At the restaurant, a man has an idea to make a better life but is given some quick perspective by his date.

GoAnimate.com: Going Back In Time by taoareyou

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Pleasant memories are a package of sensations: sights, sounds, smells, temperatures.  Really anything your senses can detect can be stored and associated with a memory.  You may have grown up with a yard but for the past many years lived in the city.  The smell of fresh cut grass could suddenly take you back to warm summer days when you were a child, carefree with no stresses of adult life.  Sometimes scents can bring back memories we hadn’t accessed in so long we’d forgotten we had them.

There are a lot of aroma therapy oils, candles, sprays and other methods of delivering scents.  Some of them can be really relaxing.  I especially like the smell of pumpkin spice in the early fall as it reminds me of Thanksgiving, going back to school, and the weather getting cooler after long, hot summers in the south.  Concentrated oils can be found in many stores and are a long lasting and inexpensive way to take your mind off your current troubles.  But if you can’t afford oils, you may be able to gather all natural scents.  Some suggestions are: fir branches or sap, pine cones/needles/bark, cloves, sage, thyme, various flower petals to your taste such as jasmine or rose, mint leaves, sassafras leaves or sticks.

You can take these ingredients and use several methods to release their scents. Grind up fresh leaves or flower petals.  Prepare a hot bath and sprinkle them in the water.  Take an orange and stick cloves in it til it looks like a prickly ornament and set it on a shelf in the kitchen.  Simmer water with bark or leaves in it that you’ve gathered to make your own all natural potpourri.  The possibilities of what to use are varied and will best be defined by what scents are most associated with good times.  Just remember that all natural items are not treated with preservatives and won’t last as long as oils or other store bought items.  So don’t leave that orange on the shelf for weeks.

Filling your home with relaxing scents is best used occasionally.  If you use them all the time, the effects will fade as your mind begins to associate your current surroundings with the smells.  So use them when you especially need to recover from a hard week or series of stressful events.

In the earlier two posts in this series, we discussed how to make a special construct in our mind as a private inner retreat.  In this post we will go over some ideas for useful tools to add to the construct.

Think back now to the earliest memory you can.  For most of us, this will be from childhood.  If we try really hard, we can pull other memories from that time.  They don’t even have to be something big and eventful.  They can be really mundane events.  What’s the point?  It’s to demonstrate that a healthy brain will retain all experiences.  All of them.  Your entire life, every moment, is stored in the biochemical patterns of your brain.  We have this vast library but most of us have not developed a method to organize and access it.  It’s like we can go to specific sections and pull books at random.

The first tool for your inner sanctum is for this purpose.  Here are some examples:  a card catalog, a filing cabinet, a computer, an ancient tome, a warehouse room (a la Raiders of the Lost Ark) with someone to go locate the correct crate.  You can design your own tool.  Make sure the tool is doing the search however, this is important.  Imagining a room filled with paintings that represent your memories puts the search upon your conscious self.  We want to make your subconscious responsible for this work.

The first few weeks of using this will be hit and miss as you train your mind.  Do not be discouraged.  The more you use it, the better it becomes.  You will be able to refine your searches to specific days, and in many cases, specific times.  From my experience, I can get in the general time frame, but once I access that, I can then move forward or backward to when I want.  Think of it like getting a microfiche.  Your subconscious brings you the right tape, then you manually locate the pages you want.

Another tool I find useful is what I call Interaction Analysis.  The subconscious gathers a huge amount of data that the conscious mind simply cannot be bothered with most of the time.  When we interact with other people there are subtle changes in their voice, movements and even the bio-electric energy they give off.  While our conscious self may be too preoccupied to notice these things, they do get stored in our mind.  This tool should take the form of something you can view: a magical mirror, a holographic imaging device, a computer screen with various readouts detailing this information, etc.  The purpose of this took is for us to revisit any human interaction we have had and train our subconscious to report all of the information gathered.  Especially those things we overlooked.  Why?  It can help us identify misunderstandings in communication.  Maybe you misread something.  Maybe someone was hiding something.  I find the more you use this tool, the more information you will get.  You don’t have to be a scientist to know what to look for either.  Your subconscious knows the signs of trouble.  Often, when lots of red flags go off subconsciously, your conscious mind perceives this as a “bad feeling” about the situation.  Trust the tool, and it will get better and better at identifying what you want to know.

