and trustful connection.

If an unsatisfying relationship is part of your life and your mind is full of doubts and dilemmas, remember the first important separation in your life, separation from your parents, and think about the nature of your connection with them in the present. If you find any traces of trying to prove yourself to others, feeling not good enough, guilt, anger, control, etc. it may mean that it’s time to work through those unproductive feelings and dependencies, and set yourself free to make the choices out of your personal confidence, peace and independence.

To learn more about adult codependency, the Bosurgi Syndrome, it’s consequences, treatment and prevention, visit the website. You can also ask your questions on our blog.

The Habits Of Supremely Happy People

The Habits Of Supremely Happy People

Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, theorizes that while 60 percent of happiness is determined by our genetics and environment, the remaining 40 percent is up to us.

Seligman describes three different kinds of happy lives: The pleasant life, in which you fill your life with as many pleasures as you can, the life of engagement, where you find a life in your work, parenting, love and leisure and the meaningful life, which “consists of knowing what your highest strengths are, and using them to belong to and in the service of something larger than you are.”

After exploring what accounts for ultimate satisfaction, Seligman says he was surprised. The pursuit of pleasure, research determined, has hardly any contribution to a lasting fulfillment. Instead, pleasure is “the whipped cream and the cherry” that adds a certain sweetness to satisfactory lives founded by the simultaneous pursuit of meaning and engagement.

And while it might sound like a big feat to tackle great concepts like meaning and engagement (pleasure sounded much more doable), happy people have habits you can introduce into your everyday life that may add to the bigger picture of bliss. Joyful folk have certain inclinations that add to their pursuit of meaning — and motivate them along the way.

They surround themselves with other happy people.
Joy is contagious. Researchers of the Framingham Heart Study who investigated the spread of happiness over 20 years found that those who are surrounded by happy people “ are moe likely to become happy in the future.” This is reason enough to dump the Debbie Downers and spend more time with uplifting people.

They smile when they mean it.

Even if you’re not feeling so chipper, cultivating a happy thought — and then smiling about it — could up your happiness levels and make you more productive, according to a study published in the Academy of Management Journal. It’s important to be genuine with your grin: The study revealed that faking a smile while experiencing negative emotions could actually worsen your mood.

They cultivate resilience.

According to psychologist Peter Kramer, resilience, not happiness, is the opposite of depression: Happy people know how to bounce back from failure. Resilience is like a padding for the inevitable hardship human beings are bound to face. As the Japanese proverb goes, “Fall seven times and stand up eight.”

They try to be happy. 
Yep — it’s as simple as it sounds: just trying to be happy can boost your emotional well-being, according to two studies recently published in The Journal of Positive Psychology. Those who actively tried to feel happier in the studies reported the highest level of positive moods, making a case for thinking yourself happy.

They are mindful of the good.

It’s important to celebrate great, hard-earned accomplishments, but happy people give attention to their smaller victories, too. “When we take time to notice the things that go right — it means we’re getting a lot of little rewards throughout the day,” Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D. told The Huffington Post in May. “That can help with our moods.” And, as Frank Ghinassi, Ph.D. explains, being mindful of the things that do go your way (even something as simple as the barista getting your coffee order right) can make you feel a greater sense of accomplishment throughout the day.

They appreciate simple pleasures.

A meticulously swirled ice cream cone. An boundlessly waggy dog. Happy people take the time to appreciate these easy-to-come-by pleasures. Finding meaning in the little things, and practicing gratitude for all that you do have is associated with a sense of overall gladness.

They devote some of their time to giving.

Even though there are only 24 hours in a day, positive people fill some of that time doing good for others, which in return, does some good for the do-gooders themselves. A long-term research project called Americans’ Changing Lives found a bevy of benefits associated with altruism: “Volunteer work was good for both mental and physical health. People of all ages who volunteered were happier and experienced better physical health and less depression,” reported Peggy Thoits, the leader of one of the studies.

Givers also experience what researchers call “the helper’s high,” a euphoric state experienced by those engaged in charitable acts. “This is probably a literal “high,” similar to a drug-induced high,” writes Christine L. Carter, Ph.D. “The act of making a financial donation triggers the reward center in our brains that is responsible for dopamine-mediated euphoria.”

They let themselves lose track of time. (And sometimes they can’t help it.)

When you’re immersed in an activity that is simultaneously challenging, invigorating and meaningful, you experience a joyful state called “flow.” Happy people seek this sensation of getting “caught up” or “carried away,” which diminishes self-consciousness and promotes the feelings associated with success. As explained by Pursuit-of-happiness.org, “In order for a Flow state to occur, you must see the activity as voluntary, enjoyable (intrinsically motivating), and it must require skill and be challenging (but not too challenging) with clear goals towards success.”

They nix the small talk for deeper conversation.

Nothing wrong with shootin’ the you-know-what every now and then, but sitting down to talk about what makes you tick is a prime practice for feeling good about life. A study published in Psychological Science found that those who take part in more substantive conversation and less trivial chit chat experienced more feelings of satisfaction.

“I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings,” is one of the top five regrets of the dying — a sentiment that hints at the fact that people wish they’d spent less time talking about the weather and more time delving into what it is that makes their heart swell.

They spend money on other people.

Maybe money does buy happiness. A study published in Science found that spending money on other people has a more direct impact on happiness than spending money on oneself.

They make a point to listen.

“When you listen you open up your ability to take in more knowledge versus blocking the world with your words or your distracting thoughts,” writes David Mezzapelle, author of Contagious Optimism. “You are also demonstrating confidence and respect for others. Knowledge and confidence is proof that you are secure and positive with yourself thus radiating positive energy.” Good listening is a skill that strengthens relationships and leads to more satisfying experiences. A good listener may walk away from a conversation feeling as if their presence served a purpose, an experience that is closely connected with increased well-being.

They uphold in-person connections.

It’s quick and convenient to text, FaceTime and tweet at your buddies. But spending the money on a flight to see your favorite person across the country has weight when it comes to your well-being. “There’s a deep need to have a sense of belonging that comes with having personal interactions with friends,” says John Cacioppo, Ph.D., the director of the Center of Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago. Social media, while it keeps us in touch, doesn’t allow us to physically touch, which harvests the warm-and-fuzzies and even decreases feelings of anxiety.

