When was the last time you really took notice of your surroundings, whether it's natural
beauty or some unique and interesting detail that usually goes unnoticed?
So often we go through life and we forget to be aware of the world around us.
We forget to live in the moment and savor each and every precious minute of life.
We forget how much we have to be grateful for.
Why is it that it takes a terminal illness to get us to appreciate the gift of life?
Why do we have to experience a near brush with death to enjoy the world around us or
to express our love to those who are dear to us?
Why do we have to feel the threat of our own mortality to start taking care of our bodies?
Think about wellness, not only physical wellness, but emotional wellness.
We don't hesitate to go to the doctor if we cut our finger or have a sore throat, yet
we can be in severe emotional pain and never take the steps toward healing and emotional
wellness.
And we can't separate our physical and emotional well-being because the two are so closely
intertwined.
Did you know that when we fall in love, our immune system actually gets a boost?
And people who are depressed are more likely to get sick than those who are not.
So today I'll show you what's worked for me to stay emotionally and physically fit.
I'll share my personal experiences and I'm going to introduce you to some extraordinary
professionals who will focus on techniques for having inner peace and outer beauty and
the importance of understanding the connection.
First, we'll concentrate on our emotional health with psychiatrist Dr. David Biscot.
With him we'll learn how to overcome barriers from our past, and later we'll meet with
Dr. Barbara D. Angeles who'll teach us how to really enjoy the present rather than simply
buzzing through our days virtually unconscious.
Then Dr. Roger Hirsch will show us how to keep our minds and our bodies in great shape
with an ancient form of Chinese exercise based on the principles of Tai Chi.
So get ready as we journey toward a healthy mind and a healthy body.
In other words, think great, look great.
You know, re-reading a kid's book is just one way you can enjoy a special moment.
I try to create little moments for myself that are nurturing for my soul.
It doesn't take a lot of effort.
You just need to be aware of your surroundings.
Like right now, I feel grateful to be here.
I love to soak in the magic of the southwestern desert.
I'm happy to be surrounded by all this beauty.
I'm also grateful for my life.
Now, considering my upbringing, I could be totally screwed up.
In fact, I should be, but because of the work I've done on myself, I'm able to have an
incredible marriage, a great family, and a career I love.
But most of all, I appreciate the serenity I feel at this time in my life.
I know for me, before I could have real peace of mind, I had to deal with many problems
from my past that were keeping me from being happy.
I had to dig way back into my child and resolve some major issues that were still seriously
affecting my life.
These issues developed from growing up with a violent, abusive, alcoholic father, and
maybe some of you know my story from my books, Keeping Secrets and Wednesday's Children.
And yet, even after I left that environment, the old unresolved issues kept rearing their
ugly heads.
Though I never drank alcoholically, I was continuing destructive patterns of behavior
that were keeping me from being truly happy.
I couldn't seem to break this cycle until I recognized that these behaviors were patterns
I'd learned as a child growing up in a household where chaos was the norm.
And many years later, as a young woman out on my own, I continued to create problems
for myself.
I was crisis-oriented, dishonest, and escaping reality by living in a fantasy world.
I felt isolated and lonely, and I was constantly creating chaos for myself because that gave
me the same feelings that were so familiar from my childhood and never dawned on me that
as an adult, I was recreating the insanity I was trying to escape.
It wasn't until I went back and did the work that I was able to break these cycles.
I started in my early 20s by working with a counselor who slowly helped me to build
my self-esteem.
And through this process, I was able to understand where and how I came to feel this way about
myself.
By rebuilding my self-worth, I then started making decisions that changed my life for
the better.
And years later, even after I had a successful career, I realized I still had a lot of issues
to work out with my father's alcoholism because they were continuing to affect me and my family.
Writing my feelings down on paper was a good beginning.
It also turned out to be my autobiography, a way to turn a negative into a positive.
But the writing process forced me to honestly look at the part that I played in all of it.
You see, I realized that I was choosing to be a victim, and if I continued in this direction,
the past was going to take away my ability to be happy and free in my present life.
But this realization was the beginning of a positive turnaround for me.
I was getting on track.
The process was time-consuming, very painful and agitating.
But the understanding that came from this work changed me as a person and is the main
reason that I feel peaceful and happy today.
