Bo Sebastian's Finding Authentic You!

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Like for Love

Liking a friend is authentic; it simply is a smaller desire to connect than love. But in the matter of intimate relationships, no one would rather be liked than loved. So, the question you must ask yourself, if you are in a relationship where you are the only one giving love is: Do I want to continue in an unbalanced relationship?

I do accept the idea that loving someone is completely a selfish act. Love is completely yours to give. However, when someone loves you back, it brings up a completely different feeling. Receiving love is more an act of security than it is passion.

A securely attached person can love without feeling as if love should be expected in return. This same securely attached person can receive love when you offer it. The person who can’t accept love, is anxious about love, or is confused about love has a problem with attachment in relationships.

Many relationships are made of anxious attachment and avoidant attachment types connected together in an unhealthy manner. One loves too much; the other can’t receive love fully. This relationship becomes a confusing mess.

Attachment disorder is not your fault, generally. Your basic adult attachment comes from the moment you came out of the womb. Did you get touched? Did you receive the kind of nurturing that felt healthy and secure? Did your parents neglect you? Did they leave you in your crib to cry for hours? Did you not comprehend their intention in loving you; such as in the way they scolded or corrected your behavior? Did something catastrophic happen as a child such as the death of a parent or sibling?

These basic questions can bring about a multitude of attachment feelings; some of anxiety (anxious attachment), some feelings of ambivalence (avoidant attachment), or simply a feeling of security. The book “Attached.” by Amir Levine is a potent example of how attachment disorder can disrupt relationship and ruin it, if not dealt with properly.

Many of my past relationships have been with Avoidantly Attached types. I believe that as a person who had been abandoned by my mother as a child of eight, I developed an anxious attachment disorder. This means when I am presented with love, I cling to it and probably have sucked the life out of it. The unfortunate problem with anxious attachment disorder is that it usually attracts avoidantly attached people.

The avoidant wants love but doesn’t want to accept the basic responsibilities of relationship. He/she wants to attach sometimes, but will pull away often for work, with moodiness, or simply by pushing you away with hurtful comments. I don’t believe that avoidant people are necessarily bad people. They are, however, hard to relate to in relationship. They make it very difficult to feel any kind of security. They do this, perhaps, because they don’t know how to create any kind of secure attachment for themselves.

I can go out with someone now and recognize this avoidant or anxious attachment and realize that “like” is about the most I’ll ever feel with this person. This perception is a great knowledge to have when looking for a mate. I believe, realizing early on in the mating ritual the limitations of your combined personalities is a very rational behavior.

If you look for love in an irrational, passionate way, you will probably end up falling in love with someone who can’t love you back, which has been my experience a lot. That’s why one needs to take time to see if a person is capable of loving completely.

I have spent many years in therapy and with hypnosis techniques to change the anxious, gut response of my childhood behavior. Trust me, it is tedious, yet gratifying work. I now feel as if I can love completely without the need to absorb another person’s life into mine. I feel autonomous and strangely okay with the truth. In fact, I invite it way more often than avoid it.

If you haven’t read Amir Levine’s book, I’d recommend it highly. You will be pleasantly surprised how easy these unresponsive behaviors are to spot and avoid in your seeking for secure love.

Ultimately, you deserve to be loved completely. Don’t allow yourself to believe that you desire anything less.

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Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available for private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com.

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Saturday, July 6, 2013

The Intent

So many words in life can take on different meanings as we travel through time. Look at the word gay. In the 1890s it meant joyous. Fag meant cigarette. Dikes are used to prevent flooding. Yet, as the years have passed, some of the terms have turned into detrimental language that is no longer appropriate in our modern vernacular.

For instance, a great of deal of people say “Namaste” at the end of yoga class and even more in the Hindu culture just say it with folded hands and bow their heads, but do you really know what the word means?

It literally means in the Sanskrit: salutations to you.

For many years I was told it meant, “God in me honors the God in you.” It could imply that, but it doesn’t mean that. Perhaps, yogis over the years have made the word a symbol of good intent. I’m not sure.

I often think of a technique actors use called “subtext” when thinking of the meaning of a word. The intent of the actor is to think of a feeling, such as anger or joy, then speak the word or the sentence.

The idea is that we actually don’t hear the word the actor speaks, we “feel” the intent behind the word spoken. So, a good actor can convince you that he/she is evil without actually saying anything evil. The malicious intent speaks volumes in the subtext of his eyes and actions.

