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Alexandra Amor

Peace of Mind Even in Prison with Anna Debenham

July 10, 2019 By Alexandra Amor

http://media.blubrry.com/stopsufferingabout/p/ssapodcast.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Ep18AnnaDebenham.m4a

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“peaceIf any group of humans had an excuse to NOT connect with innate peace and well-being, it’s those in prison. However, that’s not the case. What Anna Debenham points out in this interview is that every single prisoner she’s ever worked with is able to find examples of well-being, resilience, and peace within them.

Anna’s work is incredibly inspirational to me and I was thrilled to be able to talk with her. In the introduction I mention how this interview was a game-changer for me in terms of deepening my understanding of our innate well-being that the Three Principles are pointing to.

You can listen to the podcast by pressing play above, or listen on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, or watch the video here. Below are the show highlights and full transcript.

Show notes

  • How Anna points prisoners to their innate resilience and well-being
  • Embarking on a research project to measure the effect on prisoners of an awareness of the Three Principles
  • Following up months and years after prisoners are released to measure long term results
  • How prisoners cope with re-entry into their communities when they know where their experience is coming from
  • Working with young offenders to change the trajectory of their life path
  • Looking past the labels we’ve been assigned for our true nature
  • How working in prisons points to the universality of the human experience
  • On the ex-convicts who are now teaching the Principles to youths in prison

Resources mentioned in this episode

  • Anna’s TedX talk (The video is the full morning of TedX talks in Portland in April 2019, but I’ve set that link to begin at the beginning of Anna’s talk.)
  • The One Thought Institute
  • Beyond Recovery
  • Robin Charbit and Ken Manning’s site, Insight Principles
Anna Debenham

Anna Debenham arrived in Portland, Oregon in the spring of 2016 with no connections to prison or to the criminal justice system or any clue how to start a nonprofit. She did have one thing: an understanding of the mind.

Through this understanding, Anna began to teach in prisons, created a research project that was accepted by the authorities of the prison and built her own organization from scratch. The Insight Alliance was born in the car park of a women’s prison and the rest is history.

They have groups in a men’s prison, a women’s prison and are scheduled to start in the youth prison in a few weeks.

You can find Anna at TheInsightAlliance.org.

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Recovery from Anorexia with Rebecca Perkins

July 3, 2019 By Alexandra Amor

http://media.blubrry.com/stopsufferingabout/p/ssapodcast.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Ep17RebeccaPerkins.m4a

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“recoveryWhen we struggle with an eating disorder, it can become all-consuming. Not just for the person with the disorder, but for their family and loved ones as well.

Rebecca Perkins struggled for years to help her daughter, Bea, get well from anorexia. In this podcast episode, Rebecca shares how all-consuming the issue was. And then, when Rebecca stumbled across the Three Principles, which point toward our innate health, wellness, and well-being it was a game-changer for her and ultimately also for her daughter.

Bea is now fully recovered from anorexia and together mother and daughter have written a book about their experience and their new understanding that knowing where our thoughts and experience of life are coming from can release us from the self-imposed prisons we sometimes find ourselves in.

In the introduction I mention the exploration I’ve had in the last week about habitual thought storms and their persuasive but predictable nature. You can read more detail in the blog post.

You can listen to the podcast by pressing play above, or listen on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, or watch the video here. Below are the show highlights and full transcript.

Show Notes

recovery from within rebecca perkins
  • The simple yet profound  transformation when we understand where our experience is coming from
  • The domino effect of one new thought
  • On the mirage of our thinking
  • Writing a book together as a team
  • Why the answer to eating disorders is not where we think it is
  • And why the past doesn’t matter the way we think it does
  • Seeing health rather than illness in a person with an eating disorder
  • Looking for the innate space of stillness we all have beneath the choppy waves of our thoughts
Coach Rebecca Perkins

Rebecca Perkins has worked as a professional wellbeing and resilience coach for 12 years with both individuals and in groups and across all ages and sectors. More recently she has focused her work with young people who are struggling with anxiety, panic attacks, addictions and eating disorders.

