How can relax my mind

How to Relax Your Mind and Relieve Stress

Between commitments to work, family and friends, the round-the-clock demands on our time can feel relentless. In fact, American culture seems to prize being overbooked and exhausted to the point that it's become a status symbol to not practice self-care. No wonder "figure out how to relax and be happy" is often the last bullet point on our never-ending to-do lists.

It's all too easy to keep chugging along until you're suddenly in deep need of stress relief: your muscles are begging for a massage, your brain is fried and, to quote the wise Shakira, you're starting to feel just a little abused, like a coffee machine in an office. As wonderful as a wellness retreat or a resort getaway sounds, most of us can rarely find the money and time off required to do it. And even if you're working from home, it can be challenging to set boundaries and sign off for some quality me-time.

But, there's no reason to give your anxiety full reign over your brain. Making small lifestyle changes and adding a few new habits can help you find some inner peace and relaxation, whether you've got a day, an hour, or just a few minutes. Here are our best expert-approved tips on how to relax your mind and body—before bed, or right now this minute—using some tried-and-true methods.

Accepting that you deserve to unwind is the first step.

"The biggest barrier most people face when it comes to relaxing is their mindset about what 'relaxation' really is," says Lisa Kaplin, psychologist and women's empowerment coach.

Making time to chill out can be especially challenging for women, according to Kaplin, "because they often have so many things on their plates, including the emotional labor of running a home. A woman will sit down to relax and her mind will be spinning about all of the things that need to be done. If she believes she can't relax until all of that is complete, she never will."

In case you need a reminder: The world won't end if you do press pause once in a while, and your body has ways of letting you know it's actually a need, not a luxury. Kaplin says the true key is developing "a mindset of, 'I can relax whenever and however I choose.' Then comes "getting present in the moment and choosing one's form of relaxation."

Don't forget to breathe: Meditation really works.

"So much of our day is spent in anxiety producing thoughts, either reliving that horrible conversation you already had or fantasizing about how you're going to get your way in the future," says Lodro Rinzler, author and co-founder of MNDFL meditation centers in New York City. "Mindfulness invites us to rest in what is happening right now. We can relax the body and mind to the extent we realize that, in this moment, we are basically okay."

To those who are new to meditation, Rinzler suggests practicing a simple 10-minute exercise: Just breathe.

"Sit in a relaxed but uplifted posture, extending upward through the spine. Rest your hands on your lap to offer extra back support. Tuck in the chin slightly and relax the muscles in your face. Then simply tune into the natural flow of your body breathing."

If you find your mind wandering, that doesn't mean you're bad at meditating. "Simply acknowledge you drifted off, which happens to everyone, and bring your focus back to the breath."

It's not about perfection, Rinzler says, but practicing how to stay present. "The more we do that on the meditation seat, the more we'll be able to notice when we're triggered by stress and instead choose to relax into whatever is currently occurring—be it a meal, or a walk, in a much more thoughtful way."

If you'd like more guidance as you begin to practice mindfulness, help is just a download away. Check out OprahMag.com's list of best meditation apps out there right now, including one of Rinzler's favorites, Ten Percent Happier (which offers one-off sessions, full courses and a "coach" you can chat with).

Even a short yoga session will relax your body and mind.

Yoga's thought to help with everything from digestion to addiction recovery, and taking a class—or just breathing through some poses for a few minutes—can put you in a more relaxed mood.

"Any amount of practice will make a difference," says Keri Gans, registered dietitian nutritionist and yoga instructor. "The last thing you want to do is stress about how often you are going." Gans recommends trying different styles of yoga, as well as various instructors, until you find what works for you. Look to high-rated YouTube channels, or apps like 5 Minute Yoga.

Spend time in nature.

"In moments of uncertainty, just focusing on the stillness of a tree or the intricacy of a leaf can center me in the wholeness of all things," Oprah wrote in the February 2017 issue of O, the Oprah Magazine. Research backs the restorative power of spending time in nature: One such study from the University of British Columbia, published in the Journal of Positive Psychology in 2016, compared the reported emotions of those who observed and photographed nature for two weeks to those who did the same with "human-built objects." The researchers found that people who spent time observing nature reported a significantly higher "general sense of connectedness (to other people, to nature and to life as a whole)" than those who didn't.

And you don't need to isolate yourself for a week on Walden Pond for nature to work its magic on you, either.

"This wasn't about spending hours outdoors or going for long walks in the wilderness," lead researcher Holli-Anne Passmore told the UBC News. "This is about the tree at a bus stop in the middle of a city and the positive effect that one tree can have on people."

Eat your way to less stress.

Opening a bottle of merlot is a popular way to loosen up, but a longer-term strategy starts with your plate, not your wine glass. "The first step for combatting stress is to make sure you're consuming a well-balanced diet," Gans says. "Complex carbohydrates, such as oatmeal, barley and whole wheat pasta, and foods rich in antioxidants, omega-3s and B vitamins have been shown to possibly have a calming effect."

