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Why "Faces of Joy" ?
When we are open to receive energies and confident, we mirror our feelings through our faces. Expressions of Joy use far less facial muscles than those of unhappiness and distress. Calm is much less energy absorbing and muscle involving than fear and distress. We CAN develop coping patterns which HIDE our emotions from our faces. Some individuals are very good at showing a calm and happy face while seething inside with emotions of anxiety, vengeance, and confusion. Persons with CFS-ME and other intense illness conditions often have a recent past of losses, a long-term pattern of external commitments, and a future oriented perspective. These do NOT cause illness. They can influence health by distracting one from JOY.
Underlying restrictive emotions have been intensely imprinted into many of us. The coherent facial expression for those emotions has been overlaid with traumatic responses from others, and/or, victimizing imprinting. That is, your friend may be looking angry but if they are unwilling to act on or resolve that anger, often for fear of backlash actions from others, it is a contradictory message for you to query their expression if their honesty and openness at that point equals yet another emotionally traumatic experience. You ask: "Why are you angry?" They are afraid to answer, "Because YOU .. !?!?". They don't want to lose your friendship, or receive YOUR anger, or ....
Assertive communication is at odds with everything of an authoritarian structure. Almost all known civilizations have developed in response to high population numbers and densities. Sorting out activities and responsibilities into castes and roles, professions and trades, means there must be an acceptance of commitments and obligations shared amongst the participants. Adults, usually, are the leaders and authorities. Children, the ill, the poor, and, sometimes women, are the followers. Through the commercialized encouragement of time sensitivity, quantity, labor economy, and orderliness ... aggressive communication becomes the norm expressed from the leaders and managers to the follower-workers.
No time for discussion or conjecture.
Passivity is demanded of 90%; aggressiveness is dispensed by 40%. Yes, there is a crossover. There is the pass-down principle so common to abusive relationships. The older-stronger-bigger adult imposes on the weaker-smaller adult. The imposed on adult passes on the abuse energy investment to another adult or to a teenager or to a child, or, a baby. The negative energy of rejection, threat, demand, and selfishness is received as a HOT ember .. to be passed along as quickly as possible to someone else. Few people want to receive it and enjoy the pain of the burning. Fewer people learn how to drop (ignore), discard (deny), quench (forgive), or, convert (transform) it, effectively.
The development of a core resource for positive transformation of immature and destructive communication and behavior is required for authority biased cultures to grow into more relaxed and more politically participative communities. Many attempts have been tried. Religion. Law. Education. Social structure. Economics. Social Services. All have been instituted, separately, in combination, and altogether. All have effected partial benefits for limited periods of time. Authority structured political identities (affiliations, nations) MUST have an urgency present on which to defend the continuance of authority. Without fear, threat (of loss or injury), and reward (promise or surplus), there is no urgency. With urgency, there is no TIME, for contribution, criticism, acknowledgement, or, respect.
Authority, urgency, and commitment center around material things and institutional structures. Authority demands a mechanistic interaction between humans. It is no coincidence that it also encourages possessiveness, routine and ritual, economic worship, technological development, elitism, greed-excess, and, WAR (We Are Repressed). Everyone who is participating and receiving what their authorities have promised them, is happy. Their life is full of Joy. Yet Joy is an Emotion, not a technical production. Not everyone can be a willing follower, subservient to the wishes, and unequal benefits, of others.
Separation is present in every Authority system.
If EVERYONE participated willingly, with full confidence, with full benefit, without regret or want .. there would be no necessity to reward, educate, and impose Authority. Thus, from the Idealistic beginnings of an Authority system, those who tend to benefit more by accumulation of power, material, and privilege tend to exploit their advantages to proudly express their godliness. Increasingly, often over hundreds of years, a larger and larger percentage of the membership drift into the dispossessed. Their WORTH as individuals becomes weaker. Their jobs become less permanent and less dependable. Their skills and knowledge become less relevant and less paid. The distance between their level of authority and that imposed upon them grows more distant and more crushing.
Danger.
There are MANY indicators that a Political entity is entering danger.
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Rituals become irrelevant.
Old truths are found to fail, not improve.
Awareness is lost to boredom.
Participation is lost to expectation.
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Complexity results in increased inequality.
Laws are manipulated and preferentially applied.
Corrections & adjustments don't change the basics.
Access requires more and more levels of sanction.
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Healthcare becomes more complex.
More influences = degradation on more levels.
More people = more levels of authority.
Cost restraint = absence of quality.
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States of Depression, Anxiety, Acting out, become endemic.
A life controlled = a life without choice.
Restricted participation = duty, loyalty, sacrifice.
Demands on encourage rejection, refusal, rebellion.
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Obligations, Responsibilities, Duty, Threats .. dominate.
Wanting to do becomes Must Do.
Wanting to share becomes Must Share.
Wanting to shelter becomes Must Protect.
Consider:
Political and Sexual relationships are both examples of "Joining In" !
Health, AND, Recovery, are closely related to JOY.
The Joy you have, the Joy you share, and the Joy you receive are an influence on your health and your ability to participate in respectful and constructive ways with others. The less you have, the worse you are inviting your health to become. YOUR face can mirror the direction you are pushing your health in. There is no absolute here. It CAN. It may NOT. How accurate the mirror is depends upon how distorted the mirror is. Improve the accuracy of the reflection and you will improve your potential for maintaining and improving your health.
Why are "Faces of Joy" important
JOY is Contagious.
