Eye Palming to Relax the Eye

Eye Palming to Relax the Eye

This unique eye-relaxation exercise uses your healing hands to direct energy to your eyes, as well as to rest your optic nerve and relax your entire nervous system.

Unlike sleep, which is unconscious and passive relaxation, palming is conscious and active relaxation. Therefore, palming is one of the best exercises for eye relaxation.

Practice palming at least for 10 to 30 minutes per session for three or more sessions daily to completely relax your eyes. Even at work, you can palm your eyes for 2 minutes, if possible, to relieve your eyestrain from the computer.

Sit comfortably with your elbows resting on a table in front of you—preferably in a darkened room, such as a bathroom without any window.

Rub your palms together to generate some warmth.

Place your palms over your eyes, without touching them, while resting them on the boney ridge surrounding your eyes with the heels of your hands on your cheekbones. Your eyes should be gently

Relax your mind, and breathe deeply through your nose, not your mouth. The slower your breathing is, the more relaxed your mind becomes.

Feel your abdomen and back expand and contract as you inhale and exhale, respectively.

Visualize complete darkness to relax your mind.

Feel your neck and shoulders expand and contract as your deep and slow breathing continues.

Visualize every part of your body—hands, fingers, toes, knees, and thighs—expand and contract with your inhalation and exhalation.

 

Practice eye palming whenever you feel fatigue in your eyes. It is impossible to palm for too long or for too much; some palm for hours to reap the benefits of both relaxation and meditation. If you feel any resistance to palming, it may probably be due to your subconscious resistance to relaxation. If you become more relaxed, you will see complete blackness. However, it is all right if you do not see complete blackness; just continue with your daily palming exercise.

Remember, we are living in a stressful world, and many of us simply cannot relax, even if we very much would like to. Attesting to the inability to relax, many of us easily and often stare without blinking—and, worse, without being aware of it. As a result, our vision slowly and gradually deteriorates over the years. 

Do not let a day pass by without palming your eyes.

The “8” eye exercise

Do the following “8” eye exercise as often as required to relax your eye muscles as well to increase their flexibility.

Sit comfortably in a relaxed posture.

Consciously breathe in and breathe out through your nose until you attain a natural rhythm.

Imagine the figure “8” in the distance.

Let your eyes trace along the imaginary figure without moving your head.

First, trace it in one direction, and then in the opposite direction.

You can modify the exercise by imagining other alphabets and figures. The objective of this exercise, in addition to promoting relaxation and flexibility, is to train your eyes to consciously shift when focusing on an object in the distance.

The Taoist squeeze-and-open eye exercise

This ancient Chinese exercise developed by Taoist monks thousands of years ago increases blood circulation to the eyes, prevents watery eyes, and alkalizes the eyes to detoxify the liver. It removes eyestrain and soothes eye-muscle tension.

Inhale slowly, while squeezing your eyes tightly for 10 seconds.

Then, slowly exhale your breath, making the sh-h-h-h-h sound, while opening your eyes wide.

Repeat as many times and as often as required to cleanse the eyes and the liver.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Living in a Toxic World

Life is a miracle in itself. Being alive is a miracle. Having your breaths is already a miracle. Everything in life is a miracle.

Unfortunately, many of us are too busy even to notice our breaths, not to mention to know who we are and what we are doing. We are forever living in the past or in the future, except in the now. As a result, we don’t see the miracle of life around us. We have eyes that don’t see, and ears that don’t listen; we see only what we want to see, and hear only what we desire to hear. Accordingly, most of us live as if nothing is a miracle, and this perception becomes our reality. In addition, our perverted perception is further distorted by the toxic environment we are living in. We have become the farmer in Aesop’s fable who, out of greed, killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, thinking that it wasn’t a miracle, and thus turning a once-miracle into a no-miracle.

In truth, we are living in a toxic world, very different from that of our ancestors. As a result, our minds, bodies, and souls have become toxic to a greater or lesser extent.

First of all, our minds are toxic. In this age of advanced technology, we are often over-loaded with information and over-stimulated by sights and sounds that are mostly toxic in nature, although we may not be fully aware of it.

