Subtle Mind

This weeks activity introduced us to the subtle mind. The three levels of the subtle mind are witnessing, calm-abiding, and unity consciousness. Through out this week I have tried to incorporate the practice of witnessing mind and unfortunately this was not as easy for me as I had hoped.

The first time I listened to the exercise in a completely quit room with no distractions. I was able to keep a focus, but I fell asleep. Seriously! I tried the exercise again the next day but I found myself not being able to focus again because it was too long and I was distracted because this time I was not able to isolate myself.

In my case the witnessing mind exercise was not as effective as the loving kindness exercise for me. They both require you to be focused on your thoughts but for me since I chose my thought in the loving kindness activity it was easier for me to benefit from this.  Both of the exercises had a focus on breathing, but the witnessing mind exercise seemed to have a bit more focus on breathing to me.

Regardless of which exercise is better, they both incorporate the point of mental wellness affecting our physical wellness. We all need to have good mental health because it effects everything else in the body. When we think negative thoughts or have stress and too much on our minds we seem to feel bad. On the opposite hand when we have good positive thoughts we seem to fair better physically and feel better about ourselves. Just yesterday I was having a very stressful morning and it made me physically sick. I had the shakes and couldn't eat or concentrate. My co-workers were very concerned because they had never seem me in such a state and believe me I don't like being in that state either. I had to take a moment and calm myself and pray about the situation to get my focus back. I felt better as the day went on and the stress decreased. This is the perfect example of how our mental can affect our physical whether it be in a negative or positive way.

Angelleka

Loving Kindness

This weeks exercise may have been the first exercise that I actually seemed to be able to meditate and follow the audio exercise! I am excited that this may be the start of somthing good for me! I think that I was able to enjoy and concentrate better on this exercise because the woman's voice was more soothing to me and I was able to think about  my children as my focus point and it made me really feel filled with love. This is an exercise that I would recomend to others because love is a feeling that is easy to focus on.


Now on to the next topic of mental workout. There seems to be all sorts of brain game and exercises that we can do to help keep our brain sharp.  The website Luminosity is a set of exercises that is supossed to help your brain stay sharp. In my opinion there are things that we do everyday that help keep our brains sharp and we may not even realize it. Reading a book, doing a puzzle, or playing certain types of games help keep us mentally sharp. Mental health benefits can be a result of having a mental workout. Keeping your brain focused on something postive is a good way to keep negativity out and stress less.

New to blogging

I am pretty new to this blogging so I hope it doesn't bore you all to death! Hopefully we can all learn and share some good techniques that will help us reach our individual optimal wellness.


Happy blogging!


Angelleka

A reflection on the Journey to Relaxation

The journey to relaxation exercise was a different experience for me. I wish I had better focus with guided relaxation techniques. It was hard for me to concnetrate on the speakers voice mainly because I did not like the sound of the speakers voice and I think that I couldn't clear that thought from my mind enough to really concentrate on the exercise.  I did however go back and just listen to the exercise so I could just hear what he was saying and for a person that is able to follow a guided meditaion and really visualize what he was saying this would be a good practice,


I hope that I can get better on focusing on techniques like this. It seems that I may have to practice that. I have to figure out a way to ignore the actual sound of the speakers voice and just concentrate on the actual words that are being spoken. If anyone has any ideas as to how I can get better at this please feel free to share. I have done yoga before and I have been able to concentrate on the speaker giving the instructions in person and I wonder if hearing someone in person versus listening to audio recordings makes a difference for me.


Angelleka