- By: Emmanuel Chavez, 2008-01-31
The back is a well-designed body part that is made up of bones, muscles, nerves, and soft body tissues. It is a very important part of the human body because the bones of the back acts as a supporting frame for the back and the whole body. The back muscles work with abdominal muscles to keep the body upright and mobile. However, because of the stress of everyday life, many individuals tend to overwork or overuse their back muscles, which then leads to back pain. This condition may hamper performance and affect everyday. Common symptoms of back pain may include spasms, stiffness, pain, numbness, and sometimes pain in the leg area and depends on the cause of pain and its severity. Back pain is one the most frequent health complaints that are received by doctors in the United States. However, individuals experiencing back pain should not despair because of the availability of many methods and medication that may give back pain relief. One of the most popular alternative back pain treatments is the ancient Indian meditative exercise called yoga.
Not long ago, the primary treatment for chronic back pain was sufficient rest and the use of painkillers. Nowadays, doctors are encouraging their patients to manage pain and illness by engaging in activities like yoga. Many medical researches suggest that yoga is one of the most effective treatments for body pain. Yoga has gone from a spiritual discipline practiced by many in the Far East into a mainstream exercise routine that is taught in many fitness gyms around the world. Other than back pain relief, many medical researches also show that yoga helps strengthen one's bones and muscles, reduce stress, and promote moments of relaxation. Yoga works by building strength, improving flexibility, and reducing joint and muscle pain.
Other proven benefits of yoga include:
Increases muscle strength, endurance, and stamina;
Develops muscles in the abdomen, legs, and arms;
Release of physical tension;
Helps maintain good and proper posture;
Serves as a good warm up for athletes; and
Improves an individual's overall performance
However, not all forms of yoga can be used for back pain relief. When the back is injured or hurting, slow-paced and gentle stretches and poses should be practiced. Some yoga posses and stretches may aggravate back pain and lead to serious injuries. A type of yoga called Viniyoga is adapted from yoga that gives emphasis on precise deep breathing and slow stretches. Another type of yoga called Iyengar yoga, focuses on accurate bodily alignment. Students of this practice use different props like straps, blocks, blankets, and many more. This type of yoga works best with individuals who have little mobility and need some support.
Individuals who want to engage in physical activities like yoga should consult doctors and other health professionals before taking yoga classes. Certain injuries to the wrist, back, and ankles may prevent some individuals from practicing yoga postures and positions. Furthermore, yoga should be practiced with care and precaution. Some people have reported injuries that were acquired by executing yoga postures without focus, or by attempting difficult positions without working on them gradually or by not having proper supervision. Oftentimes, beginners complain of muscle soreness and fatigue after engaging in yoga. These effects may disappear with continuous practice. Yoga is a great way to strengthen the body and improve overall health.
Emmanuel Chavez is a sports writer and holds a graduate degree in Sports Nutrition. He is active in promoting weight loss programs and healthy lifestyle among inner city youth. Is your Back Pain slowly killing you? Try this one Buy Fioricet Online More articles like this at Related Pharmacy Articles
Article Source : http://www.articlewisdom.com
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Understanding The Benefits Of Yoga
Understanding The Benefits Of Yoga - By: Noel Swanson, 2008-01-23
What are the benefits of yoga? This is the most asked question by people who are thinking about practising yoga. It may not be entirely possible to give a comprehensive explanation, as there are simply too many. We will only discuss in this article some of the most important benefits that you can expect from doing yoga.
* Overall Harmony
The most important benefit of yoga is its primary goal, which is harmony. Those who have practised yoga for a long time have already enjoyed physical, mental and psycho-spiritual harmony. All the other so-called life-changing benefits of yoga should drive home to this single most important benefit. It is through the achievement of harmony that one's entire life is modified and enhanced. When one's parts of the self are harmonized, one can function productively and respond positively to internal and external stimuli.
* Enhanced Self-awareness
Before practitioners got into yoga, they were probably experiencing body or mental pain and discomfort due to various reasons. Those who practise yoga are usually able to recognize problems in their body and mind before they can even cause problems. Early recognition allows prompt correction. One, for example, can quickly correct bad posture to avoid back pain.
* Stress Management
The management of stress is always included in any list of the benefits of yoga. This encompasses stress of both physical and psychological kind. Concentration, detachment, breathing exercises and other meditative techniques involved in yoga all contribute to inducing calmness, relaxation and a critical change in personal views.
* A Pain Reliever
Those who are experiencing temporary acute pain or chronic pain due to certain medical conditions can benefit from yoga. At the very least, yoga can improve one's strength, posture and alignment which in effect can reduce some muscle and joint pains. Yoga has also been known to help increase the release of natural body chemicals that can relieve pain. For those who are suffering severe pain conditions, more advanced yoga techniques may be needed. It is possible for yoga practitioners to learn to detach themselves from feelings of pain and even change the way they view pain.
* Body Strength and Flexibility
Some physical pains and discomfort may be due to problems with the bones, muscles and joints. These parts may lack physical strength and endurance and therefore are limited in the ability to move about. Yoga can remedy the problems in these parts by improving your overall body strength and flexibility. With yoga, you learn to move better and in a wider range. You can also endure certain activities better.
* Physical Healing
For most people who are not ill, yoga can improve physical and mental health by improving the circulation of the blood and the functioning of the organs and body systems. Those who have certain medical conditions however can also benefit from yoga. Those with diabetes, arthritis, weight issues, high blood pressure and asthma can all hope to improve their condition and reduce symptoms through yoga techniques.
The benefits of yoga are just too many to be ignored. If you want to improve your body, health and outlook in life, you should consider learning yoga now. It is simply the best way to heal and harmonize your entire self.
Now that you understand the enormous benefits of yoga, you probably would like to get started. Be sure you also check out our complete online yoga guide for more information to help your yoga practice.
Article Source : www.articlewisdom.com
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Pregnancy Exercises: The Role of Yoga
By: Bishop Candy, 2008-01-12
Pregnancy is the time when every woman is motivated since she wants to do the best for herself as well as the baby. In this way, even for women who have not exercised before, pregnancy is the time to start by beginning with simple ones with stretching, relaxation, meditation and deep breathing. Thus exercises relieve simple day-to-day problems of pregnancy but precautions should be taken not to be hard and fast on exercises. Since during the first trimester, maximum number of mis-carriages take place, it is important to be extra careful and start exercising from first trimester onwards. If the pregnancy is normal and the woman can do normal activities, exercises can be carried on until the time of childbirth. Exercises should be a combination of physical and relaxation kind.
