Quarterly Inspirational Newsletter May 2009
Part I The Emotional Road Map to Intuition
Integrating Essential Oils and Coaching
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is about the skillful relationship between our emotional mind and rational mind. In my coach certification training, one of my facilitators exclaimed that just because you are having an emotion does not mean you need therapy. Dealing with our emotions can be fraught with all sorts of landmines if we lack the emotional intelligence to deal with it.
EQ specialists state that emotions drive behavior. We feel before we think. The emotionally healthy way is to acknowledge the feeling, squeeze the juice of intuition out of it (since intuition resides in the emotional brain (the amygdala) and respond with the rational mind (the neo cortex).
But what happens when we get caught up in our emotions during a conversation? Suddenly, without warning, we react. It could be a reaction to a statement, a glance, any kind of stimulus. Suddenly, your heart starts racing and you are absolutely NOT listening to a word that person is saying. Instead, you have been taken prisoner by the Gremlin monster, that inner critic, who now has your captive attention by repeating how you're not good enough, how you are sure to fail, or any other permutation of negativity. This state is called an emotional hijack. Emotional hijacking is a term coined by EQ author and specialist, Daniel Goleman.
It is only in acknowledging this state of highjack that there is the opportunity to disengage. What are these emotional triggers and how can we disengage in order to reengage?
I keep thinking of emotions and their connection to the corporate world where you are definitely not encouraged to acknowledge that you have feelings, let alone express them. I like to do things non-traditionally. Inside a highly traditional hierarchical model of business, I boldly talk about the importance of emotional intelligence with my corporate clients. Their initial response to EQ was that there was no room in their highly rational mindset for talk about emotions. Until recently, emotion has been a dirty word in the corporate world. These days, we are using emotions and intuition as tour guides to help our clients go deeper. For most of us, the two are very linked. People in North America's biggest board rooms are beginning to appreciate intuition, its connection to emotion and keeping their most valuable resource, people, fully engaged.
In this transitional time and shifting of corporate paradigms, we now have a neuroscientific basis for EQ resulting in a surge of interest and curiosity about the value of emotions. There are several scenarios where emotional intelligence learning can be applied in the organizational context. This is a ripe and juicy arena for coaches. The key to good coaching is to get 100% over there with our clients. The same is true for any holistic practitioner. Yet how do you do that when you get stuck in emotional hijack, held prisoner by your very vociferous gremlin? Or how do you help your client get unstuck when they get held hostage, hijacked by their emotions?
Once you notice you have been emotionally hijacked, aromatherapy can come in very handy. Inhaling stress relieving essential oils deeply will disengage that hijack. Essential oils, such as lavender, bergamot, cedarwood, chamomile, rose, mandarin, marjoram, neroli, petitgrain are stress relieving. Use vapor inhalation or your diffuser. Take a bowl of hot, steaming water and add 3 to 5 drops of essential oils. Cover your head with a large towel making sure that no steam can escape from the sides of the bowl and inhale deeply. Alternatively, put 3 to 5 drops in your diffuser so that these stress relieving oils permeate the air around you. * diffusing is a process of dispersing essential oils so that their aroma fills the environment.
Blend 10 drops of any of the stress relieving essential oils with one tablespoon of carrier oil, such as fractionated coconut oil, or sweet almond oil.
I also provide blends to my clients so they can use them at home to help them manage their own hijacked state. Even just having the bottle of essential oil around to just open and take a quick sniff can help the emotional response disengage.
Here are some tips to developing a skill set to help you to self manage:
• Develop an early warning detection system for emotional hijack.
Get really good at detecting your body's individual response;
• Breathe! Breathing engages the parasympathetic nervous system
which is in direct opposition to the sympathetic one of flight or
fight (rapid heart beat, dilated eyes, adrenalin (and other
wonderful stress chemicals surging through our bloodstream);
• Ask questions! Questions engage the neo cortex, which houses the
rational brain,while statements engage the emotional brain;
• Use gratitude and appreciation. Both work wonderfully to soothe
the amygdala.
Stay tuned for Part II.
2. The Real Secret to Falling Asleep Fast
According to researchers Taiwan's Tzu Chi University, listening to soft music will lull you to sleep. Choose jazz or classical pieces that are between 60 to 80 beats a minute to mimic your ideal heart rhythm. Researchers call it sedative music. Your own heart will begin to beat to that timing, lowering your heart and respiratory rates and that will lead to a good night's sleep, reports Reuters.
Researchers studied sleep patterns of 60 people between the ages of 60 and 83, all of whom had difficulty sleeping. Half were given relaxing music to listen to for 45 minutes at bedtime, and half were given no music and no other help to fall sleep.
The results: Those who listened to a selection of soft, slow music experienced physical changes that aided restful sleep. "The difference between the music group and the control group was clinically significant," said lead author Hui-Ling Lai, vice director of nursing at the Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital and assistant professor at Tzu Chi University. "The music group reported a 26 percent overall improvement in the first week, and this figure continued to rise as they mastered the technique of relaxing to the sedative music."
In addition, they suffered less dysfunction during the day since they had slept better the night before. Best of all, there are no side effects or pricey bills for prescription medicine. The research was published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing.
3. Some interesting facts about calcium
(1) Higher calcium intake is consistently associated with lower body weight. As vitamin D significantly increases calcium absorption, it seems likely that higher intakes of vitamin D would decrease body weight, even if the vitamin itself had no direct effect on weight. J Am Coll Nutr. 2002 Apr;21(2):152S-155S.
(2) Vitamin D and calcium, when taken together, suppress spontaneous food intake and burn fat.
(3) Calcium improves bone health: Giving your body enough calcium is important in the prevention of osteoporosis.
(4) Calcium reduces high blood pressure: Eating vegetables and fruit plus calcium-rich dairy products daily has been shown to lower high blood pressure in some people.
(5) Calcium is useful in the treatment of colon cancer: Calcium and other nutrients such as vitamin D may control the growth of cancer cells in the colon. Calcium is effective on kidney stones: People at risk for kidney stones used to be told to limit their calcium intake because most kidney stones are made of calcium salts. Current thinking is that calcium from food sources actually decreases stone risk.
The key is that it has to be calcium that can be absorbed and therefore must be dairy sourced and have phosphorous and vitamin D. Immunotec's Calcium has both of these and has been proven to dissolve faster than any other brand of calcium. For more information, go to http://visionsofhealth.com