Posts Tagged ‘relaxation’

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May is Meditation Month and it’s exciting to see this form of mind body spirit holistic healing given the credence and attention it deserves. The act of meditation is one of the most rewarding gifts you can give to yourself, yet for many, the concept is daunting. There are those who enter into meditative practices that evolve into an entire lifestyle, but for those who have never tried to meditate, the idea of sitting in a very uncomfortable position in complete silence is enough to discourage even the slightest attempt.

If you are looking to adopt a meditation practice, begin by disregarding any preconceived notions of how you think a meditation practice should operate. The key to a successful meditation practice, is to create a practice that feels right for you.

One of the easiest ways to do this, is to adopt a simple ten minute meditation.

Ten Minute Bliss Breaks

Create a set time that will become your ten minute meditation time. Perhaps you’ll wake early before the rest of your household to have those quiet ten minutes each day, or during your lunch hour outside in a park. Many people prefer to meditate in the evening to relax after a busy day and to open their mind to a deeper dream state. Crucial in any meditation practice, is the breath. Regardless of whether you wish to spend ten minutes in meditation or ten hours, slow deep methodical breathing will relax the body and bring in oxygen to both the lungs and blood stream. It will also help to retain focus and awareness.

When beginning a new meditation practice, you may find that when you take those ten minutes, that it proves to be too difficult to simply relax and think of nothing. Do not feel concerned, this is your practice and you can create a meditation practice which is right for you at this time. You will find that it will evolve over time as you continue the practice and in the beginning, even slow relaxed breathing is good for the body and will relax you.

Guided Meditations

For many people, guided meditations are a wonderful way to meditate. You can listen to the meditation on CD or on your iPod playing it in your home, car, or with headphones anywhere you are. Simply choose the meditation that appeals to you and enter the journey that the guided meditation provides with a guide and relaxing music. Guided meditations allow your mind to focus on particular images, allowing for creative visualization. As a teacher of the ancient wisdom teachings, I created a trilogy of sacred site guided meditations intended to guide the listener on a journey through nature, along with providing the opportunity to interact with guides and receive messages from the higher self.

The sacred site trilogy begins with the Spirit of Hawaii, Egyptian Mystery Temple and culminates with the Tibetan Mountain Journey.  Each meditation runs for over 30 minutes and a sample of each of these meditations can be heard here on the Explore Your Spirit website.

Powerful Stress Relieving Creative Visualizations

If your day is full and you don’t have time for a guided meditation, create a sacred space for yourself that you can return to often. As you begin your meditation, picture a peaceful scene which you find relaxing. Perhaps it’s the beach or a mountaintop or a lush garden. Build the scene in your mind, adding beautiful details.

If you find a garden to be calming, create a bench where you will sit in the garden. See the trees and the cascade of flowers blooming in a multitude of color. Listen for the sound of birds chirping, along with the soft breeze blowing through the trees. Tilt your head back and feel the warmth of the sun on your face.. Breathe in slow and deep and exhale fully, releasing the air from deep within. Take your shoes off and sink your feet deep into the soft grass, flexing your toes. As you breathe in again deeply, smell the flowers as their scent fills the garden. Now if you wish, you can release whatever is troubling you. You may choose to ask that a guide or friend come to sit with you on the bench who will listen to you as you share your thoughts and concerns. You might create a lake around the garden or a waterfall, and as you swim, you release the cares and they float away. Perhaps a pet from your childhood joins you in the garden and you spend time with them, petting and playing with them, forgetting your cares of the day.

Continue building this garden in great detail each day during your ten minute meditation and visualization until you can see it fully in your mind and know it well. Then claim this scene as your sacred space. Know that you can return there anytime, all you need to do is to sit quietly, breathe deeply and imagine this scene in your mind. In this space, you can relax and spend a few minutes there every day.

This act of active meditation can become a profound spiritual practice that can make a significant impact on your day and create a sense of relaxation and well-being.

