Author Archive: Susan Caron

“The key is to not resist or rebel against emotions or to try to get around them by devising tricks; but to accept them directly, as they are.”—Takahisa Kora

Our emotions have a profound impact on us. With all emotions two major body systems come into play. They are the autonomic nervous system and the hormonal system. Emotional self-awareness and self-regulation is a key to balance and wellness of all of our bodies-physical, spiritual, psychological and mental.

For example, when you experience a challenging emotion such as anger, anxiety, fear, sadness, hopelessness or helplessness you exist on the side of your emotional landscape that creates stress and depletion. Conversely, when you experience an emotion such as gratitude, appreciation, joy, elation, peace, or hopefulness your emotional landscape is one of healing, non-stress and renewal. If I were to ask you where you would like to spend most of your time-you would probably say the renewal or healing side of your landscape.

• How aware are you of your emotions?
• How much time to you spend on the renewal side versus the depletion side?

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Is your life aligned with what matters most to you? Have you considered what are your core values? Is your personal and professional life providing you with a sense of fulfillment and purpose? These are important questions to reflect on.

The word core, the route is Coeur-meaning heart. Traditionally, people describe their own “story” from a whole-hearted perspective.   Consistently living and acting from our hearts, experiencing heart-felt emotions, not only serve us, but also allow our hearts to come alive. Identifying what we value and acting upon this creates the alignment for you to create your certainty of purpose and live a life grounded with your core values.

Core values are:

• Unique expression of you (your divine nature)
• Give meaning to life
• Create sense of well-being
• Heart-centered living

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Do you have negative mind chatter? Do your negative thoughts that hinder you in your life? If your answer is yes to either of these questions, alpha state meditation is a great self-care modality to help you erase the negative mind chatter. Practicing alpha state meditation can assist you in creating the life you want.

Here are some key points for consideration:

• We all have a divine life purpose-alpha state allows you to uncover this
• Reminds/returns us to our true nature (spirit)
• Navigate through chaos with calmness
• Build resiliency especially with the challenges of life
• Utilize (activate) the right hemisphere of our brain and empower us to use more of our minds
• Allow our left brain to serve us rather than sabotage us conscious control of our left brain
• Allows the slowing of our brain frequency which equates to quieting our minds

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Christmas is the time of year where we are focusing on buying gifts (presents) for family, friends and colleagues.   I would like you to consider presence or being in the present moment as an ultimate gift (present) for yourself and others. What is the value of being present or offering your uninterrupted presence to another person. The value is not measurable from a financial or materialistic perspective but from a soul perspective. The quote: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, gives a unique perspective on life. We must focus on nurturing our spirit, our unique collection of gifts and talents to fulfill our soul’s destiny. We all have a divine life purpose and by being present it affords you the opportunity to uncover it and have life with meaning. Developing a practice to become present is not difficult. The secret is the practice and not trying to be perfect.

Benefits of being present:

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Do you ever just pause and listen to others as they are speaking? Are their words positive or negative?   Are their words healing or hurtful?   We must appreciate the power of the words we speak and the understanding that by choosing our words we have the opportunity to transform others and ourselves.

Words have a vibration to them, an energy attached to them, so setting positive and healing intentions about our language will assist you in creating positive change in your life and others.

Things to consider about your “Words”:

• You can increase your level of joy or happiness by how you speak and the words you choose
• Increasing awareness of your thoughts manifest into the choice of your words-pay attention on purpose to the words you speak
• Appreciate the feeling behind each word
• Words are analogous to prayers-notice what you are asking for!
• Words contribute to the law of attraction-what do you want to attract into your life?
• Pause before you respond to others

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Thanksgiving is a time where we reflect and give thanks for the blessings in our lives.   Gratitude is a powerful human emotion that has the power to change how we see our lives and the world around us. It affords us the ability to view life through of lens of positivity. Gratitude, thankfulness and appreciation are interchangeable and we all can understand the importance of these powerful emotions. Through scientific validation, we know that when we choose these positive emotions all systems in our body, including our brain, work in greater harmony or synchronicity.

The value of choosing gratitude accomplishes two things immediately:

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We have all heard or said, “Follow your Heart”. It is a common expression and with scientific advances/research we now know it must become your way of life. Following your heart must be a priority. The heart can not play second fiddle to the mind and much has been discovered over the past two decades uncovering the heart’s primary role in the mind-body connection.

The following are important new findings about the central role of the heart in facilitating the mind to function at it’s highest level.

1. The heart communicates to the brain and the body in four ways including:

• nervous system connections
• hormones produced in the heart itself
• biomechanical information via blood pressure waves
• energetic information from the strong electrical and electromagnetic fields.

2. There are 40,000 sensory neurons relaying information to the brain from the heart leading researchers to call the heart the “little brain”.

3. There is actually more information sent from the heart to the brain on a daily basis via these 4 means of communications than vice versa.  The neurons within the heart enable the heart to learn, remember, and make decisions independent of the brain’s cerebral cortex.

4. The heart emits an electrical field 60 times greater in amplitude than the activity in the brain and an electromagnetic field 5,000 times stronger that of the brain.

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Cortisol is an important hormone in the body, secreted by the adrenal glands and involved in the following functions and more:

• Proper glucose levels
• Regulation of blood pressure
• Insulin release for blood sugar maintanence
• Immune function
• Inflammatory response

Normally, it’s present in the body at higher levels in the morning, and at is lowest at night. Cortisol helps us wake up in the morning. Although stress isn’t the only reason that cortisol is secreted into the bloodstream, it has been termed “the stress hormone” because it’s also secreted in higher levels during the body’s “fight and flight” response to stress, and is responsible for several stress-related changes in the body. Small increases of cortisol have some positive effects:

Coping with Stress:

• A quick burst of energy for survival reasons
• Heightened memory functions
• A burst of increased immunity
• Lower sensitivity to pain
• Helps maintain homeostasis (balance) in the body

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Self-care?  What does that mean to you? I often hear from family, friends and colleagues that they do not have time to self-care.  They are just too busy with life.  The truth of the matter is that the we all are very busy with life but if you do not take the time to self-care you will become depleted.  YOU can not give what you do not have!!!  When the cup is empty-it is empty.  You will not be able to sustain what matters most to you because your “cup” is empty.  So what matters most?  For me, I have a priority list:

• Faith
• Health
• Family/Friends
• Job

I’m certain you all have priorities also.  The question is how to align yourself so you can negotiate and sustain your priorities in life.  The answer is self-care!!

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What is stress??

Stress is the emotional reaction to a person, event, experience or situation. The amount of stress we feel is directly related to these reactions in these situations. Stress in NOT the person or experience or situation. Stress takes you away from your core values-the essence of who you are. Within your core values is an intelligence that gives meaning to your life creating a sense of well-being and affording you the opportunity to bring texture to your life. Life works better if you can transform stress. Stress stops YOU from creating the life you want and stops you from manifesting what matters most!

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