WHY WOULD MEDITATION or simply taking deep breaths be considered a "spiritual" exercise? Perhaps because they are so deeply relaxing, both physically and mentally. And emotionally. And if you think of how "shut down" you get when you're upset, I think you can see this as a kind of sliding scale of awareness and openness. The more upset you are (anger, anxiety, or depression), the more narrow your focus, the more your brain and body get "tunnel vision" and fixed on survival.

On the other hand, if you become more relaxed, you become more open and aware. Your tunnel vision opens and expands. Your consciousness is free to explore instead of being fixated by some survival issue. You can become aware of your feelings, your surroundings, the feelings of others, and perhaps even the interconnected oneness of all things.

What wise people have discovered over and over again throughout the ages is that what your brain and body consider a "survival issue" is more often than not an illusion. Your survival is not really at stake. Learn to relax your bodymind and you see things differently. Remove the stress hormones from your system and you see things differently, and you react to things differently, which elicits a different response from the world.

Articles and Interviews
Learn about sustaining motivation, improving relationships, relieving depression, improving your health, reducing anxiety, becoming more optimistic, enjoying a better mood more often, earning more money, expanding your creativity, making better decisions, resolving conflicts, and much more.

Subscribe to MoodRaiser and get articles delivered to your email inbox free. Learn simple methods for lifting your general feeling of well-being right away, and improving your mood over time: Enter your email address: Delivered by FeedBurner

Table of Contents
...of Adam Khan's book Self-Help Stuff That Works. From the table of contents, you can click on any chapter and read it here online.

About the Book
Here's a description of Self-Help Stuff That Works and links on the book and the author.

Self-Help College Course
Anyone in the country can study the book Self-Help Stuff That Works and earn college credit.

Self-Help Menu
Want to learn to enjoy your relationships with people more? Do better at work? Feel good more often? Have a better attitude? Use the self-help menu.

Search For Anything On YMW
You can type in any topic you choose and instantly find all the material on this site on that topic. You can also browse topics on this page.

Immediate Relief
Are you having a difficulty with some aspect of your life lately? Learn something that will help. This will only take a few minutes.

Bite-Size
Check out some easily digestible nibbles of self-help stuff that works.

We post on FaceBook and Twitter a few times a week, focused mostly on helping you feel good more often. Click the icons below to join: