Meningitis Toll: 105 Cases and 8 Deaths
Meningitis Toll: 105 Cases and 8 Deaths |
- Meningitis Toll: 105 Cases and 8 Deaths
- 3 Fundamental Personal Development Steps You Need to Take
- Karma confusion
- 3 Fundamental Personal Development Steps You Need to Take
- Bangladesh vows to uphold religious harmony
- The second reminder: Death and Impermanence
- Early Morning Meditation Inspiration - 10/8/2012
- Pakistan struggles with smuggled Buddhist relics
- Happy birthday to me. But is there really a "me"?
- Puthujjana (secular) Buddhism
- What Causes Rashes?
- The simple way to get peace of mind
| Meningitis Toll: 105 Cases and 8 Deaths Posted: 08 Oct 2012 01:00 PM PDT
The number of people with a rare fungal form of meningitis tied to steroid injections is now up to 105, including eight who have died, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said today (Oct. 8). The outbreak has affected people in nine states. Tennessee has the most infected people, with 35 cases, followed by Virginia with 23 cases, Michigan with 21 cases and Indiana with 11 cases. The other states reporting cases are Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina and Ohio. The outbreak is linked to steroid injections produced by the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass. Patients affected by the outbreak received injections of the steroids in their spines as a treatment for lower back pain. [See: 5 Meningitis Facts You Need to Know.] An investigation of the NECC facility found a sealed vial of the drug that was contaminated with fungi, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The New England Compounding Center has voluntarily ceased distribution of its products, and shut down all operations. The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are urging all health care practitioners not to use any products they may have that originated from NECC. All products made by NECC have been recalled. The type of meningitis seen in the outbreak is not transmissible from person to person, the CDC says. Symptoms of the fungal meningitis take one to four weeks to appear, and include fever, new or worsening headache, and stiff neck. Some patients with the condition have had strokes. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily on Twitter @MyHealth_MHND. We're also on Facebook & Google+.  Read More @ Source 
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| 3 Fundamental Personal Development Steps You Need to Take Posted: 08 Oct 2012 11:00 AM PDT  This is a question I've asked myself for a long time now. Because I see so many people still living beneath their potential. And the important thing is, they are NOT happy about it. If they would be happy that would be fine, there wouldn't be any real reason to do personal development. But I notice the frustration and hopelessness of many because they just don't know how to change. And even if you are satisfied with your life, I still think it's a good idea to become aware of which steps can help make everyday life feel more effortless. So what makes the difference in people's life when one person actively grows and another lives in quiet desperation? What do we have to do to grow? What is the first step? I've personally identified three fundamental steps that can really jumpstart your personal development: 1. Acceptance of What is Acceptance is one of those necessities. Because as long as you aren't accepting the reality of your life, you are, unfortunately, living in denial. You don't see things clearly and you're not in alignment with the truth. This makes it very hard to change. Firstly because you are not working on a right representation of reality and secondly because you rationalize. You rationalize the situation as being better as it really is. This makes it harder to develop the necessary motivation to improve. It also makes it less likely to use the pain of the current situation as a driving force for change. So telling yourself the truth, even if it's making you feel uneasy, is a big step forward. It creates the awareness of a problem and you come out of ignorance, whic! h is alw ays the first thing to make something better. 2. Your Willingness to Change In order to grow and improve your life you have to be willing to change for the better. Without this willingness you can have the best advice, the best friends, coach, program, whatever... nothing will really help because deep down you are resisting. So saying "yes" to change is required. And you know what will make it easy? It is to know that you are going for POSITIVE change. It will get better. It will feel better. You will enjoy the end-result. As soon as you believe this, change becomes a positive thing. You will welcome change and look forward to actively changing yourself. These two steps were actually a warm-up. I think the real first step of personal growth is to realize that... 3. You Are Responsible You are responsible for everything that happens in your life. The current situation you are in is as it is because of the past decisions you made - or didn't make. Your life is your responsibility, nobody else can live it for you. The illusion that anyone else or anything else is responsible for the results you have in your life is the problem. Of course, I know that there are events that will influence your life, which are not in your control. So what I said is a bit of an over-statement. But that's not the point here. The point is that taking full responsibility for your life is your move to power. You take control and power back to yourself and by doing so you know that nobody other than you is responsible for your happiness. It has to sink in and then you are not looking to the outside world anymore for approval or direction. You will find that in yourself. And from this realization onward you will grow much faster. From my point of view, taking 100% responsibility is the first and most powerful step in personal develop! ment. So with this 3 step process you have a very strong foundation to initiate positive change for yourself. I know it's not that easy sometimes, but actively pursuing personal development will be incredible rewarding. I learned for myself that the important thing is to always believe in your ability to create a bright future. In other words, to have a positive outlook on life. And what could be better than working to improve yourself? Because the best investment you could ever make is the investment in yourself.
