I started cross-country skiing when I moved to New Hampshire. I was taking a new job. It was my first chance to do play therapy for children at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. After a stressful day\u2019s work, cross-country skiing was a place I could to to recharge myself.<\/p>\n
\u2026I heard only the delicate sound of each downy flake as it hit the evergreens on either side of me on that trail through the quiet woods of deep snow\u2026that day, my mind was sharp and focused\u2026my body, steady with physical determination to stay balanced with each glide and to make each push-off count to send me farther and farther along that narrow trail\u2026I remember the feeling of being totally part of all\u2026connected to the natural world around me\u2026and in touch with something sacred and divine\u2026it was powerful yet peaceful\u2026I thought to myself, as I ski, I am living into the feelings New England\u2019s poet Robert Frost expresses.<\/p>\n
Try reading Robert Frost \u201cStopping by a Snowy Evening\u201d illustrated by Susan Jeffers to your child and see if it evokes happiness. Your child can start the good feelings flowing with anything they love\u2014a song, photograph or wonderful experience.<\/p>\n
Even today, when I am cross-country skiing or just thinking about it, the experience can reactivate my mind in the time and space of the initial, impressionable experience. I can feel it in my body and relive it in my imagination.<\/p>\n
My studies in social psychology and psycho-neuroimmunology introduced me to Harvard Professor Dr. Ellen Langer whose research revealed evidence of the body\u2019s ability to return to a state of health and happiness from an earlier period of life. These reports described the powerful influence of memory to effect improved physiological changes, such as increases in counts of killer cells in the blood that combat disease as well as reduced blood pressure and cortisol levels overall improved perception of vigor. Our cells have memory, it\u2019s proven.<\/p>\n
We, ourselves, can bring forth our own state of pleasure and more importantly, resourcefulness when we need more confidence, more courage, more commitment. Here\u2019s how:<\/p>\n
STEP 1.\u00a0\u00a0 RECALL a time in your life when you were in a state of resourcefulness. It could be cross-country skiing or playing a sport and making a goal or completing successfully a musical performance and hearing the audience rousing applaud. You decide\u2014when did you feel great?<\/p>\n
STEP 2.\u00a0\u00a0 RE-LIVE it using all of your senses. Hear it<\/em> (sound of snow falling gently); feel it<\/em> (cool air through my nose and lungs); see it<\/em> (beauty all around me); touch it<\/em> (wet snow on my face).<\/p>\n STEP 3.\u00a0\u00a0 RESOLVE yourself to never giving up on yourself. You have within you all the power you need to do what you set out to do. Reactivate your resourceful state\u2014your cellular memory will help you know it is still there within you. It feels like\u2014YES!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I started cross-country skiing when I moved to New Hampshire. I was taking a new job. It was my first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"yoast_head":"\n