Why Meditate?

Meditation creates an empty space within by quieting the mind. That space provides an uninterrupted flow of clarity and energy, because the usual preoccupations with the world completely disappear. That space allows you to tap into your true nature, and all ego-driven fears and emotions vanish. At the highest levels of meditation, duality also disappears and there is nothing but oneness with the Divine. This is called Samadhi. The permanent state of Samadhi is what we call Liberation or Self-realization, and it is the aim of all forms of yoga and all spiritual paths. Liberation is the ultimate aim of human life, and meditation is both the practice and the door to attaining it.

So the ultimate benefit of meditation is Self-realization, but a daily meditation practice will provide many other advantages, both on a physical and emotional levels, as well as in terms of spiritual development. Since it purifies the body in general, and the nervous system in particular, it can greatly enhance your overall health and prevent or improve any type of disease. Your energy levels and mental powers will increase as well; your creativity and intuition will be enhanced, and inner joy will becomes a regular experience. Meditation can highly reduce stress levels, and the medical community is starting to realize the value of the different practices yogis have been doing for thousands of years, particularly hatha yoga and meditation, and integrating them into the hospital environment.

If you are able to meditate at least for a half hour daily, you will become level headed and face life with peace and spiritual strength. Meditation is the most powerful mental and nerve tonic. Divine energy freely flows during meditation and exerts a benign influence on your mind, nervous system, and sense organs. It opens the door to intuitive knowledge and to other realms of reality. When your mind becomes calm and steady, inner peace becomes real and part of your experience.

With practice, duality disappears and Samadhi, or the superconscious state, is reached. Be patient and consistent, because reaching this state takes a long time, but what you acquire along the way, such as clarity and inner peace, are just as priceless.

Important Guidelines for Meditation

* As purity begins with the physical body, cleanse your body before meditation.

* The seat for meditation or asana should be made of wool on the bottom and cotton cloth on the top. Avoid sitting on the bare ground, since your energy may be drained off, and-most importantly-do not share your asana with anyone.

* Regularity of time, place, and practice are important, as they condition your mind to slow down, paving the path to deeper levels of meditation. Ten minutes every day is better than one hour every now and then.

* The best times to meditate are early dawn and dusk, when the atmosphere is quiet and charged with special spiritual energy. If it is not possible to sit for meditation at these times, choose a specific time and stick to it everyday.

* Try to have a separate room for meditation. As meditation is repeated, the energy will increase and the atmosphere will be filled with peace and purity.

* When sitting, face North or East in order to take advantage of favorable magnetic vibrations.

* Sit in a steady, comfortable, cross-legged position with the spine and neck straight but not tense.

* Keep your breathing rhythmic: inhale for three seconds and exhale for three seconds. The breath, the prana (vital force) and the mind are connected. Regulating and controlling one will regulate and control the other.

* Do not force your mind to be still, as this will just set in motion more thought waves. Allow it to wander without focusing or following any thought, by concentrating on a mantra (word of power) or specific technique. With practice, it will eventually become still.

* Select a focal point for your mind to rest. Most people choose the Ajna chakra (third eye), as it is close to the eyes and easy to focus on. Eventually, you may choose the Anahata (heart) chakra to go deeper.

* If you are not using a mantra, you can also focus on a neutral or uplifting object or image while concentrating on your breath as you inhale and exhale.

* Attempt to live a pure, pious, sattvic life. Treat your body as a temple. Strive to eat pure, nutritious food and avoid intoxicants. A vegetarian diet will certain decrease toxic energy and accelerate your spiritual development.

How does yoga help to alleviate asthma symptoms? The main way is by promoting deeper breathing. People with asthma tend to have shallow breathing, so breathing deeply will encourage a better breathing pattern. Also, yoga poses that expand the chest and ribs will increase your lung capacity which also helps you breathe better. So which poses are best to treat asthma? Try the three described below:

* Fish Pose – Lie down on your back, with either your legs straight and together with toes pointed outwards or with them bent at the knees. Place your hands palms down under your buttocks and keep your elbows close to your body. Lift your torso off the floor but keep most of the weight on your elbows. Rest either the top or back of your head gently on the floor, keeping your face and neck relaxed. Breathe deeply for about 15 breaths, then lift your head slightly and lower your body back to the floor.

* Camel Pose – Kneel down on your knees with your thighs about hip width apart. Start to lean backwards slowly, reaching behind you for your feet. Only go as far as is comfortable. If you can’t reach your feet, you can use a prop until you become more limber. Don’t tilt backwards at your thighs, keep them vertical. Hold this pose for about 30-60 seconds, then come back up slowly and rest.

