Category: Teachings

Given the challenges and uncertainties of the world we live in, some spiritual practices that may be particularly beneficial include:

1. Meditation is a powerful practice that can help reduce stress, increase mindfulness, and develop a greater sense of inner peace. There are many meditation practices to explore, including mindfulness, guided meditation, and Transcendental Meditation.
2. Gratitude practice is a powerful Spiritual Practice. With all the chaos and negativity around us, practising gratitude can help us cultivate a positive mindset and shift our focus to what we have instead of what we lack. One way to practice gratitude is to keep a gratitude journal and write down what you are thankful for daily.
3. Service/Seva: Engaging in acts of service can help us develop empathy, compassion, and a sense of purpose. Volunteer your time and skills to organizations or causes that align with your values.
4. Mindful consumption: Being mindful of what you consume – whether it’s food, media, or material possessions – can help you live in greater alignment with your values and reduce your environmental impact. Consider choosing sustainable, ethical products that align with your values.
5. Connection: Building connections with others can be especially valuable in isolation and disconnection. Contact friends and family, or join groups that share your interests.
6. Chanting.
   Chanting can be a powerful tool for raising your vibration and connecting with a deeper spiritual dimension. When you chant, you focus your mind and energy on a specific sound or mantra, which can help you enter a meditative state and experience a greater sense of calm and clarity.
   Chanting can also positively affect your body and mind, reducing stress and anxiety, lowering blood pressure, and improving mood. It may activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for relaxation.
   In some spiritual traditions, chanting is believed to have a more profound effect on our energy body, including our chakras, which are thought to be energy centres in the body. Chanting can help balance and align these chakras, leading to an overall sense of well-being.
   However, it’s important to note that the benefits of chanting may vary from person to person.
   Some people find chanting a powerful spiritual practice, while others may not resonate with it as much. It’s also important to approach chanting with an open mind and heart and to practice it in a way that feels authentic and meaningful to you.
   
   Ultimately, the best spiritual practice resonates with you and allows you to deepen your connection with yourself, others, and the world around you.

At Shangriballa, we focus on Advaita Vedanta, a non-distinguistic philosophy that we believe is relevant to our times. As a spiritual practice, this could be a great way to transcend the limitations of our minds.

Spiritual Practices

Spiritual Practices

What’s the meaning of integration? “Integration is the act of bringing together smaller components into a single system that functions as one“

It’s important to realize that integration does not start with taking plant medicines or Kambo; we are constantly integrating what happens to us.
Integration is as personal as your journey with plant medicine, we all bring different life experiences to the retreat. For this reason, it’s important not to compare our experiences and integration with others.

At Shangriballa we have guided hundreds of people through their journies with us, but the real work has to come from the individual having the experience. This is especially important when you return to your everyday life.

People that have difficult experiences to integrate, like sexual abuse, PTSD or other challenging life experiences might want to work with qualified specialists in this field. There are more and more psychedelic integration groups or therapists that specialize in helping people that use plant medicines to follow through with their healing.

We always recommend that people get a post-retreat support plant or network in place before they come to the retreat, especially if it’s your first time. If you need any more advice or recommendations on this please let us know.

I meet people that have been to many retreats and have taken a lot of plant medicine but don’t really get what they want from the experiences. We must not give our power away. If you solely rely on the medicine, shaman, facilitator or healer to do the work or healing, you will be disappointed. I have done most of my healing by taking back my power, taking on the lessons and guidance and creating a plan of action to implement them into my life. As stated above this might include therapist and integration groups.

The retreat can be an amazing experience and opportunity to create a shift in your life. Taking full responsibility for what you do with the experience is what will make it a success.

From my experience and my truth, I like to share that I think there is an over-emphasis placed on “Healing” Do this workshop, read this book or learn this modality and you will heal. Yes, there is value in all of this but the main focus should not purely be on healing.
I realised that I could not heal everything that happened to me. My guides showed me that many of the things that I am trying to heal were actually the blessings, the rich compost that made me who I was. Preparation for my work and life as a healer to hold space for others and teach them to do the same.

