Hug your way to a healthier Mind and Body!

Heal Your Mind and Body

By Raquel Smith

You can heal your mind and body through hugging.

Yes, you heard me correctly. Studies show that hugging heals everything from emotions to diseases. It is also a fact that touching triggers healing in our bodies. A great example is that of premature babies in the hospital.

The babies who are not touched regularly takes a longer time to develop or they may even die. The ones who are touched regularly feel the love and flourishes in top speed. Hugging keeps you healthy by strengthening the immune system. It also relieves stress and depression.

The dictionary defines hug as:

1. 1. To clasp tightly in the arms, with affection; embrace.
3. 2. To cling firmly or fondly to; cherish
5. 3. To keep close.

Hugging is a way of saying that you care to someone or even to yourself. Hugging is a natural part of us as humans. How come we don’t do it more often? If you can remember as a child you just loved hugging everyone and as you grew older you decided that hugging was not "adult." The fact is as we grow older the need for hugs grow with us, whether we accept that fact or not.

Virginia Satir, Family Therapist made this observation:

We need 4 hugs a day for survival.

We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance.

We need 12 hugs a day for growth.

Imagine that, we should be hugging at least 4 times per day just for survival. There may be some of you saying that you are single and you work from home. So, there is no way you can even get one hug per day. Oh contraire my friend. You can hug yourself. That’s right, it’s called self-hug. You can hug yourself as many times as you want. One person even noted that it is cheaper than getting a massage. This is where the healing comes in. By you hugging yourself, you are connecting with your spirit and being centered. You are showing yourself love which leads to you feeling better about yourself. The benefits that you get after that are innumerable.

Once you love yourself, then you can pass on that love to others. Once everyone gets into the practice of hugging a change in the environment follows. Once people start feeling good about themselves and others they can start the healing process of removing any dis-ease from their body.

There are several types of hugs, I will tell you about three in this article:

1. 1. The A-frame hug - this involves only the heads touching of each person. It is more formal in nature and generally used on new acquaintances or in a business setting.
3. 2. The Heart-Centered hug - it is considered to be the highest form of hugging. This involves full body contact by both parties. This form of hugging acknowledges each other from deep within. It is usually reserved for very close friends and family.
5. 3. The Self hug - this involves you hugging yourself. This hug allows you to show yourself love and compassion. It gives you a sense of self- worth.

Here are a few benefits of hugging; this list is by no means exhausted:

• Dispels loneliness
• Opens the door to feelings
• Eases tension
• Builds self-esteem
• Heals dis-ease
• Balances your emotions
• It is fun

As I mentioned earlier, hugging is the most natural thing to do. We got our first hug as soon as we came into this world by the person who delivered us. Hugging does not have to be looked on as sensual. It is merely giving support and showing compassion to each other. Think about it, when you are feeling down or not feeling well, you perk up immediately if someone gives you a hug. I am encouraging you today, to start practicing this "lost heart of hugging™." I said heart, hugging is from the heart. You are sharing from the heart. Remember to hug yourself first.

"We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can fly embracing each other."

Luciano de Creseenzo

© 2008 Raquel C. Smith, Values Alignment Coach

Raquel C. Smith, "The Values Alignment Coach," publishes the transformational Golden Life Living’ monthly ezine. If you’re ready to transform your life into a golden life and start living the life of your destiny, get your FREE ebook now at http://www.goldenlifecoaching.com/unstoppableconfidence.html

Amy Waterman on Relationships

Amy Waterman is a dating & relationships expert and author of the books ‘Save My Marriage Today’ and ‘How To Be Irresistible To Men‘.

She’s traveled far from her childhood on the coast of Oregon. In the past ten years, she’s run a marathon, served as a Peace Corps volunteer, earned a masters degree in writing from the University of Wales, and studied agriculture in the U.K., South America, and Australia. She’s currently settled down in New Zealand and enjoys its natural beauty, fantastic coffees and wines, and healthy lifestyle.

(source)

We’ve recently had an opportunity to have a conversation with her on about her own relationships, lifestyle, and her books.

