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Spring is the time when so many of us take the time to consider ways to get fit. We pull out the old methods that worked in the past and try them out again. Often relying on past successes is a good way to get things going in life. If you have a formula for success, you are likely to apply it again with great results.
As I watched the opening of the Olympics recently, I could feel the high-level, vibrating message of inclusivity, unity, and harmony among everyone in the world exploding at the event. It was touching, funny, important, elevated, clever and most of all global. Every nation, each person, all colors, and races were acknowledged. The Olympics has the power to do that, and so do we.
When I published my blog on the environment in Real Conscious Living in 2019, I pondered what would bring us all together to “save the world.” What I knew for sure is that it would take a village. Then yesterday, I saw a photo from Australia showing the heavy rains and flooding that took away many people’s homes and livelihoods. The image showed thousands of spiders building webs together so that they could stay above water and survive as a group. There were so many spiders, all helping one another, building community webs and threads of connection for a joint purpose. They had abandoned their own webs in crisis so that the group could survive, and they would all benefit from their unity. The impact was so great that the silky webs appeared to be like layers of pristine snow hovering just about the flooded ground.
Dr. Nancy Mramor
Research shows that giving can create amazing effects on the body and mind. And now we know of a way to boost those benefits in 2022! When you give a gift, you typically get a verbal, electronic, or written acknowledgment and thanks. You often feel elated briefly, knowing that your gift or donation made a difference. But what if giving or doing a good deed anonymously can improve your mood, have long-term effects on life satisfaction, and stimulate brain activity associated with pleasure and reward? When giving our brain releases chemicals like serotonin and dopamine, giving you a sense of reward. A reduction in stress and anxiety, lower blood pressure and better sleep are also associated with the part of the brain that is stimulated with giving. And when these chemicals are released, depression is lessened.
Recently, I was noticing that a Women’s March, that had been so united, was now showing signs of fracture, due to some personal agendas, creating racial divides, and the loss of some important sponsorship. I began to wonder about the reasons why even when we have a mutual cause, personal agendas get in the way.
I began to think of the issues with the NFL. I am an independent person, and had not taken a side, seeing the philosophies of both sides and the merit of both. Was it right to use the venue of the NFL to make a statement about race? I knew that the NFL would go on, but what would happen to the Women’s March? Without the sponsorship, they would surely experience growing pains. I wondered if they would recover.
I was considering lately that perhaps the only thing that can potentially unite the world, beyond personal interest, money, or pride is the issue of our natural resources. Are the air, the earth and the water the only things we all have in common, without argument? Do they provide the things that every individual needs, regardless of race, interest in professional sports or financial gain and do they override all other special interests? If they do, we haven’t found this universal truth to be self evident.
When you are setting your priorities for the day, you typically list the most important things first. But what if the most important thing was the smallest action that you take today? One thing sets your intention for the day and creates a ripple effect that impacts you and the world indefinitely? If you have ever dropped a stone in a pool of water, you have seen the ripple effect, the circles of water that surround the place where the stone landed. They go on and on just from one action.
Daily News Lifestyles Editor, By Carol Waterloo Frazier
Many years ago, Dr. Nancy Mramor was diagnosed with leukemia. She was told the prognosis did not look good.
So she put to the test what she had been teaching for several years – mind-body medicine.
Mramor is author of “Spiritual Fitness,” as well as a licensed psychologist and educator. In the book, she presents in a concise yet easy-to-understand way the strategies for becoming spiritually fit.
“I was a special education teacher and decided to take a class in relaxation and stress management,” she related. “I found that one exercise that sent healing and prayer to another person really opened me up spiritually.”
By Jill Cueni-Cohen
It sometimes seems like we’re just running the human race, going from place to place in order to fulfill our daily requirements of taking care of our families and making a living. When we’re sick, we take medicine and soldier on; and when we’re tired, we don’t sleep; there’s just too much to get done.
But are we really living? Are we activating that amazing spirit that dwells within the center of each one of us and makes us so uniquely human? If we’re constantly putting others’ needs before our own, then maybe it’s time to get fit, spiritually speaking.
According to Pittsburgh psychologist Nancy Mramor, Ph.D., putting your spirituality first in your life and letting it drive you, mind, body and spirit, will help you reconnect to that part of you where your abundant health comes from. “You might, for example, get a great deal of health benefits from running, but if you also added quiet prayer, meditation, or yoga, you might experience something quite different,” says Dr. Mramor.
By Frederica Saylor
Pennsylvania consultant applies mind-body techniques to the workplace For more than 25 years, Nancy Mramor has used a mind-body-spirit approach to health psychology and psychotherapy in her private practice and training. Voted one of western Pennsylvania’s most successful women in 1997, she has developed programs to teach relaxation, meditation and yoga to help people open up spiritually.
By Marjorie Wertz
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
When Nancy Mramor learned she had leukemia nearly six years ago, the Pittsburgh-based licensed psychologist turned to mind-body medicine to help herself become well.
She refers to the mind-body approach as spiritual fitness and used various techniques, including prayer, faith, and visualization during her struggle with the disease.
Valley News Dispatch
Psychologist Nancy Mramor has an ambitious goal for herself and others: spiritual fitness.
On the staff at UPMC Shadyside Hospital since 1999, she is recognized as an authority regarding the mind-body connection. She believes she cured herself of leukemia five years ago by using those techniques.