As human beings, we often think that people don’t see our intent. How untrue. Most of us can spot an unauthentic person a mile away. I had been told in college and when I lived in NYC that I came off too nice and it appeared fake. So, I developed a persona that was less concerned about what people thought about me. Soon, no one was saying that about me. Later in life, I decided to not be what I am is completely against everything I believe. I have changed my persona back to what it was.

I tend to lead with nice, because that is just what I believe and want in return. People who are offended by that are people who probably aren’t nice inside and have anger tucked neatly beneath their firmly pressed outfits and coifed hair. To me, none of that makes a difference. The only thing I look for in a person when he/she speaks to me is an authentic connection between his/her words and actions.

If you find that the intent of a person is suspect, run away. You are very perceptive and know when someone is not being honest to you. The only times in my life that I regret are the times I didn’t trust my instincts. Our instincts lead us to our truths. Trust them dearly. Instincts are your ally.

We have within us an intuition that we can develop as we become quiet and turn inward with meditation and prayer. If we listen to our hearts and bodies, we will be the embodiment of spirit, because there is no other way to be when you are in touch with God. You become more compassionate, loving, thoughtful and listen to the inner workings of your mind and the call of nature in the metaphors of life.

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Friday, July 5, 2013

Tweaked

Since I turned fifty, my yoga practice has been delicate and more sensitively driven than when I was younger. Every pose in yoga has alternative ways of doing it, using yoga blocks, blankets, straps, and wedges to help keep pressure off of areas of your body that need your mental attention. No pose has to be perfect. In fact, the perfect pose in yoga is when you do it according to the prerequisites of your body. I’m assuming that every exercise regimen can follow those simple rules.

I do talk a great deal about unlimited God and good. I believe prosperity and wisdom abounds as you believe you are a child of God. However, whenever we speak of unlimited good, we don’t often talk about how our physical self sometimes becomes limited by the age or by injuries.

I keep myself secure and free from harm when I live within constraints that protect my body. If I had IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), I’m not going to subject my body to large amounts of caffeine, raw vegetables, and insoluble fiber; because I know that this will cause stomach cramps and diarrhea. If I have had a heart attack, I don’t eat fatty food and over exert myself on a stifling hot day. If I have a broken hand, I’m not going to try to lift a piano.

With what measure we are physically limited, we take the proper precautions, either to keep ourselves from more pain or to heal from the problem. This isn’t a lack of prosperity or health. This is sense!

If you have bad knees, make sure that in your exercise you wear a knee brace. Don’t try to turn your leg inward without turning your foot first! Don’t do yoga’s pigeon pose without a blanket under the opposite hip. Take precautions!

The other idea is that you must keep in mind that, as you get older, you are less likely to be able to do more agile movements. For instance, I went to an amusement park with my family last week. Roller coasters, twirling seats, and rides that jerk my neck back are now off limits for me—and my stomach.

I went bowling a few days before that. I think that bowling is now off my to-do list, as I spent three days with a stiff neck and made two appointments for massages and acupuncture. I spent $200 trying to fix a two-hour fun time with the family—not an equitable exchange, indeed.

Then two days later I decided to try a difficult yoga pose while teaching class. As you can imagine, if you do a pose that takes your effort and concentration in front of a class of thirty people, you are not going to have the inward focus you will need to listen to your body. So, in an effort not to fall over in front of my students, I pulled at my knee, giving myself a tweaked kneecap. I had to wear a knee brace today to teach without pain and to protect myself from further hurt and pain.

Limitation is part of aging. I guess, we should all just accept that and move on. Some men and women can prolong this process by pushing gently into their bodies and keeping it agile. Others, like me, are subject to injury because of family genes that produce an arthritic condition that I can’t seem to change. Believe me, I have tried everything vitamin, diet, and therapy my entire life.

Today, I am just glad that I can recognize my limitations and proceed with caution. If I can live a day without pain, believe me, I’m going to. The only way I can avoid the excusable—but avoidable tweak—is to be vigilant and listen to the voice of my body, every day, every moment.

Namaste.

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Thursday, July 4, 2013

Precious Little Control

Even the most OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) person will tell you, he can keep all his shirts pressed, color coded, and equidistant apart in his closet, but he can’t tell the sun to shine or dance for the rain to fall. In short, we have precious little control over the goings on in our lives.

What exactly do we have control of, and how can we take that precious control and make it calm our minds and hearts about the future?

