Have you ever wondered what it’s like living with Post Traumatic Stress? Actually, I hope you never have to personally experience it.

Do you know anyone who lives with Post Traumatic Stress also known as PTSD? Perhaps a family member or a friend of yours lives with PTS. Do you know how to help someone when they are triggered?

I can tell you from personal experience exactly what it’s like living with post traumatic stress and how my meditation practice has helped me overcome trigger points over the years.

First, let’s dive into what Post Traumatic Stress is.

The information below is borrowed from The Mayo Clinic, specifically, this website: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20355967#. The bold items indicate my personal account of post traumatic stress.

Causes
You can develop post-traumatic stress disorder when you go through, see or learn about an event involving actual or threatened death, serious injury...

During a recent trip to the east coast I had a revelation that opened my eyes and my heart.

Ya gotta know the beginning before we get to the juicy part…

I was born in Brooklyn, New York and then moved to Holbrook, Long Island with my family when I was 14. That was a lifetime ago and yet - I still identify with those roots.

“Yeah, I’m from Brooklyn and Long Island.“ stating it like I’m wearing a badge of honor or some such shit.

That is up until quite recently when my wife and I visited the East Coast. We went to Vermont for the total solar eclipse (phenomenal and breathtaking) and then down to Long Island for a few days of visiting places that I haven’t seen in many years.

We had a great time visiting the Long Island Music Hall of Fame https://www.limusichalloffame.org to see the Billy Joel – My Life, A Piano Man’s Journey – The Ultimate Exhibition!  https://www.limusichalloffame.org/billy-joel-exhibit

My...

You know all about the hero’s journey because you’ve seen it a million and one times.

For clarification let’s take a moment to spell it out.  

Joseph Campbell was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. Campbell's best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth.

The hero's journey is a common narrative archetype, or story template, that involves a hero who goes on an adventure, learns a lesson, wins a victory with that newfound knowledge, and then returns home transformed.

This is important because we’re going to apply the concept to your life.

Before we do let’s look at some examples from the literary and entertainment industries.

Books and movies that are grounded...

The Art of You

Do you know how many books start or have in their title “The Art of”?

What if there were over 2,000,001 books with the title?

That’s a whole lotta books. Okay, so there's not quite that many.

I did a Google search and found 445 books that have “The Art of“ in the title.

It’s still a lot, which is quite surprising and some of them are really well-known.
Here's the top 10:
Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Peanuts: the Art of Charles M Schultz
The Art of Racing In The Rain (Damn good book!)
The Art of Stone Painting
The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss
The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life
Home comforts: The Art and Science of Maintaining House
75 years of D. C. Comics. The Art of Modern Myth Making
The Art of War
The Art of Seduction

Fascinating that “The Art of Seduction” follows immediately after “The Art of War”.

Pillage, Plunder, and Seduction?
“Sorry, m’love, but me arm is...

Why is it that we look outside ourselves to fill the endless void?

We live in a world that espouses materialism and without the next biggest baddest thing our lives are lacking.

We are bombarded by commercials that tell us our clothes aren’t really clean unless we use their mega formulated laundry detergent. Or, the clothes still stink even after washing them. 

Our dishes aren’t really clean unless we use the one cleaner that was used to clean 8,428 ducks!!!! 

We’re obsessed with being freaky clean. Don’t let those germs in!

Or if we don’t have the next shiny new ultra high-tech car or truck, well pal, you're just not hip (that’s Boomer speak for cool).  

It’s no wonder you feel hollow. Face it.  You’re basically screwed for life. 

Unless…

DUCKS!!!

Not really. 

But, we have an answer at the Enlightened Squirrel Healing Arts Center. 

What if we could show you how to be okay with yourself as you...

Let's face it. "Why?" is a terrible question to ask yourself. Here's the reason.

When you ask "Why?" , as in "Why is this happening to me?" "Why doesn't that person answer my calls?" and questions like that, it gives your Inner Critic a chance to raise it's self-serving head (because it's trying to keep everything the same, and you "stuck") and respond like this: "Because you're a hopeless dweeb." "Who would want to hang out with you? You're worthless."

The things you're told by your Inner Critic are NOT TRUE. It's what you heard (usually from someone else, or the TV, or any number of places), and what you've reinforced throughout your life. It happens to us all. 

Trust me when I say there isn't a person out there who doesn't have some version of a blue-suit-cats-eye-glasses-grey-haired-overweight-overbearing-loud-voiced Critic whispering (and sometimes shouting) in their ear telling them what a creep they are. Mine is named Sally Jenkins (with apologies to every Sally Jenkins...

We celebrated my 67th birthday on Dec 11, 2023. Nice and quiet with Ashara, the cats, dogs and horses (always in that order). These days a nice non-Grunge flannel shirt is a fine present. That and take home Asian dinner. And a small chocolate cake of course!

A couple of weeks rolled by, close to holiday season and I saw a new post from the Roger Dean group on Facebook discussing another art show at the Trading Boundaries Art Gallery in Sussex, UK. What the actual paint-on-canvas? Is that Awaken I see in the background? Colorful metaphors ran around my head like ants streaming out of their hill under attack. Ever see those little buggers move when their queen sends mental messages to save the hill? Frightening actually.

The repartee began for the second time.
“Could I buy it?”
“YES!”
“Should I buy it?”
“UH…..UH…..” feeling the credit card in my wallet practically leaping out.
“Hold on, bub. We have a furnace that’s...

PART 1 (it’s a long story, folks)

Have you ever met any of your heroes?

What would you do if you did? What would you say to this person who you worshipped from afar? Would they meet your expectations of the Adonis or Aphrodite you believed them to be?

Well, I have met my hero. Two times.

Seriously, because we say seriously when we really mean it. The first time was in Seattle and the second time was quite recently in Denver.

Wanna know the truth? Both times were better than eating twenty boxes of your favorite pasta from your Grandma’s favorite pasta bowl then passing out from carb overload only to wake up and think about finding the nearest Pasta Anonymous meeting. “Hi. I’m Frank and I ate twenty boxes of pasta, passed out, and now wanting more pasta with pesto and those giant prawns still in their shells.” [HI, FRANK!]

Let’s go back to 2004 when my wife and our family of cats, dogs and horses (always in that order) lived in the very wet and very...

What does this even have to do with our business?

Well, a couple things, actually. It’s got lots of horses. Our business has lots of horses (four). 

Vendors have booths. The company where we got our training had a booth - if you went to Stock Show, you saw us in the CINCH Arena/Events Center at the Touched By A Horse booth.

Ashara (far right) with two soon-to-be Touched By A Horse certified coaches

Touched By A Horse is where we got our very extensive training in Gestalt coaching, both with and without horses. It’s a four-year total program, AND we are required to do continuing education, so we never stop learning. It’s based in Colorado, and there are coaches trained in this modality all over the world.

It was so much fun sharing the booth with some of my fellow coaches. In the Denver area, we’re spread from Platteville to Colorado Springs, and there are probably others I don’t even know about. What I’m saying here is that if you want to...

All motive and action affects the cosmos in some way. The principle of cause and effect is the truth that allows us to change ourselves and the world around us for the better. However, this same universal law is also at work when change is not at the forefront of our minds. Our intentions flow forever outward in the form of energy, affecting both the people closest to us and billions of individuals we will likely never meet. For that reason, we should strive always to speak, think, and behave with great thoughtfulness and compassion. The virtues we choose to embody can inspire joy and integrity in the lives of countless people, whether we touch their existence directly or not.

Read the rest of this article by Madison Taylor here.