Dr. Dan J. Siegel, author of “The Mindful Brain” is today’s most prominent voice in mental/emotional health. He recommends 5 important things for living a long healthy physical and mental life:

1) Omega 3s  – Best sources of these are Nordic Natural fish oil and Krill oil.  Vegetarian versions of this, like Chia and Flax seed oils are great for the other health factors they provide but they do not easily convert into EPA and DHA, the important ingredients for brain health and memory.

2) Exercise  -  Not much I need to say about this. We all know this one well. We just have to schedule some daily activity and do it, even if it is just to go for a walk every day. Reflect on how memory plays a part in getting us out there.

3) Relationships – This, Siegal says, is a vital ingredient for comforting and nourishing ourselves . . . attuning to others and attuning to ourselves.  This will sound self-promotional, but the best way I know for you to learn to better attune to yourself and to others is by attending one of the retreats my husband, Jake, and I offer twice a year.

Once you have experienced the program, staying connected to the community through monthly gatherings and/or our email support group, will be vital to embodying this practice.

Siegal says: “We come to not only know the mind, but to embrace our own inner world and the mind of others with kindness and compassion”.

In our retreats you will find a new compassion for yourself and for others and the space to breathe and just  “be” – learning how to “be” without caring so much what other people think.

4) Humor – Siegel talks about the importance of humor on our brain chemistry. Prioritize humor in your life – find a means to laugh out loud daily. As the other famous Dr. Siegel (Bernie Siegel) suggests: “see if you can laugh out loud a few times each day. Think about things that have made you laugh before. Sometimes just bringing those times back to mind is enough to enjoy another good laugh.”  Science shows our immune system, and memory access  will greatly improve from this.

5) Novelty – Doing something you have done before does not sufficiently stimulate the brain. Do something novel. Learn to play bridge or some other new game. Read “Speak Love Not War” by Jake Eagle. Attend a Green Psychology retreat. Challenge yourself further – as my psychotherapist once did by having me read, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

Memory Also Relies On a A Strong Healthy Body

I will add three more things to Siegel’s five, to address your overall health as well as the health of your brain.

6) Eat healthy, organic, live food. Stay away from simple carbs and sugars (i.e. high fructose corn syrup, which are hidden in every thing). Stay away from the middle isles in your grocery store. All the real food is on the outer edges of the store.

7) Remember to pay attention to your 20 minute alarm!  This is one of the best ways to keep from overeating. It takes 20 minutes for your brain to get the message that your belly has had enough food. Wait 20 minutes before you eat more. You’ll be surprised at what a difference this can make . . . but you have to remember to wait 

Power Thought is a supplement by Bluebonnet, which I recommend if you feel your memory slipping.

Our minds are a precious resource—maybe our most precious—and without our minds we’re not able to fully enjoy our own lives or contribute to the lives of those we love. So, I hope you seriously consider what I’ve share with you in this post . . . if you remember it

In romantic relationships, if we frame our conversations with our partner in a particular way, even the difficult conversations become a chance to deepen our connection. The key is turning toward one another, not away from one another. I’d like to share an example of this with you.

For the past week my wife, Hannah, and I have been in Hawaii on vacation. We met here on my return trip from Tokyo, where I had been working for a couple of weeks. We met at the airport and then traveled together to our beachfront getaway.

As thrilled as we were to reconnect after having been apart for two weeks, I quickly became aware of being half a step out of sync with Hannah. Little things. I would speak about something and when I was done, Hannah would say nothing. This seemed unusual to me. We would bump into each other, actually, my experience is that Hannah was bumping into me—but she may see this differently. These things occurred in ways that were slight and almost irrelevant, except that they weren’t customary for us. We normally move and relate in a smooth and seamless rhythm. 

After a few days we discussed what was going on. We came to see that while I was away, Hannah spent a great deal of her time in silence. While I was away I was conducting a training for eight hours a day, highly engaged with people and more animated than when I’m home seeing clients in my private practice. And, in the evenings, I would have deeply stimulating conversations with my colleague—he and I only spend time together when we were both working in Tokyo.

I had arrived in Hawaii after having up shifted to a higher gear—a faster pace—and Hannah arrived in Hawaii having downshifted into a lower gear and slower pace. We felt off our normal ways of interacting. These kinds of transitions and disruptions are part of all romantic relationships. The question is, “how do we communicate about what’s going on?”

When we finally talked about our out-of-syncness, we started our conversation by putting the following frame around it. We reminded ourselves that we love each other; there is nothing serious going on—”is there?”—no there is not, we are best friends, and we don’t need to see or experience events in the exactly the same ways. Actually, accepting our differences deepens our intimacy.

