4 Effective Strategies for Aligning Your Shoulders - Part 2 of 2

1. Posture awareness whilst seated
I view every patient as a professional athlete. Just like an athlete invests time on a daily basis to train their body in preparation for an athletic endeavour. In the same respect, patient's every day are investing time in certain postures that can either be favourable or unfavourable to their physical condition. It's all about self-awareness and self-correction. Ideally, if you've spent 6-hours seated each day with an improper posture then you need spend another 6-hours after work stretching and exercising to counteract the imbalance. Not going to happen, right! So, a much simpler solution is to combine your 6-hours of sitting with a distinct attention to what is more ideal, this way you gain 6-hours each day of re-educating your body to have a more optimal alignment. Plus, when you actively engage your muscles to align your body you increase your metabolic rate and calorie burning. Added bonus!

2. One-to-three minute focused stretching
If I'm going to be sat researching for an hour or longer, I build into my schedule a series of stretches that I can dedicate a maximum of 3-minutes to. I would recommend to do this every 1-hour.The more frequent you can be, the greater the outcome for correcting your posture. Essentially, you need to stretch the short-tight muscles only. For example, recalling from our anatomy lesson from Part 1 of this article, the rhomboids and related spino-scapular muscles are muscles that do not need to be stretched. The primary muscles to stretch include the sub-occipitals, upper trapezius, pectoral, abdominals, hip flexors and hamstrings/calf. Try these stretches illustrated. All of these stretches can easily be modified and performed whilst standing.








3. Frequent movement breaks away from your desk
Set a timer on your computer or phone for 30-minutes and take a 1-minute movement break. If you have chance to simply take a bathroom break, walk a corridor or even perform the breathing squat exercise for 20-30 reps - this is a step forward from being permanently seated for a prolonged period of time. The breathing squat is one of my favourite movement patterns. It will stimulate movement, blood flow, stretch the muscles and joints and internally massage your organs aiding in digestion and elimination. Exhale as you descend into the squat, inhale as you stand upright. Move comfortably toward as full a depth as you can, avoiding any pain. Two important notes: 1. This should not be performed if you have a recent surgery (spine or lower extremity), disc herniation or severe scoliosis. 2. Very important that your clothing permits you to complete the full range of movement!



4. Taking dedicated time (20-minutes) every 3-days to strengthen the muscles that become lengthened and weakened due to a seated posture.
This is a very important step to see a correction in your posture. Massage is very soothing and effective for treating chronic tension. Chiropractic is very effective for realigning your spine and related joints. Stretching is effective for short-tight muscles. Meditation is great for alleviating mental emotions such as frustration and anxiety. Ultimately though, you must invest dedicated time to strengthening the longer-weak muscles. To do this, the target muscles include the cervical (neck) extensors, rhomboids, middle/lower trapezius, deep spinal stabilizers and core muscles. Primarily, the focus should be on patterns that are either held for 10-secs+ or moving for 15+ repetitions. The column of exercises to the left are examples of corrective exercises for helping to restore a more optimal alignment. Performing the Hover with a neutral position (notice the red line that shows an alignment of the ear-to shoulder-to hip) will target shoulder stability, cervical, core and postural strength. This can be done with your knees on the floor or lifted. To advance this movement you can perform with your feet on a Swiss ball and hands on the floor. Go for time on this one - maximum 3-minute hold. The Prone Cobra will target the spino-scapular and lower back muscles. The target on this is to accumulate a total time under tension of 3-minutes. An example would be 18-repetitions of 10-second holds, equaling 180-secs. You can then vary the reps and holds to work toward an end-goal of 1 rep of 3-minutes. The Superman, performed by alternating the arms and legs, can be a high rep (25 per side) exercise or similar to the Prone Cobra, you can work toward less reps and longer holds. 

I always recommend if you are unsure about how to effectively perform any recommended stretch or exercise then seek out advice from either myself or a qualified exercise specialist. If you have any pre-existing health conditions, seek your physician's advice. Remember, even with these exercises, if you have a recent surgery, disc herniation or severe scoliosis seek further medical advice prior to beginning this program.

