Hit List of recent insights:
Every word I write or read on #Bluesky brings me closer to death. Every word, breath, and heartbeat counts.

Hit List of recent insights:
Die quickly, so a Baby Buddha can be born. - Thich Nhat Hanh

Hit List of recent insights:
I might work 30+ years more, but my children will lose interest in me in 10- years.

Insights that change your life are the last of many conditions for that change. For a car to start its journey, it needs to be manufactured. You need to fuel it, sit down, turn the key, and only then one spark ignites the fuel to get the engine moving. The conditions are uncountable, but they exist

Activation energy is the barrier that needs to be overcome for a reaction to start, for a system to relax into the ground state. Sometimes relaxation needs a kick, like a drastic insight. A small spark can ignite a huge explosion.

"When a storm comes up in you, you get out of the treetop and go down to the trunk for safety." - Thich Nhat Hanh
When emotions rage in us like a storm, we sit in lie down, focus all our attention on the lower abdomen, and simply observe our breathing. #breath #mindfulness

To reduce stress, we can reduce stressors. Stress is a reaction to outer and inner events. Simple rules to reduce outer stessors: 1. No news or social media from 8 pm to 8 am. 2. At mealtime, only eating and chatting on pleasant topics. 3. Hobbies only for fun, not to achieve anything.

Increasing our inner space V to infinity, our inner pressure vanishes p~1/V. This is the preferred way of letting go. We neither let our anger out nor do we keep it in us. Pressure, anger, and tension just dissolve in infinite space. We become infinite space, breath freely, and our mind is free.

When pressure builds up in us, we can release it in a controlled way. Like a steamengine, we can use the pressure to get some work done. Finish the project we postponed or do our exercises. Thus, we can do something useful and get a short term relieve.

We have channeled the rivers in our cities and souls. When storms rage, floods become destructive. May we release our rivers so they can meander freely and develop the capacity to cope with upcoming storms.

When pressure builds up in us, we can release it in a controlled way. Like a steamengine, we can use the pressure to get some serious work done: Finishing the project we kept postponing or doing our exercises. In this way, we can do something useful and get some short term relieve.

A car has a check engine light. Pain and fear are red lights of our body, but we might not be aware of them. Mindfulness and body scan are methods everyone can learn to become aware. Measuring heart rate or skin resistance are also available. No matter the method, check your red lights.

The first step to lower our inner pressure is to become aware of it and accept its existence. In the beginning, we might notice that pressure only after we released it by shouting at someone or slamming a door. Being #mindful, we can learn to feel the pressure building up before it's too late.

It is quite destructive how we handle our stessors. First, we collect as many as possible, at home, at work, even when doing our hobbies. Then, we push them to our subconscious storage to increase our inner pressure. On top, we frequently think about them to inflate them even more. #stress

We might have only little influence on what people say or do to us, and what situations we have to cope with. We decide, however, how we perceive everything life throws at us. Thus, we increase our own suffering or #happiness.

#Stress can be perceived as inner pressure. With every stressor we incorporate, the pressure rises p~N. Likewise, outer factors like a heated discussion increase our pressure p~T. It feels like an inflating ballon inside us. And we squeeze the ballon further to keep it under control p~1/V.

If you want to put a bottle with gas under #pressure you can cramp more gas particles into it, increase its temperature, or squeeze its volume. The gas possesses an energy, which is proportional to its temperature. This is the kinetic energy of the particles. #physics

Pressure is force per surface area. The pressure of an ideal gas approximated by

p ~ N•T / V

This means that the force on the inner surface of a vessel is proportional to the number of gas particles N in the vessel, its temperature T, and to the inverse of its volume V.

Be the sky,
not a cloud.