Tapping into Stress Relief

When I ordered a copy of Kevin Trudeau's "Your Wish is Your Command (YWIYC)" audio program, I had no idea that I would also be discovering this amazing technique for relieving stress.

I had never heard of "meridien therapy","tapping therapy", "Callahan techniques" or "Thought Field Therapy (TFT)."

I had no idea that there was a safe, drug-free self-administered stress and trauma relief method on the internet and freely available to all of us.  I had no idea that there are so many people whose lifestyle includes these five-minutes stress-busting routines, three or more times a day; routines which produce phenomenal results in 96 countries; a method being taught to children, by children, in Somalia; a method bringing huge relief to victims of tsunamis, hurricanes, genocide, and more; a method that takes only minutes to learn and use, yet can eliminate chronic pains and nightmares which have defied other treatments for decades.

It just sounds and looks way too simple, and it is very easy to imagine that this must be bogus.  Energy meridiens, acupuncture treatment points, tapping, really?
Thing is, it works, whether or not you believe it will.

There are many demonstrations of TFT on YouTube and Facebook. There are also demonstrations and explanations of spin-off variants of tapping therapy, such as Emotional Freedom Therapy (EFT).

Here, I have embedded YouTube video in which a college student demonstrates a daily TFT stressbusting routing and a related technique called "collarbone breathing".


If you are interested in checking-out more stories about the life-changing impact that TFT has had on seriously traumatized people all around the world, check out the videos at http://www.tfttraumarelief.wordpress.com


If you want to research and decide for yourself whether TFT is something you want to incorporate into your own lifestyle, the book "Tapping the Healer Within" is a very accessible resource, filled with stories and supported by online resources.  Also check out the resources at Dr. Callahan's home site http://www.rogercallahan.com/

I am convinced that anyone who battles with the effects of trauma or suffers from other sources and types of stress could benefit significantly from trying TFT.  If that includes you, I strongly recommend that you check it out.

If you do give TFT a try, please come back and share your experiences.

Thinking like a squirrel...

If you have never taken an interest in feeding the birds - and only the birds - then you may not have particularly noticed what deep thinkers (and awesome acrobats) squirrels can be.
I used to think that all I had to do was hang a baffle over the top of whatever feeder I hung in the tree.  If they set foot on it, it would tip them off, surely.  Even if it didn't tip, they could not possibly climb past it, down to the feeder, so just as good.
The first few times that I watched that squirrel slide down the baffle, and flip around onto the feeder below, I was astounded.  Surely, this squirrel was uniquely talented.  Still, no sense letting him empty-out my feeder so quickly, so I move the feeder over to the eaves of my house, far from the bushes and trees.  Since it was a wooden feeder, I also very cleverly stapled a shiny plastic binder cover onto the lid.  Now if he got onto the roof of the feeder, he would just slip straight off, right?
My dog apparently spent every day on my bed, looking out through the window at this feeder, and going berserk watching the squirrel simply run up the front of my house (scratching the heck out of the facia) and jumping onto the plasticized roof, flipping down onto the feeder, lifting the lid, climbing in, and gorging himself.
OK, so I moved the feeder again, onto the basketball net - far up in the air on a pole they can't climb.
Who knew that squirrels could jump so far?  Not very hard to leap from house roof to birdhouse roof, apparently.
So obsessed did I become, with striving to defeat this squirrel-brained tormentor that my family decided that the merciful thing to do was to gift me the most squirrel-proof bird feeder solution that they could find.
For the past three months of deadly winter, their kind and generous gift has bravely stood the test of the local hoards of hungry and creative squirrels.  Judging from their latest antics, I can tell it is only a matter of time before I am going to have to move it again (it is presently on a six-foot pole, protected by a 21" tall baffle, six feet from the house or any nearby tree.  Today, they were standing at the edge of the house, working up the courage to jump.  Only a matter of time...)
It is like that show, "Are you smarter than a fifth-grader?"
Most days, I think I am smarter than the above average squirrel, though I have been proven wrong before...

