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The U.S. population makes up 5% of the world population, yet are prescribed 2/3rds of all psychiatric drugs used worldwide. If this is not a sign of looming mental health collapse, we don't know what is!
As a doctor, I can tell you that stress has reached pandemic levels, though many still hold back from admitting it to themselves or their peers. Our normalcy bias prevents us from taking notice that tens of millions of people in Western countries are dropping like flies from illness, depression and self-destruction. I came across this article by David Kupelian on Americans' health and agreed with some of the observations made about the dire state of affairs:
  • Fully one-third of U.S. employees suffer chronic debilitating stress, and more than half of all "millennials" (18 to 33 year olds) experience a level of stress that keeps them awake at night, including large numbers diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorder.
  • Shocking new research from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that one in five high-school-aged children in the U.S. has been diagnosed with ADHD, and likewise a large new study of New York City residents shows, sadly, that one in five preteens - children aged six to 12 - have been medically diagnosed with either ADHD, anxiety, depression or bipolar disorder.
  • New research concludes that stress renders people susceptible to serious illness, and a growing number of studies now confirm that chronic stress plays a major role in the progression of cancer, the nation's second-biggest killer. The biggest killer of all, heart disease, which causes one in four deaths in the U.S., is also known to have a huge stress component.
  • Incredibly, 11 percent of all Americans aged 12 and older are currently taking SSRI antidepressants - those highly controversial, mood-altering psychiatric drugs with the FDA's "suicidality" warning label and alarming correlation with school shooters. Women are especially prone to depression, with a stunning 23 percent of all American women in their 40s and 50s - almost one in four - now taking antidepressants, according to a major study by the CDC.
  • Add to that the tens of millions of users of all other types of psychiatric drugs, including (just to pick one) the 6.4 million American children between 4 and 17 diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin or similar psycho-stimulants. Throw in the 28 percent of American adults with a drinking problem, that's more than 60 million, plus the 22 million using illegal drugs like marijuana, cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens and inhalants, and pretty soon a picture emerges of a nation of drug-takers, with hundreds of millions dependent on one toxic substance or another - legal or illegal - to "help" them deal with the stresses and problems of life.
Likewise, the CDC has reported that antidepressant use in the U.S. has increased nearly 400 percent in the last two decades, making antidepressants the most frequently used class of medications by Americans aged 18-44. The U.S. population makes up 5% of the world population, yet are prescribed two-thirds of all psychiatric drugs used worldwide. If this is not a sign of looming mental health collapse, I don't know what is!

With so many people on meds, I think we can basically say that the U.S. is a 'zombie nation'. People are so out of touch with themselves and with reality that they think they have to use anti-depressants in order to 'go back to normal', not realizing that the reason why reality is shitty is because it is sending them a strong signal to sit up and take notice. Instead, taking mind-numbing drugs makes them even more ignorant of what is going on around them - the false-flag attacks, the fireballs raining down from the sky and Earth changes.

The pandemic is by no means confined to the U.S. One major study mentioned by Kupelian concluded almost 40 percent of Europeans are plagued by mental illness.

Consider this:
  • A cross-border report on suicide shows the rate among young people on the island of Ireland is one of the highest in Europe.
  • The economic downturn that has shaken Europe for the last three years has also swept away the foundations of once-sturdy lives, leading to an alarming spike in suicide rates. Especially in the most fragile nations like Greece, Ireland, Spain and Italy, small-business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly taking their own lives in a phenomenon some European newspapers have started calling "suicide by economic crisis."
  • Bulgaria's suicide rate is among the highest in Europe. Psychologists named poverty and stress as the main reasons behind the suicide wave that shocked the Balkan country recently.
  • According to official figures, Russia sees 19-20 suicides per 100,000 teenagers a year, which is three times the world average.
  • France has one of the highest suicide rates in western Europe, ranking second behind Finland and more than double the UK or Greece. Workplace suicides have sparked a French outcry over France's elite system where the graduates of an exclusive group of schools are promoted straight into top jobs, denying any possibility of advancement to graduates of lesser schools.
  • Japan has consistently maintained the world's suicide record for years. The number of students who committed suicide in 2011 hit a record figure of 10.9 per cent from the previous year and the total number of suicides across the nation has exceeded 30,000 for 14 consecutive years up to 2011.
Kupelian asks:
What on earth is going on? Why isn't medical science - and for that matter all of our incredible scientific and technological innovations in every area of life - reducing our stress and lightening our load? Why doesn't the almost-magical availability of the world's accumulated knowledge, thanks to the Internet, make us more enlightened and happy? Why is it that, instead, more and more of us are so stressed out as to be on a collision course with illness, misery, tragedy and death?