They look on the bright side.
Optimism touts plenty of health benefits, including less stress, a better tolerance for pain and, as HuffPost Healthy Living recently reported, longevity among those with heart disease. When you choose to see the silver lining, you’re also choosing health and happiness.

Seligman summed up perhaps the greatest characteristic of the optimist in one of his most acclaimed books, Learned Optimism:

The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. The optimists, who are confronted with the same hard knocks of this world, think about misfortune in the opposite way. They tend to believe defeat is just a temporary setback, that its causes are confined to this one case. The optimists believe defeat is not their fault: Circumstances, bad luck, or other people brought it about. Such people are unfazed by defeat. Confronted by a bad situation, they perceive it as a challenge and try harder.

 They value a good mixtape.

Music is powerful. So powerful, in fact, that it could match up to the anxiety-reducing effects of massage therapy. Over a three month period, researchers from the Group Health Research Institute found that patients who simply listened to music had the same decreased anxiety symptoms as those who got 10 hour-long massages. Choosing the right tunes could be an important factor, however, as a happy or sad song can also affect the way we perceive the world. In one experiment where researchers asked subjects to identify happy or sad faces while listening to music, the participants were more likely to see the faces that matched the “mood” of the music.

They unplug.
Whether by meditating, taking a few deep breaths away from the screen or deliberately disconnecting from electronics, unplugging from our hyper-connected world has proven advantages when it comes to happiness. Talking on your cell could increase your blood pressure and raise your stress levels, while uninterrupted screen time has been linked to depression and fatigue. Technology isn’t going away, but partaking in some kind of a digital detox gives your brain the opportunity to recharge and recover, which — bonus — could increase your resilience.

They get spiritual.

Studies point to a link between religious and spiritual practice and mirth. For one, happiness habits like expressing gratitude, compassion and charity are generally promoted in most spiritual conventions. And, asking the big questions helps to give our lives context and meaning. A 2009 study found that children who felt their lives had a purpose (which was promoted by a spiritual connection) were happier.

Spirituality offers what the 20th-century sociologist Emile Durkheim referred to as “sacred time,” which is a built-in, unplugging ritual that elicits moments of reflection and calm. As Ellen L. Idler, Ph.D., writes in “The Psychological and Physical Benefits of Spiritual/Religious Practics,”:

The experience of sacred time provides a time apart from the “profane time” that we live most of our lives in. A daily period of meditation, a weekly practice of lighting Sabbath candles, or attending worship services, or an annual retreat in an isolated, quiet place of solitude all of these are examples of setting time apart from the rush of our everyday lives. Periods of rest and respite from work and the demands of daily life serve to reduce stress, a fundamental cause of chronic diseases that is still the primary causes of death in Western society. Transcendent spiritual and religious experiences have a positive, healing, restorative effect, especially if they are “built in,” so to speak, to one’s daily, weekly, seasonal, and annual cycles of living

They make exercise a priority.

A wise, albeit fictional Harvard Law School student once said, “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy.” Exercise has been shown to ease symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress, thanks to the various brain chemicals that are released that amplify feelings of happiness and relaxation. Plus, working out makes us appreciate our bodies more. One study published in the Journal of Health Psychology found that exercise improved how people felt about their bodies — even if they didn’t lose weight or achieve noticeable improvements.

They go outside.

Want to feel alive? Just a 20-minute dose of fresh air promotes a sense of vitality, according to several studies published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology. “Nature is fuel for the soul, ” says Richard Ryan, Ph.D., the lead author of the studies. “Often when we feel depleted we reach for a cup of coffee, but research suggests a better way to get energized is to connect with nature.” And while most of us like our coffee hot, we may prefer our serving of the great outdoors at a more lukewarm temperature: A study on weather and individual happiness unveiled 57 degrees to be the optimal temperature for optimal happiness.

They spend some time on the pillow.

Waking up on the wrong side of the bed isn’t just a myth. When you’re running low on zzs, you’re prone to experience lack of clarity, bad moods and poor judgment. “A good night’s sleep can really help a moody person decrease their anxiety,” Dr. Raymonde Jean, director of sleep medicine and associate director of critical care at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center told Health.com. “You get more emotional stability with good sleep.”

They LOL.

You’ve heard it before: Laughter is the best medicine. In the case of The Blues, this may hold some truth. A good, old-fashioned chuckle releases happy brain chemicals that, other than providing the exuberant buzz we seek, make humans better equipped to tolerate both pain and stress.

And you might be able to get away with counting a joke-swapping session as a workout (maybe). “The body’s response to repetitive laughter is similar to the effect of repetitive exercise,” explained Dr. Lee Berk, the lead researcher of a 2010 study focused on laughter’s effects on the body. The same study found that some of the benefits associated with working out, like a healthy immune system, controlled appetite and improved cholesterol can also be achieved through laughter.

They walk the walk.
Ever notice your joyful friends have a certain spring in the step? It’s all about the stride, according to research conducted by Sara Snodgrass, a psychologist from Florida Atlantic University.

In the experiment, Snodgrass asked participants to take a three-minute walk. Half of the walkers were told to take long strides while swinging their arms and holding their heads high. These walkers reported feeling happier after the stroll than the other group, who took short, shuffled steps as they watched their feet.

The Huffington Post  |  By Kate Bratskeir Posted: 09/16/2013 8:35 am EDT

Elena’s story – the temporary drive offered by fake identities or safe zones

Elena’s story – the temporary drive offered by fake identities or safe zones

From the book The Mind Shaman part II –

“Elena was born twenty-nine years ago in the violent town of Medellin in Northern Colombia. She was the fourth of five kids; her mother died giving birth to her last brother, and her father was a gang member—angry, drunk, and terribly violent. She grew up with a schizophrenic grandmother that didn’t allow the kids to wash—ever! She never took a proper shower for the first six years of her life, and her clothes were always terribly dirty and broken. This made the interaction with her peers almost impossible; she was so dirty and smelly that when she started school, all the other kids ran away from her, holding their nose, laughing and mocking her. One day, a bunch of kids locked her and her twin brother in a bathroom and, with the garden hose, sprayed them so violently that her torn clothes fell off in pieces, and she found herself half naked in front of all the children. By the time that one of the nuns intervened to stop the cruel torture, the damage was done.