She has seen firsthand profound changes in herself and her family as well as deep transformation for her clients as she has deepened your understanding of how well-being and resilience are innate in all of us.

Rebecca is the published author of highly rated titles including Best Knickers Always: 50 Lessons for Midlife, and Recovery From Within: A Mother and Daughter’s Journey Through Anorexia.

You can find Rebecca at RecoveryFromWithin.life

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Habitual Thought Storms Are Still Just Thought

July 1, 2019 By Alexandra Amor

It seems that just as we can have behavioral habits, we can also have thinking habits that cause us to suffer.

“thoughtWe all have them. Those issues, ideas or patterns of thought that hijack us. It could be a gripe about a spouse or a belief about ourselves. And when these thought habits arise, they can seem SO real, perhaps because of their intensity or persuasive arguments.

It is helpful to remember, however, that the makeup of intense or uncomfortable thought habits is exactly the same as the makeup of other thoughts that we are able to see as transitory. And by recognizing them as such, we suffer less.

Let me tell a personal story to illustrate

One of my painful thought habits is about money and business. Every couple of weeks or so a thought storm occurs within me that tells me I’m a failure, that I haven’t done enough with my life, that I will never feel successful, that no matter what I do, I’ll always be a failure.

Ooof. 

This thought storm almost never fails to get me swept up in its whirlwind. My mood crashes through the floor and I become unbearably grumpy.

For a while – a few hours, sometimes an entire day – I completely buy into this thinking and believe every word of the thought storm/habit. Which leads to more ugly thoughts, self-condemnation, and suffering. (And before I learned about the principles of mind, consciousness and thought I bought into this thought habit entirely and took action because of it, which led to more problems. That’s a post for another day.) 

Breaking Free

When this happened to me recently I was caught up in the thought habit for several hours. It was a miserable day, and getting more miserable by the minute because I couldn’t see my thinking for what it was. Just thought. 

view from the trail

That’s all it was. Energy coming to life within me. Except that although there was nothing personal about it I was taking it personally.

It’s normal and human to get caught up in thought storms like this. We are designed to experience thought and we also seem to be designed to believe those thoughts, often unconditionally.

Late in the afternoon on the day of my most recent thought storm/habit I took a break to go for a walk and remembered something I’d once heard Michael Neill say. He sometimes mentions that he experienced suicidal ideation as a teenager, which naturally caused him all kinds of suffering. When he was introduced to the Three Principles he began to see that labeling those self-destructive thoughts helped him to a) see that they were just simply thought, and not something be afraid of or listen to and b) create a bit of space between himself and those thoughts.

So as I walked along the street in the village where I live, the memory of this story from Michael popped into my head. And I realized my ‘I’m a failure’ thought storm was just the same as Michael’s suicidal thoughts. And that perhaps if I gave the storm a label, I too would be able to create a space between the storm-habit and myself.

So I decided to call it The Failure Story.

In other words, I’d found a way to remind myself that I am not responsible for the content of my thinking. Thinking is, to use the oft-cited metaphor, like the weather. It comes and it goes. Sometimes sunny and calm, sometimes stormy and violent. In either case, we are the sky, unaffected by whatever is passing through it.

Predicting storms makes them less scary

No doubt, wherever you live, you have noticed weather phenomena related to that area.

snow storm

In southern Alberta where I grew up, there is a unique warm wind, called a Chinook, that comes down from the Rocky Mountains and can raise the temperatures from -30C to +15C in a few hours. In southwestern Ontario there is something called ‘lake effect’ which creates tremendous snowfall.

When we label events like this they become less scary. And they become predictable as well. 

Do you have a habitual thought storm?

Can you think of a thought storm that you have on a regular basis? Something that with some predictability comes to life within you. A swirl of ideas and thoughts that seem real and cause you to suffer.

If you can’t think of an example right now, that’s okay. Because I guarantee you, one will occur to you eventually. Just like the sun rises every morning, thought habits seem to return with some regularity.

If you’ve thought of a regular thought storm, great. Now try giving it a label. 

The [Fill In The Blank] Thought Storm.

The next time that storm comes to life within you, see if you can wake up to what it is. You might not wake up immediately, which is fine. But eventually, you’ll catch on to what’s happening. And by labeling what you’re experiencing, you’ll likely be able to create some space between you and the storm.

Why does this matter?

A thought storm is not the truth, no matter how real it feels. The slippery nature of habitual thoughts like this, and habitual thought storms, is that they feel real. They feel like they’re the absolute truth and that we must pay attention to them and take them personally. When I experience The Failure Story I absolutely believe it, even though I understand the nature of thought. No wonder I feel like shit when that happens!

clouds

However, The Failure Story is only as ‘real’ and solid as a cloud moving through the sky. In other words, it’s not solid or real at all. It’s there in my head temporarily, the same way clouds float across the sky. 

Thought habits may be intense and theatrical, like a really good thunderstorm, but they are still just made of thought.

And when we are able to see them as such, perhaps with the aid of labeling them, they are less likely to have a negative effect on our lives. We will be more quickly able to return to our innate state of calm and peace.

Do you have a thought habit that you can label as such? Please leave your thoughts below and join the conversation.

[Storm image courtesy Lucy Chian and Unsplash. Ocean image copyright Alexandra Amor. Snow image courtesy Andreea Popa and Unsplash. Clouds image courtesy Stephanie Klepacki and Unsplash.]

The Innate Wisdom of Women’s Bodies in Perimenopause and Menopause with Tania Elfersy

June 26, 2019 By Alexandra Amor

http://media.blubrry.com/stopsufferingabout/p/ssapodcast.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Ep16TaniaElfersy.m4a

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“perimenopauseOur bodies are always talking to us. In this episode of the podcast, coach Tania Elfersy shares a very personal story about how she came to understand this in a deep way. Tania now works specifically with women experiencing perimenopause and menopause symptoms and helps them to turn their attention to the possibility that our churned up thinking can cause stress in our bodies. And how women can listen to that message in order to live more peacefully, and with fewer symptoms, in mid-life.

You can listen above or on iTunes or your favorite podcast app or watch the video here. Below are the show highlights and full transcript.

Show Notes

Purple leaves, red cherries
  • The difference between perimenopause and menopause
  • Busting some of the myths about perimenopause and menopause
  • How are bodies are wise all the time, not just sometimes
  • Tania’s insight about her ‘enoughness’ that changed her experience of menopause
  • Physical improvements once Tania heard what her body was saying to her
  • On the stories we create that cause stress in our bodies
  • How we sometimes take things from the past and let them define our present
  • How an understanding of how our experience of our thinking can change our physical experience
Tania Elfersy

Tania Elfersy is an award-winning author and publisher who has spent several years researching what causes and cures the emotional and physical symptoms associated with perimenopause and menopause by weaving her knowledge of midlife women’s health with the principles of innate health. Tania successfully cured her own range of symptoms one hundred percent naturally.

Tania is committed to helping women learn more about their bodies at midlife through coaching teaching and writing. Tania guides women to the simple and natural cures for perimenopause and menopause symptoms which are available to all of us.

You can find Tania at TheWiserWoman.com

Continue reading…

The Answer is to Stop Searching for Answers

June 24, 2019 By Alexandra Amor

Most of us having something we’re searching for.

“stopA different body. A better marriage. A fatter bank-account. Less anxiety. More confidence. Less shame.

I don’t know about you but for years I spent a lot of time chasing the specific things I was after. Looking for solutions to what I perceived as the problems of my life. That’s where self-help books and strategies came in.

But what if the solutions to the challenges that we’re chasing are not where we’re looking?