Do you have a bucket list? Here are 101 things to do before you die. Includes a tutorial on how you can create your bucket list too!      Read More @ Source 
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| Posted: 08 Oct 2012 10:00 AM PDT  The Medicine Buddha, Bhaishajyaguru: The Buddha as healer. The monk seems to be rather atypical, and "allegedly claimed that he had supernatural power and was able to tell the past and predict the future of the students." It's possible that he's a charlatan, or even that he's mentally ill. But ideas like this do tend to pop up from time to time, and so here are a few arguments against this particular take on karma. First, the Buddha specifically stated that not everything that happens to us in the present moment is a result of karma. He pointed to physiological and environmental factors as affecting us, as well as the actions of other people. The earlier Buddhist commentators enumerated a number of forms of conditionality that included physical causality (physical and chemical laws), biological causality (which would include things like viruses and other diseases), mental causality, karmic causality, and also a form of transcendental causality. I won't go into all of this, but it's clear that neither the Buddha nor early Buddhists believed that karma was the only thing affecting us. Certainly our mental states and the choices we make can affect our health, but even Buddhas get ill. Secondly, the Buddha stressed compassion, himself took care of the sick, and encouraged his monks to take care of the sick. "Whoever would tend to me, should tend to the sick," he is reported as saying. Thirdly, following from this, there are ample provisions in the monastic code of conduct allowing for medicines. Our unnamed monk would be well aware of this!  If you like Bodhipaksa's writings, and want to support this site, check out his meditation CDs and MP3s. And lastly, if it was indeed the karma of sick people that caused them to be sick, then wouldn't it also be their karma that brought them into contact with a doctor? The Buddha taught compassion. He taught us to recognize that other people's sufferings are as real to them as ours are to us. And on the basis of this we should empathize with others and seek not to cause them suffering but to relieve suffering when we can. Here's Dhammapada verse 20:
This is the Buddhist version of the Golden Rule. And in the Saleyyaka Sutta the ideal practitioner is described like this:
Now I'm sure that this monk would argue something like "it's more compassionate to let being suffer from sickness because it allows their past karma to come to fruition," but a view like that is very far from the kind of compassion that the Buddha advocated. In a conversation on Google+, Denis Wallez (who pointed out the corollary that is karma determines everything then it brings sick people into contact with doctors) suggested that the antidote to such gullibility (thinking here of the medical students rather than the monk) was to get people to read more of the Pali canon, which contains (as you'll see above) ample evidence to contradict the idea that the sick do not deserve treatment, and more importantly to encourage critical thinking. The Buddha himself, in the Kalama Sutta, famously encouraged us not to believe something just because some monk says so! Read More @ Source
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| 3 Fundamental Personal Development Steps You Need to Take Posted: 08 Oct 2012 09:00 AM PDT This is a question I've asked myself for a long time now. Because I see so many people still living beneath their potential. And the important thing is, they are NOT happy about it. If they would be happy that would be fine, there wouldn't be any real reason to do personal development. But I notice the frustration and hopelessness of many because they just don't know how to change. And even if you are satisfied with your life, I still think it's a good idea to become aware of which steps can help make everyday life feel more effortless. So what makes the difference in people's life when one person actively grows and another lives in quiet desperation? What do we have to do to grow? What is the first step? I've personally identified three fundamental steps that can really jumpstart your personal development: 1. Acceptance of What is Acceptance is one of those necessities. Because as long as you aren't accepting the reality of your life, you are, unfortunately, living in denial. You don't see things clearly and you're not in alignment with the truth. This makes it very hard to change. Firstly because you are not working on a right representation of reality and secondly because you rationalize. You rationalize the situation as being better as it really is. This makes it harder to develop the necessary motivation to improve. It also makes it less likely to use the pain of the current situation as a driving force for change. So telling yourself the truth, even if it's making you feel uneasy, is a big step forward. It creates the awareness of a problem and you come out of ignorance, whic! h is always the first thing to make something better. 2. Your Willingness to Change In order to grow and improve your life you have to be willing to change for the better. Without this willingness you can have the best advice, the best friends, coach, program, whatever... nothing will really help because deep down you are resisting. So saying "yes" to change is required. And you know what will make it easy? It is to know that you are going for POSITIVE change. It will get better. It will feel better. You will enjoy the end-result. As soon as you believe this, change becomes a positive thing. You will welcome change and look forward to actively changing yourself. These two steps were actually a warm-up. I think the real first step of personal growth is to realize that... 3. You Are Responsible You are responsible for everything that happens in your life. The current situation you are in is as it is because of the past decisions you made - or didn't make. Your life is your responsibility, nobody