Another useful tool is for health.  This can be some sort of tech scanner, an on staff doctor, a pool of water, etc.  Your brain is aware of all things related to your body.  Use this as a way “check in” on yourself.  This should not be considered a replacement for outside medical checkups of course, but rather an additional supplement.  Your mind can enhance immunities.  People who get sick but stay positive about it can recover faster than those who also mentally submit to the illness.  Your mental image of yourself can also affect weight loss.  If you see yourself as thinner, your mind will try and make it so.  Of course you will still need to take conscious steps such as healthy eating and lifestyle, but this tool can help make it easier.  Effective weight loss is a total mind and body process.  You can develop this tool to help deal with pain management, healing, tiredness, and may other issues.  Just remember, this is a supplemental tool only.  Never rely on it as the sole cure for possibly life threatening or disabling ailments.

There are many tools you can create after these.  I suggest, for maximum effectiveness, you work on one at a time until it works at the level you desire.  Use them often, too.  Anything stored in your brain you can access.  For example you can create a Names/Face database to use.  The more aspects of your mind you access, the more the communication lines between your conscious and subconscious are used, the more effective the tools in your sanctum will become.

Stress is a serious affliction for many in modern society.  Because of this there are literally thousands of “stress relief” methods being sold: books, DVD’s, audio recordings, pills, diets, topical creams and all sorts of devices designed to reduce or remove stress from your life.  But what is stress?  Very simply it is your mind and body’s reaction to external influences.  So is it worth it to buy products to remove stress (which may be costly for some and actually adding to financial stress)?  I believe stress is a response and a response can be trained and modified.

We don’t want to fully relieve ourselves of all stress.  Stress can allow us to better respond to things, giving us adrenaline to move faster and be more alert in a potentially harmful situation.  We want to reduce the harmful, chronic stress that comes from long term situations like work, relationships, money, etc.  Constant worry and fear will wear down the body and the mind.  We need to give ourselves some “down time” from this worry.  I suggest that for most people that can be accomplished by practicing various methods of self distraction.

This is a series on free or very inexpensive ways to reduce stress.

Sit in the shower. 

If you are hot often during the day (work outside in the summer, etc) make sure the water is slightly cooler than what you would normally use.  I say a good rule of thumb is what you perceive the temperature of rain to be.  Start the shower.  If you have a shower head that allows you to adjust the pressure, be sure and select the softest setting.   If you have a woodsy scented candle or some other natural scent that brings peaceful thoughts, light it and set it somewhere nearby (safely of course).  Close the door and turn off the lights.  Enter the shower and take a few moments to allow your body to adjust to the coolness.  If this is a warmer shower (for those cold months, still take a moment and get used to the temperature.

Now take a seat.  This should be comfortable for most people.  If it’s not, this method may not be for you.  Cross your legs or leave them stretched out before you.  Whatever position is most relaxing for you is how you should sit.  You will want to be positioned so that the water from the shower falls onto your head directly.  Tilt your head down to your chest and keep your eyes closed.  Now gently place your index finger into each ear.  The sound of the water should be central in your attention, followed by the feel of the drops hitting your body.

Breath slowly and deeply through your nose.  Listen to the water.  Think only of the water.  After a few moments, relax even further.  Allow your mind to imagine you are in nature, beneath the rain or sitting in a small waterfall.  If you have any special scents prepared, begin to pay attention to those as well and let them help you escape from your actual setting and be in this stress free hideaway.

Once you are firmly in this place, it’s time to tell yourself some things you probably never take the time to do.  You love yourself.  You are important.  You are strong.  There are numerous positive self affirmations you can use, just let them come naturally.  The important thing is to make this you time.  All of your problems can wait, and may even be easier to manage once you have had this time to regenerate.  A thirty minute shower generally uses less water than filling up a bath tub, so don’t shortchange yourself.  Spend at least fifteen minutes, more if your situation allows.

When you are done, slowly make your nature world fade out and return to focusing entirely on the sound of the water.  Now remove your fingers from your ears and become aware of your regular surroundings again.  Stand up, smile, and finish your shower as normal.

Make this a regular routine in your life.  If not daily, try at least 3 times a week.  If you try this, share your experiences with a comment please and let me know how it works for you.

GoAnimate.com: More About Dao by taoareyou

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