Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships, we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Ann O'Hare, and this is The Spiritual American. Hello everyone and welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare and I'm your host. And today we're going to be talking about calm in a crisis. Very valuable topic, I think, but before we get started, please consider like sharing and subscribing. As you know, this helps to get our content out to more and more people. And please consider sharing with your family and friends as well so they can benefit. So calm in a crisis. We're going to talk about it in maybe a little bit of a different way than you think. A lot of times when we talk about a crisis, we're talking about an external crisis, but we're going to actually. Question that idea and see if there is such a thing. Is there such a thing as a crisis? So let's find out. So first of all, what is a crisis? Is there such a thing? I think if we are going to make a workable definition right now of a crisis, it's a situation that requires. A more than usual amount of attention, more than usual amount of actions, more than usual amount of processing, more than usual amount of helping in a situation. Maybe it's a sudden loss of resources or something like that, where it requires more from the individual. In that moment. And so I wrote here, is there such a thing as a crisis? Well, we can use that as the example, for a definition, but I have an example here of being in the hospital. So I can give an example of when somebody has like a cardiac arrest. Now I worked in med surge, which means medical surgical floor. I didn't work in the intensive care or any specialty area. I worked as a regular floor nurse, which. You really get a lot of skills doing that too. It's not so specialized, I wasn't educated so much in the emergency crisis interventions, but I knew when something was wrong and I knew when to call the code team. So let's say we have somebody who stopped breathing or something. So we would start CPR and then I would call the code team and the code team would be consisting of physicians and nurses and personnel coming from the. If you want to say crisis areas or the emergency or intensive care areas, specialty areas of the hospital would come to take care of the patient. And at that time during the, what we call a code or the intervention, there would be somebody who's leading the code. There would be somebody who's recording somebody who's giving medication and so forth. There's also somebody who's running for supplies. So, the person who is leading the code is the person who is making the decisions, who's looking at all the information and making the decisions. They're looking at the EKG, they're making, okay, give this medication, give that medication, start CPR, whatever, give a shock. They would give instructions, but they would be very calm. And in my experience, it's usually. A physician. It doesn't have to be a physician, but whoever is running the code, so to speak, would always be very calm. So one of the things about being calm is that when you are calm, you're able to make decisions. Your intellect actually works. Now for me in that scenario, I was not that calm because I'm going to say that it wasn't my area of expertise. So it felt more like a crisis to me. And so usually I would be the one running for supplies or something because I had this excess energy and of course running for something, give me, what do I do? Get this. Okay. I can do that. But I wasn't the one making decisions. I wasn't the one assessing everything that was going on. So calm in a crisis, first of all, the one who's calm in that scenario was the one who was very educated also, had a lot of knowledge and was able to assess. the different information and then make decisions for everybody that would be leading. First I want to say about being calm. I, I feel that calmness involves the body as well. It's not just like a mental thing. I think it involves the body as well. You know how we do breathing exercises, you sure you've heard of doing breathing exercises. You breathe in and breathe out, breathe in and breathe out. There are different receptors that respond to slowing down your breathing and it calms down the nervous system. So the body also needs to be calm. I'm saying this because It's hard to feel calm if you're physically moving very fast, so maybe we need to slow down a little bit. So one thing we can do in a crisis is not be so physically moving so quickly because The calmness also has to be in our physical body as well. The body has to be kind of under control also. The other thing is that not being calm means that I'm emotional, my thoughts are moving quickly. Maybe I don't understand something. Maybe I'm afraid. In those cases, getting information can help us get calm also. If I don't have information, I'm more likely to be afraid. I'm more likely to be. Confused so the thing I wrote here is it's about my own inner world. I know this is true because you can have two people in the same situation and one will be calm and one will be reacting and getting excited and freaking out. So what's the difference inside? Some might say, well, it's their personality. And I think that that That is true. To some extent. I think some people have a calmer personality. I know I have one person in my