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As you might remember from my previous post that I had started sleeping on the floor. I got tired of sleeping on the bed, with a nice and expensive mattress, and constantly waking up in pain with a pulled muscle or cramps in the neck or shoulder area.

So, I’ve been sleeping on the floor for at least a month now and I absolutely love it!

I have a duvet on the floor as it tends to get really cold during night time and a few blankets on top.

Benefits of sleeping on the floor that I’ve noticed:

One day I thought of sleeping on the bed just to see how I would feel now. I had been working out, riding my bike to work etc so I thought perhaps it wasn’t just sleeping on the floor. Perhaps my body was just stronger over all from exercising and that’s why I never had a sore back or any aches upon waking up.

So, I slept on bed one night. Next morning my lower back was hurting and there was a cramp, severe pain, in my right shoulder blade!! It was just one night! That whole day I was in pain!

So, next day I was back to sleeping on the floor and the pain went away. Needless to say, I’ll be continuing to sleep on the floor for now!

Vibram five fingers are great alternative to barefoot walking. They’ve been around for a while now but I was resisting the urge to buy them.

A little background:

I’ve been questioning every single thing in my life, that seems to be set as norm or a necessity, these days. I have constant back pain, low energy, knees in pain, and now breathing problems. So, it was time to look at my lifestyle.

For example:

• I had spent over  a $1,000 for a decent mattress but my back is still hurting and I always wake up with a cramp, and feeling tired. Meanwhile, when I was in India, getting only a few hours sleep, I was sleeping on those thin mattresses, maybe 1″-2″ thick and I never had any back ache. So, do we really need to sleep on these thick mattresses?
• Hot showers! When I was a kid in India, I always bathed with cold water, even in winter. Winter there at that time was maybe 10-15 degrees celsius but still it was quite chilly. Here I can’t seem to take a shower unless the water is quite warm! Is it really beneficial and necessary for us to take hot showers?
• I constantly have high heat turned on in the winter time and high air conditioning in summer. Even if the weather is nice, I still have air conditioning on in my car. Could that be a reason for my breathing problems?
• Knees and lower back hurting all the time even though I have really nice and comfortable shoes! I do the research and I find the most comfortable shoes in my price range, with nice orthotics etc., still my knees and lower back are in constant pain. Do more expensive shoes really help? What if I just tried walking without shoes? Doesn’t hurt to try!

So, that’s where my fascination with Vibram five fingers come in!

For a more thorough review about Vibram five fingers and their benefits, check out this post by Tim Ferriss.

There are only a few stores here that sell them. I went to one of them, they said they had run out of stock and next stock was arriving next year!! Since, the company itself has a huge back log! Then I went to a different one and they had run out as well but apparently they were receiving some stock from a company that recently went bankrupt!

Anyhow, I eventually found another store that carried my size and colour. So, I ended up getting Vibram FiveFingers KSO yesterday evening.

I haven’t tried wearing them outside yet. Wearing black KSOs almost looks like I have gorilla feet! So, we’ll see…

Here’s an example of a habit I am trying to develop:

Habit of running on a regular basis.

Note, this time my goal is not necessarily to walk/jog/run for 21 or 30 days or so. My goal is to improve my stamina.

I run out of breath even if I have to run for 20 metres, or if I have to climb 20 stairs. So much so that I can not talk and it takes me quite a while to catch my breath.

This was to be a life long habit! As having good stamina helps in a lot of different aspects of life. That’s why it was necessary for me to develop a habit of regularly running first! Once I had developed the habit, then I could go ahead and try to perfect my technique.

Trick is to start slowly! Sooo ridiculously slow that you’d feel silly to skip a day. And do each step every single day! Remember the point is to develop a habit first! That can only really be done by consistency!

Week 1 – wear shoes, dress up, get out the door and then come back in

Week 2 – get dressed and go down the elevator and then come back up

Week 3 – walk 5 mins (could be on the treadmill in the gym in my building, or a walk outside)

Week 4 – walk for 10 mins

Week 5 – walk for 15 mins

Week 6 – walk for 15 mins with 2 30 sec jogs thrown in, so could be walk for 7 mins, jog for 30 secs, walk for another 7 mins, jog for another 30 secs, walk for another 5 mins for a total or 20 mins

Week 7 – walk for 20 mins with 4 30 sec jogs thrown in

Week 8 – walk for 2 mins, jog for 30 sec, then repeat until 20 mins are up

Week 9 – walk for 2 mins, jog for 2 mins, repeat until 20 mins are up

I could not complete week 9 properly due to low carb diet I was trying during the same time. I had incredible lack of energy during that period. So much so that I felt faint on many occasions even after 5 minutes of walking, even though I was eating a lot and drinking a lot of water. I was just careful to limit my carbohydrates.

Anyhow, had to stop mid way for a few days because of my diet experiment (more on that later). Following week I started again but I felt I had lost my rhythm.

I still wanted to build stamina though so started researching different ways of improving it.

Came across High intensity interval training (HIIT). This really appealed to me.

Basically, you jog for a few minutes, then go all out sprinting for 15-30 seconds, then light jog again until heart rate comes down, then sprint again and so on.

Week 9: total time 10 mins; with 2 30 sec 8 mph sprints in between (treadmill) – 2 times a week; with 5+ mins of walking on rest of the days

Week 10: total time 10-15 mins; with 2 30 sec 9.5 mph sprints in between (treadmill) – 2 times a week; with 5+ mins of walking on rest of the days

Week 11: total time 15+ mins; with 3 15 sec 10.5 mph sprints in between (treadmill) – 2 times a week; with 5+ mins of walking on rest of the days

Instead of following a strict regiment of jogging for 2 mins, then sprinting for 30 secs, I just sprint for 15-30 secs then wait for my heart rate to come below 140 then I sprint again, whether that’s with in 2 mins or 4 mins.