1. Make a game plan. Set out your schedule and follow it. Try starting with fitness in the morning and ending with the pampering aspects. A sample wellness day could look something like this: 8am Invigorating Cardio, 9am Strength Training, 12noon Healthy Lunch, 1pm Yoga, 2pm Do It Yourself Hand and Foot Massage or Soak, 3pm Do It Yourself Body Scrub or Tub Soak, 4pm Rinse or Shower and Moisturize, 4:30pm Healthy Snack, 5pm Rest and Relax, plan for your next At Home Wellness Day.

2. Fitness. Invigorate your body, get your heart pumping and strengthen and tone muscles with fitness. Pick a fitness class you’ve never tried before or choose one that you know you love but haven’t participated in for a while. Mixing it up can help keep it fresh and new for your mind and your body. Plus, make sure to make your At Home Wellness Day special and different.

3. Incorporate Healthy Meals. Let’s go all the way for this health and wellness day. Make sure to eat healthy too! Skip the fast food and check out your local organic grocer. If you’re not into cooking, you can also plan out your meals or make sure you have healthy take out in mind. Lay off of the refined carbs and stick to lean protein, fresh fruits and vegetables and healthy fats. Salads loaded with vegetables, nuts and seeds are a great way to incorporate many healthy goodies in one meal.

4. Mind Body. Relax, refresh and renew your mind and body! Add in some mind body time. Try a yoga class, pilates mat or even meditation to rejuvenate your mind and completely relax your body. Let the stress leave your body as you breathe, let go and unwind.

5. Body Time. Time to treat your body right! Give yourself a hand and foot massage or soak, book a massage with an at home massage therapist or body treatment or utilize a Jacuzzi and/or steam room. Pamper your body and release toxins to add to your wellness day.

6. Relax. Take a few minutes for you that are specifically for you and are free from noise. Turn your cell phone off and enjoy at least 15 minutes of complete silence without phones, computers or TV. Relaxing without distractions can be beneficial for your mind. You’ll be able to think clearly and focus on yourself.

7. Schedule. Plan your next at home wellness day. To keep up with the benefits from your relaxing day, you’ll need to make sure you continue your regimen. Schedule a health and wellness day at least once a month. Adding it into your planner just as you would a business meeting can help you stick to your plan.

Salutation to the Sun (Surya Namaskara) consists of 12 postures that are used with meditation of the divine power and rhythmic breathing. As the god of health and long life, the Sun is considered the most potent and life-providing force in the planet. The Sun Salutation yoga pose, which is also called Surya Namaskar or Suryanamaskara, helps prevent back pain when combined with mantras and chakra awareness meditation.

In the field of New Age and Metaphysics, the Chakra Energy Centers are popular and very well taught. Chakras, which are an original part of ancient yoga practice, can be your best option in treating pain. With Chakras, you are able to recharge the seven energy centers in your body. That way, you can eliminate the emotional obstacles and open the connection between your mind and body, which is accompanied by breathing techniques, asanas, and yoga mantras. All these are connected in several ways to pain in the neck, shoulders, and back.

What are Chakras, you might be wondering. Used by yoga experts for a long time, chakras are a spiritual and natural system in the body. Chakras enable you to instantly open up to empowerment, happiness, unconditional love, improved health, stress management, and better income for everyday lives.

When you do the Chakra Yoga, you energize your body and mind to heal. An imbalanced lifestyle can be bad for your health, relationships, career, finances, school life, and other concerns. Chakra Yoga focuses on establishing flexibility, strength, and grace while keeping meditation in the practice. Therefore, it is a great complement to traditional Yoga to treat back pain and other injuries.

Dealing with this condition is extremely difficult. Without the cause being known then you have to work through the process and find what is not sanctioned by the medical world. In many cases people all over the world have discovered that some of the most common natural tinnitus remedies are the ones that will work the best for them.

In this case we are looking at yoga for tinnitus. This is one of the lesser known tinnitus remedies that many people have found to be extremely successful. It makes use of the ancient practice of yoga and works with the body to create a better barrier against the onset of tinnitus.

Ultra Relaxation

The basis of yoga is relaxation. When you are practicing yoga you are relaxing the body and the mind and this is where the treatment for tinnitus comes into play. The reason being is that you are settling the parts of the ear that are causing the ringing and that is where you are going to get the relief.

Home Remedy

When you are using yoga for this type of treatment you can do so at home. However, it is best that you spend some time with an instructor to learn the positions that are going to be the most beneficial to you. Over the course of several months you can learn all that you need and then you can use the positions over and over that will be most helpful to you.