My father passed away last year, and I feel so fortunate that at the end, I was able to
celebrate all that he and I accomplished together in our lives.
He was sober the last 15 years of his life, and we were able to do incredible work together.
It wasn't easy.
We had to confront all the hurt, the anger, and the pain, but in doing this, we were able
to get to the bottom of what happened, what it meant, and what it means today.
Doing the work is so important because it brings resolution.
And I think about how horrible I would have felt at the time of his death if we hadn't
found peace together, if we hadn't found resolution.
What a waste of an experience it might have been.
I tell you my personal story not because it's particularly special, it's not.
Even if you didn't come from an alcoholic home, perhaps you have other issues.
Maybe your parents were abusive or neglectful.
Perhaps they were overbearing or absent.
Maybe you survived the death of a loved one, or maybe you still have unresolved issues
about your parents' divorce.
Remember the case who we are today is a result of what we learned as children, good or bad.
But this is not about blame.
I am not blaming parents.
The object here is to identify the source of the issue, truly understand it, learn and
grow from the experience, and ultimately forgive and find resolution.
I've had many teachers in my life.
All of them have helped me on my journey towards healing and resolution.
In a moment, we will meet one of them, the extraordinary Dr. David Viscont.
He's had years of experience and his latest book, Emotionally Free, guides us through
the process of digging into the past and resolving those issues that are creating barriers in
our lives.
You know, I always say that people will go to the doctor for a cold, for every little
ache and pain, but they're afraid to go to the doctor for their feelings.
Why do you think that it's taken us so long to understand that our feelings are an important
part of and maybe the most important part of who we are?
Well, most of the time when you have feelings as a child that are contradictory to what
your parents want to hear, they tell you to shut up.
If you feel something is wrong and it's bothering you, they'll say you have to do that anyhow
or grow up or something like that.
So if you're hurting and your hurt is a reflection of something wrong in the house that your
parents don't want to admit, your hurt cannot be accepted as evidence, so you have to be
squashed.
Therefore, later on in life, you develop the feeling, if I have a bad feeling, maybe it's
not right to have this feeling because there's been an old association with feelings being
wrong or that if I express my two feelings, someone's going to reject me because I'm
telling them something they don't want to hear.
So what happens to us when we're children really plays a large part in who we become
as adults?
Well, you learn the pattern.
If you want to know what mental health is, it's really a very simple thing.
It's being able to tell the person who hurt you that they hurt you at the time they hurt
you.
There's enormous wisdom in that because when you don't express the hurt as it occurs, the
hurt ages and hurt ages into anger.
And once it turns into anger, it can no longer be understood as clearly as it was when it
was pure hurt because when you try to tell someone that they hurt you two days later,
you've been coddling that in your mind a bit, making your case.
You've not only that, but the anger that you've been holding back has caused you to remember
previous angers.
It always happens to me that people say things like this, I've always been cheated.
That was just like this and just like that.
Then when you come up to the person to make your case, your case is impure because you're
making the case of the things you've remembered, then the person looks at you and says, what
are you talking about?
I remember one time my son said to, before my husband and I became what I think is emotionally
healthy, he said, are you two going to fight about the almonds again?
Because we once had a huge fight over the amount of sliced almonds that I sauteed and
put over the trout.
And what I realized with that was it had nothing to do with trout.
It's a controlling issue.
It's who knows best and who is in charge here.
Because when you are, this is really the whole point.
You fight over the sliced almonds when you cannot settle your other differences.
If you're angry about things between you, you're still looking for ways for the anger
to come out.
And when people tend to be controlling, they become critical, they become undermining.
So a couple who is fighting over the almonds, what does this couple have to do to dig back
and get to the source of what it really is?
Forget the almonds.
Oh, we're both angry.
I guess we've both been hurt.
This all is based on an understanding of how feelings work.
And the name we give feelings, the name we give to pain, depends upon when the pain happens.
So here's the blueprint for understanding feelings.
Pain in the future is anxiety.
You expect to be hurt.
Pain in the present is hurt.
It hurts.
It feels like sadness or disappointment.
Pain in the past is anger.
You resent being hurt.
The purpose of anxiety is to prevent you from being hurt.
The purpose of hurt is to limit the amount of hurt that you suffer.
Ouch, that hurt.