She never recovered from the shame of that day. In reality, she never recovered from the shame and rejection from each day of her childhood. Scared, lonely, unloved, but incredibly intelligent, she got her nun teacher’s attention. They practically adopted her and fostered her, cleaned her and dressed her decently. She also got her twin brother to be fostered with her in the school convent. The nuns were hard but straightforward and fair, which was a great upgrade from her earlier life. She was very smart, so she understood early in her life that education was the only way to escape the ghetto. She was committed to using all of her resources for studying. Elena was fourteen when she left the convent. The nuns wanted her in the order, but she knew that it was not for her. She just wanted to escape from the town that killed all three of her elder brothers as well as her father in the horrible cartels’ war, which was inflaming the town in those years. The crazy grandmother was certainly not an option; therefore, she accepted a ride from the priest of the convent and moved with her brother to the capital Bogota.

The priest was a good man and knew Elena and her brother well. He appreciated the talents of the young woman and introduced her to one of his friends, which owned a shoe factory in the south of the town. She was young but talented with numbers, so she got hired in the administration and her brother in the production. It was a dream for the young Elena that, unfortunately, only lasted a few months. Her brother Pablo got accused of stealing tools from the factory. He wasn’t a thief, but he couldn’t prove it, and both of them got fired. From then on, for the next three years, they did all sorts of jobs to survive, pushed around in dreadful and scary dorms. Fortunately, Pablo was a big guy and protected his sister. Elena didn’t forget her commitment and carried on studying in the public library and, after strenuous hard work, received a diploma in accounting. This allowed her to find a job, save enough money, and fulfill her dream to immigrate with her brother to the US.

Most of her strength was coming from desperation and her determination to reach a place where she could feel safe. From birth, she fought like a warrior, and despite her constant fears, crippling anxiety, and chronic shyness, her powerful intelligence got her to the US. They landed in Miami, with a tourist visa and a small amount of money, and instead of trying to get fake IDs and being robbed by the local Latino mafia, she was smart enough to invest her money to learn the language. In less than three months, she found a job in accounting, where they accepted her without a working visa, and she started building a life for her and her brother. Unfortunately, one year later, on their twenty-first birthdays, her brother got in a fight and was deported. She found herself alone for the first time, so desperate and scared that she thought about killing herself. Only the thought of her brother back in the ghettos of Bogota gave her the strength to move on and to try to get him back.

She got married in order to get a green card and had to live with that man for a while. The guy turned out to be horrible, and after months of harassment, one day, while drunk and angry, he raped her with the excuse that she was his wife. Elena was very religious and prudish and had never been touched by a man before. She was saving herself for the man who would marry her for love. She felt horribly violated in her body and soul. She lost it and tried to kill herself by jumping from the building. Fortunately, the flat was on a lower floor, and she landed on a canopy with just a few bruises. To avoid getting in more trouble, the guy stopped harassing her, and after a few months, she got her precious green card. She came to LA soon after, invited by a Colombian friend working as a nurse in a hospital. She saw the opportunity, and she decided to stay in LA, working and studying to get a nursing degree. She got the diploma after three years and immediately got a job in a private clinic. In the meantime, she brought Pablo back with a student visa on fake credentials. She had to travel to Bogota to get him to come; he was too scared to travel alone. From then on, life got much easier. She found Pablo a place to live, and she found a more lucrative job in a major hospital.

She finally got to a point in her life where she felt that she had arrived, and so she relaxed. Her desperate drive suddenly stopped, and so did the little confidence that made her go forward with so much determination. Her shyness and fears became so severe that she couldn’t talk to people, and she didn’t feel safe to leave home alone. Pablo had to drive her to the hospital every day, walk her to her ward, and pick her up from there at the end of each shift. This got progressively worse up to now. Even today Pablo was in the parking lot, sitting in the car and waiting for her. When she was told about this opportunity by a nurse colleague, a young Mexican girl that Luca had helped for similar issues, she saw a possible way out, and she went for it—and here we are.


“To understand Elena’s transformation, we need to talk about fake identities. People in codependency typically need two elements to feel safe: leadership and safe zones. Each one of these can partially or entirely substitute the need of the other. We talked extensively about leadership, but what are the safe zones? There are two types: the physical safe zones, such as a home or a trusted friend, and the mind’s safe zones (or fake identities) that are areas of life where people in codependency feel confident and strong. These are typically related to success, wealth, beauty, or a specific skill, such as a sport or academic ability. People suffering the Bosurgi Syndrome feel safe only when they are in their safe zone. When they are out of their safe zone, they regress like a lost kid. In contrast, when adults are off codependency and enjoy their real identity, their skills, beauty, or success represent a great pleasure and satisfaction and not a needed place for the mind to feel safe.

“Let’s analyze what transformed Elena in the last two days. Did Liam fix her in the first session? No, he just renewed her trust in her safe zone as a smart student. At a very young age, after terrible abuses, Elena discovered her intelligence and the power of education. She made the unconscious decision that seeking education and using her brilliant mind will protect her from more abuse and poverty. Thus, she committed her life to study. She felt confident and safe as a student in any situation where she could prove her intelligence and learning skills. Her trust in this safe zone has been confirmed throughout her life; she saved herself and her brother many times because of her education.

“Her identity as a brilliant student kept her going with no fears until she confirmed herself as a nurse. At that stage of her life, she relaxed, and she stopped studying. She didn’t need it anymore, but she didn’t realize that in doing so, she came out of her safe zone that kept her survival system quiet for so many years. She could have tried to study in order to grow further in the nursing profession, but it wasn’t something that stimulated her mind. It was routine work that actually depressed her brilliant mind. Despite her good job, the brother next to her, and, finally, a bit of tranquility, her still active codependency deprived her from a lifelong safe zone and made her feel terribly unprotected, unsafe, and lost.

“On Monday, Liam reactivated her student’s mind. He challenged her with a complex lesson about the mind, and he asked her to cooperate with him in the healing. Thus, she walked straight back into her safe zone, reacquiring confidence and a sense of safety. Today she came in strong and ready to progress with her learning. That’s why she asked you several questions that you answered brilliantly. You will see that in the next session, she will want to know more, and I suggest that you carry on stimulating her brain with further knowledge and involvement in the process. This will grant her enough stamina, confidence, and, of course, knowledge, to get to the click and release her codependency. After that, she will never require a safe zone again. She will almost certainly progress with her studies to become an informatics genius, but it will be a pleasurable choice and not a need that comes from fear.

 

For parents, happiness is a very high bar – Jennifer Senior: Ted Talk

For parents, happiness is a very high bar – Jennifer Senior: Ted Talk

[ted id=1974]

The parenting section of the bookstore is overwhelming—it’s “a giant, candy-colored monument to our collective panic,” as writer Jennifer Senior puts it. Why is parenthood filled with so much anxiety? Because the goal of modern, middle-class parents—to raise happy children—is so elusive. In this honest talk, she offers some kinder and more achievable aims.

The Bosurgi Syndrome became evident after the ‘Mental Revolution’.

The Bosurgi Syndrome became evident after the ‘Mental Revolution’.

From the book ‘The Mind Shaman’ –

“The massive presence of the Bosurgi Syndrome became evident in the Western countries after the ‘Mental Revolution’ of the sixties. Before then, people were following external leadership throughout their entire lives. Gods that punished, strict codes imposed by traditions, and family and society were directing most people’s choices. Therefore, self-leadership was almost irrelevant. Life was boring but safe. Thanks to consumerism, the human mind became stimulated by the many choices unseen before. Additionally, with the use of newly invented, highly sophisticated equipment, people started thinking. Humanity upgraded from the strength of the body to the power of the mind. I named this fundamental transformation the ‘Mental Revolution,’ which is, in my opinion, the most relevant step in the history of humanity. We became Homo sapiens, as well as free from external leadership. This virtually unnoticed revolution has dramatically improved the speed and the capacity of the human brain. Today, in just a few hours, we perform as many decisions as most people use to execute in an entire life.

“A vertical hierarchy of spirit over mind and body is the evolutionary plan that will bring humanity to a much higher level of consciousness. The Mental R evolution accomplished the first part of it. We entered into a wonderful learning and awareness process about the care of our body in terms of diets and physical training. The power of thinking that was reserved to just a few became universal, allowing the expansion of shared intelligence to levels never seen before. This gave birth to an incredible amount of new technologies and lines of thoughts.

“However, one evolutionary step is still missing because the phase that will position the spirit over the mind didn’t begin. Therefore, the lost external leadership was never replaced by self-leadership. The human mind, as I mentioned before, is not capable of properly operating on its own. It’s just sophisticated software that needs leadership in order to function correctly. We lost external leadership, but we didn’t acquire self-leadership. Therefore, the mind in most people feels unled and therefore unsafe to release codependency. This produces a large amount of stress, anxiety, and depression in our current society. Lack of self-leadership also produces a lack of identity. Advertising and media found a substitute identity in power, riches, and beauty or in anything that could make them look different or special, which then produced even more stress and self-doubt. Many people couldn’t bear the transformation and the confusion that came with it, so they regressed back to external leadership. They did this by entering strictly controlled religions and organizations that were able to lead their minds and make them feel safe. But most people are fighting a harsh battle like you, totally unaware of the real issue behind their struggles.

“We are now working to get to the next step, positioning our real self, our spirit, over our mind. This establishes a healthy self-leadership that equips our mind with the power of clarity, efficiency, and happiness. This is what I named the ‘spiritual revolution.’ As soon as this is acquired by humankind, the codependency will be released at puberty as nature requires. People will enjoy healthy transitions during the teenage period, to become women or men. Most stress, depression, confusion, anxiety, and fears will disappear as well as the many physical illnesses connected with the excess stress and cortisol in the body. Our identity will be based on our real self; therefore, beauty, wealth, and power will be a free choice, not a stressful need. People will find God in themselves, as well as all the source of their powers. The spiritual revolution is a key step in the evolution of our species. It coincides with the Age of Aquarius and will give to humanity a much better world, cleared of much of the greed and the fears.”

Survival System, our essential ‘safety software package’.

Survival System, our essential ‘safety software package’.

From the book The Mind Shaman-

“Let’s first explore the survival system and how it operates. This is an essential ‘safety software package’ operating from your unconscious mind that has the top priority task of protecting you from any physical or emotional danger. It has been your best friend and your worst enemy. On one hand, it has been a lifesaver—protecting you from physical and emotional damage, but on the other hand, it has been the cause of most of your fears, anxiety, and depression.

“It sounds like a crazy contradiction, but you will get it as we will explore this system further. Our survival system operates like most commercial security systems available on the market. It compares all the data collected by our senses (as well as our thoughts and emotions) with a list of possible threats. In the case a match is found, it responds by using a priority defense protocol. Here are two examples of commercial defense systems that operate in a similar way. First, look at how your antivirus protects your PC. It constantly compares all the files that you download with a list of already discovered viruses and takes a defensive action every time a match is identified. Now look at the safety system used by the army to protect a post in a war zone. It works in a similar way. Radar and other equipment and detecting devices are constantly scanning the air and the ground according to a list of all possible threats. If they encounter a match, they automatically trigger a real-time defense protocol that may include alarms, offensive responses, etc. Another good example is our own immune system that filters everything that enters the body against a list of previously identified threats and tries to attack and destroy the recognized hazards.

“Let’s re-look now at our own safety system. Our brain constantly collects and processes millions of data derived from three typical sources: (1) the external data captured by our senses: eyes, ears, smell, taste, touch, psychic, etc.; (2) the internal data generated by our body—the list of these are endless; however, the ones perceivable are physical pleasure, pain, and discomfort; and (3) the self-generated data originating from the mind such as thoughts, feelings, and emotions. All of this data is filtered by the survival system and compared with a list of ‘dangerous’ items. If a match is identified, the survival system will believe that you are in danger and activate a defense protocol. The defense protocol typically consists of a shot of cortisol in order to sustain a fight-or-flight response followed by a warning, such as anxiety, fear, or panic. This is lifesaving in case of a real threat. If, instead, this process is triggered by mistake thousands of times a day, it can seriously affect your quality of life.

“You may wonder how this can happen if the mind is so perfect? The answer is simple. The survival system relies on a list of threats built throughout your life. This includes the period of pre-birth and childhood—periods where your mind is not developed enough to understand what is really dangerous and what is not. Therefore, we rely on our parents’ and caretakers’ guidance. If our folks or teachers are scared or angry or abusive people or just unable to create a safe environment for us, our assessment of danger is confused, and many things that are virtually safe are going to be listed by your young mind as dangerous. Some of these ‘dangerous items’ may be current in our daily life, so they will be constantly engaging your survival system in a totally unnecessary and highly crippling defense process. Imagine the nightmare if, in the army post that we mentioned before, all the sirens and the defense responses are constantly engaged without actual threats.

“Safety is the first priority, because it is survival, and so our brains allocate as much energy as is required to keep us safe. This is perfect in a real emergency situation because it is all about surviving the danger. But it becomes extremely challenging if this process is constant and unnecessary. It reduces the power of the brain that can be used for daily tasks. People affected by an overactive survival system use only a fraction of their thinking power since the rest is engaged by the survival process. This creates issues with procrastination, lack of creativity, resistance to engage in new projects or developing the existing ones, learning, and loss of energies to the extent that can lead to depression. Depression is lack of processing capability in the brain to accomplish the daily tasks, since virtually all of your brain’s resources are being used to fight or flight false threats.

“How can we fix that? Most therapies focus on providing coping mechanisms to help you to live with some of those ‘dangerous items’ as best as you can or they try to desensitize you by making you accustomed to experiencing these triggers without responding to them. We do something much simpler and certainly more effective—we clear from that list all the items that are not dangerous. This disengages the brain from all that unnecessary work. This is a rather simple procedure that I guess most people will use periodically in the future in order to reset their list of fears. It doesn’t make any sense to carry the fears and anxiety that we developed when we were babies or kids throughout our adult life.” – The Mind Shaman

Are Relationships Ruled by the Heart or the Mind?

Are Relationships Ruled by the Heart or the Mind?

This essay brings to your attention the two very frequent scenarios of behaviors in relationships. A lot of people go through similar experiences and wish to change the situation. I suggest a different view at the problem, in fact, I shouldn’t call it a problem, rather an adaptive mechanism of your mind. This perspective shows you why your mind believes that it needs to apply the dysfunctional behaviors. The reason is the instinct of codependency which, if failed to terminate at puberty, prevents you from being self-sufficient. It holds the key to turning the situation around by fulfilling the critical needs of your mind and hence stopping the crippling codependency.

Read More Read More

Billy, the gay Navajo – an other story of adult codependency (Bosurgi syndrome)

Billy, the gay Navajo – an other story of adult codependency (Bosurgi syndrome)

From the book the Mind Shaman –

Billy is a very smart gay guy and also very funny . His life story was tough, sad, and very complex, but he kept it light, making constant jokes about his fears as well as the mediocrity and ignorance of his family. He was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His father was a training officer for the National Guard, a military-trained bulldozer: big man with huge fists, no feelings or emotions, harsh with his family in the same manner as he was with his cadets. His voice was so sharp and loud that Billy was still getting the creeps today just thinking about it. His mother is a full Native American from the Navajo tribe and was very submissive and kind, ready to do all that was in her power to please the husband.

Billy was the third of three boys. His brothers were the spitting image of their dad, playing with guns and fighting all day long. He was like his mom. He liked art, sewing, and painting. His mom was a great artist, and he learned the magic of colors and forms from her. But they had to do it in secret because his father would not consider the option that one of his kids might not enlist in an armed service. For him, art was for women; guns were for men. When Dad was home, Billy was constantly terrorized, hiding and walking on eggshells to not get him angry. All three kids had to endure physical punishment for every tiny mistake they did, which meant holding a standing position for hours, running around the house many, many times with no access to water, or fasting for an entire day, and so on; and this started from when they were still toddlers. The two older brothers got stronger and angrier. Billy, instead, got weaker and more sick, fainting all the time, horribly slim because he couldn’t hold food in his stomach. The constant pain in his gut provoked by his relentless fears brought him to the emergency room several times. The army doctors always thought that it was a bug in his stomach, and they sent him home with some useless pills.

He really tried to be like his dad, but it was not his nature. He just wanted to have a quiet life painting and sewing. But that was not allowed; he was a man! His illness and his passion for art provoked endless bullying and mocking from his brothers as well as constant very hurtful remarks from his Dad. He didn’t mind to be called “girl” or “daughter” by his father, but he suffered thinking that he let his dad down. He loved and admired his dad, and he would have cut off his arm to be loved back, but his father was too stuck in his soldier’s mind to understand the “different” beauty and powers of his youngest son. So he gave up on him and ignored him from the age of five. The pressure was gone, but the rejection that came with it was so devastating for the little Billy that his health got worse. His mother worried for his life and sent him to her parents in a tribal village a couple of hours south. There, Billy started a new life, and for the first time, he felt accepted and loved. His health improved dramatically, his stomach stop hurting, and he made friends, kids just like his loving nature, playing and doing art stuff. He started school in the local Navajo school. He was shy but very sharp, and the teachers liked him, but in some ways, he felt different from all the other boys. He felt much more in tune with the girls of his class, although somehow attracted to some of the older boys.

Around eight, he started experimenting with a couple of older boys, enjoying giving them pleasure. It was natural to him but also very confusing, and he couldn’t talk to anyone about it. His grandparents were old and still attached to the Navajo tradition that teaches to respect everyone without discrimination but to not discuss sex. They were good people, and they loved him dearly, but they weren’t equipped to give him much leadership or direction. He couldn’t talk with his parents either; his father would have killed him, and his mother was too scared and probably too depressed to deal with something like this. So Billy kept his painful secret to himself, feeling terribly guilty, as well as like an outsider with his peers. He returned to being sick, re-experiencing his old digestive problems and the constant pain in his guts. He felt that this was God’s punishment for his attraction to men, and he stopped seeing the kids that wanted sexual favors from him. Of course, he felt more isolated than ever, and only the passion for painting, sewing, and creating forms and shapes kept him going.

Around ten years old, the entire village was aware of Billy’s sexual nature. It was obvious by the way he talked and moved, and as much as everybody liked him for his kindness and skills in the different arts, every day he felt more excluded and despised for being gay. His breakthrough in accepting his sexuality came with a medicine man, a two-spirited person, a nadleeh. This was a famous healer that moved to the village the same month that Billy finished middle school. He was a Navajo, gifted with special powers and highly trained in his medicine, but also a guy that knew too well the struggle of being gay in his tribal traditions. He became his mentor and made him accept himself as a human being and his sexuality and healed his physical and mental struggles. This guy was the first real guidance in Billy’s life, and his presence and leadership had such an impact that Billy grew physically and mentally, becoming a man capable of taking care of himself.

