Interfaith Enlightenment Center

06/03/2024

02/07/2021

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07/18/2020

We invite you to join one of Hollywood’s most successful actors and Academy Award® winner Jeff Bridges for an online meeting of Zen Peacemakers International members. Interfaith Enlightenment Center is part of the Zen Peacemakers International members.

We invite you to read our ZPI Journal Article "The Dudes Abide: The Friendship of Jeff Bridges and Bernie Glassman.

Registration is free. The meeting will take place in English, using the Zoom app, and will be facilitated by ZPI's executive director Geoff O'Keeffe. A link to join will be sent after you register.

Note, the above start time for this event is given in EST (Eastern Standard Time, US). Please be sure to adjust for your own local time. Some conversions are provided below: One of Hollywood’s most successful actors and a seven-time Academy Award® nominee, JEFF BRIDGES garnered his first Oscar® for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in Crazy Heart—as Bad Blake, a down-on-his-luck, alcoholic country music singer. Since earning his initial Oscar nomination in 1971 for The Last Picture Show, he has been honored with seven nominations, most recently for Hell or High Water (2016). In a career spanning nearly 50 years, he has appeared in more than 65 films, among them Seabiscuit, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Starman and most recently Bad Times at the El Royale. Through his company, ASIS Productions, he has also produced films and television movies, including the documentary Living in The Future’s Past as well as The Giver, American Heart, The Only Living Boy in New York, and Hidden in America.

Photography and music are two of his passions. Jeff’s photographs have been featured in Premiere and Aperture, as well as in gallery exhibitions in New York (at the George Eastman House), Los Angeles, London, Italy, and the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. In 2013, Jeff received an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography. In February 2015 Jeff released a spoken word/ambient album titled Sleeping Tapes. The collaboration was co-produced with musician Keefus Ciancia who also supplied the music. The album was released by web hosting service Squarespace as part of its Super Bowl advertising campaign, with all proceeds from the album sales going to charity.

In 2014 Jeff released the album Jeff Bridges & The Abiders Live. He released his self-titled major label debut album for Blue Note Records in 2011, with Grammy Award–winner T Bone Burnett as producer. That critically acclaimed album was a follow-up to his first solo effort, Be Here Soon.

He is currently the national spokesman for the Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign that is fighting to end childhood hunger in America. Proceeds from this book will go to the Motion Picture & Television Fund, a charitable organization offering assistance and care to people in Southern California in the movie and television industries with limited or no resources.

Jeff and his wife Susan divide their time between their home in Santa Barbara, California, and their ranch in Montana.

04/18/2020

Stress Physiology
and the Impact on Our Health

Author: Gael Wheeler, DO
The presence of the COVID-19 virus has altered our reality globally and so has increased the stress level, personally and collectively. As a physician, I am acutely aware of the downstream health consequences of chronic stress and want to do what I can to minimize the impact. Because knowledge is power, today we are going to delve into how the stress response works and a bit of what we can do to moderate it. Please also see my previous writing for more emphasis on strategies for stress management. (Finding Calm in the Midst of Chaos)

Let’s get started.

Our stress response is ruled by primitive parts of the brain designed to get us out of danger. Acute stress has a defined beginning, middle, and end, where chronic stress is ongoing. How is stress is perceived is how it is responded to. The thalamus region of the brain sends sensory information to the amygdala. The amygdala makes an appraisal of the situation and modulates the response. If you perceive your resources are inadequate to meet a threat, the sympathetic nervous system kicks in with the fight/flight/freeze response. Conscious evaluation is not required for this. This automatic response is designed for very short periods of time. Chronic fear, worry, and rumination feed the stress response. When prolonged, a person can experience physical exhaustion.

Chronic stress can actually alter brain function. Our hippocampus helps us form memories. Chronic cortisol elevation causes the hippocampus to atrophy, resulting in decreased memory, decreased decision-making ability and increased depression. Chronic stress prioritizes quick fixes and usually manifests as either under or overeating. This can result in nutrient deficiencies and excessive weight gain.

Chronic stress can trigger pain syndromes. Chronic muscle tension can alter the physiology of muscles, causing them to atrophy. Physical activity helps decrease the stress response and prevents the cascade of chronic pain syndromes.

Chronic stress can decrease REM sleep. Chronic worry can increase cortisol and disrupt circadian rhythms. Protecting sleep is critical in times of stress. Sleep is when we do most of our restorative functions and is essential for immune health.

