Tag: judgment

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

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Dating games and why do we play them?

Dating games and why do we play them?

Is your intention to find a person who you can have a good trustful relationship with? And you are meeting potentially suitable partners and in the beginning everything goes well, but after a little while you start being aware about the words, phone calls, text messages, initiation of dates and activities, etc. The poor mind gets caught in the game of the rules, impulses, desires and fears of rejection and judgment. However, on the background of this battle your consciousness keeps raising the question: why can’t things be easy and natural? Why can’t we just agree that we like each other and start acting as our real selves?

To answer this question you can think of your first relationship or dating experience. Most of the young people follow their hearts for the first time with hopes and sincerity until the first rejection comes into scene. We all know how it felt and most of us didn’t want to experience it again. Going forward, we start using the rules of a dating game as a form of protection from being hurt.

We start trusting the rules because they are supposed to lead us in the right direction and create the best outcome whether it is going into the relationship or dating a variety of people. Just like any other rules which are created to support our life and make it easier and better, we start relying on the rules and we allow them to lead us, making decisions for us and directing our actions. Why? Because we don’t trust ourselves, we are too scared of stepping into the territory where the risks are higher, but the rewards are much more satisfying too. What we often forget, though, is that going after what we truly believe in, regardless of the result, is empowering by all means because it allows us to follow our true selves instead of being part of the game.  When we are not confident in ourselves and afraid that the other person will not like us for who we are, we trust the rules and we believe that they will put us in a safer place.

What is the downside of playing the game? We feel worn out because we become dependent on the rules, we are not acting according to our desires and impulses, which is what we want to, we are doing what we have to or what is expected of us.

Expectations are another interesting phenomena. We create expectations of other people and we create our own ideas of what they expect from us. So we start living in an imaginary world of our fantasies about what is going on, reacting not to the real person’s actions and words, but to our own interpretation of them. What makes it even funnier is that we take it very seriously and blame the other person for not fulfilling our expectations of them. But with all the fairness, why should they?..

So, how do we get from being open and sincere young people to confused and disappointed adults? We get lost in fears of being rejected and judged, we long for acceptance and hence adopt the social norms and rules because they seem to be the path for achieving our goals of unity. We rely on the external resource to make us happy just like later in the relationship we rely on the other person to make us feel good. However after a while later living together we find out that our partner has changed, rules don’t seem to apply anymore and we experience the sense of disappointment. The reality is that the other person has just become comfortable and become themselves. But are we always prepared to deal with the real person instead of someone driven by rules and expectations? If we are not, we start the game of getting control, attention, love, etc.

There is an escape from the game though. It’s called self-leadership and self-sufficiency. How do you reach it? By repositioning your relationship with the world. It is a fairly easy concept which completely changes your paradigm of thinking. To explain it, let’s go back to the nature of humans and the mechanisms of survival. When we are born, we are dependent on the care, love and leadership of our caretakers. We rely on external sources to help us be comfortable and learn how to live on our own. When we reach puberty, we are supposed to become independent and take the responsibility for own life and wellbeing. However, if during our childhood we didn’t quite learn how to do it, we will keep relying on external sources to provide us love, attention, acceptance, safety and guidance. Why does it happen? Sometimes our parents don’t give us a good example of an independent, happy and self-sufficient life.  Sometimes they don’t make us feel good enough and that we can make it on our own by exercising control, criticism or establishing a lot of rules. Love and attention become conditioned and life becomes a competition for getting those precious resources. A recent theory by L. Bosurgi calls this reliance on the external world in adult life an overextended natural instinct of codependency or Bosurgi Syndrome. To terminate it, a person needs to become the leader of their own life, provide to themselves love, acceptance, validation and leadership and become responsible for their personal, professional and emotional success. Self-love and acceptance is the way to love and relate to others without depending on them. If we accomplish this, we become immune to what the world thinks of us, to the games, rules, etc. We will make our own rules based on our values and principles and we will be choosing partners and relationships not out of a place of need and fear, but out of a place of our desire and a conscious choice.

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

Create no more pain in the present

Create no more pain in the present

“The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more ore you are free of pain, of suffering – and free of the egoic mind.

Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and
remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as
threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.

Yes, we need the mind as well as time to function in this world, but there comes a point
where they take over our lives, and this is where dysfunction, pain, and sorrow set in.
The mind, to ensure that it remains in control, seeks continuously to cover up the present
moment with past and future, and so, as the vitality and infinite creative potential of Being,
which is inseparable from the Now, becomes covered up by time, your true nature becomes
obscured by the mind. An increasingly heavy burden of time has been accumulating in the
human mind. All individuals are suffering under this burden, but they also keep adding to it
every moment whenever they ignore or deny that precious moment or reduce it to a means of
getting to some future moment, which only exists in the mind, never in actuality. The
accumulation of time in the collective and individual human mind also holds a vast amount
of residual pain from the past.

If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, if you no longer want to add
to the residue of past pain that still lives on in you, then don’t create any more time, or at least
no more than is necessary to deal with the practical aspects of your life. How to stop creating
time? Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the
primary focus of your life. Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now,
have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future when required to
deal with the practical aspects of your life situation. Always say “yes” to the present moment.
What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that
already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always
now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life – and see how life suddenly starts working for
you rather than against you.

The present moment is sometimes unacceptable, unpleasant, or awful.
It is as it is. Observe how the mind labels it and how this labeling process, this continuous sitting in judgment, creates pain and unhappiness. By watching the mechanics of the mind,
you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be. This
will give you a taste of the state of inner freedom from external conditions, the state of true
inner peace. Then see what happens, and take action if necessary or possible.
Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen
it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will
miraculously transform your whole life.”

Ekhart Tolle “The Power of Now”

Front Cover

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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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