Ten Principles for Transformation in Recovery.

The ten principles listed below can be of assistance to a person who is in recovery.  While they are not to be confused as the actual work in recovery they will provide a frame or structure from which to do recovery.

1. To take complete ownership and responsibility for your life. Understand that you have created and chosen your life the way it is occurring. You are the cause of what you experience and your life.

2. Watch your word! Stay present to what you think and say. Choose to say positive things about yourself and others. What you think and say creates your experiences of how life will occur and be for you.

3. Practice your Self Affirmations and Possibilities everyday. Say your Self Affirmations and Possibilities in the morning, throughout the day and before bedtime.

4. What is your Intention? Plan your Intention each morning upon awakening and stay present to it throughout the day. What are you committed to today? What are you committed to now? What is it that you want to create in your life? What is it that you want to create now?

5. Develop your RECOVERY PLAN. Plan your work. Your RECOVERY PLAN is about your life. Your RECOVERY PLAN is about your Integrity. Integrity is the bottom line. Are you in integrity with your RECOVERY PLAN. Are you in Integrity with your life?

6. Develop your DAILY ACTION PLAN. Work your plan. Do it everyday! Your DAILY ACTION PLAN is about your commitment and integrity with respect to your RECOVERY PLAN. Your DAILY ACTION PLAN is about fulfilling on your intention and commitments. Your DAILY ACTION PLAN is about keeping your RECOVERY PLAN in existence!

7. Acknowledge yourself and others daily. Acknowledge the miracles in your life. Practice affirming that every moment of your life is a miracle.

8. Practice patience! Remember that you are doing the best you can. At the moment that we do we do the best we can. When you know more, you will do things differently. Do this in regards to others too.

9. Share with others what you are getting out of your recovery.

10. STAY HUNGRY FOR YOUR RECOVERY!

Itunes Store and the Relaxation Music of Harry Henshaw

The Use of Therapeutic Relaxation Music in Counseling.

Music has always been a very important part of our lives.  As a part of our experience, music can have both a physiological and psychological affect upon us as human beings.  Music also has many therapeutic qualities and has been utilized in promoting a variety of healings throughout the ages.  As we know further, music can be a very powerful medium for altering our state, of changing how we actually feel.  Music can be very effective in producing a very deep and healing state of relaxation and in the process, reduce stress and even promote sleep. Music can also be used to assist one in improving his or her self-esteem and furthering an individualís personal growth and development, transformation.

As a therapist I have always used relaxation music in my clinical and counseling work with others.  I have found that when I use relaxation music during both an individual and group counseling session that my clients do more productive work, are able to focus more effectively on themselves and the issues that they are becoming present to because they are more relaxed, focused and centered and as a result, better able to concentrate.  Being relaxed during the counseling process, at least initially always tends to generate more productive results for the individual being counseled.  Relaxation music can be a very effective and powerful aid for assisting a client to reach resolution with respect to that which he or she is working on with their counselor.

Itunes Store and the Relaxation Music of Harry Henshaw

Positive Affirmations to enhance your Sleep.

Positive affirmations can be used to enhance your sleep experience.  Combined with therapeutic relaxation music positive affirmations for sleep can be very effective.  The following are positive affirmation that you could use to help you to have gentle, restful sleep.

1.  I fall asleep easily and peacefully.

2.  My sleep is relaxed and refreshing.

3.  I sleep in peace and wake up in joy.

4.  I sleep deeply and peacefully every night.

5.  i breathe slowly and deeply.

6.  With each breathe that I take I become more relaxed.

7.  I am relaxed, calm and peaceful.

8.  I am safe and pretoected at all times.  I trust the process of life.

9.  I love and accept myself exactly as I am now.

10.  I am very relaxed, I am very sleep now.  Sleep.

Itunes Store and the Relaxation Music of Enhanced Healing

The Primary Filter that Colors our Perceptions and Relationships

Some believe that they have the ability to see reality for what it is.  Some believe that they see others for who they are.  Some believe that they know and that they are right in their perceptions and ideas about how the world is, about others and even about ourselves.  They believe that they are open minded and willing to learn from the world and others, that they can experience the world objectively.

However, we sometimes lose sight of the important filters that we use to experience life.  These filters affect the information that we believe we gain from the world.  We see the world through several filters.  Some of the filters that we constantly use are our sensory organs that we have, that we use every day.  There are our eyes (visual), ears (sound) and skin (kinesthetic) that are biological filters through which we experience the world and others.

The primary filter that we have, little known or ever recognized, is the belief that we have about ourselves.  This belief to which I refer is that which in many ways defines us.  It is a belief about who we think we are.  It is our self limiting belief.  This fundamental core belief colors or influences everything in our life, our perceptions and beliefs about the world we live in and those who we know and interact with.  It is the source from which we project onto the world.  To transform our life requires that we become aware of our self limiting belief, otherwise there will be no true transformation, merely change.

Itunes Store and the Relaxation Music of Enhanced Healing

Daily Homework – Four Principles to Transform your life.

There are ten principles to the Daily Homework.  Presented here are the first four:

1.  To take complete ownership and responsibility for your life.  Understand that you have created and chosen your life the way it is occuring.  You are the cause of what you experience and your life.

2.  Watch your word.  Stay presen to what you think and say.  Choose to say positive things about yourself and others.  What you think and say creates your experiences of how life will occur and be for you.

3.  Practice your Self Affirmations and Possibilities everyday.  Say your Self Affirmations and Possibilities in the morning, through out the day and before bedtime.

4.  What is your intention?  Plan your intention each morning upon awakening stay present to it throughout the day.  What are you committed to today?  What are you committed to now?  What is it that you want to create in your life?  What is it that you want to create now?

Read each principle slowly and contemplate them daily, throughout the day!

Itunes Store and the Relaxation Music of Enhanced Healing

A passing can put things and life in perspective.

My mother passed approximately two weeks ago.  My father passed two years ago this month.  While I was not present at my father’s passing, I was there for my mother, to witness her leaving this realm of existence.  It was a very powerful experience and one that can teach me even in her leaving.

What I became present to, something that my mother and I discussed after my dad passed, was that we do not take anything with us when we pass.  Mom’s comment was that my dad did not even take his pajamas with him.  Like my father, mom too took nothing physical with her.  I hope she took my love though.

Given that I too will eventually pass, I must stay present to what is important and also the fact that I will take nothing with me as well.  Everything that I have is on loan to me, I am merely using it and borrowing it for a certain period of time.  We own nothing, we keep nothing, we merely use things.  Many people believe that opposite from this fundational belief.  From this I get that what is important is my relationship to others and myself.  Being of service to others and taking care of myself in the best way possible is what is truly important.  It is from this conversation that we can put life in perspective.

Itunes Store and the Relaxation Music of Enhanced Healing

Learning how to take care of ourselves requires making appropriate distinctions about ourselves, others and life in general.

Learning how to take care of ourselves also involves making appropriate distinctions about ourselves, others and life in general. One distinction that is crucial for our well being is realizing how and from where much of our stress is primarily generated. While some of the stressors that we face are apart of what it is to be a human being, much of the stress that we experience is of our own creation. A great deal of the stress that we experience has its origin in our own personal story and the meaning we make about life, in the thoughts that we think. Once we understand that we are truly the cause, that we are responsible for the thoughts that we create or invent and that it is from these thoughts that much of our stress is generated, then and only then will we begin to be able to truly manage our stress and have the power to live the life that we want and love. Blaming others or situations for that which we experience will only limit our power, lead to frustration and eventually a great deal of stress.

Itunes Store and the Relaxation Music of Enhanced Healing

Fear appearing as though it is running your life.

The emotion of fear and how it can appear to be running our life is of great importance to have an inquiry about.  We sometimes believe that the emotion of fear is running our life, that it can stop us, control us and limit us from getting out of life what we say we want.  We do have a tendency to believe that fear is the cause of some of our problems, some of the difficulties that we are experiencing.  While there is some truth to this, it is more that fear is an emotion that we experience, sometimes to the point that we truly believe that it stops us.  As an emotion fear has something in common with all emotions.  An emotion or feeling is how our body experiences our thinking, how we experience thoughts and beliefs in our body.  The emotion of fear is no different as it is created or driven by a thought, one very fundamental and basic to our very core, of who we think we are.  Fundamentally we believe that we are not good enough, and as a result experience the emotion of fear as well as others emotions and feelings.  Fear is about me believing that I can not really handle life, that somehow it will handle me, that I am not adequate enough as a person to live life fully, that somehow I am not good enough to do life properly.  Once I have that I am not good enough I will perceive of the world and others as more powerful and adequate than me and as a result be open to the emotional response of fear when life starts to show up as I created it.

Itunes Store and the Relaxation Music of Enhanced Healing

Watch your word as you create your experiences.

Watch your word!  Stay present to what you think and especially what you say.  Choose to say positive things about yourself and about others.  What you think and say creates your experiences of how life will be and occur for you.  If I say and say positive things there will be a tendency for positive experiences to be created.  If I say negative things there will be a tendency for negative experiences to be created.  I do have a choice in this matter.  In addition, saying positive things about myself and others feels good, saying negative things does not.  It all starts with my word, what I say.  What I say is what I put out into the world, and being that which directly affects my behavior, my actions tend to be in alignment with what I am saying, my word.

Itunes Store and the Relaxation Music of Enhanced Healing

In the face of no agreement.

What do we do in the face of no agreement?  There will be times when what we do in life, say at our work place, will receive no agreement.  It may be that we are critiqued or criticized for something that we have done.  It is at these times that we may experience an upset, feel frustrated and even angry at what the other person is saying about us.  Our tendency is to get defensive and strike back in some form or manner.  In this process it is important to keep in mind that we are not our behavior and that we are doing the best that we can.  Our behavior may need to be worked on and revisions made but that we are not doing something according to what others think we should be doing is not a statement about our value and work as a human being.  Rather it is merely a statement about our behavior.  We have a tendency to think that we are what we do. Take a look at your behavior to see if there is anything that you need to do differently. If so merely do it, do it differently.  Life will be at times about having to live with no agreement.

Itunes Store and the Relaxation Music of Enhanced Healing