Given the huge variety of "squirrel proof" bird feeders in the market, I am betting that I am not alone in my bemused frustration.  In fact, I am willing to bet that anyone who has read this far can relate more than a few amusing stories of your own on this theme.
If you still retain some faith that the collective minds of the men and women reading this blog can combine to defeat the most wiley squirrel horde, then I have a proposal for you:

I have started a new blog, dedicated to the topic of squirrel-proofing bird feeders.
I will gather and analyse every bit of information that I can find, about our wiley foe and how he defeats our best efforts. I will also invite my visitors and followers to vote on various relevant topics, and I will post the results and your comments on the new blogsite, along with lessons learned and links to our most successful countermeasures.  If you have ideas and requests for other ways we should use this new site, please comment - here or there - and I will make it happen.

If you have personal experience with any of the products that I post, please tell us what you can, about what works and what doesn't.   Together, I have faith that we can save everyone a lot of frustration, by finding the truly squirrel-proof feeder - a combination, I am sure, of both bird feeder design and placement.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I also hope and ask that if you enjoy these posts, and if you are moved to purchase any of the profiled products, then please use these affiliate links to access and purchase them at Unbeatable Sale, Inc.  If you can find a better price (and that would be hard), they promise to match it.

Based on my research to-date (ably supported by YouTube subscribers the world over), the most robust and reliable squirrel proof bird feeder on the market today is Brome Bird Care Squirrel Buster Plus Green 1024.

The embedded video below was posted to YouTube by Brome Bird Care themselves.  So far, I have not found any other posting that shows a squirrel defeating this feeder.  If you can find (or post) a video of a squirrel defeating this feeder, please share a link in the comments below.  If that happens, I will be sure update this post.

Attitude + Athenticity + Awareness = Awesome

Neil Pasricha promotes a very simple and accessible approach to happiness:

1. Choose to maintain a positive attitude, whatever happens (ok - that one might not be simple for some of us, but when you realize and believe it is a matter of choice entirely within your control, then simple it becomes...)
2. Be authentic - don't pretend to be who or what you are not
3. Practice total awareness - be completely and intensely present and open (look once again with wide-eyed wonder through the eyes of your inner 3-yr old self, and take in the world around you, as if for the first time)

We can all remember and renew the wonder with which we once experienced our world - open or start your gratitude journal, cast your mind back to a simpler time, and riff on the experience of  - clean socks, a warm bath, the view from a mountain peak, crisp white snow, a thrilling roller coaster ride, a juicy orange, the smell of wet earth, hands plunging through warm beach sand, holding hands, whispering, a babbling brook, birdsong, ...


And before the book, there was the blog, http://1000awesomethings.com/ 
If you find all this "positivity" just plain annoying, or polyanna-ish, or head-in-the-sand, then spend a few minutes just browsing the headlines in his blog, and listen to your inner child - let yourself believe once more, it's awesome...

Bent funny

 Terry Border is a professional commercial photographer with a "bent" for puns and a talent for humourous images.



If you like what you see in this embedded video from GEL 2008, then you might want to trip on over to his blog and check-out his profile, here on Blogspot http://bentobjects.blogspot.com/



Terry Border at Gel 2008 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

"Poof" at GEL 2010 - 3:1 Instructor ratios yield 24:1 Kill ratios, at Topgun

This week, I made four interesting discoveries:
1. A Mr. Mark Hurst has established a conference and a community - Good Experience Live (GEL) exploring "good experience" in all its forms - in art, business, technology, society, and life.
2. GEL make those good experiences available to everyone with Internet access, through their website at http://www.gelconference.com/
3. The US Naval flying school Topgun has a forty-year history of studying, understanding and realizing continuous improvement through teamwork.
4. There is a $25 fine for any Topgun instructor who ever mentions the movie.

In this 18 minute video presentation from GEL2010, Commander David "Poof" Harris - 20 years a Naval pilot and 7 years a TopGun instructor - provides an informative briefing on the TopGun training system and how they achieve their remarkable results. 
Their methods are costly, but undeniably effective, in the delivery of training and maintaining balance.  Every outcome - for better or worse - is analysed for what can be learned, and internalized into continuous improvement.  Relationship management and change management are key elements of their system, and every bit as important as skills management and training.
What can you model from their example, to improve the results of your team?


David Harris at Gel 2010 (former TOPGUN instructor) from Gel Conference on Vimeo.



