It’s Your Breathing – Stupid!

This post is for all of my super stressed out managers, biz owners and mom’s/dad’s who juggle a family and a job – the fastest way to calm down and find serenity is by controlling your breathing. I know, I know, I can hear the outcry already: “What? Just by controlling how I breathe I can get a handle on my stress-levels?! This cannot be true – I certainly also must change my diet, work out more, improve my love life and pop a pill or two to make this happen, right?!”


Well, an improved diet, a work out routine, and passionate sex with your partner, would of course help you a great deal with your stress levels. Though for now, let’s just and solely focus on your breathing.
There are five chambers in our lungs, but we typically only utilize the top three when we breathe the normal adult way. Sometime while growing up we completely forgot how to breathe so that all of the five chambers get filled with oxygen: belly breathing. 


I guarantee you when you focus on your breath and train yourself to primarily breathe with your belly, you will master your days in a much, much more relaxed way. The beautiful part is that you do not need to practice the art of breathing for months on end, it works right away. 


Here is how it goes: put your hands on your belly button so that you can easily observe the movement of your belly. Breathe in air through your nose and expand your belly until your lungs are completely filled (no need to strain yourself too much though!). You know that your lungs are nicely filled up as your belly will have the shape of a soccer ball. Then slowly breathe out again and pull your belly button toward your spinal cord. This way you start emptying out your lungs with the bottom chambers and work your way up to the top chambers. 


An ideal time to practice this type of breathing is right before you want to go to sleep: you are already in bed, you want to wind down, there are no external distractions keeping you from practicing the belly breathing technique. 


This simple tool is so powerful that I can guarantee you it can help you overcome the most stressful, testosterone filled boardroom meetings (or I give you your money back – hehe). Try it out and consciously focus your attention on your breathing and make yourself breath in and out of your belly at least three to five times. This only will take you around two minutes and no one will ever know. If you cannot exercise this technique for whatever reason where you are then excuse yourself and go to the bathrooms – you have no idea how often I have left meetings giving myself an opportunity to calm down and refocus by utilizing my breath.

Q Moayad is the Naked Healer. We have entered a new era of conscious living, noetic science, visualization, sine waves, self healing, self determination, visualizing, power of mind.You can see this all around you: in the stock market, your career, your relationships, your children and even your health. What used to work is no longer working. This era requires a new set of life tools. It calls for you to integrate your life actions with the power of international living.

“Life of Pi” or how profoundly we can change/adapt to new situations…

While I was on vacation in Greece the other week I came about a book called “Life of Pi” written by Yann Martel. Boy o boy, what a story. Very creative. Very captivating. Very thought-provoking. 


For those of you who have not read the story, here is a super short write up: in this fantasy a vegetarian, 16 year old Indian boy called Piscine “Pi” Molitor Patel survives some eight months after a shipwreck, while stranded on a small lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker, a hyena, a zebra and an orangutan. The hyena eats the zebra and orangutan, and then Richard Parker eats the hyena, leaving Pi as the only other survivor. Food and water supplies are low. Pi starts fishing to get food for him and Richard Parker, whom he keeps alive so that he will not be all alone on the ocean. Pi ensures, with his knowledge as the son of a zoo-keeper, that Richard Parker believes Pi is the alpha animal and therefore doesn’t attack the boy. After 227 days the lifeboat reaches the coast of Mexico.


This book has sold almost 10 million copies worldwide, and rightly so I may say. There are several aspects of life that the book touches upon in great detail: religion, spirituality, interaction of man with the animal kingdom, survival, etc. Today I would only want to focus on one aspect: transformation. Those of you who have either worked with me one on one or have attended a seminar know that I am a total believer in taking the necessary time for things to unfold and grow – I always say that “slow is fast and fast is slow”. Through gradual but persistent work we can change anything and everything: behavior, thought processes, belief systems, weight, fortune, etc.

Change can come through two doors: 1) outside circumstances, such as dramatic changes in ones world: revolution, sickness, accident, weather catastrophes, etc.: through this door one is forced to change and adapt to the new situation rather swiftly or “drown” and 2) from within, where we want to change out of our own free will: we are tired of playing around and want to get married and settle down, being overweight bothers us so much that we change our diet, we are unfulfilled in our job and so we take a leap of faith and switch jobs, industries or even start running our own small gig…
The only difference between the first and the second “door” is that one is apparently pushed upon us and the other is self directed change. Both can be equally powerful as long as the wish for change/survival is big enough…

In Pi’s case change was pushed down his throat and became a matter of life or death. He grew up as a total vegetarian, his parents were vegetarian, everyone he knew were vegetarian, as a matter of fact, the entire region he lived in was primarily vegetarian. He never had eaten meat or fish in his life before, and the sheer thought of having to do so made him feel nauseated. In his life he would have died happily being a vegetarian never knowing the taste of a juicy burger or a finely grilled fish.