During pregnancy, a gentle way of keeping active and agile is doing yoga. The magnificent effects of yoga asanas ensure a smooth pregnancy, natural childbirth and restoration of body shape after childbirth. It also does wonders on the physical and mental development of the fetus.
Yoga has five important tools for pregnancy.
Yoga exercises: At the subtle level, exercises ensure optimum blood supply and nutrients to the developing fetus and a relatively easy childbirth.
Pranayama: This gives abundant oxygen supply to the child.
Mudras and Bandas: They have powerful effect on the reproductive organs of the woman.
Meditation: Fears conflicts and trauma, which are so common during pregnancy, can be alleviated through meditation and it also brings an inexplicable bondage between the mother and the child.
Deep relaxation: Yogic sleep is very effective for childbirth preparation as it gives mental and physical relaxation.
Following these practices gives a delightful pregnancy and a chance for the best development of the child. Yogic exercises also help in relieving fluid retention, which is quite common in the last month. It also raises the level of energy and slows down the metabolism to restore calm. Pranayama also reduces nausea and mood swings quite prevalent during the first trimester. Even in postnatal care, yoga exercises restore the uterus abdomen and pelvic floor, relieving back tension and breast discomfort.
Women who have had frequent mis-carriages and bleeding during pregnancy and who have twins or low birth weight babies are advised not to exercise. Women with frequent backache feel relieved after exercises. Of all the exercises, walking for twenty to thirty minutes is the easiest and the best because it makes the blood flows right down evenly. But exercises need to be supervised and done in a controlled manner during pregnancy.
The web guide on pregnancy - http://www.myhealthinfo.info deals extensively with pregnancy related topics. You can find useful resources on a proper weight management during pregnancy on http://www.healthopts.com
Article Source : http://www.articlewisdom.com
Pregnancy is the time when every woman is motivated since she wants to do the best for herself as well as the baby. In this way, even for women who have not exercised before, pregnancy is the time to start by beginning with simple ones with stretching, relaxation, meditation and deep breathing. Thus exercises relieve simple day-to-day problems of pregnancy but precautions should be taken not to be hard and fast on exercises. Since during the first trimester, maximum number of mis-carriages take place, it is important to be extra careful and start exercising from first trimester onwards. If the pregnancy is normal and the woman can do normal activities, exercises can be carried on until the time of childbirth. Exercises should be a combination of physical and relaxation kind.
During pregnancy, a gentle way of keeping active and agile is doing yoga. The magnificent effects of yoga asanas ensure a smooth pregnancy, natural childbirth and restoration of body shape after childbirth. It also does wonders on the physical and mental development of the fetus.
Yoga has five important tools for pregnancy.
Yoga exercises: At the subtle level, exercises ensure optimum blood supply and nutrients to the developing fetus and a relatively easy childbirth.
Pranayama: This gives abundant oxygen supply to the child.
Mudras and Bandas: They have powerful effect on the reproductive organs of the woman.
Meditation: Fears conflicts and trauma, which are so common during pregnancy, can be alleviated through meditation and it also brings an inexplicable bondage between the mother and the child.
Deep relaxation: Yogic sleep is very effective for childbirth preparation as it gives mental and physical relaxation.
Following these practices gives a delightful pregnancy and a chance for the best development of the child. Yogic exercises also help in relieving fluid retention, which is quite common in the last month. It also raises the level of energy and slows down the metabolism to restore calm. Pranayama also reduces nausea and mood swings quite prevalent during the first trimester. Even in postnatal care, yoga exercises restore the uterus abdomen and pelvic floor, relieving back tension and breast discomfort.
Women who have had frequent mis-carriages and bleeding during pregnancy and who have twins or low birth weight babies are advised not to exercise. Women with frequent backache feel relieved after exercises. Of all the exercises, walking for twenty to thirty minutes is the easiest and the best because it makes the blood flows right down evenly. But exercises need to be supervised and done in a controlled manner during pregnancy.
The web guide on pregnancy - http://www.myhealthinfo.info deals extensively with pregnancy related topics. You can find useful resources on a proper weight management during pregnancy on http://www.healthopts.com
Article Source : http://www.articlewisdom.com
Thursday, January 10, 2008
The First Book of Yoga
The Bhagavad Gita has influenced great Americans from Thoreau to Oppenheimer. Its message of letting go of the fruits of one's actions is just as relevant today as it was when it was first written some two millennia ago.
By Stefanie Syman
At the sight of this, your Shape stupendous,
Full of mouths and eyes, feet, thighs and bellies,T
errible with fangs, O master,
All the worlds are fear-struck, even just as I am.
When I see you, Vishnu, omnipresent,
Shouldering the sky, in hues of rainbow,
With your mouths agape and flame-eyes staring—
All my peace is gone; my heart is troubled.—
Doctor Atomic (act 2, scene 2, chorus)
Had you attended any one of the performances of Doctor Atomic, a John Adams opera about the detonation of the first nuclear bomb near Los Alamos, New Mexico, you would have heard those words and perhaps been terrified by the image they painted of the Hindu god Vishnu. But the verse is not original to Adams's work; it was respectfully pilfered from the Bhagavad Gita (in this case the 1944 translation by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood). Adams is hardly alone among Americans to have found inspiration in this work. Rather, he's operating in a long tradition of borrowing and appropriation. If you know where to look, you can find the Gita in some of the most famous and revered works of American literature and philosophy, from Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem "Brahma" to T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, not to mention British pop songs that topped the American charts. As it turns out, the Bhagavad Gita has appealed to Westerners in general and Americans in particular almost since the moment they got their hands on an English translation in the middle decades of the 19th century.
The Gita is the sixth book of the Mahabharata, one of India's most famous epic poems. It's unclear exactly when the Gita was composed—estimates vary widely, but a number of scholars suggest it was completed around 200 CE and then inserted into the larger work; many see it as the first fully realized yogic scripture. Curious though it may seem that such an ancient text from a foreign culture has been so enthusiastically received by Westerners, the Gita, like all truly great works of literature, can be read on many levels: metaphysical, moral, spiritual, and practical; hence its appeal.