A case in point, while growing up, many are facing different challenges and struggles that come in many different forms, such as being too tall or too short, being skinny or overweight; being too rich or too poor, and the list could go on and on. On top of these, many need to belong to or be a part of a group in order to find their true identities, without which they always feel that they are insecure and worthless. Toxins corrupt the mind. Indeed, growing up in a toxic environment is not for the faint of heart.

Stepping into the adult world does not make life any easier. Pursuing a career, finding a love relationship, starting a family—many are, more often than not, filled with hurdles and obstacles in the form of anger, betrayal, bitterness, competitiveness, envy, frustration, and many other toxic emotions and thoughts.

Growing old is even more difficult. Time is running short as well as running out. Adding insults to injuries are frailties and infirmities of the body and the mind, both of which may have become over-toxic by then, and thus devastating the soul.

The reality is that life comes in different stages, and each stage is full of its own challenges and problems that often turn into toxic thoughts in the mind, which create toxic emotions leading to toxic actions and reactions, and they have become toxic memories, haunting the mind, infesting the body, and staining the soul.

A toxic mind is responsible for a toxic body. The human body is connected with the mind in the form of biochemical reactions in the body and nerve impulses in the brain. This invisible and intricate communication is subtly responsible for the alignment or misalignment of the flow of life-giving energy between the body and the mind; hence, if the mind is toxic, the body is also naturally vulnerable to its toxicity. In addition, you are living in a physical environment that in itself is very toxic and polluted; therefore, your susceptibility to body toxins increases by multi-folds. Your toxic body only further poisons your toxic mind.

A toxic mind produces a toxic body, and their toxicity taints the soul, ultimately making the soul become toxic too. A toxic soul is incapable of guiding and directing behaviors, actions, and reactions in their physical forms in the mundane world.

The body, the mind, and the soul work as a system of energy. This state of being, which is the overall feeling of health and wellness of any individual, is dependent on the intricate interconnection between the body, the mind, and the soul. Without that interdependent relationship, you are simply existing, and not living; in other words, you are living as if nothing is a miracle.

The mind always affects the body, which speaks the mind, while the soul illuminates the mind, which connects and communicates with the soul. Therefore, the alignment, misalignment, and realignment of the body, the mind, and the soul for holistic wellness attests to the miracle of life and living.

Remember, the mind is the map, the soul is the compass; without both, the body is going nowhere.

To conclude, wisdom in living is ridding the mind, the body, and the soul of their respective toxins. Rethink your mind, renew your body, and reconnect your soul—realigning the body, mind, and soul is the essence of wisdom in living in this contemporary world. Realignment of your being opens your eyes, enlightens your mind, and awakens your soul, so that you will live your life as if everything is a miracle.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

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Control and Out of Control

Control and Out of Control

Letting go is difficult because there is one thing that most of us have overlooked: the wisdom of letting go to let God.

Life is all about living—it comes with some hard work, simple integrity, and, above all, the wisdom in living. If life is all about living—not just about making and spending money—then it is not about regrets and dreams.

Regrets look back at the past; dreams look forward to the future. Unfortunately, both are not within our control. If the value of money is solely based on accumulation of wealth, or the acquisition of material things, then living indeed becomes a labyrinth of regrets and dreams—regrets over the wrong investment decisions in the past, and dreams of the great fortune yet to come in the future.

A life journey is forever paved with many challenges and losses, many of which are beyond human control because they are often sudden and unpredictable.

Physical loss, including loss of vision and mobility, both of which may affect the quality of life with respect to independent living, may make living beyond control.

Material loss may include loss of property from natural disaster, such as flooding, tornado, and wildfire, loss of place and space, such as moving from a house to an apartment or to a nursing home. Downsizing also means the loss or forced disposal of treasured possessions that many are reluctant to let go of.

Memory loss may result in a severe loss of organizational ability and the ability to plan and function, resulting in loss of independence, which is a major setback for the elderly.

Loss of loved ones due to accidents or natural causes are devastating. Spousal loss is often the most devastating in that the oneness in marriage is forever broken, resulting in isolation and loneliness.