You take your hand off the pot.
The purpose of anger, now this is critical.
Anger's purpose is only to be expressed in the moment of the hurt.
Ouch, don't ever leave that on the stove like that.
So that it reinforces the lesson.
When we hold anger in, anger turns into guilt, which is nothing more than being angry at
ourselves.
Now this is the critical thing, because when we're angry at ourselves, our mind takes over
rather than our body, because guilt doesn't serve any purpose.
And guilt gives us the following messages.
Perhaps you've heard a few of them in your own mind.
You're not lovable, you're not good, you're not smart, you're not right, you're not strong,
you're a failure, and you're ugly.
Those are the messages of guilt.
So whenever you have those replaying in your mind, the chances are that you've been hurt,
have held in the anger, and the anger is festering within you.
So the first thing you do when you're fighting with another person is you identify the feeling,
and you say, oh, we're angry at each other again.
I wonder what hurt we are talking about.
So you always must talk about your anger in terms of a hurt that is previous.
There's so much pain out in the world.
I mean, that's what you do for a living.
You listen to people's pain.
You're able to hear it and help them decipher and get to the bottom of it.
Is that what being emotionally free is, is ridding yourself of pain?
I see the pain, and I understand the pain, but I'm not struck with the pain.
I'm always saying, oh, there's a way to get through this.
Here's the resolution.
The pain is necessary because you're solving something the wrong way.
You cannot get the answer you're looking for.
So I never see pain as a bad thing.
It's just, oh, something's wrong, something that can be fixed.
Well, I also don't see pain as a bad thing because I think that's where we learn what
we need to learn.
If you're willing to go back and get to the bottom of the pain, but so many people are
in pain because there's so many layers of denial on top of it that they can't get down
there.
It's like peeling an onion.
You know, it's really what you're saying is so true, but you have to think of it like
this.
Pain is like someone waving a red flag.
Pain is bad.
Right.
The reason you're having pain is something's wrong.
And if something's wrong, why don't we stop and look at it and find out what's wrong and
fix it.
But so often when we have pain, we fix it by taking a drink, taking drugs, eating a
cookie, sex, some sort of distraction to take the pain away.
That's not fixing it.
It's hiding it.
Hiding it.
So when you do that, what happens eventually is the pain gets worse.
And pain will not go away until you face it and deal with it?
It will get less and less, but it is not disappearing.
What you are doing is you are erecting barriers which become more permanent to shield you
from the pain.
The barriers that shield you from the pain are generalized.
They're not specific.
In other words, if I'm going to block pain, what I'm really doing is I'm going to block
feelings.
So to block the pain and keep the anger inside, I'm also keeping other feelings inside.
I'm keeping love inside.
I'm keeping self-love inside.
The world seems dimmer.
The world doesn't seem as full.
I can't get involved.
I'm not so interested in doing things because the energy is all invested in holding in rather
than reaching out and just being free and accepting.
So when a person feels relief, they're letting go, not so much of the pain, they're letting
go of the defenses that hold the pain in.
The pain isn't that much, but the defensive operation that you hold to keep the pain in
place feels like the person.
The pain doesn't imprison you.
The pain is just there.
Ouch, it hurts.
Oh.
That's because you're afraid if the person hears you saying ouch, they'll think you're
weak or a bad person, you have to be like this.
That's the pain, the physical holding in, and that's the toughest part.
Is that the secret?
I don't know whether it's a secret, but it sure is the truth.
Of letting go?
You have to simply let all your feelings affect you the way they are going to affect you and
focus in the moment.
Any other techniques for healing?
Tell the truth all the time, and the people around whom you cannot be truthful are people
who you should not be around.
You have to make that decision.
What you want is friends who will tell you the truth, and you want people who will listen
to the truth of what you say and respect it and hear it.
They don't have to agree with it, but they have to respect that that's what you feel
and that's where you are at that moment.
Two more words, compassion and forgiveness.
You can't really have compassion for other people unless you respect yourself.
Because when you are feeling empathy for other people and you don't really have a life of
your own, what you're doing is worrying about them first so that it seems insincere.
It's the parent who calls you up ten times a day to find out if you're okay when there's
nothing wrong.
Real compassion starts in self-fulfillment.
