Jeffrey Alexander Martin

Anxiety and fear can help us. They help us avoid dangerous things and prepare for the future, but they can also overwhelm us and stop us from moving forward. It's like indigestion of the heart, mind, and soul. You're made to be able to have anxiety, and to be able to deal with it. It's a skill you can learn. Here is Eli's response to learning it. What is your name? E. R. If, for some odd reason, you could no longer do this type of emotional processing, would you be: very disappointed, somewhat disappointed, or not disappointed? Very disappointed. What is the worst moment from before you knew how to process your emotions? Multiple feelings of being overcome or overburdened by the common stress of life. What is the best moment after you learned how to process your emotions? The best moment is the feeling of being able to let go and release through meditative practice all the emotion and feeling that you have in relation to whatever it is you're experiencing in life at...

Loss is a part of life. The more we're attached to something the worse it feels when it slips away. Our natural reaction is to cage our grief up. But then it only turns to anger and sadness. The way through it is to experience our feelings rather than hiding them from ourselves. Here's an example of someone doing it. What is your name? T. M. If, for some odd reason, you could no longer do this type of emotional processing, would you be: very disappointed, somewhat disappointed, or not disappointed? Very disappointed What is the worst moment from before you knew how to process your emotions? Loss of a child What is the best moment after you learned how to process your emotions? Processing the loss of my Husband How has your attitude changed from before your training to after? Much more positive. Less sad How hard was it to learn to be aware of your sensations and your mind-body connection? This is a very easy process. What was the hardest part of learning? Relaxing, thinking I n...

Hope is necessary for us to continue to put forth the effort necessary to live (Richter, 1957). When we lose that hope, we are built with the ability to regain it. We can choose to process our anxiety, depression, anger, and grief. We can process our emotions, we just haven't been shown how. This is a clear example of someone that is doing it right now. I'll tell you how after. What is your name? K. Y. If, for some odd reason, you could no longer do this type of emotional processing, would you be: very disappointed, somewhat disappointed, or not disappointed? Very disappointed. What is the worst moment from before you knew how to process your emotions? My husband's death. What is the best moment after you learned how to process your emotions? When I feel a negative emotion, I know how to process it. It's wonderful to have a path to follow and not feel lost. How has your attitude changed from before your training to after? I feel good again. I giggle and laugh over silly...

If you see someone drowning, it's probably not the best idea to yell, "Hey, you should learn how to swim!" Instead, you should jump in and drag them out. Or, throw them a lifeline. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to throw you a lifeline. Then I'm going to offer to teach you how to swim. Life is an emotional thing. Something good happens and you're happy. Something bad happens and you're sad. You don't want to be sad, so you get mad. We're full of emotions. If your emotions are too much right now, you need to grab ahold of something. Not with your hand, but with your head and your heart. There are three types of things you can grab ahold of. One, something you can create. You can build a bird house, write a poem, fix a car. Make something. Two, something you can experience. You can go for a walk, admire a painting, read a book, go out to eat with someone. Do something. Three, you can change how you view the world. Life is meaningless ...

I'm seeing a lot of ads online for vagus nerve stimulators. They all tell me they can calm me down. And of course there are a lot of tv ads for Valium and Xanax, also promising to calm me down. Obviously, a lot of people are searching for a way to calm down. These things will work to a certain extent. I haven't tried them, but by forcing the body to calm down it can calm down your mind. There are some problems with that though. It's a classic joke that the side effects for drugs and medications are longer than the benefits. That can be an issue. There's another obvious issue. If when you need to calm down you need to go to something outside of you, the only obvious answer when you need to calm down again is to use again, and again, and again, and when you need to calm down more, you need to use more. The key then is to choose something that isn't bad if you need to use it again, and if you need to use it more, and if you need to use it long term. Preferably it's...

We wish words could solve our problems. That saying we're sad would solve our sadness, that admitting our anger would allow us to let go of our anger. That anxiety and depression could be fixed with just the right words said in just the right order. But it doesn't work. Words are powerful things. They effect us. When someone says something mean to us it hurts, but when they apologize it doesn't fully make up for it. The feeling that is triggered by a series of words can't be put back in the bottle by a different series of words. The only way to sort that feeling out is to feel it. Feelings are deeper than words. That's why I have a client that was recently surprised when she started feeling and found that she had fear, when she expected to find anger and sadness. That's why I had a past client recently message me that knowing how to practice feeling probably saved his life when he recently experienced a major loss. If it would have worked for her to say, "I...