Feeling hurt doesn’t have to cause us to disconnect

With this foundation we proceeded to explore the ways in which we were out of sync. Although parts of our conversation felt tender, like when I told Hannah that I felt I was more expressive of my love for her than she was of her love for me, we didn’t turn away from one another. Hannah said an interesting thing, “It’s when one of us feels hurt and turns away from the other that the hurts causes us to disconnect. When we feel hurt, if we just say so, we can stay connected.”

And that’s what we did. I talked about wanting more connection, more engagement, and more feedback. Hannah talked about not feeling like she needed anything more from me, but also expressed this in what I perceived as a more engaged way—which is all I wanted.

We concluded our conversation, which was about the ways in which we weren’t feeling connected, feeling more connected. Everything, even tension and feeling out-of-sync with our partners, is actually a chance to connect if we approach each other in a loving way.

Our romantic relationships are an opportunity to transform our previous limitations, try turning toward your partner the next time you feel hurt.

For example, Buddhism’s goal of practice, Nirvana, would not be a noun but a verb – Nirvana-ing ourselves – (actively) putting out our fires of greed, hatred, and delusion  –  rather than reaching a state of nirvana. Instead of the Buddha finding a path of enlightenment (a static state), he would be saying that he found a path for enlightening ourselves  – an active, continuous process.

From Pali scholar Lily de Silva, “though we use a noun called ‘rain’ which appears to denote a ‘thing’, rain is nothing but the process of drops of water falling from the skies. Apart from this process, the activity of raining, there is no rain as such.”

Here’s the second secret: there is a modern day equivalent to this perspective and way of speaking. It is called Perceptual Language. This is a more recent linguistic development from the 60’s that is also not well known.  I will get to that later, but first more about the Buddha’s teaching.

Much of the story of the Buddha’s life is mythology.  What we know about him is based upon a collection of stories. Buddha was a part of a social movement of “renouncers” who rejected the caste system and the hierarchy of Brahman.

Significant numbers of followers of Buddhism were waking up in the time of the Buddha because the language-ing was so radically different. The ideas and words were based upon “verbing” oneself, which helped people recognize that self was a process, dependent upon conditions arising and passing away.  This radical idea was hugely liberating in India when people thought there was no other option but to be locked into a caste forever, not even changing with rebirth. Buddha taught that an untouchable could become a merchant based not on faith but on their actions.

The modern equivalent mentioned above was created 50 years ago by psychologist John Weir and his wife Joyce and more recently refined by Jake and Hannah Eagle of Green Psychology. It is called Perceptual Language.  It can be adapted to any language (Spanish, German, French, Japanese) and one key aspect of it also involves turning certain nouns into verbs. Perceptual Language helps us speak in the present tense, acknowledging that everything that is happening is happening right now, and continually reminds us that we are in motion, constantly changing, and that every thing is impermanent.

For an over simplified example of Perceptual Language, “He makes me angry” would become “I anger myself”. This un-sticks us from the static state “I am” and puts the experience into motion with “I anger”. This is significant because if I can anger myself, and see this is something I am doing to myself, I have the power to choose if I want to respond in another way.

Perceptual Language promotes mindfulness, helping people bring themselves into the present, and encouraging them to take more personal responsibility, cutting through illusion.  It reminds us that there is a world out there but the only thing we can know about it is our perception of it. With this language we become conscious that we are constantly making meaning of everything we encounter, enabling us to have a high degree of choice as to whether we react with hostility and defensiveness or respond maturely and appropriately.  

As ancient followers of Buddhism did with Pali language, we can use Perceptual Language to complement any mindfulness practice to wake ourselves up. This linguistic practice is available to us every time we speak – to ourselves and others.

I have shifted myself in significant ways during the past several months. The simplest explanation is that I’ve come to believe that we—individually and collectively—to a significant degree, operate from within a false paradigm. The false paradigm results in us:

Trying to overcome fear by being courageous.
Trying to develop communication skills to resolve conflicts.
Seeking certainty in our lives as a way to minimize our anxiety.
Using mindfulness practices in ways that are based on dissociation.
Making sense of ourselves by thinking of ourselves as being made up of different parts.

I’M NOT SAYING ANY OF THE ABOVE ARE WRONG.

I recognize that each of the above has merit. And maybe these approaches to personal growth are necessary, sort of like learning to walk before we can run. But, take a moment and consider this possibility:

Most of the ways we approach personal growth were developed in an attempt to overcome our fears. So, by adopting them, we are inadvertently stepping into an orientation of fear. We are buying into the idea that there is something to fear.

