My Yoga Routines

My Yoga Routines 

I have started to develop morning and evening routines to help me better wake up or fall asleep.

Although they may vary slightly from day to day ,the main poses are the same in both routines. First I start with head-rolls then shoulder-rolls, 5 revolutions both before I start my routine.

Apologies in advance if I miss-name some of the poses. 

Morning

1. Twisting Triangle
2. Warrior 2
3. Tree (Basic version)
4. Downward Dog
5. Extended child
6. Cat
7. Cobra
8. Upward Dog
9. Locust
10. Camel 
11. East Stretch (Eased version. You could call it "Table pose")
12. Various breathing exercises
13. 3 "Om"s
14. Start my morning meditation.

Evening

1. Rag-doll
2. Downward Dog
3. Extended child
4. Cat
5. Cobra 
6. Shoulder-stand (My favourite pose. It makes me feel like a pro🙂)
7. Plough (as far as I can go )
8. Spinal Twist
9. Corpse (normally with pillows and cushions)
10. Rest on the mat before going to bed. (Or I sometimes just sleep there till morning . haha!

I am aiming to make these routines a daily ritual where and when possible.

I am really starting to enjoy yoga and meditation and I am now finding ways to implement my spiritual practices into my everyday life.

Namaste.

Right Swiping: my review

Right Swiping: my review

I recently finished reading a four-page article on spiritual internet dating in the March 2019, 40th Anniversary edition of the American Buddhist magazine “Lion’s Roar”. Since the beginning of 2019, I have been taken about joining an Internet dating website which has been made specially for people on a spiritual path.  For a while I have been looking for some guidance and advice in the world of internet dating says and it was a nice surprise that in this edition of Lions Roar, there was an article about someone’s personal experience of dating. One thing from the article that I learnt is an Internet dating seems to be a very emotional experience.

People’s demands

There is no doubt that there are people out there who have specific desires for their potential date.  Some of them are VERY specific.  For example, I learnt that there are people out there who list their likes and dislikes.  The writer of the article also mentions that she met a person who gave a long list of likes and dislikes.  For example: “I hope you into hiking, love dogs, and want to eat all the chocolate out of the Neapolitan ice cream.” and “no drama, no head games.  No people who wear blue socks on Tuesdays.”

It is clear to me that on that evidence I’m going to feel the pressure of other people’s expectations.  Naturally, my personal question to what’s this is; “How do I deal with such expectations?”.  Thankfully, the article provides an answer.

Emotional Athleticism.

The writer of the article was given some advice from somebody which I found very useful.  “Dating is an athletic event of the heart.  Athletes stretch before they start playing.  Dating requires the same amount of warm-up.  First, assess the situation.” The quote basically means that we must be honest about how we are feeling and be emotionally prepared before interacting with a potential date. 

I think that is important to ask ourselves meaningful questions about the person we are thinking of dating like “Do I feel positive about this person?” and “Is he or she the kind of person I want to spend time with.” Such questions help us confirm how we really feel about the kind of person we are about to date.

Relationship goals

The article also mentions that it is important to know exactly what you are looking for in a relationship. Do you just want a girlfriend or boyfriend?  Do you just want to have fun?  Do you want marriage?  Do you want to children?  Do you want sex?  Do you just want a close friend?

I recently learnt on the internet that there are several different types of relationships.

Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory of love may help. 

Swipe left or right

If we are on a dating website on our smartphones, you will probably be asked to swipe left for “no” and right for “yes” based on a picture of the person we have seen.  This forces us to make an immediate judgement based solely on physical appearance.  Hence, we must find or create a good picture of ourselves in order to attract other people.  This may be difficult or both you and other people to accept.  If you’re feeling guilty about rejecting somebody solely on an image of their face and you can internally say a small consoling message to that person like “may you find your love” or “I hope you find what you’re looking for”.  This will reduce the amount of guilt that you feel for that person and maintain your positivity when searching for the right date.

Hope and expectation

When we are dating, it is natural to have feelings of hope and expectation.  However, I think one of the biggest problems that modern society has is that they are often attached to hope and expectation.  This often leads to a lot of unnecessary stress and disappointment.  When we are dating, we always had to bear in mind that there is a lot that is out of our hands.  As much effort as we put in our profiles, appearances and mannerisms, there is never any guarantee that your date is going to work out.  We always must be conscious of this fact when trying to find a partner otherwise we’ll always open ourselves to emotional pain from other people.

This is the reason why you should always…

Love yourself first!

There are many people out there who go into relationships feeling empty of love.  This means that they try to find a partner from a point of resentment and desperation.  This is the worst possible emotional state to be trying to find an intimate partner.  Therefore, you should look inside yourself to see what kind of inner emotional pain that you are suffering and find a way to resolve it before attempting to find a relationship.

One thing to remember when you go into relationships is that regardless of your past or present, you are always worthy of love!

If you love yourself first, and loving others will be a lot easier.

Good luck with your search for true love!

How I lost my fear of failure.

How I lost my fear of failure.

Failure is NOT a bad thing.

Many of us believe that in order to succeed in life that we have to avoid failure. By this, I mean that want to push away , abandon or somehow, react adversely to any thought of failing at any time. We always want to believe that we can be successful right from the very beginning and throughout.

This however is a lie that we sub-consciously tell ourselves when we pursue our goals in life. We sometimes act as if we are entitled to have success in life all the time.