For those who haven't had the pleasure of reading it, the Gita recounts a dialogue between Arjuna, one of five Pandava princes, and the Hindu deity Krishna, who in this epic serves as Arjuna's charioteer. Arjuna and his brothers have been exiled from the kingdom of Kurukshetra for 13 years and cut off from their rightful heritage by another faction of the family; the Gita takes up their struggle to reclaim the throne, which requires that Arjuna wage war against his own kinsmen, bringing his considerable military skills to bear.
The story begins on the dusty plains of Kurukshetra, where Arjuna, a famed archer, is poised to fight. But he hesitates. He sees arrayed against him friends, teachers, and kin, and believes that to fight—and likely kill—these men would be to commit a grievous sin and could bring nothing good even if he were to win the kingdom back. Krishna chides him for his cowardice—Arjuna is from the warrior caste after all, and warriors are meant to fight—but then goes on to present a spiritual rationale for battling his enemies, one that encompasses a discussion of the karma, jnana and bhakti yogas, as well as the nature of divinity, humankind's ultimate destiny, and the purpose of mortal life.
Borrowed Poetry
A work of luminous and startling intensity, the Gita offers what Henry David Thoreau described as a "stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy...in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial." While no single thread has been picked up and woven into Western culture by the various thinkers, poets, songwriters, yoga teachers, and philosophers who have been drawn to the Gita, three main themes seem to have intrigued its readers: the nature of divinity; yoga, or the various ways of making contact with this divinity; and finally, the resolution of the perennial conflict between a renunciation of the world—often considered the quickest path to spiritual enlightenment—and action.
Take Ralph Waldo Emerson. In November of 1857, Emerson made one of the most dramatic declarations of affection for the Gita imaginable: He contributed a poem titled "Brahma" to the inaugural issue of The Atlantic Monthly. The first stanza reads:
"If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again."
The poem owes a great debt to the Gita as well as the Katha Upanishad. The first verse in particular seems to have been lifted almost verbatim from chapter 2 of the Gita, when Krishna is trying to persuade Arjuna to fight: "The man who believeth that it is the soul which killeth, and he who thinketh that the soul may be destroyed, are both alike deceived; for it neither killeth, nor is it killed." Taken with a few lines that appear later—"I am the sacrifice; I am the worship" and "He also is my beloved servant...to whom praise and blame are one"—you have many elements of Emerson's poem.
Emerson's journals confirm the Gita's impact on him. In the 1840s, not long after he got hold of Charles Wilkins's 1785 translation (the first English rendering of it), Emerson wrote what became the opening lines of "Brahma." A decade later the rest came to him. "Brahma" appears as an exhalation of verse between long paragraphs he had copied out of the Upanishads.
What's striking about this poem, which may be somewhat lost on modern readers, is how radically different this conception of divinity was from the mainstream view of God and even from the more forgiving Unitarian God of the religious liberals who held sway in Concord and Cambridge, Massachusetts, during Emerson's life.
"Brahma" the poem was a meditation on what we refer to today as Brahman, or the "Absolute, behind and above all the various deities...beings, and worlds." In Emerson's day, the names for this vast inclusive idea of divinity and the name of the creator deity of the Hindu trinity were barely distinguishable; but his description and sources give him away. Emerson was not merely trading one trinity for another. He was celebrating an idea of a God that animated everything (both slayer and slain) and dissolved all opposites ("Shadow and sunlight are the same").
Emerson's audience was less offended than bewildered by his insertion of this bit of the Gita into the Atlantic. They found his poem impenetrable and comically nonsensical. Parodies were published widely in newspapers across the country.
And yet, if taken seriously, this version of divinity might be either a tremendous relief (if Brahman is behind everything, humans have far less agency than we tend to believe) or incredibly disturbing (what happens to morality when "shadow and sunlight" or good and evil are the same?).
A Glorious and Ghastly God
In the Gita, the most powerful articulation of this idea comes not in the second chapter, echoed in Emerson's poem, but in the 11th, when Krishna shows his true nature to Arjuna. To do this, he must temporarily give Arjuna the gift of mystic insight, for it is impossible to see Krishna in his glory with the naked eye.
What Arjuna sees is a multiform image that can barely be described. It's boundless, containing all the worlds and gods, and stupefyingly beautiful, with garlands and jewels and "celestial ornaments," and it burns with the radiance of a thousand suns. At the same time, this being is terrifying, for it has "countless arms, bellies, mouths, and eyes" and brandishes divine weapons. Even more horrifying was this: As Arjuna watched, thousands rushed through the being's fangs and were crushed between his teeth, Arjuna's foes on the battlefield among them. Arjuna sees the being "lick at the worlds...devouring them with flaming mouths" (these quotations are from the Barbara Stoler Miller translation). That is, he sees endless holocausts and violence, untempered by any force known to humankind. Arjuna nearly faints.
It was this very visage, at once glorious and ghastly, that J. Robert Oppenheimer invoked on one of history's most fateful days, July 16, 1945. Oppenheimer headed the team of scientists that detonated the first nuclear bomb. Upon witnessing the fireball blazing over the New Mexico desert, Oppenheimer quoted Krishna in the moment that he displays his true nature as Vishnu: "I am become death, the shatterer of worlds." Words failed Arjuna in the face of Vishnu's destructive nature, but the Gita gave Oppenheimer a language to match the power and fearsomeness of the atomic bomb.
The quote has been memorialized in many articles, books, and films. And so it was that Oppenheimer seared a piece of this yogic scripture into the minds of another generation of Americans. In fact, he had long been a student of the Gita, reading it in translation as an undergraduate at Harvard and later in Sanskrit with Arthur W. Ryder when Oppenheimer taught physics at the University of California at Berkeley. The experience was exhilarating, he said, and he found reading the Sanskrit "very easy and quite marvelous." (Albert Einstein, in contrast, was moved by the Gita's depiction of creation, and once remarked, "When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous.")
But what of seeing this divinity for oneself? Krishna gave Arjuna the gift of a divine eye. There's hope for the rest of us, of course, and that's in yoga. The Gita can be read as a user's guide to various types of yoga, all of which will lead to illumination and liberation. Thoreau found this possibility so compelling that he tried to practice yoga based solely on his reading of the Gita and other Indic texts in translation.
