I first recieved this as an email, it’s a great one to share…..

Read this, LET IT REALLY SINK IN……THEN CHOOSE .

John is the kind of guy you love to hate.   He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say.  When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, ‘If I were any better, I would be twins!’

He was a natural motivator.

If an employee was having a bad day, John was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up and asked him, ‘I don’t get it!’

‘You can’t be a positive person all of the time.  How do you do it?’

He replied, ‘Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today.  You can choose to be in a good mood or…you can choose to be in a bad mood
I choose to be in a good mood.’

Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or…I can choose to learn from it..  I choose to learn from it.

Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or…I can point out the positive side of life.  I choose the positive side of life.

‘Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,’ I protested.

‘Yes, it is,’ he said.  ‘Life is all about choices.  When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice.  You choose how you react to situations.  You choose how people affect your mood.

You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood.  The bottom line:  It’s your choice how you live your life.’

I reflected on what he said.  Soon hereafter, I left the Tower Industry to start my own business.  We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower.

After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back.

I saw him about six months after the accident.

When I asked him how he was, he replied, ‘If I were any better, I’d be twins…Wanna see my scars?’

I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place.

‘The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter,’ he replied.  ‘Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices:  I could choose to live or…I could choose to die.  I chose to live.’

‘Weren’t you scared?  Did you lose consciousness?’  I asked.

He continued, ‘…the paramedics were great.

They kept telling me I was going to be fine.  But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared.  In their eyes, I read ‘he’s a dead man’.  I knew I needed to take action.’

‘What did you do?’ I asked.

‘Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,’ said John..  ‘She asked if I was allergic to anything ‘Yes, I replied.’  The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply.  I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Gravity”

Over their laughter, I told them, ‘I am choosing to live.  Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead..’

He lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude…I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully.

Attitude, after all, is everything.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.’ Matthew 6:34.

After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

LEARNING TO FEEL – By Walter Last

PART 4 –“DIRECT RELEASE”

A simple and efficient way of emotional cleansing is possible in a secure relationship with an understanding and co-operating partner. 

When we feel angry, sad, or in any way upset, we can just tell our partner that there is something coming up which we want to release and then let go.

It is often necessary to exaggerate our expressions in order to get to the old emotions at the bottom of our feelings. 
Therefore, when you are angry during an intentional release, show that you are really angry, throw yourself on the bed or the floor, kick and punch a cushion, pillow or mattress, wring a towel, scream, shout or cry. 

Similarly with hatred, sadness, grief or any kind of frustration, bring it out as forcefully as you can. 
Your partner can help to deepen the feeling, telling you to get into it, to cry louder, hit (the pillow) harder, etc.

Even in more restricted situations with other people, try to experience and express your immediate feelings in an appropriate way. 
When you are angry, say so and possibly hit with the fist on the table, when you have tender feelings, acknowledge them with a loving smile and, if appropriate, with a loving touch.

If you build up negative feelings within yor body, they will present in some other form- usually sickness, illness, and eventually, dis-ease.

To visit Previous Posts in this series please click here

LEARNING TO FEEL – By Walter Last

PART 3 – “FORGIVENESS”

The key and cornerstone of emotional healing is forgiveness. 

As long as we cannot unconditionally forgive, ourselves as well all others, we remain trapped in past negative emotions. 
This prevents us from fully loving ourselves as well as all others.

A good way to do this is by writing a list of everyone that you feel has hurt you in the past or whom you may have hurt. 
Recall especially your relationships with each one of your parents, with your siblings, other relatives and partners. 
Think of incidents that may have caused anger, resentment, disappointment, sadness, fear or insecurity.

Then mentally go through each incidence and feel into yourself to see if there is still any trace of that old hurt feeling within you. 
If there is, then go more deeply into it; try to reach the bottom of it. Examine that hurt feeling from all sides. 
It may then just evaporate so that you cannot find it anymore. 

However, if there is still some or even a lot remaining, then you just make a mental decision to free yourself of this ballast. 

Do some deep breathing, and with each exhalation you imagine blowing it into a balloon. 
When you have transferred all the hurt into the balloon, close it up and let it float off into the blue sky for the universe to take care of.

Now you imagine being in the presence of the one that had hurt you and you formally and lovingly forgive this person. 
A very important person to forgive in this way is you.  Forgive yourself for all the distress and hurt that you caused other people. 

If you are not quite ready to forgive everyone unconditionally, then come back to this step after you have worked some more on your belief systems and adopted a spiritual philosophy of life. 
Basically, you need to realize that you are not doing a favour to others by forgiving them, but to yourself by freeing yourself from destructive emotional toxins.

This is not different to cleaning your biological body of chemical toxins. 
An alternative possibility is to write a letter to everyone against whom you still feel a residual resentment and therefore, are not able to fully forgive. 
Write down in detail what exactly was it the other one did and how it affected you. 

Then formally forgive and express your love and appreciation. 

Finally you may either give or mail this letter to the recipient or you may just burn it and hand it over to the universe.

To visit Previous Posts in this series please click here

LEARNING TO FEEL – By Walter Last

PART 2 – “LETTING GO”

Feelings which we have not expressed and often not allowed ourselves even to feel have accumulated within us in the form of repressed emotions. 
They choke our emotional body in the same way as accumulated metabolic residues obstruct our physical body. 

In our relationships and social interactions we react with emotions mainly to ‘reactivated’ hurts within us and only to a lesser degree with true feeling to the actual situation itself. 
This causes endless frustration, misunderstandings and disappointments in our daily lives.

In order to free ourselves of these emotional obstructions from the past, we need ‘emotional cleansing periods’ – times and situations in which we feel safe enough to release and express our suppressed emotions. 

This can be made easier as a result of bio-energetic exercises, meditation, energetic treatments, muscle massage/releases and other methods to relax our muscle ‘armouring’. 
In addition, there are several release techniques to induce emotional catharsis- check the next few posts in this series…

To visit Previous Posts in this series please click here

Enjoy this series of posts, excerpts from ‘Learning to Feel by Walter Last’
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I re-read this often to remind myself how important it is to learn to feel what your body and your soul tell you, and use your feelings to improve your health rather than destroy it

 ~  Kylie

LEARNING TO FEEL – By Walter Last

PART 1 -“FEELINGS”

Feelings are the builder of the body, the glue that holds body and soul together. 
Tender feelings make us open and vulnerable. 
In order not to get hurt, we prefer to close up and not to feel. 
This has the added advantage of making us stronger in our career, because we do not need to take our feelings or the feelings of others into consideration.

Each time we suppress a feeling or do not express it in a suitable way, the generated energy solidifies into muscle tensions. 

Eventually, this leads to widespread muscle armouring, a permanent state of muscle contractions. 
This closes off the circulation of blood, lymph, bio-energy and, equally important, the flow of feeling energies.

Once we are in an armoured condition, we simply cannot feel any more even when we want to.  This applies especially to the tender feelings in the heart and all over the body. 
This is a great loss. 
Our conscious control is then out of touch with the body, with its needs, its wisdom and with the pleasure it could give us.

We are equally out of touch with the requirements of others, with the forces of nature and with our higher guidance.  Everything is wrong if we are out of touch with ourselves and with everyone and everything else, and we have to rely exclusively on our ego-controlled mind.  In order to heal our emotions we need a four-fold approach.
1. We need to ‘let go’ – release the accumulated negative emotions and associated tension.

2. We need to become aware again how we feel and express our emotions appropriately.

3. We need to learn feeling good about ourselves as well as others and generate positive feelings.

4. We need to live in our daily lives what we have learned in our exercises.