Everything about yoga is good, but the best part of yoga is that it is a great stress reliever. If you had a proper exercise and yoga schedule, acne would have been miles away from you. Apart from the physical aspect, what is more important in yoga is that it treats your mental imbalances such as stress, anxiety and deep worries. Remember, yoga is not merely one of those tips. It has to develop as your way of living.

Yoga teaches you to life with an integrated approach. Correct living is yoga. Incorrect living is anti-yoga. The appearance of acne on the face of the teenager, apart from causing physical discomforts, leaves a deep emotional impact. That means, your mind is also disturbed or stressed. You feel bad about yourself.

Cleanliness is the entry point part of the yoga way of life. One, who is suffering from acne, needs to take extra care about this aspect of life. Wash your hands a number of times, so that you provide no ground to the bacteria to enter your body. Use mild soap and water. Always keep the hand and nails away from the face. Don’t you ever try to squeeze the pimples. By doing so, you are providing opportunities for the bacteria to spread. Skin envelops all over, it protects the entire parts of your body, and therefore, deserves excellent nourishment. Cut the unhealthy items from your food, and give it fruits and vegetables.

Even if you have a tough working schedule, give proper rest and recuperation to your body. Take plenty of water for a beautiful skin.

Having done this much, you are laying the foundations for a physically fit body.

Yoga consists of two parts “the physical aspect and the mental aspect.” You need to make a beginning with a few selected exercises. Sun salutations exercise is the most import exercise. In fact, several asanas and postures are intelligently clubbed in this yoga asana. Take proper rest between each asana.

Yoga and meditation are nearly the only types of alternative medicine that require nothing but your body to complete them. Only a little instruction is required in the beginning and you have an asset in your life that will remain with you forever and help you with the various conditions of of ill health that you may have – physical or mental.

Now we shall discuss the effects of yoga and meditation in the treatment of panic attacks and anxiety. Yoga leads to a slow decline in the sympathetic tone of your body as does meditation by decreasing your stresses and tensions. These alone help in a great decrease in your anxiety level and the frequency of panic attacks correspondingly decreases.

The yoga and meditation also have a sort of placebo effect on the patient. As yoga is something that you do yourself, it helps in gain of self confidence. The medication and psychiatric therapy are something that a patient may or may not have confidence in, but when a person goes on to yoga and medication for treatment of panic attacks and anxiety, its usually his own choice and he goes in for it because of that very reason that he believes in yoga and that it will cure him. Hence, the placebo effect.

Thus if you are a patient of anxiety or panic attack, ideally, you should go around and search for the efficacy of yoga and meditation and only when you gain confidence in these techniques that you should go in for these. Otherwise you will not benefit from the major placebo effect of these treatments.

If you are a patient of anxiety, panic attacks, or even general stress and are tired of your medication and their side effects, start learning about yoga and meditation. These alternative therapies will surely help in decreasing your anxiety levels.

1. Exercise

You probably know that you need to exercise, but at the end of a long day it’s hard to find the energy. A study involving over 6800 people in 70 studies found that exercise increased energy and reduced fatigue – and not just in healthy people – people who had cancer and heart disease also benefited with an energy boost. However you have to exert the energy to make it happen. There are three kinds of people in this world, those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who just wander, what happened? Unfortunately, some of my patients fall into the ‘what happened’ category after years of mistreating their body. Your muscles were meant to be exercised, your brain is nourished through stimulation and your energy source is the connection of your mind, body and spirit. I just saw a patient today who had never exercised in her life. She is 54 years OLD, is on 16 medications, has had a recent heart attack, diabetes, depression, and high blood pressure. All this was preventable if she treated her body like the temple it is. Instead she is wondering ‘what happened.’

2. Nutrition

Yoga motivates you to treat your body like a temple for your soul to reside in. If you filled a Mercedes with regular fuel, how would it run? Your body is a first rate machine and needs premium fuel to run at its best. Eating excess fat is like sludge in an engine; it will slow down and stop running. Yoga’s inspirational message helps you treat your body with the respect it deserves and rewards you with more energy.

3. Empower Yourself

Yoga encourages mindfulness so you think before you eat. When this becomes a habit, you lose weight and the practice of self control becomes easier and even enjoyable because you know you are in charge of your health. When you are in charge of your health instead of your health in charge of you, a new found energy rises in your spirit.

4. Relax

Confucius said: “Men do not mirror themselves in running water – they mirror themselves in still water. Only what is still can still the stillness of other things.”

