"The human body is the best picture of the human soul." Ludwig Wittgenstein
This exercise focuses on breathing. "Peaceful breathing pattern leads to a peaceful mind. Still the breath and you still the mind." (Dacher, 2006). Ahh sounds so easy, but will take lots of time to master. lol I liked this exercise better. I felt more at ease. I did lose my focus many times, but with practice it will get better. I look forward to learning how to stabilize my mind so that there is total peace and serenity. I feel that this is the exercise that will help me to do that. The loving-kindness exercise has you using your mind to think of a loved one that you have lots of affection and love for. This exercise uses the mind while the subtle mind exercise concentrates on your breathing and not using your mind at all.
It is important to strive for increased wellness not only in the physical dimension, but more importantly in the spiritual dimension. Our health and spiritual wellness dimension is essentially the depth of ourselves. Not only does it refer to our values, our beliefs and our commitments that are at the very core of our being, our spirituality defines our personal code, which governs our emotional wellness and stability and ultimately how we approach and manage life's challenges.
It requires time, careful attention and a commitment to undertaking a health journey to total wellness. Unless it is nourished and exercised regularly, your spiritual wellness will not be able to support you when you need it most. It is important to have a healthy spiritual body in order to be strong mentally and physically.
I felt like I could focus more on the other exercise and free from a lot of the emotion I had been holding inside. I know that breathing is a great exercise, especially at a time of extreme stress and anxiety. I have been harvesting emotions towards other people that I needed to get rid of and it worked and I am going to do the loving kindness exercise to my daily routine.
ReplyDeleteI too encountered difficulties focusing on the subtle mind practice and had to stop the practice to relax my mind.
ReplyDeleteI did a 30 minutes meditation (as a warm-up exercise) to clear my thoughts of negative emotions. It isn't always easy to show loving-kindness even to those who are close and dear to you. It is human nature (weakness) to focus on negativity in our life and we must learn to let go and forgive others in order to achieve human flourishing - integral health, happiness, and wholeness.
I intend to practice both the subtle mind and loving-kindness practices more in my daily routine. I realize that I am carrying too many baggages from the past and need to let go of them all.