Relax with your iPhone home screen

my iPhone home screen, 201105Less is sometimes more. I created my new iPhone home screen to remind me several times a day about a few things:

  • an iPhone is a Phone
  • ZEN is about time, perception and messages
  • MEN create Social Media

A Tibetan monk once said, you need an empty space around you – to have room  for your thoughts.

Happy relaxing with your home screen and maybe this is also true for you:

Home is where your heart is.

Namaste

Save the Flag

Save the Flag by Chris RemspecherSave the flag!

Sometimes life is like a clear blue sky, sunny and lovely. With a few clouds here and there, it’s still great. When strong winds whip up the dust around us we switch to the default “I am OK, thank you. How are you?”

Raise your flag, let others know how you really feel – green, yellow, red! Keep the door to your room, flat, house, heart open, so others can visit you. Visiting relatives in hospital did remind me of so many basics recently…

The healthy ones have so many wishes, the ill patient only has one.

If your life currently feels like being in prison surrounded by a stress storm, climb on the top of your cage and hoist the red flag. While you are there, change your perspective and enjoy the view!

Namaste

Animations and Evacuation

no animations availableYou can have a very busy life, full of animations but still feel like this showcase: empty.

In a recent phone call I told somebody I am going to add a new adventure into my life. I expected to hear some “Wow, great!” or at least some “Cool, have fun!” but instead I got:

“Are you sure, you gonna like this adventure? As far as I know you, you won’t like it. I heard about it and others don’t like it either.
I don’t think, that’s something for you.”

Amazing. People seem so often to know better what’s good for you. Especially those with a (nearly) empty showcase of life.

Sometimes evacuation is necessary to protect your plans and dreams. Fill up your case of life with great stuff YOU like and enjoy YOUR show of life!

Relax in Full HD

Some people asked me, if there is also a full length version of the Medi-X Power-Nap by ZEN-MEN available online. Thanks to YouTube, the once 10 minutes limit is a topic of the past now.

Please enjoy and relax with the Power-Nap_201 and choose your resolution up to 1080p Full HD!

Hope it is useful for you.

Namaste 🙂

Happy New Stress 2011

Feux in the South of FranceHappy New Year!

We finally made it into 2011, so welcome to a new year full of stress! If this doesn’t sound so attractive to you – why?

Recently I had a fine conversation about stress, life and work. It seems like you are still an alien these days, if you are not stressed. People ask you: “How’s life?”, if you answer “Oh, it’s okay, you know, it’s just full of stress!”, then you are a normal being. If you answer something like: “Life is great!” and don’t mention any stress, you are suspicious.

For 2011 I personally wish you a very productive and relaxed life- and workflow. Let 2010 go and remember the two monks:

Two monks were on their way back to the monastery. It rained the whole day and the streets were full of puddles of water. A lovely, beautiful young woman tried to cross the street but with all the puddles of water – impossible for her. The older monk walked over to the lady, lifted her up in his arms and carried her to the other side of the road safely and continued his way to the monastery.

Later in the evening, the younger monk came to ask the elder monk: “We cannot touch a woman as monks, right?”
“Right.” answered the elder monk. The face of the young monk reflected his confusion: “But, why did you carry the woman over the street this afternoon?” The old monk smiled and said: “I left her on the other side of the road, you are still carrying her.”

Crazy Monkey Mind

Mingyur RinpocheMeet your Crazy Monkey Mind!

Mingyur Rinpoche gave a great talk about how our mind exaggerates tiny problems, the stress of wisdom and the meditation of sound.

He explains in a very funny way, why our Monkey Mind is so happy to get a job! In addition he shares his knowledge about the importance of the balance between wisdom and experience.

Give the video at least 11 minutes of your time until you decide if you like it or not… Warning: Watching the video might hurt your belly and make you wanna say to yourself: “I am gooooood!” 😉

/edit: the video moved on the Rigpa website. The detailed title is: Mingyur Rinpoche, public talk in Lerab Ling, 11 September 2010: Calming the Mind: The Practice of Awareness Meditation

The quality of Sleep


It’s all about quality. The quality of life, love, friends and family. Quantity can make you feel tired, left alone and useless.

How would you connect stress with sleep? My personal life experience is, I can sleep for 10 hours and still feel like a smashed tomato or be totally refreshed after a 15 minutes Power-Nap. What makes the difference?

