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Three Things You Are Thankful For
Gratitude is the antidote to worry. It takes you back to the present.
In this Ted Talk, “The Secret To Work Better,” Shawn Achor explains that practicing gratitude, two minutes a day for 21 days, can reprogram your brain to be more optimistic.

Mental health exercise: one hour of walking a day
A change in your environment gives you a new perspective and makes you feel fresh again.

Free writing as a mental health
exercise One of the most effective and easiest forms of writing.
When we write freely, our thoughts are paused for a while. This form of writing helps us to clear our thoughts. We are used to making a lot of changes to our writing because we often do it for someone else. In this exercise you can let yourself go completely. It not only helps to let go of thoughts and emotions, but also to find the core of a problem or to come up with a creative solution to a challenge.

Small friendly actions
By helping others we help ourselves.
Several studies have proven that being nice has a positive effect on your own happiness. Receiving, giving, or seeing friendly actions boosts serotonin production. This is a neurotransmitter that affects your mood.

https://open.spotify.com/track/13gqe2AjtaPexcBoqA10IX?si=5990ead190434a85





Typical of me to go and ruin the party
Everybody says they love me, but I'm still brokenhearted
They call me Polly Pessimism, I'm a ma-macabre Barbie (I love you)
My boyfriend wants to love me, but I won't let him
I've been predisposed to trauma since I was 11
So I wrote a couple albums to let out some aggression
I hate that I'm so
Self-deprecating, more comfortable in bad situations
Sucker for a little devastation
And this always happens
Panic attacks in paradise
Piña coladas, I'm terrified
I swear I'm not cryin', the sun's just bright
I'm havin' the best time of my life
Panic attacks in paradise
Hyperventilating under candy skies
Tellin' myself that this is fine
I'm havin' the best time of my life
It's a big joke
Ha ha, I love laughin'
It's a big hoax
Your self-help happy
'Cause I'm okay
I'm pure propane
On an open flame
Watch me blow up

(I like this song a lot because of its good lyricism about mental health and how it affects people daily.)

In his diary in an entry headed "Nice 22 January 1892", Munch wrote:

One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord – the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream.
He later described his inspiration for the image:

I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

There are theories about The Scream but one thing we know for sure that it is about the feeling of anxiety. Edward Munch himself had anxiety and other mental health issues.

Why is meditation a good way to deal with mental problems

Whenever you are anxious, worried or worrying, this mainly demands energy from your kidney and spleen chakra. Acupuncture recognizes this same phenomenon. In their own way, they observe how the energy of a kidney or spleen meridian is weakened as a result.

The pulse measurement is a method. But there are also other features. If the spleen energy is weakened, you can hear this in a person's voice. He or she then speaks remarkably softly or even weakly. As if he just can't give 'volume'.

The kidney and spleen energy are important to your body in many ways. They play a role in digestion – including emotional digestion, stress processing, changes in the weather, and so on. See more about nutrition and charging meridians in the book 'Energy recovery plan' in the webshop of this site.

Fears and worries

First of all, it is important that you learn to deal with fears and worries in a different way. However, it may be necessary to 'recharge' the kidney and spleen energy. That helps to become less anxious or end up in worry. It gives your body and mind the chance to regain strength.

The body has special methods for storing excess stress. Ultimately, that stress has to leave your body. Meditation can help with that. Both the nervous system and the endocrine system play an important role in coping with stress.

Meditation is an inexpensive and beautiful way to help your body recover. Only in deep relaxation will your body carry out all 'repair work'.

Thanks to specific meditation techniques, this creates a high-energy relaxation in a short time, which has two advantages:
The first is that your body quickly reaches the level that it can pick up its natural detoxification and immunity.
The second advantage is that it makes it easier for you to maintain that healthy relaxation. A simple meditation practice of just ten minutes a day is enough.