By the time he wrote Walden (during the late 1840s and early 1850s), Thoreau had fairly precise ideas about yoga, which he inserted into the essay's conclusion as if recounting a hoary Hindu parable. There the American essayist tells the story of the artist of Kouroo who possessed a rare and complete single-pointed concentration and set out to carve a perfect wooden staff. Eons had passed by the time he finished, but the artist had, by his devotion to this simple task, made "the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. He had made a new system in making a staff."
The Game of Awakening
More recently, people like Ram Dass as well as contemporary yoga teachers have conveyed, in supremely accessible vernacular, this more practical element of the Gita. In the summer of 1974, Ram Dass, who had been a professor of psychology at Harvard until 1963, taught a course called the Yogas of the Bhagavad Gita. The setting was historic—a summer session of the newly created Naropa Institute (today a university) in Boulder, Colorado, founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist.
Ram Dass treated reading (and teaching!) the Gita as a spiritual exercise and encouraged his students to read this work at least three times, with a slightly different perspective in mind each time. He also assigned exercises based on the Gita that could "evolve into a complete sadhana," or program for spiritual practices. These included keeping a journal, meditating, kirtan (chanting), and even "going to Church or Temple."
Over the course, Ram Dass peeled back the layers of the Gita, one by one, but he summed it up thusly: "It's about the game of awakening, about the coming into Spirit." In this context, he presented the karma, jnana, and bhakti yogas as different, if completely interrelated, ways of playing that game. Karma yoga was, in Ram Dass's formulation, an injunction: "Do your work...but without attachment." Besides giving up your attachment to the fruits of your labors, he said, you must also act "without thinking of yourself as being the actor."
Personally, Ram Dass relied most on bhakti, or devotional, yoga, specifically Guru Kripa, in which the practitioner focuses on the guru and relies on the guru's grace. That summer he offered his students some ideas about how to cultivate a devotional attitude; he told them how to set up a puja table (similar to an altar) and how to know when they'd found their guru. But the point for Ram Dass was that all methods, or types of yoga, had their pitfalls and "traps"; it was the practitioner's job to use even the "traps" themselves as tools of awakening.
Many contemporary yoga teachers, including Mas Vidal, the spiritual director of Dancing Shiva Yoga and Ayurveda in Los Angeles, turn to the Bhagavad Gita to balance the overemphasis on the asana practice in the West. Like Ram Dass, Vidal sees the Gita as a practical guide for "raising consciousness."
He is also quick to emphasize the coherence of its approach. He presents the "four main branches of yoga" to his students as a single system: "It was never intended to be practiced as a fragmented system," Vidal insists. The branches are bhakti (love), jnana (study), karma (service), and raja (meditation). Above all, Vidal teaches the Gita as a metaphor for spiritual struggle in which the practitioner learns to use the mind and body as tools for awakening—tools that don't have much value in themselves.
There is still another element of the Gita: Krishna's insistence on the value of acting in this world rather than shirking its demands, a value that has long appealed to Westerners. This concept underlies karma yoga and Krishna's insistence that Arjuna fight his kinsmen, dreadful as that seems. True, Arjuna must renounce the fruits of his actions, but he also must give up the idea that it is ever possible not to act. As Krishna explains in chapter 3 (from Barbara Stoler Miller's translation):
A man cannot escape the forceof action by abstaining from actions...No one exists for even an instantwithout performing action
Historian James A. Hijiya argues that this teaching of the Gita solves the riddle of Robert Oppenheimer's career: that he created the bomb and advocated its use on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only to become a leading critic of nuclear weapons and war. Just as Krishna insisted that renouncing action was far worse than taking disciplined action (and was ultimately not possible in any case), so Oppenheimer rejected the ivory tower, and its illusion of remove, for the Manhattan Project.
According to Hijiya, Oppenheimer believed scientists should "act selflessly but effectively in the world" and once said, "If you are a scientist you believe...that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world." Oppenheimer never shrank from what he considered his professional duty and was quite able to detach himself, at least in the short term, from its untoward consequences. It was, he believed, for humankind, not him, to deal with the awesome power he helped unleash, "according to its lights and values."
That American thinkers, poets, and yoga teachers have drawn so much inspiration from the Gita over more than a century is a testament to this scripture's power. That they have pulled out different strands and woven them into their lives and our culture is even more remarkable considering how apologetically that first English translator presented this work. "The reader will to have the liberality to excuse the obscurity of many passages," Charles Wilkins pleaded in his translator's note to the Bhagvatgeeta, "and the confusion of sentiments which runs through the whole in its present form."
Wilkins, for all his efforts, felt he hadn't fully lifted the veil of the Gita's mystery. Undeterred by such difficulties, Americans have long sung this celestial song, harmonizing it with the peculiar temperament of each era.
Stefanie Syman is the author of Practice: A History of Yoga in America, to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and is the editorial director of Lime.com.
Article Source : http://www.yogajournal.com/wisdom/2509?print=1
By Stefanie Syman
At the sight of this, your Shape stupendous,
Full of mouths and eyes, feet, thighs and bellies,T
errible with fangs, O master,
All the worlds are fear-struck, even just as I am.
When I see you, Vishnu, omnipresent,
Shouldering the sky, in hues of rainbow,
With your mouths agape and flame-eyes staring—
All my peace is gone; my heart is troubled.—
Doctor Atomic (act 2, scene 2, chorus)
Had you attended any one of the performances of Doctor Atomic, a John Adams opera about the detonation of the first nuclear bomb near Los Alamos, New Mexico, you would have heard those words and perhaps been terrified by the image they painted of the Hindu god Vishnu. But the verse is not original to Adams's work; it was respectfully pilfered from the Bhagavad Gita (in this case the 1944 translation by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood). Adams is hardly alone among Americans to have found inspiration in this work. Rather, he's operating in a long tradition of borrowing and appropriation. If you know where to look, you can find the Gita in some of the most famous and revered works of American literature and philosophy, from Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem "Brahma" to T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, not to mention British pop songs that topped the American charts. As it turns out, the Bhagavad Gita has appealed to Westerners in general and Americans in particular almost since the moment they got their hands on an English translation in the middle decades of the 19th century.
The Gita is the sixth book of the Mahabharata, one of India's most famous epic poems. It's unclear exactly when the Gita was composed—estimates vary widely, but a number of scholars suggest it was completed around 200 CE and then inserted into the larger work; many see it as the first fully realized yogic scripture. Curious though it may seem that such an ancient text from a foreign culture has been so enthusiastically received by Westerners, the Gita, like all truly great works of literature, can be read on many levels: metaphysical, moral, spiritual, and practical; hence its appeal.