Most important, what can we do to reverse course?
Indeed, why hasn't our wonderful advanced technological civilization saved us from ourselves? Maybe it is turning out to not be so wonderful after all...

There is in fact a proven, effective way of dealing with stress from coping with the increasing global madness, something I'll get on to later.

First, let's have a closer look at some of the causes of this stress pandemic.

Hysterical and nervous collapse

Martha Stout writes in The Myth of Sanity:
[A]s time passes we often feel that we are growing benumbed, that we have lost something - some element of vitality that used to be there. Without talking about this very much with one another, we grow nostalgic for our own selves. We try to remember the exuberance, and even the joy, we used to feel in things. And we cannot. Mysteriously, and before we realize what is happening, our lives are transfigured from places of imagination and hope into to-do lists, into day after day of just getting through it. Often we are able to envision only a long road of exhausting hurdles, that leads to somewhere we are no longer at all certain we even want to go. Instead of having dreams, we merely protect ourselves. We expend our brief and precious life force in the practice of damage control.[...]

In plain fact, the list of consciousness-assailing events that are witnessed or endured by even the most protected children is extremely long: serious accidents, car crashes, the illnesses and deaths of loved ones, the fear or reality of peer ridicule, petrifying medical procedures, devastating custody battles, predictions of nuclear annihilation or environmental collapse, macabre lessons in how to get away from the "stranger" whom protective parents are constantly expecting.
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Almost 25% of American women aged 40 through 59 are currently on antidepressants
Sounds familiar, yes? In a similar vein, Kupelian has this to say:
"Life is difficult," wrote psychiatrist M. Scott Peck at the outset of his international best-seller, The Road Less Traveled. Stress, difficulties, disappointments, accidents, disease, misfortune, cruelty, betrayal - they're unavoidable in this life.

Yet, during eras when society and families are stable, unified and fundamentally decent and moral - as, say, America during the 1950s - the stress level for each person is minimized, or at least not compounded by a perverse society. Conversely, when - as is the case today - we have widespread family breakdown, a depraved culture that mocks traditional moral values, a chaotic economy and disintegrating monetary system and a power-mad government dominated by demagogues and sociopaths, the normal stresses of life are greatly multiplied.
It's doubtful whether America was "decent and moral in the 1950s", but it's safe to say that, relatively-speaking, things are much worse now. When you're induced into behaving like a psychopath in order to survive life in a world run by psychopaths, the inevitable result is an enormous build-up of pressure - anxiety, fear, hopelessness and depression - in the masses of normal people... until they reach breaking point and snap.

Kupelian again:
Today's relentless economic pressures: high unemployment (the actual rate is at least double that of the "official" government rate), foreclosures and bankruptcies, a stagnant growth rate, 11,000 new people signing up for food stamps every single day, rising taxes for the entire middle class whose net worth is simultaneously shrinking, ever-higher prices for food, gas and other essentials - and overshadowing it all, a galactic national debt burden, courtesy of a wildly out-of-control government unrestrained by either the Constitution or common sense.

That, too, is very stressful. Top it all off with an administration continually abusing the public for the sake of enlarging and consolidating its political power - for instance, by purposely making the "sequester" cuts hurt Americans, even our active-duty soldiers, as much as possible.
Obama is just one in a long chain of utterly incompetent leaders attempting to 'correct problems' but who are in fact making them worse. The nature of our 'just-in-time' global economy is such that we could withstand disruption from a natural disaster for barely a week before undergoing widespread systemic collapse.

With several forecasts predicting food prices increasing anywhere from 1.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent in 2013, consumers will have to rethink how they will spend their hard-earned discretionary income. I don't know about you, but when I go to the store I notice that food prices have increased by far more than that - by about 30% in the last year alone. The 'new normal' in the agriculture business is fluctuating food prices, strongly influenced by crop failures from the extreme weather and financial speculators 'making a killing' by betting the prices up and down.

