Healthy Positive Lifestyle: Holistic Lifestyle And Coaching With Dr. Jin

Stressful circumstances vs. positive attitude and motivation. Where is the line to determine how far to push? Hard question to answer. This short episode is about my personal experience.

People often complain that they try meditation to reduce stress, and it does not work. Many get discouraged. What's the secret? Meditation is just a tool. If we use it properly, it works as prescribed. I am sharing my own experience with meditation.

The very first step in getting rid of stress in our life is to recognize where it comes from. Like any physical stress, emotional stress is caused by minimum two forces. One of them is often out of our control, but another one is 100% under control. If we learn how to use it, we can start getting rid of stress in our life, live stressless, happy and positive life!

In this episode we will continue talking about keeping and restoring balance in life. This time we will talk about some specific principles and techniques I've used over the decades to avoid or eliminate distractions, stress and loss of passion and productivity in training, work and life overall. Very simple and easy to use.

Today, I'd like to start discussing one of the pretty hot topics in today's fast pace high stress society. That is How to find your Center and how to gain and re-gain, if necessary, your inner balance.

There's a joke. Question: How many psychologists does it take to change the light bulb? Answer is: Just one. But the light bulb has to really want to change.   Indeed, change comes from inside. I was not a morning person either. But it changed overnight when I got a dream. I did not question what motivated me to get up in the morning. I was looking forward to training, and getting up in the morning was the way to do it. I did not have to push myself to get up, well, most of the time. I was just getting up without even thinking about it. My training was not what I did. That was how I chose to live. That was who I was.   Have I ever felt tired? Have I ever wanted to skip a training? Of course! Have I ever had to push myself to work out? Absolutely! This is when variety in training comes really handy. I was talking about it last time. My each training has been slightly different every time. Or sometimes, a whole lot different. That's why I did not feel mental fatigue from doing the same thing over and over.    D

The question about staying on the Path came up in my mind quite a few times. I have been trying to find out what motivated me. Why did I start training all of a sudden? Why did I choose Martial Arts over any sports? Why have I been staying with my training for 30 years, and I still did not lose my interest? Why did I choose shakuhachi flute, one of the most difficult instruments in the World, and I have been studying it and practicing daily for over 10 years? I was talking about all the things I have been doing in my life in one of my previous episodes. People ask me, what helped me to stay consistent? I used to say, I did it because I liked it. But what made me like it? I had to study some things about motivation, about consistency, so I could at least explain it to other people. And perhaps, help somebody to make a decision. Yep, helping somebody is one of the points I will mention later today.   First of all, we need to remember, that we are dealing with a mindset. I've seen so many people trying to simpli

Today I’d like to talk about first steps I took on my Path to changing myself. Being an outcast is one thing. Getting out of it requires some steady efforts. But I think the most important is the very first step. What makes it so difficult?   First, Overcoming inertia? Yes. That very first effort to make the initial move can be extremely difficult. I think it came easy for me because the discomfort from being me was much greater than discomfort from changing. It was time to do it. I did not take time to procrastinate. My thought process switched instantly from total lack of interest to obsession with my training.   Second, perhaps fear of failure? Of course! Why would I believe I could achieve any degree of success in physical activity if I hated every second of it for as long as I remembered myself? It was later when I found out that every successful person has to go through certain number of failures. But at that time I did not know those details. Nobody told me.    Third, Fear to be laughed at? No doubt ab

...So, what is Japanese garden? First of all, it is quite a generic name. There's no single design. There are many different types of garden. Some of them are designed for nice slow meditative walk. And they are called stroll garden. They do require pretty large space. They usually have a pond or even a small lake as one of the elements.   Listen to the Podcast to know more.. Download

Tea drinking in my Path   I'd like to talk about Tea and tea ceremony, and about how I personally got into tea and what it means to me. I often look at my life as a jigsaw puzzle, and Tea became one of the valuable pieces. It felt like there was a very specific place in my life for tea, and nothing else could replace it.   Tea has been part of my daily routine for as long as I remember myself. I grew up drinking tea. I grew up in Soviet Union. Our neighbors from the South were China, Mongolia, Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey. India was not an immediate neighbor, but our countries were really great friends. So, our friends and neighbors had tea as a big part of their culture. No wonder that it became a big part of Russian culture as well. And by the way, Russian word for tea is "Chai". I am not sure if the word has Russian origin, but it is definitely part of Russian language now. And perhaps has been for at least 1000 years. But I am not gonna speculate about etymology.   My first tea experience began with loose

Today I'd like to answer a question I've been asked many times. The question is: where do I get time to practice everything I do? Indeed, autogenic training, yoga, meditation, martial arts, Chi Kung, reflexology, tea ceremony, gardening, music, and so on. This is quite a list of activities, especially since I was going full time to medical university and learning English on my own. Yes, I did. I also learned shorthand in the meantime, which helped me a lot to write down all my lectures word by word. We did not have technology at that time, as we have it today.   First of all, let's separate two types of learning.  As babies, we learn to walk, to talk, to do all basic things we need to learn. Later we learn to read, to write, to ride a tricycle, to play games etc. This is initial learning. Once we learn to read and write, do we keep learning? Of course we do. We may not spend extra time for that, unless reading and writing is a part of our further education and perhaps part of our future career . But we consta

