The Benefits of Meditation
What is meditation?
It is any technique that develops your Awareness to see each thing as it truly is while appreciating the perfection of life as it unfolds. It is also the awareness of being aware. While thoughts can take you in the past and into the future, Awareness is the only medium that takes you into the ‘now’. If you are truly meditating, you are in the present moment.
How can meditation benefit me?
Stress, anxiety, fear, low self esteem, agitation and emotional, physical and mental imbalances dissolve through the regular practice of meditation. Committing to a technique and practicing it at least 20 minutes daily builds your power of awareness and sensitivity to your well being. Daily observation of your mind and thought patterns trains you to become the master over your mind.
How can I learn to meditate?
Take a course and learn it directly from a teacher who is an experienced meditator to receive the depth of what meditation is. We suggest that you practice it weekly in group settings and in your own home daily.
The Benefits of Yoga
What is yoga?
Yoga is the practice which unites body with spirit to experience peace, the united state of consciousness. A yogi is one who practices yoga and any spiritual activity.
How will yoga make me feel?
Your energy will flow freely. With a structurally aligned body, you will experience full flexibility, joint mobility, strength and muscle tone. You will feel light, buoyant and confident of your physical endurance ability.
What happens if I dont practice yoga?
When we hold ourselves in a way that hinders the natural flow, ignoring our body signals to keep moving, calcium will build up in a joint. Lack of movement tightens muscles and eventually disconnects the nerve pathways to the muscle to maintain natural tonal length. When the energy flow gets blocked, disease is the result. For example, if you are working at a computer for hours a day for years on end, you are forced to ignore the bodies signals to move and stretch, breath deeply and develop muscle tone. When these signals are ignored over a period of time, the flow backs up and starts to sit in the joints. This creates diseases such as arthritis, fibromyalgia, lower back disc issues and frozen shoulder syndrome to name a few.
How do I start practicing yoga?
Firstly, begin with where you are now. If you are a person who has been injured or have little range of movement, it is best to start with a mild form of yoga designed for your present condition. When your condition improves, you can move on to a higher demanding yoga level and style.
The Benefits of a Natural Healthy Diet
What is a natural healthy diet?
Remember the saying, "You are what you eat"? A natural diet makes you feel light and energetic, promoting easy digestion and excretion, exuding health and vibrancy. Natural foods are greens, fruits and whole grains that are live, raw, organic, whole and unprocessed. To prevent future disease and heal presently occurring diseases, it is recommended to do periodic juice fasts. A simple natural diet lifestyle creates simple clear thinking.
What happens when we dont eat high quality foods?
Today, disorders of the digestive system are pandemic. Chemicals and processed foods lack the nutrients for creating health and hinder the body’s natural ability to heal and grow healthy. The body is always working to maintain balance of health by removing toxins. We hinder the body’s natural flow towards health and healing when we eat but we’re not hungry, or for the sake of taste, emotional security, social expectations, and unconsciousness. When the body gets overwhelmed and over taxed with all the cleaning, it breaks down from the burden
How can I improve my diet?
Eat only when you are hungry.
Introduce more fresh vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts and beans.
Learn to appreciate the pure taste of whole foods.
Keep the company of people who eat a natural healthy diet.
Observe and listen to your body’s needs.
Get informed about other diets: the transitional diet, vegetarianism, vegan diet, and the live food diet.
The Benefits of Chanting
What are Chants?
Traditionally, they are the singing of sacred mantras or phrases to facilitate a higher vibration within the energy system to remove the mind of unwanted thoughts.
How does chanting benefit us?
Through repetition, the mind becomes focused and we become fully present in the moment. Chanting attunes our energy systems and this enables us deepen our presence to ourselves and others.
How do I learn how to chant and how often?
Find a teacher or a group who chant regularly. Join in weekly chanting sessions. You can choose to practice the chants before your daily meditation. This will help you go into a deeper meditation sooner.
The Benefits of Mind Clearing
What is an unconditioned mind?
As we grow through life, we develop many unconscious patterns and behaviors that can hinder our ability to live life fully. An unconditioned mind is a fully awake conscious mind.
What is the value of an unconditioned mind?
