We wake up in the morning. Then we
reached for coffee or our smartphone to check emails. Jump into the bath and
run to work. Is this your routine? When was the last time you really thought
about what you were doing with your life? Are you happy and consciously living?
One of my student asked me " I have everything in my life, why I am still not
happy?" I told him " May be you have everything, but not YOU!. If you want to
have this YOU, try practicing Yoga and Meditation"
The main rule for a good yogic practice
is to live life consciously. What does it means to live life consciously? Do I
have to focus more? Well lets have a look. In the past in India, the yogis used
to live away from fast going life and perform all those yogic postures (asana)
in order to control the mind, the ageing process and cultivate good health. But
Yoga is more than just mastering postures and increasing your flexibility and
strength. You get it anyway. The traditional purpose of Yoga practice, however,
has always been to bring about a profound transformation in the person through
the transcendence of the ego and to cultivate moderation, to commit to
presenting ourselves before our highest awareness through meditation and
relaxation.
Yoga gives us access to the storehouse
of resources built into our body and mind. The body is the instrument through
which we receive our tangible experiences. If we treat it with respect and
care, we are that much more able to experience and direct our life effectively.
Imagine the body as a high performance automobile. You would give it only
premium gasoline to make it run smoothly. You would bring it to the service
station frequently for oil changes and preventative maintenance. You would love
it and take good care of it. Why not our body? We must treat our body at least
as well as we would treat that car. It is the only vehicle we will get and it
is, in fact, designed for high performance. In this modern and fast moving
lifestyle, we are running so much away from that connection towards the reality
of ourselves. Our body-car is getting old and damaged and the driver which is
the monkey mind sitting on the drivers seat is insane and driving our mind and
life into the darkness.
We all run through thousands of
habitual behaviours everyday. Some serve to make us more efficient, allowing us
to breeze through small tasks as if by second nature, but others have the
potential to become life disrupting or even life threatening. You may get a
small thrill from eating sugary foods, spending money, checking your phone,
throwing back another drink, but chances are youre just distracting yourself
from stress and pain that you dont want to deal with, removing yourself from
the present moment—and jeopardising your long-term health and well-being in the
process.
If this is your case, don't worry
there is always a light to overcome darkness. Regular practice of Yoga puts us in touch with our "high
performance" abilities. It becomes easier to treat ourselves well. We eat
in moderation, sleep in moderation, exercise in moderation: we create balance
and well-being. Today, just like the lightbulb, meditation is a universal
phenomenon - one helps illuminate our outer world, the other our inner world.
But in the process of becoming universal, many misconception about meditation
and yoga have arisen: that it is religion, that it is about sitting in
difficult postures and perhaps you have to be flexible. I had once a guy who
came to my yoga class with one leg, he was struggling with his destiny and this
life journey he has to go through. He thought that he would not be able to
practice yoga with his disability. But yet he did fantastic. And through the
practice, he understood that the body is just an instrument to deal with our
life topic and the soul is the true essence beyond physical existence.
So even if you are physically disable,
you can still do yoga. But Most of us have been taught that in order to be
successful in life we need to struggle, to fight, to focus, to concentrate. The
trouble with this approach is that the more we struggle, the more tense we
become. And the more tense we are, the worse we perform. The meditative
approach is to understand that in order to be at our best, in order to give
each moment our best - and to receive the best from each moment, we need to be
as aware as possible. And to be aware we need to be relaxed and find the
balance within ourselves. Maldives is the best place to cultivate this in
connection to the beautiful surrounding.
In this issue, I will share this very
simple meditation with you.
Meditation to Release Stress and Clear
Past Emotions
Come to a
comfortable cross-legged sitting position or sitting on a chair with your feet
touching the earth. Place your fingertips together, forming a tepee with your
hands, fingers pointing up and thumbs pointing toward your heart centre. Look
at the tip of your nose and inhale for 5 seconds, hold the breath for 5
seconds, then exhale for 5 seconds. Continue for 3-11 minutes then relax. If
your breath is unsteady and shallow, it sends a signal to your body that its
needs are not being met. This meditation creates a steady breath rhythm so that
your body and mind can release stress and habitual ways of being. It is a very
simple meditation yet very effective.
For more
information about yoga, meditation and touch of soul healing, please visit our
website : www.touchofsoul.eu
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