Try masturbating.

Not only is a great way to get back in touch with what turns you on—leading to all-around better sex—experts say masturbation can help with stress release. Try not to worry about whether or not you have an orgasm, and just enjoy the journey. Need some toy recommendations? Here are some good vibrators for beginners, and the quietest ones we've found.

Once you've identified your go-to relaxation techniques, honor yourself by actually doing them.

Whether it's a walk in the park, a luxurious bath with a book and a beverage, a little self-love, or rewatching your favorite rom-coms, it's all about scheduling an unbreakable appointment with yourself.

"I tell women to look for small opportunities for relaxation. Fifteen minutes at lunch, an hour before bedtime, a few hours on the weekend," Kaplin says. "It's the 'pay ourselves first' concept. If we relax and take care of ourselves first, the rest will easily fall into place. If not, we won't show up the way we want to and we will never feel rested."

View the original story on OprahMag.com: Easy Ways to Relax Your Mind and Body.

Easy Ways to Relax, Recharge, and Vanquish Stress

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How to relax your mind - find inner peace and tranquility

7 min read

Anahana April 20, 2022

Mindfulness

Anxious thoughts, anxiety about the future, regrets about the past. Tension and stress have a unique way of penetrating our consciousness and overwhelming us. Dealing with the stress and stressors of modern life can be challenging.

Fortunately, there are relaxation techniques and practices that you can incorporate into your daily life to help calm your mind and find peace, even in difficult times.

How can I relax my mind?

Although we cannot completely eliminate stress from our lives, we can learn to manage it better. First of all, start by being aware of your stress response and the amount of stressors you expose yourself to on a daily basis. What makes you constantly on the lookout? What brings you the most anxiety?

Once problems are identified, treatments can be sought. The possibilities are endless: from physical movement to nutrition, sleep, meditation and breathing.

We have described four relaxation exercises that will help to relax the mind and are suitable for beginners.

Learn how to meditate

The benefits of meditation are manifold and are felt on both the physical and mental levels. Many studies have shown that meditation has fantastic effects on stress relief, mental health, and even blood pressure control.

There are many ways to use meditation to reduce stress and anxiety, soothe and even relieve symptoms of depression. But although meditation takes many forms, at its core it is a practice of mindfulness training and attention.

Visualization meditation is a great start for beginners. Just as famous athletes practice visualization before a big game to play their best, you can practice calming visualization meditation to help you relax or relieve anxiety.

Follow these steps to do basic visualization practice:

Begin by finding a quiet place to sit, either on a meditation cushion or right on the edge of a chair.
Set the timer to five to ten minutes.
Keep your back straight. One can imagine that from the base of the spine up through the back, neck and crown of the head there is a string.
Gently close your eyes.
Imagine a quiet place. Let's say you're sitting on a grassy bank of a gently flowing stream. The weather is fine. The sun warms your skin and the cool, soft breeze keeps you warm.
Hear the water flowing in the stream. Feel the breeze on your skin. Feel the fresh scent of flowers and nature.
Breathe slowly through the lower abdomen. Focus on how the breath enters and exits the lungs.
When a thought, feeling, or emotion enters your mind, imagine that thought, feeling, or emotion sitting on a maple leaf floating on a river. Look at the sheet and what is on it. Accept that thought, feeling, or emotion. It is not bad and not good, not scary, not anxious and not restless. Just look at the leaf and let it float past you in the river. Return to focusing on the breath and visualizing on the bank of the stream.

Keep doing this every time you have an extraneous thought until the alarm goes off. Then slowly release the visualized picture. Before you get up, take a few minutes to come out of your meditative state.

With regular practice, entering the meditative state will become a quick and easy process for you. As you go deeper into the practice, you will feel less physical tension in your body.

Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is another wonderful practice that promotes peace and relaxation. It's pretty close to meditation, but it's unique in that you can practice mindfulness anywhere, anytime. The purpose of the practice is to stay in the present - that's easy.

Here is a basic mindfulness practice you can try while doing some work, such as washing dishes in the kitchen sink:

Stand at the sink, ready to do the dishes. Tell yourself that washing dishes is all you will be doing for at least the next ten minutes. Take this time for yourself.
Tighten every muscle in your body that you can. Hold on for a count of three. Let go. Repeat this three times.
How does your body feel now? Notice if you are concentrating on any particular part of the body. Shake your body lightly to release excess tension.
Take three deep breaths in and out. Are there other thoughts knocking on the door of your mind? Ask them to wait.
Turn on the tap. Take the time to get the exact temperature of the water - not too hot and not too cold. Focus on how the water looks as it slides over your fingers. Feel how it changes from cool to hot to warm. Hear it flowing from the faucet and down the drain.
Add some soap to the sponge. Look at its brilliant color and note its smell. Wiggle the sponge to create bubbles, watching them grow and feel their warmth on your hands.
Do you feel that an extraneous thought or feeling comes up? Notice this. Then release it. Return your attention to soap and sponge.
Take a washing dish. Examine the dish. Slowly begin to wash it, trying to wash away all the debris.
Rinse the dish to see all the dirty spots and soapy water run off. Set it aside to dry. Keep breathing deeply.