For those who haven't had the pleasure of reading it, the Gita recounts a dialogue between Arjuna, one of five Pandava princes, and the Hindu deity Krishna, who in this epic serves as Arjuna's charioteer. Arjuna and his brothers have been exiled from the kingdom of Kurukshetra for 13 years and cut off from their rightful heritage by another faction of the family; the Gita takes up their struggle to reclaim the throne, which requires that Arjuna wage war against his own kinsmen, bringing his considerable military skills to bear.
The story begins on the dusty plains of Kurukshetra, where Arjuna, a famed archer, is poised to fight. But he hesitates. He sees arrayed against him friends, teachers, and kin, and believes that to fight—and likely kill—these men would be to commit a grievous sin and could bring nothing good even if he were to win the kingdom back. Krishna chides him for his cowardice—Arjuna is from the warrior caste after all, and warriors are meant to fight—but then goes on to present a spiritual rationale for battling his enemies, one that encompasses a discussion of the karma, jnana and bhakti yogas, as well as the nature of divinity, humankind's ultimate destiny, and the purpose of mortal life.
Borrowed Poetry
A work of luminous and startling intensity, the Gita offers what Henry David Thoreau described as a "stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy...in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial." While no single thread has been picked up and woven into Western culture by the various thinkers, poets, songwriters, yoga teachers, and philosophers who have been drawn to the Gita, three main themes seem to have intrigued its readers: the nature of divinity; yoga, or the various ways of making contact with this divinity; and finally, the resolution of the perennial conflict between a renunciation of the world—often considered the quickest path to spiritual enlightenment—and action.
Take Ralph Waldo Emerson. In November of 1857, Emerson made one of the most dramatic declarations of affection for the Gita imaginable: He contributed a poem titled "Brahma" to the inaugural issue of The Atlantic Monthly. The first stanza reads:
"If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again."
The poem owes a great debt to the Gita as well as the Katha Upanishad. The first verse in particular seems to have been lifted almost verbatim from chapter 2 of the Gita, when Krishna is trying to persuade Arjuna to fight: "The man who believeth that it is the soul which killeth, and he who thinketh that the soul may be destroyed, are both alike deceived; for it neither killeth, nor is it killed." Taken with a few lines that appear later—"I am the sacrifice; I am the worship" and "He also is my beloved servant...to whom praise and blame are one"—you have many elements of Emerson's poem.
Emerson's journals confirm the Gita's impact on him. In the 1840s, not long after he got hold of Charles Wilkins's 1785 translation (the first English rendering of it), Emerson wrote what became the opening lines of "Brahma." A decade later the rest came to him. "Brahma" appears as an exhalation of verse between long paragraphs he had copied out of the Upanishads.
What's striking about this poem, which may be somewhat lost on modern readers, is how radically different this conception of divinity was from the mainstream view of God and even from the more forgiving Unitarian God of the religious liberals who held sway in Concord and Cambridge, Massachusetts, during Emerson's life.
"Brahma" the poem was a meditation on what we refer to today as Brahman, or the "Absolute, behind and above all the various deities...beings, and worlds." In Emerson's day, the names for this vast inclusive idea of divinity and the name of the creator deity of the Hindu trinity were barely distinguishable; but his description and sources give him away. Emerson was not merely trading one trinity for another. He was celebrating an idea of a God that animated everything (both slayer and slain) and dissolved all opposites ("Shadow and sunlight are the same").
Emerson's audience was less offended than bewildered by his insertion of this bit of the Gita into the Atlantic. They found his poem impenetrable and comically nonsensical. Parodies were published widely in newspapers across the country.
And yet, if taken seriously, this version of divinity might be either a tremendous relief (if Brahman is behind everything, humans have far less agency than we tend to believe) or incredibly disturbing (what happens to morality when "shadow and sunlight" or good and evil are the same?).
A Glorious and Ghastly God
In the Gita, the most powerful articulation of this idea comes not in the second chapter, echoed in Emerson's poem, but in the 11th, when Krishna shows his true nature to Arjuna. To do this, he must temporarily give Arjuna the gift of mystic insight, for it is impossible to see Krishna in his glory with the naked eye.
What Arjuna sees is a multiform image that can barely be described. It's boundless, containing all the worlds and gods, and stupefyingly beautiful, with garlands and jewels and "celestial ornaments," and it burns with the radiance of a thousand suns. At the same time, this being is terrifying, for it has "countless arms, bellies, mouths, and eyes" and brandishes divine weapons. Even more horrifying was this: As Arjuna watched, thousands rushed through the being's fangs and were crushed between his teeth, Arjuna's foes on the battlefield among them. Arjuna sees the being "lick at the worlds...devouring them with flaming mouths" (these quotations are from the Barbara Stoler Miller translation). That is, he sees endless holocausts and violence, untempered by any force known to humankind. Arjuna nearly faints.
It was this very visage, at once glorious and ghastly, that J. Robert Oppenheimer invoked on one of history's most fateful days, July 16, 1945. Oppenheimer headed the team of scientists that detonated the first nuclear bomb. Upon witnessing the fireball blazing over the New Mexico desert, Oppenheimer quoted Krishna in the moment that he displays his true nature as Vishnu: "I am become death, the shatterer of worlds." Words failed Arjuna in the face of Vishnu's destructive nature, but the Gita gave Oppenheimer a language to match the power and fearsomeness of the atomic bomb.
The quote has been memorialized in many articles, books, and films. And so it was that Oppenheimer seared a piece of this yogic scripture into the minds of another generation of Americans. In fact, he had long been a student of the Gita, reading it in translation as an undergraduate at Harvard and later in Sanskrit with Arthur W. Ryder when Oppenheimer taught physics at the University of California at Berkeley. The experience was exhilarating, he said, and he found reading the Sanskrit "very easy and quite marvelous." (Albert Einstein, in contrast, was moved by the Gita's depiction of creation, and once remarked, "When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous.")
But what of seeing this divinity for oneself? Krishna gave Arjuna the gift of a divine eye. There's hope for the rest of us, of course, and that's in yoga. The Gita can be read as a user's guide to various types of yoga, all of which will lead to illumination and liberation. Thoreau found this possibility so compelling that he tried to practice yoga based solely on his reading of the Gita and other Indic texts in translation.