Yours In Muscle Health,
Jason Barlow, B.Sc. (Hons), RMT, CSCS, CHEK HLC
www.endyoumusclepain.com
www.facebook.com/massageokotoks

P.S. If anyone can shed light on why my Blogger does this crazy thing with the fonts please comment below :)

4 Effective Strategies for Aligning Your Shoulders - Part 1 of 2

Somewhere, something went wrong
I never get bored with this image because as they say 'a picture paints a thousand words'. What I want you to focus on in particular is the faulty posture of the head, neck and shoulders. Always remember that this image is also showing a series of highly functional movement patterns and postures. I'm not here to advocate only ever having a fully erect, neutral spine, 24/7. The spine is designed for a series of directional movements such as flexion, extension, lateral bending and rotation. However, most important is HOW LONG you are training your posture to be away from neutral position.

What is Your Daily Postural Investment (DPI)
If you are investing several hours a day behind an office desk then you are teaching your muscles and skeletal system to adapt to a sitting position for that many hours. From my point of view this is dedicated time in which you can pay close attention to your posture and stretching strategies to make the most of the situation. Otherwise there is a greater possibility of matching our friend in the above image sat at his computer (however you may be wearing clothing!). Most important is to ensure you allocate some time in your day to help counteract the typical curved posture that feels most comfortable when seated for prolonged periods. Simple strategies, in order of priority, can include:
1. Posture awareness whilst seated
2. One-to-three minute focused stretching
3. Frequent 'movement' breaks away from your desk
4. Taking dedicated time (20-minutes) every 3-days to strengthen the muscles that become lengthened and weakened due to a seated posture.

Anatomy of the Posterior Shoulder

The rhomboid muscles and neighboring spino-scapula muscles are the most common muscles that I treat day-to-day. Typically, patients arrive with some symptom which may include pain, burning & fatigue in the region of the posterior shoulder and/or headaches and migraines. An essential lesson here is that these muscles are often the longer-weaker muscles (a.k.a. eccentric tissues) that are being stretched due to improper alignment of the spine and shoulders commonly caused by sitting and sleeping postures. In addition, the anterior shoulder muscles (pectoral, subscapularis and latissimus dorsi) are powerful, short-tight muscles (a.k.a. concentric tissues) that when 'trained' every day for several hours at a time, habitually pull the shoulder forward creating a tug-of-war situation between the anterior and posterior muscles. As the posterior spino-scapula muscles are usually weaker they are stretched more and more, creating a stretch effect through the nerve and blood vessels which in turn communicate pain to the brain to get you to do something to alleviate the unnecessary overload. Application of heat, massage, ball rolling and lying down are usually very effective, in the short-term. For long-term investment though, I highly recommend you invest your time and energy in corrective the positioning of your shoulders, head and neck.

Join me for Part 2 of this article later this week and I will share the 4 essential strategies to help realign your head, neck and shoulder posture.

In the meantime, if it's been longer than 6-weeks since your last massage treatment, call me today to schedule your maintenance treatment -403 589 4645. 

Yours In Muscle Health,

Jason Barlow, B.Sc. (Hons), RMT, CSCS, CHEK HLC

www.endyourmusclepain.com

www.facebook.com/massageokotoks

The Missing Link to Pain Relief

Time Travel

Let's imagine we travel back 50,000 years ago. What would be missing from our existence? What is the first thought that comes to your mind? Money, iPhone, car, career? We'd more than likely have some kind of family/community, shelter and source of food. After all, what else do you truly 'need' to survive. I once asked Frank Forencich, author and founder of www.ExuberantAnimal.com, what would have been the causes of mortality to humans 50,000 years ago. As an expert in functional movement and evolutionary development, I thought he'd be the best to predict what the common causes would have been:

Top 10 leading causes of death in the world, 50,000 years ago
1. Infant mortality – birth to year 1