Take your time. Continue washing dishes in this way until you're done. Now take a clean cup and pour yourself some herbal tea. To learn more about mindfulness exercises, check out the mindfulness meditation here.

Do yoga

Yoga is another great way to find peace and tranquility when you feel like your mind is in a frenetic state.

The mind-body connection in yoga is phenomenal. The mind-body theory is that what happens in the mind - thoughts, emotions and feelings - influences what happens in your body, which in turn affects your physical well-being. At the same time, how you feel physically and how healthy and fit your body is affects your thoughts, feelings and emotions.

Yoga is a mind-body connection practice that aims to improve all aspects of your being. Although it may seem that asanas only affect the physical side, they have a significant effect on your mental state. Each posture can strengthen and improve the flexibility of your body by stimulating the organs and working on circulation. Each pose is also designed to stimulate the brain, inducing focus and peace.

Try taking a yoga class or working out at home to reap the many benefits of this practice. No doubt you will leave the mat with less muscle tension, less stress and more focus.

Learn to breathe better

Most of us take our breathing for granted and underestimate its importance in our lives. We believe that since our lungs are constantly working, without our instructions, they should do what they should and do not need improvement. However, this is not quite true. There are right and wrong ways to breathe.

Did you know that most people breathe too shallowly?

Many people breathe only the air that is in the upper part of the lungs. This causes short, weak breaths that tire you out and causes "stale" air to remain in the lower part of your lungs.

To test yourself, place one hand on your stomach and the other on your chest. Breathe normally. Do you feel the hand on your stomach rise as you inhale, or do you feel the hand on your chest rise? If you feel your hand drop on your chest as you exhale, you are breathing shallowly.

Ideally, you should inhale much deeper, drawing all the air into your lungs. As you inhale, you should feel the hand on your stomach rise, and the hand on your chest should barely move.

Breathing exercises are often one of the most valuable techniques for calming the mind and restoring correct breathing. Here is one to start with:

Find a quiet place to sit where your back will be supported.
Place one hand on the abdomen and the other on the chest.
Keep your back straight, imagining that you have a string running from the base of your spine up your back and neck and out through the top of your head.
Close your eyes slightly.
Take a few deep breaths without thinking about how you breathe.
Inhale deeply and as you inhale feel your belly rise and your hand on your belly. Breathe slowly and as you do this say to yourself, "I am breathing in peace and quiet."
When you can no longer inhale air, slowly release your breath and exhale. As you do this, say to yourself, "I'm breathing out tension and stress."

Repeat this exercise for five to ten minutes, or as long as you like.

Relaxation tips in no time!

Imagine that you are about to go on stage for a big performance, and your thoughts are running at the speed of kilometers per minute. Try this mental relaxation tip to regain your calm and calm your racing thoughts.

#1 - Find a quiet place

Start by going to a quiet place to focus - another room at home, a break room at work, outside, or even the bathroom.

#2 - Sit if possible

If possible, find a chair where you can sit with back support. Ideally, if you can put your feet on the floor. Now place one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach.

#3 - Perform short breathing exercise

This exercise is called square breathing. You may also hear it called "square breathing", "four-part breathing" or "4x4 breathing". To perform square breathing, do the following:

Exhale all the air from the lungs.
Slowly count to four, inhaling only through the nose. As you inhale, you should feel the hand on your stomach rise. The other hand must not move.
Hold your breath slightly in your lungs for another four counts.
Count to four one last time while slowly exhaling air from your mouth. In this case, the hand lying on the stomach should again fall.

Repeat this exercise at least four times to relax and relieve stress.

How to relax and unwind

Whether it's at work or at home, sometimes we just need to step aside and find a way to relax, to occupy our mind with pleasant activities. Relaxation is different for every person. We each have our own ways of relaxing. For some, this may mean going out for a few minutes and having a nice walk. For others, it might be playing a sport or instrument, meditation, yoga, or breathing. Some simply learn to relax by watching their favorite TV show or popping a bottle of wine.

The important thing is that we all find ways that work for us and allow us to calm down, relax and enjoy a moment of well-being and self-care. Engaging in relaxing activities will help us learn to relax.

Relaxing the Mind: Frequently Asked Questions

How can I stop thinking too much?

To stop thinking too much, meditate regularly. Ten minutes of meditation every day can change your focus and concentration, allowing you to shift your attention when you start thinking about things you don't want to think about.

In some cases, distractions can also be helpful. Just be sure to choose healthy distractions and don't rely on them to keep you from thinking about something serious. Distractions can be helpful in certain situations where you just can't bring yourself to stop obsessing over something.

