The Positive Mind

The feeling of home is as universal as it is personal. Home can be a place of safety and refuge, or chaos and instability. No matter which, home is the place you identify with in some way, it carries meaning, memories and shapes your identity.

Homesickness is a powerful feeling that something just isn't right, coupled with a longing for things to be stable, predictable, familiar and safe. But, it is a fact of life that everybody has to leave home; how a person manages that stress can say a lot about their relationship with themselves and their ability to take a sense of "home" with them wherever they go.

Kevin and Niseema talk about how homesickness can lead to depression, a sense of being lost, rootless and adrift. It's the mysterious and universal feeling of home that seems to root us in our very being, providing a shelter for those days and times when all seems lost.

This week Kevin and Niseema talk about the Danish word "Hygge," which is a way of creating comfort and ease in your life. It is amazing how many ways we can create more comfort and ease in our daily rituals, from how we wake up in the morning, to how we live our day, to how we go to sleep.

In the fall/winter season, there are so many ways to add pleasure to our lives, like wearing cozy wool socks, to making a cup of hot apple cider or hot chocolate. For the Danish, Hygge is a way of life, which explains why they are one of the happiest countries in the world.

This week, Kevin and Niseema talk about the Vagus Nerve, a major nerve in the body that begins at the brain-stem and travels all the way through the vital organs to the sacrum. The Vagus Nerve helps control several muscles of the throat and voice, plays a major role in regulating the heart rate and keeps the gastrointestinal tract in working order. The Vagus Nerve has also been shown to have a very strong connection to how you manage stress. A weak Vagus Nerve is a major indicator that you have been suffering from prolonged and chronic stress.

Niseema introduces a powerful tool for healing and balancing the Vagus Nerve called The Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP). The SSP delivers a passive stimulation of the Vagus Nerve to help increase its capacity to regulate the "fight or flight'' part of our nervous system which contributes to symptoms of anxiety and PTSD, and access feelings of safety and connection.

In our final show on Resilience, Kevin and Niseema talk about how "programming" in childhood can lead to inflexibility and a low level of resilience as an adult.

Most often, children are programmed through negativity: "Don't do that. Don't touch that. Don't complain." This can force a child to create a "good child" persona that causes them to detach from a feeling self. They will carry this "good child" persona into adulthood, losing the capacity to be real to themselves, their friends or any future partner. Kevin and Niseema talk about ways to undo this terrible and destructive syndrome.

In Part 3 of our series on Resilience, Kevin and Niseema talk about the difference between "strain" and "stress." Notice what happens when we change a familiar word like "stress" into a more accurate description like "strain." Are you "strained out?"

One of the most universal sources of stress is strain. It can be a physical or psychological strain, and it can be caused by many different factors. For example, if you work long hours and don’t have time to spend with your family, that’s likely to cause some level of mental strain. Most of us have been dealing with a lot of strain since COVID began in addition to its aftermath, feeling our inner resources "strained" leading to "stress." Join Kevin and Niseema as they discuss strain, stress and how we can use those as tools to build resilience.

In Part 2 of our series on Resilience, Kevin and Niseema talk about defense mechanisms and an internal mechanism called "The Engineer" which wants to keep us from changing. "The Engineer" will work to sabotage any kind of alterations you want to make, even positive ones.

This week's show is centered around learning how to have a dialogue with, and make friends with, "The Engineer" so you can make the changes you want to make.

We are kicking off a four-show series on resilience. In this time of COVID/post COVID stress and all that it entails, people's sense of resilience is very low. How are you doing with your resilience? Do you feel tapped out, that you cannot handle one more demand? Tune in as Kevin and Niseema talk about ways to refill your resilience tank to move forward with knowledge and purpose.

This week Kevin and Niseema welcome Dr. Brenda Shoshanna, Ph.D, psychotherapist, Zen practitioner, speaker and author of the book, “Zen and the Art of Falling in Love.” Brenda shares with us her journey and understanding of how every person we meet can teach us how to love. In sharing this, she shows us ways that we can love without judgment, shame, or blame.

Falling out of love is a heartbreaking feeling. The expansiveness. warmth, and joy of being with your beloved is just gone. It may have happened suddenly or overtime, but there is no doubt that 'the loving feeling" is gone.

This week Kevin and Niseema explore some of the reasons why what used be a "tuning in" to our partner, suddenly turns into a "tuning out." Expectations, lack of relationship skills, stress, personal history, our own body, etc., can turn that loving feeling into irritability and loneliness. If love is the antidote to loneliness, then what may be the antidote to the "loss" of love?

This week Kevin and Niseema talk about the fear of letting people get close to you. How many people really know you? How many people do you feel close to? Closeness is often a trigger for most people. What happens to your body when people get too close?

Kevin and Niseema explore the common fears that consciously or unconsciously keep relationships at an arm's length. The fear of being controlled, the fear of losing independence, the fear of vulnerability, all work to sabotage the desire for real closeness. This week's show talks about THE REWARD of letting go of those fears.