2. Simple exposure: hyper or hypothermia

3. Predation or non-carnivorous animal attacks

4. Bacterial infection, skin lesions & wounds

5. Lightning strikes

6. Starvation

7. Water-borne disease

8. Trauma from accidents or assaults (falling off cliffs, out of trees...)

9. Drowning in swift rivers

10. Heart disease, strokes and infectious disease

Now let's compare this to our modern day version:

      Top 10 leading causes of death in the world, 2011(World Health Organization)

1. Ischaemic heart disease

2. Stroke

3. Lower respiratory infection

4. COPD

5. Diarrhoeal diseases

6. HIV/AIDS

7. Trachea bronchus, lung cancers

8. Diabetes Mellitus

9. Road injury

10. Prematurity

Okay, after a brief history of time, you are probably thinking how does this have anything 

to do with my back pain? Read on...

Take a Chill Pill

Staying with our ancestral ties for another minute, think about what our levels of stress would have been like 50,000 years ago? I don't believe it would have revolved around 'weight loss', 'chronic disease', 'money', 'career' or the 'commute to work'. I'm confident that we would have had survival stress (hunting, fighting, being hunted even, surviving climate issues) to deal with but that the bouts of high stress would have been few and far between, momentary in nature and with a good spread of time between bouts that we had ample time for our physiology to recover and for our body/mind to heal. Our modern day, monumental challenge that we face daily is the excessive amount of repeated bouts of high stress (family life, finances, exercise, food, medication, work etc.) with minimal (if any), time for recovery. Even during the optimal mode of recovery, sleep, we are often experiencing disrupted sleep, too few hours of sleep and/or are dependent upon some kind of medication or supplement to induce sleep. Not the best physiological position to be in from my opinion.

Yin & Yang of Physiology

Figure 1 illustrates the normal cycles of anabolic (tissue building) and catabolic (tissue destroying) cycles that should take place every 24-hour cycle. Needless to say most people are not according with this. Figure 2 shows us the exaggerated stress response which is often what people are experiencing. Compare the two figures and you can see clearly in figure 2 how extended the catabolic phase is and how reduced the anabolic phase is. The greater your deviate away from the natural circadian rhythm of figure 1, the more you experience pain, slower recovery from injury, overall mental frustration, little or no body shape transformation, illness and a plethora of other symptoms, which are simply an attempt of your physiology to wake you up to an imbalance in your body.

Figure 1. Black line indicates catabolic hormone cycle and the white line indicates anabolic hormone cycle. (Taken from How To Eat, Move & Be Healthy by Paul Chek)

Figure 2. Black line indicates catabolic hormone cycle and the white line indicates anabolic hormone cycle. (Taken from How To Eat, Move & Be Healthy by Paul Chek)

These illustrations should help you to understand the importance of 'winding down' at the end of your evening, so that you can reduce physiological stimulation and encourage the natural cycle of physical and psychological repair that should be taking place from when the sun sets to when the sun rises the next morning. The more stimulated we are in the evening through caffeine, alcohol, artificial lighting, working through the night or watching television, the less chance we will feel revitalized and recovered the next morning. Continue you this cycle for weeks, months and years, what do you get? Premature aging, chronic disease, increased injury risk, chronic pain and mental illness. 

      The Missing Link!

Did you figure out the missing ingredient? It is rest. We are usually lacking sufficient rest relative to the amount of stimulation that we experience each day. My advice is for you to create balance in your life by affording more time to de-stimulate your physiology through a choice of activities such as Tai Chi, Qi Gong, meditation, restorative yoga, light stretching, slow walking, more sleep and escaping the stimulants (caffeine, sugar, TV and Facebook!). Remember it's the dose that makes the poison. Strike a balance and let your body help you to figure that out. The more symptoms you experience the more you need to de-stimulate your physiology. The less symptoms you experience the more you can stimulate your body and experience positive changes to your body shape and healing speed.

Start right now with a fresh perspective! Need some coaching. Just ask!

To your health and vitality,

Jason.

P.S. I apologize on behalf of Blogger for the crazy, misalignment of the text in this blog post. Weird things were starting to happen with Blogger and I wanted to get my beauty sleep!

