How could meditate reward your l
It's the 20th day of the "Effective Reading Training Program". The challenge we are facing today is reading three books in one hour on the condition that the three are talking about one topic.
What's the point of doing so?
Imagine yourself invite three experts in the same domain. You sit down, chat with them and try to spot the most valuable perspectives out of the three experts which will speed up your learning curve. You will be able to get most out of wisdom and experience of the three experts in one hour, process and digest, coupled with your own instinct, common sense, understanding and experience, until they become part of your sharable knowledge.
Excited about it? Now, here is how it works!
1) Prepare, meditate and activate your subconsciousness
2) Goal setting and preview
3) Questions and key words
4) Flow reading
5) Mind Map
6) Writing
7) Talk and teach
Familiar? Absolutely! We have been practising it for couple of days consecutively! Interesting, inspiring and incredible!!!
Now, I picked three books
1) POWER PRANAYAMA by Dr. Renu Mahtani
2) CHAKRAS AND YOUR MIND by Trish O'sullivan
3) STRESS LESS, ACCOMPLISH MORE by Emily Fletcher
Books
I would like to give it try if the whole thing works on books in other language for me. I spent 2.5 hrs finishing them and another 1hr writing. I'm so proud to tell all of you: Well, there's yet pretty much room for improvement. But It's working!!! No doubt about it! :)
My goal: HOW PRANAYAMA PRACTICE REWARD MIND AND EMOTION?
Mindmap
How does Stress affect the body?
A little understanding of the human nervous system in this context will be helpful. Every action that takes place in the body is secondary to its initiation in some part of the brain. For example, the sight and smell fo the food of our choice triggers salivation in the mouth after the brain gets information about the food through the sensory nerves coming from the nose and the eyes. So does stress response.
Stress response is an action. In primitive times, the brain was tuned to meet external challenges like wild animals and the "fight-and-flight" response in the body is always on alert. As time goes, the human beings tends to involve more the fight and flight response, Sympathetic Nervous System rather than the other system Parasympathetic system, which is ease and release response. In modern life, we don't have wild threats anymore. Modern stressors like paying back housing loans, getting promoted in the company, how to outperform in the team...take its place.
Functionally, the nervous system can be divided into two parts: the Somatic nervous system which controls the voluntary actions of the body like walking and the Autonomic nervous system which controls the involuntary actions of the body, that is, actions that are not under our conscious control, such as digestion, excretion, sweating as well as activating fight and flight response.
Once the fight and flight response is activated, the heart rate increased, blood vessels constricted, blood pressure climbing, inhalation becoming shorter and faster...You are "excited" in a bad way. When we feel bad and get disturbed, what we do to protect us emotionally is we actually tend to override the stressor and suppress the physical reaction to it. It finally becomes chronic stress which has not been released, not aware of it! They are like bomb inside the body, as long as it is triggered, the body will explode.
Still, there is good stress there. It looks like cold shower. They are just good enough and stays as short as burn up wake up your brain and make you act in the right now. They don't stay inside your brain. They don't go unconscious. It's not bad for the body to et stressed, however, it is toxic for your body to stay stressed.
Pranayama, the most valuable element in yoga, time people an alternative to deal with the stress. You don't need to suppress it or repress it anymore. Just use PRANAYAMA to engage both spheres of your brain by activating parasympathetic nervous system. It de-excites the body. Balancing functionality of both parts of brain will keep your mind clearer and ensure a good decision without stupidity.
What is Chakra?
Do you know chi(气) in Chinese? If so, that is the same thing. Philosophically, our existence is the union of two primal forces - consciousness and vital energy, that is, prana. Mind, body, spirit are different forms of energy. The mind is energy in wave form and the body is energy in particle form. Think of a radio. The body of the radio is made up of solid particles and the information that plays on the radio arrives in wave form. Spirit is even subtler energy and that is why we are often not aware of it at all.
Prana is the life force that keeps the body alive. All the body organs needs it for its functionality. According to Ayurveda, the energy transforms digested food into body components, the sequence being: food - juice - blood - flesh - fat - bone - marrow - sexual vital fluid. The remaining goes to the mind to enable it to feel, understand, comprehend, learn, experience and reflect. See? The more prana, the better for the body and mind. That's why pranayama, the control of prana practice, is so important!
