CHAPTER 7

Neuro-Wellness Rituals to Break Through Crises

Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.

—Swedish Proverb

After two years of nursing his wife through her cancer treatments and checking in on his elderly parents, Jack feels like he’s about to break. So much about his life is good, and Jack is grateful—especially now that his wife is in remission—but he’s worried that life is slipping by and he’s not making the most out of it. He’s afraid that he’s missing out on some essential element of happiness. There’s an inexplicable echo in the back of his mind, an ache for..something. Well aware of how quickly one’s health can turn for the worse, he’s worried that he may not have time to discover what that something is, and he’s feeling every tick of the clock.

Is your worry about what might have been standing in the way of having a deeper connection to what is? To the people you love? To a deeper meaning to life? This chapter will help you relieve your worry by helping you use a neuro-wellness process that allows you to listen deeply to your yearnings and desires, appreciate what you have, and clear a path toward a no-regrets life.

Neuro-Wellness Allows Us to Enjoy Life

You don’t have to be dealing with a crisis like Jack’s to forget to take care of yourself. Our culture almost demands it. Many people are so busy achieving their goals and taking care of others that they neglect themselves, forgoing exercise, vacations, hobbies, and even family time so they can squeeze every last minute of productivity out of their day. But as we get older and face empty nests or retirement, many of us worry about our mortality, about whether we’ve made the right choices, about whether “this” is all there is, and about whether we’ll have time to recapture all the dreams we put aside. Worries like these have caused many a mid-life crisis. Head them off at the pass with self-care rituals of neuro-wellness, a tool that helps you create a sense of connection to yourself and takes your brain out of its busy Beta state into the placid, contented Alpha comfort. Self-care can be as simple as sitting alone in your favorite chair with a book or walking the dog. It’s any activity whose only purpose is to make you relaxed, calm, and more connected to life. Worry naturally subsides during these exercises. The more you incorporate these rituals into daily life, the more you condition your mind to stay in calmer states even under stress.

How Neuro-Wellness Yields Insight

Jack’s demanding and stressful situation had led him into the kind of existential crisis that most of us eventually experience in some form. Illness, the demands of providing food and shelter, and tragedy are a part of even the happiest life, and they can often make us question our choices and reevaluate our assumptions about and plans for the future. When Jack came to us, he had many conflicting feelings. On one hand he wanted to take care of his wife, but on the other hand he resented that some of his needs weren’t being met, and he was worried that his existence would be defined in unending caregiving. At this time in his life he had thought he’d be furthering his education and starting his own business, but those plans were now on hold. He didn’t have the energy to take on coursework, nor could he take the risk of not having a salary. He was also disappointed that he and his wife couldn’t take any of the trips they’d once planned.

We encouraged Jack to talk about his frustration and reassured him that his uncomfortable feelings were normal. As he spoke, tears welled up in his eyes while he released the pent-up tension he could not share with his wife because of her weakened condition. We asked Jack to talk about the trips he’d wanted to take with his wife and what those adventures might have done for his relationship. He said it would have been romantic and would have brought them closer. We asked him to think about how he felt as he was taking care of his wife during the worst of her illness. He paused and said, “I felt very close to her and didn’t want to lose her.” The worry over losing her had heightened his awareness of how important she was to him. Jack realized that while no one would wish his wife’s illness on anyone, in the midst of a scary and demanding situation, he had experienced the very core of what he wanted to feel with his wife: intimacy. Jack fondly remembered how the two of them gazed at each other when he would tend to her, deepening a sense of their love. Finding a safe place with us to vent his frustrations had also allowed him to recognize that some good might have come from the whole ordeal, but he was worried that life would pass him by. His personal needs were not being met.

Jack felt exhausted. Worse yet, he felt under threat from potentially being alone and worried about not getting to live his life. We asked him to consider what he’d need to regain his energy and to feel fulfilled. Some time alone, he replied emphatically. He had not taken any time for himself since his wife had gotten sick. We weren’t surprised. People often become hyper-focused when they find themselves in the midst of a crisis that demands their intense attention. Jack worried that he had lost himself in the process of trying hard to be loving and supportive. The fear and sense of personal responsibility can become so great that we may not ask for assistance from friends, family, or neighbors. And we can become so used to living this way that even when circumstances improve, we may still have a difficult time recalibrating and broadening our focus of attention. Jack wondered if now might be a good time to try.