When Billy graduated from high school, his mentor, attracted by Billy’s intelligence and skills, offered to train him in his medicine to become a healer. He loved the man, but he wanted out from the tribe and the judgment. He also wanted to develop his artistic skills and make some money with it. Billy jumped on a bus and travelled over twelve hundred miles to San Francisco. He was still very shy and fairly anxious, but the excitement of being free to be himself with others like him made him overcome all his fears. The first evening in town, he met Dino, the love of his life, a much older man, experienced, powerful, rich, and the owner of a fashion design company. His dream came true. One day in Frisco, he found all that he had desired: a leader, a father, a luxurious life incredibly different from his past, a man to love, and a job as fashion designer. This lasted just over three years. On his twenty-first birthday, Dino decided that he wanted a younger boyfriend and dumped Billy. In twenty-four hours, Billy found himself heartbroken, homeless, and jobless. It was totally unexpected. He thought that Dino was sharing the same love that he felt for him and their union was for life. He didn’t think about saving money or preparing a “Plan B”.

Fortunately, he immediately got back working, as he was already a great and established designer. Fashion designers fought to hire him. But that was the only aspect of his life that kept going in a straight line. Emotionally and physically, he was a mess. He felt totally lost and terribly sad. His digestive system started freaking out again, and he started losing weight and feeling sick all the time. For two years, he changed many partners trying to get back what he had lost with Dino, but each time was a further confirmation of his unlovability as well as his inability to be happy. Around twenty-four, sick and tired from rejection and physical and emotional pain, Billy went back to his tribe and his mentor in order to find himself again and get some rest from the constant misery experienced in his life. In the meantime, he made a decent amount of money, so he arrived with beautiful gifts, and the village welcomed him like a hero. But after a few weeks, he ended up hanging out with only his mentor and a couple of local gay guys, which in some ways was expected, and he was fine with it. He wasn’t there to build a new life.

Bored but restored, after a few months, he again left his mentor, the old grandparents, and his Navajo refuge. Determined to create a life for himself that no one will be able to mess up, Billy decided to find a business partner and create his own label. He already knew many people in the industry, but he couldn’t trust any one of them, so he sought an investor. Unfortunately, instead of looking for a pure financial investor that would finance his business, he searched for a father that would lead him as well as finance his venture. He did this in the gay world, but this time in Los Angeles, and he fell in the same trap of several years before. The new guy, much richer than Dino and totally in love with Billy, gave him a label, invested a ton of money, and enabled him do what he desired the most—creating collections.

Billy was a genius as a designer but totally inexperienced in the business of making money with fashion. He designed beautiful collections, but they were unsuitable for creating any cash flow, and he failed season after season until he gave up. His boyfriend was rich enough and still terribly in love with Billy, so he didn’t care about losing money with the toy that he created for his lover. But Billy couldn’t bare the shame of his fiasco and left the business and the guy. He wasn’t really in love with him anyway; he just enjoyed his paternal protection. Back to square one and too ashamed to retreat to New Mexico, Billy entered in to the worst period of his life. He worked as a freelance, making the minimum required for survival, and started drinking, smoking, taking a lot of drugs, and sleeping around with as many guys as he could. He was in West Hollywood every night, partying and burning his talent as well as his brain cells. He was twenty-eight when he fell on the floor of a bar one night, totally drunk, releasing blood from every cavity of his body. In the ER, they found his gut perforated as well as his blood infected with HIV.

At first, he decided to die and then to live. The deadly virus was probably just what he needed to appreciate life. He cleaned himself from drugs and casual sex, and he got back to designing in a stable job, managing a totally new type of life. This was last year, and he’s kept clean, sober, and single, too worried to infect someone and too ashamed to fall in love. He also kept his job despite his constant anxiety and fears. It doesn’t pay much, but he can’t get much more in his state of constant mood swings and recurring depression. One of his best friends, a well-known publicist, told him about Luca a couple of months ago, and here he is, and . . . he jokes about all this. Respect the man! I would not be capable of joking for sure.

And . . . here we have another victim of the Bosurgi Syndrome. This guy with a different dad and a different mom would very likely be Valentino number two. Instead, he is here joking about his life’s fiasco. Maybe he is still in time to do something great. I’m sure Carla will do the magic! I wonder if I will be able to follow the impact of this work on our clients in the next part of their lives. It would be very rewarding as well as a great matter for a book or a show. We should probably consider this as one of the Bosurgi Syndrome Institute spin-off projects. I should talk to Luca about it.

Carla ended the first part of their work, telling Billy about their targets: “Our goal is to provide you the tools you need to become self-sufficient. We need to clear your codependency, and consequently your fears, anxiety, and need for external leadership, in order to enable you to create a successful fashion label with someone that knows how to run that business. This will allow you to capitalize on all your past experiences and mistakes, providing you with what you desire the most, the ability to create, to succeed, and to reach a powerful state of unconditional happiness. Correct?” Over these words, Billy changed expression stopping his jokes, looked Carla with the expression of a kid, betrayed already too many times, and asked with a little voice, “I wish! Do you really believe that could be possible? I’m rotten inside now. Isn’t too late?”

Carla took his hands smiling and promised that she will get him there in just a few weeks. Billy started crying quietly, almost ashamed to be emotional. He used his jokes to keep some power, but now he felt good to let go, surrendering all his power to Carla.

From the book the Mind Shaman

We may be the cause of our children’s anxiety, fears and depression in their adult life

We may be the cause of our children’s anxiety, fears and depression in their adult life

It’s a scary statement but unfortunately corresponds to an indisputable reality. Our mind set as well as our parenting skills will either determine happiness and efficiency in our children’s adult life, or make them miserable.

In the first 12 years of their life, our children depend entirely on us. We mold their minds by demonstrating our leadership, love, safety, validation and guidance. They also unconsciously mirror all of our behaviors, success or fears, our approach to relationships and our attitude to life. They build their life’s models accordingly.

I have been researching new models of the mind for over twenty years, and found solutions that have helped hundreds of clients to gain happiness and efficiency in their life. But only recently have I been able to isolate the real cause of most modern psychological issues. I discovered a disorder originated by poor parenting that affects possibly half of the American population, if not more.