Listen to the full Amy Waterman Open Lecture here (approx 40 mins)

OR

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD! (Right-click, Save-as)

Enjoyed the Amy Waterman Open Lecture? Find out more about her book “How to be Irresistible To Men”

It’s a woman’s to guide to attracting the right men or to reigniting passion in their existing relationships. It’s delightful to read, I’d definitely recommend checking it out.

Click Here To Find Out More

I love the kind of diversity that the New York Times newspaper has for their articles.

Have lots of fun and stay romantic!

Reinventing Date Night for Long-Married Couples

Long-married couples often schedule a weekly “date night” — a regular evening out with friends or at a favorite restaurant to strengthen their marital bond.

But brain and behavior researchers say many couples are going about date night all wrong. Simply spending quality time together is probably not enough to prevent a relationship from getting stale.

Using laboratory studies, real-world experiments and even brain-scan data, scientists can now offer long-married couples a simple prescription for rekindling the romantic love that brought them together in the first place. The solution? Reinventing date night.

Rather than visiting the same familiar haunts and dining with the same old friends, couples need to tailor their date nights around new and different activities that they both enjoy, says Arthur Aron, a professor of social psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The goal is to find ways to keep injecting novelty into the relationship. The activity can be as simple as trying a new restaurant or something a little more unusual or thrilling — like taking an art class or going to an amusement park.

The theory is based on brain science. New experiences activate the brain’s reward system, flooding it with dopamine and norepinephrine. These are the same brain circuits that are ignited in early romantic love, a time of exhilaration and obsessive thoughts about a new partner. (They are also the brain chemicals involved in drug addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder.)

Most studies of love and marriage show that the decline of romantic love over time is inevitable. The butterflies of early romance quickly flutter away and are replaced by familiar, predictable feelings of long-term attachment.

But several experiments show that novelty — simply doing new things together as a couple — may help bring the butterflies back, recreating the chemical surges of early courtship.

“We don’t really know what’s going on in the brain, but as you trigger and amp up this reward system in the brain that is associated with romantic love, it’s reasonable to suggest that it’s enabling you to feel more romantic love,” said the anthropologist Helen E. Fisher, of Rutgers, who has published several studies on the neural basis of romantic love. “You’re altering your brain chemistry.”

Over the past several years, Dr. Aron and his colleagues have tested the novelty theory in a series of experiments with long-married couples.

In one of the earliest studies, the researchers recruited 53 middle-aged couples. Using standard questionnaires, the researchers measured the couples’ relationship quality and then randomly assigned them to one of three groups.

One group was instructed to spend 90 minutes a week doing pleasant and familiar activities, like dining out or going to a movie. Couples in another group were instructed to spend 90 minutes a week on “exciting” activities that appealed to both husband and wife. Those couples did things they didn’t typically do — attending concerts or plays, skiing, hiking and dancing. The third group was not assigned any particular activity.

After 10 weeks, the couples again took tests to gauge the quality of their relationships. Those who had undertaken the “exciting” date nights showed a significantly greater increase in marital satisfaction than the “pleasant” date night group.

While the results were compelling, they weren’t conclusive. The experiment didn’t occur in a controlled setting, and numerous variables could have affected the final results.

More recently, Dr. Aron and colleagues have created laboratory experiments to test the effects of novelty on marriage. In one set of experiments, some couples are assigned a mundane task that involves simply walking back and forth across a room. Other couples, however, take part in a more challenging exercise — their wrists and ankles are bound together as they crawl back and forth pushing a ball.

Before and after the exercise, the couples were asked things like, “How bored are you with your current relationship?” The couples who took part in the more challenging and novel activity showed bigger increases in love and satisfaction scores, while couples performing the mundane task showed no meaningful changes.

Dr. Aron cautions that novelty alone is probably not enough to save a marriage in crisis. But for couples who have a reasonably good but slightly dull relationship, novelty may help reignite old sparks.

And recent brain-scan studies show that romantic love really can last years into a marriage. Last week, at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference in Albuquerque, researchers presented brain-scan data on several men and women who had been married for 10 or more years. Interviews and questionnaires suggested they were still intensely in love with their partners. Brain scans confirmed it, showing increased brain activity associated with romantic love when the subjects saw pictures of their spouses.