It can be an antidote to many other potentially contagious emotions, including sadness, grief, and panic, which encourage distance, conflict, rejection. These often lead to demonstrations of hostility, vengeance, theft, and other actions which are disrespectful of others. We usually would not like others to express these towards us. Joy is an indicator of how we feel about ourselves, our sense of security, our potential for opportunity, our significant others (relationships), our environment, our health, our work, our (social) status. For a person with CFS-ME, joy is compromised by much and encouraged by little. How we make our lifestyle can enable an attitude which dispels joy, or, invites it.
Joy can ..
- be savored
- be sensuous
- fall soft
- spring from the intellect
- bewitch
- teach
- brighten
- make life worth living
- lay to rest old pain
- heal
- comfort
- be sweet
- be an attitude
- reduce stress
- (add your own additional findings)
Joy is Dynamic.
It springs from and adds to our endorphin hormone levels.
When we are joyful, it is easier to become more joyful and remain joyful for longer than when we are in a state of alert, danger, terror, panic, OR, confusion, anxiety, or fear. Instabilities in our life depress our access to Joy.
Orgasms raise endorphin levels by DEPLETING excess hormones which have tension inducing properties. Whether the orgasm is expressed as a sneeze, cough, vomit, ejaculation, or, sigh ... it is the Resolution of a physiological pattern which begins with a building of tension. That tension may be derived from intentional or unconscious stimulation, usually the latter. It may be a Reptilian Structure reaction to a sensed threat to your immune system. It may be a response to a series of reinforced pleasurable sensations which can reinforce the participatory "Joining In" Ego response between two people, the participatory "Political" SuperEgo response within groups, or the "Reproductive" response of our Reptilian Structures. It is the RELIEF that enables the endorphin presence.
There are at least FOUR TYPES
of endorphins created in the body.
Each has a different number and types of amino acids in their molecules.
Beta-endorphins are usually found in the hypothalamus and pituitary gland.
Other endorphins are released in the pituitary gland during times of pain or stress.
Met-enkephalin and leu-enkephalin are found in the brain stem and spinal cord.
Physiological INFLUENCES of endorphins:
- All bind to opioid receptors in the brain.
- Reduces cortisol demand & inflammation.
- Increases the alkalinity balance.
- Reduction of pain sensitivity.
- Fear or trauma induced conditioning is reduced.
- Reduction of anxiety induced compulsive behaviors.
- Assist in the release of sex hormones from the pituitary gland.
- Releases calcium and fat excesses.
- Excess pituitary beta-endorphins tend to encourage overeating.
- Endorphins are cleared from the blood very quickly.
Life without these Quality-of-Life enhancers can begin on a downward spiral into chronic AND acute pain, depression, constipation, inflammation, and addiction. Just how happy can anyone be when those PHYSICAL realities fill their conscious awareness? We are well served by knowing what reduces and takes our normally produced "encouragers" away from us. Check this out ...
Neutralizers of endorphins:
- Need
- Confusion
- Anger
- Fear
- Tension
- Demands
STRESS, health destructive stress, is what we often categorize the above as. The higher the temperature that you heat your food to and the longer you heat your food, the more nutritionally useless, and toxic, it becomes. If we keep feeding our life systems with attitude and emotional poisons, what do YOU think is going to happen?
These neutralizers can all be ADJUSTED by us as to their impact of influence on us. Needs are best to be discerned clearly apart from Desires. Confusion can be decreased by our becoming more self-aware, more self-directed, more reverent, better informed about our personal concerns, more aware and accepting of our limitations and those of others. We CAN do all of this, at minimal economic cost, and considerable long-terms savings.
Start investing!
IF we truly want health and recovery, we must encourage Joy and diminish those influences which neutralize it, and its expression. Denial and ignorance are excuses not to take control of your life and your health.
You no longer have those.
You have the answers here.
What are YOU going to do about it!
Examples of "Faces of Joy"
- a world of mystery and promise
- playing
- elevator ride
- just for the heck of it
- working together
- using imagination
- pleasing others
- playing grown up
- challenge, and success
- speed
- flying
- inverting
- floating
- loving
- giving of the heart
- passion
- excitement
- dancing
- positive expectation
- romance
- kissing
- hugging
- quiet affection
- joshing
- carefree
- acceptance
- a comfortable bed
- a warm companion
- A nuzzling cat
- a hot soak
- sunbathing
- swinging
- a smile of appreciation
- floating in warm water
- reverence
- hearing a joke
- performing for others
- reuniting the lost
- sight for the blinded
- freedom for the trapped
- hope for the hopeless
- springing up and down
- (add your own ..)
ALL of the above can encourage
the release of more endorphins.
Life is about activity and rest; stimulation and calming; change and constancy. It is the excess of any of these which encourages physical exhaustion and loss of ability. The societies WE have built and ALLOWED to be built around us, are killing us. We can continue to be slaves, cower in fear, consume in pride, and, react with abandonment and violence ... and our environmental and health quality will continue to degrade. Is that what YOU want for yourself, your spouse, your children, the planet? There are Choices. Here are a few:
- Become aware of your true Face.
- Thank your body for its capabilities.
- Reduce your own Joy stealers.
- Recognize the political dangers.
- Increase your Endorphin levels.
- Practice your own Faces of Joy.
- Stop waiting for others to bring Joy.
- Encourage others to reduce THEIR Joy Killers.
- Invest in YOUR health!
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