By Anil Chandwani / Guidely
My intention and honor always is to give the gifts that I have received in my life back to those who are interested in receiving them. The biggest gift that I have ever received in my life is the gift of meditation. When I started experimenting with meditation, the first thing I encountered was my very busy mind, it was the most prominent and visible thing. In my quest to understand the mind, I learned that 90% of the mind is unconscious and not visible to us. Having learned that, I got very interested and deeply attracted to clinical hypnosis. My work and passion has been to bring the workings of the mind through hypnosis, and meditation together.
My experience with travel and the corporate world allowed me to link meditation with money, and the marketplace during a time when practicing or studying any form of meditation meant selling your Ferrari and shaving your head to join a monastery to become a monk. When I started this practice 25 years ago, people were fascinated and wanted to know how I was running multiple companies while spending several hours a day meditating, as well as going to meditation retreats several months every year. That was my starting point, so what I’m sharing with you is what I’ve learned in my own studies and experiences.
How our minds work
One of the most fascinating things about the mind mechanics is the way in which the mind can trick itself and change what it can do in any situation based upon the suggestion that it receives. So I invite you to change one word in the famous quote that was stated by Lao Tzu, which says “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” to “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the plot.”
Let me explain: The mind receives information through the senses, the mind assimilates the information and responds to every given situation. So the mind is an accumulation of everything we have processed, from the time of our birthing process until this very moment. The birthing process has a deep impact, the whole science of primal therapy is based on that. So the mind receives the information based on its recording and belief system, then the mind assimilates and responds back.
Each individual has their own story based on their own experiences and responds from that vantage point. 2 individuals can experience the exact same scenario and have 2 completely different reactions. The layers of the mind and how it processes information has always been incredibly fascinating to me. Hypnosis is an incredibly powerful tool, second to meditation, as meditation, in my opinion, is the most powerful tool one can use. Nothing comes close to meditation.
Hypnosis is a tool that can change these subconscious layers of the mind. On an average day the mind processes upwards of 60 to 80,000 thoughts if not more. One of the gifts neuroscience has to offer is the visibility of the mind and how it functions, this is why meditation has become so popular, because it is no longer a mystery. People can visually track the function of the brain before and after meditation through the neuroplasticity of the brain function. So when we are processing 60 to 80,000 thoughts a day, and 90% of these thoughts are repeated thoughts, then nothing new will happen.
Having said that, the way we speak to ourselves become transferred thoughts from the mind to feeling thoughts in the body. Before any kind of action happens, the mind, which is a mechanism, or an “expectation machine” functions by responding and sending a chemical reaction to the body in order to create the action. The emotion creates the feeling, based on that, the body creates the response, and the feeling happens. When we start to understand this one simple science of how we communicate with our own mind and ourselves, we can profoundly change the game.
Reframing Limiting Beliefs
For example: My daughter gave me a skydiving gift for my birthday. As this tiny twin engine plane was going 13,000 feet up into the sky, my whole body was screaming, telling me that I was crazy. As I was sitting in the plane with my feet dangling out ready to jump and not knowing if I would land in Southern California or Mexico, I had an opportunity to practice what I teach.
At the moment that I was sitting there looking down from 13,000 feet, I knew that this moment mattered. I know that my mind responds to what I’m going to say to it, so the key is absolutely knowing that: “This moment matters!” So here is the process that my mind went through:
The First Step:
Empowering ourselves by knowing that this is an important moment, and it matters.
The Second Step:
Acknowledging whatever is coming up at the moment.
What was present for me was the “fear and freaking out” around the idea of jumping out of a plane –
Whatever the emotion is, it has to be acknowledged. You can do that by:
The Third Step:
Scanning your body, taking a deep breath, scanning your body and seeing or locating where in the body you’re experiencing the intense emotion. What makes acknowledging a feeling in your body so amazing is that, since you’ve identified it, in that space where it sits in your body, you now can’t ignore it, on some level it has to be addressed and dealt with. But if in the moment you are just pushing through the intense feelings, then you’re not really processing it. Once you process that specific emotion, you clear it forever.
So you:
- Scan the body with your breath
- Acknowledge where the fear or freak out sits in your body
- Then make a choice.
The thought process may sound something like “A part of me is freaking out and afraid, but I know that this is only a “part” of me. When you simply acknowledge that this is only a part of you, wherever it sits in your body.