By the time he wrote Walden (during the late 1840s and early 1850s), Thoreau had fairly precise ideas about yoga, which he inserted into the essay's conclusion as if recounting a hoary Hindu parable. There the American essayist tells the story of the artist of Kouroo who possessed a rare and complete single-pointed concentration and set out to carve a perfect wooden staff. Eons had passed by the time he finished, but the artist had, by his devotion to this simple task, made "the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. He had made a new system in making a staff."
The Game of Awakening
More recently, people like Ram Dass as well as contemporary yoga teachers have conveyed, in supremely accessible vernacular, this more practical element of the Gita. In the summer of 1974, Ram Dass, who had been a professor of psychology at Harvard until 1963, taught a course called the Yogas of the Bhagavad Gita. The setting was historic—a summer session of the newly created Naropa Institute (today a university) in Boulder, Colorado, founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist.
Ram Dass treated reading (and teaching!) the Gita as a spiritual exercise and encouraged his students to read this work at least three times, with a slightly different perspective in mind each time. He also assigned exercises based on the Gita that could "evolve into a complete sadhana," or program for spiritual practices. These included keeping a journal, meditating, kirtan (chanting), and even "going to Church or Temple."
Over the course, Ram Dass peeled back the layers of the Gita, one by one, but he summed it up thusly: "It's about the game of awakening, about the coming into Spirit." In this context, he presented the karma, jnana, and bhakti yogas as different, if completely interrelated, ways of playing that game. Karma yoga was, in Ram Dass's formulation, an injunction: "Do your work...but without attachment." Besides giving up your attachment to the fruits of your labors, he said, you must also act "without thinking of yourself as being the actor."
Personally, Ram Dass relied most on bhakti, or devotional, yoga, specifically Guru Kripa, in which the practitioner focuses on the guru and relies on the guru's grace. That summer he offered his students some ideas about how to cultivate a devotional attitude; he told them how to set up a puja table (similar to an altar) and how to know when they'd found their guru. But the point for Ram Dass was that all methods, or types of yoga, had their pitfalls and "traps"; it was the practitioner's job to use even the "traps" themselves as tools of awakening.
Many contemporary yoga teachers, including Mas Vidal, the spiritual director of Dancing Shiva Yoga and Ayurveda in Los Angeles, turn to the Bhagavad Gita to balance the overemphasis on the asana practice in the West. Like Ram Dass, Vidal sees the Gita as a practical guide for "raising consciousness."
He is also quick to emphasize the coherence of its approach. He presents the "four main branches of yoga" to his students as a single system: "It was never intended to be practiced as a fragmented system," Vidal insists. The branches are bhakti (love), jnana (study), karma (service), and raja (meditation). Above all, Vidal teaches the Gita as a metaphor for spiritual struggle in which the practitioner learns to use the mind and body as tools for awakening—tools that don't have much value in themselves.
There is still another element of the Gita: Krishna's insistence on the value of acting in this world rather than shirking its demands, a value that has long appealed to Westerners. This concept underlies karma yoga and Krishna's insistence that Arjuna fight his kinsmen, dreadful as that seems. True, Arjuna must renounce the fruits of his actions, but he also must give up the idea that it is ever possible not to act. As Krishna explains in chapter 3 (from Barbara Stoler Miller's translation):
A man cannot escape the forceof action by abstaining from actions...No one exists for even an instantwithout performing action
Historian James A. Hijiya argues that this teaching of the Gita solves the riddle of Robert Oppenheimer's career: that he created the bomb and advocated its use on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only to become a leading critic of nuclear weapons and war. Just as Krishna insisted that renouncing action was far worse than taking disciplined action (and was ultimately not possible in any case), so Oppenheimer rejected the ivory tower, and its illusion of remove, for the Manhattan Project.
According to Hijiya, Oppenheimer believed scientists should "act selflessly but effectively in the world" and once said, "If you are a scientist you believe...that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world." Oppenheimer never shrank from what he considered his professional duty and was quite able to detach himself, at least in the short term, from its untoward consequences. It was, he believed, for humankind, not him, to deal with the awesome power he helped unleash, "according to its lights and values."
That American thinkers, poets, and yoga teachers have drawn so much inspiration from the Gita over more than a century is a testament to this scripture's power. That they have pulled out different strands and woven them into their lives and our culture is even more remarkable considering how apologetically that first English translator presented this work. "The reader will to have the liberality to excuse the obscurity of many passages," Charles Wilkins pleaded in his translator's note to the Bhagvatgeeta, "and the confusion of sentiments which runs through the whole in its present form."
Wilkins, for all his efforts, felt he hadn't fully lifted the veil of the Gita's mystery. Undeterred by such difficulties, Americans have long sung this celestial song, harmonizing it with the peculiar temperament of each era.
Stefanie Syman is the author of Practice: A History of Yoga in America, to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and is the editorial director of Lime.com.
Article Source : http://www.yogajournal.com/wisdom/2509?print=1
Yoga for weight loss
Yoga for weight lossBy: Robert Baird
Obesity is a necessary evil that has gripped modern society and it has several adverse affects on the body and is capable of causing life threatening diseases like cancer and diabetes and high blood pressure. Therefore, the primary agenda of the overweight individuals is to lose weight and at present there are scores of weight loss products available in the market like diet pills, diet foods and drinks etc. and they are marketed so well that most people lured by the prospect of having quick weight loss indulge into investing on these products. But extensive research has revealed that most of these products are absolutely inefficient in causing effective weight loss and in fact some of them are even capable of causing harm to the body. Thus it is always better to follow a balanced diet low in calorie and this is aided by a strict exercising regimen and can be supplemented by some other weight loss techniques. Yoga is a very effective means of losing weight and not only does it aid in regaining the physical posture it allows equal enhancement of the mental and emotional aspects of a person. Therefore it is able to address the issues of obesity far more effectively than many other weight loss programs. It ensures a positive impact on the body and the soul and is one of the very few weight loss programs which have no negative effects on the body and its organs. This is because yoga takes into account the fact that apart from excess consumption of food, excess fat accumulation in the body can also be a result of various other psychological factors like anxiety, depression and frustration.
