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The relativity of Time

Time is relative. Very. In an accident seconds pass by like in slow motion, the minutes you wait for the ambulance to arrive extend to eternity. You see people with green trees on their cars and you think; is it already Christmas again? On your 30, 40, 50, 60th birthday you wonder how did all this years fly by? Sounds familiar?

A look at my Sinn watch shows me time is ticking away, one second after another, precise, unimpressed by my worries not to have enough time. It’s just ticking, tick, tick, tick. Is it real? Do you know the days, when you fight against windmills, nothing seems to move on or works properly. Other days everything is in the flow; you, life, time – all fine. What’s the difference?

Maybe it’s like rafting on the river of life. Sometimes slow, sometimes fast. Wild and weird – peaceful and clear. When our course in life needs a correction, we are lucky to have friends which help us to paddle back on our track. Stones might show us the way, water flows like tides of time – a.way.

All the world is changing. Life is, to traverse a particular time, a certain space, and with a little luck, to leave a few traces behind.
Elie Wiesel

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traveling to Paris without moving

The Tour Eiffel in Paris Lady Victory in Paris one of the best places in Paris

Ready to travel to Paris? Let’s do a refreshing 300 seconds journey for your brain. Your eyes will be the guide, rest about 5 seconds on each of the 60 stations.

Bonjour, welcome to your hotel! Flowers follow us to the magic fountain, and the green guy shows us the way to the Paris Wall Newspaper next to the wonderful restaurant Le Petit Chatelet. The next day we explore the Tour Eiffel and wonder about the E.T. antenna on the top of the sommet. Looking down, we suddenly discover city patterns, the Arc de triomphe, churches and the relative size of humans. We are brave and walk down inside the Tour Eiffel, step by step. In the Notre Dame, a special atmosphere touches the soul and traveling with the Metropolitan subway makes us think about the underworld. Inverse pyramids reveal the secret of life and show nature’s color code right in front of our feet. It feels like standing besides Lady Victory, Louvre here we come! The perspective, our viewpoint – it changes as we move. Three ducks relax surrounded by mystic gates and George V takes us to the Champs-Elysees.

Moulin Rouge, Rue Lepic, le Cafe des 2 Moulins –  magical. From the Mont Martre to Sacre Coer, the view over Paris is simply stunning. Finally we are sailing in the Parc de Luxembourg, tropical, mystical, spiritual. Arago, let’s go!

to the set with all 60 pictures of Paris

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Yogi Tea Ginseng

Ginseng teaYogi Tea is more than the sum of its parts. For me it’s a micro universe around a tea bag. The package already invites you to discover a lot of fine details and information, not only about tea. Serving Your Spirit is a claim from Golden Temple Natural products, the company which makes Yogi Tea. Many years of knowledge and experience in Taoism, Ayurveda and, let me summarize it, the wisdom about Yin and Yang create its great fundament.

Besides the outstanding tea made of organic ingredients you will find mini-manuals for some Tai Chi moves or a Yoga pose. If you have a tea bag version of Yogi Tea you get a kinda additional fortune teller or let’s say a cosmic reminder. Each tea bag has a tiny message for you, the last one I got was simply: Keep up.

The many varieties always offer the perfect flavor for every occasion through the day- and nighttimes. Most times I pick the Yogi Tea of my choice by intuition or maybe it’s simply the resonance of my magnetic field and the tea. Yogi Tea for your body, mind and soul.

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How to get 92 years old

Is there a secret to get 92 years old? The ingredients of the secret recipe, which I have learned from a lovely lady in my family are: Eat what is good for your body, make some sports daily, train your mental fitness and, for the dark moments in life, pull out THE hook.
So what’s the hook? More than 50 years ago, she did a journey by train. Happily arrived at the railway station, she noticed a friendly but drunken guy repeating the same sentence over and over again. A short prayer went to heaven; Please Lord, don’t let this chap sit in my train!
Maybe you experienced already in your own life, prayers sometimes come back in a reversed way. So yes, the mantra man was in her train and in the same compartment. Hours later the refraining sentence was burned into her brain. Call it fate or coincidence, today she says; This man might not even know how much he helped me with what he said. Often in my life it kept me going on. And he only said: Somehow……… it will go on!

I am very lucky that I could record her recently(thanks iPhone!). She emphasizes that the break after the first word is very important. Thank you, Elisabeth!
(The recording is in German.)
Hook of life

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TMI relax with TweetDeck

TweetDeck. Now also on iPhone.TMI, you can drown into Too Much Information or relax with TweetDeck. Maybe you already have discovered social networks like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn. The nearly endless supply of information on the one hand and the limited 24 hours per day on the other hand call for a tool which helps you to get more signal and less noise.

TweetDeck is a real-time web browser which gives you a clear view over your social networks. I use it on the PC side of life, on the MacPro and on the go with my iPhone. It really helps me to keep in touch and at the same time chillax. One of my favorite features is Add Column. For Twitter I currently have two columns, one for my twitter friends I want to follow tightly and one for the BIG real-time twitter news stream. Very effective way to filter information like YOU want it!

TweetDeck’s cross-connection is also great. Easily post a picture on the go via iPhone to your twitpic account or shorten your URLs conveniently with your Bit.ly account. In addition you can manage multiple Twitter accounts, post directly to Facebook and much, much more! Happy socializing!

