Vasco lives in Portugal. He works as a Human Flourishing Facilitator, inspiring change and transformation in organizations worldwide for a more human and compassionate world. With a toolbox of cutting-edge awareness-based technologies, and trained directly by some of the world’s greatest specialists in the fields of Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence, neuroscience and Heartfulness, his dream is to co-create the future, something that he has been doing in different organizations, training people worldwide. He is now dedicated to merging different practices, like Mindfulness, Heartfulness and Presencing, into the service of a greater good: Human Flourishing. What really drives him is his love of nature and animals, being a positive activist for the protection of the planet.

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Vasco Gaspar

<h4>VASCO GASPAR is a Mindfulness consultant and Heartfulness trainer living in Portugal. Here he shares a simple effective practice to down-regulate emotions.</h4>
We all sometimes feel stressed, anxious, fearful or angry. It’s part of the experience of being human to feel emotions, something we share with all other mammals to some extent. Actually the part of our brain that is involved in the processing of emotions is called the limbic brain or mammalian brain.
Emotions have been helping us for thousands of years to deal with the environment and survive. For instance, if we’re crossing a busy road and a car is coming straight towards us, it is very good for us to feel fear. It will mobilize our physical resources to run away or jump back from the front of the car. And we don’t even think about it because most emotions are faster than our conscious mind. That is also an advantage from an evolutionary point of view. Taking the car example again, it would not be useful for us to think about whether it is a Mercedes or a Ford. That split second of reflection could cost us our lives.
But that evolutionary advantage comes with a price. I had a teacher who used to joke that we are all descendants of the nervous monkeys. Why? Because all the relaxed ones didn’t made it. The ones that were the first to run were able to survive and reproduce. In fact most of us, by default, constantly keep scanning the environment for threats, and we react to them using the same mechanisms we used to fight lions or run away from other ferocious beasts.
In our modern lives fortunately we don’t have as many physical threats as our ancestors, but we’re using the same brain mechanisms to deal with problems that are mostly conceptual, like the fear of losing a job, the anxiety of speaking in public etc.
What can we do when we are in an emotional state that is not useful? For instance, imagine that you have to speak in public and feel so afraid that you lose the capacity to think clearly; or you had an argument with a colleague in a meeting and now you arrive at the next meeting still angry with him. Or even that you feel mad after spending an hour in the car on your way home after a frantic day at work and don’t want to take those toxic emotions to your small child waiting for you at home.
Is there a simple practice we could do before stepping onto the stage, into the meeting, or arriving home?
Something that would help us down-regulate the excessive emotional state and bring us to a balanced and coherent state. If you’re a Heartfulness practitioner my suggestion is to use the Cleaning process, which I find very useful.
Another possibility is to do the following steps that take less than five minutes:
Go to a place where you can be alone. It can be a room, your car or even the toilet.
Breathe in deeply, filling your lungs, and then breathe out as if you were blowing a candle, until your lungs are completely empty.
Repeat the process three times. That will help you bring oxygen to your system and balance your inner state.
Allow your breath to come to a regular rhythm and put one hand on your belly and the other on your chest. Sense the hand you prefer on these parts of your body. Normally one combination will feel more familiar than the other.
For one minute or so, notice how your hands move as you breathe. Is it the hand on your chest that moves more, or is it the one on your belly? Are they moving more or less the same way? Just follow the movement, with a sense of curiosity. Some people notice that just by doing this they feel calmer. Some scientists argue that it is related with our physical memory of a hug, especially when our parents held us when we were babies, when we were crying.
Now just move the hand on your belly along with the breath. Do it as if you had a balloon in your belly: As you breathe in the ‘balloon’ fills and your hand moves away from your body. As you breathe out the ‘balloon’ empties and your hand moves closer to your body. Your breathing process will become more abdominal. Since the lungs are bigger at the bottom, you will bring more oxygen to your system, allowing you to be more awake, aware and able to self-regulate. Try to keep this abdominal breathing going for 30 to 60 seconds.
Continuing abdominal breathing, now add some counting to the breathing process. Breathe in and count mentally up to four. Breathe out and count mentally up to six. Do it at your own pace. Breathe in counting to four; breathe out counting to six. Keep doing this for one minute, coming back to the process of counting if you are distracted.
This will help your mind to keep focused on an object and not to think about what is stressing you. And by regulating the breathing process it will also impact your heart and circulatory system, bringing your whole system to a more coherent state.
In the last minute of the exercise see if you can bring your mind to an image of someone you love and care about. It can be someone from your family, a friend, or even an animal. Just hold that image in your heart for a while.
You can keep doing the breathing process if it is useful, or simply just rest in the image of a loved one. The rationale here is simple: the same way that you feel stressed when you think about something that stresses you, you feel calmer and more balanced when you think about someone who evokes positive emotions in you.
That’s it. Very simple, right? Even my almost 90-year-old grandmother does it daily. And it takes less than 5 minutes.
Just give it a try. The next time you feel that your emotional system is out of control, just stop and go through these simple steps. You can do them together or just do one or two. Notice which steps have a deeper impact in downregulating your emotional state and then use them whenever you need. After that, go into your day.
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article by VASCO GASPAR</h4>
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Bringing your system to balance

Practices for human flourishing

<h4 style="text-align:justify;">VASCO GASPAR asks us to explore how we can become truly alive. Like Einstein, he invites us to remove the delusion of separateness and connect with the whole. He challenges us to move from “ego to eco,” and gives us the tools to manifest the world of the Heart.</h4><h4 style="text-align:justify;">&nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:justify;">Becoming whole, connecting our essence with Life</h4>Life is a great mystery. Many times we wonder about our role and who we really are. I invite you to get in touch with the depths of your Heart and reflect on the following questions:What is the real goal or purpose of human life? What blocks us from manifesting that potential? Who can help us flourish into that higher possibility?I’m always inspired by a letter Einstein wrote to his daughter, where he said, “A human being is a part of the whole called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and his feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”To me, that seems like an inspiring answer to the first question-that our real goal is to dissolve our boundaries and unite with the whole, unite with the Universe/Life/Source/God (use the term you prefer that resonates the most). That is what words like yoga and religion seem to point to in their origins.What is blocking the way to achieving that goal? What really stops us is our ego, with its fears, desires, and attachments. Also, the parts of us that, although trying to protect us, end up creating even more constriction and boundaries between ourselves, other people, and Life in general. As some say, the word ego can be an acronym for “edging God out,” which seems entirely aligned with what blocks us from flourishing.<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">Our real goal is to dissolve our boundaries and unite with the whole, unite with the Universe/Life/Source/God.</h4><hr><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:50%;"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/connecting_with_life3_888adfccd5.webp" alt="connecting-with-life3.webp" srcset="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/thumbnail_connecting_with_life3_888adfccd5.webp 145w,https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/large_connecting_with_life3_888adfccd5.webp 432w,https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/connecting_with_life3_888adfccd5.webp 432w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h4 style="text-align:justify;">From ego to eco</h4>How can we move from “ego to eco,” from the constriction of our small self to the infinite expansion of our being, our higher Self, connecting with the whole web of life? And who can help us achieve that?I believe the answer lies within, beyond the body and beyond the mind. It resides in the Heart, in the Heart of our Heart, the Self, that deeper healthy core inside, that inner divine Light that has always been shining. The Chandogya Upanishad pointed to it many centuries ago: “There is a light that shines beyond all things on Earth, beyond us all, beyond the heavens, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in your heart.”As we connect with that divine presence within, we start getting guidance to attune to Life. We start “stepping out” of our own way and letting Life live through us. The words “surrender” and “service” become the beacons of our existence. We start surrendering to the guidance that Life is constantly sending us, receiving it with our Hearts, which in turn then guide us in the right direction. We manifest who we truly are in the world and how we can be of service to the larger existence we are part of, contributing to the greater good.Step by step, we become a walking prayer, as the Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast says: “Prayer is not sending an order and expecting it to be fulfilled. Prayer is attuning yourself to the life of the world, to Love, the force that moves the sun and the moon and the stars.”&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:50%;"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/connecting_with_life4_76e48f35c8.webp" alt="connecting-with-life4.webp" srcset="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/thumbnail_connecting_with_life4_76e48f35c8.webp 145w,https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/large_connecting_with_life4_76e48f35c8.webp 697w,https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/connecting_with_life4_76e48f35c8.webp 697w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h4 style="text-align:justify;">Nurturing the connection</h4>I find many practices helpful to establish, attune, and nurture that connection with Source, but the main ones guiding my journey have been <a href="https://bit.ly/hfnmedit" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Heartfulness Meditation</a> and the <a href="https://bit.ly/hfnprayer" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Heartfulness Prayer</a>. Prayer helps to create an inner connection with that divine presence, and meditation strengthens it, allowing me to be in tune with Nature and evolve spiritually.We are all sparks of the Divine, walking each other home, back to the Source. What would happen if we could maintain that connection, that remembrance of the Divine within and without? To see ourselves and others beyond the masks. To see us all as one, part of the same Being. Imagine a world like that.Is it easy to do? No. Is it possible? Yes. It takes one step at a time, expanding our awareness to a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness we share with each other and our environment. The more we expand, the more we include and transcend our boundaries and realize our full potential for goodness, compassion, and peace, while navigating through the challenges of Life.May we all find ways to become our divine essence and manifest it in the world for the benefit of all beings. May we all realize who we truly are, surrendering ourselves to the divine guidance that is always present. May our spirits blossom and flourish while we help others to flourish as well. May we, together, manifest the world our hearts know is possible.<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">Illustrations by JASMEE MUDGAL</h4><hr>

Vasco Gaspar

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