There are several means by which yoga can aid weight loss. It consists of various exercise regimens like the ‘sun salutation' which is very beneficial for the peace of mind and for the lungs as well and 24 sun salutations in a day at the rate of 4 rounds in a minute need to be followed for best results. The yoga is abundant in several ‘asanas' which are extremely important for allowing the loss of body weight and fat burning near the arms and legs are facilitated by the swinging lotus pose, tree pose, hero pose etc. the ‘pranayama' is extremely popular as it is extremely useful for energy management and such fast breathing techniques are useful for the obese individuals as well. Along with these, a healthy diet is a pre-requisite.
Article Directory: http://www.articlewisdom.com
Looking for more weight loss tips? Check out www.lookcut.com/ today!
Obesity is a necessary evil that has gripped modern society and it has several adverse affects on the body and is capable of causing life threatening diseases like cancer and diabetes and high blood pressure. Therefore, the primary agenda of the overweight individuals is to lose weight and at present there are scores of weight loss products available in the market like diet pills, diet foods and drinks etc. and they are marketed so well that most people lured by the prospect of having quick weight loss indulge into investing on these products. But extensive research has revealed that most of these products are absolutely inefficient in causing effective weight loss and in fact some of them are even capable of causing harm to the body. Thus it is always better to follow a balanced diet low in calorie and this is aided by a strict exercising regimen and can be supplemented by some other weight loss techniques. Yoga is a very effective means of losing weight and not only does it aid in regaining the physical posture it allows equal enhancement of the mental and emotional aspects of a person. Therefore it is able to address the issues of obesity far more effectively than many other weight loss programs. It ensures a positive impact on the body and the soul and is one of the very few weight loss programs which have no negative effects on the body and its organs. This is because yoga takes into account the fact that apart from excess consumption of food, excess fat accumulation in the body can also be a result of various other psychological factors like anxiety, depression and frustration.
There are several means by which yoga can aid weight loss. It consists of various exercise regimens like the ‘sun salutation' which is very beneficial for the peace of mind and for the lungs as well and 24 sun salutations in a day at the rate of 4 rounds in a minute need to be followed for best results. The yoga is abundant in several ‘asanas' which are extremely important for allowing the loss of body weight and fat burning near the arms and legs are facilitated by the swinging lotus pose, tree pose, hero pose etc. the ‘pranayama' is extremely popular as it is extremely useful for energy management and such fast breathing techniques are useful for the obese individuals as well. Along with these, a healthy diet is a pre-requisite.
Article Directory: http://www.articlewisdom.com
Looking for more weight loss tips? Check out www.lookcut.com/ today!
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Meditation is a Quiet Revolution
By Jeanie Marshall
For over 30 years, I have been meditating. For almost as many years, in workshops, consultations, friendly conversations, and writing, I have been encouraging, teaching, or leading people to meditate and create quiet times. During this time, the world has changed considerably, and so have I. My most important learning is: everyone is different. Certainly there are commonalities in meditating, but each individual is unique. I consider that meditation is one of the most empowering practices that anyone can engage in.
A "quiet revolution" is an oxymoron, of course. Meditation is generally a private, quiet practice. In North America its acceptance has changed dramatically over the last several years, although it is still not universally accepted. As with most revolutions, an underground is established before, during, and after the outward manifestations of the awakening. In this culture which I know, more and more individuals are speaking and writing about their meditation practice.
Meditating in groups is also common and very powerful, and yet each meditator still has a unique, quiet, private experience. In the workplace, meditation is rarely practiced openly, nor is it discussed, except in safe, small groups or among friends. When I was a frequent workshop presenter, I had many participants speak to me privately in hushed tones at break times to confess that they meditate. The voices may not be as hushed these days, but still there is a quietness, even a silence, about the practice in many settings.
I am comfortable with the variety of words used to describe meditation. My own purpose for meditation is to connect with the Divine and be replenished by the Source. Some speak about mystical experiences and higher consciousness, while others are more comfortable talking about relaxation, calmness, and resilience. Heightened awareness, intuition, imagery, and vision are frequently used to describe experiences of meditation. I find that helping others to express their own meditation experiences is a powerful process for them, even when the words do not flow smoothly.
Long-time meditators can find other long-time mediators easily. Meditators give off signals or vibrations that are calmer and more aligned with self than those who do not meditate or do not have a meditative-type practice that taps into higher consciousness. Gardening, yoga, certain athletic activities, and regular relaxation can achieve the same soothing signals when practiced in ways that achieve harmony with self.
No matter how or where you meditate, you must make a choice to meditate and practice it regularly in order to benefit fully. Full benefits come with regular practice over a period of time. Meditating only when stressed may certainly be beneficial in the immediate situation, but the long-term benefits of a regular practice include general well-being, health, a strong immune system, longevity, clarity of thought, and balance.
Meditation is sometimes associated with certain religions. Meditation can be practiced in any and all religions, but the two are not synonymous. In my work, I keep meditation distinct from religion; if my clients choose to join the two, that is fine. Those with strong religious beliefs gravitate to the types of meditation that fit their beliefs. Wikipedia has a comprehensive listing of meditation methods.
Regardless of the chosen method, the benefits of regular meditation, over time, are as varied as the individuals who meditate. It is quite common for long-time meditators to acknowledge they benefit physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
Recently I received an email message from a long-time meditator in India talking about her meditation experiences. It was a delight to read. It became clear to me that she has integrated the same elements that I encourage people to discover and use.
She uses her breath to relax. She has several processes to handle mind chatter and stress so that she is not disturbed by them in her meditation. She has two different "focal points" for her attention. One is a visual focus, a traditional Indian lamp, which she visualizes as divine light that lightens her heart. Another focal point is one of the most famous mantras, Om, which she chants repeatedly, finding that it takes only a brief time to achieve the state of consciousness that is her purpose for meditation. And she has a regular practice.
Her message was a beautiful summary of what many long-term meditators might report. While working with both new and long-time meditators, I have discovered that the most difficult aspect of meditation is to practice it regularly. All the elements of meditation are easy to understand, but to sit and do it challenges many new meditators.
If you have not meditated before, it may seem mysterious. However, meditation is simple. I recommend a maximum of twenty minutes for new meditators. Here are the elements:
Arrange time when you will not be disturbed;
Sit in a comfortable position and relax;
Close your eyes, unless you prefer an open-eye meditation;
Breathe intentionally for a few breaths;
Choose a focal point, such as music, a chant, a pleasing image, a guiding voice;
Stay with the focal point; if your mind wanders, gently return to the focal point;
Bring the meditation to a close and return to your activities, refreshed.