If, for example, you find it hard to stop thinking about a recent breakup, try taking your mind off your thoughts by spending time with friends, volunteering, exercising, a favorite hobby, or developing new hobbies.

How can I calm my mind while I sleep?

Sleep disturbance is a common health problem affecting millions of people worldwide. The truth is that anxiety and stress often accompany insomnia. Whether poor sleep is due to anxiety and stress, or vice versa, is debatable and can vary from person to person.

However, one thing is for sure: Calming the mind can greatly improve your sleep if you usually have trouble sleeping. To prolong deeper sleep, try these tips to relax your mind:

Try a short meditation before bed.
Listen to white noise or nature sounds (such as waves or a stream) while you take a nap.
Do 5-10 minutes of yoga next to your bed before going to bed.
Try practicing mindfulness while falling asleep (concentrating on the breath and the present moment, watching your thoughts, feelings and emotions as they come and go).
Listen to a tape-recorded meditation before going to bed.
Establish a sleep routine in which you turn off all appliances, dim the lights, and change into pajamas about half an hour before going to bed.

What relieves anxiety?

Unfortunately, there is no universal answer to this question. Everyone has different things that cause anxiety, and as a result, what relieves one person's anxiety may not help another.

The best solution is to use a combination of the above tips to cultivate a calmer mind. In addition, you can try the following to improve your overall health and well-being and reduce daily stress:

Eat healthy foods that include fruits, vegetables, lean meats, whole grains, and healthy fats.
Exercise regularly, including both cardio and strength training in your daily routine.
Improve your sleep by developing a sleep routine and giving it at least 6-8 hours every night.

Invest in better stress management and enjoy a more relaxed mood all the time

When the stress of life takes over and nothing seems to be going right, it can feel like a hurricane is raging in your mind. At times like these, it is helpful to have at least a few solid tips for relaxing the mind in your pocket.

Use the techniques, tips and tricks mentioned in this article to enjoy a more peaceful mind, especially in times of difficult stress and struggle, improve your mental health and reduce stress.

Anxious thoughts, worries about the future, regrets about the past... Tension and stress have a unique way of entering our consciousness and overwhelming us.

Although we cannot completely eliminate stress from our lives, we can learn to deal with it better. To do this, you need to have several stress relief techniques at the ready for the moment when you feel that your mind begins to overload with negative thoughts and emotions.

Here are four relaxation suggestions that are sure to help you relax.

Resources for awareness in Anaachana

Vicki on attentiveness

Mindfulness

How to relax your mind

9000

How to clear your mind

How to clear your mind 9Ol000 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/mindfulness-meditation-helps-fight-insomnia-improves-sleep-201502187726

Consciousness without an inner "I" / Habr

This article is devoted to the state of consciousness without the inner "I". Such a state with a certain training can be experienced by each person on personal experience. Perception in this state of consciousness is very different from perception in the normal state, and some of its aspects can help solve various issues regarding the human mind, which arise, among other things, when discussing technologies for transferring consciousness to a machine, creating an artificial brain or copying a human brain, etc. .

Foreword

It so happened that the theme of a state of consciousness without an inner "I" is not very popular. For some reason, this state is not considered in articles where they talk about robots with human feelings or try to resolve various paradoxes associated with the internal experience of intelligent beings. Even among people who are fond of various mental practices, for whom this state can be one of the important peaks, there are almost no those who have experienced such a state in practice and very few of those who have even heard of such a phenomenon. Perhaps I was just “badly looking”, since initially for me such a state was of practical interest, and not theoretical. For this reason, this article will be based almost entirely on my personal experience of experiencing this state. However, I hope it will still be at least interesting. The article will touch on many topics that, to one degree or another, may be related to this state, and at the end of the article you can find various ways how this state can be induced by anyone.

Since the topic is difficult to understand, first you need to define some terms and nuances. Since this state refers to the so-called altered states of consciousness , then in the article, instead of “a state of consciousness without an inner Self”, the abbreviation ISS will be used almost everywhere.

* What happens when the "I" disappears

* The human body is like a robot, or almost complete automatism

* Dialogues and thoughts without words or the language of consciousness

* The personality of a person or what is under the hood of the psyche

* Pain without suffering

* The amplitude of emotional experiences

* Why do we need "I" and why do we "think" a lot

* Mentioned in other sources

* How to repeat this experience and safety precautions

What happens when the "I" disappears

My first experience of ASC differed from subsequent ones in that the transition to the state occurred imperceptibly for me after long attempts to induce the state. In subsequent ISS experiments, the transition to the state almost always went through the fear of death: when it was possible to stop the flow of thoughts to an almost pure state, the resulting emptiness began to frighten: it seemed that a little more, and everything would disappear (either the world around would disappear, or you yourself) . However, if you overcome this fear and continue to plunge into this emptiness, then nothing terrible happens. The inner "I" really disappears like a sensation. But consciousness, what it observes, does not disappear (and it also covers with such a vivid feeling that it seems that this is the happiest state in the world). Only perception changes, the world is no longer divided into the concepts of "I" and "not I". Moreover, the absence of such a division is not the same as if the mind suddenly began to consider the whole world as oneself (although a feeling of unity with the whole world in this state may arise, but this is not the same as considering the whole world as oneself). This is precisely the destruction of the criterion of division, there is no longer a feeling of "this is I", and there is no feeling of "this is not I". At the same time, the ability to distinguish the boundaries of one's body, or to understand one's name, does not disappear. But it will happen without the feeling of "this is me" or "not me".

