Kenji Kumara: The Joy of Be-ing Present

Posted on by Tammy

By Jennifer McCartney

Catalyst, activator and initiator for personal and planetary transformation, Kenji Kumara joined Elevated Existence founder Tammy Mastroberte for the “Living an Elevated Existence Mind, Body & Soul Summit Season 2,” to share how we can radically shift our vibration to one of love, peace and joy — which is our true birthright.

“My personal goal for people is to give them something that would be practical in their life,” Kumara said of his teachings. “What is unique that I can offer people?” Some of the common complaints he hears from people are that they feel overworked, too busy, or disconnected from God.

“It’s the challenge of ‘everything I’ve done up to now in my life isn’t working,’” he said. “Not enough time in the day to get stuff done—that’s very common now,” he continued. Often people feel like they need a second person just to enable them to complete their daily tasks such as answering emails. But bigger than these issues, he noted, is worry. “Worry comes from unconscious fear, which comes from the judgments we make about ourselves and other people,” he noted.

To begin recovering our sense of self and increasing our connection with the universe, we need to start by relinquishing judgment, which causes worry. “The masters say at some point you have to give up all desire to make judgments about anything,” he shared. “We can acknowledge the judgments without letting them control us.”

Often we judge ourselves for worrying, feeling disconnected or being different. We suspect that we’re special, but squash that feeling in order to fit in, or belong. We may see an angel or feel a vibration or read people’s thoughts or have a vision of the future or even hear voices, Kenji suggested. This isn’t something to be ashamed of but an opportunity we can embrace—the act of “appearing normal, but having an awareness or a consciousness that can be very different from others.” We must embrace our difference. “We’re getting out of this gross thinking of analyzing and logic and staying in your box. The key is to embody that in your everyday life to where you appear to be normal, but you’re not.”

What most people ultimately come to, no matter what issue or problem they are tackling, is the question of how — How do I find my soulmate? How do I get out of a marriage? How do I find a new job.

To uncover these answers, the first step is breath work, Kumara said. leading listeners in a breathing exercise to help ground them in the present:

“Take a deep breath and let all the old breath out of your body. Do it again, and breathe into your body. Feel the breath and then slowly exhale. Let go. Do it one more time. As you do this you come into more present. Hold the intention that ‘I’m going to be present in my body. And I’m going to ground my body to my feet and the beloved underneath.’ Take another breath and hold the knowing that I’m going to hold this state and more for the next day. Then exhale.

Take another deep breath. And then exhale and relax. Now we’re going to create another intention where so you’re going to slowly breathe in from the belly and then breathe up into the brain and you’re going to say to yourself ‘I’m ready to receive a wave of love.’ Now exhale. Keep your space open.”

This exercise not only grounds us, but opens us up to receiving a wave of love. We have access to all kinds of waves for any issues, he said. “It’s all about what you believe. If you create the reality that ‘when I do this and invoke that,’ this is what’s going to happen—and more.”

He offered another exercise for allowing better communion with God or Source. “What is the source of you feeling separated from God?” he asked. “So just say to your higher intelligence, ‘I am open ready to receive.’” Place your palms open on your lap and be open to receiving the answers. Breathe in and then exhale. Do it one more time. Breathe in, ‘I am ready to know now.’ Slowly exhale.

“The more you do these exercises…the more present you’re going to be, and the stronger you’re going to be,” he said. “A lot of people come to us not strong enough and so they go seek out healers and psychics, and channelers, massage therapist, and doctors…and it’s okay up to a point, but at some point you got to realize now ‘I’ve got to do the work.’”

It’s time to get rid of the excuses that we don’t have enough time or energy. “If God came to each one of you and said ‘okay today’s the day now of your awakening,’ can you throw out your to-do list for today and just be with this God presence for the whole day? Is that a priority for you, or is your to-do list more important?”