If this is your first time meditating, you may feel that "nothing is happening" during the first few times you sit to meditate. That is a common sensation. At the end of your chosen meditation time, simply get up and continue with your day. The benefits are cumulative, which is why I advocate a regular practice. If you want to meditate, yet are not meditating or are not meditating as frequently as you want, please be gentle with yourself. While it is true that only you can sit down and do it, you can also find ways to make it more appealing. In order to have a meditation practice, you must practice meditation. Above all else, follow your heart and trust your own inner guidance.
What about you? Do you want to be part of this quiet revolution? Are you already part of the revolution but wanting to meditate more regularly? If so, meditate one session at a time until it becomes a natural part of your life.
Article Directory: http://www.articlewisdom.com/
Copyright © 2007 Marshall House, http://www.mhmail.com/. Jeanie Marshall, Personal Development Consultant and Coach with Marshall House, writes extensively on subjects related to personal development and empowerment. Her course to help people to meditate regularly is Meditate Now: 21 Days to Meditate Regularly. You may republish this article at your web site or blog, provided you include this paragraph and make all links active.
For over 30 years, I have been meditating. For almost as many years, in workshops, consultations, friendly conversations, and writing, I have been encouraging, teaching, or leading people to meditate and create quiet times. During this time, the world has changed considerably, and so have I. My most important learning is: everyone is different. Certainly there are commonalities in meditating, but each individual is unique. I consider that meditation is one of the most empowering practices that anyone can engage in.
A "quiet revolution" is an oxymoron, of course. Meditation is generally a private, quiet practice. In North America its acceptance has changed dramatically over the last several years, although it is still not universally accepted. As with most revolutions, an underground is established before, during, and after the outward manifestations of the awakening. In this culture which I know, more and more individuals are speaking and writing about their meditation practice.
Meditating in groups is also common and very powerful, and yet each meditator still has a unique, quiet, private experience. In the workplace, meditation is rarely practiced openly, nor is it discussed, except in safe, small groups or among friends. When I was a frequent workshop presenter, I had many participants speak to me privately in hushed tones at break times to confess that they meditate. The voices may not be as hushed these days, but still there is a quietness, even a silence, about the practice in many settings.
I am comfortable with the variety of words used to describe meditation. My own purpose for meditation is to connect with the Divine and be replenished by the Source. Some speak about mystical experiences and higher consciousness, while others are more comfortable talking about relaxation, calmness, and resilience. Heightened awareness, intuition, imagery, and vision are frequently used to describe experiences of meditation. I find that helping others to express their own meditation experiences is a powerful process for them, even when the words do not flow smoothly.
Long-time meditators can find other long-time mediators easily. Meditators give off signals or vibrations that are calmer and more aligned with self than those who do not meditate or do not have a meditative-type practice that taps into higher consciousness. Gardening, yoga, certain athletic activities, and regular relaxation can achieve the same soothing signals when practiced in ways that achieve harmony with self.
No matter how or where you meditate, you must make a choice to meditate and practice it regularly in order to benefit fully. Full benefits come with regular practice over a period of time. Meditating only when stressed may certainly be beneficial in the immediate situation, but the long-term benefits of a regular practice include general well-being, health, a strong immune system, longevity, clarity of thought, and balance.
Meditation is sometimes associated with certain religions. Meditation can be practiced in any and all religions, but the two are not synonymous. In my work, I keep meditation distinct from religion; if my clients choose to join the two, that is fine. Those with strong religious beliefs gravitate to the types of meditation that fit their beliefs. Wikipedia has a comprehensive listing of meditation methods.
Regardless of the chosen method, the benefits of regular meditation, over time, are as varied as the individuals who meditate. It is quite common for long-time meditators to acknowledge they benefit physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
Recently I received an email message from a long-time meditator in India talking about her meditation experiences. It was a delight to read. It became clear to me that she has integrated the same elements that I encourage people to discover and use.
She uses her breath to relax. She has several processes to handle mind chatter and stress so that she is not disturbed by them in her meditation. She has two different "focal points" for her attention. One is a visual focus, a traditional Indian lamp, which she visualizes as divine light that lightens her heart. Another focal point is one of the most famous mantras, Om, which she chants repeatedly, finding that it takes only a brief time to achieve the state of consciousness that is her purpose for meditation. And she has a regular practice.
Her message was a beautiful summary of what many long-term meditators might report. While working with both new and long-time meditators, I have discovered that the most difficult aspect of meditation is to practice it regularly. All the elements of meditation are easy to understand, but to sit and do it challenges many new meditators.
If you have not meditated before, it may seem mysterious. However, meditation is simple. I recommend a maximum of twenty minutes for new meditators. Here are the elements:
Arrange time when you will not be disturbed;
Sit in a comfortable position and relax;
Close your eyes, unless you prefer an open-eye meditation;
Breathe intentionally for a few breaths;
Choose a focal point, such as music, a chant, a pleasing image, a guiding voice;
Stay with the focal point; if your mind wanders, gently return to the focal point;
Bring the meditation to a close and return to your activities, refreshed.
If this is your first time meditating, you may feel that "nothing is happening" during the first few times you sit to meditate. That is a common sensation. At the end of your chosen meditation time, simply get up and continue with your day. The benefits are cumulative, which is why I advocate a regular practice. If you want to meditate, yet are not meditating or are not meditating as frequently as you want, please be gentle with yourself. While it is true that only you can sit down and do it, you can also find ways to make it more appealing. In order to have a meditation practice, you must practice meditation. Above all else, follow your heart and trust your own inner guidance.
What about you? Do you want to be part of this quiet revolution? Are you already part of the revolution but wanting to meditate more regularly? If so, meditate one session at a time until it becomes a natural part of your life.
Article Directory: http://www.articlewisdom.com/
Copyright © 2007 Marshall House, http://www.mhmail.com/. Jeanie Marshall, Personal Development Consultant and Coach with Marshall House, writes extensively on subjects related to personal development and empowerment. Her course to help people to meditate regularly is Meditate Now: 21 Days to Meditate Regularly. You may republish this article at your web site or blog, provided you include this paragraph and make all links active.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)