It’s not clear why some couples are able to maintain romantic intensity even after years together. But the scientists believe regular injections of novelty and excitement most likely play a role.

“You don’t have to swing from the chandeliers,” Dr. Fisher said. “Just go to a new part of a town, take a drive in the country or better yet, don’t make plans, and see what happens to you.”

By TARA PARKER-POPE from the New York Times.

source

The Top Productivity Blogs Collected by Social Rankings!

An incredible new website, Productivity Zen, identifies the top 15 productivity stories and blogs of the day by monitoring the buzz of the productivity blog community.

The developers of the site use a software called SocialRank to monitor each of the best productivity sites and determine the day’s hottest articles and bloggers in the field.

According to the SocialRank team:

This is done by analyzing how sites and users link, connect, and discuss each other’s content. Add a touch of math and what we have is a powerful filter into the hottest stories of the day.

Now you can find better productivity stories, learn more, and get updated… much faster and easier than before.

So far great sites like Zen Habits, Life Optimizer, Matt Idea, and Lifehack have been showing up on the top rankings for the site. But also some new faces that I urge all your productivity junkies to go check out!

It’s so nice to be able to find stuff from within the longtail without having to deal with the complications of technorati and the sheer bias some some social networking sites.

Want to know more about these great sites? Visit the links below:

SocialRank
Productivity Zen

Read these tips on seducing women if you’d like to be pegged as That Guy and doomed to a life of second class “relationships.”

Did that get your attention? Good, I’m about to save your hiney. I was perusing a little Net Drudgery today and due to some unforeseen power of Zeus came upon this delightful post on How to Make Women Laugh (I’m linking to it out of courtesy, because WOW, WHAT A PIECE OF UNREPENTED GARBAGE). After seeking more “advice” I was treated with this gem on Typical Mistakes Men Make at Clubs. Derek Vitalio, is there no filter between your head and mouth (or pen)? It takes a special man to dedicate that much energy towards offering overly simplistic solutions to an extremely trite topic. I can only hope you volunteer somewhere sweet on a very regular basis.

In any case, let me address his prose on dialoguing with women first, then I’ll address this protocol for living the dream at the club.

He apparently gets grilled quite often by dudes asking him how to be funny. Fine. A great philosophical question. But, the fact that he attempts to provide a serious answer should send up an enormous, extremely bright colored flag with fireworks in the background that the answer you’re about to waste precious moments of your life reading is… not worth it. Really. Not. Worth it.

Within the gaping astral blackness of that piece though, there happens to be a tiny nugget of wisdom which, bless your soul if you did in fact read it, you should take away. I’ll save you some time, it’s right here:

“The trick to being funny is forget “funny” and just be playful. If you’re playful, a girl will laugh. And the reason girls want to laugh is because they want to feel easy COMFORT around you.” (Source, in case you forgot)

In this statement are two key ideas, one which stems from the other. Derek fails to explain this derivation . Idea One: Girls want feel comfort. Idea Two: Girls want to laugh. Why do girls want to laugh? Because laughing means they are feeling comfortable; it is a signal. The more laughing, the more comfort, I’m led to believe. Are you with me?

No comfort –> No laughing
Comfort –> Laughing

Thus, Comfort is the ever elusive goal we’re going after here, not laughter. Solve the Root Challenge and you actually get somewhere. Girls want to feel comfort. (I can only assume so, given my chromosomes, but I think that is a safe assessment of reality.) Your “takeaway” here should be that going after the Funny Guy label and those grand slam jokes are not the bridges to worthwhile relationships. Seeking to understand her, asking her questions, interest in more than what lies just beneath the cusp of her polo collar; these are things that will get you places and things, maybe even a girlfriend.

If in fact you aren’t interested in any of that, and instead enjoy here-today gone-tomorrow type gigs, I recommend the Rands Vegas System as a starter.

But hey, don’t take it from me. Take it from Derek. He sells books and writes articles to promote said books. I just write a weblog.

How Can We Understand the Science Behind Love?

Surely science can’t explain why we love? Apparently it can - there’s a science behind love that Helen Fisher has dedicated her life research on. The 45 years worth of research is truly staggering and she’s tested many guinea pigs that prove this science behind love.