Well, fate meant it differently with him when he woke up in a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific ocean. He survived not eating at all for the first couple of days but then he started to eat the bland survival cookies he found on the boat. After a couple of weeks those were all eaten and hunger started to take over his body and mind. He was thus forced to either do the unthinkable and eat fish or simply die.
During his time on the boat the reader gets to observe the gradual but nonetheless drastic change in Pi, who entered the boat a total vegetarian but left it 227 days later as a carnivore of the first order. After catching his first fish he has the biggest of difficulties to kill it. It takes him a while to overcome his own fears and inhibitions before he finally wins the battle against himself and the fish. From total vegetarian to a raw fish eater within five minutes, incredible how life sometimes unfolds itself to us. In the weeks and months to come he then gradually threw overboard all of his inhibitions so that he ate sea turtles and drank their blood and even killed a bird with his bare hands and ate its raw flesh without thinking twice.
The question now arises as to why he was able to turn 180 degree from a total vegetarian to a raw fish and meat eater? The motivation to do so was big enough, that simple. Either he changed or he would have died. A very simple equation.

This brings us now to the second “door” and the voluntary change that lies behind it and this is really what we are interested in.
Figure out what it is that you would want: different job, less work hours, more money, family, more travel, new home in a specific neighborhood, etc. Be as precise as possible, mere wishful thinking and blah blah won’t just do it. How much do you want to earn? Give the exact dollar amount you would like to earn in a year. You want a new home? In which neighborhood? How big/how many bedrooms, bathrooms? How much should it cost max? I guess you get the picture here.

Focus on the end result. Put yourself in the new house and see yourself submitting your tax return with that specific dollar amount.

Believe that you will receive from the bottom of your heart. If your believe is as big as Pi’s and if your motivation is as big as Pi’s you will get there with 99% certainty! Pi wanted to live. This simple but very powerful motivator helped him overcome his aversion against meat and gave him the courage to tame and subdue a wild tiger on a tiny lifeboat.

Q Moayad is the Naked Healer. We have entered a new era of conscious living, noetic science, visualization, sine waves, self healing, self determination, visualizing, power of mind.You can see this all around you: in the stock market, your career, your relationships, your children and even your health. What used to work is no longer working. This era requires a new set of life tools. It calls for you to integrate your life actions with the power of international living.

Where have the last 15 years gone?!

Just a few weeks ago I had to fly to England for a business trip. I seized the opportunity to fly up to Birmingham to not only visit one of my oldest and best friends but also my former university I used to study at for a couple of years – the University of Wolverhampton.


Revisiting my former stomping grounds made me very melancholic and I found myself overwhelmed with emotions several times during my visit. And quite frankly had I not had my mate Gabe with me I would have shed many tears, that’s for sure


Walking through the town and the campus and revisiting the dorms and the house we used to live in brought back wonderful memories of simple and joyful times. Mind you though, simple times compared to now that is – then of course we also had our worries and concerns, such as: Will I be able to pass my next exam? Will I be able to secure my summer internship? Where will the next party be? Will I be able to ask her out for a date? Hopefully I will be able to change classes and get rid of the lecturer I do not like, etc, etc.


These concerns and worries seem so innocent and naïve from today’s point of view – but boy o boy were they real and all encompassing then.


In the 15 years since I first moved to Wolverhampton everything in my life has changed and so have of course the town the the campus. Physically being were I used to live so many years ago allowed me to slip back into the person that I was and relive my dreams and wishes again, only to realize that most of my dreams have dramatically changed and that what was important then to me has become tertiary now.
All day and many days thereafter I kept on pondering about where those 15 years have gone? What have I done with my time? If my life ended tomorrow could I truly say that I led a self-determined and fulfilled life, living to the max and experiencing life at its fullest glory or would I have to admit that I fell short of achieving my highest potential? These questions have been gnawing on me since and I have not been able to shake them off yet – maybe because I have to admit that despite a truly amazing life that I have had the luck of having I continue to feel that I am falling short of my highest possible potential. There it is out on the table – just to verbalize this makes me breathe easier and freer. Despite all the growth that I have gone through and all the self-improvement and (self-)healing work that I have done, I am still not where I would want to be – actually far from being where I would want to be…sigh…


Time is so precious, time is so dear – and the more I make myself aware of this simple but fundamental fact, the more I am able to let go of the unimportant daily crap that eats away my energies and focus more and more on what is important to me as well as society at large. Whenever something has bugged me in these past couple of weeks and I catch myself getting tense and allowing my ego to take over I think back of the sadness I felt when I was in Wolverhampton and the realization that time is traveling by far faster than light and that I have no time to waste on stupid, ego driven crap if I really want to make a difference in this world – and as soon as I realize this, tension goes away, ego gets put back into its place and I can think clearly again and thus overcome the challenge swiftly and as painlessly as possible.