I’m finding that it’s hard to really sprint very fast on a treadmill. I feel like I am going to fall down!

So, next session I’ll try HIIT outside!

Over the past few years I’ve tried various different therapies for depression. Here are my experiences:

Family doctor – My family doctor never thought there was anything wrong with me. I had to try repeatedly to get a referral to see a therapist/psychiatrist. He kept saying “don’t worry, it’s just stress! Everyone has stress these days, it’s no big deal!”

Psychiatrists – I saw a few different ones. Few of them saw nothing wrong with me as I seemed to be knowledgeable about what might be causing me stress and what I could about it. They said “you know what to do, you don’t need anything, and you’ll be fine!” While one suggested I could try to go on medication which I refused at that time.

Talk therapy – Quite effective. I worked with a good therapist and she knew just the right questions to ask me to make me think deeper about my issues. By just talking with someone who’s not going to judge can be very comforting in itself.

Only thing is that it can easily make you dependent. Plus those were one hour sessions and she would always be looking at her watch to keep track of time so I never really felt comfortable opening up as I would always be thinking of trying to summarize every thing so it could fit in that one hour session.

Eft – I mentioned in a previous article about how I cured my lower back pain using EFT. After that I worked with an EFT practitioner for some time to resolve a lot of deeper issues. Even though she thought everything was ok, working with her actually did not help directly. She was very good practitioner and a good person but I think the problem arose because she tried to use techniques of EFT without really taking into account my background.

After we had stopped the sessions I continued with EFT for another six months at least and for 1-2 hours every single day so I got quite knowledgeable in applying EFT. Every time something negative happened in my life, I would just apply EFT and get rid of the negative association to that event. This enabled me to look objectively at the situation and thus learn from it but overall it did not help me resolve deeper issues.

I eventually stopped using it so much when I started using NLP.

NLP – I worked with a highly qualified NLP practitioner. He was highly recommended and had done a lot of good in the community using NLP. He had helped a lot of people deal with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and not to mention a whole lot of other disorders and phobias very successfully.

We went through really extensive NLP sessions. He assured me that I did not need to remember specific events in order to deal with them with NLP. Interesting thing is that nothing worked. We went through a lot of issues, with many different NLP techniques, but not a single one of them went away. So, that was kind of disappointing.

Thus, I found both NLP and EFT to be very good at dissolving negative feelings if I could remember specific events. They’re both relatively easy to learn and use. They’re also very good at curing phobias as you know specifically what it is that’s causing you discomfort.

On the same note, I have found that unless you can get to the core issues, it’s very hard to totally resolve an issue with them.

With EFT, the set up phrases and phrases that are recommended to be used while tapping may not work for everyone either. Problem is similar to problems with using affirmations, as I mentioned in my previous article.

So, there you have it. Please keep in mind that every single one of these therapies has actually helped a lot of people. Just because I didn’t find help using them doesn’t mean they don’t work.

This is just my experience and they did not help me. Also, I could have tried going to different people with in the same field but I was fed up with it all.

Still, I actually learned a lot about myself, from each of these different forms of therapies, so these experiences were not totally wasted.

What exactly is depression? You can read my previous post for the symptoms of depression. But what is the cause of depression?

Let’s remember one thing! You were not born depressed. Therefore, your depression is not permanent.

Please keep in mind that I’m not talking about some disability though, which is different all together. I am talking about people who’re born healthy otherwise but fall into depression due to the circumstances in their lives.

Also, there are a lot of people who’ve cured their depression without medication so we know it is possible. This is a very good start.

You have a bad experience in your life. Now every time you think about it, it causes you to feel some kind of negative emotion. Not only that, but negative feelings get associated to anything that reminds you of that experience, or even anything that’s a little similar in nature.

What if you have many different negative events in your life? For example, what if you grew up in extreme poverty, experienced racism, had poor health, and grew up without real friends and so on?

Now, almost everything you look at might put you in a negative state.

You’re feeling sad all the time. More you feel sad, more you reinforce your current state and harder it gets to get out of sadness.

In a law of attraction term, you are always in a vibration of sadness. And since you attract in your life what you’re vibrating, you keep attracting other people, circumstances, and things that keep you in your current vibration, which is sadness. You’re stuck in a vicious cycle.

You stop to think about why you’re feeling sad but there is no answer since it’s been going on for quite some time now. It might have been a simple new gadget that someone bought that you didn’t have. Even though you might be able to afford it now but subconsciously it took you to a time when you were unable to afford anything. Or it might just be the way someone looked at you on the road, or way someone was dressed, or certain smell, or certain tone of voice, or people of certain religion/culture and so on.

It can be anything at all. It all depends what was around you when you had your negative experience(s) in your life. If in your negative state you focused in on a certain person then everytime that person’s around you, you might feel the same negative emotion. Actually, this is called a negative anchor in NLP. That same negative feeling gets anchored to that person.

So, how do you deal with it now? What do you do when you can’t even pin point the cause of your depression, of your sadness?

Take your attention away

One way is to take your attention away from sadness and by deliberately placing it on something that you like, something that makes you feel good.

If even for one moment you change your focus to something positive, at least for that moment your depression is no longer there. For that one moment you are feeling good.

You could try focusing on your breath. Focus on one complete breath, inhaling and exhaling. For that one breath your attention was taken away from depression to peace and tranquility. For that one breath you were at peace.

When I experimented like this, that’s when I realized that I did not need medication but needed to deliberately focus on things that brought joy to my life, things that made me feel good.

So, even if I couldn’t pin point the root cause of my depression but if I could feel good for just one moment then there there is hope that I could feel good for a whole day. It is just a matter of being in that state for longer periods of time daily.

This again is encouraging!