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Obliquity: The Source of Intolerable Cruelty!

Ever heard of this before?
In all my years of schooling and advanced courses that I have taken since my degree I had not heard of obliquity in the human body until 2011 when I started to learn NeuroSomatic Therapy with Paul St. John. Through this unique therapeutic approach we were taught there are six dimensions to a postural evaluation. Now stick with me because there is a test for you!

POSTURE PATTERN	FORCE CREATED
Tilt	Lateral Compression
Rotation	Torque
Flexion	Anterior Compression
Extension	Posterior Compression
Projection	Anterior Shearing
Obliquity	Lateral Shearing

Table 1 - The six primary posture patterns and their related forces

Now only if was that simple. In every patient that I have evaluated I commonly see a mixture of several of these posture patterns some of which are created as the body attempts to counterbalance another posture pattern elsewhere (a.k.a. compensatory stress). I have measured many patients that have multiple postural patterns (bad posture) and yet the patient has little or no pain to speak about. On the other hand, I've measured and found patients with minimal postural distortion (good posture) and yet they complain of chronic pain in one or more areas of the body. The difference has typically come down to the presence of obliquity in those with minimal postural patterns.

Posture Chart 1 - An example of a Posturology chart for one of my patient's. Note the multiple posture patterns that essentially misalign the whole body.

The common site of obliquity
Obliquity creates the greatest havoc in the regions of the pelvis and the temporal bones of the skull. According to the 'Lovett Reactor Relationship' (I hope you are taking notes for that test that will be coming!), the pelvis has a strong line of communication with the bones of the skull. In particular, the ilium bones (A in image 1) work in opposition to the temporal bones of the skull. Think of when you walk. Ideally, the opposite arm swings with the opposite leg. In essence this same pattern of working in opposition applies to the example here of the pelvis and skull. 

Image 1 - The Human Pelvis - the ilium bones (A) on either side can turn in (inflare) or turn out (outflare) creating a tremendous force through the sacro-iliac joint and compensatory stress elsewhere.

Image 2 - The Temporal Bones of the Skull (red) - similar to the ilium bones of the pelvis these bones can also turn in (inflare) or turn out (outflare) creating a tremendous force through the joints inside the skull and compensatory stress elsewhere.

The Righting Reflex
Naturally, if you stand up and push your hips to one side your shoulders will move in the opposite direction to attempt to balance your body, thus preventing you from falling over. This is known as the righting reflex. This can happen on a very subtle level as I often measure between the pelvic bones and cranial (skull) bone relationships. Here is where it gets interesting. There are occasions when I've measured obliquity in the skull and the pelvis but they've essentially 'cancelled' each other out which tends to lead to a patient having little or pain. However, when the forces between the pelvis and skull have not cancelled themselves out, a patient typically has a greater experience of pain. This can be an all distinguishing factor between a patient with no pain and a patient with chronic pain. 

Action steps
Two simple home techniques to measure if any of this applies to you is to have a friend measure for obliquity.

To measure obliquity in the cranium:
1. Lay on your back.
2. Have your friend use a pair of noodle sticks or two pencils and place them on either side of the skull where a pair of glasses would position above the ears toward the eyes.
3. Note the angle difference between left and right side. The side with the greater angle would said to be an inflare. The example in the image to the right is a patient with left side temporal inflare.
4. If both angles are equivalent then this would be an optimal alignment of these two bones.



To measure obliquity in the pelvis:
1. Lay on your back.
2. Have your friend place their index fingers on the inside of the Anterior Superior Iliac Spine's (ASIS) (bony protuberances of the pelvis). 
3. Using the belly button as a centre line, note the approximate distance from left ASIS to the centre line and then the right ASIS to the centre line.
4. The side with a greater distance from the centre line to the ASIS is said to be outflared and the side with less distance from the centre line is said to be inflared. The example in the image to the right is a patient with left side ilium inflare.
5. If both measurements are equal then this would an optimal alignment of these two bones.