Developing yourself thanks to meditation

Elsewhere on the site you can read about all kinds of physical benefits of meditation. The mental benefits viewed from a psychoanalytical point of view are described below. In psycho-analytical terms, meditation has a positive influence on, among other things:

The ability to control things and deal with them deliberately ('containing capacity')
The self-comfort The ability to
distinguish
The ability to integrate
Increased introspection
The impulse control
An improved frustration-tolerance
An improved fear-tolerance
Repairing psychological faults
Being able to handle contradictions

1. Withstanding difficult situations (the 'containing capacity')

Thanks to a so-called 'containing capacity' you can cope with, among other things, frustration, powerlessness, sadness, pain, fear, excitement, anxiety, unfairness, injustice, communication blunders, etc. In technical terms this capacity is called 'containing capacity'. It is an important capacity for spiritual development and it determines to a large extent how spiritually healthy you can remain. It helps to lower stress and thus boosts your immunity. Healthy food also increases this ability.

2. Improved Anxiety Tolerance

Do you know that there is increasing scientific evidence of how well meditation helps against anxiety? As a result, even purely regular psychologists and psychotherapists are offered refresher courses in which they are taught the art of meditation. It's just described differently. You will hear or read about terms such as 'Focusing', Mindfulness and 'Mind-control'.

Another article on fear and its influence on the brain can be found in the article 'Anxiety and the Amygdala' elsewhere on this site. There is also an article on how specific food choices can influence your brain in such a way that you become less prone to anxiety. This article is called 'Brain Messengers'.

Fear is a bad counselor." Who does not know the expression. Still, that's easy to say if you're not anxious. Fear simply causes strange and sometimes illogical reactions. In any case, fear puts a strain on your nervous system. And that is unpleasant for your body.

It can therefore disrupt your digestion, causing you to 'sudden' negative reactions to food. It can keep you from sleeping. It can affect your coordination ability, so that you make more chunks, bump yourself more often out of clumsiness, drop things, etc. Fear makes you unable to think clearly, loses the overview, becomes over-sensitive.

3. The discernment

Discrimination Being alert and seeing differences well are capacities, whereby the second and third chakras are especially important from the point of view of chakra psychology. Unfortunately, these are also the chakras that are often involved in unpleasant emotional and mental events. The second chakras help to feel good and the third chakra to think logically. Shame, feeling guilty, being bullied and/or laughed at, abuse, rejected or neglected. All such feelings and experiences limit the free functioning of those two chakras.
In order to get over such feelings faster and to make these two chakras work properly again, focused meditations on these two chakras are advisable. The most important thing in exercises for this ability is learning to use the second and third chakras as optimally as possible. It is especially good to learn how to connect these two.

A good connection between these two chakras ensures that the information can flow freely and is not blocked halfway by a defense mechanism. Defense mechanisms cause the energy flows to become trapped. Targeted psychological meditation exercises on these chakras cancel them. Understanding and the elimination of the applied defense mechanisms ensure that this weakening of the discernment is completely eliminated.

4. The ability to integrate

Integrating means something different in talk therapy from integration! Imagine that all feelings, thoughts, wishes and experiences are small puzzle pieces. Thanks to your integration skills, you can see all those puzzle pieces in focus. You keep the overview and put that big puzzle together. So you don't just choose the (easy) corner pieces. Or only all pieces on which you recognize that, for example, there is a piece of a ship on it.

Now putting a jig-saw puzzle of 1000 pieces together is quite different from the puzzle of 'human life'. There it is even more important to be able to observe sharply. Don't get overwhelmed by all kinds of information. And then know how to choose such a solution in which as much as possible -preferably all- pieces are discussed.

A well-developed ability to integrate will teach you that there is more often a both/and option as opposed to an either/or solution. This means that your choices can be more careful, so that you do not have to adjust them as often. The ability to integrate is important. Without it, everything you experience and learn remains loose chunks of information. As if a large puzzle consists only of individual puzzle pieces and you fail to put them together.

This ability to integrate also starts very early with the baby. Even after a few hours, the baby can recognize by the smell of breast milk whether he is dealing with his real mother. Animals sometimes show how phenomenal their sound memory is. A sheep recognizes the bleating of her lamb out of hundreds. Of course, this ability must be trained.

