How to meditate in 2010

ZEN-MEN artwork of the track I am homeMeditation can be helpful in reducing stress, making clearer decisions, staying healthy and  improving life quantity and quality. Meditation is an old and proven tool of mankind all over the planet, throughout all religions. The form and importance might vary but the core is the same: an orientation to the inner center.

Maybe there is a deeper connection between the words orient and orientation… I’m personally a fan of meditations in Buddhism and ZEN style. So why meditate? Let’s use a geeky example to explain: (de-)fragmentation

If the hard disc of your computer is too much fragmented it will slow down seek time to data access and affect your whole system performance. Basically it’s the same with us human beings. Most times we are fragmented in time and space. A part of our brain-body-soul system works in automatic mode, breathing, entry-(eyes/ ears/ mouth/ nose) and surface(skin) surveillance, food mode – beer mode. Other parts are split(or lost) in past, present and future happenings, hopes and fears. Meditation practice improves your focus, concentration and offers a better “overview”.  In many life situations you can be more relaxed, stay calmer, find solutions faster and finally be happier. How do you defrag your system?

One of the easiest version is:

  • make yourself a gift of 5 minutes of free time
  • sit upright(if possible) in a for you comfortable position – relax
  • breathe in slowly
  • breathe out slowly – count to 1
  • breathe in slowly
  • breathe out slowly – count to 2
  • repeat until you counted up to 10 – restart breathing and counting from number 1

That’s all. Try to do this for only these 5 minutes and only do this. No other thoughts, no traveling through time and space. Sit and stay in the Now, breathe – count. Easy, right? 😉

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Une table a trois and the roulette of life

cafe dans le Rue Lepic!“I wanna dig more in the meaning” asked Omar over at the ZEN-MEN facebook page, thanks for asking!

I wrote the song and the lyrics of ZEN-MEN feat. Caroline – “une table à trois” in 1997. Caroline was pregnant in her 9th month and you can hear movements of her unborn daughter in the original recordings. It’s all about relativity, duality, about hopes and fears, obvious but hidden rules of life, the illusion of time and the One.
She comes into the cafe and sits down at a table with an old gentleman. Their conversation pauses from time to time for “meta-thoughts” like “Night and day at the same time, the sun shows the time but the sun itself has no time”. She takes two pieces of sugar for her coffee, one shaped like a heart, one like a cube. The old man explains her how he shares the sweetness of his heart, how he offers it in his open palms to the world.

Elle voulait être libre. Mais qui peut apercevoir les étoiles le jour, le soleil brille toujours pour celui qui sait le voir!

“She wanted to be free. But who can see the stars at day, the sun always shines for those, who know how to see it!

They talk about the game of life. She asks him, if he ever did win. “Since I know, who plays with whom and tomorrow, today will be yesterday, yes! In this game, there are only winners.”

Un jeu sans perdant, tout est emprunt̩, a qui? A celui qui laisse les fleurs sӪ̩panouir.

“A game without losers, all is borrowed, from whom? From the one, who lets the flowers blossom.”

She does not understand why he is talking about three persons all the time. In the story, she did not know yet that she was pregnant already. (So obviously, the story plays at least 9 months before we did the recording 😉 )

Yin and Yang, black and white, what is bad, what is good. The duality changes with the viewpoint of the observer. Both can be “wrong” and “right” at the same time. If we are stuck in a 2D view, we might miss the 3rd dimension. Some say there is a 3rd eye which might open a kind of over-view over duality. Mankind uses the (fixed) binary approach since a long time, “the earth is flat, the earth is the center of the universe, man is the crown of creation. Is this normal?”

Les jeux sont faits, rien ne va plus, la roue se met à tourner.

“Les jeux sont faits, rien ne va plus, the wheel starts to turn.” You could name it Karma or fate, sometimes it seems, when you spin the wheel of life, make a decision, drop the ball – at the end, it will land on black or red and maybe even on your lucky number… or on the One. In green.