This state is also interesting because it is impossible to explain it later either to oneself or to another person. This state can only be experienced on personal experience and be in it in order to understand the phenomena in the world without the criterion of division into "I" and "not I". For some reason, our usual logic resists understanding the world without dividing it into “I” and “not I”, although this idea without dividing the world into “I” and “not I” is rather more correct. Arguing about such a state, one way or another, the thought wants to solve the problem through one of the two states, but the third cannot be found.

As a result, in the ordinary state of consciousness, we are forced to always use the concept of the inner "I", even when it is not necessary. For example, it is difficult for us to imagine an electron particle without transferring the idea of our “I” to it. If we imagine an electron particle, we automatically seem to feel like an electron, for which there is a more energetically “favorable” state. We have no words in the language for the states of inanimate objects. Therefore, the electron has a “beneficial” state, which in fact cannot be applied to anyone, because it has no “I”. Thinking about evolution, we get "good" genes, "important" tasks, because we put ourselves in the place of living beings that evolve, and thus understand what will be more profitable and what will not, from the standpoint of the internal experience of living beings, and not from the standpoint of the inanimate process "evolution".

Human body, like a robot, or almost complete automatism

In the ASC, you can also, as in the normal state of consciousness, feel your body and control it. However, now the body is perceived differently, it is perceived as an automaton that can walk by itself, can drive you home from work and back, can cook food by itself, and can even play the piano by itself. Those. all basic skills can work automatically. At the same time, you do not lose control over the body, you can still do anything. But you have a clear understanding that if you give the body a command, for example, to move your finger, your consciousness will not move the finger itself, the body will move the finger, move “something” in the body, some mechanisms will execute your command, as it should, but you don't personally do it. In fact, you yourself in this state cannot do anything, you can only be manager \ at a very high level, and feel how some control processes are taking place inside your body that implement your command. Moreover, the body carries out not only your commands, it also often decides what is needed now. But you can interfere with these decisions.

Body automatism can be invoked separately from the ASC state. For example, this is achieved by trying to “let go” of control over walking while walking, to eliminate the feeling “I am moving my legs”. If the technique works, you will begin to feel that your legs themselves go where they need to and how they need to. At the same time, you continue to feel your legs, feel how they move, but without the feeling that you personally are doing this process. At the same time, control of the situation still lies with you. You have simply eliminated the feeling of "I'm going." Indeed, a person usually does not actually control every movement, but at the same time feels that supposedly "he is walking." Those. processes in the body are simply assigned to our inner "I" after the fact.

During the very first, longest and brightest experience of ASC, when the state was already beginning to weaken, I decided to record a video of playing the piano for the last time. I don't have a lot of experience playing the piano, let alone creating professional music. The video just shows that you can automatically play at the level of your skills. The melody in the video was also created “automatically” during the game, I didn’t specifically think which keys to press, only sometimes I changed the direction of the game.

Dialogues and thoughts without words or the language of consciousness

Probably, everyone noticed that before saying or thinking something, there is already all the information in the head, which after a couple of seconds will be announced. But despite the fact that we know this information in advance, for some reason we still voice it. It turns out a kind of "duplication" of the same information presented in different forms. Perhaps this is the only thing that can be noticed inside oneself in a normal state of consciousness.

In the ASC, the sounding of thoughts does not occur (ie, you never "think" in the usual sense of the word), all information exists only in the form of sensations. Even during reading, the assimilation of information occurs without first translating it into words. Dialogue with another person will take place in the same way without “words” within oneself, and will take place automatically. In ASC, you can either completely automatically carry on a conversation with a person, or interfere with the meaning of what you want to answer. This is essentially the same "automatism" of the body, which extends to dialogue with people, to reading, to the processing of visual and auditory information.

In ASC one can feel not only thoughts as sensations without words, but also perceive any visual and auditory images not as a sound or an image, but as a sensation containing all the information. This sensation can be interpreted into a visual image or into the voicing of words, into a certain text, and there is no single correct interpretation. Those. the sensation can be interpreted in many ways, with a partial loss of information.

For example, if you imagine some complex three-dimensional object, then in ASC it will be a sensation, but what we are used to “imagining” in the ordinary state of consciousness in the form of a projection of a three-dimensional object onto a plane is only an interpretation of this sensation.