And ask yourself, “What would my approach to life be if it (I) were born out of love?”

Michael Leunig is an Australian poet, cartoonist and cultural commentator, who wrote:
There are only two feelings: love and fear.
There are only two languages: love and fear.
There are only two activities: love and fear.
There are only two motives, two procedures, two frameworks, two results:
love and fear. Love and fear.

About two decades ago I heard this overly simplistic idea—that there are really only two emotions, love or fear —and I disregarded it. But I am now reconsidering it in a larger context, which is that maybe there are basically two approaches to living: love or fear.

If we (unconsciously) choose fear—then we must try to muster up courage, learn conflict resolution skills, seek to create certainty in our lives, dissociate from things that are scary, and segregate ourselves into parts as a way to cope with our own lack of acceptance.

But, if we (consciously) choose love—then we don’t need to muster up courage, conflict dissipates, we become comfortable with uncertainty, we associate (move toward) whatever is happening in our lives instead of dissociating (moving away) from whatever is happening in our lives, and we fully acknowledge all of our behaviors and beliefs as “us” so there is no need to think of ourselves as being made up of parts.

If we could change our basic stance in life, from fear to love, what would this look like on a practical level?

Instead of trying to screw up our courage (which magnifies our fears) to overcome our fears, we could open ourselves to our present experience. We don’t need to brace ourselves, steel ourselves, or overcome ourselves. We can just be present with whatever is happening.

Instead of using conflict resolution skills, which are largely based on learning different ways to make our point, we could turn toward one another with the intention of understanding, and then conflict dissipates. The solution is understanding, and everyone hears only what they understand.

Instead of seeking to create certainty, or really the illusion of certainty—which leaves us holding onto an illusion—we could learn to embrace uncertainty, which results in curiosity, humility, and new beginnings.

Mindfulness—this is a subject some of you reacted to when I suggested that many mindfulness practices are designed to help us dissociate. I continue to believe this is the most common structure to mindfulness practices. They teach us to focus our attention on one thing while dissociating—distancing—from other things. The result is a coolness, and a disconnection from that which is uncomfortable. Instead of using this form of mindfulness, we could use mindfulness that is based on fully associating—experiencing our senses, embracing, and integrating. To do this requires that we have an “approach” stance, which is based on love, rather than an “avoidance” stance, which is based on fear.

And finally, my newest suggestion is that we are potentially impeding our personal growth by thinking of ourselves as being made up of various parts—a scared part, a sacred part, an immature part, a wounded part—and that instead, we could think and act and speak as if we are one whole being, and by doing this we will actually generate greater self-acceptance, maturity, and integration.

Most of our psychological models and strategies for personal growth are based on a belief in fear—that we are in some way unsafe. I’m questioning this basic foundational assumption.

As I experiment with this in my own life, I’m experiencing exponential progress—in my most intimate relationship with my wife, Hannah, and as I move through the world. As I apply this approach to my life with Hannah, all tension has evaporated. As I apply this approach to moving through the world, I feel less resistance in myself, and I encounter less resistance in others.

But it is a radical shift. I enter this different paradigm by doing a few things:

• I remind myself I am safe.
• I turn toward the other person and assume their point of view is completely valid.
• I trust that not knowing an answer brings me into an array of new possibilities and expanded horizons.
• I believe that feeling whatever is in me is the most direct path to relief, release, and revitalization.
• I expect that everything I need to express can be maturely expressed, and that if I express myself maturely, I have no need to distance myself from myself (by labeling “parts” of me), because I am loving myself.

Try any one of the above and I believe you will find these are shortcuts to living gracefully and experiencing deeper connections with other people. Maybe you do have a choice, love or fear.

So, what’s the secret? The secret is some kind of daily meditation in which you remind yourself that you have this choice. If you don’t have a daily practice, because of the messages we are bombarded with all day long, we forget—or never even recognize—what’s possible.

When you respect yourself you send a message about how much you value yourself and how much you expect to be valued. This message speaks to every aspect of a romantic relationship, from expecting your opinion to be honored—even when it differs from your partner’s—to deciding when you will become sexual with a man you are dating. Based on my personal experience with my wife, Hannah, who informed me that she wouldn’t date me if I wasn’t willing to wait three months before becoming sexual—and my experience working with couples for twenty years—rushing into sexual relations decreases the chances of creating a sustainable romantic partnership.

