Rejuvenate mind and spirit through yoga

So many times, you must have heard people saying that he does not have any spirit or energy or any ambition to grow in life. Why it is so? The reason is that the mind and body of that particular person are not properly nourished to induce mental and physical strength and spirit. This spirit only makes you energized to perform all activities to your fullest satisfaction. When you feel less energetic, you hardly bother to complete your job, whether it is social or professional. Now, to increase the spirit, attainment of a sound health, body and mind is a prerequisite.  The yoga exercise can heal your mind and body to channel your energy so as to increase your spirit. The yoga means “union.” By practicing the yoga, you will be able to concentrate more on the positive aspects of life and then automatically your mind and body will be tuned to focus more on clear thoughts pertaining to complete various ambitions of your life for which you might have already made a road map.

Today, people all over the world, practice yoga and take this activity very seriously to remain fit mentally and physically. The ancient history indicates that the inception of this yoga exercise started long back in India and then spread to other countries of the world.  There is a widespread debate about the difference between style, method and brand of yoga.  The western world may claim that their system is the best, whereas eastern can claim to be a precursor for this exercise.  But yoga cannot be differentiated as which one is the best or the worst.  There is no fixed assessment of yoga, its power is to be felt only; it is to be practiced continually to rejuvenate your mind, body and spirit.  If there is any comparison between the eastern and the western practices, then the same is a waste of time and a deviation from the main concept behind this practice. The critics and odd discussions between various types of yogas are  of no meaning. If you concentrate on the wrong side of this yoga Sadhana, you cannot heal your mind and body The yoga is a practice through which we connect to our breath, mind, body and correct posture of our health system.

Today, the yoga practice has been spread more than ever.  We should do this not only to make our bodies in shape, reduce anxiety, to throw diabetes  and control blood pressure, but also to practice this exercise to increase the power of mind to choose the religious path in life. When you are involved very deeply in this practice, it helps you to connect to God and his blessings to you  and also for others.

The yoga practice is an ideal to take care of various ailments to make your body almost like a disease free machine  Once your body is healthy, the mind also becomes full of positive energy.  By this practice, you can unite everybody by your love and energy and you will always try to help or serve others. Because an enliven, calm and tranquil mind always instigate you to do something fruitful  by which others are getting inspired.  When you continue this practice, you will be able to increase your magical mental power through which you can identify everyone as your own.  Today, we are identified either as a group or as a fraction to initiate quarrel, bickering and nepotism and ultimately losing the cohesion to remain united.  We are recognized as a part of a political party, or as a cultural group or as the disciples of a particular religious guru.  This distinction only makes us suffer as we are not able to take part in the other’s sufferings, their anxieties and their distress spontaneously.  By practicing yoga, you can reduce this mental gap.  Unless this gap is narrowed down, you will  lead to depression and it will be increased gradually.  When your mental power is unable to subsidize various thoughts leading to depression, you will be feeling alone, disconnected and isolated from the society. And if this situation prolongs, you will be very much disturbed both in your social and professional life and ultimately, you will have no desire to live.  You will think to die and sometimes commit suicide giving pain to your beloved people. Yoga is the practical solution for all types of mental and physical diseases and to save you from all your health hazard and you will be able to live your life peacefully and blissfully.

The more ego makes you egoistic;root of perdition

There is a famous proverb “Cut your coat according to your cloth”. Similarly, if you carry more weight than you are able to lift, you will be exhausted easily. And if you force yourself to continue the said activity, you will become distorted in pain. This is also the case with your personality.  Some people carry a heavy load of ego and always think of their own interest.  A person who possesses a larger ego remains always irritated, sees all the things all the time in a frustration and gets him enlaced knowingly or unknowingly in various conflicts no sooner his ego is hurt. These types of persons will be disliked by most of the people, they may not even get the sympathy from their own family members and will always observe the world with a suspicion. Almost all the time, they will remain unhappy and make others also gloomy.

This ego is like an extra baggage in your life. The more you carry with you, you will become unstable, imbalance and emotionally volatile. 

Despite our knowing this fact, we do not make any attempt to reduce this extra baggage of personality. The Indian philosophy teaches us that in our living, we can attain a stage of salvation, if we desire so. Without being attached to the fruits of our labor, if we consider the same as our duty, our mind will be free from conflicts, anxieties, ill feelings and aspiration to do wrong doings. And a free mind is bondage less.  So, it is utmost important to make the mind free of ego and engage in self-interest free activities. To reach this stage, the continuous practice to make the mind calm and thoughtlessness is a prerequisite.  The more we become self-centered, the more we show the interest only for our own benefits and the more desire, we display for our materialistic comfort, the higher will be the complicacy in our lives.  For example, throughout the day, if you always think and evaluate everything in terms of money, you cannot reach the thoughtlessness.