This is a condition that I call the Bosurgi Syndrome, which describes the devastating effects of overextended codependency in adult life. Fear of rejection, fear of judgment and abandonment, lack of self-confidence, anger, social anxiety, lack of identity and purpose, neediness or numbness in relationships, feeling like a fraud or a kid trapped in adult mind and body are just some of the devastating symptoms caused by the Bosurgi Syndrome.
Codependency is typically described as an excessive dependency to parents, partners or friends, but my research revealed this behavior to be a byproduct of the real issue.

Codependency is in fact, a healthy instinct provided by nature to every child at birth. It is built into children’s behavioral system to keep them safe and allow their parents to educate them in the first 12 years of life. It operates at the emotional level to maintain children’s dependence and need of leadership, love, safety, validation and guidance during their first vulnerable period of existence.

Since a young child is unable to navigate the world, this natural codependent instinct keeps our children close to home. If they get too far away from their parents or their teachers (which act as substitute parents) children get anxious and nervous. This instinct also keeps children in the learning mode. They soak up information like sponges.

If proper parenting is provided, based on fair leadership, unconditional love, a safe emotional and physical environment, lots of validation and precise guidance, the young adult will learn a proper model of self-leadership and the instinct of codependency will terminate at puberty. The young adult will then successfully use the teenager period to learn how to be a man or a woman, in order to gain a powerful life clear from anxiety, fears and depression.

If instead, we don’t provide our children with proper models of leadership, because we are in codependency ourselves or unable to take care of them or just not aware of the gravity of this issue, our kids will not know how to lead themselves in the process of becoming adults. This lack of self-leadership will actively maintain the instinct of codependency after puberty, with the consequence that the young adult will enter into the teenager period still held by the juvenile emotional ties of codependency.

The result will be that throughout the teenage period, there will be progressively severe issues of anxiety and fears, feeling of being an outsider and self-consciousness with their peers. It will cause social anxiety or a pleaser attitude with the intent of trying to belong, in some case eating disorders, and in others, anger and rebellion.

Some teenagers will try to cope with numbing substances such as drugs or alcohol, some will isolate themselves in safe environments like video games or excessive computer use, some will carry on with their lives focusing on their studies or sports even though they are constantly battling anxiety. Others will feel so desperate and powerless that will give up and choose to end their lives. Nearly 1 in 6 high school students has seriously considered suicide, and 1 in 12 has attempted it, according to the survey on youth risk behavior published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Can we prevent it? Yes we can! In fact, it’s our duty as parents to understand the issue and act upon it for the sake of our children’s happiness and efficiency!

We are offering a series of events to educate parents about the Bosurgi Syndrome, how to clear it as an adult and how to prevent it in your children. We will keep you updated on the dates of the workshops that we are scheduling in schools and other venues.

Morgan – a story of a super model suffering Adults Emotional Dependency (AED)

Morgan – a story of a super model suffering Adults Emotional Dependency (AED)

From the Mind Shaman – Morgan is only twenty-nine years old.  Born in San Diego, California, from hippie parents living in a commune, drugs, nudity, and free sex were around her throughout her childhood. She saw her parents having sex in between them and with many others from as far back as she can remember. She tried marijuana before talking, and she was initiated to sex herself when she was nine. Her life was fun though; she learned surfing when she was a toddler, and she lived always out and about with sheep and chickens surrounded by a lot of dancing and music. She grew up like a wild creature, everything was allowed, as long as it would not hurt others or nature. But certainly, she didn’t receive any structure, direction, or leadership.

Read More Read More

The many identities of an actor

The many identities of an actor

From the book The mind Shaman

Born and raised in Orange County, his parents were very proper middle-class people, rich enough to own a nice house with a pool and nice cars. They supported him in their own way throughout his life and they still are. It would have been a perfectly normal life if Danny didn’t have an older brother that made his childhood miserable, making him feel ugly, dirty, sloppy, and incapable. From his earliest memories, his brother constantly bashed him with the meanest comments and bossed him around, using him like his personal slave.

Read More Read More

The real cause of PTSD – the Bosurgi Syndrome

The real cause of PTSD – the Bosurgi Syndrome

From the book The Mind Shaman-

“Julie, let’s talk briefly about your case. Richard is a twenty-five-year-old young man who served as a US marine for four years, deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He came back to the US in 2011, all in one piece, highly decorated for his bravery in battle, but soon after he returned, he developed what it is commonly called PTSD. In the last two years, he has been highly depressed and twice attempted suicide.

“The actual trend in psychotherapy is to focus their healing on the traumatic memories assumed to be the origin of the disorder. In my opinion, they are focusing on the wrong culprit. The PTSD, in most cases, is caused by the Bosurgi Syndrome, triggered or enhanced by the traumatic events. Millions of people with the Bosurgi Syndrome feel like they are in a mental state comparable to PTSD, but they don’t have an actual trauma to blame.

Read More Read More

The Behavioral System

The Behavioral System

From the book The Mind Shaman

“The area of the mind that I specialize in is the behavioral system. This consists of a mass of behaviors structured to provide us with the safest and most efficient life. The only job of the behavioral side of the mind is to keep us safe and make us as effective as possible. I slightly resent the psychological theory that speculates that part of the mind acts as our enemy and needs to be fought and suppressed in order for us to achieve happiness. Again, in my opinion, this is just wrong and really unjust. The mind is our best friend and our powerful protector. If our mind does not work properly, it’s only because it is confused and uses its resources to protect us when it is really not required. I’ll explain this in a moment.

Read More Read More

The Survival System

The Survival System

From the book The Mind Shaman

“The survival system is one of the most powerful and complex software applications of our mind. It has the task of protecting us from every possible physical and emotional risk and damage. Its actions are considered priority in the behavioral system since our life may depend on it. How does it work? It is database driven and uses a pre-compiled list of threats to spot and prevent danger.”

“Let me expand on this: from the time that we are in our mother’s tummy, our survival system collects a list of items that are considered dangerous. These may be all sorts of things like thoughts, feelings, emotions, people, animals, objects, sites, or some combination of those. Everything that may represent a threat is listed in it. I call this list the ‘database of the unsafe.’ This list is being constantly compared (24/7) with all of the data that we receive from our senses and our thoughts and covers every physical and emotional aspect of our daily life. If a match is identified, our survival system will believe that we are in danger and initiate a survival protocol.”

“Imagine seeing a tiger approaching. Your survival system will immediately associate the beast with danger and will start providing you a series of instinctive reactions to promote your safety.”

