How to Achieve Deep Physical Relaxation With the Sandbag Technique

Sleeping womanThe state of your physical body can have a significant effect on the level of mental relaxation you are able to achieve. If you’re experiencing pain in your body, it can be difficult to focus on anything else and can truly hamper the personal growth process.

Fortunately, the mind can be used as a tool to create a feeling of relaxation in the physical body. In turn, relaxing your body frees you to use your mind more efficiently to affect positive changes in your life.

Sometimes it is helpful to check in with your physical self and take note of how you are feeling. You may not even realize certain areas are tense until you bring your attention there. This technique is designed to help you pinpoint areas of tension and release the stress from those areas until your whole body feels deeply relaxed.

The Sand Bag Technique

Find a comfortable resting position in a place where you are not likely to be disturbed. Feel free to lie on the bed or floor, or to sit upright or recline in a chair.

After reading the rest of these instructions, you should …Read more about the Sandbag Technique for deep relaxation

Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke of insight

In this powerfully moving video, brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor recounts what it felt like to have massive stroke. She describes with intense passion the experience of watching her brain functions shut down one by one, losing speech and motor functions, and ultimately losing self-awareness, culminating in a feeling of oneness with everything.

A Simple Technique to Help You Sleep Better

Sleeping womanWe’re always on the lookout for practical methods to help people get a night of deep, restful sleep. When an easy technique accomplishes that much and also improves mental and emotional health at the same time, it’s definitely worth sharing.

This technique takes very little time, can be done while lying in bed before falling asleep, and will work for just about everyone.

The Daily Rewind Technique

A Daily Rewind is a swift and painless way to clear all the clutter out of your mind in preparation for sleep and dreaming. The technique simply involves a …Continue reading about this easy technique to help you sleep

Light/Dark Visualization for Relaxation or Meditation

This easy visualization technique can be quite helpful and refreshing when you are having trouble sleeping, feeling overly stressed, or feeling ill or fatigued. You can use this technique indoors or outdoors.

Woman relaxing outdoors1. Get into a comfortable position. You can do this technique while lying in bed or on the floor or while reclined in a comfortable chair, wherever you are most comfortable.

2. Close your eyes.

3. As you lie there, visualize your body, wherever it is that you are at this moment. See yourself lying there on the bed or sitting in your chair.

4. Imagine your entire body is …Read more about the Light-Dark Visualization for relaxation

Everyday Meditation For People Who Don’t Like to Meditate

When most people think about meditation, they think of sitting cross-legged on the floor and trying to empty all the thoughts from their mind. Or they think of Tibetan monks chanting mantras in temples far away. While it’s true those are forms of meditation, they aren’t the only ways to meditate.

Spirograph 1Unfortunately, many people never realize meditation doesn’t have to be quite so complicated. They give up because sitting in the lotus position is too uncomfortable or because they can’t stop the constant stream of thoughts going through their mind or for any number of other very legitimate reasons. They miss out on all the rewards of meditation — better sleep, reduced stress, improved health, deeper self-awareness, and a whole host of other benefits.

That’s why we’ve decided to begin a new series of articles devoted to everyday meditation. We’ll offer simple techniques you can incorporate into your day with very little effort, along with suggestions for how to turn daily tasks into a form of meditation.

I’m going to begin with one of my favorites, a technique so easy little children do it all the time. I can almost guarantee you’ve done it at least once in your lifetime, and …Read more about turning everyday activities into a meditation

The Top 5 Reasons You Should Try Meditation

Meditating on the BeachMeditation, once considered a spiritual practice reserved for monks and yogis, is gradually achieving mainstream popularity as more people discover its many benefits.

Meditation doesn’t have to be complicated, doesn’t require you to subscribe to any particular spiritual belief, and doesn’t necessitate sitting cross-legged on the floor and chanting mantras. It can be as simple as sitting in a quiet room and focusing on your breath, or counting your steps while walking around your neighborhood. You can also turn everyday activities like washing the dishes or vacuuming the carpet into a meditation.

There are many different forms of meditation, making it easy for everyone to find a style that best suits their lifestyle. At the end of this article, we’ll provide a few simple meditation techniques, including one method that will allow you to meditate deeply without even trying.

But first, let’s talk about the top five reasons you should try meditation. …Read more about the top five reasons you should try meditation

Developing Present-Moment Awareness With Reversed Behavior

Here is an easy exercise to help you develop present-moment awareness. We call this technique “practicing opposite behavior.”

This exercise also has the added benefit of stimulating activity in both hemispheres of the brain. By reversing your actions and by maintaining an awareness of each action as you perform it, you’ll trigger synchronized activity in the left and right hemispheres. Whole-brain synchronization is often seen in EEG readings of the brain activity of people who have practiced meditation for many years.

For one week, try performing all your everyday tasks in reverse. If you always put on your right shoe before your left, force yourself to stop and think, to become aware of what you are doing, and to put on the left shoe first instead. If you always step into your pants with the left leg first, try it in reverse instead. If you always take the milk out of the refrigerator before you get the cereal out of the cabinet, force yourself to stop and deliberately do it in the reverse order.

While you’re performing the actions in reverse, take …Learn more about the Opposite Behavior technique for enhanced awareness

Time Saving Tips to Help You Reduce Stress

In today’s world, it seems like there are never enough hours in the day to do what we need or want to do. This can cause you to feel stressed from the moment you wake up, and those little stresses throughout the day can add up quickly. Yet, there are some folks who seem to have it all together. They accomplish whatever they set their mind to and all the while appear completely calm…but how? How do some people manage to fit everything in without experiencing the stress of such a busy schedule?

time saving tipsA large part of it is time management. We all have the same 24 hours to work with. It’s truly a matter of using every moment to its fullest. When you manage your time effectively, the unavoidable daily stressors become much easier to handle because you’ve removed so many of the smaller ones that can make the day so hectic.

Time management takes commitment and a bit of effort but there are many small and easy things you can do to get started. Each one may only add a few minutes to your day, but soon the minutes add up to hours, you find you have more time than you once thought you did, and everything seems to flow much more smoothly.

Add just one of these tips each week and you’ll quickly be on the road to less stress and a lot more time: …Click here to read more about time saving tips to reduce stress

Book Review: The Intention Experiment

The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggartLynne McTaggart, author of the international bestseller The Field, has paved a new road for scientific research with the release of her latest book, The Intention Experiment. This book is truly the first of its kind in that readers are invited to participate in a group of ongoing, world-wide experiments to help determine just how powerful our thoughts really are. The book doesn’t really end; instead it calls you to action in a way that no other book has ever attempted.

Before imploring the reader to participate in these ongoing experiments, which are monitored and documented on McTaggart’s website, she provides an enormous amount of detailed information regarding related research studies, involving everything from plant-life to humans. If you’ve ever wondered if there really is proof that our thoughts can affect our reality, this book is a great place to start.

At first, we felt her detailed account — what seemed to be a thorough explanation of every possible study having anything to do with thoughts or intent that was ever conducted — was somewhat excessive. It makes up quite a chunk of the book. However, after reading through to the end, it became understandable why McTaggart chose to [Read more...]

Breathing technique: Whole Body Breathing

This breathing technique is designed to help you learn to involve your entire body in the breathing process.

Seat yourself in a comfortable position, or lie down on the bed or floor. With relaxed concentration, focus on the idea that your entire body is performing the duty of your lungs, breathing air in and out. Inhale and exhale slowly.

As you inhale each breath, imagine you are breathing in the air through each and every pore in your skin. Imagine your entire body as …Click here to learn more about the Whole Body Breathing technique for relaxation

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