Archive for the ‘Meditation’ Category
Are you stressed out? Do you worry about your physical health? Your mental health? Your spiritual health? Do you wish you had less stress and anxiety in your life and more peace and harmony?
Well, I felt all of these things a few years ago and I thought I was going to go crazy or die. I was working 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week at a very stressful job. I had a wife and two kids at home who wanted, and deserved, my time and attention. I had a mortgage, two car notes, tuition, medical bills, overdue taxes, and credit card debt coming out of my ears!
I was running nonstop through my days trying to take care of everything and make everybody happy but I never had enough time to take care of myself. In bed at night, my heart would pound from stress and anxiety. I worried about my job, my marriage, the kids, the bills, the house, my heath, and even my sanity.
My health was of particular concern. I felt tired all the time. I was gaining weight. My back was always hurting. Climbing even one flight of stairs left me breathless and dizzy. I felt like I was falling apart physically, mentally, and spiritually.
I was really worried about myself but I didn’t know what to do. I tried the gym, several fad diets, home exercise machines, and even time management programs. I had about the same results with each new thing I tried. They all seemed to help at first, but I just couldn’t stick with any of them for very long. I now realize that they didn’t work because they were all short term fixes to a long term problem. I had to change my life.
I knew I had a lot to learn, but I couldn’t afford to buy a bunch of books and everything at the library seemed to be outdated. So I made a habit of stopping at the local Barns and Noble on the way home from work each day. I read everything I could find on stress, anxiety, health, diet, and self-improvement. I felt like a cheat just sitting there reading the books without buying them but nobody seemed to mind. I usually bought a cup of coffee or tea just to ease my conscience a little.
I read a lot of great books with wonderful insights on improving one’s life. Not surprisingly, one subject came up over and over; meditation. I had tried to meditate several years earlier but had gotten frustrated and quit before really giving it a chance. But, I was desperate and determined to try anything that might help.
One book in particular said, “Start right now!” I was too embarrassed to sit in the book store and meditate, but I didn’t want to waste another moment. So I went out to my car, adjusted the seat into a comfortable position, set my watch alarm for 30 minutes, then closed my eyes and started counting my breaths.
Once Western scientists first began studying the personal effects of speculation in the 1970s, they noticed that heart rate, perspiration, and other signs of emphasis decreased as the meditator relaxed. Scientists, like Richard Davidson, PhD (University of Badger State), have besides been considering the long-term of . In 1992, Davidson received an invitation from the 14th Dalai Lama to come to northern Republic of India and sketch the brains of Buddhistic monks, the foremost meditators in the world. Davidson traveled to Bharat with laptop computers, generators, and EEG recording equipment, thus initiating an ongoing work. Now, monks travel to his WI lab wherever they chew over while in a magnetic imaging machine or they watch disturbing visual images as EEGs record their responses to understand how they regulate aroused reactions.
Any activeness–including –will create new pathways and strengthen certain areas of the mind. “This fits into the whole neuroscience literature of expertise,” says Stephen Kosslyn, a Harvard neuroscientist, in a New York Times article (14 September 2003), ” taxi drivers deliberate for their spatial memory and concert musicians for their sense of pitch. If you do something, anything, even play Ping-Pong, for 20 years, eight hours a Day, there’s going to be something in your head that’s different from someone WHO didn’t do that. It’s just got to be.” monks pattern three forms of : 1) focused attention on a single object for long time periods 2) cultivating pity by thinking about angercausing situations and transforming the negative emotion into compassionateness and 3) ‘open presence,’ “a Department of State of being acutely aware of whatever thought, emotion or sensation is present without reacting to it.” Knowing the that has on the monks’ brains, Davidson decided to realize what effect has on neophytes. He set up a cogitation with 41 employees at a nearby biotech company in Wisconsin River (Psychosomatic Medicine 65: 564-570, 2003). Twenty-five of the participants enlightened ‘mindfulness ,’ a accent-reducing form that promotes nonjudgmental awareness of the present and is taught by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
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You have the ability to create your own mind-set. Whether your attitude is positive or negative, is up to you. The ability to change your environment, circle of friends, and attitude, is within your control.
Just like a computer absorbs raw data, so does your mind. Within your mind a culture, within itself, has grown. Many people feel like they have no control of their own mind, because this culture has become negative. The negativity is a result of past experiences, being in a negative environment, or being under the influence of unconstructive ideas.
Similar to a computer virus, you have to identify it quickly, to avoid letting it spread within your mind. You can also pass this virus of negative thinking to people around you. As a result you are spreading negative energy around, like “weeds in a field.”
Much like a farmer, you cultivate too. The energy in your mind is the crop, and it is up to you, whether it is weeds or wheat. If you have a farm and let a field take care of itself; you will be lucky to have any kind of a crop, from it.
This is the same with the energy within your mind.
You have to option to pick quality seeds: Information, in the form of books, eBooks, DVD’s, CD’s, lectures, courses, workshops, and seminars. This is learning, for the sake of self-improvement, and it results in a positive mind-set. Read the rest of this entry »
How do you connect chakras, the energy centres of the body in Eastern tradition, and flowers, pretty, ephemeral, bright, cheerful manifestations of nature?
…by way of color therapy.. yoga energy balancing techniques…meditation… and a simple way of making yourself feel better and reenergized even if you don’t really believe in any of the above.
There are seven main chakras (as well as several others) in a line from the base of the spine to the crown of the head and one more newly recognised chakra just above the head which I believe is important. Each one is associated with various areas of physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. When the energy flow in one becomes blocked it can result in certain symptoms and vice versa. By keeping the chakras open and the energy flowing, we can maximise our body’s ability to keep well and heal itself.
One way of stimulating energy flow is by a simple visualisation. Each chakra has a colour of the spectrum linked to it. Focus on that colour and imagine that colour light pouring into the chakra and saturating it in pure coloured light, then visualise the chakra as a spinning disc of colour. Take 2 or 3 deep breaths as you do so. You can also repeat a mantra or affirmation to intensify the positive energy you are creating. Work through each chakra (see below for summary) in turn from Root to Crown to rebalance your whole energy level.
So what about the flowers? Whatever you use to visualise the colour would work, paint swatches, coloured stones or crystals, an image in your minds eye, but beautiful photographs of flowers saturated in the pure colour of each chakra can bring some extra flower energy into your life as well.
Flowers raise the vibrational energy around them, which is why they have long been associated with celebrations, brought as presents to new mothers, sick people, loved ones. Weddings and funerals are lavish with them. We are rarely aware of the spiritual connection these days, we just know that flowers cheer people up and make them feel glad. So flower photos as visualisation aids make sense and are beautiful to have around. www.aflowergallery.com has a whole section devoted to chakra flower photos.
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