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Eckhart Tolle Findhorn Retreat

book cover of Eckhart Tolle's Findhorn retreatEckhart Tolle‘s Findhorn Retreat was held in spring 2004 at the Findhorn foundation in Scotland. Luckily it was recorded. The result is a wonderful gem consisting out of two DVDs with two hours footage each and a lovely tiny book with the essentials in written form accompanied with some favorite nature photos taken by Eckhart himself. The four hours retreat is like a journey through mankind, histories, humor and stillness. In a very clear and easy way Eckhart Tolle helps us to understand the normal confusions and illusions we are normally trapped in. If we live too much in the world of forms, attach our wellbeing or luck to forms, it gets obvious that we drive on the suffer highway with full speed. Forms come and go, maybe we succeed to get all forms in order for a short time and can finally be happy – but – its just a matter of time and forms decay and chaos comes back in our life. In addition, most of us(including me), are often stuck in the past or the future. The narrator in our head keeps on telling us our stories which happened in the past, which might happen in the future. Our history gets so important for us, that it sometimes feels like we are at the Oscar awards each day. Day in, day out.

How can we find stillness in all this? Rock’n’roll, baby!

Let me explain. Be a rock, practice some Zazen meditation or just sit on a chair. Do nothing. At least try it. Maybe you manage to experience the gap between two thoughts. Find the gap – mind the gap in the London tube…
Roll it. Imagine your life, your histories from past to future written on a scroll of parchment. Now roll it together from each side, what happens? You land in the present moment, welcome to the NOW!

Yes I know, it sounds all so easy if you write or talk about it. When neuronal thunderstorms once again hit my head and heart, for me, Eckhart Tolle’s Findhorn Retreat is a great tool to brighten up my brain and being. And it’s even funny!

Amazon.com Eckhart Tolle’s Findhorn Retreat: Stillness Amidst the World: A Book and 2 DVD Set

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the value of emptiness

Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching about the value of emptiness.

Thirty spokes connect to the nave,
The emptiness between creates the wheel.
The potter shapes clay into vessels,
The emptiness therein creates the utensil.
Windows and doors are cut out of walls,
The emptiness inside creates the housing.
The visible constructs the form of a work.
The in-visible makes up its value.

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let it sync

Let it sync. Recently I felt a bit stressed and bumped into a friend who asked me about my world. That day I had, once more, the illusion I might not have enough time. I told him about my worries and that I am aware I dropped into the time-trap again. He only said: Let it sync.

It made me ponder for a while – those mini happy moments when all is synced: my Google Calendar, Contacts and Mail via an exchange server to my iPhone, the iTunes music library, my bank account, my blog, my life. Perfect!
And then, in a fraction of a second, chaos is back. Like the Buddhists say, chaos and decay are the natural state of things. What about inner and outer pressure? Would it help to let it sync? How?

For me being blood type 0 positive, thats another story, I found a good mixture out of meditation, tea and sports. Add a good talk with a friend to it in any mixture and I can easily let it sync. How do you sync?

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Power-Naps by ZEN-MEN


Today it is Saturday here in Germany. Maybe you have had a stressful week, feel tired and now are trying to slow down over the weekend. This seems kinda unfair to me, using much of my free time to recover from the week. A while back I started to create Power-Naps by ZEN-MEN. The music and the woven-in brain tones are designed to bring you the relaxation level of a normal two hours sleep in 15 minutes. My friends have already asked me for a sleep-in only version of those Power-Naps, and I am working on that as well.

In Asia naps are widely accepted by society, it’s a sign that the person having a nap is looking consciously after his/her body and health. Latest developments even brought nap-shells to airports and official offices here in Germany. Use naps as an addition to a good normal sleep and actively transform a small amount of downtime to a 15 minute ritual for your body, mind and soul. Please share your experiences in the comments. Thank you!

FREE download via the ZEN-MEN video podcast at iTunes

Due to public requests more FREE download options:

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ZEN and martial arts

book cover of Zen Body-BeingWhat do ZEN and martial arts have in common? Do you need to be a professional in martial arts to build a ZEN garden? Maybe not but it might help. Peter Ralston started his studies in judo, aikido and tai-chi at the age of nine. In the year 1978 he won as first non-asian the full contact world championship in Taiwan. For him, this was the completion of one chapter, just to be able to start the next one: Zen Body-Being
His research in various techniques and his own profound life experience made him unveil his own method. In a nutshell, its about re-connecting your-self with your body, find the center and also physical/ geometrical middle of your body. Starting from that point a new body consciousness evolves and changes the way you move – yourself and things. He easily shows how to use the inner tension of your body to interact with objects and subjects. If you thought in the past, you push the not-working-car, with Peter Ralston method you rather just transfer the weight of the car into the ground and let the earth push the car using your natural body tension. Yes, it might sound weird at the start but try it. It might also improve your cooking, office work, home work, fitness, hockey and building your ZEN garden.

Amazon.com Peter Ralston – Zen Body-Being: An Enlightened Approach to Physical Skill, Grace, and Power

UPDATE: I wrote Peter Ralston an email about this blog post and asked him to optimize the content if needed. Here’s his friendly reply:

Chris,
Thanks for that. The picture on the book was done by German publisher and doesn’t represent me or my work at all. I wouldn’t use the word “tension” as you do, we are all about relaxing and so tension is contrary to that; it is the “intrinsic” strength or the inherent binding force of the relaxed body that I am referring to and so tension gives a wrong impression. My German students say the translation of ZBB isn’t very accurate, but the translation of the Principles of Effortless Power (a different book) is much closer. So perhaps you could look at that book to get a better idea of some of the concepts mentioned in ZBB.
Thanks,
Peter

I did change the book cover picture to the original of the English version, the German cover Peter is talking about can still be found here. Furthermore I just ordered the Principles of Effortless Power book and will write about it here in the future. Thanks for the tip, Peter!

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