… to the lyrics of  ZEN-MEN feat. Caroline – “une table à trois” in french
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Stress and Autism

Stress and Autism; you could say that’s not your topic if you consider your-self as a “normal” person (whatever normal is…). In the past, mankind found gold nuggets, answers, solutions and hope in so called unrelated areas like foreign cultures, religions, dreams, chaos, spirituality, absinthe, drugs, conversations and blogs. I invite you to dive into a 10 questions interview I recently did with a friend and come back with some interesting insights for you…

A sneak in:

2. When you hear/ read the word stress, what comes first into your mind?
A.: that’s a difficult one. lots of things happening at once, and all needing attention at the same time, maybe. (…)

3. How would you describe your relation to your brain, to your heart?
A: for me, my heart is what pumps blood. (…)

6. What do you do, when you feel stressed?
A: i’ll try to get rid of lesser priority tasks that make me stressed. (…)

10 Questions by CFR
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Alltop and Opera Mini

and 
This is a good day, the best just got better! Alltop is a wonderful tool for me to read, organize and discover great content on the web. Most times I read MyAlltop page on the iPhone, it’s like my personalized newspaper. With the Opera Mini browser the reading experience just got a fun and quality kick! Switching between MyAlltop page and blogs, articles is really fast, tabbed browsing, zooming – just great!

Yes, it works also with Safari: click, browser window opens, click on an article, browser window minimizes, scrolling to a new browser window (if you have already a few open, enjoy the slideshow…), maximizing new browser window, opening URL, yawn…

So thanks Opera for making this mini browser with maxi value and thanks Apple for accepting it in the app store!

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Felicity with FeliciTEA meets Dragon Well

felicitea and dragon well
It’s teatime again! I got more tea from wearetea/ London, thanks Mikel!

Felicitea – the happiness tea

Fact; we can’t all be happy all the time. Whether the central heating system has decided to pack up, you’ve just become single again or you’re just down on your luck in general, we all need a pick me up from time to time to help us to remember how good life can be. Felicitea may not be able to fix the boiler, repair broken relationships or being good luck but it can provide a moment of happiness and we think that is priceless.

I did open it, the tea, the flowers, the colors – the perfume… instant happiness! 😀 I suddenly saw the tea scene of Alice in Wonderland before my eyes (the 2010 Tim Burton version), thought of pink Hubba Bubba chewing gums from my youth. The tea triggered funny memories in my brain and delivered a wonderful carpet with its taste to enjoy and dive into those precious emotions. Priceless!

Dragon well is one of the most sought after green teas in the world, notice the “great taste gold 09” award. There is not much to write about this tea. The leaves are perfect, the aroma is amazing and the taste is stunning. Immediate feng shui for your being!

Again, thank you Daren and Suzanne for making such great teas!

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Your Blood Type drives your Stress Type

eat right 4 your typeDo you know your blood type? In times of iPads and worldwide networks it still amazes me, that most people don’t know something so fundamental as their own blood type. In 2010 we are approx. 7 billion(!) humans on this tiny planet, maybe 7000 different languages and dialects worldwide, so many different types of individuals, but, only four blood types(0, A, B, AB). Does this ring a bell?

I was strict vegetarian for about 20 years in my life until one day I had the feeling, something is missing. What do you do when your body starts to send (pain) signals? You ignore or investigate – your choice. As always when I start digging, soon the right people, friends, books etc show up. In this case, a book from Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo – “Eat right for your type”.

In short: you don’t fill gasoline into your diesel car and vice versa. I am blood type 0+ and while reading the book I had fireworks of enlightenments! A few things I already found out myself over the years, like when I eat normal wheat pasta, I get sleepy after the meal and soon after I am hungry again. Why didn’t I get that book right at my birth? It would have saved me a lot of stress and would have told me earlier how I can cope best with my stress type. Blood type 0 reduces stress very good with active sport, in my case trail running or mountain biking. Blood type A would rather go to a Yoga class.

“We are what we eat.” You will find a wide range of recommendations for suitable or not-so-suitable food in the book(and MUCH more…!). Yes, as always there are exceptions to the rule, but those lists made me re-start eating fish and since then my body system is more balanced. Discover your blood type, then manage your stress type!

Amazon.com Eat Right 4 Your Type: The Individualized Diet Solution to Staying Healthy, Living Longer & Achieving Your Ideal Weight

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