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Join Kala in July 2010 as she teaches at the prestigious
Omega Institute for a weekend workshop entitled:
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More about Kala Ambrose: Kala Ambrose is an award winning author, intuitive and talk show host of the Explore Your Spirit with Kala Show. Her thought-provoking interviews entice listeners to tune in around the globe! Described by her guests and listeners as discerning, empowering and inspiring, she speaks with world renowned authors, artists, teachers and researchers delving into metaphysical, holistic and paranormal topics. Kala’s book, 9 Life Altering Lessons: Secrets of the Mystery Schools Unveiled delves into the mysteries of ancient Egyptian mystery schools and explains their wisdom teachings. Kala’s Guided Meditations CD’s include a sacred site trilogy including Spirit of Hawaii, Egyptian Mystery Temple and Tibetan Mountain Journey. Kala lectures on Wisdom Teachings, Developing Business Intuition, Working with Auras, Chakras and Energy Fields, and Wise Woman Wisdom (also known as the Divine Feminine).

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Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Robert Butera, author of The Pure Heart of Yoga: Ten Essentials Steps for Personal Transformation Robert has studied meditation and yoga for over twenty-five years and is the founder of the YogaLife Institute in Devon, Pennsylvania, where he trains yoga instructors and publishes Yoga Living magazine.

Kala: Robert, thanks for taking the time to sit down with me for this interview. I enjoyed reading your book as it shares the philosophy that I’ve always aligned with, which I describe as the ‘essence of yoga’. You describe it as the ‘pure heart of yoga’. Can you define what yoga means to you?

Robert: Yoga is the spiritually infused life. Yoga is a path to a viribrant life and Yoga embraces all paths that lead to harmony of mind, body, spirit and environment. One classical definition of Yoga from The Yoga Sutras is that Yoga means cessation of the mind’s waves. (Yoga citta vritti nirodha). Thinking of Yoga in terms of the mind’s waves can be a good barometer regarding if an activity is yoga or not – simply ask yourself if that activity calms the waves of your mind. I am writing this with a smile, mind you!

Kala: In some parts of the US, yoga has become completely mainstream, and in other places, it is still being steadily introduced into communities. For beginners, who are just exploring the idea of yoga and are preparing to take their first class, what advice can you give to beginners?

Robert: Firstly, remember that each and every experience you have can be a source of learning. Finding your perfect style of yoga or the best teacher for you requires some investigation. So, learn from all classes and recognize that finding your perfect situation may take time as there is great variety amongst all the styles of yoga. If your first class is not a fit, remember to try another teacher as there is alot of variety. Be careful of absolutes. There are many physical body types and therefore many ways of doing yoga poses. Non-violence is a cardinal virture in yoga so make sure not to overdo anything or to stretch too far. At the start, read a few books to gain some perspective. In a beginner’s yoga class learn the breathing as it is noted as the top benefit for new students; relaxation is usually second and the interesting philosophy follows. Physical flexibility is often ranked fourth as a benefit to new students, while most think that flexibility would have been the first conclusion.

Kala: In your book, you share 30 main poses, what they represent and how to use them as tools to achieve physical and emotional balance. Can you discuss a few of these poses with us and how they help to create balance within the person?

Robert: As the book states, I recommend that everyone finds a teacher to meet at least once per week to avoid any mistakes. Then, perform a few minutes of a deep breathing exercises in a quiet place. Next, try a group of poses that move your spine in each of 5 directions; a reaching pose to elongate your spine; a twist to release tension; a sidebend for flexibility as the body rarely moves sideways; a forward bend to release stress and a back bend for energy. These exercise can be performed right at your desk during a short break during your workday. The final exercise for the busy person is to maintain the “Smile Pose” and attempt to navigate through the ups and downs of life realizing that the inner state of your mind is the ultimate pose!

Kala: The western world has a bad habit of taking an ancient philosophy and connecting to only a small part of the whole, in an attempt to bypass the full lengthy process and get quick results. For example, I studied Feng Shui for years, at first I studied the western version and I felt it was missing something at the core. I then studied traditional feng shui with two masters, one from China and one from Hong Kong. One of the masters referred to the western version as the McDonald’s version (fast food) of feng shui. I’ve seen this with some yoga practices as well, where it’s touted as exercise and skips over the core of yoga. What are your thoughts about yoga and how it’s practiced here in the west?