Jeddah Mali: Shifting the Paradigm

Posted on by Tammy

By Jennifer McCartney

What if there was a new way of looking at the world? So that instead of always trying to address the physical manifestation of our problems we could see where they originated—see the secret energy that caused these problems to manifest. Well, we can learn a new way of looking at the world. CEO and founder of Global Paradigm Ltd, Jeddah Mali joined Tammy Mastroberte, founder of Elevated Existence Magazine for the ““Living an Elevated Existence Mind, Body & Soul Summit Season 2,” to explain how we can transform our understanding of the world in order to lead better, happier lives.

Most of our experience is with physical, mental, and emotional health. But this is not enough to be a healthy and happy human being, according to Mali. We need to factor in our spiritual health, our existential health, and once we learn to see this underlying structure, we can begin to work with the life and the universe rather than against it.

Modalities, such as meditation and yoga can be helpful, they don’t necessarily give us access to bigger picture, she explained. Instead of trying to address the physical manifestations of our issues (whether it’s stress, relationship issues, or financial problems) we need to address the real root cause.

“There is a structural skeleton to life and this is how life is built,” Mali told listeners. “Everything works off this central principal, but we don’t see it because we’re focused on what is built on top of it. Never having known about it, you don’t know to look for it. We’re so geared towards our five physical senses, we neglect to develop our sixth sense.”

Without developing our sixth sense, it’s hared for us to realize and understand what we are missing, she said. “The structural mechanics [of life and existence] are being overlooked, when in fact, they are the only element that can unify us and bring us to a place of wholeness and unification,” Mali noted. “We get caught up in the diversity of form and forget that it all comes from a single source.”

Once we turn our attention away from the physical manifestation, we can quite readily discern the hidden layer underneath, including “emotional forms, mental forms, heart forms and beyond,” she said. “I refer to it as existence. I like the plain, mechanical name for things…in its purest form its energy.” This isn’t to be confused with consciousness, however, which is growing and developing. Existence “is the all of it.”

Changing the Paradigm
So how do we learn to see this hidden structure and begin to change our lives? The starting point is always to “see” the design, and connect with the energy beneath all the manifestations we see in our lives.

“For most people that’s something that is completely new to them,” said Mali. Once we see what lies at the heart of existence, we can begin to create with intention. “Once we realize we’re doing the creating, we can create something else,” she explained. And it all starts with our thoughts.

“Just think of a continuous sea of energy — all these billions of subatomic particles, and the only thing that can move that energy is the input of thought. So where we place our attention…will temporarily cluster energy, which becomes a thought, which becomes emotion, which becomes a physical sensation,” she said.

Every time we think a certain thought it gives us an emotional, physical experience. When we start to recognize our thoughts and put intention behind them, we can being to see our old patters of thinking and being melt away, Mail explained.

“Existence isn’t cruel or perverse in that design–that’s how it works. As we enter into these misunderstandings, this discomfort brings us awake and makes us question a better way and ultimately serves a better purpose,” she said.

Mary Beth Vanderlinden: Healing Journey of Your Soul – Release and Reclaim Your Fragmented Self

Posted on by Tammy

By Jennifer McCartney

Do you feel disconnected or like a part of you is missing? Do you have difficulty remembering your early years? Are you afraid of certain things but don’t know why? Maybe you have recurring dreams or nightmares, or are prone to anxiety and panic attacks?

Past life regression and soul retrieval may contain the answers you’ve been looking for with Mary Beth Vanderlinden shared how past life regression and soul retrieval can help during an interview with Elevated Existence founder Tammy Mastroberte, during the Living an Elevated Existence Mind, Body & Soul Summit Season 2. ” Vanderlinden—an ordained minister and intuitive healer who has been called “the human CAT scan” for her ability to see, hear and feel energy—also explained the effects of retrieving fragmented soul parts and how this can bring a person back into wholeness so he or she can move forward in life. This reuniting can also bring back joy, free one from depression, addictions and more.