“Let’s carry on with our explanation. When the mind receives the warning of a possible threat, it will instruct the brain to evaluate the danger, and if it’s identified as a real threat, it initiates a ‘fight or flight’ strategy. This needs to be fast, and it’s done with top priority over all the other behaviors since it may save your life. Therefore, as soon as the defense protocol kicks in, the brain releases cortisol which is the fight-or-flight hormone, and also releases a warning to advise you of the danger. According to the level of hazard, this warning will create in you either a feeling of danger, anxiety, fear, or panic. In the rare case that we are confronted by real danger, this is lifesaving. If, instead, it is constantly triggered by false threats obliging the brain to overwork and constantly release cortisol and warnings, it becomes crippling.”

“According to my research, depression is the consequence of an overworked brain due to an overloaded survival system constantly reacting to false threats. Imagine that your brain has a CPU like a computer, which, like your Mac, is limited in its processing capability. Our brain is powerful and certainly oversized for our daily tasks, but imagine the overwork that it has to do if it’s forced to cipher through thousands of survival warnings on top off its current daily load. Like a computer that is processing too much data, the brain would have to slow down or crash. In order to avoid this, it’s obliged to make a choice between the survival requests and the daily tasks. Naturally, it prioritizes the first since survival is paramount to our existence, and it delays all the rest. This will reduce the processing time devoted to all the daily current activities to the extent that you will feel overwhelmed, confused, tired, compelled to procrastinate everything that is not essential, or, worse, it will make you depressed.”

“But what are these false threats? These are items in the ‘database of the unsafe’ erroneously listed as danger—typically the results of unconscious decisions made at a young age when we didn’t have the required experience or tools to properly assess our experiences. Or they may be correct assessments of threats that are now obsolete such as threats that were only dangerous in the first part of our life. I’ll give you a couple of examples of false threats: You are a young child and your mother constantly warns you to be careful around people because they can be dangerous. You may falsely associate people as threats, and every time that you are around people you will feel unsafe. Or you felt very hurt by your dad’s rejection and you may associate rejection as threat and therefore constantly fear rejection.” – The Mind Shaman

A case of Bosurgi Syndrome explored

A case of Bosurgi Syndrome explored

From the book The Mind Shaman –

“Let’s redefine the issue in order to identify the steps required to clear it. Nineteen years ago, baby Liam was born. His mind was equipped by nature with a temporary instinct called codependency. This instinct had the task of protecting Liam during his period of physical vulnerability and allowed his parents to raise and educate him. To limit Liam’s freedom and make him dependent on his parents, codependency restricted Liam’s mind with tools such as lack of self-confidence, anxiety if unprotected, search for external leadership and validation, etc. This is a totally natural process that requires a precise parental response in order to provide the expected results. It is supposed to disappear at puberty, when it is no longer needed.

Read More Read More

The Genius Lab of the Mind talk show – March 24th – Third Street Theater

The Genius Lab of the Mind talk show – March 24th – Third Street Theater

http://bosurgi.wordpress.com/talk-show-with-luca-his-team/

The Genius Lab of the Mind – an interactive talk show about the mind hosted by Luca Bosurgi and his team.

Dates: March 26th 2014, 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Venue: Third Street Theater, 8115 W 3rd St, Los Angeles CA-90048
Suggested donation: $ 10 – No one turned away for lack of funds “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Buckminster Fuller

Your mind generates your joy and excitement as well as your anxiety, fears, lack of purpose, addictions, painful relationships, depression, etc. Thus the key to resolve these issues sits inside your mind.  The purpose of the Genius Lab is to help you to explore your personal mind’s struggles and to give you tools to fix it. The interactive conversation will be focused on your questions and on a few of your personal cases assessed by Luca Bosurgi and his team.

 Up to now the mind has been considered as a mysterious black box. We want to explain how the mind works, the purpose of anxiety, the value of codependency and the cause of addictions. Mastering the organization of your mind will create a shift in the way you approach life, relate to people and feel about yourself.

 During this interactive conversation we are going to demonstrate to you how your daily crippling issues are connected to incorrect choices made by your mind, and how you can change it.  We want you to tell us your story so we can present it to you from the perspective of your mind – the way nature works to keep you efficient and safe. We will identify where your mind was misled and explore the solutions to fix it.

Live music by James Hood featuring ‘ CEREMONY’ jameshood.com

 
A personal story

A personal story

competition

Hello,

My name is David. I am a CognitiveOS Hypnotherapist. I am happy to be able to write this story about how I came to appreciate life and everything about it. It hasn’t been easy and it took me quite a bit of turmoil and suffering, but I did it. I’m looking at all of my experiences now with a deep sense of gratitude. I was able to learn so much and arrive to this place of happiness. It is so liberating to be able to say that I love life and believe it. I never thought that I would ever feel this way. I have been on such an amazing journey to discover this that I would like to share with you my personal story about my past struggles and my solid resolution to them. Perhaps as you read you can identify with some of these struggles and, if you do, I can tell you with a deeply true heart that you can find healing and empowerment the way I did, through CognitiveOS Hypnosis. I believe in this so much that I have left my previous life behind to become a CognitiveOS Hypnotherapist.

Read More Read More

The Mind Shaman a novel about Luca Bosurgi’s work

The Mind Shaman a novel about Luca Bosurgi’s work

tms-cover

Luca Bosurgi, the founder of the Institute, has just published his new book about the young man who is trying to become happy and independent, but is caught in the emotional vicious cycle of ups and downs, in which downs take the significant part of his life. He finally breaks free going through the CognitiveOS Hypnotherapy and clearing the Bosurgi Syndrome, the cause of his anxiety, depression and fears.

The book is written as an interesting novel which reveals the inner workings of the mind and the mechanisms to fix them. The book is available on Amazon and is very helpful for those who are looking for personal growth, a different perspective on therapy, and wants to understand some aspects about the healing power of the clinical hypnosis.

I deserve to be loved, why can’t I find it?

I deserve to be loved, why can’t I find it?

It’s Sunday and you are out in the park jogging or walking your dog, through your sunglasses you see a couple passing by, they are holding hands, smiling and having a chat, they seem to be peacefully happy and in love.  You notice those couples on the way home from work, in coffee shops, supermarkets, etc. Your imagination completes the image by picturing them in their cozy house, sitting on the couch, hugging and reading a book. And every time the same questions pop up in your mind: why am I not like this?

Read More Read More