- A part of me is afraid
- A part of me doesn’t want to do that
- A part of me doesn’t want to go on stage and perform
- A part of me doesn’t want to stand on the board of directors and speak
Acknowledging “A part” actually means that you are separating it from the totality of who you are and reducing it to a simple particle. I invite you to take any situation in your life that is currently present for you, it can be anything:
- Going to your boss and asking for a raise
- A difficult challenge you’re having a hard time facing
- The most difficult challenge you have around doing something
The most important thing to know is that the situation or challenge is there. You have identified the fear and freak out, and you have acknowledged that this “part” of you needs to be addressed. Once you’ve made that connection, this “part” of you suddenly becomes small and not as significant as it was before. Returning the power to move through it, back to you. When challenges take over, and you give it all your power, it tethers itself to you and takes over the house. You know when it’s taken over the house when you’re freaking out or in fear.
As soon as you acknowledge that there is only a part of you that is in fear, then you can distance yourself from the situation and see from a different perspective and get your power back. Once we separate out the fearful part, which is most likely a story from childhood, we can make a conscious decision and choose to jump out of the fear. With that very understanding, I chose to jump out of the plane and have gone skydiving many times since. I do this simple technique with my personal life, my businesses, and teach this technique at present.
This Moment Matters
Every human being has the power to choose which moment matters. Every human has the power to choose when to jump and be free of their fear, when to choose to move out of procrastination and get more productive, or when to get healthy by simply reminding themselves that “This Moment Matters”. It’s a simple 3 step process that I have explained above. The trick is about knowing what part of the body is freaking out then coming into that quiet space so you can scan your body.
To make this more real, I invite you to bring up a pressing challenge that you may be going through, or procrastination about right now and bring it to your awareness, I will show you how to process it and we can do this together. If you would like to do this practice without having to read through this blog and listen to it instead, you can do that on YouTube or please feel free to click HERE. To fast forward to the meditation on YouTube scroll to 18:04 on the lower scroll bar.
Let’s begin this easy meditation that you can read through then sit quietly and do:
- Take a deep breath and scan your body with awareness
- Let your breath be a scanner, scanning your whole body
- Open you mouth as you exhale allowing your body to relax more
- As you scan your body, pay attention to where the tightness is
- Which part of your body is holding the tension related to your challenge or fear of not wanting to do something or face something that your life has presented you with
- When you have located the part of your body that is holding the emotion, use your breath to breathe in and out of that part
- Let your in breath fill that space, and your out breath empty the space. Release it through your breath
- Take your time with this process…
- As this space becomes available to you, picture yourself sitting and being present in that space within you
- This is your sacred space, your cockpit and your control seat within you
- As you see or picture yourself sitting in your sacred space use your breath to bring awareness to your body
- Let the breath fill your body with awareness, this clarity filling you from within
Repeat This Phrase a Couple of times:
- This Moment Matters – Let the moment of this phrase fill your body.
- A Part of Me Is – Fill in the blank so it is suitable for your particular situation. What are you delaying, procrastinating, avoiding?
- I Am Now Choosing To Do It Anyway
Using this energy that is filling your body at this point, visualize yourself taking that first step, see yourself doing what you really want to do. Make it as real as possible in your visual image.
When you come back out of this meditation feel yourself bringing that energy with you. To anchor this energy, I invite you to take your non-dominant hand and place your pointer finger on your thumb, letting the two fingers touch. As you do that, close your eyes again and recollect that power within you as you speak the words out loud:
“I am Choosing to Do it. This Moment Matters”
- As you open your eyes, separate your fingers
- Then close your eyes again and allow your fingers to touch again gently
- Once again while your doing this recollect and recall that space where you are always connected with your core, your source, clarity, intelligence, and power
“I am Choosing to Do it. This Moment Matters”
Repeat this process a couple of times then let your fingers touch one last time with your eyes open and notice if you feel this anchor taking effect.
My invitation to you is to practice this until you can do it very quickly with anything that you have been avoiding or delaying, and to also do this meditation again tonight and tomorrow so that you remember it. The best part is that if you do this 4 times, the brain will start to create a synaptic connection creating new neural pathways and start to become hardwired.
This process is more powerful than affirmations because it is an action that you are taking instead of speaking some words with no real action behind it. Practice this as much as possible to hardwire it into your subconscious.
Also know that you can create all kinds of different anchors besides touching your fingers together. You can touch your heart, your forehead. Slap you knee, any kind of anchoring process will work.