In our super-busy, hectic, often frantic, overworked, overburdened world, we do not take the time to be still. Yoga offers peaceful meditation to help you boost your energy to achieve your goals. So stop and hear yourself breathing. Breathing requires one to breathe in the breath of life – to inspire is to be inspired with the gift of life and possess an extraordinary sense of well being. What a blessing.

5. Get Enough Sleep

Yoga can help alleviate anxiety and help you sleep soundly. A former client of mine, Myra, a hospital dietician and college professor stated she hadn’t slept well in 2 years, but once she practiced my yoga techniques, she finally got a long awaited and well deserved 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

6. Yes You Can

Yoga with meditation teaches gratitude and a positive attitude. A Gratitude attitude has a way of transforming your way of looking and acting in everyday life. Your gratitude speaks volumes about the direction, concerns, and qualities of your life. Yoga unites a feeling of gratitude with a physical connection to wellness in a seamless, effortless way to achieve the desired state of being appreciative while giving thanks for the natural life forces that surrounds us. Connecting with nature instills a sense of wonderment and admiration towards the universe. The more we appreciate nature, the more it rewards us by allowing us to relax, unwind and be spiritually linked to this extraordinary planet earth.

Studies and research conducted in various medical centers indicate yoga can help steady the blood sugar levels in diabetics. Here are some of the yogasanas people with diabetes can try. It is advisable to do these asanas only after consulting your health care specialist.

5 Useful Yoga Postures for Diabetics:

1. Sun Salutation/ Surya Namaskar: Surya Namaskar is offering salutations to the Sun. Sun Salutation has proved very effective for the people who have diabetes. Surya Namaskar follows a series of 12 poses and is effective if you follow and do the exercise correctly.

2. Sarvangasana: This is a shoulder stand-position. This posture involves lifting your legs slowly and keeping them vertical without shaking. Remember to exhale while lifting your legs. Once you attain the final posture, you can breathe in normal pattern. People having high blood pressure and heart disorders should not try this posture.

3. Bhujangasana: This is otherwise known as Cobra pose and is highly beneficial for diabetes treatment. You should lie flat on your stomach keeping your legs straight, feet together, pointing toes and palms placed directly below your shoulders. Now slowly lift your head, neck and abdomen accompanied by breathing with the help of arm support. Stay in this pose for a few seconds holding your breath. Then gradually return to the original position.

4. Dhanurasana or Bow Pose: This asana is beneficial for people with diabetes and the reason is because it helps to improve the functions of the pancreas and intestines. To do Dhanurasana, lie with your stomach on the floor. Bend your legs towards your hip. Now try to reach the hands back and get hold of the ankles. Make sure your arms are straight and your spine assumes an arch shape.

5. Paschimotasana: This is otherwise known as “forward seated bend” and helps to stimulate the functions of pancreas, liver and kidney. Practicing this Asana is very beneficial for diabetics. Extend your legs completely while seated. Now exhale and move forward to touch your toes with your fingers and then your knees with your head. This is one of the most difficult postures, but can be mastered over time with practice.

Ayurveda is treats every health troubles including back trouble in different way and always tries to remove the disease from the root and give life long relief to the patient. Ayurveda uses only natural treatment methods including therapy and the herbs made from the natural resources only. According to Ayurveda, the root of any health relation problem is in the imbalance of five main components of the body. Reading this article with surely give you the way to treat your back trouble and pain at your home an Ayurveda way.

Ayurveda relies on the detoxification principal with natural treatment. Detoxification means to remove the poisonous effects from the patient’s body and give him relief the natural way. Castor oil is very useful in this treatment and detoxification can be easily done with castor oil. Castor oil is also like a god’s bless for those patients who are in initial stage of their back pain trouble or sciatica.

Panchkarma treatment is also suggested by Ayurveda for sciatica disease and it’s effective for back pain trouble also. Natural resources like organic oil, are used to balance those five main components in sufferer’s body. The panchkarma treatments used to treat back pain are Asthavargam, Dhanwantharam and Maharasnadi.

Enema and Basti is also found effective to combat the back ache. In this treatment herbal oils are used to nourish the whole body by oiling bowl and abdominal walls. Basti is the part of enema treatment. With his treatment, your whole body gets toxins free and feces get flushed out of your body. Hence the result will be the relief from back ache.

Aroma therapy (off course an part of Ayurveda) is also found to be useful to treat sciatica and back ache the natural way. The ingredients of Cinnamon, Basil and frangipani henna are also used in aroma therapy to give relief to sufferer’s body.