We suggested he take a week off and sign up for a meditation retreat where he could focus on himself, catch up on sleep, and come to terms with his worry thoughts and feelings that time might be running out for him. But he had used up too much of his employer’s good will; he wasn’t comfortable asking for yet more time off. That was fine, we assured him. Even taking a single weekend morning off by himself would be a step in the right direction of neuro-wellness.

To achieve neuro-wellness, we have to allow ourselves to engage in the kind of self-care exercises that reduce stress, change unhealthy patterns, and create synergy among the mind, body, and brain. Jack could do whatever he liked—take a walk, see a movie, head to the gym, have breakfast with friends—so long as it was entirely pleasant and stress-free. In addition, it was imperative that Jack slow down, even just for a few minutes per day, and meditate. A few minutes of daily meditation promotes the healthiest states of mind. When you can be fully in the present without judgment or expectation—which is the goal of most meditation practice—you minimize suffering and stress and become more aware of what makes you feel alive.

We offered Jack two meditation strategies. The first is called “coherent breathing” a tool to bring both the sympathetic system and parasympathetic system into balance and that results in a synchrony of Alpha frequency throughout the brain. It takes very little time to make you feel great. It’s not very hard: Sit straight with good posture, relax the face, jaw, chin, and tongue, and slow your breathing to six seconds of inhalation, belly out, followed by six seconds of exhalation, belly in. Immediately you will begin to create profound relaxation. Within one cycle of coherent breathing (six seconds inhalation, six seconds, exhalation) the amplitudes of Alpha immediately rise.¹ Once you feel calm, imagine breathing through your heart while remembering someone or something you care about deeply. The research clearly shows this approach quickly leads to inner balance.²

The second meditation breathing exercise Jack could have tried was called the “relaxation response,” devised by Herbert Benson of the Harvard Medical School. It is useful in longer meditations. This one is not hard, either: Sit in a relaxed position, and with your eyes closed visualize the number 1 on your mental screen. As you exhale slowly, imagine the 1 moving farther out into the distance. As you breathe in, bring the 1 back to the forefront. Your mind will chatter, so let your thoughts come and go, but keep gently bringing your mind back to the number 1. Start practicing this exercise for five minutes a day and work up to 20 minutes.³ Your mind’s chatter will eventually slow down.

Meditation naturally moves the mind to a place of greater joy and connection, and decreases the frequency of worry—because our emotions develop according to what we pay attention to. Paying attention to negative experiences makes them bigger; paying attention to positive experiences expands their intensity and frequency (or rather, our ability to notice them). Taking the time to notice small things like the feel of the breeze on our skin or noticing our breath as it gently comes in and goes out places our attention in the present moment and displaces worry thoughts.

With his wife’s blessing, Jack slept late the following weekend and spent most of rest of his time reading inspirational literature. He also began a daily meditation practice. The next time we saw him, he had found new perspective. He realized how precious his time with his wife had become. Though it was painful to deal with her treatment and worry around losing her, for him the real meaning in life was to relate, connect, and share intimate experiences with family, even if the time he had might be shorter than he hoped. This was his purpose beyond what money he could make, or things he could acquire, or accolades he might win. But he had also become aware that his needs for creative self-expression weren’t getting met. He had always wanted to be a sculptor. As a young man he had focused on his artistry and won many awards, but the demands of life had made him put his pursuit on the back burner. He didn’t realize how not expressing himself had creatively dulled his spirit and increased his worry. Without a personal creative pursuit, his tendency was to hover over his wife. She was doing much better, though, and with his new perspective, Jack began to think about how he could make some adjustments and incorporate his passion back into his own life.

