Meditation for a Travel Bug

There are two kinds of people in this world. One, for whom traveling is a passion and a lot of fun. Exploring new places, tasting different foods, discovering new cultures – they are simply smitten by the travel bug! And then there’s another category of people who start making a long face at the mere mention of the word ‘travel’. They have had too much of it and they can’t seem to enjoy it anymore! For these people, traveling itself is a bug.
The good news is: we have a tool, so simple and handy, to fix this bug.

Jet Lag

The first and the most common after-effect of long hours of travel. Change in time zones disturbs sleep patterns and the entire body cycle gets affected. But that’s not all. With the body not feeling great, the mind is unable to function effectively. If you are on a business tour, jet lag can be particularly problematic as it can affect productivity and efficiency at work.
Just for thoughts: Rajita Bagga, President of the World Forum for Ethics and Business, sometimes travels 2-3 weeks a month but despite long flights and jet lag, she manages to remain productive, creative, enthusiastic, and fresh. How?

 

 

     How to include meditation in your
     tour itinerary?

• Meditation is possible anywhere – flight, airport,
  car transit (when you are not driving), or train.
• It’s good to meditate morning and evening
  but if you can’t, do it any other time of the day.
• Meditating before in-flight meals is a good
  idea. But don’t worry if you missed it, meditate
  whenever!
• Download a few online guided meditations
  on your Ipod or laptop.
• Register for a Sahaj Samadhi Meditation
  Course and carry your mantra
  with you during travel.

 

 

Poor digestion

The last thing you would want on a holiday is an upset stomach. Unfortunately, change in place, change in weather, different eating habits and different food types all make it happen. Sometimes, the craving to taste a different food is so strong that we end up stuffing ourselves and crying with pain later.
Just for thoughts: Srinivas Uppaluri, Management Consultant, needs to travel quite a bit for work. Yet, he has a healthy digestive system. Apart from the fact that he is fairly strict about his diet and eating habits, Srinivas is also extremely particular about his daily routine, no matter which part of the world he is in. Long traveling times and jet lag don’t bother him and he is fresh and charged up when he arrives to take on the day ahead of him. How?

Motion sickness

Most people are uncomfortable in transit because of motion sickness, particularly on flights. While some people feel like throwing up during take-off and landing, some feel light-headed and restless all through the journey. The result: not a very favorable start to that perfect vacation.
Just for thoughts: Shreya Chugh, National Coordinator, Art of Living Yes! Course, travels extensively and used to keep popping pills each time she had motion sickness during air travel. Now, not only has she bid adieu to this problem forever but she doesn’t suffer from any jet lag either in spite of her hectic traveling. How?

Back-to-back travel can take a toll on the body

Imagine what would happen if you had to make more than 12 trips in a year? Sometimes, two back-to-back trips in a month can be enough to leave you exhausted and not wanting another for at least a year again! Continuous travel in different modes of transport – car, train or flight – can actually make one feel sick after a while. Most young business people these days, between the age group of 20 to 35 years, complain of back problems and body pain because of long uninterrupted travel schedules.
Just for thoughts: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, spiritual leader and founder of the Art of Living, has traveled at least 54 cities in the past 3 months alone! Yet, he looks fresh and energetic after every tour. Whether it is a satsang he needs to attend the moment he lands at the airport, or a business meeting that he needs to go to soon after, the enthusiasm remains unchanged. How?
There is only one answer to all these ‘hows’ – meditation. A few minutes of sitting still with yourself can work wonders, especially when you are traveling,

• It helps you get over the jet lag so that you can spend the day holidaying or finishing business deals instead of catching up with sleep in the hotel room.
• Meditation helps keep the digestive system in place
• Meditation can help restore balance coupled with a few yoga postures, pranayamas, and a little check on the diet. And the best part is that you can do some of these yoga poses even on the flight! (see yoga in airplane). Srinivas Uppaluri, Management Consultant, shares the secret to his good health – “I make sure to carry my yoga mat everywhere I go and the first thing I do after arriving at the hotel is practice yoga, Sudarshan Kriya, and meditation. With that, my jet lag is gone and I’m fresh and active for the entire day.” • A few minutes of meditation helps eliminate the fatigue and travel-related stress in the mind and body.