Then there's the stress that is deliberately propagated through societies via government-sponsored terrorism. As Joe Quinn and Niall Bradley wrote last week regarding the Boston Marathon bombing:
Many older Europeans ought to be familiar with the 'Strategy of Tension in Europe in the 'Cold War' years. The strategy of tension, employed by US and European government agents, was a tactic that aimed to divide, manipulate and control public opinion using fear, propaganda, disinformation, psychological warfare, agents provocateurs, and false flag terrorist attacks.

The theory began with allegations that the United States government and the Greek military junta of 1967-1974 supported far-right terrorist groups in Italy and Turkey, where communism was growing in popularity, to spread panic among the population who would in turn demand stronger and more dictatorial governments. There is no reason to assume, or believe, that governments today are any less interested in controlling the people through fear and terror.
Josef Stalin is supposed to have said, "The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The Public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened." Kupelian comented in his article that "radical change cannot be accomplished while Americans are calm, happy, content and grateful for their blessings. Citizens must be unhappy and stressed out." It's an important point. Content people during relatively stable times would neither allow nor demand dictatorial government. And so, citizens must be fearful, unhappy and stressed out, at which point they themselves begin to clamour for government 'protection' and control.

The problem of overbearing government stressing us out is compounded by psychiatric practices that only make things worse. The pineal gland, long considered the 'third eye' or 'seat of the soul', is extremely sensitive to toxic fluoride compounds found in public water supplies and Prozac, which then seem to turn it to stone through calcification. How appropriate is that? As health researcher Sayer Ji explains,
Prozac may represent an archetypal example of how fluoride affects the personality/soul. This drug (chemical name fluoxetine) is approximately 30% fluoride by weight and marketed as an "antidepressant," even while a major side effect of its use and/or withdrawal is suicidal depression. Modern psychiatry often treats depressive disorders - the "dark night of the soul" - as an organic disorder of the brain, targeting serotonin reuptake by any chemical means necessary. Fluoride and fluoxetine, in fact, may accomplish their intended "therapeutic effects" by poisoning the pineal gland. Animal studies confirm that when mice have their pineal glands removed they no longer respond to fluoxetine.

Perhaps the primary reason why Prozac causes a favorable reaction in those who are treated (poisoned) with it, is that it disassociates that person from the psychospiritual conflicts that they must normally suppress in order to maintain the appearance of sanity and functionality in society, i.e. it is control and not health that is the goal of such "treatment."
To paraphrase Krishnamurti, Big Government and Big Pharma have teamed together to ensure that you can readjust and reintegrate into a profoundly sick society - and that, surely, is no measure of health.

Completely divested from anything spiritual, mental health science leaves out all mention of the world's problems and our capacity to figure them out. On the contrary, thinking is discouraged. Just focus on the positive and take your pill to make you essentially like a psychopath who doesn't give a damn. Just get a prescription and don't ask questions!

Escape from evil
"It is not group helplessness that leads to narcissistic rage, it is narcissistic rage that produces group helplessness. And a helpless group can be driven to any evil, even to their own destruction." - Laura Knight-Jadczyk in 'A Structural Theory of Narcissism and Psychopathy'
Ok, so things are bad. Now, what can we do to heal the body, mind, emotions and spirit?

1. A genuinely healthy diet

Certain fundamental changes in diet and lifestyle that occurred after the Neolithic (Agricultural) Revolution, and especially after the Industrial Revolution, are too recent - on an evolutionary timescale - for the human genome to have completely adapted. This mismatch between our ancient physiology and the Western diet and lifestyle underlies many so-called diseases of civilization, including coronary heart disease, obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, epithelial cell cancers, autoimmune disease, and osteoporosis, which are rare or virtually absent in hunter-gatherers and other non-Westernized populations. Most of the human genome has ancestral genes that adapted over millions of years to a Paleolithic diet. Low-carbohydrate eating seems to be the normal metabolic state associated with health, which is consistent with the view that throughout most of our human evolution, we thrived under a low-carb diet. We are here today because our ancestors survived prolonged periods of fasting while they hunted for foods and they were able to thrive on animal foods under very interesting environmental conditions, particularly prolonged and intense periods of cold.