Our brains are a bit like computers, we have energy saving modes like standby (that’s when you wait in this endless customer support hotline), hibernation (you try to sleep but your brain still takes a backup of today), sleep mode (your brain finally shuts off after you got a blue screen) and dreaming (only for humans, unless you are HAL 9000).

When we enter the supermarket, most of us have a tag cloud in our heads: milk, bread, tomatoes, beer, juice, water, potato chips… We are lost until we start to focus and set priorities. If you want to relax and increase the quality of your life, a good sleep is a great foundation. Power-Naps and Sleep-Ins by ZEN-MEN might be great tools for you. Happy relaxing and Bonne nuit!

iTunes: ZEN-MEN

iTunes: free video podcast by ZEN-MEN

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Happiness cannot be found

A rainbow in France at the beachAbout happiness, rainbows and elephants by Lama Gendun Rinpoche

Happiness cannot be found
through great effort and willpower,
but is already present, in open relaxation and letting go.

Don”™t strain yourself,
there is nothing to do or undo.
Whatever momentarily arises in the body-mind
has no real importance at all, has little reality whatsoever.
Why identify with, and become attached to it,
passing judgment upon it and ourselves?

Far better to simply
let the entire game happen on its own,
springing up and falling back like waves,
without changing or manipulating anything,
and notice how everything vanishes and
reappears, magically, again and again,
time without end.

Only our searching for happiness
prevents us from seeing it.
It”™s like a vivid rainbow which you pursue without ever
catching,
or a dog chasing its own tail.

Although peace and happiness do not exist
as an actual thing or place,
it is always available
and accompanies you every instant.

Don”™t believe in the reality
of good and bad experiences;
they are like today”™s ephemeral weather,
like rainbows in the sky.

Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there – open, inviting and comfortable.

Make use of the spaciousness, this freedom and natural ease.
Don”™t search any further.
Don”™t go into the tangled jungle
looking for the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting quietly at home
in front of your own hearth.

Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and nothing missing…

Emaho! Marvelous!
Everything happens by itself.

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Enough

Man with hat, Mauritius, OceanEnough is a very relative concept. In Germany 18 degree celsius are warm enough to have a drink on the balcony, whereas it would be too cold for people on Mauritius to go to work.

Let’s have a closer look at that concept. The main elements are:

YouNeed ”“ Cure

You are thirsty, your body needs water, the cure is to drink a glass of water or a cup of tea. Easy, right? Now get a lottery ticket, win 10 million $$$ – how many cars will you buy? Why?

Sangter Tulku Rinpoche recently said:

If you have 1$ you have one problem. If you have 10000$ you have 10000 problems.

In various topics of our lives, it seems there is never enough for us. Not enough time, love, money, happiness, freedom, peace, …

When a very good friend told me: “In 10 years we will have fully paid off our house, then we can have a real good life!” I asked him: “And what do you do now in the next 10 years?”

Most times the real trouble with the enough-concept starts when we drop into the compare-trap. The good news is, in most cases, the creator and savior resides in the same brain.

Two friends were at a party held at the mansion of a billionaire. One said, “Wow! Look at this place! This guy has everything!” The other said, “Yes, but I have something he’ll never have: enough.”

Anything in this world, has exactly the value you assign to it. Anything. Think about it, until you have enough…

Thanks Derek for the inspiration!

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Forest bathing

A walk through a forest is a multimedia spectacle. Air to breathe, an ocean of colors, a concert of fragrances, surround sounds everywhere – from your steps on the trail to the tops of the trees. Forest bathing is healthy and even free!

Recently the NY Times wrote about the therapeutic effects of forest bathing. Stress reduction, benefits for your immune system, lower pulse rate, less cortisol, lower blood pressure and much more. Somehow it’s no surprise to me, that the popular practice is called “Shinrin-yoku” in Japan. When did you do your last forest bathing? Mine was today.

In case you should not be able to take a walk or a forest bathing in “real life”, perhaps you might like to try at least a virtual forest bathing in Chakryn forest, which is a wonderful place in the virtual world of Second Life. Sure, it will not have the same impact like a real life forest but it might reduce some stress. You will find me in Second Life under my user name ZEN7MEN Mannonen. Happy bathing!

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