Robert: Well, Kala, you have hit a big issue that is a tough one. I went through a big let down in 1989 fresh off of the Yoga Ashram in India (theyogainstitute.org) when a friend gave me a popular yoga magazine. At the Ashram, men and women had separate dormitories, I wasn’t allowed to wear short pants… and the Yoga magazine had a scantly clothed model in a revealing posture on the cover. A point to remember is that the jewels of discovery are within yourself and not in the form of the body but in its essence. Many years have passed and one of my mentors mentioned the concentric circle approach to transformation. Whatever each one of us knows about life and reality can be honored. And however broad our knowledge, we can draw a larger circle around our present state. So, leave open the possibility to learn something new. What you know at this point can be honored and maintained as you circle your present experience with something new. Suffice to say, there is usually much room for authentic yogic wisdom to shine forth.

Ironically, when you learn the theory of yoga in more depth, the mind becomes more focused. This focus quiets the nervous system and actually improves the physical experience of life as well as the spiritual experience.

Kala: Describe for us what you call the body’s Energy Centers and how we can connect with these centers through a yoga practice…

Robert: These days most people have a fascination with the “Chakras” or energy centers in the body. Chakra means ‘wheel’ and in this case relates to a wheels of energy that converge at different areas in the body. The heart chakra is most easily perceived; a loving interaction brings warmth to the heart and sadness brings a constricted or cold feeling. After one performs the yoga poses for six months and understands how to breath and align the body in the poses, understanding the chakras helps go deeper in the poses. This is simply one area of discovery on the inner journey with yoga poses.

Kala: You mention 10 Steps that transcend yoga and connect it with spiritual and emotional growth. Share some of these steps with us…

Robert: Beginning with a spiritual Intention for your yoga practice is an important first step. Start with your first motive even if it feels shallow, say weight loss was your first reason for starting yoga. Then, go beneath that and align weight loss to improved health. Take your nutritional choices and align those with received love in your heart… pretty soon, you have moved into an intention on love that is at the core of weight loss. Another interesting approach is to try to gain an understanding of the attitude of a posture. Inherent in each posture is an expression of an attitude. Yoga poses also relate to archetypes whch is an interesting exploration. There are also the energy centers, concentration points and emotional transformation. The recommendation is to discover one new aspect of yoga poses at a time. If you are a beginner, stick with the alignment and breathing. And as your practice grows, explore the other areas one at a time.

Kala: I view yoga as a way of ‘being’, rather than as some people say that they, ‘take a yoga class’. For example, when I say I’m a dancer, it’s part of my essence and spirit, how often I dance is almost irrelevant, I am a dancer at heart. To me, yoga is the same, one lives and embraces yoga. What are your thoughts?

Robert: My original teachers say that yoga is a culture of consciousness. Yoga studies physical health in great detail as we have been discussing. What few people know is that Yoga also discusses how to work at your job and turn work into Yoga. There are equally detailed teachings on relationships, meditation, psychology, higher knowledge and practically every field of living. So, yes, any activity that is taken to its depth penetrates a person’s consciousness and is a “yoga.”

Kala: Let’s talk about yoga and meditation. Many people picture meditation as sitting in an uncomfortable position for an hour while trying to stop their mind from wandering. Each pose in yoga can be an active, moving meditation. Can you discuss the yoga poses in regards to what they can do for the mind body and spirit?

Robert: Refering back to the definition of Yoga as stilling the waves of the mind; each yoga pose can lead to stilling the mind. A lot of folks ask if stilling the mind is boring, they ask in passionate ways, “Bob, am I supposed to turn into an android?” Ironically, a clear mind is one that loves deeply, it’s a mind that is free of negativity and limiting thoughts. A quiet mind is able to laugh loudly and feel passionately.

Kala: Robert, where does yoga take us next? What do you see as the evolution of yoga?

Robert: I am seeing the maturation of yoga in terms of an increasing interest in all the points that this interview asks, what is further? How can I go deeper in my life? How can I love more, how can I be stress-free in my life? As those who take the time to improve their health physically begin to experience the joy of having a balanced mind, more and more people will look into the theory of yoga. Just as you are helping people access this information, I am seeing an interest in meditation and activities that quiet the mind! Thank You for spreading this information!

Kala: My pleasure Robert and a pleasure to speak with you, thanks for your time. More info on Robert and his book can be found at: PureHeartofYoga.com

Robert: Yes, Thank You Kala, it is always a treat to discuss the essence of Yoga.

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