Here’s a specific example:

Throughout my life I’ve been, shall we say, financially challenged. Always living paycheque to paycheque, without savings and sometimes without the means to pay my bills. Part of this is rooted in the decade-long fixation I had on earning a living writing fiction, which didn’t work out, financially at least. It left me deeply in debt and, financially worse off in my early 50s than I was in my early 20s.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about money and thinking about ways to solve the problems I feel I’ve created. This chase is oriented outside myself. 

hound dog

I’m like a hound dog on the scent, tail up, nose down, galloping along trying to find the thing I’m looking for. My logical brain says that once I find that thing – in this example, financial stability – I’ll feel at peace and whole.

What if we’re already whole?

We chase the wind, trying to find solutions to what we believe is broken inside us. But what if there’s no need for that chase at all? 

If action was the answer, wouldn’t we be fixed by now? I lost track a long time ago of the number of self-help books I’ve read. Those well-intentioned books and authors only caused me to be more focused on my perceived brokenness. The list of strategies I employed to manage my feelings and change my behavior became so extensive it could have filled a book of its own.

For self-help junkies like us, the search, the chase, can become almost addictive. It feels like we have to be doing something in order to create positive change in our lives.

Set the problem down

Since coming across the Three Principles, what I keep being reminded of is that when I feel I have a ‘problem’ the solution is to set it down. 

raindrop on leaf

That seems counter-intuitive, and sometimes it’s very hard to convince my brain, which loves solving problems, to let things go and stop trying to fix them. But again and again, I’m reminded that chasing answers isn’t the answer.  Ironically the chase ends up leading us farther away from what we seek.

Wisdom always lies inside us. It is always there for us. No matter what.

What I seem to need most to learn is to stop chasing around outside myself and instead slow down, wait, and listen. 

When you have a problem to solve, are you able to see the wisdom in not chasing the answer? Please leave your thoughts below and join the conversation.

[Woman sitting image courtesy Myles Tan and Unsplash. Hound photo courtesy Adam Muise and Unsplash. Rain drop image courtesy Ed Leszczynski and Unsplash.]

Insight As The Healing Force In Addiction Recovery With Harry Derbitsky

June 19, 2019 By Alexandra Amor

http://media.blubrry.com/stopsufferingabout/p/ssapodcast.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Ep15HarryDerbitsky.m4a

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“HarryIt is likely that addiction has touched your life in some capacity, either personally or with someone you know. This is certainly true for me. My darling departed brother was a recovered alcoholic and I remember him mentioning the dismal statistics that Alcoholic Anonymous cited. That number is up for debate, but whichever way you look at it, it’s not great.

Perhaps there’s another way. A path that relies less on will power and more on leaning into our true nature of innate health and well-being. In episode 2 I had a conversation about this with Greg Suchy, and today I talk to his co-host of the Addiction, Alcoholism and the Three Principles webinar series, Harry Derbitsky.
Harry Derbitsky

Harry Derbitsky’s book Evolution of Addiction Recovery is out now and has testimonials from psychiatrist Dr. Bill Pettit and psychologist Dr. Amy Johnson. This unique offering by an early student of Sydney Banks provides a roadmap to the spiritual and psychological nature of the Three Principles for addiction recovery.

It includes indigenous or native American chapters and is available at Amazon and in certain bookstores. Harry and recovery coach Greg Suchy co-host the bi-monthly webinar and YouTube series called Addiction, Alcoholism and the Three Principles.

You can find Harry at ACTTraining.biz

You can listen above or on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. Below are the show highlights and full transcript.

Show Notes

Evolution of Addiction Recovery
  • How Syd Banks defined jumping the boundaries of time
  • Why the 3 Principles appeal to those looking for a spiritual-psychological answer about addiction
  • How the field of addiction recovery is evolving
  • On the involvement of insight in addiction recovery for those like Bill W.
  • The restriction to mental health of labeling oneself as having a disease
  • How the Three Principles work as a health model, rather than a disease model

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