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Humans are NOT meant to consume "healthy whole grains." Our intolerance can show up as type 1 diabetes in kids, type 2 diabetes in kids and adults, acid reflux, bowel urgency, autoimmune diseases, dementia, seizures, hypertension, water retention, paranoia, anxiety, eating disorders, or just feeling rotten.
The most important tool you have with which to change your health is the food you eat. It doesn't rely on the latest stem cell study or genetic tweaking in a mad scientist's lab. Food is information that talks to your genes and is capable of turning them on or off, telling them what to do or what not to do. The food you eat has the information needed to affect your health in the fastest way.

From a biological, genetic, and physiological point of view, we are highly optimized and geared by nature to be 'hunter-gatherers'. We have been mostly eating high-quality animal foods that were hormone-, antibiotic- and pesticide-free with no genetic alteration. This diet was very high in fat, something that was treasured, and low in carbs. The few carbs ingested, if any, were eaten as seasonally available.

For most of us, from an evolutionary perspective, a high-sugar diet is a metabolic challenge that some find difficult as early as birth and many fail to meet as early as adolescence. Humans are NOT meant to consume 'healthy whole grains.' Our intolerance can show up as type 1 diabetes in kids, type 2 diabetes in kids and adults, acid reflux, bowel urgency, autoimmune diseases, dementia, seizures, hypertension, water retention, paranoia, anxiety, eating disorders, or just plain feeling rotten. For more information, check out 'Life Without Bread', the 'Ketogenic Diet', or any resource on the Paleolithic diet.

2. Regular and healthy exercise

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I know this is going to run counter to everything you've been told before, but chronic cardio-aerobic exercise is simply bad for your health, period. It stresses your adrenals into fight-or-flight mode, and besides burning you out, it also creates lots of joint problems. People who run marathons typically have CPK (creatine phosphokinase) blood levels that are high, a marker of muscle damage that is used to detect heart attacks. Excess aerobics cause over-training and muscle-wasting, which later leads to reduction in fat burning. Aerobic exercises increase your bodies' need for oxygen. From running to spending hours on a treadmill or stationary bike, many aerobic workouts are long and their overall effect on your body is inflammatory. Quite a few people who have had a heart attack were jogging supposedly 'for better health'.

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Erwan le Corre, creator of MovNat, resistance training in a natural setting
In contrast to aerobic exercise, resistance training builds lean mass, but the implications are far more than just that. Resistance training minimizes and even reverses mitochondrial dysfunction - our powerhouse energy factories. It also induces mitochondrial biogenesis - a process where new mitochondria are formed within the cell, and it does it not only in the muscles, but in the brain, kidney, fat tissue and liver as well. The implications here are enormous! By exercising our muscles, we have the potential to not only reverse aging and brain-related diseases such as dementia which are characterized by mitochondrial dysfunction, but as it happens, mitochondrial dysfunction is the final step in ALL diseases. In fact, by making new mitochondria, there is a remodelling of entire networks of mitochondria. New mitochondria merge with old ones, leading to elimination of damaged or dysfunctional mitochondria.

There are several ways to do resistance training, but as a general rule, brief bouts of peak anaerobic exertion are far better for your overall health, including your cardiopulmonary system. It is important to remember that more is not better when it comes to resistance training, it is the quality that makes the whole difference. Exercise no more than 20 minutes and focus on brief bouts of significant anaerobic exertion, interspersed with brief periods of recovery at a slower pace that will allow you to return to resting heart rate.

3. Last but not least: prayer and meditation

This is not only fundamental, it is the key healing mechanism in a world gone mad. Stress reduction through meditation and group social interaction is arguably how our ancestors lived and interacted with challenges thrown at them via their environment.

This is where Éiriú Eolas (pronounced "AIR-oo OH-lahss") comes into play. The Éiriú Eolas ('EE' for short) program of breathing techniques grew out of research conducted by the Quantum Future Group under the direction of Laura Knight-Jadczyk. Central to this is stimulation of the vagus nerve, which activates the calm-inducing parasympathetic system - a powerful anti-inflammatory system in our bodies. The program has been thoroughly researched and proven to work through the thousands of people who are already benefiting from it. The effects are cumulative and results and benefits can be seen in a very short time, sometimes after just one session!

EE allows you to:
  • instantly control stress in high-energy situations
  • detox your body, bringing pain relief
  • relax and gently work through past emotional and psychological trauma
  • regenerate and rejuvenate your body and mind.
Éiriú Eolas will enable you to rapidly and gently access and release layers of mental, emotional and physical toxicity. You can get a copy of the program at eebreathe.com, but you can also find an online version there where you can learn the techniques.