These images are a great example of a patient who has is not meeting the demands of the righting reflex as both the left temporal and ilium are flaring in. In this situation a patient typically presents a higher level of pain. Ideally if the body is meeting the demands of the righting reflex we would see either the temporal and ilium bones are equally centered or left temporal inflare is counterbalanced by right ilium inflare (or vice versa that right temporal inflare is counterbalanced by left ilium inflare).

Congratulations on learning something that most patients are unaware of and in my experience a lot of therapists have also yet to discover.

Yours In Health,

Jason Barlow, B.Sc. (Hons), RMT

Put Your Head on Straight

Breaking the Cycle 
One of the most common postures that I see in the clinic is the forward head posture which is often caused by our daily postural investment in how we sit whilst driving, sat at the office and relaxing on our couch in the evening. That being said anytime we then walk, hit the gym or take care of the kids, unless we are very attentive to our head alignment, due to the hours we have invested during the day training our head to be forward, it feels natural for it to be off center. Think prevention because unless we experience some kind of symptom or someone kindly points out how much our head is forward of the spine (try that one in the grocery store!) then we don't usually recognize this, sometimes subtle, misalignment of our body.

Simple Facts

The human head is approximately 8% of total body weight, so for a male weighing 180-lbs, his head would weigh approximately 14-lbs. Now for every 1-inch the head migrates forward of its ideal alignment its weight increases by 10-lbs. I have seen forward head postures as severe as 4" which meant that there was an increase of 40-lbs to the weight of the patient's head. Add in a dash of gravity and we have some major development of muscle imbalance leading a myriad of symptoms such as headaches, nausea, nerve related pain/numbness, vision issues, brain fog, visceral disruption, reduced neck, shoulder and thoracic range of motion.

Upper X Syndrome

Naturally if we are not paying attention to our posture and every day investing many hours in training our head to sit forward of the spine, as we age we will develop what is clinically identified as an upper cross syndrome. In essence, this 'X' is created by some muscle becoming short-tight (or hypertonic - red muscles in the image) and their opposite muscles becoming long-weak (or hypotonic - blue muscles in the image). This significantly alters breathing patterns, shoulder and thoracic spine range of motion and vastly increases the risk of upper extremity injury and/or pain symptoms. 

This image shows the exit points of the vein, artery and major nerve vessels (brachial plexus) which can easily become compressed by altered head posture. Particularly, the scalene muscles in this scenario become hypertonic and add pressure to these vessels creating symptoms such as poor circulation to the arm, cold hands, prolonged healing time for other arm injuries such as tendinitis and numbness/tingling. This is clinically identified as a Thoracic Outlet Syndrome.

The Postural Athlete

My goal with any of my articles is to 'educate-to-motivate'. I encourage you to become your own postural coach and athlete all wrapped into one. By understanding the basic foundations of how forward head posture develops here are some key action points to immediately put into play:

Breathing:- The only time the neck, shoulders and chest should elevate and expand is during more challenging activities that require increased oxygen. Otherwise reviewing the image below we should be aiming for a natural expansion of the abdomen during inhalation and flattening of the abdomen during exhalation. This one correction alone will serve up 25,000+ repetitions every day (this number is your approximate number of breaths per day) of reinforcing good head alignment.

Sitting Ergonomics:- The below image illustrates an ideal sitting posture to adopt for your workplace and even whilst driving your vehicle or sat in an aircraft. Imagine another black dot to the centre of the ear on this image. The four black dots, from the hip, elbow, shoulder and ear, should all align vertically. This is your goal to maintain as long as you can, as often as you can to break the current faulty postural pattern.

Activity:-  The big one. When you exercise you are either going to perpetuate the existing head forward posture OR truly start to correct the alignment through neuro-muscular (fancy word for exercise) education. All important is your attention to head and spinal positioning throughout all movemment patterns. I encourage you to even lower your exercise intensity if this assists you in the correction. A good example of our goal is the push up posture in the image below. You will see a patient performing the exercise with a dowel rod placed on his back. This dowel rod would help you to pay attention to optimal alignment of the head, neck and spine whilst performing this exercise. You can then translate this alignment to every other movement in the gym.