Imagine that you look at life through the lens of a video camera. All that is going on is being played out as if on a movie screen in front of you. If you can imagine this scenario, then you know that the one person you don’t see on the screen is YOU! That is because you are the director of your life.

Now, let’s imagine that the show viewed in front of you is a baby playing with a toy on the living room carpet. If you took that scene and played a spooky, haunting music clip behind it, you might think that the baby is in impending danger. However, if you played “Music Box Dancer” behind it, then you may feel joyous.

In other words what is superimposed onto the scene in front of you comes from the director—You! If something tragic happens in your life, and the music that you play or the voice over is something positive and peaceful, such as: I’m not sure why this is happening, but I know I’ll be safe and provided for; then, you are more likely not to react frantically or irrationally.

I was driving home with my friend Sharon. She noticed that a car in front of me three different times had acted crazily. She said, “If that were me, I would have gotten upset and beeped my horn.”

I said, “Sharon, how much life do you want to lose over something you can’t control? I figure that I make driving errors all the time, and people have to put up with me. I’ll just let them slide and give them the benefit of the doubt. Besides, I can’t control what happens “to” me when I’m driving. I can only drive defensively and hope the rest of the world does too.”

She laughed. “Good point!”

Sharon gets that I don’t let much rattle me. I decided long ago that with my “precious little control” I was going to try to set the scene with peace and joy and laughter. That’s much more my style and befitting for the moment.

My dear Blog Readers, you can’t control the elements, the people around you, or God; so don’t waste your precious life and joy trying to.

If you are stuck in the middle of a tornado, duck into a bathtub. If you have a partner in relationship that is bugging you with some attitude or behavior that is irritating, then just simply ask him/her to stop. If your query is met with bitching and ranting, then move on. If you think you can tell God when you are going to die, you have not experienced much of life. Children, friends, and family die unexpectedly all the time. We have absolutely no control over it.

But what I learn each time death happens is that I have wasted way too much time trying to control what I can’t, and not doing what makes me happy. Use your precious control to change the one person that matters—YOU!

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Wednesday, July 3, 2013

The Fortune Begins with You

My entire life, I have been listening to people say, “If only I could win the lottery, I would be okay.”

Really? Who wouldn’t be okay—at least, financially?

I had a friend who got laid off today. He was depressed, as you can imagine. He thought, this is just my bad luck. But the truth is, this guy believes that God is in control of his life. If he truly believes that, then Rejection is Direction. Right?

Being laid off might be the catalyst to find his dream job, to make more money than he’s ever made before, or to find a friend that is essential to his spiritual growth. Who knows what the reason is, only that it is? We have to be okay with the now, with the present situation, no matter what course it takes in our lives.

If you’re a seeker, than you will probably be asking yourself the question, why, when something happens that changes the course in your life. That’s a good thing to do. Ask Spirit to send you messages and answers through people and the metaphors of nature. Surely, you will see a sign that will direct you. Why would God want you to be lost? God wouldn’t.

You may expect that you will be depressed or despairing, if you lose a relationship or a job. But your reality doesn’t have to be negative. It can be positive.

Do a treatment I use on myself. It is a combination of NLP and EMDR and self-hypnosis.

When a negative emotion comes up, I hold on to it with my breath. I clench my sphincter muscle (like the Kegel exercise) and feel the emotion in my chest, as I hold my breath. Then when I release my breath, I imagine releasing the emotion as well.

I then close my eyes, as I exhale, and move my eyes like small erasers to the right and to the left as I touch a place on my body that we will call your anchor. When I touch that anchor, I repeat to myself out loud, “Direction, not rejection!”

So, you will have accomplished a few things when you do this exercise. You will feel as if you are bringing up an emotion and actually physically embracing it. You will integrate that same feeling with your right and leftbrain. You will anchor a positive thought to this sensation that will counter the negative thought.

All of this will eventually evaporate the old belief in yourself and create new power you never thought you had.

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Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available f

or private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com.

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Tuesday, July 2, 2013

You Are a Living Magnet

This morning I witnessed a bat fall from a tree. Soon after she fell, she gave birth to three babies. What amazed me was that she left each child far from her because she knew each would attach itself to her to be fed. She had to deliver all three before she could start to nurture the first.

By the time she gave birth to three birds that looked to be her size, which was amazing in itself, the first baby had found its way back to her teats. It fed for about five minutes, then like magic, wings began to unfold from its sides like mystical vampires lurking in shadows. Suddenly, the first flew away.

