Remembering Dr. David Simon: An Interview Part 2

Posted on by Tammy

In Part 2 of the article “Beyond the Symptoms,” based on an interview with Dr. David Simon, which was featured in the December 2009 issue of Elevated Existence Magazine, Simon discusses a holistic approach to anxiety and depression, and ways we can make changes in our lives in order to alleviate and release the emotions that can lead to disease in the body.

For part 1 of the article, see “Remembering Dr. David Simon: An Interview Part 1.”

Alleviating Anxiety and Depression

When dealing with many mental or psychiatric disorders, medication is extremely important.

Illnesses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder — often based on a deeper genetic, biochemical imbalance — require medication, Simon says. But for issues with anxiety, depression and insomnia, a mind/body approach can have amazing effects.

And when used in conjunction, can get people off medication sooner. “Medication for these things can be such an easy shortcut, and we need to raise the threshold of how readily doctors are giving them out,” he explains, noting often people will feel better from the medicine and the underlying issue will never be addressed. “When someone dies, suddenly a person is put on an antidepressant, and they are not even allowed to grieve.”

Ideally, Simon believes medication should be used for a short period of time while helping people work through their issues, along with teaching them alternative lifestyle changes, such as meditation and yoga.“People often just want relief, and if doctors offered them relief without going on a psychotropic medication, most people would opt for that, but so many just give the pill,” he says.

While a psychiatrist might know that if a person started meditation on a regular basis and reduced the amount of caffeine they take in during the day, it might help with their anxiety, many assume the patient won’t do these things, and so they just offer a pill, Simon explains. But in essence, people are “outsourcing their biochemistry.”

“I work with people trying to get off medication all the time, and I tell them, ‘If you had a manufacturing plant in the United States and you learned you could do the work overseas for much less, you would fire everyone and move. But then, if all of the sudden you decide you want to start back in the United States, you can’t just open up the same day — it takes time.’”

Simon says the same is true with the human brain. Once you start giving it serotonin from the outside, it realizes it doesn’t have to make it from the inside anymore. So getting off of medication can take four to six weeks, “until the brain says, ‘Oh, you’re serious. You really are going to make me manufacture this myself,’” he explains.

By looking at diet, exercise and sleep habits, shifts can be made to produce the same chemicals from within, rather than depending on an outside source. Getting to bed by 10 p.m., eating healthy foods, walking in beautiful, natural settings and more can help create a feeling of peace and keep a person centered.

“The practice of meditation is key because it gives people a glimpse of how they can generate peace inside their own body,” Simon says. “Good, healthy food; good smells; nourishing sounds; and good relationships — if everyone had these things we would all be healthy and happy. At The Chopra Center, we recreate the memory of wholeness, and teach skills to allow people to stay connected to their center.”

Particularly when it comes to anxiety, Simon believes by putting time into it and learning these new skills, people can learn to live without anxiety in a natural way. “Living without anxiety is a skill set that we have to be taught, and then the need for medication will go away,” he explains.

Making Changes

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was originally published in December 2009. The seminars mentioned below have changed. See www.chopra.com/healingtheheart for more information.)

The Chopra Center offers emotional healing seminars, which Simon says he has been developing for years. The first of the two-part series dedicated to emotional healing is called “Free to Love,” which takes place over three days and is about identifying, mobilizing and releasing emotional toxicity getting in the way of good health. The second part is “Free to Heal,” which dedicates five days focused on rejuvenation for the body.

“Fee to Love is intensely healing, but we are finding people are pretty raw afterward, and so we encourage them to learn how to take better care of themselves in a compassionate and loving way through the second course, “Free to Heal,” explains Simon. “With both, they have the deep insights to release the pain, and also have the tools to move forward, treat themselves lovingly and have healthy relationships.”

In his book, which is based on these courses, Simon reveals a variety of methods for emotional clearing, including heart-opening yoga poses, breathing exercises and specific “intuitive self-reflection” exercises that take the reader through a series of questions to both reflect upon and journal about. “Breath and thought work closely together, so we find that by consciously using the breath, we can access information we previously suppressed,” he says.

Also, the yoga poses were developed over the years to make it easier for people to bring awareness into the places of the body associated with emotions, and stretching, moving and breathing helps the release of toxic emotions from the body. “If people are tuned in, they feel emotions in the heart, gut and occasionally the sexual organs,” Simon explains. “The yoga poses are designed to open up the core emotional center and release the energy trapped inside.”

And while many who go through the program or do it themselves at home may be tempted not to do the journaling element, Simon says it is a very important piece. Rather than going through the steps in the mind, writing them down is necessary — not only to remember the insights revealed, but to get them out of our minds and onto the paper.

