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As women, we have many stressors in our lives. One way to deal with these is meditation, which can do wonders for your mental, spiritual, and physical health.
Meditation is an intriguing, unknown territory to a lot of us. Though we know it’s the answer to a healthy life, a stress free life, and a positive life, many of us are still reluctant to try meditation.
So the big question here is ‘how do I meditate’? I have come across many a people who want to meditate but don’t for lack of a proper thought process or technique. So while I too am a work in progress, I would like to share a few tips to help to start meditating or to take your present level a notch higher.
Many of us think that we can’t meditate unless we reach a state of total inner silence which means a state where we have no thoughts. True, such a state will be blissful but it may not be possible to achieve it without practising for quite some time.
When we sit to meditate, it is natural to have thoughts, especially knowing that we shouldn’t! When you have a thought come up while meditating, then instead of fighting it or forcefully stopping yourself to think about it, just tell your mind lovingly that I will come back to this thought later and for now I am concentrating only on my meditative state. Do not try to forcefully push yourself into such a state.
For example, if a thought comes that you have to reach a certain place the next day by a certain time, then rather than comparing time, fare, convenience of metro vs cab vs driving, just tell yourself you will come back to this thought a little later and imagine that you have lovingly pushed the thought aside for now.
When we start meditating, many of us would do it regularly for a first few days but stop doing it after a few days. One of the main reasons is that we may be looking out for something amazing to happen during our meditation. A bright light to be seen, some sign to be shown to us, to experience God.
But when we sit to meditate with a focus to have certain experience, our whole attention is towards that and we end up not even feeling the calmness and contentment that meditation should bring to us. Even for people who have been meditating for years, not every time would they experience something that great. And meditation doesn’t mean that you would have a surreal experience every time.
To have a beautiful meditation experience, sit with a calm mind & faith and experience that very moment as every moment in itself can be a beautiful experience if we seek to feel it.
Since it’s difficult to sit in silence and work around having very less or no thoughts at all, one can try guided meditation. Guided meditation takes you through certain thoughts and visualizations and directs your mind towards a certain thought process. You can either continue with guided meditation or switch over to sitting in silence by your own once you have trained your mind to do that.
Yes, you can train your mind! Tell your mind very lovingly before sitting for meditation that you do not want it to wander and you would be concentrating on meditation now, and you will experience slowly how well this works.
If we fix up a time for meditation, there would be a higher chance for us to be regular at it. As otherwise many times we procrastinate, and not just by hours but by days. It’s a personal choice how many times in a week would you want to meditate but I personally feel that to start with even 3 days in a week should be good.
Every time that we meditate, there is a downpour of divine, pure, healing energy. If we meditate at the same place every time, that place/room will have more pure and divine energies which will help us to meditate better and deeper.
Yes, you need to set the mood right for this also! A few things that can be done before meditation are exercising /practicing yoga, breathing exercises, listening to soulful music, burning soothing oil/candle, remembering and thanking the Supreme Power for all the blessings that we have in our lives. Also, be careful not to meditate while experiencing emotions of anger and frustration as the energy that you have at that time gets magnified during meditation.
Meditation like happiness is a state of mind and when regularly practised, one will start to feel a surge of love, peace and happiness within. So, ladies, let’s take a leap of faith in ourselves and take out time from our busy schedules for the soul spa. Prioritize your schedule so that you would be able to meditate in peace. And even the law gives you a right to remain silent!
Image source: shutterstock
I am a management faculty by profession and left my full time job in June 2012 when I got diagnosed with breast cancer. I am perfectly healthy and fit now and run my own NGO ` read more...
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Women today don’t want to be in a partnership that complicates their lives further. They need an equal partner with whom they can figure out life as a team, playing by each other’s strengths.
We all are familiar with that one annoying aunty who is more interested in our marital status than in the dessert counter at a wedding. But these aunties have somehow become obsolete now. Now they are replaced by men we have in our lives. Friends, family, and even work colleagues. It’s the men who are worried about why we are not saying yes to one among their clans. What is wrong with us? Aren’t we scared of dying alone? Like them?
A recent interaction with a guy friend of mine turned sour when he lectured me about how I would regret not getting married at the right time. He lectured that every event in our lives needs to be completed within a certain timeframe set by society else we are doomed. I wasn’t angry. I was just disappointed to realize that annoying aunties are rapidly doubling in our society. And they don’t just appear at weddings or family functions anymore. They are everywhere. They are the real pandemic.
Let’s examine this a little closer.
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