Opening yourself slowly is a sign of self-respect. It’s a way of saying to a man, “You must earn entrance into my life, my psyche, my body. The more you prove yourself, the more I open to you.” If you open too quickly, you devalue yourself. Think of what you have to offer as precious . . . not to be casually offered to anyone. Let him earn the right. If he’s a good man, he’ll want to earn the right.

What happens when you open yourself slowly is that the man you are dating perceives you as more valuable. This will attract men with better self-esteem, because they think they deserve the prize (you), and it will discourage men with lower self-esteem, because they don’t think they deserve the best things in life.

And what’s the rush? Why do some women hurry to divulge everything about themselves, to start spending all their free time with a man, to talk to him multiple times per day, to fall into bed together before they’ve tested his integrity and seen him maturely deal with difficult situations. What’s the rush?

Whatever it is, it comes across as desperate or impulsive, not discerning and self respecting. Are there exceptions? Of course, there always are. Sometimes mature people date with the specific intention to satisfy their sexual desires. They may not even be looking to create a sustainable romantic partnership, but then, unexpectedly, they find that sex leads to a deeper kind of intimacy and they become interested in exploring a deeper relationship.

But, generally speaking, if you want to improve your chances for creating a sustainable romantic partnership, respect yourself and let him earn the right to slowly discover more you.

“It’s the economy, stupid” was a phrase in American politics widely used during Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign against George Bush. The point they were making was that to win an election you must pay attention to the basics.

Well, in romantic relationships, “it’s love stupid.” So many times we have interactions—or altercations—with people we love, and because of a few silly words, or the tone of voice, or insufficient attention we pull back and protect ourselves in the veil of anger or fear. This is because we don’t know how to love.

And the anger and fear is an absurd waste of time and energy—for which the solution is NOT to spend endless hours processing the incident. The answer, well—it’s love stupid! Just love her. Just turn towards her. Remind her that you love her. That’s the foundation, the underpinning of your romantic relationship. Go right to the core. Turn towards her and love her. Whatever the friction, it will dissolve. Whatever you need to learn—some people think that a fight or disagreement is a chance to learn something—the learning will more easily take place after you reconnect. There is no downside to loving her.

Stop holding back and finding reasons to justify your anger and hurt. Just love him. Just turn towards him. Remind him that you love him. That’s the foundation, the underpinning of your romantic relationship. Go right to the core. Turn towards him and love him. Whatever the friction, it will dissolve. Whatever you need to learn, the learning will more easily take place after you reconnect. There is no downside to loving him.

Yes, I know, many people will say that my ideas about how to love are harder to do than to say. That’s because we’re all so damn insecure. I don’t say that as a criticism, it’s not an indictment so much as it’s a statement of biological fact. We are wired to protect ourselves when we feel threatened. We either fight, freeze, or flee. And when our identity—our sense of who we are—is perceived to be under attack, our reaction is fear based. In that moment we forget how to love.

But this is the wrong reaction in romantic relationships…for two reasons. First, it’s only our identity that is being challenged, not our survival, so it’s not necessary to be reactive. Second, the context for a romantic relationship is love—your partner is your friend, not your enemy—so you are fundamentally safe.

But, we forget this. That’s why I’m telling you, it’s love stupid! Remind her of your love. Remind him of your love. Just because you disagree doesn’t mean you don’t love each other. Just because you may be disappointed in your partner doesn’t mean you don’t love each other. Remind each other of the context and you will feel safer, more relaxed, and be less likely to react as if you are under threat. You’re not.

The only threat to your romantic relationship occurs when you forget the context. It’s love stupid!

If you’re trying to find a good partner—male or female—one key is to apply your criteria before love takes hold. Whatever criteria you have—a financially stable partner, a person who wants to start a family, a person who is emotionally mature—as soon as you find out that the person you’re dating fails to meet your criteria . . . move on.  Move on before love takes hold.

Falling in love is a highly motivated state. It’s actually a state of need. We are biologically wired to fulfill this need by merging with another person. As we fall in love our brains are busily predicting the rewards of merging with another person.

One problem, however, is that our brains predict what will be rewarding to us based on that which is familiar. Familiar is rewarding—even when what’s familiar isn’t healthy. So if we come from a dysfunctional relationship with our parents, especially our parents of the opposite sex, or we’ve been in a series of dysfunctional relationships, dysfunction is what’s familiar.

If very early in the dating process we tolerate of things that we deem unacceptable, inappropriate, or just too difficult, then after we tumble into love we’re apt to start bartering—trading off negative traits for positive traits. We accept things that in the long run will become unacceptable.

Early in the dating process we must turn away from that which is unacceptable to us—even if it is familiar—before we find ourselves committed to a difficult partnership, or a partnership based on the delusion that we can change the other person.