Forgiveness is the gateway, because forgiveness is letting go of the hurt, and in some way
forgiveness is letting go of the past.
Not to forget it, but to allow it to fall into its proper perspective.
A person who has not forgiven is a person who cannot live life in the moment.
A person who has not forgiven is still expecting people to make payments for the injuries they've
suffered.
A person who has not forgiven is not really alive because they're not really in the present,
and they are still bearing a grudge.
Because not to forgive is to live in the past, and that means that the past has already given
what it has to give.
There's nothing more you can extract out of it.
So that living in the past keeps you from a sense of fulfillment that the moment grants,
and the moment gives you wonderful things in the simplest ways.
I mean, it's being present for this setting, for example, without expecting it to be anything
more than it is.
You know, when a person says, is the glass half full or half empty?
Those are the wrong ways of looking at the glass.
The glass merely has water in it.
And you have to realize that the way in which we look at the world and measure the world
is also the way in which we shortchange ourselves by expecting more than it is.
Everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be.
You are precisely at the point in your life where you were supposed to be.
It took everything you ever did to get here.
Take responsibility for all of that and move on.
So would you finish the sentence for me?
To be emotionally free, we need to...
Tell the truth about your feelings.
Believe in yourself.
Find the thing you love in life and follow it.
Life is not about suffering.
It's about joy.
If you're having suffering in your life, it's because you're not paying attention to some
hurt.
Find that hurt and resolve it.
You resolve hurt by letting go of it and forgiving.
You are your own gift.
Accept that.
There is nothing in this world that you will face that you will not be able to get through.
Don't worry about things until they are happening.
Live in the moment and enjoy the moment.
The more you focus on what you are doing, the happier you will be.
The rest takes care of itself.
Thank you, David.
You're welcome.
When you free yourself from pain, you free yourself from being a victim.
Every negative can be turned into a positive.
In fact, in Scott Peck's book, The Road Less Traveled, he said it's the wise man who welcomes
problems and mistakes because through them we grow spiritually and emotionally.
Focus and resolution release the pain and bring growth.
Therefore, you can look at every negative in your life as an opportunity to grow.
It's your choice.
No one can do it for you and no one will be as sorry as you if you miss out on the opportunity.
You see, this thinking brought me to a place of being grateful, and that's the next gift.
I have now reached the point in my life where I am truly grateful to have learned my lessons
through my father's alcoholism.
I don't know what tomorrow will bring, but at this moment I am happy and peaceful because
I took care of myself.
We've talked about healing wounds from our past.
Now let's discuss living in the present, enjoying life to the fullest.
We all live in the present, but are we really paying attention or are we distracted by thinking
about yesterday or tomorrow?
We need to retrain our minds and bodies to react to our surroundings as we did as children.
When finding a ladybug was an event or playing in the sand could entertain us for hours.
As adults, we forget how to get pleasure from these little things.
It's easy to let stress keep us from living our lives to the fullest.
I try to live in the moment.
That's not to say I succeed all the time.
I don't, but I try to enjoy each moment by really soaking in my surroundings and not
worry about what I have to do next.
My day is more fulfilling if I pay attention to what's going on right now.
For example, I love to sit here and watch the birds and not just look at them while
I'm thinking about something else like the groceries or catching up on my correspondence,
but to really pay attention, like to the way they interact, the sound of their bird calls,
the color of their feathers, how they struggle for the best perch on the bird feeder.
Taking moments like this where I really pay attention to what's going on around me helps
me stay grounded, even if it's just for a minute or two.
For many of us, it's work, work, work during the week.
The weekends are filled with family and social obligations, and when are you going to catch
up on all those errands we didn't get to during the week?
Well, if you let yourself, you can just go through the motions of your life and not truly
experience it.
It's important to make sure we take time for ourselves and create little moments of enjoyment
along the way.
Now, in a moment, we'll meet Dr. Barbara DeAngelis, a relationship expert and bestselling author
who's influenced the lives of millions of people.
Her most recent book is Real Moments, and she'll share her techniques to help us focus
and appreciate our lives moment to moment.
I love your book, Real Moments.
I just want to read something right off the top, okay?
First, I was dying to finish high school and start college, and then I was dying to finish
college and start working, and then I was dying to marry and have children, and then
I was dying for my children to grow old enough for school so I could return to work, and
then I was dying to retire, and now I am dying, and suddenly I realize I forgot to live.