With prolonged stress, cortisol is chronically elevated, which suppresses our immune system. When this becomes chronic, the immune system can actually become over-activated leading to autoimmune disease, heart disease, and diabetes.

Using the prefrontal cortex of our brain, we can turn down the emotional response to a situation and re-appraise it. Remembering that ‘this won’t last forever’ and ‘we will have learned a lot’ helps us put our situation in perspective. We can ask ourselves ‘In five or 10 years, how will we feel about this?’.

The insula region of the brain joins the higher and lower centers of the brain and helps us listen to what our body is telling us: pain, hunger and more. Mindfulness, practicing being present in the moment, helps us tune into the language of the body and the brain. Doing this helps us better choose how to meet our needs. Like a parent whose child is trying to get their attention, we need to stop and listen deeply. An increased awareness of our emotional state gives us more of a sense of control of the problem. Noticing thoughts without judgment and accepting emotions helps us move on.

For more information on the amazing physiology of the stress response, how it can help us, how it can hurt us and what we can do to manage it, there is an excellent book ‘Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers’ by Robert Sapolsky.

Keep yourself safe, keep yourself sane and keep yourself happy,
Gael Wheeler, DO

04/01/2020

For anyone who has anxiety or stress or wants some guided meditation: We have released free guided shamanic meditations using triple induction techniques by David Hobbs. Also as a special treat: There are guided hypnotherapy tracks from Sean Wheeler. For those who don't know Sean Wheeler, Sean has appeared on radio & TV for more than a decade, including CNN, Nancy Grace and Chrisley Knows Best. Sean has performed more than 12,000 sessions with more than 3,000 clients. He's a Licensed Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and also a pretty funny dude. You can download and share the tracks at:

ibet Sky Village Foundation seeks to alleviate some of the hardships the villagers endure, while ensuring they maintain their self- sufficiency and agency. We are currently in Phase One of a long-term project to support several incremental water, sanitation, and health improvements. More urgently, w...

03/08/2020

THE FLOW STATE

Years ago, The Pandora Star Creators created one of the first PandoraStar programs called, 'FLOW', which They aptly named for two reasons... 1) studies show the 7.80Hz frequency increases cerebral blood flow and 2) the flow state seems to correspond to an actual brainwave state (7Hz-8Hz)...

This one small band of frequencies makes up a VERY unique frequency range. A frequency range which sits on the alpha-theta border, where the optimal range for visualization, mind programming and the manifesting power of your mind begins.

Within this frequency range is the resonance of the earth itself 7.83hz. This is where Reiki is so effective: Researchers found that not only do the brain wave patterns of practitioner and receiver become synchronised in the alpha state, characteristic of deep relaxation and meditation, but they pulse in unison with the earth’s magnetic field, known as the Schuman Resonance at the alpha-theta border. During these moments, the biomagnetic field of the practitioners’ hands is at least 1000 times greater than normal, and not as a result of internal body current.

This frequency is where you consciously create your reality. By spending larger amounts of time in this resonance, you can re-program negative patterns, blockages and belief systems. Eventually, or immediately consciousness levels and frequencies and begin to resonate at your maximum potential.

Whether you’d like to work on healing the body, or the mind, tapping into these waves can help you reach your potential by stimulating creativity, and your special gifts or even help you begin implementing new healthier habits from old negative programming.

Last week, I used 'FLOW' before leading one of my Synchronicity Walks, because the flow state is a powerful state of being, where meaningful coincidences will emerge that can connect you with favourable circumstances, chance encounters, needed resources, like-minded people, and more. And if you let go of all fearful control, trusting you can remain in the flow for an indefinite period, you'll experience a cascade of synchronistic events that'll lead you into an elevated state of spiritual reality, where anything can happen!

For those who have access to the Pandora Star: Consider making FLOW part of your regular program.

01/18/2020

When you are ready to make change in the world, consider those who are often suppressed in the news. Tibet suffers.

DONATE Tibet Sky Village Foundation What does Tibet Sky Village Foundation do to help? Tibet Sky Village Foundation seeks to alleviate some of the hardships the villagers endure while ensuring they maintain their self- sufficiency and agency. We are currently in Phase One of a

01/17/2020

01/06/2020

"This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.” – Rumi