Maybe this will help:

• During the dating stage—one strike and he’s out.
• During the relating phase—two strikes and she’s out.
• During the mating (marriage) phase—three strikes and he’s out.

I don’t mean to sound harsh, of course all of these decisions must take into consideration a larger context, but my point is simple—early on in a relationship the other person hasn’t earned second chances.

The longer we’re together with our partner—assuming things are good—the more trust our partner earns. Some tolerance becomes appropriate. But even so, love is still conditional.

If we aware ourselves that our biological and chemical drives—love is like an opiate—leave us vulnerable to making poor choices, we can more consciously navigate the territory of love.

Perceptual Language allows you to speak with authority and clarity about your own experiences, to be in the present moment, and to more easily reveal yourself so you can better connect with others.

While using Perceptual Language you constantly are reminding yourself that you are making your own meaning of everything you experience and thus, you have the power to choose how you want to respond in any given conversation.

Perceptual Language is a daily mindfulness practice

Perceptual Language brings you into the present moment, makes you the active agent in your life, minimizes social anxiety, and allows you to live a more fearless and spontaneous life.

This is our tenth anniversary sharing what was generously shared with us by John and Joyce Weir, the original creators of this work. They developed this model in 1960 and taught it to thousands of people over fifty years. They called their workshop a Differentiation Laboratory and the language they taught was called Percept. When we became one of the stewards of this work we re-branded it Green Psychology and we called to language Green Speak.

Now, after ten years, we are going to start referring to the language as Perceptual Language. We are making this change for many reasons. First, it comes closer to honoring the name the Weirs used. Second, it accurately describes what the language is—it is a language used to communicate our perceptions of the world. And, finally, it is a more sophisticated name than Green Speak, and since we want this work to be taken seriously, we think the new name will be helpful.

To read an article written about Perceptual Language click here.

To order the only book currently available on this subject click here.

If you haven’t ever done the Four Directions Meditation before you may want to listen to this short introduction. Once you’ve heard it, you probably won’t need to hear it again. However, feel free to download it if you’d like.

And here is the meditation itself:

This is the actual audio recording of the Four Directions Meditation. We’ve had so many people request copies that we are making this available as a FREE MP3 download. You can listen to the recording from here, or you can download it to your computer or iPod. Just follow the instructions below. If you want to see the meditation written out instead of a listening to a recording, click here:

I found food for thought this week while reading an article in Huffington Post by Dennis Merritt Jones, Reverence Thyself First: Where the Sacred Journey Begins.

Jones speaks of going out to his mediation garden and discovering weeds
among his lilies and bamboo. Rather than immediately plucking them out, he
sat for a moment to contemplate weeds, remembering Emerson’s words: “a weed
was a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered”.

He wrote that “Earnest Holmes, the author of The Science of Mind, would on
occasion, dine with a vase of weeds on his dining room table . . . the only
real difference between a weed and a rose was the value we choose to place
upon one over the other.”  He was suggesting we could hold the same
reverence “for every form of life, from snails, to whales and everything in
between, including you and me and every human being on this planet”.

Jones discovered that day that a weed can be a spiritual experience if we
are willing to look beyond form and perhaps understand that the weed
has something to contribute.

Masanobu Fukuoka,with his revolutionary approach to organic farming, had an
enlightened attitude about weeds. He determined that weeds play an important
part in fertilizing a garden and in building an ecological balance. And so
in his garden, weeds were controlled rather than eliminated.

So, too, I believe we can we can feed our souls and bring ecological balance
to our minds and hearts with the self acceptance of our weeds, the snails and
whales of our personalities, the whole shebang of who we are.

In a Green Psychology training, we learn that we cannot really pluck out the
parts of ourselves, or behaviors, that we perceive as undesirable. We begin
to understand that these parts of us, like weeds, will return again and
again, popping up at very inconvenient moments unless we integrate these
aspects of ourselves into the whole of who we are.

And like the weeds in Fukuoka’s garden, we can enjoy control over these
parts only once we accept and integrate these parts. We may not truly
‘revere’ these parts as Earnest Holmes did his weeds, but we can accept that
they are just a part of our inner gardens.

We can bring these parts of ourselves to the table, appreciate them for how they may have served us in the past. This is the practice of self acceptance. And once we do, we can begin to consciously make choices in how we want to ‘control’ these parts of us, and allow these parts to mature.

Weeds will always appear in my garden. Yet if I accept them, I can control them, so that they do not overpower my lilies, nor detract from my bamboo – the kinder, more reverent, parts of me.