Last year we started discussing meditation as a tool, and in the previous episode we were talking about Music meditation with shakuhachi flute, which is an ancient Zen tradition called Suizen. I mentioned some benefits of using shakuhachi flute for meditation, and one of them was vibrations. Sound is vibrations. Today I'd like to talk about various types of vibrations used in different types of meditation. This is not a comprehensive tutorial by any means, just  a quick overview of what I had a personal experience with.   Why vibrations, you may ask? Well, we cannot live, function, communicate, hear, see of feel without help of some kind of vibrations. We may admit it or deny it, it doesn't change anything. So we may as well use it to our benefit. And vibrations have been used for many thousands of years as a part of meditation, or even as stand alone healing practice. In one of my video episodes I will demonstrate some vibration techniques and exercises, but today we will just talk. Download

... Shakuhachi is a vertical bamboo flute. According to what I know, it came to Japan from China with Chan or Zen Buddhism. Shakuhachi tradition is connected to monk Puhua, known in Japan as Fuke. Fuke was walking all over the place preaching Zen, and he had a hand bell he carried with him. Fuke did not play flute, he was just ringing the bell. However, one of his disciples cut a piece of bamboo and started making sound blowing it like an end blown flute.  The instrument did not have holes yet, and the name of it was Kyotaku, which means false bell. The sound of the instrument reminded sound of the bell. This is how the tradition was born... To know more, listen to the podcast ;) DOWNLOAD HERE Have a wonderful day! Eugene 

Today I'd like to discuss one of the most popular practices, and that is Meditation. Indeed, everywhere we go, we hear the word meditation. Yoga and meditation, sitting meditation, walking meditation, just meditation, or whatever meditation that could be. Meditation became a generic term to describe the whole variety of practices that came from different religions and philosophies.      Therefore, to say "I am practicing meditation" is like saying "I am into fitness" without specifying what kind of fitness: jogging, body weight, weight lifting, other kinds of resistance or weight training, zumba, aerobic dancing, cycling, cardio kick boxing, etc. So saying I am doing meditation is just letting somebody know that you are practicing some kind of mental, emotional or spiritual fitness, whatever your program is. But that's about it. There's no word meditation in Yoga, Martial Arts, Buddhism, Daoism etc.   Download

Last time we started talking about the Path of the Water, about how soft but strong the water is. Today I'd like to talk more about this in a context of martial art application. First of all, lets define Martial Arts. I am not talking about any specific style now. What is Martial Art in general? It is often seen by many as set of hand-to-hand combat techniques designed to allow one person to defeat another person in a competition. It can be done in a form of wrestling, boxing, various styles of strikes, joint locks, weapons etc., or combination of all of the above.    Well, while there's nothing wrong with some competition, this is not what I am talking about. I am not talking about competeing and winning. Nobody wins a real fight, there are only survivors.   Download  

Today I'd like to talk about the Path of the Water. I mentioned the path of the least resistance a couple of times in my previous podcasts. How to determine where is the line separating justifiable resistance from excessive force?   I often hear people talking about "being like water" in the context of complete non resistance. But is it really so? If water was such a non-resistant substance than tsunami would not present any danger to people, and it would not cause any devastation like it does sometimes. And we cannot blame the ocean for not being like water. So, is water really that yielding and soft?.. Listen to the podcast to hear the full story   Download  

Why are we doing things the way we are doing? Who created traditions? Should we change the rules or should we adjust? This is a beginning of a long discussion..  Download  

  Today I'd like to briefly talk  about definitions of right and wrong. But before we begin, let me say a disclaimer.     First, I won't even try to fit  -- in a short podcast -- the topic which has been a source for major arguments and discussions since the beginning of mankind. Second, I will only try to briefly describe what I studied and what I believe in. Finally, Tao is something that cannot be expressed in words. Everything I say is just a reflection, a snap shot of my thoughts at the moment I said it.    Download  

Shao Dao is not just a regular Martial Art School. Instead, it is a whole philosophy in its own right. I will not even try to describe Dao in a short podcast. I will not try to describe Dao period. Everything I say is just like a snapshot of my perception of the World at the moment I said that. And the very next second it may change and turn into its opposite like Yin turns into Yan or Yan into Yin. So there is no Status Quo in life. Everything is changing constantly. There is nothing permanent except the change itself. And this may change too! How often have I seen people who were trying to hold on their thoughts thinking that they got the life by the tail? How many times have I been guilty of that myself? Trying to hold on my thoughts long after circumstances changed?.. Download  

What I cannot completely understand, is whether my holistic lifestyle was a result of my training, or was I brought into this World already destined to take the path of martial arts? Almost sounds like chicken and the egg dilemma. It can make a good topic for nice philosophical discussion. But we are not getting into it right now. I just have no other explanation for my spontaneous, absolutely no common sense decision as a young teenager, other than believing in destiny.   Download AncientSoundsOfPeace iTunes