Focus on You to Change Your Future

Like Jack, having too many responsibilities can numb you to daily life and cause you to dissociate in order to function in the world. You might not realize it, but when you’re overwhelmed your feelings and body sensations dampen, and your joyful moments disappear, giving more room for worry to set in and giving negative events greater meaning. Engaging in self-care rituals of neuro-wellness helps us create deep connections and lessens our need to worry, generating subtle changes that transform and shift us into the best version of ourselves. It allows you to begin to recognize small opportunities that show up and signal the opening of a new future. You start to act from your best future self, and your present becomes the future you imagined with less worry about how to create it. That’s what happened to Jack. He set up his own sculpting studio, and with new excitement, he began a new project. Three months later, he began to seriously think about developing his own business.

Find Your Pause Button

Sometimes we forgo self-care because we feel like we’re just too busy, but often we actively damage our bodies by leaning on addictive behaviors or substances to help us cope with a life shock. And sometimes our addictions can actually cause the life shock. Whether it’s to food, drink, sex, or anything else, addiction will clobber you with its consequences. The only upside is that once you hit rock bottom, and you will, it, like all other life shocks, it will give you the opportunity for deep self-examination. But if you don’t have a full-blown addiction yet, you can choose to make a change before you’re hit with devastating results, like starting to drink alcohol before late afternoon. It’s about developing what Pamela Peeke, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland, author, food addiction expert, and long-time meditator, calls an internal pause button. If you can use one to delay an impulse, such as overeating or drinking, you are less likely to follow through on the thought.¹⁰

Good habit-forming self-care like exercise and meditation can help develop your internal pause button. Exercise teaches you to put mind over matter when you feel discomfort, or distracts you from it altogether. It feels great (when you’re done) in the short term, and it gives you confidence as you look and feel better over time. Meditation teaches you to notice how your sensations arise and fade without judgment, or telling yourself a story, which fades worry and changes your thinking over time. Exercise and meditation teach you to notice your thoughts without acting on them, which gives you a greater ability to hit the pause button. For example, let’s say you have a thought that something is wrong with you physically. You can begin to worry and ruminate about this potential problem but choose not to visit your physician. Meditation reduces stress and keeps reactivity at bay. You will be more likely to follow through with checking out a worrisome symptom without ruminating on it. Then, you acknowledge the thoughts, make a plan of action, and let the worry thoughts pass. When a worry thought rises, because you enjoy a calmer mind you learned from training the mind, you let it go.

In addition, exercise and meditation can enhance your energy, drive, creativity, and introspection, which increases your happiness. This decreases your worries, which increases your ability to stay in control of your life. By doing any of the neuro-wellness activities of self-care, you repattern your brain to turn on different neural circuits. As these neural pathways activate, they help you regain the internal resources that allow you to believe Winnie-the-Pooh’s wise words: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

A lot of worry stems from fear of the unknown. But as Joseph Campbell said, “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”¹¹ Here again, self-care can help. It doesn’t have to be physical activity. It could involve changing your diet, leaving a dysfunctional relationship, changing a dead-end job, or giving up knocking on a closed door to get into the “in” crowd. If you can face your worry that things might be worse than the way things are, and jump into the risky abyss of change, doors can open that you would never have anticipated. By leaving something familiar, there is always regret. Moving into something new always provides both anticipation and awkwardness until the new becomes familiar. At their most effective, meditation and exercise can give us access to the deeper aspects of the self.

Deep Self

The deep self is that psychological, philosophical, and spiritual dimension innate in all humans that expresses itself in wisdom and understanding. As Jack became calm, the nature of his worry dissolved because he no longer saw the world in dualities. His choice was no longer to either take care of his wife and sacrifice everything he wanted to do, or live out his dream. By being willing to accept his own struggle and frustration, Jack realized a number of things. One was that there is great meaning in mundane and demanding caretaking chores. Two, taking care of his wife didn’t mean he needed to exhaust himself beyond reason. Three, he could find help from others and free up his time to focus on his own creative and spiritual needs. The growth that he could find in self-care activities energized him and allowed more intimacy between Jack and his wife. He discovered an inner compass that was freed from either-or thinking and his worry began to melt away.

