For every new day, nutritionists and exercise gurus can suggest several things for your health: eating a hearty, balanced breakfast and doing stretches, cardio exercises and strengthening routines. But what about your soul?
Early morning must be a treat not only to the person’s ‘corpus’ but also to his ‘anima’ (call it inner self or soul). The Chinese usually go to the park or in their gardens to do tai-chi, which relaxes both body and mind. But you can do something simpler than that right inside your own home.
‘Everything is extraordinarily clear. I see the whole landscape before me, I see my hands, my feet, my toes, and I smell the rich river mud. I feel a sense of tremendous strangeness and wonder at being alive.’ – Gautama Buddha
If ordinarily mortals like us saw life the way the Enlightened One did, there’d be no cause for suffering — for the negativity that consumes most of our passions. Perhaps heaven is not a place after all but a way of seeing things.
Nature offers a perfect setting for recreation and more. Instead of just unwinding and detoxifying your mind from your numbing routine, you can also get to know yourself better. This is what meditation is all about.
You don’t have to subscribe to any particular belief system to be able to meditate. You don’t have to memorize prayers or repeatedly utter ‘the spoken essence of the universe’ (the Hindu and Buddhist ‘om’). It’s a simple means of self-rediscovery without the complicated philosophies, theologies and myths.
Long time ago, the water is considered a perfect source of life-giving energy. Travelers kneel down before the creek or any stream they would come across and help themselves with the cool and healing wonders of the water. And many young people bathe on the flowing water because of the thought that it has a great connection to the Divine.
Such belief observed by many cultures from different parts of the world continues to live on. That is why, most of the ‘health-and-beauty’ establishments like salons, and spas are promoting the same theme to all types of weary people. Add to that, the majority of us are deeply engaged with these bathing rituals to give ourselves the best time to exude the beauties we are hiding within.
Gardens are designed, cultivated and maintained to serve a higher purpose that just being eye candies. The Japanese garden, for instance, helps in Zen meditation; it relaxes the senses and takes the mind off concerns that cloud one’s consciousness. The Good Book shows Jesus unloading the burden in his heart in the garden of Gethsemane.
If you think your garden is just a place for you to grow ornamental plants and veggies, think bigger. It shouldn’t just give you the satisfaction of watching your plants in bloom or your lettuce and tomatoes looking ready for the salad bowl.
Take a Stroll
Boredom is a state of mind that sets in when you’ve forgotten simple pleasures or when you allow a sense of emptiness to dwell in your heart. It’s not something you can just ignore, considering how it can affect a person’s work, relationships and perception of life in general.
It seems ironic but you can learn a simple ‘cure’ to it by observing a child, who looks at ordinary things in amazement, laughs at funny gestures and enjoys ordinary treats. Perhaps it’s time to rediscover the child in you.
Finding Serenity
City Life can be tormenting in so many ways. It could be the loud music from your the next-door neighbor or the general din of the busy streets. It could be the motorists that cut you in traffic or people who shove you in the subway station at rush hour.
The blurry pace of urban life and work-related anxiety can strain relationships, affecting your marriage, family life, circle of friends. Stress seems magnified in your jungle of glass, steel and concrete, and there’s hardly any time for letting your soul breathe.
Our mind can hold a lot of different thoughts in a day. In fact, these ‘noisy thoughts’ are what keep us busy day in and day out. We are driven by our thoughts and often they seem too big, too heavy for comfort.
Whatever we have today, pleasant or not, is the end result of previous actions triggered by the thoughts we entertain in our mind. Often, our thoughts even color certain circumstances. A bad fix gets even worse if we think quite negatively about it. So when we think of our lives being messy, if we focus on that, it’ll probably get messier.
Enjoy a Break
We’ve gotten so used to the rat race that we think stopping awhile means losing opportunities. Everyone is rushing without letup, aiming for one thing and then the next, setting no ceiling for contentment.
Time passes by so quickly, as though digital timekeeping has sped up the Earth’s rotation. Our routine is set at exact times. Things get done like clockwork. And we are slaves to our routine, from the moment we wake up to the time we close our eyes.
Smell The Roses For 1 Minute
The demands of life are getting more complicated. We talk of advancement in the way things are done, but what it really means is that the pace of everything keeps getting faster. We do things quickly so we can do more things.
It’s not really society that progresses but technology. We are now more concerned about getting things done for our jobs or careers and there are high-tech tools to do the task well. We think little of what nurtures humanity, of the simple pleasures life used to afford us.