Losses that come in many different forms often become sources of unhappiness, but losses are no more than life challenges that are beyond human control.

But living, to many, is about controlling self and others; more specifically, purposely controlling the destiny of self, as well as directly or indirectly controlling the destinies of others around. The truth of the matter is that we are only humans, and we cannot control what is controlled by God. Being finite, with only limited intelligence, we are limited in our capability to control what is beyond human control. God, who is infinite, is in absolute control of everything. Our constant desire to control is displeasing to God—an expression of our lack of trust, and our disobedience.

Humans are always given a choice: continuing to control one’s destiny, or letting go to let God control. 

God has given each one of us a unique life and destiny that only we can complete it.

“Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

(Psalm 139: 16)

However, the completion of that life and destiny in our life journey is according to His way and time, and not according to ours. In other words, it is all about what He wants for us, and not what we want for ourselves.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

A Better and Happier You in 2019

Happy New Year!

A Better and Happier You in 2019

There is an old Latin axiom: “nemo dat quod non habet” — meaning, one cannot give what one does not have.

If you don’t have the wisdom to know your real self, you won’t have the wisdom to understand others, especially who they are and what they need. In order to understand others to have better human relationships, you must first and foremost have the wisdom attained through asking self-intuitive questions throughout your life.

Then, with mindfulness, you observe with a nonjudgmental mind what is happening to you, as well as around you. Gradually, you will be able to see things as what they really are, and not as what they may seem to you: anything and everything in life follows its own natural cycle, just as the day becomes night, and the night transformed into dawn. With that wisdom, you may become enlightened, which means you begin to know your true self—what you have and what you don’t have, and you were created to be who you are, and not what you wish you were or want to become. Knowing what you have, you can then give it to others. It is the giving, rather than the receiving, that will make you become a better and happier you in 2019.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Anxiety

Anxiety

Pay attention to your thoughts: see if they are changeable throughout the day. If they are, probably you are suffering from anxiety, which often results from nutrient deficiency, toxins, and food allergies, according to Dr. Abram Hoffer, an expert in orthomolecular psychiatry. Dr. Abram Hoffer recommends the following:

Eliminate processed foods loaded with additives, artificial flavorings, artificial sweeteners, and food colorings and preservatives. These chemicals may be responsible for food allergies in certain individuals. A healthy diet should eliminate these toxic chemicals.

Eat whole foods, such as brown rice, green vegetables, which seldom cause food allergies. Your healthy diet should be made up of whole foods, not artificial or processed ones.

Avoid all the sugar: blood-sugar disorder (hypoglycemia) is the basis of most anxiety disorders, such as panic attacks, and food allergies.

Check your food allergies. Yeast infection may lead to food intolerances and food allergies.

Over the years, your body may have accumulated heavy metal toxicity: lead, cadmium, and arsenic put in animal feed to remove germs; aluminum in baking powder, table salt, vanilla powder, and emulsifiers in processed foods; and mercury in dental filings.

Perform simple hair test to determine the level of toxicity in your body.

Other metal toxicity from foods and the environment may result in depression, headaches, lack of concentration, and forgetfulness.

Water has pesticides and heavy metals. Drink only filtered tap water or distilled water from glass bottles, not plastic ones.

Keep your body allergy free.

Antioxidant vitamins

Get all antioxidant vitamins from your healthy diet, preferably not their supplement counterparts.

Vitamin B complex

The vitamin B complex consists of eight water-soluble vitamins. The B vitamins work together to boost your body’s metabolism, enhance your immune system and improve your nervous system. Brewer's yeast is one of the best sources of the B vitamins.

B1 enhances your mental functioning. Rich food sources high in B1 include liver, heart, and kidney meats, eggs, leafy green vegetables, nuts, legumes, berries, wheat germs, and enriched cereal. Include them in your healthy diet.

B2 is abundant in mushrooms, milk, meat, liver, dark green vegetables, and enriched cereals, pasta, and bread.

B3 may help avoid irritability and mental confusion, which are often symptoms of mental depression. Food sources rich in B3 are chicken, salmon, tuna, liver, nuts, dried peas, enriched cereals, and dried beans.