When you accidentally touch a hot stove you don't think about what to do. The pain receptors in your hand send a signal to your brainstem that says, "Pain!", and your brainstem sends a signal back to your arm that says, "Pull your hand back!" Your hand doesn't send a signal to your brain that says, "Make a pros and cons list on whether or not you should pull your hand back." There isn't time. Something has to happen immediately. You have a reaction built into you, and you react. It's the same with emotions. You don't look out at the world and think, "This might be a good time to start worrrying about a bunch of things from the political structure of society to when I'm going to be able to get to the store to pick up groceries." That's not what happens. You're just worried. When you're worried, or anxious, or sad, or angry, it's a reaction to your external environment. But that doesn't mean that you have...

I currently have a couple of small woodchips in my beard. A few minutes ago I was standing at the top of a ladder, with an extendable chainsaw borrowed from the neighbor fully extended, teetering back and forth trying to saw off a limb. The ladder wasn't quite tall enough to reach this branch. So I had stacked up two wooden skids and placed the ladder on top of those. It was not safe. My mother held the ladder. A few weeks ago her house insurance had emailed her about branches needing to be cut. Then I put a new air filter in my father's car. He passed recently and I have it now. I got the oil changed yesterday, and I Rain-Xed the windows. It's convenient to have the water hit the window and just slide right off, even without using the wipers. It essentially gives the window the ability to let go of the water rather than being stuck with it. There's a similar problem with emotions. When a traumatically intense thing happens and we're around, that image gets embedded...

I turned and asked the old man next to me how he was associated with the college. He said that he wasn't. He had made a lot of money and wanted to write a very big check to a college as a donation. But, the college he graduated from had turned against the things he believed in, so now he was on this campus tour bus at Hillsdale College to see if maybe he would write the check to them. He asked me if I was a graduate. I told him no, my degrees are from somewhere else, I just like Hillsdale and have joined some of their programs in Michigan and Washington D.C. He asked me what I did, and I told him that I currently hold a local political office, but in about a year I would be leaving that office, so I had been working on getting a business up and going, and hopefully producing revenue soon. He was interested in that. The bus started pulling out of the parking lot. As we were driving around, the driver was pointing out different parts of the campus. Old buildings that had seen student...

There's a disconnect between our life on the outside and our life on the inside. I've been surprised over the last couple of years when people have told me that they can't let go of things emotionally like I can. It's surprising because some people can be doing great on the outside with their family and career, and yet inside they are doing horrible. And no one notices until it's later revealed that they have a drug, or drinking, or gambling problem. I had an older friend who had a son-in-law with a good family, and house, and job, who completely unexpectedly took his own life. Jack knew I had written on the subject before and asked me why someone would do that. I remember the look of complete bewilderment in his eyes. He couldn't imagine why someone who looked happy and fulfilled on the outside could be feeling horrible on the inside. I don't particularly have that skill. I basically show how I'm feeling at the time. But I've spent a large portion o...

We make decisions based on feeling from a set of values and our perception of the situation. To the extent that we're unsuccessful at x, y, or z our decisions have been wrong in that area because our values and perception have been wrong. I've been working on correcting for this, which leads me to writing an article on marketing and selling meditation today. I don't have a natural proclivity for selling. I like to discuss ideas, but not to convince or convert people. Often in group discussions if someone is struggling to support their points on a topic I'll help them out and brace up their side of the argument even if it's not the side I think makes the most sense in the end. So I'm better at de-convincing and un-converting people, if you will. I'm better at bringing people to doubt than to certainty. That's my natural tendency. Kind of like Socrates, who people found annoying enough to have executed. The ability to doubt and steelman opposing arguments ...

One of the best parts about teaching is learning. I've had students from a multitude of cultures, different countries, different languages, different religions, different ages, different socio-economic levels. And I try to learn as much as I can. I have an unusually intense connection with meditation because I use it to deal with the chronic pain from my spinal deformities. I studied with an Ishaya monk for a year before my brainstem issues emerged. But still, there's nothing quite like unceasing physical pain to drive learning. I've read dozens of books on meditation, and my personal experiments have the added benefit of my physical pain as a feedback mechanism. A few months ago I was talking with my student Carrie. She's in high school in China, and we started going through how they do meditation at the different age levels in school. It's different in different schools. I have some students in China who've never done meditation. But, in her schools the...