Ok, all this sounds great but where do I fit meditation into my busy travel schedule? If this is your excuse, there is all the more reason for you to start meditating. It will help add more hours to your day. Just 20 minutes of meditation and see the change for yourself – your mind becomes more focused, productivity increases and you will be able to strike much more profitable deals – all with just a 20-minute time investment.


Loads of Love,

Ravi...

Meditation

Meditation is universal. It transcends all divides like religion, country and culture. It is a gift given to mankind to access the infinite spirit not limited by any identity. It is the only tool that can aid a person to return to innocence.
Modern life style has high exposure to anger, hate, fear and other negative emotions. These human emotions have a high tendency to duplicate and spread. For example, when a person gets cheated, he starts to suspect everything around him. This also has an impact on people around him. These emotions form strong impressions and opinions on an individual and social level. The result of which is an insecure individual and an unstable society.
Meditation helps an individual overcome these emotions to facilitate a calm peaceful mind and a healthy and stress free body.Upon daily practice an individual will blossom into an unshakable personality. With increase in the number of people who are clam, peaceful and healthy will facilitate a social transformation, enabling a society that is trusting, happy and content.


100 Benefits of Meditation

Physiological benefits:
1. It lowers oxygen consumption.
2. It decreases respiratory rate.
3. It increases blood flow and slows the heart rate.
4. Increases exercise tolerance.
5. Leads to a deeper level of physical relaxation.
6. Good for people with high blood pressure.
7. Reduces anxiety attacks by lowering the levels of blood lactate.
8. Decreases muscle tension
9. Helps in chronic diseases like allergies, arthritis etc.
10. Reduces Pre-menstrual Syndrome symptoms.
11. Helps in post-operative healing.
12. Enhances the immune system.
13. Reduces activity of viruses and emotional distress
14. Enhances energy, strength and vigor.
15. Helps with weight loss
16. Reduction of free radicals, less tissue damage
17. Higher skin resistance
18. Drop in cholesterol levels, lowers risk of cardiovascular disease.
19. Improved flow of air to the lungs resulting in easier breathing.
20. Decreases the aging process.
21. Higher levels of DHEAS (Dehydroepiandrosterone)
22. Prevented, slowed or controlled pain of chronic diseases
23. Makes you sweat less
24. Cure headaches & migraines
25. Greater Orderliness of Brain Functioning
26. Reduced Need for Medical Care
27. Less energy wasted
28. More inclined to sports, activities
29. Significant relief from asthma
30. Improved performance in athletic events
31. Normalizes to your ideal weight
32. Harmonizes our endocrine system
33. Relaxes our nervous system
34. Produce lasting beneficial changes in brain electrical activity
35. Helps cure infertility (the stresses of infertility can interfere with the release of hormones that regulate ovulation).

Psychological benefits:
36. Builds self-confidence.
37. Increases serotonin level, influences mood and behavior.
38. Resolve phobias & fears
39. Helps control own thoughts
40. Helps with focus & concentration
41. Increase creativity
42. Increased brain wave coherence.
43. Improved learning ability and memory.
44. Increased feelings of vitality and rejuvenation.
45. Increased emotional stability.
46. improved relationships
47. Mind ages at slower rate
48. Easier to remove bad habits
49. Develops intuition
50. Increased Productivity
51. Improved relations at home & at work
52. Able to see the larger picture in a given situation
53. Helps ignore petty issues
54. Increased ability to solve complex problems
55. Purifies your character
56. Develop will power
57. Greater communication between the two brain hemispheres
58. Respond more quickly and more effectively to a stressful event.
59. increases one’s perceptual ability and motor performance
60. Higher intelligence growth rate
61. Increased job satisfaction
62. Increase in the capacity for intimate contact with loved ones
63. Decrease in potential mental illness
64. Better, more sociable behavior
65. Less aggressiveness
66. Helps in quitting smoking, alcohol addiction
67. Reduces need and dependency on drugs, pills & pharmaceuticals
68. Need less sleep to recover from sleep deprivation
69. Require less time to fall asleep, helps cure insomnia
70. Increases sense of responsibility
71. Reduces road rage
72. Decrease in restless thinking
73. Decreased tendency to worry
74. Increases listening skills and empathy
75. Helps make more accurate judgments
76. Greater tolerance
77. Gives composure to act in considered & constructive ways
78. Grows a stable, more balanced personality
79. Develops emotional maturity