What will we be without our suffering?

For me integration was also acceptance, I healed what I could and the rest I made a part of who I was. During my many journies with plant medicine, I became one with the Universe or God, not that it can be named. During these experiences, I first felt that I understood what has happened to me and then it progressed into the knowing that it actually had nothing to do with me. I was the Universe experiencing itself as a human. This brought me a lot of acceptance for what has and will unfold in my life. Does this make the lessons easier? No, it doesn’t, taking the curriculum of life will always teach us lessons and then the exam still happens to test our knowledge of the lessons. Being aware of the process of learning and experiencing lets me move through the lessons and exams quicker but no less challenging.

I ask myself many times. How can I function to the best of my ability within this container? Warts and all. I can’t change what happened to me and I am not saying it was right but it happened, I will not suffer my past or mind any more than is needed. This is one of the blessings I now share with others.
Lisa Silva.

The Science and Technique of Heart & Brain Harmonising.

Heart Brain Harmonisation: what is it? We are constantly told the analogy “To speak from the heart,” but we never really meant this in a literal sense but in a truthful and honest way. Today, scientists now know that this is actually literal.

In 1991, a French scientist named Armour (Karmic Destiny or what!) found 40,000 specialised cells (called sensory neurites) concentrated in a small area of the heart. These cells form a neural network that thinks, feels, and remembers independently from the cranial brain!

This communication between the heart and brain is a dynamic, ongoing, two-way dialogue, with both organs in ways that significantly affect our performance and how we perceive and react to the world. (Heart and Brain Harmonisation)

Science is only starting to recognise the potential for healing trauma, not just the traumatic memory in the brain but healing the memory in the heart.

There are approximately 5,000 heart transplants a year around the world, and there have been many cases where a heart recipient begins to assume the donor’s characteristics; this is more evidence of heart memory.

In society, we are conditioned to start thinking with the brain from a very young age, and so discount the intuition from our heart, unlike some indigenous cultures such as the Kogi in South America where the children are taught firstly from the heart and so develop excellent intuitive skills from very young. Neither of these ways is good or bad but just very different ways of embracing the potential that’s been with us from the beginning of our human existence.

When we harmonise these two neural networks, we gain access to super information processing and obtain superhuman abilities; it opens the door as a hotline to the subconscious. Heart and Brain Harmonisation can be a powerful practice.

We don’t have to have hypnosis or be in an altered state but be self-healing as we know we are.

Why do we need to access our subconscious??

A short story to a very long story is when you’re in your mother’s womb until you are about six years old. Then, we begin to absorb from our environment patterns of personality and behaviour patterns from our caregivers, parents, etc. From the time we are in the womb hearing from our mother’s stomach, we are in a sponge-type brain state called the hypnogogic trance, and we don’t know how to filter what’s coming in. So, this is nature’s way of preparing us to be in the world. We absorb these patterns unconsciously to learn how to respond to the world.

So, if you’re born into a very stable and healthy solid family, that’s great! But if you’re not, then we pick up the unhealthy patterns/habits of relationships of lovers, friends, siblings, and parents.

Our relationship with our bodies all links back to the subconscious ways that may not be the healthiest, and through access to the subconscious, we can change those. By accessing the subconscious, We can create new, healthy, vibrant patterns to affirm life. Harmonizing gives us access to extraordinary states of deep intuition on demand.

How many times have you stopped at a red traffic light and waited for it to change? You remain there in an open state, and that openness invites intuition. You start to think about your life and get revelations about where your life will go, about the world, and about the meaning of the universe, and it’s crystal clear, but then the lights turn green. And then we think, where did that come from?

How can I get that back? By doing heart and brain harmonisation.

The Heart-Brain Language and Benefits of heart-brain harmonisation.