“We carry all this stuff around on our internal hard drive, and when we write it down, it’s like downloading it to a flash drive and creating space,” Simon says. “We need to quiet down the usual conversation of our mind and start asking questions from a deeper place. We may not think we know what we need, but we do know it somewhere, and intuitive self-reflection is a way of hearing the truth and bringing into awareness.”

The key to emotional health, and in turn physical health, is learning how to stay centered, no matter what life throws at us. It’s about learning to make better choices, and knowing we all deserve to be happy and healthy, have nurturing relationships and have a meaningful life by expressing our unique purpose. By ridding ourselves of toxic emotions — some we may have been carrying around for a lifetime — and learning a new, healthy way to live and love, we can find our center and know how to return to it when we fall off.

“If we have an inner state of wellbeing, where the mind is relatively quiet and the body is in comfort, we can evaluate, and listen to our bodies and minds to get information from a deeper place,” Simons says. When evaluating a decision in life, our mind and body will often generate signals, letting us know when something doesn’t feel right. The more centered we are, the more likely we will be able to recognize the signals, he notes.

“The more your baseline is centered, balanced and comfortable, the more sensitive you will be to going out of your center. But if your baseline is one of chaos, you won’t even notice you are out of balance.”

To leave a note in remembrance of Dr. Simon, visit the Remembering David Web site.

Remembering Dr. David Simon: An Interview Part 1

Posted on by Tammy

The December 2009 issue of Elevated Existence Magazine featured an exclusive in-depth interview with Chopra Center co-founder, Dr. David Simon, about the connection between emotions and disease, and how a mind-body approach can help people find wholeness and health.

At the time, Simon had recently published the book “Free to Love, Free to Heal: Heal Your Body by Healing Your Emotions,” and launched an emotional freedom course at the Chopra Center based on the book.

Dr. Simon recently passed away, and in remembrance of him, we present the article in full – broken into two parts. Interviewed by Elevated Existence founder, publisher and editorial director, Tammy Mastroberte, Dr. Simon shares valuable information on the connection between our emotions and the creation of disease in the body.

Beyond the Symptoms

The Chopra Center’s Dr. David Simon explains the connection between emotions and disease, and the holistic way to find wholeness and health.

By Tammy Mastroberte

When our head starts pounding, our stomach starts churning or our chest is on fire from heartburn, the first place we usually run to is the medicine cabinet. And when we can’t find relief on our own, the next step is the doctor’s office, where the physician often turns to his or her prescription pad to alleviate our symptoms.

This has been the routine for many of us, who learned over the years that when we feel bad — physically or mentally — a pill is the answer. And in some cases, this is absolutely true. But what if there was an alternative to medication that would soothe anxiety or depression? What if our stomach cramps or acid indigestion is really the body’s way of letting us know our emotions need tending to?

These questions are the reason Dr. David Simon wrote his newest book, “Free to Love, Free to Heal: Heal Your Body by Healing Your Emotions,” and created an emotional freedom course at The Chopra Center, both of which are based on his experience as a physician who has looked at life and health holistically for more than three decades.

“If you give people the safety needed, you will find everyone has a story underlying their symptoms or illness, and if we can bring that from the subconscious to the conscious, there are opportunities for healing,” he tells Elevated Existence. “It’s about revealing the underlying story and writing a more empowering chapter. This can often help people get off or reduce their medication needs for a variety of things.”

Of course, there are some cases where medication is required, such as an auto accident, sudden heart attack or a urinary tract infection, Simon says. In these cases, medication can be lifesaving. But there are many instances where modifying a person’s lifestyle and looking at emotional factors can help alleviate ailments just as effectively as a pill.

“Traditionally, the physician’s job is to find the biochemical to relieve someone’s suffering. They don’t think of stress when someone has high blood pressure, it’s more about giving them a medication that can bring it down,” he explains. “If someone is depressed, a doctor often doesn’t look at what’s happening in the person’s relationships, how they might not be nourishing themselves, or even if a person has found meaning or purpose in life. It’s more about a deficiency in serotonin. That is the conventional model.”

Simon approached medical school from a different perspective, majoring in anthropology and studying medicine in non-Western cultures. He did his thesis in Shamanism, and in between his graduate studies and medical school, became a meditation and yoga instructor.

“I learned health was about love, but in medical school they teach that people are molecular machines, and when the machine isn’t twirling properly, to introduce a new molecule. We are taught to treat symptoms rather than look at the root of illness,” Simon says.

He believes there is an emotional component to all illness, and a mind/body approach works well, especially for psychosomatic illnesses such as functional bowel disorders, chronic pain, migraines and fibromyalgia. Even heart disease has some emotional component, he explains, although genetics, diet and exercise do play a role.

