I read in my school days that there is no side effects performing swimming and yoga when compared to other forms of exercises. It is just that belief, that pushed me to kick start with swimming and yoga. The word Yoga means to become one with the universe, it does not denote a form of exercise. I have been doing lot of yogic postures in my school days, to keep my body damn flexible and to compete with others. But the time is ripe for realizing the real form of yoga in term of meditation.
How did meditation changed me?
I have been doing meditation for around few months continuously, every morning and i did swimming for about a month and had stopped it due to Corona Outbreak. Doing both seems to have made my body and mind flexible.
I have lost weight of around 12 kilograms. Since I started doing meditation & swimming, I had been continuously loosing 3 kilogram per week and it got reduced from 75 and stabilized at 62 kilogram.
I changed my eating habits. I brought this change as eating and breathing are essential activities which we do regularly to keep life intact with body and I also find all the other activities subsidiary compared to them. I was conveyed that they are having a profound impact on the mind while I took 2 full day meditation program to kick start meditation. Now I realize how profound is the impact of food and breathing on the mind.
I stopped taking dinner at night, to avoid ulcer kind of problems I took milk and dates in limited quantity. Stopped taking tea and snacks at office. I tried them one by one, I did not even had any hope or I did not even gave any thought of my will power during this period, I just gave a try. I stopped my dinner with out a substitute. But for dropping tea/coffee and snack I did created a substitute, I took lot of water when I felt less energy, tea/coffee time was a strict "no" most of the time unless my energy dropped to make me feel very weak. I took tea/coffee and food at night occasionally, to keep my energy up. But it is still surprising how I was able to keep my energy up to such an extent that today, I am free of coffee/tea, snacks and heavy dinner.
I started to chew my food to such an extent that my salivary glands could digest most of carbohydrates in my mouth itself, so it leaves the stomach to digest protein and intestine to digest fat and lipids. This activity I started along with other trails that I had been performing while investigating the impact of food intake on body and mind. I reviewed human body structure and organization of nervous system, blood circulation system, lymphatic system and recollected the functioning of both endocrine and exocrine glands. It left me with a thought that our body is a huge and complex support system of life, it has various organizations, each organization has various communities and communities are formed by specialized cells to form body parts from skin to heart to brain, you name it. When we eat food each and every cell to cell organelles based on the gravity of attraction or repulsion (i.e., a very mild attractive and repulsive force) performs some move to make each organization to act in a certain way and these activities are happening in a rhythmic way through out the day based on the needs of each organelles in cells and the balance & imbalance they make with rest of the system. People have named this almost cyclic behavior happening everyday as "Circadian" rhythm. In India, we have terms such as Dinacharia and Ritucharia, here charia means path or following footsteps, dina stands for day, ritu stands for season. They represent the acts that we should do on daily basis and as per seasons. The acts seems to have been described based on the profound knowledge of the body as huge and complex support system and the cycle it goes through daily and seasonal. Changing a habit with these cycle is very difficult, apart from these we have external factors which demands us to remain in harmony with external world. I am happy that I could change it.
I wanted chew food thoroughly. To avoid junks food and to avoid pungent, very spicy, tangy or hot taste, I avoided taking outside foods. I also avoided onion and garlic as they make me difficult to keep the food little long in mouth to chew. Our tongue has become a lier over many years. The excitement signal the tongue sends to brain and the neurotic signals that it sends especially to salivary glands has kind of skewed. It takes some time for the salivary glands to secrete enough to digest the food, it takes a lot of chewing and ensuring we don't swallow the moment we intake food in our mouth.
Needless to say, my awareness of the body did increase with meditation. To support all the change and cause that was said so far, meditation played a major role, without which nothing could have been achieved.
What do i do in the name of meditation?
Meditation takes place for every living being, it happens to person who know nothing about the word "meditation". It is a shutdown and restart switch for entire body. Beware we should not shutdown our complex and humongous system if that is not our intended goal but meditation could do that. It can also put the system in to paused state for many days, months and years. In India, we call this shutdown state as jeevasamadhi, paused state as samadi, the act of touching samadi and coming back as performing meditation. Meditation is a thought, study and thorough reflecting of profound nature inside us and outside us.