She explained our soul and it’s past lives hold the key to having a happy, healthy and prosperous future, and that past-life energy can negatively affect our current lives without us even realizing it. How do we know we have past life energy holding us back? “The main way you can tell past life energy is holding you is if you can’t move forward,” Vanderlinden said. “You feel stuck.” She compared it to feeling like we are sinking in quicksand.

Our present-day issues brought about by past life energy can manifest themselves in many ways. She gave the example of a woman who felt afraid or uncomfortable around men, explaining that it could be the result of a devastating sexual and physical abuse from a past life. Our bodies retain an imprint of that abuse. “There’s that cellular memory built in fear,” she said. Also, these past lives can affect not only us but also our entire families, for generations.

“If you see patterns that are repeating in families like poverty, that’s ancestral,” she shared. If we try and escape these patterns ourselves, by trying to overcome our fear of men or trying to better manage our money, or escape a cycle of abuse that our mothers and grandmothers also suffered, our cellular energy is actively fighting against us, telling us, “you can’t do that,” she said.

Protecting Our Energy
To complicate matters, it isn’t just past energy effecting on our daily lives, but also the energy people bring to us—everyone we interact with has their own energy and we often absorb it and take it on without realizing it.

“You’re soaking up their energy and you’re showing the symptoms of that energy,” she said, using the example of meeting a friend for lunch and suddenly feeling drained afterwards. “If you notice that every time you meet them for lunch the same things happens…you notice you always feel really drained or you just don’t feel right afterwards…that person is the one you’re picking up energy from.”

So how do we protect our own energy on a daily basis, and ground ourselves so we don’t absorb the energy of others and allow it to effect us in a negative way? Vanderlinden walked listeners though the below exercise to use before we start our day:

Get seated comfortably and uncross your legs. Rest your hands on your thighs or knees. Take in a deep cleansing breath. Do that three times.

In front of you just imagine a path in a meadow. Notice the flowers, the butterflies, and the birds. Feel the sun on your face. Now in front of you you’re about to enter a forest with massive oak trees. Walking through the forest you enter a clearing and you can feel free to sit down or remain standing.

Now you see a seedling dropping from an oak tree, fluttering toward you. It enters in through your belly and comes to settle in the core of your being. It sprouts and grows in the core of your being. It extends its roots down your back and leg and into the earth. All the way through the dirt and soil and rock to the hot core of the earth. See them drawing in that earth energy. The roots draw that energy back up into the core of your being. Feel that warm healing earth energy pulsing through your core and sit with that a moment.

Then see the heavens open and give heavenly light to our third eye and down through our heart to the core of our being. Feel that divine light and learning and protection. Take a deep breath. Now we’re solidly grounded to heaven and to earth.

Additionally, to establish energy boundaries, she taught listeners to “get into their coconut,” which involved projecting heavenly light from our core, our solar plexus, and pushing it out so it’s 5-feet on either side of us, as well as above and below us. This is our energy boundary and it has a hard shell, she said. Then we set the intention, “My energy is my energy, and it stays inside the coconut.”

You want to get into your coconut every morning, she said, suggesting we do the practice as soon as we wake up or while in the shower. “Otherwise, you keep getting mired in other people’s energy.”

Dina Proctor: Using Mini-Meditation for Transformation

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By Jennifer McCartney

Dina Proctor is a life and business coach with a specialty in mind-body connection. The bestselling author of “Madly Chasing Peace: How I Went From Hell to Happy in Nine Minutes a Day,” joined Tammy Mastroberte, founder of Elevated Existence Magazine, for the “Living an Elevated Existence Mind, Body & Soul Summit Season 2,” to reveal just how vital our mindset is in shaping our bodies, relationships and outer reality and how 3-minute bursts of focused meditation throughout the day can transform our lives.

Dina discovered 3 x 3 meditation (3 minutes of meditation 3 times a day) at a low point in her life when she was struggling with alcohol addiction, and tried meditation but found that sitting still for 20 minutes just wasn’t working. She found her body “maxed out” at around three minutes. Instead of being frustrated by this, she decided to listen to her intuition and instead of sitting for a full 20 minutes, she broke up the time throughout the day in three-minute segments.