When you harmonise, your body recognises the language, and we set up a conversation between the two, which releases 1300 biochemical reactions that include: –

• Compassion
• Empathy
• Deep Intuition
• Fast Learning
• Anti-ageing Hormones
• Respiration
• Heart rate and blood pressure
• Powerful Immune Responses

These kick into overdrive along with numerous cardiovascular benefits and much more.

It’s essentially a hotline to the subconscious.

The Technique

Three simple steps for 3 minutes once or twice a day.

1. Connect with your heart by physically touching its centre in whatever way is comfortable for you, such as placing your palm or fingers on its sternum. Allow your awareness to go to the place on your body where you feel that touch.
   
2. Slow your breathing for 5 seconds on inhaling 5 seconds on the exhale. This powerful practice signal tells your body you are switching from the brain to the heart mode. Let go of all the stress hormones, release healing chemistry, and tell the body we are safe.
   
3. Feel one of 4 feelings: –
   Care for anything or anyone
   Appreciation for anything or anyone
   Gratitude for anything or anyone
   Compassion for anything or anyone.

This ancient and primal practice, done regularly at the start and end of the day, is undoubtedly instrumental to “Speaking from the heart” and performing at an optimum emotional and spiritual level.

Namaste

Miguel Silva

The Spiritual Teaching by Lisa Silva. Most people are familiar with the Tree of Life. I share a story about the tree that has a lot of meaning to me.

Each incarnation that we are born into is one leaf on the tree. After every season, the leaf slowly fades and falls to the ground, becoming compost for the tree. Next season, we are a different leaf on the same tree. When we have been every leaf on the tree, we become a flower. The flower then becomes a fruit; the fruit falls to the ground and has to rot to become another tree that will hold the space for new leaves.

There are many teachings in this story. We must not panic! We will be every leaf on the tree, and there is no rush. So many people are in a state of panic that they need to heal, transform and transcend their life situations and stories. There is much emphasis placed on healing in Spiritual circles, creating a state of panic. It creates a feeling of not being good enough or lacking, an emotion imprinted on us from a young age. As children, we quickly realise that we compete with our siblings and peers if we are not better than everyone else. We feel we lack or are not good enough. It continues into adulthood, where even the media manipulates us to buy more products to fill this gap.

Many spiritual teachers teach us to be at one with who we are; this means realising who and what we are, Divine (The Tree). Therefore, we must change what we can and improve ourselves to live closer to a divine path, whatever this means for us. If you don’t do it in this lifetime, don’t worry. You will be every leaf on the tree, and there will be plenty of opportunity for growth and transformation.

Unfortunately, going into a state of panic and running between workshops, retreats, shamans, and gurus feeds into this feeling of lack. Yes, we can try different modalities and take the best from them as long as we do this as part of self-discovery and proper integration. True transformation comes from mastering a discipline, one discipline.

Letting go of judgment. As we will be every leaf on the tree, we should not look at other leaves and think, why are we not that leaf? We might have been or will be that leaf in the future. To me, this brings love and compassion to others. The kindness we show them might one day return to us when we are that leaf.

The rotting fruit. When we have every leaf in the tree, we become a fruit that needs to rot for the seed to germinate. Like every leaf that deteriorates and becomes the compost for the tree, rotting is a necessary process for transformation.
We look at our lives and do so much to avoid discomfort, constantly wanting to change. What if we are trying to heal the blessings? I have come to appreciate what I thought of as trauma or negative experiences as my blessings. I am not saying they were all good, but they happened to me, and I  can’t change that. Now, do I grow from the experience or not? To truly inhabit this incarnation, we must embrace our light and dark aspects.
The closer we go to the light source, the bigger the shadow behind us becomes; this is not to scare us but to bring balance between light and dark.

“Make change your friend” (Ram Das)

Like the seasons affect the tree, so do the seasons of our lives. We should not always wish for summer and use the autumn to shed what no longer serves us, making compost from the things we shed that will feed us again in spring. On the other hand, winter can be an excellent opportunity for going inwards and making the changes that will support us when spring comes. You see, we need to stay open to change and transformation. The tree sheds its leaves, trusting that spring and summer will return. On my journeys with Ayahuasca, I became one with the universe and the energy of what I perceive God to be. This energy was not the light but the space in which the light appeared. I realised that the dark or emptiness was the key. I am not trying to explain what God is as it’s not possible, but saying it’s the light means it is not the dark, and so can’t be the ultimate explanation; it makes more sense that it is the empty void where all possibilities can unfold.

Each season, the leaves fall. But we don’t give much thought to moving on from this life. The biggest blessing we will ever receive is being born and dying. We can make moving on to the next season easier by realising there are plenty of opportunities to grow and change. Relax and do the best you can, but not in a state of panic.

I share my truth here, and it might not be the same for you. So what does the tree of life mean to you? Please leave us your interpretation in the comments below, and let us see how this story grows.

What are Telomers? Some people say, “Why would I want to live until my 80s or 90s?”

Did the Buddhists refer to Telomeres? Ancient Buddhists said that “first you must learn to control the body”, which means healthy eating and exercise. Then, you must control the mind, which includes addictions/habits, sexual urges, negative thought patterns, and I could go on. Then, the spirit will follow,” with meditating, yoga, etc.

So increasing your lifespan will lengthen the time to do more spiritual practices and give you a better quality of life into advanced age. Science is now starting to catch up to show proof that this is indeed the case.

What are Telomeres? And how are they linked to ageing?

You don’t need to be a scientist to know that ageing is complex. It starts in our cells and results in a gradual decline of our body’s systems. Scientists have proposed various theories of how this occurs.

However, in 2009, Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak jointly won the Nobel Prize for discovering how telomeres protect chromosomes.

A simple way to think of chromosomes, which carry all our genetic information, is as shoelaces; telomeres are the little protective tips that protect them from fraying and disintegrating.

 Telomeres at the ends of chromosomes help protect DNA from damage and allow chromosomes to replenish during each cell division (or wrong lifestyle choice).

The good news is that these telomeres can be regenerated and LENGTHENED with a healthy lifestyle!

So, let’s go over the five strategies to lengthen your telomeres.

1. Focus on a plant-based-rich diet.

It’s well known now that avoiding animal and dairy foods reduces the chance of chronic disease and is associated with longer telomeres. As a result, many athletes eat a vegan/vegetarian diet to provide optimal performance.

2. Exercise.

When exercising, the key is to exercise to the recommended level for your age. Otherwise, you may damage your telomeres more than you do good. Seek good exercise advice.

3. Choose vitamin B folate-rich foods that can optimise telomere length.

Essential vitamin B is contained in spinach, asparagus, artichoke, broccoli, beans, and pulses.

Scientific studies found in 2009 that too much vitamin B can also be detrimental to telomere health. The best way to regulate optimal vitamin B is by these foods instead of supplements.

4. Get Shangriballa food and sunshine in your life, lol or vitamin D supplements.

Studies suggest a very strong link between vitamin D and telomere length. In addition, vitamin D has many bodily functions, including modulating inflammation, which protects telomeres and reduces oxidative stress.

5. Keep stress at bay.

Chronic stress levels reduce telomere length.

A study of two groups of women who had their telomeres measured: one group was mothers of healthy children, and the other group had chronically ill children. Due to the stress of the chronically ill children, the telomeres were significantly shorter than those of the other group. This shortening was the equivalent of 10 years of life and age-related illnesses.

This clarifies that relaxing exercises like yoga, meditation, tai chi, mindfulness, and similar practices can play a vital role in reducing stress levels and lengthening the telomeres.

Summary.

At Shangriballa, we know the importance of a balanced lifestyle. We strive to grow organic foods, drink clean spring water and exercise. We believe spiritual practices such as heart and brain harmony, meditation and plant medicine can significantly decrease stress and lengthen telomeres and life expectancy.

Watch this 5-minute video below on lifestyle changes to lengthen the telomeres.

I hope you liked this short introduction to telomeres.

Namaste

Miguel Silva.