There are various form of meditation, a book named appropriately as Vigyan Bhairava Tantra to manifest spiritual energy documents 112 meditation techniques, most of them are very simple, even a child could perform, for example gazing at light for long time is a kind of meditation. Meditating only with mind for me had been unattainable. To perform dynamic mediation, by letting mind to freely think and letting body free for several hours also has been unattainable. I see, that great saints never bothered about what technique they are following. Following a technique itself is wrong, as the technique may or may not work, to put us in balance with rest of our surroundings & events. But I found a mixed of physical activity and mental activity to calm down in my surrounding environment has helped a bit to perform balancing and also helped me to calm down.
With few physical yogic postures I am able to activate all 7 Chakras or the 7 largest synapses of nervous system that flows through spinal cord, right from perineum up until the brain. Physical acts can be done despite we have any state of mind that make it fool proof in not making mistake when we try to settle down each organs, cells and organelles. Each chakra activation ensures, that it takes care or activates/deactivates organs to gets enough oxygen from our lungs and prepares them for the next chakra activation or in general for next level. It shutdown down the system level after level and lets me to touch the epitome of silence and sometime with a blessed feeling.
For certain, when i woke up from my bed, I usually felt little tired. After performing meditation session I felt i had gained enough energy for the day. Nowadays, when i wake up from bed despite being tired, I feel happy because of the fact that a single mediation session could put me back on track for the rest of the day.
Mediation session does comes with a cost but it is like paying already borrowed loan, the cost will slowly diminish over a period of time. Initially, it takes hours without any outcomes or energy, until we get accustomed to it.
Here are my few tips,
1. Our thoughts are always wandering and judgmental. Observe what thought do come why we do them the way we judge them and re-frame what the thoughts.
2. Do not suppress thoughts. Sometimes it takes several minutes to realize that we are thinking in certain unwanted direction and we are not taking control of our thoughts. Let it fly during meditation session, observe them if few thoughts are taking several hours and mental energy, see what physical or mental act you could perform to settle your mind.
3. Observe, you being control of your thought, and you not being in control of your thoughts. The ups and downs are the way of life.
4. Focus thought on some object which you can describe and think for several hours. Observe the object vanishing from your thought and helping you to pause your entire system for sometime.
Witnessing and Observing is the key. One can repeat "Witness" as any kind of mantra. It creates a detachment. It is difficult to perfect our body, and to keep it in balance with the events around us. It is a moving target. It is easy to figure out what imperfection to address when we witness. Mind listens to body first than your rational brain. Witness it. It is very difficult to remain rational than irrational. Common sense is not common. Accepting "Common sense is not common" gives a different perspective. The way we see our life changes. It opens our heart. It expands our heart to make rooms for everyone, everything.
I am feeling blessed.
How did meditation changed me?
I have been doing meditation for around few months continuously, every morning and i did swimming for about a month and had stopped it due to Corona Outbreak. Doing both seems to have made my body and mind flexible.
I have lost weight of around 12 kilograms. Since I started doing meditation & swimming, I had been continuously loosing 3 kilogram per week and it got reduced from 75 and stabilized at 62 kilogram.
I changed my eating habits. I brought this change as eating and breathing are essential activities which we do regularly to keep life intact with body and I also find all the other activities subsidiary compared to them. I was conveyed that they are having a profound impact on the mind while I took 2 full day meditation program to kick start meditation. Now I realize how profound is the impact of food and breathing on the mind.
I stopped taking dinner at night, to avoid ulcer kind of problems I took milk and dates in limited quantity. Stopped taking tea and snacks at office. I tried them one by one, I did not even had any hope or I did not even gave any thought of my will power during this period, I just gave a try. I stopped my dinner with out a substitute. But for dropping tea/coffee and snack I did created a substitute, I took lot of water when I felt less energy, tea/coffee time was a strict "no" most of the time unless my energy dropped to make me feel very weak. I took tea/coffee and food at night occasionally, to keep my energy up. But it is still surprising how I was able to keep my energy up to such an extent that today, I am free of coffee/tea, snacks and heavy dinner.
I started to chew my food to such an extent that my salivary glands could digest most of carbohydrates in my mouth itself, so it leaves the stomach to digest protein and intestine to digest fat and lipids. This activity I started along with other trails that I had been performing while investigating the impact of food intake on body and mind. I reviewed human body structure and organization of nervous system, blood circulation system, lymphatic system and recollected the functioning of both endocrine and exocrine glands. It left me with a thought that our body is a huge and complex support system of life, it has various organizations, each organization has various communities and communities are formed by specialized cells to form body parts from skin to heart to brain, you name it. When we eat food each and every cell to cell organelles based on the gravity of attraction or repulsion (i.e., a very mild attractive and repulsive force) performs some move to make each organization to act in a certain way and these activities are happening in a rhythmic way through out the day based on the needs of each organelles in cells and the balance & imbalance they make with rest of the system. People have named this almost cyclic behavior happening everyday as "Circadian" rhythm. In India, we have terms such as Dinacharia and Ritucharia, here charia means path or following footsteps, dina stands for day, ritu stands for season. They represent the acts that we should do on daily basis and as per seasons. The acts seems to have been described based on the profound knowledge of the body as huge and complex support system and the cycle it goes through daily and seasonal. Changing a habit with these cycle is very difficult, apart from these we have external factors which demands us to remain in harmony with external world. I am happy that I could change it.
