STOP USING YOUR MIND (eBook)

Get Healthier and Happier in Seven Days Using Meditation and Diet

Celia Ko (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
130 Seiten
10-10-10 Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-77277-568-6 (ISBN)

Live happy and healthy every single day! It is your right to live a happy, healthy, pain-free life. If you are ready to say yes to stepping into your life with renewed energy, Stop Using Your Mind is exactly the book you need. Celia Ko generously shares her simple formula, combining meditation, diet, and yoga, to help you get out of your head and into your life.

Chapter 2

The Way of Meditation

“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life,

live in the moment, live in the breath.”

– Amit Ray

In this chapter, I will set you up to achieve success in your own meditation practice. As you already know, meditation has been life-changing for me. I know, with some dedication, it can do the same for you.

To begin your work, I’d like you to close your eyes once you’ve finished reading these instructions. When you do, open your mouth and exhale until you feel that you have nothing left to exhale. Then take one long, slow inhale and feel your breath moving all the way to your dantian. Remember that this is the place just below your navel.

Repeat this process 2 more times and, as you do, make a commitment to yourself. Commit to learning. Commit to growing. Commit to taking your health seriously. Commit to living a life of happiness!

A Healthy Smile

My husband and I regularly run a meditation class. One of the exercises we often do with our students is to take photos of their faces as they are meditating. This sounds strange, right? You might be wondering why we do this. Well, the answer is simple: Your face affects your mood. We want people to look at their facial expression while they are meditating because it is often very revealing. Most of our students have no idea they look the way they do. I often hear things like:

“I had no idea I look so angry.”

Or,

“I look so sad.”

Did you notice my face on the cover of this book? I didn’t put it there to be vain or because I think I look nice. I put it there for two very specific reasons:

For you to feel the energy of meditation. There is a sense of calm in my posture that walks out of my meditation practice with me and into my daily life. This is what I want for you too.

My smile. Yes, your facial expression is very important!

There have been scientific studies that prove that when you smile you do feel happier. According to Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos: “In our research, we found that when you forcefully practice smiling, it stimulates the amygdala, which releases neurotransmitters to encourage an emotionally positive state.”

I’m not saying you should pretend to be happy, or mask signs of depression or severe mental health issues. I’m not even saying you should suppress negative emotions by always having a smile on your face. What I am saying is that when you meditate, bring some awareness to your facial expression. Allow yourself to replace whatever is there with a soft smile, and see how it affects your mood in the moment.

If you find that this feels good to you, try smiling once in a while throughout your day. See how this feels. Does it help lift your mood? Does it help you find calm in moments when you need to slow your racing thoughts. Give it a try! If not anywhere else, do it in your meditation practice.

The Benefits of Meditation

Now that you are smiling and your spirit is ready, let’s look a little closer at what we know meditation can do:

• Reduce stress

• Control anxiety

• Promote emotional health

• Increase self-awareness

• Improve concentration

• Slow aging

Wow! Don’t all of these things sound amazing? Maybe it sounds too good to be true. Trust me, I have lived through some very stressful situations, as I shared with you in the first chapter, and have experienced much anxiety in my life; but since beginning my journey through meditation, I have learned how to control my own anxiety. I have increased my own self-awareness around what triggers me to feel angry, sad, worried, or stressed, and I have a greater ability to manage my emotions in these situations.

Life is stressful, but you can manage your response to it by learning how to focus on your breath rather than getting stuck living in your worried thoughts. With this sense of calm, you can reduce your negative responses to the stress and in turn bring more calm to your life.

By developing your ability to control your thoughts, effectively allowing you to stop living in them, you give yourself the gift of greater concentration as well. This is something I know our students feel great about. I work a lot with the older adult population and have heard often from my students how much more focus they have throughout the day, giving them a greater sense of accomplishment.

In our world, especially in the Western culture, many feel that life is over in the later years. You can’t try anything new, in the same ways you did when you were younger. This is simply not true. When you have strong emotional health and an ability to focus on your goals, you can accomplish great things. Meditation has helped me learn this. And I think it is this belief, along with the great physical benefits of meditation, that has also helped me look at least 5 years younger than I did before I started meditating.

It is the truth! Looking younger has nothing to do with fancy creams or the latest beauty craze; it comes from within. When you feel younger, you look younger. When your organs are living in balance and working in harmony, it shows in your external appearance—not only in the reduction of wrinkles but also the way in which you walk out into the world. You walk with the strength and confidence of someone who has learned how to achieve balance within themselves.

Think about it this way: When you are tired, you walk differently than you do when you have energy. When your mind is clear of worry, you hold your head higher. You make eye contact with more ease. In a way, you physically, mentally, and emotionally say yes to living life in the moment—to being present. This way of being is noticeable in your physical presence.

As you continue to read this book, try bringing more awareness to your physical presence, in the same way that you are doing with your facial expression. How do you walk into the world? Do you hold your head high? Does your back feel slouched? Do your shoulders hold a lot of tension? You can write your reflections in a journal. That way, you can see you progress as you become more successful in your daily meditations.

There are so many benefits to meditating. I know from myself and my students that one of the big ones is sleeping through the night. When you sleep well, you feel better in every single aspect of your life.

Another benefit is having better circulation. I know a lot of people, as they age, complain more of having cold feet and cold hands. As you improve the flow of your chi, you will notice better circulation throughout your body, allowing your blood to warm up your cold extremities.

As you develop your own practice, you will begin to see these benefits within your own body and notice how they impact your overall health. You will feel younger, look younger, and have so much more energy!

Balancing Your Organs

One of the things that meditation does to help you look and feel better is to balance your organs. As a concept, the idea of balancing your organs might not be one that you’ve ever thought of before. It is one that is so important. All of your organs have an impact, not only on your emotional health but also on your physical and spiritual health.

Many people love to see fortune tellers to predict their futures and their entire lives. As for the Chinese, people love to read the yearly prediction book in relationship with their birth year, which in China has 12 zodiac elements according to the year of their birth.

For me, neither of these things are as important as the future your organs predict for you. I tell a lot of my friends that your future is your internal organs, which are your heart, liver, spleen, lungs and kidneys. If you have very healthy internal organs, that means you can eat, you can sleep, and you don’t have any problems with your digestive system and your metabolism, which is the chemical reactions in the body’s cells that change food into energy. Your body needs this energy to do everything from moving, to thinking, to growing.

Let’s take a closer look at how we can live a healthier life by first balancing your five organs. Chinese medicine recognizes five elements:

• Fire

• Earth

• Metal

• Water

• Wood

These five elements are dynamic; they are always shifting and changing. Each element is connected to specific organs and emotions.

For example, wood is connected to both the liver and the gallbladder. The emotions that are associated with wood are anger, assertiveness, and kindness. If your anger is out of control, you can weaken your liver. Remember that everything is connected and shifting. You have the ability to shift yourself out of this state by recognizing it, understanding it, and moving beyond it.

The theories that have been developed regarding the five elements and how they interact within our bodies and our lives can be quite intricate. For the purpose of our work together, I am going to keep things simple. My goal for you is to be able to begin working within this concept right away, and to seek out more resources once you feel you have grasped what we do here...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	19.6.2023
Vorwort	Raymond Author
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Esoterik / Spiritualität
ISBN-10	1-77277-568-1 / 1772775681
ISBN-13	978-1-77277-568-6 / 9781772775686

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