ZENERGY MINDFULNESS
The Intersection of Buddhist and Energy Psychology for Mental Health and Wellness
Living my life more mindfully has had wonderful consequences. The dull becomes the profound, impatience transforms into patience, and ignorance into knowing. We are no longer bored or dissatisfied because we have gained an understanding of the true nature of ourselves and others. We slowly habituate patience and tolerance. With this energy, we can begin to transform our suffering and the suffering of others.
-Diane Chrestman from Zenergy Mindfulness
On a beautiful autumn day in 2012, after my last client session, I visited the Zen Buddhist Temple next to my office for the first time. I had watched the monks from my office window for years and admired the remarkable peacefulness and purposefulness they embodied. I wanted to move through the world like that! And so my journey began.
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Since 2012, I have studied meditation and mindfulness with nuns and monks from various traditions of Buddhism. I have benefited a great deal from Buddhist teachings, and as a licensed psychotherapist, I knew these same practices would benefit my clients. Over the next few years, I evolved into a Buddhist psychotherapist.
Energy Psychology is an evidence-based holistic approach to healing that blends Eastern and Western theories and practices to improve mental and emotional health. Zenergy Mindfulness includes two energy healing techniques that support the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral characteristics associated with mindfulness and weaken the characteristics associated with mindlessness.
Mindfulness Techniques
Anyone who has attempted to practice mindfulness knows it is not easy. The mind can’t seem to make up its own mind as it jumps from one unrelated thought to the next. This state of mindlessness affects our emotional, mental, and spiritual health and encourages conditions of suffering and mental anguish.
Zenergy Mindfulness by Diane Chrestman is a one-of-a-kind self-help book offering mindfulness practices and techniques, including protocols of Energy Psychology, designed to support mental and emotional health. Personal stories illustrate the opportunities we have to live mindfully, during the most difficult times of our lives or the most monotonous part of our day. Like individual drops of water that eventually fill a bucket, mindfulness cultivates seeds of peace, joy, and wisdom.
Cultivate Mindfulness Through Chakra Spinning
The unique approaches in Zenergy Mindfulness provide accessible mindfulness techniques to improve emotional and mental health and to encourage the manifestation of your highest self.
The seven chakras are the presumed energy centers located at intervals along the spine. Beginning at the top of the head, chakras metabolize and assimilate energy fields around us. Due to the electromagnetic energy in our own hands, we can manipulate the “health” of the chakras by spinning our hands over the chakra centers.
Spinning our hand counter-clockwise over the chakra diminishes maladaptive emotional and thinking patterns such as anger or worry. Spinning our hand clockwise over the chakra instills adaptive emotional and thinking patterns such as acceptance and loving-kindness. To strengthen the energy of mindfulness Zenergy Health provides chakra spinning exercises to support mindfulness in the mind, body, and feelings.
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Until we reach a full uninterrupted state of awareness, mindfulness is interrupted by:
Craving ~ Anger ~ Laziness ~ Worry ~ Doubt
These obstacles are known as the Five Hindrances. Many factors including personality traits, cultural influences, and karma, result in habituated expressions of the five hindrances. The hindrances are manifested through behavioral, emotional, and thinking patterns. For example, the hindrance of worry is often expressed through behaviors such as pacing, nailbiting, or excessive talking, emotionally expressed as anxiety or anger, or mentally over/under estimating risk/rewards. The hindrance of worry, like all the hindrances, may have many manifestations and manifest in all sentient beings until we ascend into Buddhahood.
Cultivate Mindfulness Through Meridian Tapping
Zenergy Mindfulness includes meridian tapping instructions designed to reduce the maladaptive expressions of each hindrance. In the first part of the tapping intervention, we attune to the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral aspects of the hindrance and tap on meridian points while expressing releasing statements.
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In the second part of the exercise, we attune to how it might feel to be free from the hindrance while tapping. Script suggestions are offered for each hindrance to help the reader “tap on” the emotional, cognitive, or behavioral aspect presumed to be energetically metabolized in each meridian pathway.