Tell me what that means to you.
When I found that quote, I knew it was going to be the beginning of the book because it
really describes, sadly, how so many of us are living.
We're racing through our life, postponing our happiness, thinking I'll be happy when
I graduate or when I have a job or when I get married or when my kids move out or when
I lose weight or when I find the right man, and you get those things, and you think, well,
no, this isn't really it now.
What I need next, and before you know it, you're thinking, my God, I'm 40, I'm 50,
I'm 60.
Where did my life go?
And we realize that we're so busy racing through life, we're missing what I call, of course,
those real moments of meaning in our life.
When you say real moments, do you mean focus and paying attention?
Real moments are moments when we are right here, right now.
We're not thinking about what we're about to do in 10 minutes, what happened 10 minutes
ago, but fully present in the moment with whatever you're doing.
It could be talking to someone you love, brushing your daughter's hair, going out to get the
paper in the morning, and very rarely are we totally in present time or kind of half
there.
You're kind of watching yourself do it, afterwards you think, gee, four hours went by.
What happened?
They just went by like that because you weren't there.
We don't have enough of those.
We don't have enough of those with our lovers, with our children, with nature, certainly
with ourselves.
And we wonder why we feel kind of, is this all there is, feeling in life.
But we're so busy, and we've got so much to do and so much to accomplish, and there's
so little time, and excuse after excuse.
You know, it's not even about taking time away from what you're doing.
It's about paying attention to where you are when you're doing it.
You can do the same thing that you normally do, but if you do it with attention, it's
a real moment for you.
So have you always lived this way, in the moment, being present, paying attention, focused?
Absolutely not.
I mean, that's the reason I wrote the book.
I think we always teach what we need to learn.
And I realized I'm not having enough of these moments, not just because I'm working a lot,
but because when I'm there, I'm not fully present.
I'm already thinking about what's going to happen next.
And that's how a lot of us live.
And when we are really with someone, we're not fully present, and they don't feel that.
A lot of people in their relationships feel that.
I know you're here, honey.
I love you, but I can't feel you, because being fully there, the moment is totally complete.
There's nothing else.
There's nowhere to go.
Do you think that's why so many marriages break down and fall apart?
Absolutely.
Real moments are the lifeblood of a marriage, because they create that intimacy with somebody
else.
Marriage, and I say this in the book, is not a ring.
It's not a piece of paper.
It's not how many years you've been together.
It's the way you love your partner every day.
It's an active, dynamic experience.
Like, what little things would one do in a relationship to be present and be focused
and really, really feel one another's presence?
Do you know how rarely a couple in love just sits and looks at each other?
Really just takes the hand of the person and just looks at the other person and says, you
know, I just love you, and just takes that moment to let their connection manifest.
But at the point where you're really present with your mate, it seems to me you need to
be really emotionally healthy to be able to now, let's really focus on one another.
Let's tell each other how much we love one another.
Don't we have to do all the work beforehand and get in touch with where it started?
You know, life is a full-time job, and growing is a full-time job, as you know, as I know.
The reward of it, though, is experience, love, magical moments that fill your life with way
more meaning than anything else you could be doing with your time.
A lot of people don't see that, though.
And what I'm saying, what you're saying, is the process of feeling good starts inside,
and it starts with feeling clean and clear and feeling comfortable with what you're carrying
around.
So when I look into my husband's eyes, I let him see all of me – my pain, my fear,
my excitement – and being recognized that deeply by another human being, that's what
love really is about.
What can we do to get on track so that we essentially do that thing that you're talking
about that our parents always said, stop and smell the roses?
I think, first of all, we need to find the emotional courage to ask ourselves very difficult
questions every day, like, am I happy?
Am I doing what I like to be doing?
Am I giving as much as I can?
Am I getting as much as I can?
If I had six months to live, what would I change?
These are confrontive questions.
But if we don't ask them, we – one day when we're 70 or 80 and we're lying there
in our deathbed or in the hospital, we go, oh, I'm looking back on my life, if I could
live it again.
And it's really sad that people have those kind of regrets.
What about the inner voice, the inner dialogue, the little voice inside, however you refer
to it?
