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you will be programming yourself for a slower resting heart rate and providing your heart with |
a longer rest period |
As you listen through the stethoscope notice that the sound of each heartbeat coincides |
with a faint feeling in your chest The stethoscope makes this invisible sensation apparent This |
pairing constitutes a form of biofeedback that allows you to understand what your heartbeat |
feels like so that you can recognize it in the future even without the auditory cues of the |
stethoscope This will help you develop a sense of how fast it is beating Youll be able to |
compare the magnitude of the stressors in your environment to the rate of your heart to |
determine whether the two are commensurate You should find that your heart is beating in a |
way that is out of proportion with most experiences Unless you are having lots of fun or getting |
lots of exercise you can allow your heart to beat as slowly as possible |
You can use breathholds like those in Exercise to accentuate the sensations coming |
from your heart Studies show that meditative breath holding makes participants more aware |
of their heartbeat and helps them calm the sympathetic nervous systems reaction to it by |
activating the vagus nerve |
PROGRAM PEACE Self Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body |
The more time you spend listening the more you will ask yourself There is nothing here |
for me to be afraid of so why does it hurt and why is it beating so fast This is the magic |
question and if interrogated enough you will have an emotional epiphany that only this |
experience can provide Repeatedly inhaling smoothly through several heartbeats in a row |
then exhaling through several in a row teaches the heart and your psyche to let go of trauma |
recommend performing diaphragmatic breathing for at least five minutes every night before |
bed with your stethoscope on find this helps me fall into a deep restful sleep |
To Overcome Rapid Heartbeat You Must Overcome Fear of Death |
Think of the life you have lived until now as over and as a dead man see whats left as a bonus and live it |
according to Nature Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own for what could be more fitting |
Marcus Aurelius |
Interoceptive exposure to your own heart can be dreadful In attending it you will come face to |
face with your instinctual fear of death Fear of dying perpetuates much of your hearts |
unnecessary exertion The way to escape this situation is to reach full peace with the idea of |
dying Do it now Die before you die Then you will have already done it and wont have to |
spend a lifetime in fear of it The pain in your heart warning you of impending death will no |
longer be informative |
Meditate on your mortality Take the time now and convince yourself that you have had a |
good life that you have done many worthwhile things and if you were to have a fatal heart |
attack this instant you would still feel whole complete and satisfied with your time on the |
planet In Hinduism it is common to look forward to death and the liberation it brings is known |
as moksha Death is thought to release us from our mundane mortal minds and introduce us to |
our permanent essence Moksha and the concepts in the next activity helped me come to grips |
with my own eventual demise |
Interoception Activity Embrace Your Eternal Nature |
have recently found some consolation in the idea of the eternal moment and hope you |
can too Modern theoretical physicists as well as philosophers differentiate between |
presentism and eternalism The adherents of presentism see the present moment as the only |
time that is real They figure that if something happened in the past it is over now |
nonexistent and generally unrecoverable Eternalists on the other hand believe that all |
moments in time are equally real Eternalists believe that there is no objective present and |
that our subjective sense that the past is gone and irretrievable is illusory prefer eternalism |
Eternalism is sometimes referred to as the block universe theory because of its description |
of spacetime as an unchanging fourdimensional block If you apply this to the human |
condition it tells us that all existence in time is equally valid Therefore if you existed at all |
you will always exist In other words time is a dimension that our experience is embedded |
within but if you could move outside of time and look down on it you could see the entire |
timeline and all of your human existence any second of which is just as legitimate as any |
other So every one of the moments you ever experienced every decision and every |
Chapter Listen to Your Heart and Gut |
thought may be eternal happening right now and recorded somewhere in an immutable |
temporal continuum This may all sound pretty abstract but why not let it give you some |
comfort if not let it make you feel immortal |
Allow me some poetic license for the next two paragraphs |
We dont fear or mourn the billion years of nonexistence before our birth Why should we |
fear the trillions of years that will come after our death We shouldnt especially because |
we will continue on in a different form As denizens of planet Earth we are part of the |
universe In a very real sense our conscious minds are manifestations of the universe |
experiencing itself After we die the universe doesnt die And so we should recognize our |
larger identity that we are not only intertwined with all of reality but we are all of reality |
There will be an end to our human story and our mortal melodrama However death is not |
final We are recycled back into the biosphere resubsumed by the cosmos The matter and |
energy that was us will be and already has been transformed into other things Things that |
will inevitably interact with the repercussions of the good deeds we performed while alive |
Every atom that has ever been a part of you every molecule you have eaten drank or |
inhaled belongs to a larger more beautiful system Even the nonmaterial information in your |
brain body and DNA belongs to this system Your cerebral cortex will decompose But we |
dont need the autobiographical memories inscribed in our brains neural networks to persist |
meaningfully You are not merely the character that you have played in your short lifetime |
Like a person reading an engrossing novel dont get so wrapped up in your lifes narrative |
that you forget your larger role your more permanent selfhood We are much more than a |
bag of bones flesh and ego Think of death as an expansion of your sense of being In playing |
a part in the macrocosm we are it We are other people we are the birds bees and black |
holes You wont fear death if youre aware of your larger eternal identity |
was dragged around by a large Rottweiler as a fouryearold The dog grabbed me by the |
hood of my jacket and pulled me around a backyard forcefully for a few minutes believe the |
dog assaulted me because didnt act afraid of it While the dog was dragging me realized |
that might die or be badly hurt felt that if surrendered it might let up Because was |
cringing and my heart was racing my body language caused the dog to sense that submitted |
and that it won It stopped shortly thereafter It is common for dogs to stop attacking people |
that fully capitulate Frightful situations like this one impel an archetype deep in our nervous |
system Full submission can save me from death |
The ultimate source of submissiveness is that we feel the need to display fear of physical |
attack so that our attacker will decide to be merciful We are afraid that if our heart stays slow |
and calm our persecutor will kill us for our insolence This is because when our heart speeds |
up we involuntarily choke up tremble and give numerous other nonverbal signals of submission |
We must renounce the belief that submissive fear will buy us leniency To do so imagine |
being viciously attacked by a stranger or a predator Neither panic nor submit Simply imagine |
yourself swiftly but calmly taking the steps needed to extract yourself from the danger |
Imagine someone or something trying to kill you while you retain total peace Your tormentor is |
PROGRAM PEACE Self Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body |
stabbing you and you speak to them plainly and honestly while forcefully grabbing the wrist |
that holds the knife The beasts are taking bites from your body and you deftly deliver carefully |
placed blows to their noses Your attitude need not be defiant or combative It must simply be |
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