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Éiriú Eolas increases neural plasticity, facilitating information processing, psychological well-being and stress relief.
The EE program also includes emotional releasing techniques developed by Carl Jung and promoted by Alexander Lowen. The program leads to a general sense of well-being and improved sleep, leading to faster healing, psychological relief, including release of PTSD, decreased substance abuse, improved mood, longer attention span, better mental focus, and increased stress tolerance. It can be applied to improve symptoms associated with cardiovascular disorders, autoimmune diseases, pulmonary diseases such as asthma, autonomic nervous system imbalances, depression, and anxiety. Stimulation of the vagus nerve is known to reduce oxidative stress, improve the overall antioxidant status, and thus has relevance for numerous diseases.

The combination of specific rhythms for voluntary breath control, conscious inhalation, retention and exhalation, in conjunction with meditation and 'belly-breathing' with correct use of the diaphragm, helps to increase levels of the anti-stress hormones GABA (our natural valium), melatonin (our pineal gland hormone), and serotonin (our 'happy mood' brain chemical), whereas levels of the stress hormones cortisol and norepinephrine are decreased.

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The 'wandering nerve'
With Éiriú Eolas, there is no need to sit in special postures, or be present in a carefully prepared relaxing atmosphere. The strength of the program comes from its high adaptability to stressful conditions in modern world settings. Anyone can do it. In addition to reducing stress, calming and focusing your mind, it creates better links between body and mind, thus improving quality of life and increasing a sense of connection with others in the community.

The Éiriú Eolas program uses what is called 'Pipe Breathing' as the key to instant stress reduction and control. Pipe breathing brings the entire body-mind system into balance. You can use it in any place at any time for instantaneous results: controlling fears and phobias, recovering quickly from shocks, or in high-energy situations where decisive action is required and stress control is essential.

It is pipe-breathing that stimulates the vagus nerve, the heart of the parasympathetic nervous system - the body's own 'anti-stress system'. The vagus nerve is your calming and relaxing nerve which goes from your brain down to your abdomen, dividing into multiple branches that reach your throat, your heart, and all your viscera. It is also called 'the wanderer', as it wanders throughout your body. When you take deep breaths in specific rhythm sets and meditate with Éiriu Eolas, the nerve is activated and it releases acetylcholine, which reduces the production of inflammatory molecules like cytokines that are linked to every known disease. For instance, brain inflammation is linked to every known mood, behavior, attention, memory, or degenerative disease.

The vagus nerve enhances neurogenesis (the creation of brain tissue) by increasing brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) output, which is like a super-fertilizer for your brain cells. It helps repair brain tissue, but also helps with tissue regeneration throughout your body. BDNF plays an important role in neuronal plasticity, which is essential for learning, thinking and higher levels of brain function. Practising Éiriú Eolas will therefore kick-start or improve neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, processes that are essential for maintenance of brain functions as we age, but also for recovery from trauma, emotional adaptation, and learning.

When we stimulate the vagus nerve, we produce what is called sensory motor rhythm (SMR). This is an activated pattern in the parietal cortex that is associated with a state of relaxed vigilance, mental focus and heightened awareness. People who exhibit this pattern show improved sleep, digestion, thinking, memory, and their brains become much more resistant to seizures. In addition to that, they have fewer cravings and addictions.

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You don't need to be sitting cross-legged on a mountain top some warm evening at sunset, but EE can take you there in terms of results!
Vagus nerve stimulation also releases hormones such as prolactin, vasopressin and oxytocin. These are anti-stress and social-bonding hormones. Oxytocin is known as the 'cuddle hormone', so it is no wonder that the vagus nerve has been called the 'nerve of compassion'. In fact, the vagus nerve is intertwined with neural networks involved in pro-social and empathetic communication, involving muscle groups that are related in care-taking. Oxytocin is intimately involved in the experience of trust and love.

During the breathing exercises and the meditation portion of the program, several neurochemical changes take place. Levels of the anti-stress hormones GABA, melatonin and serotonin are increased. GABA and serotonin are neurotransmitters that make us happy, relaxed and peaceful. People with anxiety, panic attacks, and insomnia have low levels of GABA. Serotonin is necessary for a happy mood, reducing anxiety and irritability and helping us to sleep. Melatonin is our natural sleep-regulating hormone.

All these natural chemicals are enhanced during Éiriú Eolas without the need for Big Pharma's prescription drugs! Think about it: they only work at all because there are receptors in our bodies that bind with them. If we can activate and regulate these receptors ourselves, consciously, well then, who needs Big Pharma?...

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With Éiriú Eolas there is more information exchange between the two hemispheres of the brain (left-right integration), which means there is increased coherence and better problem-solving. It also improves balance between parts of the cortex and subcortex, which means that higher functions of your cortex can influence primitive messages from your subcortex. Selfless love, reasoning, logical deduction and emotional processing 'originate from' or 'take place' in these higher cortical areas.

Éiriu Eolas evokes deep insight, resolution of emotional conflict, and a subjective sense of newfound mental clarity. It also has a strong impact on stress-reduction and eases anxiety and depression. This is in part due to the fact that there is a complex interrelationship between breathing, cognition and emotion. Emotional states can affect the respiratory rate, depth, and pattern. On the other hand, voluntarily changing the pattern of breath can account for at least 40% of variance in feelings of anger, fear, joy, and sadness.

Psychotherapist Peter A. Levine has proposed the idea that trauma is not a "disorder" (as in 'Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder'), but an injury to the body-mind. Rather than a syndrome that may be a life-long burden, trauma can be healed. He explains in
In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness:
Trauma occurs when we are intensely frightened and are either physically restrained or perceive that we are trapped. We freeze in paralysis and/or collapse in overwhelming helplessness. In freezing, your muscles stiffen against a mortal blow, and you feel "scared stiff." On the other hand, when you experience death as being unequivocally imminent, your muscles collapse as though they have lost all their energy. In this "default" reaction (when it has become chronic, as it does in trauma), you feel that you are in a state of helplessness resignation and lack the energy to fuel your life and move forward. This collapse, defeat and loss of the will to live are at the very core of deep trauma. Being "scared stiff" or "frozen in fear" - or, alternatively, collapsing and going numb - accurately describes the physical, visceral, bodily experience of intense fear and trauma.
While we might not actually remain physically paralyzed, we do get lost in a kind of anxious fog, chronic partial shutdown, dissociation, depression and numbness. When one is overwhelmed, the frontal cortex of the brain, where things are put into perspective, shuts down and our abilities to stand back and observe one's sensations and emotions is lost; we then become those emotions and sensations. This makes us feel terribly overwhelmed, fearful and stiff, and we get stuck in an immobilized fearful response which translates into a lack of vitality and engagement towards life.

As breathing is controlled by a complex feedback of both voluntary and involuntary mechanisms - involving autonomic networks, the brain stem headquarters of the vagus nerve, the limbic system, cortex, and the neuroendocrine system - voluntary control of breath can help create a physiological state where we can finetune our automatic reactions and influence the reactivity of our central nervous system. For instance, long-standing overwhelming feelings of helplessness or fear can be released through the breathing exercises as physical trembling, changes in body temperature or spontaneous crying that is relieving and non-traumatizing. It is the release of long-term, 'bound' energy held in the body's primitive defense mechanism patterns. This brings balance between the most evolved parts of the brain and our most primitive ones, allowing for complex, knotted and 'heavy' emotions to emerge in a safe setting, where they can be integrated and transformed. Through the breathing exercises, the prefrontal cortex is engaged in observing primitive fearful sensations generated in the limbic system, allowing us to process the information and let it go.

Peter Levine adds:
Beginning meditators are often painfully surprised at the tumultuous activity of their minds. Thoughts, sensations, feelings, fears and desires chaotically pursue each other like dogs obsessively chasing their tails. However, as they gain some steadiness in awareness, practiced meditators start taming their restless minds. They begin having extended periods when they are not sucked into the endless swirling vortex of their frenzied thoughts and emotions. In place of this turbulent state a sublime inquisitiveness about moment-to-moment experience begins to develop. They start to investigate the "how" of each arising moment, as well as their reactivity to various thoughts, sensations, feelings and situations.
Breathing as a therapeutic tool provides a means for regulation of mental and emotional states, which cover a broad area ranging over psychology, physiology, and spirituality.