B5 deficiency may result in allergies, fatigue, and nausea, which are often associated with mental depression. B5 is most abundant in eggs, whole grain cereals, legumes, and meat.

B6 helps your body absorb and metabolize amino acids and omega 3 fatty acids. Whole grains, bread, liver, green beans, spinach, avocados, and bananas are rich food sources of B6.

B7 (biotin) helps your body release energy from carbohydrates. Generally, your body has no deficiency in B7.

B9 (folic acid) deficiency may lead to mental depression. Studies have shown that more than 30 percent of depressed patients have folic acid deficiency. Good food sources of folic acid include leafy green vegetables, nuts, whole grains, legumes, and organ meets.

B12 is critical to the optimum functioning of your nervous system. B12 can be found only in animal sources, such as eggs, milk, fish, meat, and liver. Therefore, vegetarians are strongly encouraged to take B12 supplement if they cannot obtain it from their healthy diet.

Vitamin E

Vitamin E, according to a previous scientific study, had been implicated in depression: patients suffering from major depression had lower levels of antioxidant vitamins, such as vitamin E. However, it was not known whether it was due to inadequate antioxidant vitamins, or a result of the depression itself.

Other scientific studies found that the lower vitamin E in blood not only increases physiological stress as well as oxidative stress during mental depression, but also protects your brain against damage caused by free radicals and other reactive oxygen species produced during basic cellular metabolism. Antioxidant vitamins are potent against free radicals for optimum mental health

Good sources of vitamin E include egg yolk, green leafy vegetables, whole grains, and vegetable oils.

Remember, it is often difficult to obtain sufficient vitamin E from foods even in a healthy diet. A daily supplement containing 400IU is highly recommended.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C, another one of the important antioxidant vitamins, plays an important role in the synthesis of neurotransmitters, which enable efficient nerve impulse transmission between nerve axons. Vitamin C is important and necessary for the synthesis of the neurotransmitters, norepinephrine and serotonin. It catalyzes the conversion of dopamine to norepinephrine and the conversion of tryptophan to serotonin.

Vitamin C can be found in many fruits and vegetables. Remember, vitamin C cannot be stored in your body, and is easily destroyed in cooking.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Why You Need to Fast

Why You Need to Fast

Having an autoimmune disease means having a toxic body. All these years you may have accumulated toxins in your body, making it toxic. A toxic body leads to a dysfunctional immune system, and hence the development of an autoimmune disease, including myasthenia gravis. Western medicine uses toxic drugs, such as steroids, to control the many disease symptoms of an autoimmune disease. But the long-term adverse side effects are more toxins in the body. The only solution to improve the disease symptoms is getting rid of the toxins.

Internal cleansing is detoxification, which involves dislodging your body toxins and waste products from within and between cells and joints, and then transporting these wastes from your body for removal.

Fasting is internal cleansing and rejuvenation—one of the most efficient ways to detoxify your body of toxins. Fasting is to recovery, as sleep is to recuperation.

Fasting is voluntary abstinence from food and drink, except water, for an extended period. Fasting is the best way to detoxify your body.

The benefits of fasting:

Fasting accelerates the self-healing process of your body because fasting temporarily stops the continuing work of your digestive system, and therefore instrumental in reserving that energy for your self-healing. By conserving the energy otherwise used in digesting food, fasting provides you with more, not less, energy, contrary to the myth that fasting makes your body weak. Remember, eating and digesting food expends your energy too.

Fasting activates the immune system in your body to protect you from disease.

Fasting relieves the burden of not only your digestive tract, but also your liver and kidneys, which have to work extra hard to remove additives and toxins accumulated in your body through improper eating. Fasting removes the underlying cause of any chronic disease you may have by removing the toxins, not just the symptoms, as in the case of medications.

Fasting may alleviate your body pain and rid your body of any drug dependence. Fasting facilitates you, if you are a smoker, to quit smoking during a fast. Nicotine damages the immune system.

The process of fasting

Eat more vegetables and fruits prior to a fast. Reduce the consumption of meat, and refrain from eating any meat the day before a fast.