Lack of worry didn’t mean he no longer had any concerns, of course. But he felt more confident in his ability to cope with them. His new mindset—feeling connected to his deeper self and to others, recapturing his creative spark, and integrating a sense of internal purpose—allowed him to move toward creative actions and out of a compulsive worry loop. He was finally functioning as the person he had always wanted to be.

Deep Listening

As Jack began to slow himself down, he listened to his inner desires and noticed the signals his body was giving when he was tired. Before the meditation, he could not honor his own physical signals and respond appropriately. We call this process “deep listening,” and it helps you connect with the deeper aspects of your self. Deep listening is being curious about your thoughts and feelings without judgment or trying to control or change them. By using a respectful inner ear, you witness your thoughts and feelings. If you have never given yourself this kind of attention, it may be difficult at first to be gracious with yourself and just listen. If you’re reading this book, your usual habit is probably to debate, argue, and struggle with your thoughts and feelings, and then worry about them. But if you can move into a deeper place inside yourself and really listen in a contemplative frame of mind, you will begin to respect yourself more. You can even respect your worry thoughts more without self-criticism. When you engage in deep listening through meditation, you often become conscious that you’ve been holding on to old limiting ideas. That awareness allows you to release the worry and stop struggling. As a result, you can be more relaxed and caring toward yourself.

Bill was once asked to lead a meditation at a Buddhist temple. He started the group out with a simple exercise of focusing on their breath. There was no air circulating in the room, and he became quite warm and began to perspire. As he started to sweat more profusely, he had a difficult time keeping his attention focused on his breathing. Bill became anxious and worried that he wasn’t modeling the meditation correctly. The more he worried that he wasn’t doing the exercise right, the more he perspired, and the more he struggled to focus. He began to fight internally with his own body signals.

Finally, Bill realized that he could change his mental state by changing his focus and thus his emotional circuit. He mentally followed the beads of sweat pouring down his face and thought the word sweating. This focus enabled him to relax and not fight the perspiration. In his mind’s eye, he observed the sweat as it rolled down his head, eventually falling on the nape of his neck. As it did this, he felt a slight chill. Had he been in a struggle with his thoughts, he wouldn’t have noticed the more pleasant feeling of coolness. He observed his body temperature alternating between very warm and cool. By shifting his focus, he no longer identified with someone who was uncomfortable and unable to follow his breath, so there was no struggle. Letting go of worry and the internal fight led to an insight. By turning on the emotional circuit of Curiosity (see Chapter 6), Bill dissolved his worry about not doing things correctly and his sweating, and his physiology, changed dramatically. By listening deeply to his sensations and thoughts without reacting to them, he completely changed the experience.

There is a fine line between dissociating from a sensation or blocking it out, and just observing what is happening. When we dissociate from something like pain, it may be more difficult to pay close enough attention and take appropriate action to care for ourselves physically. For example, prior to developing a meditation practice, Bill had begun to experience shoulder pain. His athletic background was permeated by the philosophy of “no pain, no gain,” with coaching instructions to worry if he wasn’t pushing himself beyond his limits. Hearing his former coaches’ voices in his head about it being important to drive yourself, Bill chose to ignore the discomfort he felt in his shoulder. He would dissociate from it and continue to go to the gym to lift weights. For a long time it was easy to dissociate from the pain, especially when he warmed up and the adrenaline began flowing. Eventually, however, he exercised in a way that turned an inflammation into a tear. Bill’s personal story that he should exercise through the pain enabled the dissociation and made the situation worse until he had no choice but to have surgery. When you don’t use deep listening with regard to your body, worry sometimes leads to poor decisions.