department at work right now. It doesn't seem like anything can get her excited. This one listens. She doesn't talk that much. She just, and if you ask her, do you need, do you want to say anything? Nope. I'm good. Like she. Really doesn't talk much. She's very calm and okay. I come from a culture and a family where everybody talked all the time and everything is also emotional. And so my personality that I grew up with or that I, Picked up along the way was much more emotional, extroverted, and so forth. Some people automatically have a more introverted, calm nature. So in this case, for this topic, having a calm nature is good. As, as long as you're able to. So it may be part of your personality, but let's say it's not. Can I develop a calm nature? Yes, you can. This is where spirituality comes in. So if we just recap for a second. So what we're saying is that it's not really external that decides whether it's a crisis or not. The situation may require more energy, more decision making, more activity, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be excited or out of control. You can physically and emotionally and psychologically be calm even in that situation. So how do I cultivate? the ability to be calm regardless of the situation. And I'm going to say, again, we have to talk about spiritual effort. So what is the spiritual effort? Well, first thing, meditation. And what is meditation? I am sitting still and I am Not thinking about anything of the world for a few minutes. So we'll practice this just for a second So I am not thinking about anything of the world and I'm making this time just for myself and in this time I'm sitting still and you can close your eyes or open your eyes and there's a point behind me a point of light I can imagine a point of light here in my forehead and I can say I am The spiritual being inside this body. I am the soul. I am living consciousness And my nature is peace. My nature is peace. Now remember I said that calmness involves the body, so as a soul, I'm looking at myself without the body. Am the being, I'm still alive, whether the body's here or not, I'm still exist. I still exist. My nature is peace. So being calm, I'm telling myself the body is. Sitting still, but I am peaceful and that peaceful vibration also has an impact on the nervous system. The other thing I mentioned about being calm is that the person who's calm is a lot of times educated. They know what's going on. So part of this Raja yoga meditation practice is spiritual study. We talk about the laws of karma. We talk about powers of the soul. We talk about different levels of consciousness and how to access different levels of consciousness. All of that is spiritual knowledge. And that knowledge supports this identity of myself as a peaceful being. I am a peaceful being. As I practice that, that helps me to remain calm. I can say for me, coming from a very, very emotional, dramatic, Northeastern kind of social environment, family and society up there, that there was a lot of emotional, Yelling and, everything was emotional, everything. And I'm, I can say that even me, I have gotten a lot calmer. I've gotten much more in control of my emotions and all I'm doing is practicing meditation and studying spiritual knowledge. When we are educated and when we practice identifying ourselves. as eternal, peaceful beings, that experience begins to impact us not only psychologically, but it impacts my personality and my body too. Then I can be in a situation where I'm not reacting, but I'm able to maintain some calm and also maintain My poise, let's say, or my intellect is still functioning, I can make a decision or I can be cooperative or I can be helpful. If you've noticed, People who are really, really emotional and not, they can't, they can't help, right? They can't help, especially in a crisis. They can't help. They become, everybody has to help them. So I think one of the nice things we can think about here, if I learn how to be calmer in general, and I learn how to be peaceful and I learn this spiritual knowledge so that it actually starts to change my personality and I start getting more and more peaceful and in control of myself, then I become more independent. And I become able to help others and others don't have to help me. And I have found this to be the case in my life. That being less emotional has helped me to be more independent and be in a position to help or feel empowered to help as opposed to feeling like I need help. Then I don't become the crisis, right? But maybe we could end it there but think about it, you know Sometimes we just take it for granted that it's the situation that's causing the feelings But it's not because one person can be calm and the other person isn't so what is it that's going on inside myself? Think about it. Think about this spiritual effort practice these meditations There's links in the description to practice the release your wings meditation You can go to a free online meditation class or check out the brahma kumaris website All of this is very easy to bring into your lifestyle. You do have to make a little effort. You got to get up to meditate and so forth, but it's not difficult. And a little bit of consistent practice brings powerful, real results. So I will leave it there. Remember our slogan is heal, empower and serve. And so until next time, take care. Um, uh,