“At any one time, 20 percent to 25 percent of the population is struggling with digestion, whether its heartburn or irritable bowel, and these have a strong emotional component,” Simon notes. Many autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, also have a direct correlation to emotions.

“Most people with an autoimmune disease say their illness gets aggravated when they are stressed, and when they are not, the symptoms get quiet for a while,” he says, citing a study done with people suffering from an autoimmune disease who were admitted into a hospital. Patients were asked about physical, emotional, sexual or drug abuse in the family as a child, and the study showed an increased risk of an autoimmune disease as an adult when one or more of these factors are present.

Additionally, issues about food — whether eating too much or too little — all have underlying emotional components. The answer is to help people fill their needs directly rather than going through food, Simon says, explaining whether it’s food, drugs or alcohol, addictive behaviors are a person’s attempt to self-medicate.

But whether it’s self-medicating or turning to a doctor’s prescription, when the underlying emotional components are not addressed, new symptoms will often crop up over time, he explains. The body will continue to create disease until the emotional causes are uncovered and resolved.

“The body is trying to get our attention because it is carrying some pain — often emotional — that needs some direct attention,” he explains. “Whether it’s a headache, backache or irritable bowel, the body is asking ‘Can someone please pay attention?’ But rather than doing that, we just suppress the symptom with some type of medication, and then it often finds another way to get our attention.”

For example, a patient will often go to the doctor because of a migraine headache, and the doctor will prescribe a medication. Then the patient comes back into the office saying his or her headache is better, but now they have a side effect, or a new symptom. The doctor will then prescribe a new medication for the new symptoms or side effect, and that is why people often wind up on five or six medications, Simon says.

“You have to look back to the beginning and see what triggered the escapade. When I see people like this, it often goes back to one thing — such as being emotionally or physically abused as a child — and they often need someone to hear their story and help them heal that story. Once it’s resolved, the symptoms often go away.”

Read Part 2 of the interview “Remembering David Simon.”

To leave a note in remembrance of Dr. Simon, visit the Remembering David Web site.

Editor’s Advice: Accepting the Joy in Life

Posted on by Tammy

Have you ever noticed it’s often easier to believe the negative or bad things that happen to us compared to the positive or good?

The expressions “I had to pinch myself” or “I can’t believe my luck,” are examples of how most of us feel shocked when something wonderful happens for us. And then these initial thoughts of shock usually turn to worry about the good being taken away, or being followed by something bad.

More than 12 years ago, my sister and I took a road trip to Long Island for an appointment with the medium, George Anderson, 10 months after our mother unexcpected passing only three days after Christmas in 1999. It was an emotional hour, but something Anderson conveyed to us from our mother during that session always stayed with me. She said “learn to partake in the joys that come to you, because if they come to you, then you deserve them.”

This is something she admitted to struggling with in her life, and during what she called her “life review” after passing she realized she didn’t accept joy as well as she could have while in the physical world. She said, “We are always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Unfortunately many of us have been conditioned to expect the negative, even when something positive comes our way, and in doing so, we forget to bask in the beauty life has to offer. Instead of moving quickly on to the next worry, issue, problem or fear, when something good comes to us – be it a new relationship, more money or a successful venture – we should savor it, celebrate it and live in the gratitude of it.

Instead of expecting the bad … what about expecting the good? If you understand the law of attraction, then you know expecting the good will only attract more good to you. More importantly, as my mother so eloquently conveyed through George Anderson, if good things comes to you … then know it’s because you deserve it!

Tammy Mastroberte
Founder, Publisher & Editorial Director
Elevated Existence Magazine
www.elevatedexistence.com

Finding Love: A New Way to Date

Posted on by Tammy

Getting beyond the stereotypical dating model and learning to impress yourself first can lead you to the right person

By Dr. Craig Martin

Let’s start this off by saying there is nothing wrong with wanting to look and act your best on a date. For all intents and purposes, there also should be nothing wrong with wanting to look and act your best with your spouse of 15 years. But this isn’t going to be about that.

Dating inevitably is very stressful. We all want to be liked, to be accepted, and to be loved. For single people, the dating process is the way in which we find someone to fulfill those needs. And for anyone who is out there dating – we soon discover this is not easy.

There are all kinds of reasons for that. People are odd, and finding just the right kind of odd that meshes nicely with you is a complex task. Often, on dates we find that people seem strange to us, and we can’t make a connection that feels like we want it to.