Do we have the answers in us already?
I totally believe we have the answers in us already.
The person knows what they really need to do.
They just aren't listening.
So when we don't listen to that voice, we suffer, we get in trouble, and we cause ourselves
pain.
When we listen to that voice, we're always guided in the right direction.
How important is it to those who are watching this video right now to do the work to get
to the point of being content, of being serene, of being peaceful?
To me, that is the only real work that we're here for.
I don't believe we're here to accumulate things.
I think we're here to discover who we are and to be the best we can be and to remember
the miracle of life and the miracle of our own existence.
And that takes conscious, everyday work of paying attention, asking for guidance, asking
for teachers, being open to learning with books and tapes and everything you can, and
having an innocence about the process of being a child and learning more and more every day.
Are there any other tips that you can give people so that they can, on their own, learn
to appreciate each moment of each day in a better way?
When you notice yourself not present, you realize you've been talking to someone but
you're not even listening to them, stop and just pay attention to whatever is happening
physically.
Where are you?
What's happening?
And the great little meditation that I have in the book, Real Moments, is called the Right
Now Meditation.
And you literally say, right now, and you do whatever you're doing.
Right now, I'm sitting in my backyard with Suzanne.
Right now, I'm breathing.
Right now, I'm hearing the birds.
Right now, I'm feeling how nice it is to have a connection with someone.
Right now, I'm feeling alive.
Right now, I'm feeling the wind blow my hair.
And all of a sudden, you're pulled right into this moment.
There's nothing else going on.
Here we are.
And that becomes a full, real moment.
Nothing else is needed.
And there's nowhere else I would rather be than right here, right next to you.
So whether you're driving, cooking, eating, working, people watching, taking a walk, making
love, or doing nothing at all, try to pay attention.
Live in the moment.
You'll be amazed at the little wonders all around you that you've never noticed before.
There's something so soothing about gardening.
I just love making little bouquets of wildflowers.
Relaxes me.
Gets me in touch with my domestic side.
In fact, I love the whole process.
I love planting the seeds and watching the very first sprouts grow.
And then come the buds.
And then in springtime, it's amazing to see everything in bloom, although it doesn't always
work out.
Sometimes the rabbits get to it before you do.
But the good news is that some rabbit had a really great meal.
But even when the plants die, they still have purpose.
You know, they break down and fertilize the soil.
They create a richer place for new life to grow.
It's all part of the cycle of life.
For us, life is also a series of passages from one stage to the next.
We pass from childhood to adolescence to adulthood.
Other passages include marriage, parenting, retirement.
The list goes on and on.
As we grow, we find passages unique to our own lives.
Some are spiritual, some personal.
The point is, no matter how well you did in your previous stage, there are new things
to learn in the next one.
Passages can be a little scary at first, because everything seems so new and confusing.
You remember adolescence?
Right now, I'm entering a new passage.
My children are having babies and I'm thrilled about it.
Yet, as I near the end of my own childbearing years, I admit I'm feeling a slight anxiety.
Babies do that to you.
You have to adjust.
But I know I have new things to learn in the next cycle, and I'm really trying not to
approach it with fear.
I want to approach it with understanding and excitement and anticipation.
But whenever I enter a new stage, there's confusion.
I don't have any answers yet.
I realize that once I accept the next stage, it's exciting, because working through it
and gaining wisdom, which comes from growth, is exhilarating.
You see, age is a state of mind.
It's an attitude.
When you feel old, you start to look old.
When you think positively, you feel vibrant, and it shows on the outside.
In fact, the most beautiful people I know are the ones who have serenity.
They have balance.
They have energy.
They have interest.
I'm inspired by my mother, who just turned 80.
Even though she's had a hard life, she's active and upbeat.
She always looks on the bright side.
But you see, it's because she's done the work.
She's gone through therapy.
She walks three miles every day.
She's deeply spiritual.
Now she's almost completely lost her sight to an incurable eye disease called macular
degeneration.
At first, she was depressed, but then a friend of mine who has the same disease told her
a totally blind person would love to see what she sees.
It's all attitude.
At that moment, my mother felt blessed, because at least she could see something.
I attribute her health and well-being to her attitude that every age is a state of growth
and an opportunity to continue to learn.
Every passage of life is important.