With children this happens in a playful way, for example with all those craft and fröbel games. This ability remains important throughout life. It ensures that all information that comes your way, that you read, hear and see can be brought together into a logical and meaningful whole. It also avoids a human tendency to see situations too simple or black and white when faced with problems. One-sided ideas or opinions can pose a risk to physical and mental immunity.

The more you allow one conception, feeling, experience, etc., and always reject other possibilities, the greater are the counter forces that you arouse. Before you know it, you end up in a power play of polarities. The disadvantage of this is that this always evokes a sharpening of those contradictions. The chance that you will drift more away from others as a result, evoke more disharmony, see fewer solutions, then only increases. The ability to integrate learns that there are many sides to a situation. There is not just one solution or one good opinion.

At a psychological level, there is a danger of getting stuck in behaviors based on this 'all-or-nothing' thinking. In technical terms this is called 'splitting' and it is seen as a simplified, childlike way of functioning. (More information about this can be found in chapters 5 to 8 of Tessa Gottschal's book 'I feel/something for change').

On an energetic level, you limit the vitality available to you due to an insufficiently developed integration capacity. As a result, you miss out on an important part of the energy that can flow through your chakras. Energy that affects not only your mental and emotional well-being, but also your physical health.

5. Introspective Abilities

An increase in introspective abilities means that you are able to better perceive and judge your behavior, feelings, thoughts, experiences, memories, and the like. You can, so to speak, look deeper within yourself, consult. This allows you to find more answers to, for example, what motivates you, why this motivates you. Why you look up to someone or why you find someone interesting, etc.

There are quite a few benefits to an increased capacity for introspection. Your independence is increased, you can better check which advice is really good for you. You are also less likely to be led astray or confused. You can create solutions faster and it contributes to more inner peace and contentment. In addition, it makes it easier for you to achieve your goals and wishes.

6. Impulse

control The term impulse control speaks for itself, with this you are able to control impulses that arise in you. This ability usually only gets attention when it leads to problems. Such as impulse purchases or impulsive comments or actions (including binge eating). Good salespeople (and supermarkets) know the power of weak impulse control. They try to arouse that temptation so that you respond to a buying impulse.

It is of course not only with purchases that this impulse is there. Not being able to resist stimulants, immediately responding to someone or constantly interrupting him/her or not letting someone finish. Or if someone says or does something you don't like, spit or hit them. Poor impulse control is associated with many diseases. In anxiety and panic disorders, eating disorders, relational problems up to addiction or violent crimes.

Being able to control yourself, the well-known first – to – ten counting is an art that you often need in life. Even if it's just by reading user instructions, doing odd jobs, getting the computer up and running again, etc.

7. Frustration intolerance

Frustration tolerance means that you can handle setbacks. That it does not upset you or affect your mood. It is closely linked to your impulse control. Frustration grows, for example, because something goes wrong. For example, you are unable to program the electronic alarm clock. For the umpteenth time you drop something, the computer doesn't do what you want, etc. If you can't handle that badly, a low impulse control can cause you to throw that entire alarm clock on the floor or a whole bag of liquorice out of envy. eat.

8. Improved Anxiety Tolerance

Meditation helps against anxiety. This is because in meditation you learn to relax on a very deep level and develop mental resilience. The relaxation that comes from regular meditation is even deeper than sleep can bring about. It is in that deepest relaxation that the body recovers. Recovers from everything it's been exposed to. Hence, daily meditation contributes to better physical and psychological health.

You no longer have to live in fear. And it is better to keep it in perspective. In particular, you will learn how not to let fears develop into panic, because then you will be even further from home.

9. Repairing psychological fault lines

Everyone can have experiences in their life that leave deep traces. Often these are dire events. For example, there can be extreme indifference, abuse, violence, etc., which has evoked intense powerlessness, great insecurity, long-term instability, etc. Understandably, the younger a person is, the more drastic it is for him/her. Sometimes such a situation can have such a profound effect on the psyche that you psychologically 'stand still'.