Guinea Pigs? Confused? I hear you ask . . .  well she didn’t literally test guinea pigs . . . BUT she did:

• Put 32 People Madly in Love through a fully functional MRI brain scanner
• Tested a further 17 who were madly in love and their love was accepted
• Tested a further 15 people who were madly in love and had just been dumped

Discover the Science Behind Love

Shakespeare famously said:

“What it is to Love?”

What do you think of this subject?

Enjoyed the Science Behind Love? You should read a previous article of ours

make your relationships more fulfilling

How can you Make Relationships More Fulfilling? 

Are you searching for a way to make relationships more fulfilling? It doesn’t matter whether you’re thinking about sexual relationships, family matters, your friends or people you don’t even know . . .you can make relationships more fulfilling by simply adopting the right mindset and living your life to the full.

So many people don’t live their lives to the full extent and seem to be consumed with fear because they face the prospect of being hurt.

One saying that rings true in all aspects of life and especially powerful in relationships of all kinds is . . .

“A life lived in fear is a life half-lived”

Steve Pavlina in a great recent post illustrated this viewpoint excellently. He puts forward that the key to fulfilling relationships is to have empowered relationships without an ounce of fear.

Here’s what he has to share.

The mindset of empowered relationships

by Steve Pavlina

So what is the mindset that makes it so much easier to relate to people?  Here it is in a nutshell:

Everyone you meet in your life — even total strangers — is already intimately connected to you.  The idea that we are all separate and distinct beings is nothing but an illusion.  We are all parts of a larger whole, like individual cells in a body.

Moreover, everyone and everything you see out there in your world are reflections of you.  Just as the cells in an organism carry the same DNA, other people are walking around with some part of you inside them.  When you look at other people, you’re really looking at yourself.  When you notice other people, it’s just like your eyes observing your hands.  We’re all parts of the same whole.

Here are some facets of this interconnected model of relationships:

• Oneness - Other people are not separate and distinct from you.  In fact, they are you.
• Connectedness - You don’t have to “build” relationships with others because you’re already connected.  You need only tune into the pre-existing connection that’s already there.
• No risk - Little or no courage is required to approach strangers.  You’re never actually building new connections from scratch.  You’re just recognizing what’s already there.
• Equality - You can feel just as close to total strangers as you do to your friends.
• Significance - All relationships are significant; none are irrelevant.  Even the strangers you pass on the street are important parts of you.
• Love without attachment - Letting go of harmful relationships is easier because you’re still unconditionally connected to everyone else.  As you release old relationships that no longer serve you, you’ll attract new ones that are compatible with you.

Initially I found this a totally alien mindset.  It was only in seeing the results first-hand that I became a convert.  Interestingly, I wasn’t into subjective reality when I first adopted this mindset, but this is in fact the subjective reality view of relationships in a nutshell.

One of the side effects of this mindset is that Erin and I are constantly meeting people through synchronicities… people we feel we were supposed to meet.  I first read about these kinds of encounters in The Celestine Prophecy.  When you have a certain mindset about relationships, you begin to attract the right people at the right times.  That’s precisely how Erin and I met as well.

For example, Erin and I recently spent several days in Sedona, Arizona.  This was the first time either of us had ever been to that city.  One day we walked into a shop we’d never been to before, picked up a strong vibe from a total stranger, started talking, and 30 minutes later we had become friends and said goodbye with hugs.  This woman also sent us a gift in the mail a week later to thank us for some guidance we gave her.  For Erin and me, this has become an increasingly common event.  And believe me — before I had this mindset I could never walk into some random store and expect to be hugging someone I’d never met only 30 minutes later.

I think the reason this mindset is so effective is that when you assume a pre-existing connection with another person, s/he will tend to respond in kind.  Usually the best way to break the ice with someone is to assume there never was any ice to begin with.

I also like that this is an easy way to identify highly conscious people.  The more conscious and self-aware someone is, the more easily and naturally they’ll respond to someone who relates to them as a real human being right off the bat.