The truth is, by the time you find someone who is great for you, that person has been passed up by other people who thought they were strange. And so the dating scene is really about finding the right person – the one who makes you feel at home with them. It’s about finding the person whose strangeness isn’t really strange to you at all.

One thing that prevents this exploration from happening in a natural, and often amazing, way is that we put on a face designed to impress someone else. The problem with this is the face we put on isn’t really who we are. We don’t just show up looking and acting our best for a date, we show up looking and acting like someone we aren’t. This creates a problem.

If we go into the dating scene believing that “men want women who make them laugh,” or “women want men who are strong and unflappable,” then we make every attempt to mold ourselves into that kind of person. The issue that gets created is narrowness. Not all men or women are looking for the same things. And by the same token, not all men or women fit the stereotypes of specific kinds of behavior.

The more we try to behave in the particular way that we think will gain our acceptance, the further away we drift from our true selves. We often then learn to dislike who we are, thinking that if we are not a picture of the perfect date, then we are not desirable or attractive to anyone. This is not true.

The only person you ever need to impress is yourself. Once you’ve learned to do that, then the right person comes along. You don’t need to look outside yourself to find the validation and acceptance that’s been with you all along. It’s right there – in the mirror, in your actions, in your thoughts and in your deeds.

When you fully embrace the beauty that is you, then there is no other person who has the power to decide that for you. You’ve decided it for yourself and then someone comes along who sees it too! What a remarkable new way to date. Show up to impress yourself, and anyone who is not impressed by you is clearly not the right person. A number of wonderful things happen. You don’t have to waste too much time on people who don’t see you. And you, because you know better what to look for, don’t have to kiss quite so many frogs.

ABOUT DR. CRAIG MARTIN

Dr. Craig Martin is an astrologer, interfaith minister and spiritual counselor. Working with both individuals and couples, he resides in Los Angeles, and practices in both New York City and California. He is the author of “Elemental Love Styles: Find Compatibility and Create a Lasting Relationship,” and can be reached through his Web site at www.doctorcraig.com.

Arielle Ford Shares Secrets to Finding and Keeping Love

Posted on by Tammy

Are you single and dreading Valentines’s Day this year? Maybe you are in a committed relationship or even married, but struggling to make it work?

Best-selling author, Arielle Ford, shared her secrets for using the law of attraction to find the love of her life in the book, “The Soulmate Secret: Manifest the Love of Your Life with the Law of Attraction,” and now she is sharing the secrets to making a relationship last once you find that perfect partner in her newest book, “Wabi Sabi Love: The Ancient Art of Finding Perfect Love in Imperfect Relationships.”

Elevated Existence interviewed Ford so she could share some tips for those who are still searching for love, as well as those who are searching for ways to make it last.

Elevated Existence (EE): So many people who are single struggle through Valentines’s Day. What is something they can do different this year to start attracting their soulmate?

Arielle Ford: I believe a soulmate is someone with whom we can completely be ourselves. Someone with whom we share unconditional love and when we look into their eyes we have the experience of being home. With this definition you can quickly see that you ALREADY have many soulmates in your life … it could be your best friend, kids, siblings, co-workers, pets, etc. This Valentine’s Day celebrate the soulmates in your life, do something special for them. By putting your focus and attention on the LOVE YOU ALREADY HAVE you become a magnet for even more love, especially the romantic love you are seeking.

EE: What is Wabi Sabi?

Ford: It is an ancient Japanese art form that honors all things old weathered, worn, imperfect and impermanent by finding the beauty in the imperfections. For instance, if you had a large vase with a big crack down the middle of it, a Japanese art museum would put the vase on a pedestal and shine a light on the crack, or they might fill the crack with 24k gold!

“Wabi Sabi Love” is devoted to exploring the simple, fun and effective ways to apply this concept to our love relationships through stories and exercises that demonstrate how to attain groundbreaking shifts in perception so that you can embrace and find the beauty and perfection in each other’s imperfections. I call this “going from annoyed to enjoyed.”

EE: In “Wabi Sabi Love,” you explain that learning to love, or at least accept, what your partner loves or is passionate about can lead to a better relationship. What is the first step of making this change?

Ford: Make a decision to find a creative way that you can share their passion. For instance, Suzanne’s husband Bill loves to fly small airplanes … nearly every weekend. She often found this boring … until she decided to be in charge of the itinerary. Bill didn’t care where he was flying to, he just wanted to be in the air. So, Suzanne would research interesting destinations to fly to, for a meal or an entire weekend. Places where they could explore historical sites and art museums, two of her passions. It became a win/win for both of them.

EE: You believe couples should wear “rose-colored glasses” when it comes to seeing each other. Why?