From the lives of various sages, monks and religious preachers, we have learned how they curb their egos, which exist always. The human beings only induce these vicissitudes  instead of diminishing the same.  The ego is an indispensable part of our life, but the religious people make all their efforts not to dispel them. Let them stay and remain as their slaves and this is the ideology of their lives.  The Gita suggests the path of complete humility in order to curb ego.

If you always focus on your own interest, there will be conflicts and these conflicts only leads to violence, anarchy, disputes and quarrel. It is nothing wrong for you and me to  think in the opposite direction; you and I contradict each other and you and I even fight for a common cause. In this melee, if ego does not besmear with our thought process and if the focus is only on the rationality of the action desired to perform these activities, then there could be a conflict, argument and even bickering, but the same can be resolved with an amicable solution  So, the system defect of the restless mind is the ego. If we can shed our thinking in terms of I, me and myself, we can easily downplay the gravity of the conflicting situations, making the surroundings more jovial and full of fun.  The selfless action is the magic wand to attain salvation in life.

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Altruistic nature is not that prevalent in our society today.  But that does not mean this trait of idealism is not found at all.  The dominance of self centered people does not mean the abolition of altruism altogether. Now also there are people, who sacrifice their comfort, their needs and happiness to save others who are in distress and dolorous. The best example of shading ego and love others spontaneously, can be learned from dogs, whether it is your pet, stay near to your house or locality.  If you provide him a piece of food particle or simply show some affection occasionally, he will wag his tail whenever he sees you. Even if you do not give him any food or show affection; he will still come behind  you to express his  affection.  The dog is doing his Dharma because he has no ego at all. He even does not know what it is?

The selfless action only can bring peace, tranquility, serenity and bliss.  If we harp peace in our life on a continual basis, let us not find fault with others; we must identify our own misdeeds and mistakes and take corrective measures and not to repeat the said mistakes. 

The fundamental philosophy must be to reduce the weight of the extra baggage of the ego from our personality to grow unblemished and embellish our lives and remain always as a joyous and pious person. Life will be then full of vigor and smile.

 

Know the art of blessing yourself

Our parents teach us; our teachers preach us and even our siblings advocate to take blessings from others in our prosperous healthy and wealthy lives. But we never introspect on the  manifestation of blessing ourselves. We are habituated to learn that the blessings are to be given to others and mostly it is the domain of the elder people, teachers and religious gurus. But the spiritual gurus and the religious minded people assert that you can even bless yourself. You have to only believe in this conviction without any doubt. Otherwise, the charismatic power of these blessings will not  yield any tangible result. While most of the people are comfortable to bless others, share the ideas of blessings with others and advise someone to bless the other persons whom both know.  It is not a common paradigm in our society rather we are not taught in that way to start blessing ourselves. If you study Christian theological texts and particularly the books of Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller, you will find that both have advocated the power of prayer and blessings for others and so for yourself.  They have proven that by blessing repeatedly, one can palliate one’s own distress accruing out of painful disease of even Cancer. Sometimes, the intensity of this type of disease gets lessened.

Blessing oneself also helps when you are bogged down with negative thoughts, or you are in a gloomy mood because of social or professional constraints or you have landed in sorrow because of any mishap happened in the immediate past. During this stage, if you continuously utter the words of blessings, you will be able to divert your painful mind to an enliven and blissful countenance. In our culture, the inferiority complex is quite prevalent. If we fail in the examination, if we perform poorly in a competitive environment or if we are not able to secure the job for which we hope for, we get frustrated and we curse and condemn ourselves, and then we start comparing ourselves with others and deplete our energy in unproductive self-assessment activities.  We start analyzing the shortcomings of ours and we deeply delve into these analyses and ultimately we get angry with ourselves. To overcome the anger and other negative feelings, the showering of blessings is a must.  Now, in this type of situation, whenever you bless or contemplate to bless, it will bring a state of love and gratitude to you. This state automatically forces your mind to ponder on positive aspects of life drifting away the negative and infectious thoughts being accumulated in your mind. Your perception level gets improved and you will feel more energetic. By blessing yourself on a daily basis, you can turn around the criticism and negative comments inflected to you by others to a positive notion of feeling. This will ultimately calm your mind. Blessing oneself is a scientific method to rejuvenate your health. You can bless your past, even it was pervaded with grief stricken remembrance.  At that time of blessing, you have to think that today what you are; it is because of the past.  If you shower blessings on you with compassion, sincerity and wholeheartedly, you will get the results and you will become the same what you want to be in the future. 

Bless yourself considering your relationship with your parents, your friends, your spouse, family members and all others who really matter in your life cycle growth.  You will feel proud to observe this blessing power of yours. This will make you see everything blossoms like a blooming flower.

You must bless yourself for those you have helped or supported; out of the whole lot, some may be known, others may be unknown.  It is not that imperative, whether they, in turn, bless you or not.  You only bless your own intentions and sacrifices that you have made for others.