“Our intuition always knows the best route for us,” she explained. “If we nourish our bodies three time a day why not nourish our soul three time a day?” And 3 x 3 meditation was born.

These short bursts can also be a good starting point if people are curious about meditation, she noted. “Just putting yourself into a relaxed state for three minutes is taking you out of your stress state. And putting yourself in a relaxed state has a huge effect,” she said. “I don’t doubt that if you’re going from zero to once a day that you’ll have a positive benefit.”

Effectiveness is not tied to the time period, but about taking that break to disconnect. It’s about what gets us into that space of “emotional gratitude,” said Proctor. “Whether it’s 5 x 5 or 3 x 3 or whatever. Even 10, 20, 30 seconds of uninterrupted focused mental energy…is way more effective than sitting there and letting your mind wander.”

The important thing is the function of meditation to interrupt negative thoughts, and to rewire the brain’s stress response. “You’re constantly interrupting your subconscious programming,” she explained. Our recurring negative thoughts about how we’ll never lose weight, or how we’ll never look as good as someone we see on television get disrupted. Eventually a switch will flip in our brain, and we’ll have escaped those negative programs, she said.

Working in Cycles
To bring structure and intention to your 3 x 3 she advises working in seven-day cycles. Chose one intention to take into your meditations that week, and at the end of the week check in to see what has changed. “Within seven days you’re likely to see some kind of difference within yourself,” she explained. It could be that we are sleeping a bit better or feeling less stressed at work, or simply more aware of our thoughts.

You’re rewiring your brain pattern,” she said. What will manifest are feelings of emotional connectivity and feelings of creativity and inspiration. She compared meditation to gardening. “You have to weed the garden and till the soil. You have to create the space so that the flowers can grow,” said Proctor.

One of the challenges may be finding time in the middle of the day to make space for it. But the mid-day meditation in the 3×3 cycle is an important one because this is when mind chatter is at its loudest, said Proctor. That’s why it’s important to interrupt this chatter and do the meditation anyway.

“We think whatever we have going on is so amazingly important that we can’t take time for our higher self,” she said. “It’s believing the universe wants you to succeed. You’ll notice you have few minutes after your last meeting and before your next one.”

She also suggested popping out to the car or running to the bathroom in order to make the time. “It might feel overwhelming but realize that when you start one thing it may…have this trickle down effect. Set your timer. The universe is not going to sabotage you. The universe is setting us up for success,” she noted.

Paul Scheele: Align Your Mind & Body

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By Jennifer McCartney

With the breakthrough technology of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and whole brain learning you can improve any aspect of your life – even while you are sleeping. Author, co-founder of Learning Strategies Corp., and founder of Scheele Learning Systems, Paul R. Scheele, Ph.D., joined Tammy Mastroberte, founder of Elevated Existence Magazine, for the “Living an Elevated Existence Mind, Body & Soul Summit Season 2,” to teach us how we can reprogram our brains to reach our highest potential.

Scheele explained we’ve all been preprogrammed—often in a negative way—by society, which dictates how we feel about ourselves, our work and our relationships. Most of us don’t question this programming, and we just accept it unquestioningly.

“We’re often stopped from exploring and developing our true genius as we become adults,” he said. “We get through school, and we are programmed into what’s called ‘the socialized mind.’”

Sheele compared the preprogrammed brain to a computer that’s been infected with a virus. “We were raised to be obedient to the society that raised us, and we have accepted many of our programs unquestioningly,” he said. Maybe we now believe we’re bad at math, or that we can’t lose weight, or that we’ll never find a job. These become our default settings, and our brains don’t even try to solve the problem.