Nadi and Chakra is like energy channel and energy inter-crossing. Nadi is channel network where prana moves in and out to support body organ's functionality. Chakra, "wheel" in sanskrit, is like a roundabout which directs energy in different destination. Pranayama, the energy control practice is to purify nadis.
Human body has 7 primary chakra. Each chakra is instrumental in determining the personality structure, the behaviour and the level of awareness of an individual. That depends on the amount of energy and activity in individual chakra. It has everything to do with endocrine system as well as nervous system on energy interaction and physiological correlation.
For people who are into mantra, there is also different seed sounds that are able to engage individual chakras. For example, to wake up Anahata, chant "YAM".
Seven primary chakra
Different Techniques to practice
1) PRANAYAMA, this is what most of people take as meditation practice. This is what I have been practising everyday. The more I practice, I am less willing to give up the practice.
In india, it is called pranayama. Prana: life force. Yama: control.
"The 'you' that goes in one side of the breathing experience is the not the same 'you' that comes out the other side". That is the beauty of Pranayama Bhante Henepala put. Yogic breathing starts from the gross part of body like belly, to subtle part of the body chest, up to even more subtler part throat and nasal. It engages each part of the body and move the prana around to where it is supposed to be.
Pranayama to the mind is a different thing. Without help of prana, the mind cannot operate because the vibration of prana produce thoughts in the mind. Breath is the external manifestation of prana - breath is gross and prana is subtle. So, mind, prana and breath are interrelated.
The rewards of pranayama:
First, cleanse the body and mind
Second, energise the body and mind
Third, activate Para-sympathetic nervous system
Fourth, created optimum state of mind which will benefit every part of your life.
2) TRAYA Practice
Following is the Traya technique for removing negative thoughts / emotions from the mind.
Step 1, mindfulness and focus - tune in to a chakra
Step 2, surface - see what memories it brings to the surface of your mind. You don't judge it, you just observe it like a third person. Let it surface as much as possible.
Step 3, Release - visualise the negative energy moving out of your chakra
Step 4, Replace and imprint - visualise positive energy replacing the negative energy that has been released and receive the positive imprint.
Step 5, Diagnostic scene from nature - let you chakra reveal a scene from nature. You can diagnose its message using the elements and the scenes associated with the chakra and its positive and negative mind states. This is optional.
Please ground yourself at the start and again at the finish of the practice by focusing on the soles of the feet and breathing in and out of an imaginary opening there. You don't have to be perfect, just do the best you can. Not actively looking for anything or rejecting anything that comes. Just observe. Remember, the mind wants to heal and when you go toward it, it will come toward you.
3) The Z Technique
The Z technique is 3M. It is detox process. It takes time to find your way onto the practice.
Mindfulness: seated comfortably, gently close your eyes. With the natural rhythm of breath, take your awareness from gross sound to subtler sounds, from the most prominent tactile sensation in the body to subtlest tactile sensation. Shift your awareness to sense, starting from sight, smell, taste, then all at once. Immerse yourself in what's happening around you. Use your five sense as a tool to get yourself into the body and into the now.
Meditation: full surrender. Don't take it wrong. Surrender is not negative, it means trust your body, trust the practice, and ultimately trust your intuition that rise to the surface so you can trust yourself more.
Inside the meditation, find yourself a personalised mantra which will serve as a life purpose or a short-term goal to help you complete a mental task. The mantra is a short sentence, a simple and effective one, like becoming number one in your field, or the one thing you are prioritising. The word won't induce any mentaller change if you're using it in your left-brain. In this instance, you're using the word as an anchor and setting your body and mind up for deep rest and surrender.
One minute of mindfulness leading to fourteen minutes of meditation.
Manifesting: This practice invites you to think of one dream, one goal or one desire and imagine it as if it were your current reality. Give your permission to see, feel, hear, taste and smell every aspect of that desire as if it were happening to you right now in your current, immediate reality. As you take time to marinate in this dream, allowing your imagination to colour in the details all around you, pay particular attention to how this feels. This will give you the gift of experiencing the joy and the accomplishment as well as connect with your subconscious mind.
Mindfulness helps you deal with stress in the present moment; meditation gets rid of stress from the past; and manifesting helps you create your dreams for the future.
The Z technique is a simpler version of Yoga Nidra. Anybody interested in Yoga Nidra, pls feel free to contact me. I will walk you through every step of it, from which I personally benefited a lot.