Become a postural athlete and consider your daily postural investment!

Yours In Health,

Jason.

It's the dose that makes the poison

Old Wisdom
Many centuries ago the Swiss-German physician Paracelsus, founder of the discipline of toxicology, declared this adage "it's the dose that makes the poison." Taking a 21st century spin to this old adage we can use this wisdom in any sphere of our human existence to understand how, indeed, anything in life can tip from being a healthy choice to an unhealthy choice. Let's take a look at the pillars of health - movement, sleep, food & emotions.

Movement
Having spent many years studying human movement and teaching a variety of personal training clients I encountered many individuals who deemed that if a little exercise was good, a lot must be great. I recall one client who was so addicted to exercise she would train through pain, illness and make every conceivable effort to get her morning dose of exercise. Her routine of exercise had such an impact on her physiology that her menstrual cycle had stopped and although she admitted her and her partner were trying to have a baby until her physiology found a balance again there was no way her body was going to permit the conception of a child. She taught me one great lesson in life that 'you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.' As one of my teacher's, Paul Chek, once shared that exercise is a drug - given the wrong prescription it can be counter-productive or ineffective for the client. I refer you to a short video teaching from Paul Chek regarding how to bring balance your physiology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOKvfcXM4vA

Sleep
There is no greater fantasy to a new parent than having a peaceful, uninterrupted nights sleep with an easy morning of gently awakening, perhaps a cup of coffee and morning salutations in the sun (I confess, as a parent of four young boys, I still have this fantasy myself!). Maybe one day... Again we have these ideas that if a little is nice, a lot must be better. Perhaps we've had that experience of feeling fatigue but that even with 12-hours of sleep we still awaken unsatisfied or even more fatigued. And so it is with rest and sleep cycles also, that we need to listen to our body, perhaps even keep a log of what our physiology requires, to help find that balance point of sufficient rest before exposing our body to the next experience of stress which is equally essential to create growth. An important note to remember is that our body adapts to what we have exposed it to on a daily basis during our sleep cycle. The more restored we feel in the morning, the greater our vitality level and the more prepared we are for our next daily experiences.

Food
I recall hearing on a radio station once where a competition to drink a high volume of water that day, led to the death of a participant through what is known as dilutional hyponatremia or overhydration. So even something as healthy as water even has the potential to become a source of suffering, pain and even death in this case. And so it is with food. Our detoxification system in the body is highly intelligent, born through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. It is designed to help cleanse the system when toxins arrive. Again though, too small a volume of toxins and the system doesn't learn to cleanse itself and strengthen the immune system and too many toxins (this is typically the case for every human being) leads to a cascade of symptoms such as slow injury recovery, poor training responses and physical pain which are indicative of a suppressed immune system and disrupted hormonal system. I recall reading an article that even went as far to say that we although we consider those in parts of Africa to be under- and malnourished, we actually don't need to look too far to recognize it in our own neighbourhood - we just see the other end of the spectrum: - unhealthy, symptomatic and overweight bodies.

Emotions
And so we meet perhaps the biggest contender that we have to conquer everyday - emotional stress. It's typically referred to in a negative context but as I once questioned a grade 6 elementary class - what would our lives look like without any stress? They didn't have answers initially because they had been conditioned that all stress was negative. That's the illusion - that we wish for a life without stress but actually we couldn't survive without it! Again we continually learn and strive to find that balance - some days we can take on higher levels of exercise, nutritional, lack of sleep or familial/work stress but on other days we need time to retreat or escape for us to recover and prepare for the next dosage of stress. Although I've placed this toward the end of the article, this should be the foremost in your mind in helping overcome any form of physical pain or disease.

