Wellness / Spirituality: Selected Writing Samples
Various - July 11, 2017
Click to see > Reader friendly PDF version of all these samples
Contents Below
- Integrating the Fragmented Self [Newsletter Article]
- Zen Marketing: Passive Dimensions of Creating Positive Impressions [Blog Post]
- Boomer Shock: A Synopsis [Book Excerpt]
- Dolores Boldu’s Dance Meditation [Press Release]
[From the online newsletter of Trump University]
Issue 16: Strive for Wholeness
Integrating the Fragmented Self
The contemporary world presents us with an oceanic array of choices, stimuli, responsibilities, and distractions that often keep us from achieving personal harmony. Many people either fail to realize or are indifferent to the fact that their lives are really a form of controlled chaos. Others are all too aware of this situation and find themselves overwhelmed by the excess, burdened by their inability to incorporate and/or filter out unnecessary or harmful mental input.
Some people, though, have taken on the modern world in all its excess and have found a way to thrive, enjoying a life that is happy, healthy, prosperous, and dynamic. Chances are such people are continuously striving for wholeness and have learned the fine art of personal integration.
One key to becoming integrated is to incorporate the opposite qualities of those aspects of life we generally think of as positive. For example, cheeriness, charm, and good-humor can only be authentic if one has also experienced some pain and suffering. Good humor is not about denying or repressing the grim things in life, it’s about coming to terms with them and making them a part of us—contained, understood, and even nurtured. Through our struggle to achieve personal integration, we gain insight into living well. Avoiding the painful and the unpleasant often makes a situation worse. Embracing pain—using it, transcending it—is the way to achieve a higher pleasure. Striving for wholeness and achieving it will enhance and elevate the full range of our desires and aspirations.
Wholeness means uniting all the aspects of one’s self, integrating all innate capacities, however disparate they may be. Achieving wholeness or integration is a daunting task. One of the many obstacles to wholeness is that people, in a cosmic sense, are small, limited, and inadequate; tiny pieces of a vast, imperceptible whole. This realization can become a source of defeatism, leading one to believe that achieving wholeness is impossible in such a fragmented world.
As individuals, we experience the various effects of dualism—that separation between essential aspects of ourselves, like mind and body—on a daily basis. Duality is based on the law of attraction and repulsion, and, therefore, creation itself is founded on the principle of duality. It would seem, then, that we are meant to exist in a state of fragmentation, and the noise of media and technology does not add to this situation so much as mirror it. This makes the task of wholeness that much harder.
It is difficult to talk about a theme like wholeness without lapsing into the abstract and metaphysical. It’s a chimerical topic, but the consequences are very real. The person looking to succeed must have his own house in order and maintain some peace of mind simply to make it to work in the morning. But to thrive and reach the zenith of success, a person needs to do more. It’s a matter of reaching self-knowledge, and taking the next step after that: applying that knowledge in your professional as well as your personal life.
[A blog post from Meta-Media.net]
Zen Marketing: Passive Dimensions of Creating Positive Impressions
Do something amazing, requiring a ridiculous amount of time and devotion. Then make no effort to promote it. Later, do the same thing again. It’s an exercise in discipline, craft, and generosity; and an investment—however elusive or indirect—in future returns.
Cultivate a reflexive hesitation to grandstand, employing your reserves of humility, personal experience, and understanding that “pride goeth before the fall.” (This is not the same thing as a reluctance to promote yourself, but rather a way to infuse your promotion with subtlety and grace.)
Hone your ability to inflate your accomplishments to oversized proportions, but practice the technique of holding back and deploying hyperbole surgically. Be like the quiet karate master—capable of overkill, supremely confident, thus exuding strength and avoiding conflict altogether.
Never show your ego to the client; your own self-worth and confidence should be taken for granted. Creating a buzz is essentially a metaphysical idea. (Has anyone ever seen or actually felt this “buzz?”) Yet the process comprises distinct, concrete steps.
Make all of these steps meaningful and organic—i.e., integrated with previous and pending steps—so that they reflect both the object of the buzz and your life’s work as a whole. Everything you do—even random, seemingly meaningless gestures and actions—influences your future, in ways both obvious and unexpected. Pursue each opportunity or exchange mindful that it may lead to more significant ones.
[Excerpt from a book to which I contributed writing and editing.]
Boomer Shock: A Synopsis
The evidence for boomer shock is convincing: As the majority of boomers start to pass retirement age, huge problems may be imminent—problems of a magnitude that would convulse society and make the financial crisis of 2008 look like small change.
With so huge an elderly population, the healthcare industry could end up grossly overburdened. Meanwhile, Medicare and Social Security will continue to slide closer toward the abyss of insolvency.
This will exacerbate an increasingly sick and miserable populace. The major health problems that even today suggest a country headed for dire straits—the obesity epidemic, the unending scourges of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, et al.—will become practically unmanageable. Add to this the fact that tens of millions of Americans past retirement age may still be working, due to their failure to save enough money for retirement.
Staying healthy will become an imperative like never before. It will spur Americans of every stripe, including those who gave little thought to their physical well-being when they were younger, to finally become health conscious and avail themselves of the wellness industry’s many options (which, given the climate taking shape, will continue to expand by leaps and bounds).
Boomer shock is not preordained; it needn’t be the apocalypse some people are predicting, not with the possibility of so many more individuals than ever poised to take responsibility for their own health.
All of this adds up to a golden opportunity for the wellness industry, especially those practitioners who understand the basic issues surrounding the graying of America’s largest demographic ever. That means knowing how to market to this group; and, beyond that, embracing the opportunity to do well by doing good. That is, helping to save people from their own worst enemy: themselves.
[Press Release for Dolores Boldu’s Dance Meditation class]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Dolores Boldu’s Dance Meditation
Dolores Boldú’s Dance Meditation is a soothing, transcendent, and physically rejuvenating synthesis of tai chi, yoga, ballet, and Taoist philosophy. Her conception is a multi-dimensional discipline for those seeking physical, mental, and spiritual progress.
Ms. Boldú was born in Barcelona and grew up in New York City. She studied at the Joffrey School of Ballet, the David Howard School, and with Alvin Ailey. She also studied martial arts and oriental philosophy. Her diverse studies have given her the knowledge and skills necessary to forge an expansive vocabulary of movement that functions as both a meditational dance “performance” and a bona fide discipline that can be taught to others.
Ms. Boldú’s Dance Mediation classes train students to understand the mechanics of motion and the relationship between the body and its capacity for movement. The classes help students to gain muscle tone, increase strength and endurance, and enhance physical poise and body control. Dance Meditation classes also provide a deeply tranquil, stress-releasing environment.
One of the principle ideas behind Ms. Boldú’s work is that body movement is a means of journeying to a deeper part of the self. To accomplish this it is necessary to incorporate the Taoist idea that “everything that exists begins with nothing and issues from emptiness.” Her Dance Meditation resides in this emptiness and eschews showmanship and all its trappings, such as characters, choreography, stages, sets, or themes; it is a minimal, unembellished investigation into movement that is both less and more than either a performance or an exercise.
Movement originates from the universal realm and the audience (or participant) creates the meaning of the dance through the universal energy (Chi) that comes through them. The dance does not merely reflect this universal energy, but actually produces a spiritual transformation. The body always yearns to be free and Dance Meditation, whose focus is on the harmonious relationship between the body and the inner self, makes this possible.
Dance Mediation is a highly innovative creation that draws on some of civilization’s most profound and significant ideas. It is a pleasure to watch and an even bigger pleasure in which to participate as it imbues one with dynamic movement and celebrates the body in flux.