else can live it for you. The illusion that anyone else or anything else is responsible for the results you have in your life is the problem. Of course, I know that there are events that will influence your life, which are not in your control. So what I said is a bit of an over-statement. But that's not the point here. The point is that taking full responsibility for your life is your move to power. You take control and power back to yourself and by doing so you know that nobody other than you is responsible for your happiness. It has to sink in and then you are not looking to the outside world anymore for approval or direction. You will find that in yourself. And from this realization onward you will grow much faster. From my point of view, taking 100% responsibility is the first and most powerful step in persona! l develop! ment. So with this 3 step process you have a very strong foundation to initiate positive change for yourself. I know it's not that easy sometimes, but actively pursuing personal development will be incredible rewarding. I learned for myself that the important thing is to always believe in your ability to create a bright future. In other words, to have a positive outlook on life. And what could be better than working to improve yourself? Because the best investment you could ever make is the investment in yourself.
Do you have a bucket list? Here are 101 things to do before you die. Includes a tutorial on how you can create your bucket list too! Read More @ Source 
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| Bangladesh vows to uphold religious harmony Posted: 08 Oct 2012 07:00 AM PDT Unprecedented violence against the country's Buddhist minority has outraged Bangladeshis. Officials say they detect the hand of extremist groups in what appears to have been a pre-planned attack. Bangladeshis appear to have been stunned by the weekend attacks against the country's Buddhists, who have lived there for generations without any known confrontation with their majority Muslim counterparts. "Never before in our history have places of worship of a religious minority been ravaged on such a large scale and in so deliberate a manner," Mahmuz Anam, editor of The Daily Star wrote. "And this happened against a community who are among the most peaceful … Read the original article » Read More @ Source
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| The second reminder: Death and Impermanence Posted: 08 Oct 2012 06:00 AM PDT
As I write this I have goose bumps. It enlivens me as well as scares me. There are many days I don't want to die, and yet I know this is the cycle of life. Once I am born I am old enough to die. I remember speaking with one of my friends when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She wanted to know how long she had? Little did she know she only had seven weeks. Reflecting on this question, I realized she had 49 years to live, it took 49 years for her to die. How long did she have? She had now. And yet so many of us, including myself live life as is we are immortal as if we are immune to death, as if it will not happen to us. As if our first terminal diagnosis is the first warning that we get that we will die. I remember once saying to a friend who was diagnosed with cancer three years ago: "Hold on, hold on I could die before you. Your husband could die before you. Some of your friends could die before you. There is no guarantee you will die first. Life is immediate for all of us, our death is immediate to all of us, if we wake up to that reality. I know that to be so true. I have woken up in the morning, felt on top of the world, had a great day at work, jumped on my bicycle and been knocked down by a car, more than once. Life is fragile, we do not know when it will end, but we know it will end. The uncertainty of not knowing can be more stressful than the actual dying. A dear friend of mine died at age 44, from ovarian cancer. Initially she was given five years to live. But during surgery to remove her ovaries the surgeon punctured her bowel. This accelerated her living. She was terrified of dying, and her partner asked her: 'What is so awful about dying?'. She couldn't answer, but after this question her life changed. She accepted her dying process, to the extent that we gave her a living funeral. I remember telling her we wanted to celebrate her before she died. She lit up, and then proceeded to tell me what food she wanted, which people she wanted to attend. She said: "I want this celebration to help me pass over." Her mom, brother, extended family and friends came to say goodbye to her. We all rejoiced in her life, told her we loved her, and said goodbye to her. She sat through every single bit of it, present and alert. Two days later she died. My friend taught me not to fear death.  Detox Your Heart, by Vimalasara: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.ca One of my best friends has just died. Was it a shock? Was it sudden? I know that my friends, family and i will die. And yet it still comes as a shock. I realize I still do not accept impermanence. I am in resistance to the change, that my dear friend will no longer share long talks with me, no longer laugh with me no longer support me. My selfish mind continues to cause me suffering. I have multiplied my pain by resisting it. I want Georgina to still be here, so I can here her call me V, so she can tell me everything that is going on back home in England. I leave you with this quote from Pema Chodron – "It's not impermanence per se, or even knowing we're going to die, that is the cause of our suffering, the Buddha taught. Rather, it's our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation. Our discomfort arises from all of our efforts to put ground under our feet, to realize our dream of constant okayness. When we resist change, it's called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that's called enlightenment, or awakening to our true nature, to our fundamental goodness. Another word for that is freedom—freedom from struggling against the fundamental ambiguity of being human.
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| Early Morning Meditation Inspiration - 10/8/2012 Posted: 08 Oct 2012 05:00 AM PDT  "The good man should not tire of his good deeds. Till their fruit ripens, he may have to suffer bad times. But once the good deeds ripen, his life is suffused with happiness." ~The Buddha       Read More @ Source 
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| Pakistan struggles with smuggled Buddhist relics Posted: 07 Oct 2012 10:00 PM PDT Sebastian Abbot, AP: Lacking the necessary cash and manpower, Pakistan is struggling to stem the flow of millions of dollars in ancient Buddhist artifacts that looters dig up in the country's northwest and smuggle to collectors around the world. The black market trade in smuggled antiquities is a global problem that some experts estimate is worth billions of dollars per year. The main targets are poor countries like Pakistan that possess a rich cultural heritage but don't have the resources to protect it. The illicit excavations rob Pakistan of an important potential source of tourism revenue, as valuable icons are spirited out of … Read the original article » Read More @ Source
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| Happy birthday to me. But is there really a "me"? Posted: 07 Oct 2012 09:00 PM PDT Geez, I'm so philosophically minded, I can't even enjoy a birthday without questioning whether "I" am having one. Over on my other blog I mused yesterday about the Beatles' When I'm 64 and the positive side of craziness. Hopefully this will shut up the folks who, after reading my thoughtful ponderings about religion/spirituality, accuse me of being a left-brained rationalist who only lives in my big fat intellectual brain. Fire up your skateboard, accustory dudes, and join me on a four mile longboarding jaunt up and down (mild) hills here in Salem's Minto Brown Island Park. Then you'll see another side of me. But... Is there really a "me"? If you've been reading my churchless blog posts the past few months, you know this is my current Big Question. Heck, maybe it always has been. I just haven't been so aware of the Big Question as I am now. After all, a whole lot of religious, spiritual, mystical, and philosophical thinking/beliefs/dogmas get flushed down the reality toilet if there's no such thing as an enduring soul, self, atman, or whatever else we might call an "I" which exists apart from the goings-on in the human brain. This morning I read another chapter in one of the birthday gifts I gave myself, Jan Westerhoff's "Reality: A Very Short Introduction." This is the short (144 pages) book that echoes what Westerhoff said in his New Scientist cover story about the nature of reality that I blogged about recently. His "Are persons real?" chapter is a creatively fresh overview of arguments I've read about before in both the neuroscientific and Stress Reduction'y literature. Interestingly -- since for most of my life I've really hated the prospect of not existing after I die -- I'm becoming not only comfortable with this whole "there is no self" thing, I'm actually beginning to embrace it with gusto. I think the reason has something to do with this: If I feel that I've lost something important to me, that's deeply troubling. But if I were to learn that the thing never was mine, and indeed never even existed in the way I thought it did, then the "loss" is no big deal, because I really haven't lost anything. Westerhoff makes a number of fascinating observations which undermine a persons are real assumption. Here's several which I found particularly persusasive and interesting. The first involves a thought experiment; the second, a "flight simulator" in which not only the flight but also the pilot is simulated. Thought experiment: We can address this problem by assuming that our self is something more fundamental, something constant that has all these changing properties but remains itself what it is. Like a thread running through every single one of a string of pearls, our self runs through every single moment of our lives, providing a core and a unity for them. The difficulty with this view of the self is that it cannot have most of the properties we usually think make me me. Being happy or sad, being able to speak Chinese, preferring cherries to strawberries, even being conscious -- all these are changeable states the disappearance of which should not affect the self, as a disappearance of individual pearls should not affect the thread. But it then becomes unclear why such a minimal self should have the central status in our lives we usually accord to our self. If practically everything that is going on in our mental lives leaves the self untouched, what is the use of such a self?' To put the point in a different way, suppose someone offered you a drug that completely destroyed your self while leaving all your beliefs, desires, preferences, and so on intact. Would there be anything wrong with taking it? It would certainly be preferable to a drug that destroyed all our beliefs, desires, preferences etc. and left our self intact. This might