Professor Robert Sapolsky, neuroendocrinologist at Stanford University, has remarkable evidence to support how we as humans have actually exceeded our physiology from a stress perspective. Take any other animal on the planet and they have daily stress which typically lasts a few seconds to a few minutes, after which the event has ended or their life has ended! Humans on the other hand seldom have a physical 'life or death' survival experience but with the emotions we play all sorts of stories in our mind which create a feeling comparable to life or death, generated through our fears and anxieties. As a consequence we have this highly exaggerated physiological response comparable to multiple tigers entering the room to take our life. Although we in our minds can differentiate these scenarios our physiology continues to react as though these tigers were actually present in the room before us and about to pounce! When you have an hour to spare I highly recommend watching this thought-provoking documentary by Professor Sapolsky.

Video 1 - Stress: Portait of a Killer - Full documentary

Applying this knowledge
You know your body better than anybody out there. Learn to understand what your body is trying to communicate. If you are experiencing any prolonged symptoms such as muscle pain, soreness, joint pain, fatigue, mental drowsiness and poor digestion these can be clear indicators of your body attempting to communicate an imbalance. Learn to listen and apply the appropriate medicine. Become a self-educated patient by reading books and articles that relate to your own experiences. Create a team around you that includes your doctor, a naturopathic physician, chiropractor, massage therapist, personal trainer and even a nutritionist. Your health team is there to help assess you and essentially counsel you during your life's journey to master your own health and wellness and then share it with others!

To your optimum health,

Jason.

Happy New You

Checking In
I just read an interesting statistic that '75% of people give up on their new years resolutions within the first week!'. So as we complete the first week of 2014 - how are you doing? I know I've experienced this in the past and so this year I decided to keep it real simple and give myself one goal to work on. When I'm then consistently achieving this goal (in essence creating my new habit), I will then work on my second goal and so forth.

Your Driving Forces
Think about this: what is it that we are all trying to accomplish on a daily basis? Now I'm sure we can all come up with a finger-print specific list of daily tasks that are unique to each of us, however, underlying each and every one of them we are trying to fulfill two primary goals: firstly to be happy all the time and secondly to avoid suffering all the time. The deeper question to ask yourself though is if it truly were the case that food, exercise, sex and other worldly pursuits provide happiness why is it that the more you engage in these activities the less happiness they produce and the more suffering is experienced. For example, eating chocolate. The more we eat in one sitting the quicker our initial satiation and fulfillment of happiness becomes tainted by the nausea and digestive overwhelm experienced with our overindulgence. Clearly, this is not a true cause of happiness otherwise the more we engage in such an activity the more happiness would be experienced. In essence, all we ever experience is a temporary alleviation of our desires before they return minutes or hours later requiring more.

Discovering a True Source of Happiness
I remember meeting a gentleman once who had traveled to Tibet and his one and only comment about the Tibetan people was that 'they smiled with their whole bodies'. Can you imagine radiating such light and love to every single person that you meet, regardless of whether they appear as a friend, enemy or stranger? How transforming that would be! Buddhism details how to attain a true source of happiness through accomplishing inner peace - a mind that is clear, light and naturally happy regardless of what is happening on the outside. Why is it a true source of happiness? The more inner peace we experience the greater the sense of happiness. At no point does our inner peace turn into suffering until we lose the the object of concentration (inner peace) then our mind becomes distracted, unpeaceful and subsequently unhappy once again. We have all experienced wonderful external conditions such as being on vacation or relaxing in a hot tub but as soon as our mind becomes disturbed, for example discovering that our flight is delayed for 24-hours or our hot tub is now a cold tub, then quickly our mind experiences agitation and frustration completely destroying any sense of happiness.

Wisdom of the Ages
These basic teachings, drawn from ancient Buddhist philosophy, require time to contemplate and understand. Our understanding and wisdom grows even more powerful when we then apply these teachings into our daily life. Sitting still, breathing and training your mind to become clear allows you to understand profound topics such as understanding the mind and distinguishing between true sources of happiness (virtuous minds) and sources of suffering (non-virtuous minds).

For more information on Buddhism and learning how to meditate visit: www.kadampa.org or locally www.meditationalberta.org

Happy Meditating and I sincerely wish you a 2014 filled with inner peace and wisdom,

Jason.