Bless yourself for everything, to your parents for your upbringing, your teachers and gurus for imparting knowledge, to your spouse for taking care of your well being, to your children for their love, to your friends for their support and finally to your failures that enlightens you to judge the difference between the right and the wrong.

Bless your needs and also your greed; after all you are a human being and not a sage.

To shower blessings to others is an easy task, but blessing oneself is an arduous approach. If you can achieve this technique by the grace of God or your guru, you will become blissful most of the time.

Sedate mind makes you glittery and increases your productivity

Have you ever thought why your productivity is not very high as you desire? Further, why you fail to achieve the target in your life?  What makes you scowl when you fall short of any output irrespective of your getting sufficient input?  What is the reason and why most of the time; you curse your luck for any set back?  The reason is that the happenings in your life do not depend on others; it is entirely of your own creation and your reaction to the happenings, which brings in either joy or distress. In management education, your teachers teach the theory of probability of 80-20, life is also governed by the same theory. The occurrence of twenty percent is all by habits, regular practice and  the dictum of your parents, peers, teachers or friends, but the eighty percent happens to you how you react to a particular situation.  For example, for an issue of family feud, if you are silent and your reaction is neutral, you won’t have to face any unpleasant scenario. May be the consequences of the feud will die on its own. But if you react strongly, take part with a grumpy face and support one member knowing that he is not correct, the acrimonies  will increase and pervade the atmosphere and vitiate the peace of the house at that particular moment. This is only an example.  In fact, for most of the situations where we get entangled with wrangling, the same is our own creations, which destroys our energy and we lose our productive hours. And after losing the productivity, when the situation goes beyond the control, we finger and accuse others to create this volatility. We then vociferate that what a life, it is!  But if you closely monitor, who is responsible? It is you and your retaliatory approach which only affects  your life’s growth. 

In today’s nuclear family lifestyle, this is much more prevalent.  The parents are sharply reacting and criticizing each other in front of their children and the siblings are reacting between themselves for one or the other disputes. Many times, these are creeping up due to pressure to discharge duties of our lives. The students are burdened with the load of studies; the parents are bogged down by the pressure of work in offices and at the same time in houses. All these circumstances lead to a reaction of an unfavorable attitude which causes disharmony in  relationships and agitate your mind. This is more relevant to the younger generation as they do not react nonchalantly to each and every state of affairs in their lives.

Take the case of todays generation. Why they react so sharply to each incidence? Who are their role models?  What is their lifestyle and perception of their lives?  Are they very critical of the behavior of their parents? How they define the meaning of various responsibilities entrusted to them?  Are they willing to share the same spontaneously or willy-nilly?  What ethics and morality they like to envisage from their life?  What is the meaning of spirituality to them?   Are they open to various religions and trust the other religion?  Are they open to differentiate between truth and false?  Are they believers of integrity and lead a frugal life?  Do they feel for brotherhood?  What are their values towards relationship bonding between family members, marriage, social mingling, parenting and children?  How much sensitive they are to other’s distress and pain?  All these questions are needed to be introspected to find out the reason of their sharp and instant reaction to any situation.

If you analyze, you will  find that we waste a huge amount of energy to react and ultimately spoil the relationship. The derogatory comments of others, which even includes parents, teachers, superiors and friends, the mind becomes provoked and ultimately loses its tranquility. This hampers  both who are involved in this unwanted practice of commenting and you for showing your sharp  reaction to the same.  For example, when you show your disrespect to your parents, teachers or your friends, even though they inflict you wrongly, if you keep quiet and take the same as a passing phase of your life, you will be able to save your energy to consume the same for productive work. Contrarily, if you react and take vengeance and retaliation, you waste your valuable time perhaps sacrificing your important duties. These unwanted activities will whistle away your precious time and the same will carry a huge social cost on your life.

In today’s competitive world, one is always eager to surmount others and in this process ensure to resort all sorts of temptations to earn quick money to become rich within no time or to vaunt wealth to the society and react sharply, if they find their desires are not getting fulfilled. Many become ferocious to achieve their said goal of prosperity by demeaning others that ultimately today’s society follows a more retaliatory approach to each other.  But these are also self created.  By stopping the behavior of reacting sharply and bluntly, if the situation is handled based on a conciliatory approach, many problems can be eliminated at the initial stage itself.

To do so, each of us has to increase the tolerance power. If we inculcate this self disciplinary habit in our course of lives, starting from individual, corporations, citizens, communities, societies at large, automatically, each of us will be flourishing with a remarkable achievement rate and the wrongdoings will be less as well unethical approaches will be minimized.

But unfortunately, the eighty percent of the events steam up due to the less tolerance power, which is the major cause to pollute the society and its habitants.  So, if you want to lead an exemplary life, don’t react eighty percent time of your life, sedate your mind to become glittery and invest more time for productive output. Then people will follow you as a role model.