Ben Ralston

RELAXATION 1 – WHAT is relaxation?

With this blog I want to GIVE you as much information and practical advice as I can.



So this is the first of a series of guides on relaxation. It’s a big subect – one that in reality few people really think about, but it’s so important. It’s fundamental – without proper relaxation we cannot be successful in any area of our lives. So I’m breaking it down into three manageable chunks:
Today I will tell you WHAT relaxation is (it’s not so obvious!).
In the 2nd article I will tell you WHY it’s so important.
And finally I’ll give you practical advice on HOW to incorporate relaxation into every day life.


WHAT is relaxation?


Relaxing means “going back”.
Going back where?
Inside, where we BELONG!
Ok, but what does that mean?


Almost all our waking lives our attention (and energy) is directed outwards. It goes out through our eyes, our mouths, our bodies (our senses) into the world around us. It is attracted to other people, sounds, advertising, media… all of which are competing for our attention, 24 hours a day…


So to relax means to break this cycle – literally, to regain control of our own attention, our own energy.


Try something:
Take a deep breath into the abdomen, and as you exhale, let go of any physical tension. Taking another deep breath, simply acknowledge what is happening with you right at this moment – physically, emotionally, and mentally… breathing deeply, letting go of tension, and observing how you feel. It’s best to do this with the eyes closed.
Go ahead.


Doesn’t that feel great?!
That is a 10 second relaxation. Now, imagine if you were doing that all the time, 24 hours a day – breathing deeply, letting go, observing. Imagine how good you’d feel, how much energy you’d have!


It’s very simple isn’t it? So why don’t we actually do it?!


The reason why we don’t stay relaxed is because:
a) we were never told the importance of it
b) we were taught that other things are important
c) the combination of a + b causes STRESS


I want to tell you something different: relaxation is the most important thing in the world. It is the foundation of all health, happiness and succes.


Stress is the opposite of relaxation. Quite literally, in biological terms, stress is the absence of relaxation, and relaxation is the absence of stress!
Our nervous system has two possibilities – either the sympathetic nervous system is dominant (stress), or the parasympathetic nervous system is dominant (relaxation).


The sympathetic nervous system reacts to perceived threat in the environment.
Let’s say that a dog behaves aggressively towards you: your body will automatically react in several ways – your eyes dilate to enable faster reactions; your chin drops to protect your throat; adrenalin is released to enable more strength or speed, depending on whether you choose fight or flight; the heart rate goes up to bring more oxygen to the muscles; blood and energy flow is redirected from the organs to the muscles (center to periphery); and so on. All of this is very good – it helps us in difficult sitations, and without it, we would never have survived as a species!
The parasympathetic nervous system on the other hand UNDOES all that the sympathetic nervous system does – when the stress is over (the dog stops barking and goes home) your body needs to calm down. So the parasympathetic nervous system releases hormones to relax the body – releasing the adrenalin, calming the eyes, the heart, and so on.
So, the sympathetic nervous system is all about stress response, while the parasympathetic nervous system is all about normal, regular function.


So far, so good. But what happens when you live in a society where your body is always under stress? For example, what if you live in a city with lots of traffic; lots of people in a hurry; noise, air, food and water pollution creating toxins (stress) in the body; constant bombardment of the senses by media, advertising, etc?
I’ll tell you what happens: the body is permanently in a state of stress. In other words, the sympathetic nervous system is always being stimulated.
This is the primary reason why so many people are so ill, depressed, and unhappy.


I’m not kidding! I lived in London for 14 years and I know from experience!
But let’s be honest: it’s not only city life that is to blame. It’s really the speed of 21st century living – and that can affect anyone, even in the country.


What’s the solution?


The solution is that we have to consciously relax. We have to take time to really come back to ourselves, allowing our body to slow down, and giving time to the systems in our body to balance each other.


This does NOT mean watching a movie; reading a book; listening to music; having a beer / glass of wine; going out with friends. All of these things, which we have been taught to associate with relaxation, are stimulating! They stimulate our senses. They don’t really help us to relax in a deep, meaningful way.


For real relaxation, silence is needed. So that our hearing is allowed to relax, and the muscles of our throat, vocal chords, tongue, and mouth can relax.
Closing the eyes is needed, so that our mind can stop processing visual information (did you know that literally millions of bits of information are absorbed through the eyes every second? And that our brains have to process that information?!).
Lying on the back is the best position to relax in – and the best posture is the ‘corpse pose‘, a yoga pose known to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system.
Breathing should be deep and slow.
And our mind should be directed inwards.


There is a practice called Yoga Nidra, many thousands of years old. Yoga Nidra means yogic sleep, or ‘sleep of the yogis’ – it is a state of awareness in which the body is so relaxed that it sleeps, but the mind is awake, fully conscious.


20 minutes in this state of being is equivalent to two hours of sleep. It’s very simple to do. I’m going to tell you how…

YOGA NIDRA
  • Lie on the back, with the arms and legs slightly apart, and the head in the middle (corpse pose).

First, tense all the muscles in the body, tensing them, and releasing them.
Then get comfortable.

  • Close the eyes, and take a few deep, full breaths.
  • Then focus the attention inwards… focusing your full attention into the toes. Mentally (silently) repeat: “I am relaxing my toes, my toes are relaxing, the toes are relaxed“

Repeat this phrase until you really feel the toes softening, and relaxing.

  • Then shift your attention to your feet, repeating: “I am relaxing the feet, the feet are relaxing, the feet are relaxed…“

Continue this process, going through every part of the body in turn, until you get to the top of your head. 