Unfortunately, it is often very difficult to interpret sensations into information that is understandable in everyday life. For example, you can feel the length of an object, but you cannot accurately express it in meters. Sometimes it is impossible to express a feeling at all, and it turns out that you know something, but do not understand this knowledge at the level of words, at the level of any ideas from the ordinary state of consciousness.

Consciousness, is it the work of the parts of the brain responsible for speech?

The article What is Consciousness describes the theory that consciousness is “the distribution of neural excitation among the prefrontal cortex, association cortex and areas responsible for speech – this is what our “I”, our consciousness or focus of perception is. "

The experience of ISS, on the one hand, proves in principle that speech and the inner self are interconnected things. However, it also proves that consciousness and the inner Self are different things, and the former can be separated from the latter. Thus consciousness and inner speech are different things, consciousness can work without inner speech.

Personality of a person or what is under the hood of the psyche

In ISS you remain an ordinary person with all his usual desires, needs, problems inside, nothing new. However, the personality of a person in ASC does not look like a solid monolith, it is no longer “I”. In ISS, different “sources” are responsible for different needs, tasks. The “source” is something that can be felt in oneself, which gives a certain signal to control the body. A person's personality is made up of "sources". They can fully automatically control the entire body. For example, the “source” can decide for your consciousness what to answer to a person in a dialogue with him, if consciousness does not intervene. It is the “source” that can be responsible for your hobby, create interest in a particular business. But not all "sources" can be attributed to the individual, many "sources" refer to basic things, such as the desire to eat, breathe, etc.

Looking under the hood of the psyche, one can see a whole "orchestra" from "sources". And it is they who most often rule everything in life most of the time. And some of these "sources" we call ourselves, our personality traits, our personality. In fact, this is essentially a "program" of behavior.

Theoretically, "sources" can be changed, thus changing the characteristics of the personality, because the "source" is an automation tool in the hands of consciousness, and not an indestructible fundamental part of what we consider ourselves to be.

Pain without suffering

In an ordinary state of consciousness, it is difficult for us to imagine that it is possible to experience very deep emotional states, sob, climb a wall, lie on the floor, scream, and that all this was possible without suffering. It seems to us that pain and suffering are inseparable things. In the ASC, one can experience very deep experiences, but they will not “burn”, due to which one can immerse oneself in them more than in the normal state. Moreover, due to the fact that empathy in ASC works well, you can experience the feelings of another person as deeply as possible, experience his states as your own, understand his pain, delve into his past, fully empathizing.

Amplitude of emotional experiences

As a child, I became interested in electronics. I was 6 years old when I first picked up a soldering iron. I really liked to make various home-made things, I went crazy for radio components and just for all sorts of pieces of iron. However, over time, my passion became less and less "bright", although I continued to like it.

Feelings in ASC are as vivid as in childhood. Once, after a walk, I went into my room, saw there, as usual, my rubbish from radio components, but I experienced the same thing as in childhood, as if I saw radio components for the first time. It was a feeling of novelty, celebration, joy of life, which was on that day in general, in principle, for any reason.

Feelings of novelty, celebration, joy of life - these are all quite ordinary sensations from an ordinary state. With age, the world becomes less and less "bright" not at all because memories are distorted and seem brighter than they were. In fact, due to the avoidance of internal problems, the “amplitude” of both bad feelings and good ones decreases, and as a result, the emotional perception of the world becomes more and more “neutral”. In this regard, ISS allows you to return perception to full power. In ISS, you can make yourself a child by just going out for a walk in the evening in your sleeping area.

Why do we need "I" and why do we "think" a lot

I have been practicing ASC for a very long time, and I was looking for reasons why the condition eventually disappears. One of the practices I did was to simply watch the thoughts that come up in my head and try to feel the reason for them. From practical observations, it turned out that any thought voiced in the head has a hidden experience under it. Roughly speaking, a person is always under the pressure of experiences, but does not realize it. Instead of experiences, a person “thinks” about something. It may be music in the head, it may be reflections, and there may even be reflections about ISS, maybe philosophy, there may be thoughts on work. However, the verdict of any voiced thought is one - it is suffering. But by translating emotions into abstract words, suffering is not experienced as an emotion. I make the assumption that the inner self is a psychological defense mechanism against experiences that works by delimiting experiences. Roughly speaking, the label “this is not me” is put on internal discomfort, due to which it becomes easier to live. And for this distinction to work, it must be constantly maintained by thoughts in the head.

Based on this assumption, it also follows that practices to suppress thoughts in the head cannot be effective, since they do not eliminate the cause of thoughts. The reason is that a person cannot or does not want to deal with his feelings, hides them from himself. To some extent, this is his choice. For the same reason, any methods that do not eliminate the “choice” of a person “not to pay attention to their experiences” cannot be effective at all. This is where their temporary action comes from.