give rise to the suspicion that the self understood in this way is not what we care about, but the content of our mental lives is. Furthermore, given that you cannot tell the difference between having taken the drug and not having taken the drug from the inside, could it be the case that you have actually been given the drug and so don't have any self any more. Should you worry about this? Flight/life simulator: According to this [Buddhist] theory, we consist of a body and four psychological components, corresponding to different cognitive functions. The self cannot be identified with any one of them (since all of them change frequently, while the self is supposed to be continuous), nor can it just be the collection of all of them (since the self is a unified, single thing, not a coalition of shifting elements). Nor is the self a separately existent thing, distinct from the four components. This does not imply that talk of selves and persons should be eliminated; these form an important part of how we conceptualize the world. But the self has nothing more than a strictly nominal existence. It is superimposed on our physical and mental constituents for purely practical purposes. It allows us to locate ourselves in the world, rather like the pointer of our mouse allows us to locate ourselves within the interface of our computer. But like the pointer that is neither "in" the computer, nor a continuous object (when we switch off the computer, there is no pointer), nor constituting the substantial centre of the computer's workings, the self is not what it appears to be. When we say that the self is superimposed on the constituents, the question arises: 'Who does the superimposing?' When considering the self as the unifier of our experiential world, it makes sense to understand it along the lines of a pilot in a flight simulator. From a range of perceptual input, our brain creates the image of the world in which the self operates. We cannot step outside of our brain, so we have no way of finding out what the world beyond the intracranial simulation is like. To us, it does not even feel like a simulation. But the problems with the Cartesian theatre suggest that there is no pilot, no self, for whose benefit the simulation is put on. Rather, the collection of our physical and mental constituents acts like a total flight simulator that not only simulates the information received in the cockpit, but simulates the pilot as well. The self as the unifier of our perceptual input is a simulation or illusion, yet there is no non-simulated or non-illusory someone experiencing the simulation or having the illusion. Like I said, this notion -- which to both neuroscience and Buddhism is darn close to fact -- is strangely pleasing to me. Of course, there's no "me" to be pleased. Just a simulated me who is having a simulated sense of pleasure from reading the simulated words I just copied from Westerhoff's book. But since this is what reality is, it's good enough for me. Whoever I am, or am not.
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| Posted: 07 Oct 2012 08:00 PM PDT What is odd about secular Buddhism is that it is bad at defining itself. Being fair to secular Buddhism, in an earlier blog I said this about it:
Does any of this ring a bell in traditional Buddhism? It sure does. Secular Buddhism by any other name is puthujjana Buddhism. The best way to define puthujjana is that it refers to a common worldling. In this respect, puthujjana easily falls under the category of secular which relates to the worldly as distinguished from the spiritual. We learn from the canon that a puthujjana is a spiritually blind person who cannot distinguish a noble person (ariya-puggala), such as a disciple (sâvaka) or a Buddha, from a non-noble person. The reason for this is that a puthujjana cannot sense the spiritual presence of the noble person. A Buddha, for example, or a recent current-winner (sotâpanna) could be sitting together in a Dharma center and no one would be able to recognize them because they are puthujjanas who lack the dharma-eye (S., dharma-caksus). In brief, the dharma-eye marks entry into the supermundane path (lokuttara) which is the true Spiritual Consciousness path. Foremost, the puthujjana does not know nor does he see things as they really are nor does the puthujjana know that the higher Mind is clear light or the same, radiant. Even though the puthujjana claims to be a Spiritual Consciousness he is still subject to suffering (duhkha) and rebirth. In addition, he cannot distinguish his self from the Five Aggregates. Essentially, puthujjanas remain subjects of Mara the Evil One—not the Buddha. Secular Spiritual Consciousnesss have no spiritual attainments even close to sotâpatti (current-entry) or bodhicittotpada (manifesting the mind that is bodhi). The only part of Buddhism they imagine they understand are the teachings of impermanence, suffering and no-self (an-âtman). But with this they don't know what is the permanent, the non-suffering, and the true self which is the Dharma body of the Buddha which is increate and perfected. 
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| Posted: 07 Oct 2012 06:00 PM PDT
"The Healthy Geezer" answers questions about health and aging in his weekly column. Question: What causes rashes? Answer: The most common cause of a rash is contact dermatitis, an inflammation of the skin that comes from direct contact with irritants or allergens. A red, itchy rash from contact dermatitis isn't contagious, and usually goes away in two to four weeks. The cause of contact dermatitis is direct contact with irritants or allergens. These include: detergents, soaps, makeup, deodorant, clothing, chemicals, rubber, metals, jewelry, fragrances, plants and medicinal lotions. There are two types of contact dermatitis. Irritant contact dermatitis is caused by a substance such as bleach that irritates the skin. Allergic contact dermatitis is caused by a reaction to an allergen, which is a substance that induces an allergy. If the cause of a rash isn't obvious, you may have to get a "patch test." During one of these tests, small amounts of possible allergens are place on patches that are attached to your skin for two days. If you are allergic to a tested substance, a bump will appear on your skin. You should seek medical attention for a rash when it interferes with your sleep or your normal daytime activities, you are in pain, you think you have an infection, or home care hasn't worked. If you scratch a rash for a long time, you can get neurodermatitis, a condition in which skin becomes thick. Persistent scratching can also lead to infection, scars or color changes in your skin. To treat contact dermatitis you should:
The following are some common allergens:
If you would like to read more columns, you can order a copy of "How to be a Healthy Geezer" at www.healthygeezer.com. All rights reserved © 2012 by Fred Cicetti Read More @ Source 
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| The simple way to get peace of mind Posted: 07 Oct 2012 04:00 PM PDT  The Mindful Manifesto, by Dr Jonty Heaversedge and Ed Halliwell: available at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Regular practice of a few simple exercises can help to alleviate conditions by calming mind and body and breaking unhelpful thought patterns. Here, in the first extract from his book, Dr Jonty Heaversedge describes an exercise that can help manage pain … FOCUS ON BREATHING Experience the sensation of air flowing into your nostrils, streaming down the back of your throat and into your lungs. Notice the rising of your chest and the expansion of your abdomen as breath flows into your body. Feel the beating of your heart; visualise how it pumps oxygenated blood around your body. Continue this awareness as you exhale, observing your breath as it merges with the air around you. Repeat until you feel ready to move on to the next stage. ACKNOWLEDGE THE PAIN Gently bring your awareness to your pain, even if your instinct is to recoil. Try to experience it fully: what kind of pain is it? Is it a long, dull ache or a sharp throbbing? Investigate the shape and behaviour of your discomfort, without getting caught up in how it makes you feel emotionally. When you are able to think about the sensation of your pain without strong emotions, slowly bring yourself back to how you feel towards it. Are you trying to ignore it? Are you feeling hostile to it or desperately wanting it to stop? Notice these emotions in as friendly and compassionate way as possible. RELEASE THE TENSION Next, explore whether the pain in one place is causing tension elsewhere in your body, such as your shoulders, jaw or legs. Release the tension if you're holding it consciously but don't struggle. If it seems stuck, accept it with as much compassion as you can. GO WITH THE FLOW Every time you breathe in, visualise your breath flowing into the painful part. With each exhalation, imagine the air flowing out of it, as if you are softly bathing the region with attention. If this feels overwhelming, focus your mind back on simple breathing and allow the discomfort to exist at the fringes of your awareness. Focus on other bodily sensations, such as where your body meets the ground or how your clothes feel against your skin. DON'T GIVE UP There is no right or wrong experience in mindfulness. Whether you find it scary, boring, frustrating or enjoyable, the practice is simply to notice the reactions themselves – to be with them and accept them as they are. But this is not resignation. We are not giving up on our bodies, and we can continue to follow any sensible steps that are recommended by doctors. We may still take medication, have surgery, or try some other form of therapy. THE ICE-CUBE EXPERIMENT During pain-free periods, try this experiment. Place a few ice cubes in a bowl. Take a few moments practising mindful breathing. When you feel ready, place a cube in your hand, curl it into a fist and remember it is fine to put the ice back in the bowl at any time. Now focus on your hand. Do the sensations change over time? Immerse yourself in the quality of the experience and notice how you automatically react. Can you separate this reaction from the experience of the ice? If your attention strays from the sensation, gently bring it back. If the ice melts completely before you decide to stop, take another cube to see if the experience is any different. Via the Daily Mail. Read More @ Source
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'One day I will die. I can not escape it. Death comes to everyone, including me.' 
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