This 'psychic stagnation' is also called a 'psychological break or fault line'. You can imagine it as a serious and profound crack, an invasion of someone's psyche, of someone's life. Your life has come to a standstill You notice that 'psychological stagnation' because you constantly get -undesirable- images of those situation(s) or that you stop psychologically at a certain level. In the first example, there may be frequent nightmares, or that you are often attacked by bad memories or by 'flash backs' during normal activities. (The brief experience of past frightening events.)

In the second example, you can think of an adolescent who was placed for care at different addresses due to the divorce or death of one of the parents. Or children whose parents are going to divorce, but despite the divorce, one parent continues to defame the other parent.

In these last two examples, the adolescent can 'hang on' on a spiritual level. For an adolescent it is relatively normal that they indicate by mugs that they are not happy with something. With a psychological fault line, it can happen that the adolescent can no longer unlearn that. Even as an adult, he or she only knows by pointing out that something does not suit him or her.

It goes without saying that 'repairing' psychological fault lines takes a lot of time. Psychological guidance is needed longer and the meditations have to be done even more intensively. In addition, it takes more time to get the energy that has been trapped by these events in motion again. At the same time, the natural energetic boundaries must be revised and strengthened.

A psychological fault line often involves intensely experienced emotions. In that respect, you can also see the talk therapies and the special meditation exercises as neutralizing (de-sensitizing) overly charged emotional experiences.

10. Being able to handle

contradictions Easy to deal with contradictions gives emotional peace and is therefore also good for your immunity. Many people find it difficult to deal with contradictions. We would like clarity. I cite a few examples. 'He sees his ex quite often; does he love me now or does he love her too?' Doubt immediately sets in. 'I want to go outside, but I also really want to finish my book.' You should actually visit your parents, but prefer to go out with your own family.

A hallmark of good decisions and careful considerations is precisely that they leave room for both the one and the other. By thinking in 'either – or' you can quickly create an oversimplified representation. Nor does it do justice to the complexity of matters or problems. Especially when it concerns important matters, such as your health, your relationships, your emotional life, etc.

Such an 'either-or' arrangement easily takes you to extremes or extremes. "Either you love me or the other one!" It is right or wrong, black or white. This puts a situation or conversation on edge. That does not help to come to a good solution. Giving in to an 'either-or' solution is unwise for two reasons:

Psychologically, there is a good chance that you will deny feelings, which is not good for your physical and mental health. Even if it is purely because you have to continuously expend energy to constantly push away what you want to deny.

Energetically, 'either-or' views create tensions in your aura and chakras. This means that they can function less optimally, which in turn affects your emotions, interactions with others, your total energy management and ultimately your physical functioning.

For example, by denying feelings of intimacy, your second chakra may become less functional. Suppose you become afraid that your partner is unfaithful to you, if he has to go to another country for months. As a compensation, your forehead chakra may become overactive. This can lead to racing thoughts, or not being able to let go of problems, but also to headaches, sleeping problems, eye problems, etc. Even in extreme situations you can become increasingly suspicious and then see things that are not really there. And that is a very fast way to deteriorate a relationship.

The better you are able to withstand contradictions, the more stable you become emotionally and mentally. Contradictions sometimes cause someone to act immediately instead of thinking calmly first. As a result, 'either-or' thinking often leads to ill-considered actions, quarrels, unjust accusations, stupid statements, unnecessary purchases or wrong decisions. Exchanging opinions can cause problems and lead to relationship problems or problems at work. 'Either-or' thinking makes life more difficult than enjoyable.

Art brut → inspiration

3d installation
https://stamparein3d.it/on-our-minds-unicef-%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8Bstampa-in-3d-linstallazione-artistica-di-sensibilizzazione-sulla-salute-mentale/

https://www.cirifletto.it/6-benefici-della-pittura-terapia/

Painting, specifically, is a beautiful way to express yourself. To express feelings and thoughts. When there is a need to communicate them, and you don't know how to do it. It is a type of alternative and natural therapy that can have multiple benefits.