Mention in other sources

This state of ASC is mentioned in the works of Viktor Argonov. Many of the states that the musician touches on in his works have been considered in this article from the point of view of personal experience. However, I generally do not agree with Victor's position.

From the video clip "Crossing the Line - Part 5: there, beyond the line"

Also, the state of consciousness without an inner "I" is described as the silence of the mind in the writings of the Indian philosopher, poet and revolutionary Sri Aurobindo. Much of what is described in his books coincides with my personal experience. And given that I read it after the first experience of ISS, I was especially pleased to see it.

Also, on a tip from a professor of biology, there are practitioners who have been "seriously purged of the religious husks" by Gurdjieff.

Perhaps this is all I know about this topic from other sources.

How to repeat this experience and safety

Anyone can call the ISS. Once you start training, it's only a matter of time. But first, some safety instructions under the spoiler.

Safety

What to do if someone spoke to me in my head

At first, during the practice, it may happen that someone will talk to you in your head. This voice may appear to be anyone, but it is important to understand that you are actually talking to yourself (some part of your psyche is talking to you). A similar situation indicates that you did something against your will (well, as against, against some part of yourself). You provoked an internal conflict. If in this situation you believe what the voice offers you, then by doing so you will transfer control of yourself to this part of your psyche (in practice, it can mean the beginning of the path to a madhouse, although most likely you will simply tell your friends how you communicate with “that” world ). Therefore, politely refuse this voice, no matter what it offers you or what it doesn’t frighten you with. Don't be afraid of anything, nothing can happen to you if you don't allow it to happen.

What to do if you feel the presence of someone nearby

It may be that after the practice, the presence of some creature will be felt nearby. It is possible that the creature can even attack. It is important to remember that this is your own game with yourself. Don't go to war with imaginary beings. You just need to forbid them to come to you, to forbid you to interfere. It all depends on you, on your choice. Even if you have already managed to break firewood, you can always disperse. No one can do anything to you against your will.

Warning

After the practice, there may be a “rollback”, this is when your psychological state temporarily worsens. There may be a splash of aggression on others, you may begin to behave strangely.

Remember that practices are not the solution to your current problems. This means that if you are unhappy in a relationship, or someone has died, or whatever, you should not seek solace in practices, this actually causes the first two points, and not only them. You run the risk of starting to live in imaginary worlds.

Now let's continue. Personally, I first enter into a state of "love for everything", in which oneness with the whole world is felt, and one can feel love even for the sand under one's feet. This state is easier to call than to turn off the inner "I", so it's better to start with it. In addition, in this state, you can then track your thoughts and work out the experiences that these thoughts cause, in order to then enter the ASC. The technique is given under the spoiler.

Methodology

I have a specific way to enter the state of unity with the whole world, and perhaps it's just the so-called "anchor". However, it might work for you too.

First, I imagine a “bright light” somewhere up there, to which I mentally reach up. There should be a feeling of "lifting" up, or pulling the body up. You can imagine going up on a jet elevator, you can crawl up the stairs, or climb in some other way. Our goal is to climb as high as possible to the brightest "light". We seem to rise higher and higher to the upper layers, but not of the atmosphere, but of the "light" that penetrates the body. The higher, the brighter the light. This light is the essence of the inner state. This light is “there” unconditional love for everything, this is what is commonly called a “divine” manifestation. In general, this is all "good".

The level to which you can rise must be related to your condition. This feedback in the form of sensation will arise by itself. However, for everything to work properly, you can’t imagine that you are already at the very top. You must always rise from the bottom up, gradually, feeling how the light is getting brighter, listening to the sensations in the body.

After a certain number of days, this practice can cause a feeling of love for everything. After a long break, it took me 2-5 days (15 minutes on the way to work and back) to start getting into the state again. You will be able to feel unity with the street along which you walk during practice, with the water flowing in the river, with lampposts, with the road, feel love for yourself or for a part of yourself.

After mastering the technique, you can proceed to the ISS. To do this, it is enough to continue the same practice, but at the same time working with the thoughts in your head. It's important to stop them. To do this, I propose to work with the feelings that thoughts evoke. You need to dive into your own experiences and "pull" them to the level of another understanding of the world, where these experiences cannot exist, as their "logic" collapses. This is realized by a trite “love” for the suffering part of oneself.

Some conclusions

ISS can show from personal experience that the world actually looks very different. In the real world, there are no concepts of “mine”, “I”, and the beauty is that it is in such a world that real happiness can exist, because otherwise suffering would be real. Suffering is possible only as long as the sufferer (i.e. the inner Self) exists.
ASC makes it possible to see that many human abilities are separable from consciousness, and therefore, to study consciousness directly, everything unnecessary can be sifted out.
ISS shows that if a person has free will (in the form of the intervention of consciousness in processes), then we use it at least not so often, since most often parts of our psyche decide for our consciousness, which is essentially an “autopilot ".
Along with the disappearance of inner speech, the inner "I" also disappears, but consciousness does not disappear. Therefore, it is not yet known what exactly to transfer to the “machine”, and what exactly to “copy” into the artificial brain from the present, so that we can talk about the transfer of precisely “consciousness”.
Almost all people live under the constant pressure of internal problems, which is expressed in the presence of "voicing thoughts." "Thoughts" are the result of escaping experiences. At the same time, such a solution to the problem does not essentially solve internal problems, but it is easier to implement

Update 09/14/2019
I add to the article a description of the methodology for "forecasting the future." Who cares, please under the spoiler.