Applying the empowering mindset

When you adopt the mindset that we’re all inherently connected, these are some of the actions and results that will come naturally to you:

• Easy rapport - You’ll connect with strangers almost as easily as you connect with your closest friends, sometimes more easily.  The difference between strangers and friends is intellectual familiarity, but you can tap into an intuitive familiarity even with someone you’ve never met.
• Fairness - You’ll begin to feel a kinship with everyone, regardless of familiarity.
• Attraction - Because you’re always open to connecting with people, you’ll begin attracting new relationships fairly easily.  Compatible people will be drawn to you.
• Synchronicity - You’ll experience a swell in synchronicities that lead to chance encounters, meeting people you feel very drawn to meet.
• Social courage - Have you ever seen someone at a distance you felt you were supposed to meet?  Have you ever run into the same stranger multiple times in the same day?  With the right belief system, you’ll feel confident beginning a conversation with such people, and you’ll find that your hunches were right on — you were supposed to meet.
• Deeper relationships - You’ll enjoy deeper, less superficial relationships, getting to know people at the level of soul.
• Energy - You’ll attract relationships that energize you rather than drain you.
• Reading people - Because we’re all connected, you can mentally connect with other people and literally share the same thoughts in a way that goes beyond words, voice, and body language.  You can even do it at a distance.  With practice you can get an accurate read on someone you’ve never met, picking up specific data about that person that you couldn’t have known in a purely objective sense.  Practice increases both your accuracy and your ability to trust the information you pick up.

These benefits aren’t either-or.  You gradually gain them as your awareness of our spiritual interconnectedness grows.

Fearless relationships

While you can get some of these benefits while still clinging to an objective model of relationships, I think it would be very difficult.  The real key is removing fear from the equation.  When you can relate to people without fear, which is a natural consequence of the belief that we’re all connected, then it becomes much easier to form deep connections with other human beings.

If you’ve been reading my articles for a while, you can probably guess that if you were to meet me in person, you wouldn’t have to begin a conversation with me by chatting about the weather.  We could just talk soul-to-soul about anything, and you needn’t be afraid of me judging you because my belief is that you’re an integral and inseparable part of me.  But that’s because you already know a lot about me and my mindset from reading my articles, so you already have some familiarity with me, and that reduces your social risk with me.  However, the truth is that you can achieve the same level of rapport with a total stranger when you get an intuitive read that s/he will be receptive.  Your social conditioning will cause you to focus on the fear of rejection, but with the mindset of interconnectedness, you’ll focus on the opportunities for connection instead.

My understanding is that the mindset of interconnectedness isn’t only more empowering than the objective mindset — it’s also more accurate.  Our fundamental interconnectedness was one of the most empowering realizations I ever had… and also one of the most humbling.  It keeps my ego in check to know that this Steve person I inhabit is just one cell in a much larger body.  We all are.  And the best we can do with our lives is to achieve the point of optimal balance whereby serving our own needs and serving the whole body are congruent.  A body does not survive by sacrificing the cells that serve it, and a cell does not survive by sacrificing the body that hosts it.

Interdependence is a higher level of consciousness than independence.  Fear serves the latter; fearlessness, the former.

Final Thought

I certainly echo Steve’s sentiments - you can make relationships more fulfilling if you get into the right mindset and eliminate any fear.

Why not follow the advice of Mark Twain and:

“Dance like nobody’s watching; love like you’ve never been hurt. Sing like nobody’s listening; live like it’s heaven on earth.”

So adopt the mindset as soon as possible and make relationships more fulfilling in life!!

Read the full article from Steve on how to make relationships more fulfilling.

Are We Living The Fast Life or the Good Life? 

Just think how hectic modern life has become, the hustle and bustle of city life and the rat race has never been more chaotic. We are vastly living in a society that revolves around time and time’s running out!

BUT . . . have you ever thought that this pace of life is damaging your health, relationships, love life and your recognition of the finer things in life?

I’m showcasing for you another great TED talk from Canadian journalist, Carl Honore who is a stern advocate of the slow movement.

“These days instant gratification now even takes too long” - Postcards from the Edge

Take Heed of this Great Video

In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honore >>

Carl Honore Bio >>

Turn strangers into friends and you never know what it might lead to . . .