“We try to use the stuff we were given and when it doesn’t work we think, ‘oh I’m broken,’ or we look at society, and we think that society’s broken,” he noted. What we need is to identify the virus in our mind or the pre-programming we have accepted, and get rid of it. We can reprogram the brain using a variety of tools, including NLP so that our brain functions differently—more productively, and more in line with our highest self.

We all need to start by asking: “What are the voices in your head telling you?” said Scheele.

Rather than get stuck in what he called “the socialized mind,” we can become the author of our own mind, which Scheele calls “the self-authoring mind,” and ultimately, we can progress to what developmental psychologists call “the self-transforming mind.”

“That’s what we’re really encouraging here … people not just authoring their minds, but learning to transform their lives,” he explained. “We can make profound changes in our lives almost instantaneously.”

Three Brain Tools
In order to reprogram out brain, we need to understand how it works. The brain runs on three things:

1.Concentration or focus. This is what we focus on during our daily lives. If we’re meditating and focusing on breaking old thought patterns, our brain will respond accordingly. If we’re spending all our time focusing on the same old thought patterns—that’s our brain running on default. We can choose what we focus on.

2. Imagination. Our brain will create what it is that we focus our attention on. We need to step into this full representation of what we imagine. If we can “see” it in our mind’s eye we can transform it into reality.

3. Suggestion. This is what we suggest to ourselves or the suggestions we receive from others. For example, if we are in an abusive marriage where we are told that we’re worthless, not good enough, not worthy of love over and over, then we learn to accept that as the truth. Even if we escape we still have these programs running in your brain—these suggestions need to be deprogrammed. “Anytime anyone says ‘I can’t,’ they’re right. They’re absolutely programming that,” said Scheele.

The brain responds to these three powerful tools, but most of us don’t actually access the full power and potential our brains possess. We cruise along, instead of using the built in “turbochargers” that can get us where we need to go. In order to rise to the next stage of consciousness, “we have to subject our ideas to inquiry,” Scheele said. “You get more of what you reinforce.”

Once we’ve begun to positively program your brain and use it at its full potential, and are able to move into the self-authoring and self-transforming mind, we’ll find ourselves interacting differently in our family systems, work systems, and even in our church or community. We will find ourselves naturally assuming a leadership role. We will feel more self-confidence because we believe in ourselves, because that is how we are programmed.

“The change is coming from within you,” he said. “It’s not an act of willpower. It feels natural.”

Don Joseph Goewey: The End of Stress

Posted on by Tammy

By Jennifer McCartney

We are all well informed about the damage stress inflicts on our health, happiness, and efforts to succeed—a recent study has shown 77% of Americans suffer from stress. Yet most of us have given in to it, accepting stress as the new normal. The stress reduction programs we’ve tried simply haven’t worked.

But we shouldn’t give in. There is a solution.

Don Joseph Goewey, the founder and managing partner of ProAttitude, a company focused on ending work stress, and the author of “The End of Stress: Four Steps to Rewire Your Brain,” and “Mystic Cool: A Proven Approach to Transcend Stress, Achieve Optimal Brain Function, and Maximize Your Creative Intelligence” joined Tammy Mastroberte, founder of Elevated Existence Magazine for the “Living an Elevated Existence Mind, Body & Soul Summit Season 2,” to share how we can overcome stress once and for all.

Neuroscience discovered genetics and past traumas wire our brain for stress reactions, but we can rewire those faulty circuits through a specific shift in mindset, which can switch our brain’s “auto-pilot” from knee-jerk stress reactions to one that defaults to higher brain networks, calm and peace, Goewey explained. Making this shift is simpler than we would imagine and change happens quickly, within four to eight weeks. Once the shift is made we can unleash the brain’s capacity to generate creative insight, foster greater self-esteem, and improve our relationships.

“If you add up all the stress related disease in America you have the No. 1 cause of death,” he explained. “It knocks out cognitive functions, we get aggressive with other people, it’s rough on relationships.”