Forecasting

The forecast can be obtained using techniques for entering a special state of consciousness. In a state of stopping inner speech or/and “love for everything”, it is enough to “mentally” rewind time into the future, but you need to rewind it gradually, and not immediately, so as not to go into fantasies. “Rewinding” can be understood by the feeling that something is “changing”, for example, feel yourself in the next hour - in the next hour you will know that there is already an hour more on the clock hand, but now you don’t have such a feeling, since the clock shows a different time, you are not yet where you should be, etc. Through comparisons of this kind, one can understand what it means to “rewind to the future” in terms of sensations. Time for you should be expressed as a static sensation of a certain state of reality, and it does not matter whether it is present, future or past.

Also, one more point - the forecast is also based on feelings, and not "dry" facts. Those. if you, for example, want to know if you will have big money in a month, then you need to rewind to the future, try to feel your mood "in the future", your feelings, emotions, or try to feel directly the object that you want check. And these feelings can already be concluded. Do not try to "hear the voice" or slide into the imagination with illustrations. It is necessary to use such perception, which is the basis of our thoughts, internal dialogue, i.e. without visualization.

Do not assume that the forecast will come true, this is just a life-hack on how to squeeze extra percentages of benefit (sometimes of dubious benefit) out of your brains. The forecast is based trivially on the capabilities of our brain to predict the future, therefore this method essentially solves only the issue of removing restrictions from the knowledge that is already inside us, but which is hidden from consciousness (as a rule, because it will be psychologically difficult for us to accept this knowledge, because there may be information about the upcoming separation, death, illness, etc.).

A couple of examples of how forecasting works.
Example #1: One day I was talking to a friend from Ukraine, to whom my girlfriend left. He said that he would come to Russia in the summer, when suddenly I felt that he would not be able to buy tickets (I did not specifically try to find out anything, it happened by itself). I told him about it, and he ridiculed me, said that nothing prevents him from taking tickets right now, he just doesn’t want to disturb people (meaning that the studies are not over yet, his new girlfriend had exams ahead). Later in the summer, I decided to meet with my ex, to reconcile. At the meeting, she said that I could be satisfied, because her new boyfriend could not come to the Russian Federation, flights by plane were canceled due to the ongoing conflicts between Russia and Ukraine.

In fact, there is no mysticism here, just apparently the facts of bad news on the net were enough for such a forecast. And as you can see, in order to make such forecasts, it is not at all necessary to deliberately think about the “future” aloud. The brain itself has already thought a hundred times in the background, but not all “we” are allowed to know directly.

There were several similar situations, and there were many (about a dozen) situations where I found out the forecast at will. Of course, the forecast does not give 100% guarantees, and can often be harmful. I'll give an example why.

Example #2: I worked with an investor and we were doing a hard project. As time went on, the project was brought to the stage of a working prototype with heavy efforts on my part. At this point, I decided to "peep" what will happen in the future. My feelings told me that very soon it would become “easier to live”, the emotional state in my family would improve, and even with money everything would seem to be not bad, but not cosmic either. But it had to happen in unexpected ways. No matter how I tried to find out exactly how, I could not find the answer. It only seemed that it was not like the fact that the project would bring a sharp profit. Something else must have happened.

And something else happened. My investor decided to “fire” me and distribute the shares in the project among new tech partners so that my 50% was now divided into 4 people. The investor was not satisfied with the prototype of the device, he wanted a more advanced device, as well as to start developing 5-6 more new devices that would satisfy the needs of certain categories of potential buyers. At the same time, new tech partners would have to do development only for a share in the project, with almost no funding (that is, in words they would receive money for expenses to buy parts, but they would have to provide for themselves).

After some hesitation, I came into conflict with an investor. In the stash I had working trading algorithms for trading with self-optimization, the launch of which I had been putting off for more than a year, because I could not find and interest an investor in algorithmic trading. The situation with trading algorithms was crazy, because I had previously tested them for 10 years and even tested them in practice and got a good result. But I still preferred to rely on an investor experienced in business, because there was a “share” in the project and the result seemed quick and calm.

As a result, I put the investor's project aside until better times, it was obvious that it would be difficult to raise it in the new conditions, and decided to focus on trading as an option with a higher probability of successful completion, which ultimately brought me my first decent profit .

If in the forecast of the future everything that is coming to me would become known immediately, most likely I would not be able to go through these events as well.

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