Ford: Research by Sandra Murray a psychologist at the University of Buffalo, reveals that putting on “rose-colored glasses” and idealizing our partner actually leads to more happiness and satisfaction in relationship. In fact, the happiest couples focus on what’s right and not on what’s wrong. This is also known as the Pygmalion effect, the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform. It’s a form of self-fulfilling prophecy. As mature adults, we get to choose our thoughts and beliefs; so why not intend and expect the best out of ourselves and our partners?

One disclaimer here – this is not an invitation to go into denial or accept bad behavior or harmful situations. In the event you find yourself in an abusive relationship, you are advised to seek professional counsel immediately.

EE: How can gratitude move a person from annoyed to a more accepting state in a partnership?

Ford: Gratitude comes from the heart not the head. When we drop into our heart and allow ourselves to feel the warm, positive emotions of gratitude, we can begin to release the more negative emotions of annoyance and frustration. Your partner does not wake up in the morning thinking of ways to drive you crazy. They, like you, want to be loved and accepted for who they are. Taking time to be grateful that you have a loving partner (in spite of their quirks) will enrich your relationship.

EE: How do you “go from annoyed to enjoyed” when your partner does something that truly makes you crazy?

Ford: First, you must be willing to make a shift in your perception and see your mate’s behavior through a new, gentler and kinder lens. Chances are, you see their behavior as “wrong or bad,” but imagine for a moment that this behavior exists solely to teach you how to become a more loving, compassionate person. Can you find the gift of that behavior?

One of my favorite stories in the book is about a couple named Ed and Deb. Ed loves to meet new people and tell silly jokes. Deb has heard all of these silly jokes a million times and is often annoyed because when they are out and about running errands she always ends up waiting for him while he is busy entertaining strangers. One day, after Deb found herself waiting for Ed befriending a lonely little boy sitting on the curb waiting for his mother. She heard Ed say to the boy, “How does a camel hid in the desert?” The boy gave him a quizzical look, and then Ed delivered the punch-line: “Camelflage.” With that , the boy burst into laughter just as his mother approached, giving Ed a big smile.

It was at that moment that Deb, after a decade of marriage, finally got Ed’s true nature. He wasn’t trying to make her crazy at all. He just wanted to make people happy. And on that day, Deb found the beauty and perfection in what once made her nearly insane!

For more on “The Soulmate Secret,” visit www.soulmatesecret.com. For more on Wabi Sabi Love, including exercises, visit www.wabisabilove.com.

Deepak Chopra’s Sages and Scientists Symposium Addresses Future Evolution

Posted on by Tammy

Deepak Chopra’s “Chopra Foundation” will bring together leaders in both science and spirituality to explore responsible leadership, environmental sustainability, peace, justice, world transformation, economic challenges and more in the Third Annual International Sages and Scientists Symposium, being held March 3-5, 2012, at La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, Calif.

The event will address some of the most urgent questions facing our future evolution, including:

Are we in the midst of a major paradigm shift in science?
Is there an ultimate reality?
Does consciousness conceive, govern, construct and become the physical universe?
Is the universe becoming self aware in the human nervous system?
Is the next stage of human development conscious evolution?
Do we have the ability to influence the future evolution of the cosmos?
How does our understanding of consciousness as pure potentiality enhance our capacity for intuition, creativity, conscious choice making, healing, and the awakening of dormant potentials such as non-local communication and non-local sensory experience?
How does our understanding of consciousness also enhance our capacity for total well being—physical, emotional, spiritual, social, community, financial and ecological)?

“If you find the above questions intriguing, you are most welcome to join me and my colleagues in deep dialogue about our emerging future,” said Deepak Chopra, founder of the Chopra Foundation. “Everything will be examined from the perspectives of both sages and scientists with the shared goal of finding common ground. At the end of the symposium, we will summarize the current understanding of the issues that deeply affect all of us at the core of our being. We aim to propel scientific investigation and research in the areas of consciousness.”

The distinguished speakers list includes some of the top minds in science and spirituality, such as President Vicente Fox; Nancy Abrams, J.D.; Renata Black; Rinaldo Brutoco, J.D.; Deepak Chopra, MD; Gotham Chopra; Mallika Chopra; Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D; Carlos Dominguez; Kamran Elahian; Elissa Epel, PhD; Stuart Hameroff, MD; J. Ivy; and Menas Kafatos, Ph.D.

The Chopra Foundation is requesting a donation of $1,995 – $1,000 of which is tax deductible – for general participation, after which registration will be complimentary. Contributions to the Symposium will be used to support collaborative research on the realization of consciousness, carry on the Foundation’s other charitable work, and pay expenses for the program.

For more information, visit www.choprafoundation.org.