Do you freeze up when talking to someone for the first time? Do you find yourself trying to hard to impress? If you like many others, find that being outlandish and off the wall, possibly even a bit kooky, is a good way to impress strangers I have news for you - 80% of the time it doesn’t work. Granted, it might work some of the time but when push comes to shove your not playing the percentages.

I found a great article that outlines the best attitude to take to meeting strangers and getting them to like you. The simplicity of the methods pitched in this article is its striking feature. It stresses the need to pick neutral subjects and that the most essential thing is to make the other person feel comfortable and at ease in your company.

DON’T BE SHY!!

Turning Strangers Into Friends

by Royane Reel

Do you find it easy to make conversation with new people you’ve just met? Or does the thought of trying to make conversation with someone new make you break out in a cold sweat?

If you don’t feel comfortable making casual conversation with new people you have just met, you will find it harder to make new friends. You will also find it more difficult to fit in at your work place.

One of the most common reasons that people have difficulty making conversation with someone they don’t know very well is because they put too much pressure on themselves.

Many people think that whenever they meet someone new, they have to say something really interesting and brilliant, right from the beginning. Even before they know the other person very well. They think they have to really put up a great performance to impress the other person.

They don’t just let themselves just be ordinary, and talk about fairly ordinary things.

Here’s a very important lesson to learn about making conversation with people: Insisting to yourself that you have to be brilliant and dazzling in all your conversations will not win you new friends. It will not even improve your conversational performance.

When you think to yourself that you have to perform perfectly in all your conversations, you will actually make your performance worse! You will become too nervous and awkward, and you’ll be too focused on your own performance. You won’t be focused on getting to know the new person you’ve just met.

New people that you meet are not looking for brilliant conversation. What they are looking for is someone who will be comfortable to be with, and fun to talk to. But most of all they are looking for someone who seems interested in them!

For conversational success, it’s more important to be a good listener than to be a great talker.

When you are just starting out talking to a person, you can use your immediate surroundings or the weather as a basis for a few starting remarks.

If you want to know that person better, move on quickly to a slightly more personal level of discussion. Ask a few basic questions and offer a little bit of information about yourself, your likes or dislikes, or your opinion on some neutral topic. Notice whether the other person lights up with interest about any topics you mention.

This can give you new interesting areas for both of you to discuss.
Even if it seems somewhat difficult and awkward for you in the beginning, develop the habit of introducing yourself to others as soon as you meet them, or very early in the conversation. Otherwise you could spend hours talking and neither of you will have any idea of what your conversation partner’s name is.

Socially confident people introduce themselves to their conversation partners very early in the course of conversation. People who are shy or socially awkward tend to introduce themselves much later, or not at all. Shy people often wait until someone asks for their name, but they rarely volunteer to give it, and they rarely ask the other person what their name is.

Sometimes it is easier to ask the other person for their name first, and then offer your own. If you practice the new behavior enough times, it will eventually become second nature to you. With enough practice, it will no longer seem intimidating to take a more active role.

The important thing is simply to develop the habit of starting simple little conversations with lots more people. Look for the interests you have in common.

If you want to be more socially successful, take the initiative to introduce yourself to new people and to get the conversational ball rolling. Don’t hold back and let other people make all the first moves. If you have been holding back, waiting for other people to do all the work in the relationship, you are shirking your responsibility in making the relationship move forward.

See the full article here >>

Putting You On The Road To Success!

Hello World! For anybody out there that is on the road to personal enlightenment or simply just wants to further themselves and prosper your life is to get a lot, lot sweeter.

As of today SelfPursuit.com will be your only destination to head for to get the most comprehensive information and the most informative advice on a wide array of topics from self improvement, creativity and imagination, the Law of Attraction and manifestation, personal development, confidence, goal setting and motivation, and entrepreneurship and productivity.

Everyday we’ll be serving you up with attention grabbing articles, that will keep you gripped to the screen. SO . . .

Sit back and relax and let us guide you and take you on your journey of growth that’s set to be as enjoyable for you us it is for us here.

If you feel strongly about any matter or article we post I invite you to share your views as this is a voyage which we should all experience together.

WARMEST AND HAPPIEST OF GREETINGS FROM SELF PURSUIT - MAY THE JOURNEY BEGIN!