When you listen deeply to your desires and settle your worried mind, you can more easily see the future you want to live. And when you imagine a specific future, you are more likely to have creative ideas about how to embrace that future. Artists, musicians, businesspeople, inventors, and entrepreneurs do it all the time, guided by an inner knowledge that brings creativity into actuality. When this happens, it’s as if the music writes itself; the painting paints itself, and creative ideas pop into the mind like someone else whispered the thought. From his research with advanced fakirs in India, Dale Walters, a psychologist who worked with Elmer Green, father of biofeedback at Menninger’s in the 1970s, believes it is possible that this information comes from our connection to a universal “field of information” that is shared between and a part of every human being alive. He posited that intuition is actually our brains recalling information it has gleaned across time and space from the collective unconscious.¹²

Listening deeply to your intuition connects you to all that is, thus providing a strong sense of security. It’s why people with strong intuitions don’t worry about the things they intuit as much as those who don’t trust or pay much attention to theirs.

One of our clients struggled with her heightened intuition. She was able to feel people’s pain when she shared the same space with them, such as at church or the office. This experience was so uncomfortable for her that she actually felt physical pain. She worried that picking up on others’ feelings would become unbearable. Knowing that empaths (people with high intuitive ability) have dominant Theta waves, we suggested she let us hook her up to our EEG system to check her brain out. Sure enough, with her eyes open she produced more Theta than any other brain frequency. We knew the key to her feeling more comfortable was to learn how to regulate this slow brain frequency. She learned to use deep listening, which would give her the ability to allow information in when she wanted it, and an ability to leave it out when she didn’t.

The only problem with teaching her how to manage her dominant brain waves better was the risk of losing her intuitive ability if she didn’t stay with the mental training she did at home. Her positive premonitions had led her to make good decisions in many areas of life, and she wanted to keep her internal guide.

To start, we suggested that she notice what happened to her mind when she focused on mundane activities like reconciling her bank account or grocery shopping with a list, which should lower the slow frequency amplitudes and raise her Beta brain waves. In fact, this activity lessened her intuitive ability. She practiced switching her focus of attention back and forth to a cognitive activity and then to a state of intuitive receptiveness until she felt more in control of her attention. She practiced making a mental grocery list and then shifting into a deeply relaxed state to tune into another person in the same room with her. If she noticed feeling discomfort from feeling another person’s pain, she moved her attention away. Her own deep listening to her levels of comfort became a signal for shifting attention. She learned how to control her focus of attention just like changing radio stations. As she learned how to be in control of tuning in to others, the discomfort disappeared, and she developed more flexibility in shifting states through the act of deep listening.

Design New Adventures

Joseph Campbell said, “I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”¹³ Besides taking important self-care breaks, you can keep worries and insecurities at bay by giving yourself interesting and novel experiences. Exploring new places, different cultures, philosophies, or subjects of interests can enliven your life and expand your mind. What have you done in the past to feel alive, and what new adventures would you would like to have? If you have no clue, try a new adventure for a start, maybe something you always wanted to do but never dared. It will raise your level of excitement and give you newfound energy.

Self-Connection and Shared Connection

Self-connection gives you more choice over your internal states, perspectives, and personal decisions, shutting down worry. It also allows you to become hyper-aware of your sensations and surroundings, expanding your feeling of being fully alive.

If you have ever had the experience of communicating with a pet, you can feel touched with affection and appreciation. When our cat wants us to wake up in the morning, she gently jumps on the bed, comes over to one of us, and carefully puts her paw lightly on one closed eye. This is shared connection. When you have intimate moments of connection, you develop a deep sense of being connected to all that is. When you worry, you separate yourself from connection.

One of our self-care practices is to gaze at a picture of the ocean at Esalen in Big Sur, California, on our computer. We can feel the shift to a calm mind whenever we look at it.

The scene reminds us of meeting a photographer, Andy, at Esalen when we were teaching there. Andy had an amazing experience sailing in his boat one day. It was something he did whenever he was was worried about anything. One day when he was struggling with a financial concern, he took his boat out in the ocean to take some photographs. A beautiful white whale surfaced ever so quietly next to him. It was stunning to see this huge creature. Then the whale moved around to see Andy clearly and looked deep into his eyes. It was one of those astounding moments of intimate connection that could never have been anticipated. Then the whale submerged. Andy noticed that his worry thoughts disappeared in the moment. The experience caused him to suspend his habitual pattern of worrying about money, redirect attention to this amazing encounter and later to the inner source of his upset, and let go of a habitual worry thought. It occurred to him to begin looking for these moments of connection in nature. As he took a number of photographs of these encounters, his photography business bloomed, and his financial concerns subsided. The most popular photos he sold were the whale looking at him and a variety of other intimate nature moments of animals connecting, and birds communicating with humans.