Spiritual benefits:
80. Helps keep things in perspective
81. Provides peace of mind, happiness
82. Helps you discover your purpose in life
83. Increased self-actualization.
84. Increased compassion
85. Growing wisdom
86. Deeper understanding of yourself and others
87. Brings body, mind, and spirit in harmony
88. Deeper Level of spiritual relaxation
89. Increased acceptance of one self
90. Helps learn forgiveness
91. Changes attitude toward life
92. Creates a deeper relationship with your God
93. Increases the synchronicity in your life
94. Greater inner-directedness
95. Helps living in the present moment
96. Creates a widening, deepening capacity for love
97. Discovery of the power and consciousness beyond the ego
98. Experience an inner sense of “Assurance or Knowingness”
99. Experience a sense of “Oneness”
100. Leads to enlightenment

To top it off, meditation has NO negative side effects





Loads of Love,
Ravi

You Were Born As A Yogi

 

You Were Born As A Yogi, Do You Remember?

The only beings (other than liberated souls) that are in harmony with themselves, i.e they are at home anywhere and don’t care who is watching, are babies and children. And yoga naturally manifests in their supple bodies.

It is quite common to observe children performing yoga asanas or yoga mudras that support their physical and mental development.

children are born yogis.

Children perform different asanas at different stages of their development. For instance, when they are learning to walk, they do the cat stretch to strengthen their spines or perform the Pavanamuktasan to boost digestion.

If children are born yogis and perform yoga naturally, then why do they forget the practice and lose their flexibility as they grow up?

The main reason is that that their interactions with their environment, namely parents and peers, have a bigger influence on them. So they don’t get to interact much with nature. Secondly, the pace of life is different these days and parents don’t really encourage their kids to do yoga. Thirdly, the ego starts developing and does not allow the child to be natural.

Yoga itself can never be forgotten because it is as natural as heart beat or sunrise.

There is an innate intelligence that knows what postures are good for the body. The ancient rishis discovered this in their meditation. So the asanas do not need to be learnt, they naturally manifest.

That these asanas are innate can be proven by observing children all over the world, whether they are from Japan or Latin America, perform similar postures.

Once children grow into adulthood, these postures need to be consciously and regularly practiced to achieve the goal.

As we grow up, our awareness matures and these postures begin to have a deeper and more profound impact. When the body and the mind develop, the impact of the asanas also changes. For example, children can put their big toes in their mouths, but adults lose the suppleness. As the body ages, the same asanas act in different ways and regular practice of yoga can help maintain youth.

The point of yoga is to harmonize with nature. Regular practice of yoga brings about this harmony with the universe.

The word yoga stems from the word ‘yuj’ meaning to unite or harmonize. When we do more yoga, we start getting more in touch with ourselves. As we get in touch with ourselves, we begin to experience joy. We are all different parts of the universe and we start experiencing this connection when we do yoga. That’s why yoga and meditation are relaxing.

A growing number of people are starting to realize the value of yoga now.

More schools are now including yoga as a part of their curriculum. Yoga is gradually becoming a part of the corporate atmosphere. The media is also playing a big role in promoting the ancient practice.

It is becoming a fallacy that children forget yoga as they grow up. Children in this generation are now more exposed to yoga than their parents were, The Sri Sri yoga program of the Art of Living facilitates the rediscovery of the yogi in each one of us.

Some Interesting Observations:-

The fetus in the mother’s womb can often be observed holding the merudanda mudra(thumbs up)
A new born child can be seen very often with the adi mudra (closed fist with thumb enclosed)
Infants very often hold the chin mudra (thumb and forefinger delicately touching at the tips and the other 3 fingers are opened out)
When babies start turning over, they do Bhujangasana (cobra pose), Natrajasan (leg crosses over while lying on the back with arms stretched out)
When they start crawling, they often do the cat stretch
As they learn to stand up and walk, they do trikonasan (triangle pose) and the mountain pose
Till the age of two, babies often do the pavanamuktasan( knees and legs up in the air folding towards the stomach while lying on the back)
Babies are often seen even sleeping in the child pose
There are many other such points of observation where yoga as we know it is a natural and spontaneous expression of the child’s consciousness. Perhaps, the next time we are with a child, this article can translate in to your own experience.

- Loads of love,

Ravi