If you would like to learn more about the real Topgun experience, from one of their instructor's perspective, you may be interested to read Topgun Days, by David "Bio" Baranek.  Be warned, though - it could cost you a $25 fine, if you mention this book to a Topgun pilot; in August 1985, Bio was assigned to combine his day-to-day flight duties with participation in a Pentagon-blessed project to film action footage for a major Hollywood movie focusing on the lives, loves, heartbreaks, and triumphs of young fighter pilots: Top Gun.

On Lean Startups and Fighter Pilots - Boyd, Blank and Ries

It always interests me when I find familiar concepts in unexpected places.

A few years ago, while working within a defence industry research team, I was introduced to a very elegant model of how to think, to ensure success in head-to-head combat.

The model was proposed and refined by a Col John Boyd (1927-1997); an F-15 fighter pilot in the US Airforce, during the Korean war, and later an advisor to the Pentagon. Boyd is credited with having contributed pivotal thinking that lead to the very successful F-16 and F-18 programs.  Boyd  called his model the Conceptual Spiral.  It is perhaps more "commonly" known as "the OODA Loop." 

This week, I found the OODA Loop embedded in presentations by Eric Ries and by Steve Blank, who have adapted this same model to describe a method for guiding startups through the process of converging on a product and a marketplace, with minumum resource burn rate by design not by crisis.

If you have an hour, the interest and the patience, a series of videos on Youtube introduces Col Boyd, and captures a lecture on the Conceptual Spiral, by Col Boyd himself.  In that presentation, he explains that his inspiration for the OODA Loop came from the realization that if - in the heat of a dogfight - he could trap his opponent in a reactive thought spiral, and always be ahead of the opponent in that spiral, then he would always win the engagement. 

Boyd's OODA spiral thought model spirals repeatedly through four sequential stages: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.  It drives success because the one (person, team, company, country, etc..) that passes around this loop faster and more effectively than the other(s), always has the advantage over the other(s).

If the names Steve Blank and Eric Ries are not already familiar to you, and if you have an interest in Agile Software, Web 2.0, Lean Product Development, etc., then I think this blog will be a lucky find for you.

Steve Blank is a professor at Stanford University, and a self-described serial entrepreneur who is credited with having lead at least eight (8) startup companies in Silicon Valley. Steve Blank developed the concept of a Customer Development process, which he describes in his book, "The four steps to the epiphany".
Eric Ries has trademarked the term "Lean Startup' (TM), and is partnered with Steve Blank in a couple of ventures.

One of those partnerships resulted in the popular 3D Chat site IMVU (a company that went from $0 to $1M/month, in 6 months, using the Lean Startup model.) Another is their ongoing Lean Startup (TM) consulting, helping others learn and leverage the Customer Development process as front-end to the Agile Software Development eXtreme Programming (XP) process.  When the Customer (marketplace, business model, value proposition) is unknown or uncertain, and the solution is unknown or uncertain, then they strongly recommend following this commercial adaptation of the OODA loop thought process, and they present convincing case studies drawn from their own experiences, to show how it is done. 

In this video, Eric Ries (CTO of IMVU) addresses the Govt 2.0 conference in 2009, providing a clear nine-minute elevator speech on what is a Lean Startup and why you need to learn more about it. You will find several versions of Eric's presentation materials posted to a site called "slideshare"

In this video (one part of a nine part series on YouTube), Steve Blank performs his own 3-minute elevator speech overview on the importance and relevance of the Customer Development process.

NOTE: The above videos are short teasers. There are more detailed videos on Youtube, but you will need to devote an hour or more to watching them.  If that excites you, great! See this series of three 19 minute videos, from Startup2Startup, along with a copy of the charts they are speaking to, as found on slideshare.net.

Slides:

Customer Development at Startup2Startup

View more presentations from steve blank.

Video Part 1 :

Video Part 2 :

Video Part 3 :


Both Eric and Steve observe repeatedly that the Lean Startup and Customer Development processes are NOT uniquely of value to software startup companies.  The exact same thinking can be successfully applied withint a brand new product development/launch activity inside a large legacy company.