The Prayer of the Soul Meditation, the centerpiece of the program, is done every night before going to sleep. Employing an initial period of Pipe Breathing that rapidly induces a deep state of meditative relaxation, the Prayer consists of affirmations that enter deeply into the subconscious and trigger deep body and soul-level healing and rejuvenation. The effects are cumulative and its results and benefits can be experienced after only a short period of practice, often after just a single session since our need for emotional connection and our need to hear consistent and constructive calming words that open our potential in unlimited ways is met. The breathing exercise context of the meditation serves as an enormous tool which speeds up the process by working and soothing our body-mind-soul connection. The Prayer of the Soul works like a seed which sprouts new life from within. It is open-ended, allowing for the best of our potential to be manifested within us without the limited preconceived notions that may restrict our capabilities. Sometimes we don't know what is best for us!

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Meditating with daily open-ended affirmations helps to heal our wounds and release past and present emotional burdens
The Éiriú Eolas team is spread around the world, offering group sessions where practitioners can do the breathing and meditation together as a group. Many of them have experienced reaching a deeper meditation level when practicing in a group than when on their own. This has to do with the concept of limbic resonance, also known as the 'empathic harmony' that arises when our limbic systems connect with each other, in a mutually enriching experience.

The concept was first introduced by psychiatrists Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon whose scientific, yet very poetic, A General Theory of Love explains that limbic resonance is vital for survival, especially for the young:
Within the effulgence of their new brain, mammals developed a capacity we call limbic resonance -- a symphony of mutual exchange and internal adaptation whereby two mammals become attuned to each other's inner states. [...] To the animals capable of bridging the gaps between minds, limbic resonance is the door to communal connection. Limbic resonance supplies the wordless harmony we see everywhere but take for granted -- between mother and infant, between a boy and his dog, between lovers holding hands across a restaurant table. [...] Because limbic states can leap between minds, feelings are contagious, while notions are not. If one person germinates an ingenious idea, it's no surprise that those in the vicinity fail to develop the same concept spontaneously.
The authors cite a terrible experiment undertaken by a 13th century emperor of southern Italy, Frederic II, who in his unwise mind thought that he could discover the inborn language of mankind if he raised children who never heard a spoken word. He had women bathe, change and feed the infants, but no one was allowed to talk to them or prattle with them. The experiment did not produce any results because all the children died before they reached speaking age. In the 13th century this monarch proved (in such a horrible way) what the scientists of today are learning through experimentation and observation: that "children could not live without clappings of hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments". It is the limbic connection with their primary caregivers that keeps them alive. As for adult humans, it is our limbic resonance that keeps us healthy, and banishes one of the biggest stressors of our daily living: feeling lonely and neglected.

Limbic resonance is one of the wonderful results of group breathing and vocalizing together, which is of course what we do in group sessions of Éiriú Eolas. Increasing limbic resonance encourages the development of all that is best in human society: warmth of feeling, empathy, connection. We hope that those of you who are able to go to classes will make it a regular part of your life. For those who are currently far from a regular class, you still make another sort of connection with those practicing on Mondays and Thursdays. Thought and feeling aren't limited by time and space!

It surely is no accident that a world ruled by psychopaths who are excluded from the 'limbic field' shared by humans because they have no empathy - meaning that they either lack higher cortical functions - is controlled by manipulating the emotions of everyone else, provoking them to feel rage, hopelessness, frustration, intimidation, fear, despair, or to lash out and act violently.

That's the key; the Powers that Be want you to feel upset because then you are not using your higher cortex and its faculties and you are in a stupefied and dumbed-down state, like a sheep waiting to be sacrificed. They win. You become a reactive and ineffective machine who cannot effect a creative output in the world. And creativity is what these psychopathic rulers fear the most. No matter how great our potential might be, when we are in reactive mode, we are no match for the evil that has overcome this world.

So let's all reclaim and reconnect our higher faculties. Too much is at stake here!
"Life is religion. Life experiences reflect how one interacts with God. Those who are asleep are those of little faith in terms of their interaction with the creation. Some people think that the world exists for them to overcome or ignore or shut out. For those individuals, the world will cease. They will become exactly what they give to life. They will become merely a dream in the 'past'. People who pay strict attention to objective reality right and left, become the reality of the 'Future'."

-- Cs, 09-28-02