I wanted chew food thoroughly. To avoid junks food and to avoid pungent, very spicy, tangy or hot taste, I avoided taking outside foods. I also avoided onion and garlic as they make me difficult to keep the food little long in mouth to chew. Our tongue has become a lier over many years. The excitement signal the tongue sends to brain and the neurotic signals that it sends especially to salivary glands has kind of skewed. It takes some time for the salivary glands to secrete enough to digest the food, it takes a lot of chewing and ensuring we don't swallow the moment we intake food in our mouth.
Needless to say, my awareness of the body did increase with meditation. To support all the change and cause that was said so far, meditation played a major role, without which nothing could have been achieved.
What do i do in the name of meditation?
Meditation takes place for every living being, it happens to person who know nothing about the word "meditation". It is a shutdown and restart switch for entire body. Beware we should not shutdown our complex and humongous system if that is not our intended goal but meditation could do that. It can also put the system in to paused state for many days, months and years. In India, we call this shutdown state as jeevasamadhi, paused state as samadi, the act of touching samadi and coming back as performing meditation. Meditation is a thought, study and thorough reflecting of profound nature inside us and outside us.
There are various form of meditation, a book named appropriately as Vigyan Bhairava Tantra to manifest spiritual energy documents 112 meditation techniques, most of them are very simple, even a child could perform, for example gazing at light for long time is a kind of meditation. Meditating only with mind for me had been unattainable. To perform dynamic mediation, by letting mind to freely think and letting body free for several hours also has been unattainable. I see, that great saints never bothered about what technique they are following. Following a technique itself is wrong, as the technique may or may not work, to put us in balance with rest of our surroundings & events. But I found a mixed of physical activity and mental activity to calm down in my surrounding environment has helped a bit to perform balancing and also helped me to calm down.
With few physical yogic postures I am able to activate all 7 Chakras or the 7 largest synapses of nervous system that flows through spinal cord, right from perineum up until the brain. Physical acts can be done despite we have any state of mind that make it fool proof in not making mistake when we try to settle down each organs, cells and organelles. Each chakra activation ensures, that it takes care or activates/deactivates organs to gets enough oxygen from our lungs and prepares them for the next chakra activation or in general for next level. It shutdown down the system level after level and lets me to touch the epitome of silence and sometime with a blessed feeling.
For certain, when i woke up from my bed, I usually felt little tired. After performing meditation session I felt i had gained enough energy for the day. Nowadays, when i wake up from bed despite being tired, I feel happy because of the fact that a single mediation session could put me back on track for the rest of the day.
Mediation session does comes with a cost but it is like paying already borrowed loan, the cost will slowly diminish over a period of time. Initially, it takes hours without any outcomes or energy, until we get accustomed to it.
Here are my few tips,
1. Our thoughts are always wandering and judgmental. Observe what thought do come why we do them the way we judge them and re-frame what the thoughts.
2. Do not suppress thoughts. Sometimes it takes several minutes to realize that we are thinking in certain unwanted direction and we are not taking control of our thoughts. Let it fly during meditation session, observe them if few thoughts are taking several hours and mental energy, see what physical or mental act you could perform to settle your mind.
3. Observe, you being control of your thought, and you not being in control of your thoughts. The ups and downs are the way of life.
4. Focus thought on some object which you can describe and think for several hours. Observe the object vanishing from your thought and helping you to pause your entire system for sometime.
Witnessing and Observing is the key. One can repeat "Witness" as any kind of mantra. It creates a detachment. It is difficult to perfect our body, and to keep it in balance with the events around us. It is a moving target. It is easy to figure out what imperfection to address when we witness. Mind listens to body first than your rational brain. Witness it. It is very difficult to remain rational than irrational. Common sense is not common. Accepting "Common sense is not common" gives a different perspective. The way we see our life changes. It opens our heart. It expands our heart to make rooms for everyone, everything.
I am feeling blessed.