The actual Truth and our colored perception of reality are often very different. An open unconditioned mind allows a participant to experience that which really is.
How does one become free of a conditioned mind?
It starts with disillusionment with the conditioned mind because it has not delivered happiness. Disillusionment creates a vacancy for a new power to grow that develops the ability to look inward in a committed way. The more you get established in the Observation role, the more you detach yourself from your mind.
Where can I go for help to clear my mind?
Friends and family generally will not allow you to complete your communications nor will they fully hear you out because they have their own agenda and will often interfere with your clearing process. Find a trained Mind Clearing therapist (some counselors and psychotherapists may also be helpful) to deal directly with your subconscious. If you cannot afford a professional Mind clearer or other therapist, join a dyad group
The benefits of Good Company
What’s the importance of good company?
No man is an island. Although we may have heard about yogis living in caves by themselves meditating for years to attain enlightenment, this path is not necessary for spiritual progress. As a matter of fact, spiritual growth happens best when we are communicating with others, learning how to relate in relationships to raise our consciousness to higher levels of awareness. Spiritual company supports us in our own practice as they become reflections for us to see the truth about ourselves.
How do I create my circle of spiritual company?
Firstly, you turn yourself into good company through your own spiritual practice and intention. As your own vibrations increase in frequency, you’ll demand a higher standard of company to interact with. Friends and associates who cannot rise to your standard will naturally fall away. Others who vibrate at your frequency will start to be attracted to you and you towards them. Participating in classes and workshops or gatherings where other like minds go is a great place to meet your spiritual company.
The Benefits of the Healing Arts
What are the healing arts?
Anything from body oil massage, chiropractic adjustments, Thai yoga massage, acupuncture, natural herbal medicine, reiki, to energy therapy.
Why is it important for spiritual growth?
These practices can assist in fine tuning the body vehicle and energy field to assist in allowing energy to flow freely in the body. Free flowing energy allows for spiritual growth.
The Benefits of Retreats
What is a retreat?
A structured exclusive setting (generally in the country) where basic food and accommodations are cared for by the facility to give the participant the time to reflect, contemplate, recuperate and rest. Often participants are expected to participate in a particular practice or technique led by the facilitator of the retreat.
What’s the value of doing a retreat?
Retreats give a person the opportunity to be transformed in their perspective of life, to emerge with renewed energy, to experience the excitement of new future possibilities resulting from the inner shift in consciousness.
What kind of retreat should I do and how often?
There are retreats in yoga, meditation, relationship work, enlightenment technique, energy healing and more. If you are new at this, try a retreat that gives you a taste of a variety of practices. When you’ve discovered the style of practice that suits you, it is suggested that you do a retreat that focuses on one technique so that you can experience the purity that is inherent in that practice. The most profound experiences to be had on retreats are when you’re ready to surrender into the technique being practiced and you give everything you’ve got, moving through all resistances, to complete the duration of the retreat.
It is recommended to do at least one long retreat a year (7 days to a month). If your time and finances allow more, then do another 3 shorter retreats (minimum 3 days long) in the year.
The Benefits of Nature
How are we interconnected with Nature?
Nature supports all life. Without nature, we cannot breathe or eat.
How does connecting with nature benefit me spiritually?
Today we are forgetting the power of nature to ground us. Our minds spend hours each day living in virtual experiences such as television, computers, and other communication devices. This leads to a sense of emptiness or disconnectedness because our bodies are no longer touching and acknowledging the realness of the earth that made us. We are body beings; we need to be grounded by playing in the earth. Interacting with the Earth activates our feminine expression while computers and such devices activate our masculine side. We have lost this balance of masculine and feminine. Spending quality time in nature will unite us with our whole being quicker than any technique or practice because it is the Wholeness itself, it is Spirit itself.
The Benefits of Service
What is Karma yoga?
Performing simple tasks while not identifying oneself as the doer and holding focus on the task at hand in the moment. The objective is to experience oneself as an instrument of Universal Will. While serving, one is receiving immediate benefits by experiencing the state of peace of being ‘in the moment’.
What can I do to serve?
Look around your community and assess how and where you can volunteer your services that trains you to be in the ‘now’.