The more I think about our purpose in life the more I have to admit that I have no clue, but I believe that, at least in part, we are here to pro-actively create our life and see it blossom so that we can enjoy the fact that we are spiritual beings temporarily put in a physical body.


Time is too short to waste on the small stuff – brush it off and move on so that also you can create and lead the life that you truly want.

Q Moayad is the Naked Healer. We have entered a new era of conscious living, noetic science, visualization, sine waves, self healing, self determination, visualizing, power of mind.You can see this all around you: in the stock market, your career, your relationships, your children and even your health. What used to work is no longer working. This era requires a new set of life tools. It calls for you to integrate your life actions with the power of international living.

A Simple but Powerful mind shifting exercise on MONEY!

Money – the constant struggle, battle and challenge in life! We never seem to have enough of it. And if we are in the lucky position that the amount of money that we have is not the challenge then for many it is the fact that earning it comes at a price – more than we are willing to pay for it: we feel exhausted, stressed and burned out.


Believe me, I know what it means to own a lot and lose it all. I was born into a wealthy family and as a child I was used to getting almost anything that I wanted. I grew up in an environment knowing that I was 'privileged' (without having a clue what the word actually means). Even though I was very young, I knew that I was treated differently than other people. At the tender age of eight a revolution swept through Iran and we had to flee the country and leave everything behind – everything. All of a sudden, I was not the privileged kid anymore, but the 'immigrant' in class who didn't speak the language too well. From then onwards it was not dad who provided for us but mom – it were rather confusing times I am telling you, my world not only had collapsed but was also turned upside down.


As a teenager I started to earn my own money and this is when I realized that money came to me rather easily. I don't mean that I did not have to work for my money – quite the contrary, I even had to work very hard for it at times – but I could clearly see that I landed summer and part time jobs that paid a ton more than those my peers were landing – which of course put a big smile on my face.


Long before I realized that everything in life is merely energy, created through the frequencies that we exude, it hit me that making money had little to do with who you were and whether you had a degree or not but rather how you 'felt' about money. When I had money in my wallet I felt, amongst many other things, 'cooler', 'bigger', 'older', and more self confident. With the influx of all these emotions life became more delightful – for example it was almost effortless to chat up girls, and otherwise not so enjoyable aspects of my life, such as exams and school, were easier to deal with. And as an added bonus, I would attract even more money: grandma would slip me a bill, I would find money on the sidewalk or an opportunity would present itself where I could earn extra cash without having to kill myself for it.


This simple but very powerful equation – money in my pocket means a better, smoother life – burnt itself into my mind and stayed with me throughout my entire life in good times as well as in hard and challenging ones. A few years ago when I was faced with my company's collapse, I remembered those carefree times in my teenage years and started to reprogram myself from the ground up about how I felt about and perceived money. Even though my self esteem had hit rock bottom and my stress levels sky high, I knew I had it in my power to ultimately change my life's trajectory. Remembering how I felt as a kid when I had a (large) bill in my wallet I put a couple of $100 bills in my wallet and went on walks. I would go on a shopping spree and everything that I saw and liked I would pretend to buy making myself believe that I could afford it. I would often say thank you that I can afford this or that and that money was coming easily to me. This exercise helped me to change how I felt about money and helped me shift my paradigm from victim in life to money is coming easily and in abundance to me. Admittedly, the exercise did not prevent me from having to file personal bankruptcy a couple of years ago but it helped me to get to where I am today: in 2011 I have made more money than ever before and it is still coming in in droves. Don't get me wrong, I have to work hard for it, but it practically comes to me on a silver platter, all I have to do is to "service it", i.e. guide my groups through Europe, coach my students or manage the business I am a partner in. And I am doing so with a big smile on my face – despite all the stresses that I am exposed to due to my rather busy (work) schedule – as I simply know that money lies out there waiting for me to be picked up. And with this mindset I end up earning my money easier and easier and with more joy than ever before.

Q Moayad is the Naked Healer. We have entered a new era of conscious living, noetic science, visualization, sine waves, self healing, self determination, visualizing, power of mind.You can see this all around you: in the stock market, your career, your relationships, your children and even your health. What used to work is no longer working. This era requires a new set of life tools. It calls for you to integrate your life actions with the power of international living.