On the first day, you may feel pangs of hunger, with a white coating on your tongue. This is just a natural response of the body to the cessation of eating. On the first day, you may experience physical weakness, which is also a natural response of your body

On the second day, you may begin to feel gradual dissipation of hunger, with more white coating on your tongue.

On the third day, you may feel complete disappearance of hunger and the clearance of coating on your tongue.

The first three days of a fast are most challenging. However, once the challenge is overcome, you are well on the way to rejuvenation of your entire body. Remember, Jesus, too, fasted for forty days.

What to do during a fast

Drinking plenty of water is required since your body may easily become dehydrated due to the discharge of body fluids.

Continue your normal daily routine activities, but avoid all strenuous activities, especially those outdoor ones. Exercise as normal.

Bathe more frequently. Brush your body to stimulate your skin to rid toxins from your body.

Stop taking your daily vitamins while fasting.

Stop smoking if you are a smoker. That is as good a time as any to quit smoking for good.

How to break a fast

Break a fast on fruits and vegetables juice. Eating an apple is ideal for breaking a fast.

Gradually increase your intake of solid food. Eat slowly and chew thoroughly. Overeating too soon may cause abdominal pain and even vomiting.

Avoid taking salt and pepper immediately after a fast, lest they damage your stomach lining.

Continue to drink plenty of water after a fast.

Remember, the longer the fast, the less you should eat at the first meal.

Duration of a fast

A clear tongue and clean breath are a good indication that the cleansing is more or less complete.

The length of a fast depends very much on an individual.

The following is just a general guideline:

A one-day fast, as often as required, preferably weekly, for good health maintenance

A three-to-four-day fast for general health and well being, several times a year

A two-week fast for complete internal cleansing, every year or so

A three-week fast (or even longer) for curing a specific disease, under the supervision of a physician.

It is suggested that you begin with a short fast, and then proceed to a longer fast for complete internal cleansing.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Letting Go to Live in the Present

Letting Go to Live in the Present

Humans have wants and desires which generate expectations that necessitate judging, picking and choosing. Disappointments and frustrations are their byproducts. According to Lao Tzu, the author of Tao Te Ching, the ancient classic on human wisdom, everything in life is to be welcomed and embraced, but not avoided.

“Everything that happens to us is beneficial.

Everything that we experience is instructional.

Everyone that we meet, good or bad, becomes our teacher or student.

We learn from both the good and the bad.

So, stop picking and choosing.

Everything is a manifestation of the mysteries of creation.”

(Chapter 27, Tao Te Ching)

According to Tao wisdom, the root cause of all human miseries is pride, which is to satisfy the ego-self delusively created in the flawed human mind.

“The Creator is above,

and we are below

The Creator is in front,

and we are behind.

Because this is the nature of things,

humility is only natural to us.

Yet many are desirous of the top

fearful of lagging behind.

Humility is the Way.”

(Chapter 66, Tao Te Ching)

“Dependent on the Creator,

our horizons broaden and expand,

our souls inspire and nourish,

our relationships grow and flourish.

Everything around us becomes oneness with the Creator.

Dependent on ourselves,

our horizons contract and shrink,

our souls wither and die,

our relationships break and crumble.

Everything around us becomes depleted and damaged.”

(Chapter 39, Tao Te Ching)

Humility initiates the process of letting go of everything that distracts us from our pursuit of true human wisdom.

“Possessing little, we become content.

Having too much, we lose the Creator.

Having no ego, we become humbled, and our actions are enlightened.

Having no desire for perfection, our actions are welcome by all.

Having no expectation of result, our actions are selfless and non-judgmental.

Having no goal, our actions are under-doing and never over-doing.

Accepting what is, and finding it to be perfect is not easy.

But that is the only Way to the Creator.”

(Chapter 22, Tao Te Ching)

Indeed, distractions in modern life come in many different forms.

“Distractions are many,

in the form of riches and luxuries,

They allure us from the Way.

Accumulations are like extortions of the poor.

They bring only disaster and suffering.

Do not deviate from the Way.”

(Chapter 53, Tao Te Ching)

Letting go of control, we no longer strain, strive, and struggle, and thus enabling us to live in the present moment—which is a luxury to many in this day and age.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau