Posts Tagged ‘meditation’
What to do to regulate our emotional life so we can grow? How to expand our consciousness?
The less developed our consciousness is, the more we get caught up in unpleasant emotional states. The more we expand our awareness, our emotional life becomes more balanced so that anger, jealousy, depression and guilt begin to disappear. The energy we once used for those emotions becomes purified and transforms into peace, joy, love and compassion. Let’s transform ourselves.
Namaste,
Sunshine Yoga Academy
We all carry fears and we are afraid to examine them, we pretend that they do not exist but this creates insecurities in our daily life.When we take time to examine our life we come to realize that fears create big obstacles that interfere with our progress.
What is the method to clear them and be free?
We must face them and examine them, we will come to realize that most of our fears are not real. It is our responsibility to find our fears and not allow them to grow. The more fears we grow the more we generate disease. Find freedom from fears. Explore yourself and understand who you are.
Be free from fears
Today, I would like to introduce you to the practice of breath meditation. It is a simple technique that will change your life.
Sit comfortably with your spine erect and the whole body relaxed. For a few moments let your awareness and breath join together traveling through your body as you observe the wave of relaxation arising with the breath.
Sit for several minutes observing the breath without trying to change or manipulate the breath. Do not control it; let it come and let it go.
Bring your attention to your torso as you establish diaphragmatic breathing. Observe the expansion and relaxation in your torso. Relax any efforts, let the breath breathe you. Observe thoughts coming and going, without an effort let go of the thoughts and bring yourself back to the breath. Continue focusing on the breath and notice how your breath and your mind become one. With practice, you will notice that the breath becomes so soft, rhythmical, even at the same time that the mind becomes more calm, centered and peaceful .
Enjoy the first steps of the practice of meditation. Practice this method for a few days and see the changes in your life.
Namaste
Sunshine Yoga Academy
We have not yet found a perfect diet. After experimenting for millions of years, we have not found the best way to achieve good nutrition. We eat food but we have not yet understood the method of living and being. What is the right attitude to eat food? Eat to live and but don’t live to eat. We need to develop an attitude that good food is needed for healthy living. Eating good food is not enough. Rather, we must look at how we eat our food. Whatever we eat, we need to eat on time, enjoying the meal. It is also a good idea to eat three meals a day. When I was at the Ashram in India, I learned that we must eat breakfast as a king, lunch as a prince and dinner as a pauper and I certainly did. For the duration of my stay there, I had no digestive issues and truly felt healthy for the fist time in a long time. What a difference eating calmly, without stress and without worries can make in your daily life.
We must remember some important guidelines when it comes to nutrition. Always make sure that you are at peace before eating. If you happen to have had an argument with somebody before dinner, make sure that you take your time, take a deep breath for a few moments and then you are ready to eat. Be cheerful when eating and chew your food well. Remember that digestion starts in the mouth as saliva has the first digestive enzyme in the digestive process. Do not over eat. Overeating and not eating enough are problems of the mind. When you eat a balanced diet you do not overeat. You overeat when the diet is imbalanced or your mind is imbalanced. Do not force yourself to eat. If you are not hungry, do not eat. Furthermore, try not to drink during meals. Drink before or after but not during the meal as liquids dilute the gastric juices. Do not eat very late at night or before going to sleep because that can bring many illnesses.
Start making small changes, be patient with yourself and treat yourself nicely.
Namaste
Sunshine Yoga Academy
My spiritual Teacher used to tell this story.
Imagine that you are lost in a deep valley, surrounded by thickly growing bushes and trees. You are able to see a short distance ahead and on the sides, because of the dense forest surrounding you. You are preoccupied with protecting yourself and satisfying your immediate needs. You are concerned with finding water, food, shelter and protections from the animals. You feel frightened and desperate, wondering how you will ever find your way out.
After a considerable struggle you finally climb to the top of the ridge surrounding the valley. There your field of awareness is extended and you can look down to where you were previously standing. From this higher point you see a winding stream and some fruit trees just a short distance off from where you had been. When you were in the valley the water and trees were unknown. For you they did not exist. The fear of suffering from thirst and hunger was very real to you then. But from a larger perspective at the top of the ridge you can see that there was no need to be concerned at all. Your problems were created by your own imagination by the narrowness of your perception.
From the ridge where you are now standing you can see even higher plateaus surrounding you, and you wonder what lies beyond them. Though your perspective is greater than it was before, it is still far from all encompassing. You are still preoccupied with finding your way out of the wilderness and seeking shelter. Though your field of vision has been enlarged and your anxieties somewhat reduced, many uncertainties remain. so you begin to make your way toward a higher vantage point. It take considerable time and effort to reach it, but when you finally climb, exhausted , to the top of a large hill, your efforts are rewarded by a still greater perspective and you are overjoyed to see in the distance a trail and beyond it, still further, the smoke of some tents of some campers.
Each time that you climb to a higher vantage point the range of your vision is enlarged and your understanding of the entire situation is altered. You see things from a more encompassing perspective which allows you to be less concerned and anxious and enables you to relate to your environment in terms of how it really is rather than in terms of how you imagined it to be from a more limited point of view.
Namaste,
Sunshine Yoga Academy