If these two entrepreneurs are correct observing that the horrific failure rate of early startup phase enterprises is inevitable when those startups are planned and managed using traditional large company methods, what is the key message for large companies whose future absolutely relies on innovative new product launches??

A Final Note to Fighter Pilots (and their fans) - If you scanned this blog hoping for more info about fighter piltos, and a pointer to Boyd's OODA loop is not enough, follow this link to watch a 1-hr presentation by Steve Blank on the history of Silicon Valley, and be treated to a history of Electronic Warfare and Intelligence (ELINT) in WWII Europe and Cold War America.

Postscript: This week, I found a webinar by Eric Ries posted on the Lean Enterprise Institute webinar site (http://www.lean.org/Events/WebinarHome.cfm) - see "Lessons from Lean Startups".

OMG! Heaven, Hell, Same-Same; Ketut, Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie

Ok, as blog post titles go, this one does not pass any of the acid tests for excellent headlines, but the moment when you are having an epiphany is not the time to be critical of such small things...

If you are following the NBC series, "Breakthrough, with Tony Robbins" and if you are following-up on the  backstory of each episode at Tony`s companion website (http://www.breakthroughinsiders.com/), then you may have heard Tony make reference to "The Work" of Byron Katie.  In his follow-up to Episode 2, Tony describes a phonecall between himself and Ron, in which Tony used The Work of Byron Katie - four questions and a turn-around - to lead Ron to a huge breakthrough realization.
Tony then goes on to assign "The Work" as homework to all of us who are following the personal breakthrough training that Tony is delivering for free on this website, in parallel with the tv series.

As it happens, I have a copy of Byron Katie`s 6-CD set titled, "Your Inner Awakening- The Work of Byron Katie: Four questions that will transform your life."  It has been a while since I last worked through her program, so I popped it into my car CD player today, thinking I would refresh myself on The Work straight from the horse`s mouth, so to speak.  On CD-1, Katie is describing a time in her life when she is suffering from extreme psychosis, self-loathing and depression, thinking she needs to die to escape her suffering. She is over 200lbs and living in a half-way house where they are helping her to cope with her illness. She is sleeping in an attic room, because the other guests at the house voted her as far as possible away from them.  She is sleeping on the floor because she does not think she deserves a bed.  A cockroach crawls over her foot, and she awakens -

"In the place of all that darkness - that horrendous darkness and depression and hopelessness - in that moment, it was gone! and there was a joy and a clarity and a miraculous experience that I can`t describe. There are no words for that kind of scene/experience. [In that moment, I saw that when I believed my thoughts, that I suffered and when I question my thoughts, I don't suffer.  I have come to see that this is true for every human being.  There is no one that can not answer a question.]  I had no identity in that moment. It's as though I had never seen what I was seeing, before, and I had no name for any of it. It's as though something was looking out of my eyes - and the eye was dead - and what was looking out of "her" eyes was new.  It was new; so new. I can't even say "child-like" because it wasn't even a child; it was new.  I could say, "It was born".  It was so amazingly...empty.  It's like it rose - the woman rose - and began to walk, but it didn't know it was a woman. And you know to people listening to this it could sound totally insane, and actually it was the extreme opposite. It was such peace and such joy and excitement at everything it saw and then it walked directly to a mirror and looked into it, and it saw the eyes of the woman - and it simply is the experience and it is the only way I can describe it - it looked into the mirror and it saw the eyes of the woman and in that there was a connection that was almost like lightning or a spark. It was an experience, but it just merged. It merged, and took on a life. It's like it became one with that... For example, maybe someone came in and said, "Katie, you're late.", and that's how I knew that I was Katie.  I had no idea that I was a Katie or anything.  It would look around, and then somehow it knew that it wasn't the wall or the floor or the lightbulb or the window; that they were talking to "this". And so I began to take on an identification..."

What struck me most while I was listening to Katie describe her awakening was that I recognized two very similar-sounding passages - between which my mind insists upon drawing a significant relationship. 
To my mind, there is a blindingly clear and arrow-straight line between the above experience and the following two passages:


Eckhart Tolle, in his book, "The Power of Now; A guide to spiritual enlightenment" begins the Introduction of his book with a powerful personal story of a time in his life when he too was haunted by darkness, depression, and suicidal thinking -

"...I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread...The most loathsome thing of all... was my own existence. What was the point in conyinuing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live."

