Meditation: Fruit for the Soul

Meditation simply means taking a break from your busy daily life, hectic job, worries and concerns. It means turning off your mobile phone, letting your computer and your e-mails wait for a minute and giving yourself some time. We are such an action-oriented society that it is extremely important to relax as we are becoming more aware of ourselves.

Meditation can show you where you are holding tension and teach you to find your center. This can dramatically improve your health and align your intentions, and l make you a creator of life instead of a recipient of whatever comes your way. If you cannot relax your body and mind, then you may have problems with health, finances, relationships or all three. Recent research has shown that meditating once a day for 10-15 minutes can reduce stress and bring calmness in life.
More and more doctors are prescribing meditation as a way to lower blood pressure, improve exercise performance in people with angina, help people with asthma breathe easier, relieve insomnia and generally relax the everyday stresses of life. Meditation is a safe and simple way to balance a person’s physical, emotional, and mental states. It is simple; but can benefit everybody.

Make meditation part of your daily life and nurture self-respect. With meditation, we give the attention a target that keeps us anchored in the present moment. The target can be a physical object, or more commonly, the breath. We give the mind something consistent to focus on and this becomes the object of the meditation, Here are three easy tips to get you started with meditation.
Choose a Place to Meditate
First of all, choose special place in your house. It can be a corner or a room or you can meditate outside in fresh air. If you like, you can furnish that area with special objects that have a spiritual meaning for you. But the important thing is that the place where you do meditation is quiet. There should not be any disturbance. Tell people around you that this is the place where you spend time with yourself, so that there is no one to interrupt your quietness.

To get better results, and enhance your meditation, you can consciously choose the pleasant fragrances that are relaxing, balancing and nourishing. You can use smells like lavender, juniper or geranium in your room. Oils like chamomile, vanilla, jasmine, mandarin and neroli have calming, grounding and cooling effects. You can choose to meditate in the lap of nature. For example you might have a place near a beach or in the woods where you can be quiet and undisturbed and really enjoy nature together with your meditation. Great experiences can be achieved when you meditate in nature.

Correct Position While You Meditate
The classic posture is to sit with legs folded and hands resting quietly in the lap or on your knees. But for an effective meditation, you need to find your own posture, the pose in which you feel comfortable and relaxing. If your pose is not comfortable enough the body will start aching and you won’t be able to concentrate and carry on with the meditation. On the other hand if the posture is too comfortable chances are that you will fall asleep. Thus, there is a strong need to look at the the balance between the two.
Work out which posture is best for you. You might choose to sit in a chair, with legs crossed or sit on the floor or walk around gently in a room. It is up to you, try a few different postures and see which one gives you best result.
Eyes - Open or Closed?
Whether to keep eyes open or close them is again a question of suitability. Some people say that one should close eyes while some others think that meditate with your eyes open. You do the way what gives you the best results. Generally people, who keep their eyes closed have great meditation. A few others fall asleep with eyes closed. 

So if you keep your eyes closed make sure that you sit in an alert position. The same goes for when you open your eyes to do your meditation, you may keep looking here and there. So it is all about concentrating, no matter whether your keep eyes open or closed.

I will discuss more tips in coming articles

REFRESH UR MIND

Mind is most powerful and precious tool, which has to be kept in proper shape. We live through our mind in this world. All possessions and assets are meaningless if we don’t posses a healthy mind. Healthy mind in a healthy body is required for a satisfying and happy life. Mind is like an old horse which has to be exercised if we want it to work in order, recommends John Adams. Mind has to be kept afresh otherwise it will not function properly.

People do exercise like aerobics, yoga, jogging, swimming etc. .People in this busy world have got inspired and have realized to keep their body fit through external agents like VLCC an swami Ram dev. They spend thousand of bucks in slimming centers going there in the early morning or even in late evenings. They buy expensive “ low cal “ food, buy expensive equipments to keep their body in shape and look beautiful and presentable. But very little effort is put in looking after their mental faculties. They never care to know that their mental health has strong effect on our physical health.

We human beings are generally assured that our mental powers are always best. We think that our mind is always right. We are presumptuous about our wisdom that we never think of improving and reconsidering our own mental powers. Each human mind has a unique way of perceiving things. Everyone develops his/her own way of looking at things. And develop perception about it. This process starts from childhood. When we grow up, our mind gets a filter. It sees things and allow the things only which conform to our way of thinking which we have developed over the years. We don’t accept new ideas and thoughts, which are not in the conformity with our existing mental faculties. Our mind is dominated by many things like:
Ego: It does not allow us to acknowledge positive points of others. We generally try to find faults in others because of this ego.

Fear: It threatens our mind that if we are not going to be accepted in the world , then our power to think rationally may be lost.

Insecurity: We feel insecured that new ideas may have negative changes in our lives.

Hesitant to accept changes: Our mind hesitates to accept challenges thinking of being failed at some time.

Lack of courage: We are happy as the things are going on. We lack courage to try out new ideas thinking of their consequences.

Fear of being unsuccessful: Our mind lacks confidence and thus always has a fear of being unsuccessful. This lack of confidence is because we have a close mind.

Negative thinking: Most of the negative thinkers generally find faults in others. They criticize others and find almost everything boring. They don’t admire other people and thus, they themselves decay.

All above said, are the ways which don’t allow human beings to be open minded, clear-headed and successful. Positive orientation and zest for happy life is utmost important. For this we need to have a refreshed mind, which not only fills our life with hope and happiness but also enthusiasm.

Keep in mind following points to have a refreshed and healthy mind-

Take care of your mind as you look after your body, home, property, business and other assets. The secret of self victory is open-mindedness
Keep aside emotions like ego, fear, negative attitude towards new thoughts and ideas.
Expose yourself to new ideas and thoughts, people and places.
Read good and encouraging books.
Develop writing habit. It will help you to go deeper and have clear understanding. Writing will challenge your mental faculties to think more and more.
Accept positive points of others and learn to accept faults in your own self.Never conceited enough to think that you need no improvement.