It's never too late to improve our minds or our bodies.
Today I've become interested in Tai Chi.
It's an ancient form of Chinese exercise, which is great for all ages.
I'm just learning the many incredible mental and physical benefits, and I'd like to introduce
you to some of the basic principles.
So I'm here with my friend, Dr. Roger Hirsch, who's a doctor of Chinese medicine and a Tai
Chi expert.
I'm so glad you're here, and we are going to teach you 10 Tai Chi warm-up exercises
based on the principles of Tai Chi, and in fact, we are doing the first one right now.
Warming the hands.
What are we doing?
We're warming our hands, and the reason why we're warming our hands is actually what we're
doing is waking up the body and helping ourselves get in touch with ourselves.
What is the front of the hand and the inside of the hand signifying?
The palm of the hand is actually the front of the body, and the back of the hand is the
back of the body.
So what you're actually doing is you're making contact with the whole front of your body
and the back of your body if you want to massage them.
So what we do after we massage our hands like this, we start our second exercise, which
is...
Rotate the hips and knees, feet together.
Place hands at the kidneys, which is underneath the rib cage in the back, and we want to move
and loosen the waist.
By loosening the waist, I mean that we rotate in a circle.
Feet are together, good.
Now my body should be perfectly straight?
Well, your body should...the big part of the circle should be at your waist.
You want to really stretch and loosen the waist.
You don't get enough of this kind of movement in daily life.
So we do nine times in one direction, and then we'll do nine times in the other direction.
Okay.
What's interesting about it is I feel it working the waist, but also I know that this is about
moving the inner organs, isn't it?
Exactly.
Because we're moving the kidneys, we're moving the intestines, and all these functions have
both physiological and psychological correspondences.
And this is good for hormonal imbalance also, this thing that we call PMS?
PMS, yes.
It is very good for PMS.
The reason it's good for PMS is because it helps the flow of blood in the pelvic cavity.
And usually when there's stuck blood or endometriosis, there isn't flow of blood in the pelvic cavity.
Rotate the hips and knees, feet apart.
So now we step to the side, and we do the same thing with our feet apart.
And what does this do?
Basically the same thing, but it works more the connection between the upper leg and the
trunk.
So we want to just gently loosen the body.
We want to awaken our body for Tai Chi practice.
I feel that this is moving the hips more than the first version, so is this also good for
our emotions, did you say?
Absolutely.
The motions are in the hips.
And you mentioned earlier when we were doing this before that this is good for men's sexual
vigor, isn't it?
Absolutely.
Why is that?
For the same reason it's good for PMS.
It gets rid of the stuck blood and moves the blood in the pelvic cavity.
Okay.
Well, those are good reasons for doing that right there.
And you get a nice thin waist while doing it.
Rotate the heavenly axis.
This is how you do this one.
And you basically just relax.
You sort of hit yourself when you do this, correct?
Yeah.
What you're doing is you're stimulating the body.
You're putting energy or chi into the body.
It feels like it's twisting the spine.
Exactly.
That's what it's doing.
It's twisting the spine.
Relax the shoulders.
It's twisting the spine and allowing this movement to innervate and gently exercise.
And all the organs and the meridians are getting massaged internally, correct?
Exactly.
Okay.
Phoenix Flying Above the Clouds.
This exercise is called Phoenix Flying High Above the Clouds.
I like this one.
And this is where you pretend that you're this great bird.
Okay.
And this great bird is going to fly over the clouds.
What is this doing for my body?
What this does for your body is that because you're exercising your knees in a particular
way, it helps the kidneys, the renal adrenal function, which has to do with combating stress.
And it also is very good for the heart because you're exercising the thorax and relaxing
the shoulders and the attitude of flying high above the clouds without a care in the world
helps you relieve stress.
I feel like Mary Martin and Peter Pan.
You bet.
But what is this doing for the external body?
Well, what this does with the external body, of course, good health radiates in the face.
So what you're doing is you're creating a better circulation and flow of energy through
the heart and thereby helping your spirit come out of your face better.
In other words, having that presence, if you will.
Rotate the Ball.
The next exercise is rotating the big ball.
And this is just to kind of cool down a little bit and relax and get this ball of energy
between your hands.
So this is more about focus, about being in the moment, about concentration.
And nine times the other direction.