Then Tolle describes a breakthrough moment, in remarkably similar in nature and impact to the experience that Katie describes -

"...I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy.  It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated.  I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words "resist nothing," as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that."

"I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window. I had never heard such a sound before. My eyes were still closed, and I saw the image of a precious diamond. Yes, is a diamond could make a sound, this is what it would be like. I opened my eyes. The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains.  Without any thought, I felt, I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize.  That soft luminousity filtering through the curtains was love itself. Tears came into my eyes. I got up and walked through the room, and yet I knew that I had never truly seen it before. Everything was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence. I picked up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and aliveness of it all.  That day, I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world."

Different specifics, yes, but what I find connected between these two stories is that both of these now iconic guiding spirits of our age went through what one could literally describe as "Hell on Earth", and both came out describing an experience that sounds so much like the state of enlightenment which mastery of meditation is said to enable.


And it is from that observation that my mind then draws its arrow-straight epiphany to the following passage from the Elizabeth Gilbert book, "Eat, Pray and Love"

In this passage, Gilbert is speaking with the medicine man in Bali, about meditation, divinity and human nature. 

- "The other day the medecine man told me that he knows sixteen different meditation techniques, and many mantras for all different purposes.  Some of them are to bring peace or happiness, some of them are for health, but some of them are purely mystical - to transport him into other realms of consciousness. For instance, he said, he knows one meditation that takes him to "up".

  'To up?', I asked.  'What is to up?'

  'To seven levels up', he said, 'To heaven.'

  Hearing the familiar idea of 'seven levels,' I asked him if he meant that his meditation took him up through the seven chakras of the body, which are discussed in Yoga.

  'Not chakras,' he said. 'Places.  This meditation takes me seven places in universe. Up and up. Last place I go is heaven.'

  I asked, 'Have you been to heaven, Ketut?'

  He smiled.  Of course he had been there, he said.  Easy to go to heaven.

  'What is it like?'

  'Beautiful. Everything beautiful is there. Every person beautiful is there. Every beautiful to eat is there. Everything is love there. Heaven is love'

  Then Ketut said he knows another meditation. 'To down.'  This down meditation takes him seven levels below the world. This is a more dangerous meditation. Not for beginning people, only for a master.

  I asked, 'So if you go up to heaven in the first meditation, then in the second meditation, you must go down to...?'

  'Hell', he finished the statement.

  This was interesting. Heaven and hell aren't ideas I've heard discussed very much in Hinduism. Hindus see the universe in terms of karma, a process of constant circulation, which is to say that you don't really 'end up' anywhere at the end of your life - not in heaven or hell - but just get recycled back to the earth again in another form, in order to resolve whatever relationships or mistakes you left uncompleted last time..."

"...But here Ketut was talking about heaven and hell in a different way, as if they are real places in the universe which he has actually visited. At least I think that's what he meant.

  Trying to get clear on this, I asked, 'You've been to Hell, Ketut?'

  He smiled. Of course he's been there.

  'What's it like in hell?'

  'Same like heaven,' he said.

He saw my confusion and tried to explain. 'Universe is a circle, Liss.'

  I still wasn't sure I understood.

  He said, 'To up, to down - all same at end.'

 I remembered an old Christian mystic notion: As above, so below. I asked, 'Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?'

  'Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places.  Hell, you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss.' He laughed.

I asked, 'You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell - the destinations - are the same thing anyway?'

  'Same - same,' he said. 'Same in end, so better to be happy on journey.'

======================================================

So - that's all the evidence I have, on which to base my epiphany. 

It might seem like a stretch for some, but for me, I think Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie have both been to Hell, through extreme prolonged agonizing mental obsessive stress, and when they got very good at meditating in their deepest darkest place, I think they broke through [accidentally?] to a "happy place" on the other side.

What do you think?

If you know of other similar stories, please share them here.
If you want to learn more about any of these fascinating people and their unique yet somehow common stories, just click on the icons to find their books or CDs on Amazon.com.  I own all three of these references, and I strongly recommend them all.