Calm: How to Thrive in Challenging Times

By Gayle Kimball, Ph.D.

Generate Emotional Strength
Balance Your Body
Learn Empowering Visualizations
Resources
We live in challenging times but can apply mental and physical tools to stay centered and calm. You will learn energy tools to develop your thought power, including how to stay centered, how to ground and generate more energy to achieve your goals. You'll learn movements to balance the physical body and calm the nervous system. The beauty of the tools is their simplicity and ability to be used anywhere to rewire our brains with our thought patterns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9780938795674

Book preview

Calm

How to Thrive in Challenging Times

Gayle Kimball, Ph.D.

Calm cow near Zurich, Switzerland

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination 

embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.

Albert Einstein

©Gayle Kimball, 2020

Equality=Press [e-mail]

ISBN ebook 978-0-938795-67-4

ISBN print 978-0-938795-66-7

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or

used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the

publisher except for the use of brief quotations in articles and book reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2020

Drawings by Chris Ficken, cover design by Miles Huffman and photos by the author. The front cover is the California Mendocino coast and the back cover photo is the Big Island of Hawaii taken by Brooke Kimball. Deep thanks to Dolores Blalock for her editorial skills.

Other Books by Gayle Kimball

Mysteries of Reality: Dialogues with Visionary Scientists

Mysteries of Healing: Dialogues with Doctors and Scientists

Mysteries of Knowledge Beyond the Sense: Dialogues with Courageous Scientists

Trilogy trailer: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGlobalyouth/featured

https://visionaryscientists.home.blog

Essential Energy Tools: How to Develop Your Clairvoyant and Healing Abilities illustrated with videos and CDs

50/50 Marriage

50/50 Parenting

Women’s Culture

Women’s Culture Revisited

The Teen Trip: The Complete Resource Guide

Everything You Need to Know to Succeed After College

How to Survive Your Parents’ Divorce

Answers to Kids’ Deep Questions in Photos

Your Mindful Guide to Academic Success: Beat Burnout

Ageism in Youth Studies: Generation Maligned

How Global Youth Values Will Transform Our Future

Brave: Young Women’s Global Revolution (Volumes 1 and 2)

Resist! Goals and Tactics for Changemakers

Quick Healthy Recipes: Literacy Fundraiser

Young Women Climate Activists (in process)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Generate Emotional Strength

Chapter 2: Create Visualizations

Chapter 3: Balance The Body

Conclusion

Glossary

Resources

Endnotes

Introduction

        St. Croix

We live in challenging times but can apply mental and physical tools to stay centered and calm. You will learn energy tools to develop your thought power, including how to stay centered, how to ground and generate more energy to achieve your goals. You’ll see movements to balance the physical body and calm the parasympathetic nervous system. The beauty of the tools is their simplicity and ability to be used anywhere. The fact is, we can rewire our brains with our thought patterns, as researched by UCLA psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, author of The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force.1 The brain is much more changeable or plastic than scientists used to believe.

We feel stressed when we feel we can’t cope with challenges. Take the Perceived Stress Scale to measure your stress level.2 If it’s on overdrive too long the parasympathetic system’s response to stressors weakens the immune system.3 This is one of the three parts of the autonomic nervous system called the rest and digest system because it slows the heart rate and increases activity of the glands and digestion when the body feels safe rather than defending itself in fight or flight. These tools will enhance your enjoyment of daily activities as well as your well-being.

The techniques in this book are illustrated in three animated videos, a meditation CD, and Kids’ Mind Power CD, listed in the Resource section. I built on visualizations developed by the late Louis Bostwick (who didn’t write about his program at the Berkeley Psychic Institute), and include energy psychology (which works with meridians and acupressure points and other energy systems), Heart Math Institute (a therapeutic focus on synchronizing the heart with positive emotions) Neuro-Linguistic Programing (which uses senses to change emotional patterns), kinesiology (muscle movement) and other tools for balance and stress reduction. My video on YouTube illustrates some of these techniques.4

Even young children can use mind power. A stern nurse about to give him immunization shots frightened Brandon, a five-year-old who listened to my Kids’ Mind Power CD. While she went to get her supplies, his mom asked Brandon to think of a happy time; so he picked doing the limbo dance at his birthday party. Tearless, when the nurse said the third shot would be the worst, he laughed during the shot because he was thinking about giving his friend a green slime cake at the party. The nurse said that his laughter was a first. Perhaps she learned something from Brandon about the power of our attitudes.

Visualizing images serves as a powerful way to harness the power of thoughts. We attract what we focus on; we program ourselves like computer software, so we need to examine our core beliefs, such as about our self-worth. You have probably used your intuitive abilities throughout your life without naming them. Have you ever known who is calling you on the phone before you answered it? Have you felt someone looking at you from behind? Have you had a sense something is going to happen and it did? As you learn to develop your intuition or your sixth sense, you will experience more ease, more control of your life, more wellness, joy, and wisdom. You can use visualizations like grounding to achieve more balance and centeredness.

We know that worry and depression hamper the immune system. We’re weakened by self-sabotage and negative thought patterns; feeling overwhelmed, over-responsibility; adrenal stress response, etc. Stressors include too much to do in too short a time, perfectionism, self-criticism, an unsupportive work supervisor, conflict with family members, work/family strains, over-spending, health problems, feeling overwhelmed, disasters and climate change, epidemics, and lack of purpose when we lack spiritual renewal and joy.

Chronic stress impairs the immune system, leading to disease, which costs employers money. Long-term stress contributes to heart disease, high blood pressure, increased cholesterol, depression, divorce, arthritis, type 2 diabetes and certain cancers (according to a study of caregivers of relatives with dementia), as well as workplace accidents and injuries. Research shows that tumors transplanted into rats living in stressful situations grow more rapidly. Even wounds take longer to heal when we’re stressed— about 40% longer, according to an Ohio State University study of dental students.5

Stress alters the body’s chemistry: Stress hormones encourage the formation of fat cells and cravings for sugar and fat. A study at Georgetown University, led by Zofia Zukowska, found that mice that were stressed and fed a diet high in sugar and salt gained about twice as much fat in their bellies as non-stressed mice with the same diet.6 The fat is filled with chemical signals that promote illness and metabolic syndrome: high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol.

Adrenal glands sit on top of the kidneys and