He kept going out in the ocean for months in hopes of seeing his new friend again. One day, when Andy was busy photographing the surrounding cliffs from his boat, a whale surfaced next to his vessel. He had the familiar coloring around his eyes that made Andy immediately recognize him. Andy smiled and said, “Hello, old friend. Nice to see you again.” Again he had that moment of connection, and eye-to-eye meeting that now communicated a sense of safe familiarity. This was an intimate moment. The awareness that ultimately you are connected with all things inoculates you against intense concerns, particularly when you feel all alone in a sea of worry. But the process of suspending an old way of thinking and redirecting attention to your inner stillness allows you to let go into a new way of paying attention without the worry.

Follow Your Heart

One day we were strolling along the River Walk in downtown San Antonio, a favorite place of ours, and by chance we stopped by an interesting shop that sold paintings, sculptures, and carvings. A carved wooden green dragon with scales and very long legs caught our attention. In Asian culture, the dragon is a symbol for the unconscious mind and protector of the individual. On the bottom of one foot was stamped a black sheep. We asked the storekeeper about the sculptor. He told us the artist was a young woman who grew up quite poor. Her family struggled with making ends meet, and they couldn’t support her heart’s calling to create beautiful art objects. The artist worried about disappointing her family, but worse, she really worried about disappointing herself. Her family wanted more security in her life than they had, and art wasn’t dependable. The artist yearned to support herself through her art, but she worried that her family was right; she would never make it. She went back and forth mentally over whether she should even try. But her desire to create was incredibly strong. So she snuck out of the house to create her designs. All the animals she carved had extremely long legs stamped with a black sheep. The long legs symbolized that you can rise above your troubles, and the black sheep was a reminder that even if you don’t fit in with your “tribe” you can always find a way to follow your heart and be successful. In following your heart, you move into deeper aspects of yourself. This artist set her worry aside, followed her heart’s desire, and became a popular sculptor.

Through the neuro-wellness exercises of self-care, mental training, and realizing your mind is really unlimited, you can become aware when worry holds you back from where you want to be in life. After you engage in some of these self-care rituals, don’t be disappointed if your mind goes back to your old worries. If that happens, repeat the rituals.

If you notice your thinking is out of whack again, try to name it. You can call it your “worry brain” or “funky thoughts,” or whatever you like. If you name your internal chatter before you get to the “uh-oh-here-comes-something-really-bad” response that sends your worry brain into the stratosphere, you’ll be able to better control your reaction. If you name the worry brain something funny, like “We’re off to see the Wizard,” you will immediately change your state, which will make your worry disappear, because you’ve put a space between your worry thought and your emotional reaction to it, giving you time to find a new response.

Generative Conversation

Taking time to rest and regenerate with individual self-care rituals is crucial to feeling alive, aware, and more present in your life. But these rituals work even better when you also collaborate with others. Connecting with others through conversation activates energy between people that stimulates ideas, feelings, awareness, and a sense of comfort. The conversation becomes generative; that is, it is a shared dialogue leading to the stimulation of more creative possibilities and sources of value. Our friends often give us new ideas and are always important to well-being.

Talking with others is another form of self-care because it promotes deeper understandings, connections, and perspectives that lead to acceptance (including of oneself), reflection, and being open to possibility. The focus is to listen with curiosity and examine suggestions to see what might fit your positive movement toward the future. When you have conversations that generate possibilities, you feel supported.

Power Thought: Calming your worries through neuro-wellness exercises of self-care allow you to become more present to yourself.

You have moved into deeper self-inquiry and focused on developing a deeper awareness of yourself, and what makes you feel alive. By taking the time for self-care, you enable profound experiences and self-acceptance that will sustain you in difficult times.

In the next chapter, we will look at how you keep your best internal states going and how to use an amazing key to align your mind, body, and heart.