The greater the stress, the more we bicker with our partners, and it can even effect the way we look, with chronically stressed people appearing older than they actually are, he shared. Stress also affects our IQ making it difficult for us to function at full capacity. “If we’re chronically stressed, it means the stress response system is on full time,” he explained. We secrete stress hormones when this happens, and our emotional “set point” is to be anxious, angry or depressed. “When we’re having a stress reaction basically the primitive brain is in charge,” he said.

To listen to Don’s interview, and take his Free Stress Test, along with 26 other top experts in mind, body & spirit topics, sign up for the FREE summit now!

But how do we stop stressing? High stress work environments aren’t going away, and the usual stress-reducing programs just aren’t working—our collective stress levels are going up, not down. To make things more difficult, a full 50 percent of our experience of stress is determined by genetics, which plays a big role in wiring us for stress responses. However, the good news is that 40 percent is determined by our attitude or mindset (with the other 10 percent being circumstances). This 40 percent becomes the key to reducing our stress, said Goewey.

It’s all about neuroplasticity. If we can reprogram the way we react to stress, we can begin to take control of our lives. “It takes practice,” he said. “The practice that it takes to built that mindset, to change your brain and change your life in all those positive ways, is a simple practice –it just needs to be practiced.” Anyone can do it because age doesn’t matter when it comes to the ability to retrain our brain. “A change in experience literally changes your brain…and to change our experience you have to change your attitude,” he noted. This can all be done in four to eight weeks, and Goewey shared the four steps to do it — all of which are outlined in his book, “The End of Stress.”

4 Steps to End Stress
1. The first step is awareness. “We create all kinds of stressful events purely in our heads,” he noted. Acknowledge the thought is within you, and not reality. This will help us become aware of the thought patterns that lead to stress. “You want to step into your day in a very conscious way, and be grateful. Gratitude sets of a flurry of positive emotions.” One tool he shares is to take five minutes in the morning to get quiet and be grateful, and set the intention to have a great day no matter what happens.

2. The second step after awareness is making a conscious choice not to activate the stress response. It starts with not believing our stressful thoughts. Ask ourselves, “what does my experience become when I don’t believe that thought?” This will interrupt the stress response and allow us to make a different choice.

5. The third step is about expanding our brain power. As we begin to move out of stress and make the conscious choice for peace, more brain power becomes available, and opens the door to creativity, primarily a function of the right brain. Part of expanding beyond stress includes taking breaks from work throughout the day, walking in nature and taking vacations every year. Goewey recommends taking a 15 to 20 minute break mid-morning and mid-afternoon each day to recharge the brain and keep creativity flowing.

4. The last step is to form a personalized practice that sustains the gains that you make and builds on those gains. Here we can pick and choose the tools that work for us to maintain a stress-free lifestyle.

The Clear Button Tool
As a practice to bust stress in 90 seconds, Goewey shared one of the tools he teaches called The Clear Button Tool. When we become aware of a stressful thought or are in a stressful situation, we start by holding out our left hand. With our right hand, press the center of our left palm, or what he calls “The Clear Button.” Press down and count to three, and then for each count think of a different color. For example, on the first count, inhale and count one, and then on the exhale, think of the color red. Take a second breath, and count 2, and on the exhale think blue. On the third, think green. This is how you “reset” your brain. It’s a form of distraction, and allows you to see the calm or peaceful path through the stress. It stops the stress reaction in its tracks. He also said this can be repeated two or three times, if necessary.

It doesn’t mean we will never experience stress again, but rather that by learning a practice we can shift our thought patterns away from fear and stress, and into a more dynamically peaceful attitude. Our brain will have a new “autopilot” setting that gives us choice, freedom and a better life.

“A lot of people think letting go of fear and stress is hard, but living with the fear and stress is much harder,” Goewey said. “You make the decision to end stress right here right now in the present moment, or you don’t.”

For more from Goewey and the other 25 experts in mind, body and spirit topics, sign up FREE to Season 2 of the Living an Elevated Existence Summit.