1. Communication improves. People are initially shy and reserved. And they have a hard time communicating with others. However, with painting, shy people are able to overcome the wall of communication and free their creativity, to the point of expressing feelings and emotions.
2. Self-esteem is strengthened. When painting is practiced in a non-competitive, relaxing and pleasant environment, great personal goals can be achieved. And that will boost your self-esteem. This aspect is important for people with addiction problems and who need to increase their autonomy and learn to love and value themselves.
3. Motor skills are recovered. As when we play an instrument, even with painting, handling a brush or a pencil, we learn to regulate the movements of the hand and develop brain connections related to this skill.
4. The whole brain works. Both the left and right hemispheres of the brain are stimulated with drawing and painting. The left hemisphere has to do with the logical and rational aspect. While the right one is connected to creativity and emotions. Thus this synergy provides for freeing the imagination and letting it fly. So that even the deepest thoughts, which have remained dormant, can express themselves.
5. Increase your focus. Dedicating yourself to painting, or to other forms of art, requires concentration. Painting can be a meticulous job that allows you to forget about the environment and let yourself go. Passing the time without realizing it. And even when it becomes gestural and instinctive, concentration remains, however, a fundamental part of the work.
6.Emotions flow freely. Emotions are a very important part of creativity. With painting it is possible to let them flow and experience happiness, sadness, love, pain, empathy and inner peace. The feeling of relaxation obtained with painting helps to achieve a harmonious balance between the mind and the heart.

The idea that art has a therapeutic value is very old : the history of the creative arts, in fact, has often been intertwined with that of mental health. The ancient Greeks already attributed a cathartic function to theater, which was used to release repressed emotions and rediscover a balanced lifestyle. The Greek theater can be seen today as a sort of “art-therapeutic support”.

In the twentieth century, thanks to psychoanalysis (and especially with Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Carl Jung (1875-1961)), the first steps were taken towards art—therapy as we understand it now.
The Arts that can be used for “beneficial” purposes are many:

- visual (painting, sculpture, collage, photography, video, comics, etc)
- music (music therapy) (Editor's note. See previous articles "MUSIC" WELLNESS FOR THE SOUL AND THE BODY - 1st Part and 2nd Part)
- dance (dance therapy)
- theater (theater therapy)

The areas in which art therapy is used most successfully are:

- medical-psychiatric
context - rehabilitation
The latter is also used with children, the elderly, adolescents and adults with physical handicaps. It becomes a playful experience, a game without judgments or conditioning.
The goal is not to "do well", but it is to communicate our thoughts and emotions. In the rehabilitation of people with neurological damage or physical handicaps, expressing oneself creatively can help reduce the denial of disability, achieve greater personal autonomy and develop healthy social relationships.

- education-prevention
contexts A form of education in sensitivity, creativity, self-awareness and self-acceptance. It favors a greater knowledge of oneself in moments of change that occur in life (e.g. marital crisis, job change, mild depression following e.g. retirement, etc.).

- medical
field useful for the emotional regulation of patients suffering from chronic diseases, or waiting to undergo major surgery. Often used with children and cancer patients.
Painting is a beautiful way of expressing oneself, of expressing feelings and thoughts. Drawing and painting are used in art therapy to acquire or enhance the ability to contact emotions and represent them in a fantastic dimension through form and color. Furthermore, since it requires the activation of visuo-motor coordination and the ability to make fine and precise movements, it also benefits from a motor point of view.

Drawing takes on three meanings in art therapy:

- playful (to create)
- narrative (to tell about oneself) and
- cognitive (to ask oneself and answer questions).

Above all, it has a projective value: in fact, it allows one's conflicts and anxieties to become “concrete and visible”. This helps the person to see the problem "from the outside" and allows to face it more positively and effectively.

In addition, it improves communication and the ability to be together.

In the group we build strength and courage, we appreciate our own work and those of others.

https://www.stateofmind.it/2016/05/van-gogh-pittura-nevrosi/

Van Gogh and sunflowers

Guided meditation script:

Guided meditation research and inspiration:

https://youtu.be/rrLkhg3fA0M

https://www.netflix.com/search?q=headspace&jbv=81280926

https://www.va.gov/WHOLEHEALTHLIBRARY/docs/Script-Mindful-Breathing.pdf

Sofia text