However, if we look at our lives carefully, you will find that we are destined to experience failures right from the very beginning of our lives. When we are babies, we are taught to walk and talk. When we first try to walk, we would normally just crawl on all fours with our arms and legs in order to move about as we are not able to keep our balance on our two feet.

When we are growing up and we fail a school exam or we do not do a certain job in the way that our parents or teacher would like us to do it, we are shamed, told off and occasionally even disgraced for our short-comings. This gives us the internal signal that we are "failures" in some way. However, sometimes our failings actually have nothing to do with us. We might have forgotten or mis- understood an instruction or maybe we simply do not have th right "mental toolkit" to succeed in a certain task of job.

One way of another we are constantly told that failure is bad and wrong and that we should avoid failure and be adverse to it all costs; and yet failure as we are about the discover, is actually the most important and valuable part of out road to success in anything that way try to achieve in life.

Talk you way to success

One thing that I have learnt through my journey is that you can actually programme the way you think about life. I first learnt this from a book called "What to say when you talk to yourself" by Shad Helmstetter. This small  book taught me how powerful affirmations and inner mental messages can be. Positive self-talk can be a very powerful tool on you path to success. For example, I convinced myself for a long time that I was bad a blitz (speed) chess because I was not a naturally fast player. When I play chess, I usually like to take my time and double-check certain move before I played them. However, I started to encourage myself by saying "I AM a good blitz player" This helped my lose my fear of failure and before you know it, guess what! I actually won an online blitz tournament. Hence, my life has proven that this method really works. There is a common expression that comes from successful people. "Fake it till you make it!" Sometimes the best way to be successful is to pretend that you already are!

Self Forgiveness

While reading the book "Forgiveness is power" by William Fergus Martin I realised the importance of forgiving oneself when falling short of our goals. Many of us are often harsh on ourselves when we are not able to achieve what we wanted to do. Many of us blame ourselves for our lack of achievement in a certain task but we have to remember that there are usually more factors in achieving a certain goal in life than we realise. These are many external factors like:

• Atmosphere
• Social Settings
• General Environment
• Education
• Location
• Upbringing

These are only a small amount of external factors that may prevent us from succeeding. As we can see, it is not always our fault when we fall short of our goals in life. Many of us have barriers that we may not even be aware of. 

Self Forgiveness is about realising that sometimes  our ability to achieve a certain goal in life is simply our our hands. When you fall short of your goals, remember to tell yourself that you did your best in the given situation and your results cannot always be helped.

Failure LEADS TO success!

As explained above, failure is not a bad thing. In fact in order to succeed, we actually have to accept  that we are initially going to have our failures first. What we have to realise above all things is that failure is not the opposite of success, failure is part of success. We have to look at our short comings as opportunities to learn valuable lessons instead of seeing problems and losses. If we look at all challenges this way, then we can attempt any task or challenge and embrace the journey that it leads to the full. During my chess career, I went through a lot of failures and difficulties. I even wanted to quit at times, but I decided to keep going and finding different ways of doing things and eventually, I got my rewards for my efforts. Any path to glory will have it's bitter moments but sometimes you just have to be patient for success to come. Eventually, you will get there in the end.

Summary

The realisation that I have described above has given me a sense of freedom and joy. It has given me the desire to try new challenges in life and enhanced my motivation to improve on the challenges that I am already taking. I can now pursue dreams and goals without ever worrying about what is commonly called "failure". I look forward to new challenges (and continuation of old ones) that come my way in the future.

Good luck with yours!

Richard Davis

Is Autism Just Human Evolution?

Is Autism Just Human Evolution?

My diagnosis story

According to my parents, I was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome at the age of 10. However, the condition was never explained to me at the time of the diagnosis. In fact I was in a constant state of disbelief of the idea of me having the condition until I arranged a one of appoint ment with a secretary at my local surgery to see my medical records. For me to realise this truth was heartbreaking. I thought I was like every other person on the planet but clearly, medical science had other ideas.

The medical mystery

Throughout my life, I have had Asperger Syndrome (AS) and other Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) be called all sorts of things. I've heard it be called a mental illness, learning disability, medical condition and even a disease!

Medical science always puts a negative connotation to the autism spectrum. Many have said that there has to be a cure for it. However, I am hearing more and more no YouTube that ASDs are rather a step in human evolution. This way of thinking about ASDs is certainly not out of the question when you consider th growing amount of cases around the world. (even without the controversial MMR vacccine) Many scientists have struggled for decades to find the cause of ASDs but alas have yet to find an answer.

What is the truth?

So is autism really just a step in human evolution? If scientists are not able to give a definite external reason for the sharp rise of ASD cases then we are clearly seeing a transformation within the human species. Society is always demanding us to conform and be like everyone else as if we were all ment to be the same person. Society is always fearful of someone who is different in some way. However, it is our differences that makes the human condition as rich as it is.

As you are about to learn from these 3 videos, there are a growing amount of people who beleive that ASDs are not "illness" that have to be "cured" in some waybut rather a step in human evolution. Maybe all of us will be "autistic" in some way.

Teal Swan: Autism (Understanding Autism, Autistic Children and Autistic Adults) - Teal Swan

Arthur Arcturus: Is Asperger's Human 2.0

Tony Atwood: is Asperger Syndrome the next stage of human evolution?