I was astounded. How was this tiny mammal able to find its way to its mother, feed for just a few minutes, and fly without any kind of nurturing or tutoring. Soon the last two fed and flew away as well. The mother looked as if she had died in the process of producing her offspring. But soon life came back to her. She flew off as well. Her sacrifice and appearance of death signifies the ritual of shamanic death of the old teacher before the new initiate appears.

What a miracle of life. I don’t know if you have been reading my blogs, but a couple of days ago, I had two small birds fly into my windshield as if they were two bomb shells and died immediately on the road behind me. I was saddened by the experience, but had a feeling that they had sacrificed their tiny lives to show me a lesson. Today the metaphor began to come to completion when I saw a bat, which in Indian totem means new beginnings or rebirth, gave birth to three babies.

So, two old lives were taken away by me, as three new lives were born in front of me. The Indian totem reading went on to say that the trial period of my life had ended and it was time for new relationship, work, and joy to burst forth (three offspring when the death of the old appeared).

I have been praying about many things lately in my life. I know that there is a perfect timing for all that we desire and hope. But what was given to me in a message of the birds has been a continuing message from the time I found the dead bird under the pine, then just after two birds mating under the same pine tree. That was right before I met Allen. Then I had the message on my daily reading from the scripture bowl at the YMCA that said, “Consider the birds.” Apparently, angels are using the birds of the field to convey major messages to my life.

With eyes wide open I am hearing and listening intently to all the direction and messages, knowing that every life given and taken away will be duly utilized in my ultimate growth.

I am a magnet. What is inside my mind will express itself in kind. If I believe in my ultimate good and prosperity, there—I will likely be. If I believe in my demise and the past mistakes, they also will reappear. As far as relationship goes, if you desire someone wonderful, you must also become that wonderful person. Like attracts like! The magic of life is within us all—like magnets we attract what we are.

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Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available f

or private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com.

* * *

Don't Live LIfe Backwards

Don’t Live Backwards

If you haven’t ever noticed before, the word LIVE backwards spells EVIL! What an amazing metaphor for life. If you are going backwards, that may be the definition you have been needing for the word evil.

The word evil has always been a bit of a conundrum. I don’t like to use the word because I think even believing it exists gives it power. However, you can’t look around you without noticing that plenty of negativity exists in the world.

I go back to the Book of Job in the bible. Satan was God’s pawn in the process of testing Job. Satan wasn’t bad; he was simply doing what God asked him to do. Satan was created as the opposing force of Good. If you believe God is all in all and that God is the creator of all things and has a divine purpose, you must also believe there is a reason and a purpose for evil—or whatever you choose to call it.

When I stopped looking at the present as a moment in time that could possibly be hurting me, taking something away from me, or be killing me, I realized that I have no fear of death, because there is a purpose for my life. When I stop having the purpose I’ve been put here to do, I will cease to exist on this playing field.

I really don’t have a problem with that. I find that people who are caught up in life and in the treasures of life as if no other purpose exists except to bring them joy or pleasure, they are sorely disappointed in anything negative that goes on in their lives. Big news! Negativity has its purpose in life. And it may be here solely to teach you your biggest lesson.

As I have realized that the sun and moon don’t rise and fall just for me, nor does the rain and thunder fall on my enemies only, life is just life. Human existence is ephemeral and fleeting. We have a certain amount of time to exist for a purpose; whether it be to learn a lesson, serve the world, or to be addicted to drugs to discover a higher purpose or teach a parent a hard lesson about codependency, we have a distinct amount of time here.

If you don’t use it wisely, put aside the time you spend on contemplating the past, and treasure the now as if it were all you have, then eventually you will become depressed and angry about life. Then, once again, you will have the opportunity to learn a lesson that could put you on the pathway to peace, or you could choose to live backwards and form some more evil to help you understand why and how and when all things went askew in your life.

Take a lesson from a man who has lived life from all sides now. When I am looking down as an observer, I’m more comfortable, able to live fully, and take advantage of every joy and opportunity that is presented to me.

Namaste.

* * *

Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available f

or private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com.

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Bo Sebastian's Finding Authentic You!

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Like for Love

Saturday, July 6, 2013

The Intent

Friday, July 5, 2013

Tweaked

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Precious Little Control

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

The Fortune Begins with You

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

You Are a Living Magnet

Don't Live LIfe Backwards

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