Real relaxed.
It's about doing it slow, correct?
Absolutely.
When you slow the movement down, you really help adjust the fine motor coordination of
the body.
This fine motor coordination of the body helps sync the body up with nature.
And that's a big part of what we're trying to do.
Buddha's Prayer Wheel.
This exercise is you step forward directly in line with the hip and you take that same
kind of posture and you come down and it's like you're turning a big prayer wheel.
Relax the shoulders and do it slowly.
Enjoy the slowness.
This develops strength in the lower part of the body and relaxation in the upper part
of the body which gives you better brain power, better memory, better focus and concentration.
This is a good exercise for anybody and can be done sitting, can be done lying down even.
It's very simple.
You can step forward or step in the same place and step back.
Lion playing with ball.
And this exercise is called lion playing with the ball.
And just kind of move it around like you have this ball of energy.
Okay.
And what is the purpose of this?
Well what you're doing is you're stretching the whole body.
You want to kind of get out all those kinks.
You can do this to music.
You can do it to quiet tune.
You can do it to any inner movement or any understanding in yourself and you can take
it down.
Okay.
You can take it up, good.
Swing the arms a thousand times.
The name of this exercise is swing the arms a thousand times.
So that's what I like about these exercises.
They get to the point, don't they?
Yeah.
No pun intended.
Is that the point to do this a thousand times?
Well if you want.
I mean.
How long would that take?
About ten minutes, twenty minutes.
Ah.
And what does this do?
This is great for the shoulders.
This is great for just opening up the wings of the body, you see.
The wings are the inspiration, the creativity is also.
Going up on your toes.
Yeah, you can go up on your toes if you want.
That's very calming and it's good for the lungs and the intestines because the lung
meridian goes over this area.
It's good for what we call fifty year old shoulder.
Which is.
I wouldn't know that.
No.
But.
Because men usually get it.
Women don't get it.
It also tonifies the immune system.
That's right.
You can do this to help prevent colds and flus.
You can also do this to strengthen your immune system.
Especially if you're out, you know, in the early morning at sunrise or sunset doing this
when the air is good.
The Cosmic Stance.
The reason why it's called the Cosmic Stance is because what it, or the Tai Chi pole exercise
is because you stand as if you were a pole.
What you do is you put either foot out and your hands right out from the center of your
chest, relax the shoulders, tip of the tongue to the roof of the mouth, base of the spine
drawn to the center of the earth.
Breathing naturally.
You imagine a pole of energy that we're grabbing onto.
Like your arms are circling around this great pole or a tree.
The shoulders are relaxed, the elbows have weights on them, and you're just balancing
on the front of your foot.
Now you can hold this posture 15 to 20 minutes on the side.
I recommend starting with five minutes on the side and just change to the other side.
Good.
Now your arms might feel heavy, that's the point.
Because when they feel heavy and when you're hurting with this particular posture, you're
gathering energy from your environment.
And that's what you want to do.
You want to live in harmony with nature.
Do you feel anything in your hands now?
I feel it tingling a lot and I do feel it actually all over my body.
Now you can take that tingling in your hands and if you have a sore knee or a headache
or a sore jaw or a pain or an ache or an arthritic joint, you can put your hand on that area
with this energy.
Well, I thank you very much, Roger.
You're welcome.
These are a wonderful warm up and I hope all of you enjoy these and get the maximum
benefit and focus and really enjoy the moments when you're doing this.
In every negative, there's a positive.
Find it.
There's a theory that we choose everything that happens to us so that we can learn and
that every event in our life is something we've chosen.
Each and every one of us at some point will be thrown a curve, we all will be.
It's up to each one of us to look at our own situation and either choose to be a victim
and say, why is this happening to me or how can I grow?
How can I learn from this?
It's up to us to change the negatives into positives.
It's hard work, but it's worth the effort.
Take a moment and really pay attention to what's going on.
Study your surroundings, breathe deeply, listen, observe.
You'll find yourself truly experiencing the moment.
Wake up each morning and be grateful.
There's so much to appreciate.
Focus on the positives, your health, your loved ones, your attitude.
Give of yourself freely.
Be the best person you can be.
Bless the world, bless all living things and look for love in all situations.
With this philosophy, you'll not only think great, you will look great.