  • Then do the same for all the internal organs: brain, heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, and so on. The whole body can be done in 5 minutes. If you are a beginner, it will take longer.
  • When you are finished, lie still for at least 3 minutes. Allow your body to be completely still, and simply observe your mind. As time passes, the mind sinks into a deeper and deeper state of relaxation. There comes a point when, with the body and mind deeply relaxed, we touch something inside ourselves very deeply. That is true relaxation.
—



With practice, we are able to be deeply relaxed all the time. When you can do that, you don’t age so fast. You stay healthy. And perhaps most importantly, when you are in a stressful situation, you have more reserves of energy to call upon should you need them.


This is the secret of the ancient yogis, and why they are known for long life and miraculous acts.


In the next article on relaxation, I’m going to tell you just WHY relaxation is so important for us – I believe that it’s the foundation upon which any success (whether in work, relationship, personal development, or spiritual evolution) must be built.
And I’m going to keep on giving you as much information as I can about these things, because I want you to be successful!
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With love,
Ben

EGO 1 – What is ego?

I want to talk about ego, and whether or not it is real. This will be a series of articles. First, we’ll discuss ‘What Is Ego?’
In the next article we’ll talk about the implications – namely, that much of the spiritual ‘work’ that many people do and have done (including myself) for many years, is almost a waste of time.
It’s a complex subject, so I will try to keep it as simple as I possibly can. I also want to keep it interesting, so that you stay with me to the end!


The reason I want to write about this now is that I see so many people struggling with what they think is ego – so many people get caught up in the idea that we have an ego, and that we have to ‘conquer’ it, and that it’s difficult. This is simply giving power to the thing which they think are fighting with!
My belief is that the ego is nothing. It doesn’t exist. It’s not real. It’s just a mistaken belief that we get caught up in, and because we get caught up in it, we fight it, and the more we fight it, the more real it seems… like being caught in a net – the more you struggle, the more you get caught up…

I was prompted to write this by a discussion on Simon Rose’s blog. ( Simon is the creator of Reference Point Therapy – the alternative healing method )
First I want to define ego. What exactly IS ego?
Ego is that which we identify with – what we think of as ‘I’.
So when I say:
“I am Ben”, or “I am an Englishman”, or “I am a man”, it’s my ego speaking.
Let me explain…
Of course my name is Ben. It’s what people call me, it’s what I call myself. But AM I BEN? Is that really what I am? Or am I much more than the label?


Of course my body was born in England – my Mother gave birth to me there. But am I right in labelling myself as English? Of course legally, my passport, my background etc… all makes me English to an extent. But surely my true nationality, if I look at the ‘BIG PICTURE’, is not so easy to define.
For example, I have lived in many countries. At the moment, I live in Slovenia. Why should I not say I am Slovene.
Or why should I not simply say, “I am an Earthling”… 
Because by stating that I am English, I cut myself off, I make myself different from all people who are not English. And this has been a big problem in the past – this issue of nationality has caused wars!


And if I say “I am a man” – even this statement is not wholly accurate. Biologically, I am of course a man. But biology is only one aspect of me. Body is nothing without emotions, thoughts, instincts, deeper feelings, intuition, reasoning, senses… and so on. Every man has feminine aspects – and every woman has a masculine side to her. So it would be more accurate to state:
“I have a male body”, or better still – “in this lifetime, I have a male body”.


So the ego is what we think we are when we stop simply being. When we allow our attention to be distracted from our full being, we start thinking, and then the ego arises.


In reality, there is no ego. The ego is just what we THINK we are. What we THINK we are is not real – not really what we ARE. Because when we think, we stop being fully present – and reality; being; is only in the present.


Let me clarify this:
Thinking happens in the neocortex – the part of our brain that analyses. The part of the brain that compares. So when I think of myself as male, I am by implication also thinking of myself as ‘not woman’. That is what the neocortex does: it compares and analyses. It views the world in terms of opposites. It cannot do anything else. That is it’s nature, what it does.
Animals and small children (look at the picture!) don’t have much ego – why? Because their neocortex isn’t fully formed yet.


The present moment has no opposite. What is the opposite of NOW?…
Got it? THERE IS NO OPPOSITE OF NOW! Therefore the neocortex, the part of us that compares opposites, cannot grasp the present moment. The best it can come up with is past and future. So the neocortex is constantly analyzing our experience in terms of time.


What we truly are is timeless awareness. Consciousness. PURE BEING.
We experience this BEINGNESS ( a wonderful word I learnt from Simon Rose, who learnt it from Soleira Green ) fully only when we are living in balance. Only when we are completely ‘real’: centered in our body; emotionally present; and not caught up in the analytical processes of the ‘head’, but simply allowing it to do what it does… process information, like a computer.
This is what all the great masters describe: living in the present moment, feeling in balance with the environment, being spontaneously joyful. It’s what is known as an enlightened state.


I believe that enlightenment is the natural state of no-ego. When we are completely at one with ourselves, we lose that sense of ‘I’-ness. We become fully present, and we stop thinking of ourselves as this or that… we just experience, and that experience is what we are. That experience is what we really, truly are. Not what we think we are, but what we truly are. So we are all already enlightened – we just lose sight of it sometimes, because we think about what we are, and identify with that – ego!!


The great spiritual teacher Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (whose incredible talks in the book ‘I Am That’), said:
“Wisdom is knowing I am nothing.
Love is knowing I am everything.
In between the two my life moves.”
Wisdom is knowing I am nothing.
Love is knowing I am everything.
How beautiful.


Ego is thinking I am something.


When we let go of the idea of what we are (which is really based on our past experiences – ie – what we were), we are free to really BE. We are also free to become more than that past idea.
That ‘beingness’; that state of awareness at the heart of our existence, is REAL.
The ego is not: the ego is just an illusion.


Part 2: http://benralston.blogspot.com/2010/06/ego-2-dont-fight-it.html