When we relax we have a chance to offload our tensions, stress, anxieties and our tight and uncomfortable reactions to life, to people, and to happenings or events.

We have the chance to melt away any physical tension to allow nature to send its energies to heal and vitalize every cell of our body as we breathe rhythmically.

We shut our eyes to cut out external distractions and go inward in our awareness after directing our muscles to be still. Only the rhythm of our breath is evidence of muscular activity.

As the body becomes comfortable, we are able to cast off any emotional stress that prevents us feeling totally at peace. This we do by an attitude that admits that we feel best and most loving when we are not trying too hard, or attempting to bargain with our love, or to be selfish. Just feeling that we can let go all our emotional efforts so that our circulation of our feeling nature is restored and nature can energize us as naturally as it does our body.

Then with our minds concerned only to release effort, we can become a little too self conscious when trying to subdue the habit of thinking or even may wonder what we should be thinking about! To help with this, we return to the assistance we have with respiration, and put our thought only into rhythmic and equal inhalation and exhalation to an easy count and sustain this for a few minutes.

Then, ceasing even the thought of respiratory rhythm enjoy again how you feel.

You may feel light, heavy, calm, strong, shapeless, tingling, vital, or on the verge of sleep.

The remaining time in relaxation is individually experienced but you will be likely to feel many new and pleasant experiences as you give your mind a ‘holiday’ and just be free.

Try it…….

Technorati Tags: cleansing the psyche, dissolve negatives, Meditation, mental health, mind training, Raja Yoga, relaxation, relaxation cleanses, simple tonic, stillness

It is a magic occurrence to experience the difference that a positive tonic thought can have upon your emotions and mental state.  There is no secret about the power of self persuasion. It is only the practical application that can present a difficulty in with-holding benefits. It is offered as a ‘technique’ in many mind-training programmes and cultures including the practices of the yogis. 

As the system of Yoga is one of self culture, all the techniques are basically designed to help the individual help himself. The wonderful thing to realize is the scope for creating our own tonic thoughts. We have freedom to employ conscious concentrated thought to build up our mental strength without any censure or limitation imposed by others.

A basic elementary application is the inward affirmation applied in building up our own self image through focus upon each of the good qualities we wish to express in our personality and being. For instance we may aim to reduce a lack of self confidence by affirming all our  own recognized strengths in which to feel proud.  Another may deliberately work to strengthen in turn all the qualities that serve as their ideal.

The exercise is known as Japa. This is done through silent mental repetition in privacy and ideally in circumstances similar to meditation that requires peace and quiet. 

Additionally we can draw upon the powerful wisdom inherent in the literature of our culture, and the wealth of knowledge we have inherited from others who have experienced similarly and have overcome and prospered.

Some examples of fine ideas are offered in the Page on Quotations on this site, but each must choose for themselves the simple, tonic thoughts that affirm what they seek in self culture and that result in a sense of true well being.

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With disregard or rejection of time honoured values in culture, our mental climate is becoming threatening. Classical values are being replaced by thoughts and attitudes that are damaging. Their acceptance indicates a collapse of our social values and principles. It is only the positive, noble thoughts and aspirations that uphold any civilization. Denial of them limits further progress or heralds the downfall of a people.

That may seem exaggerated statement but just think about it for a moment.

Can you depend upon the powerful media outlets to present you with fine thoughts and reports of noble deeds, examples of high moral behaviour and positive news gathering? All indications are that the contrary is the case.

Deplorable values and violent rather than civilized behaviour is the main tone of daily news reports. We are presented withhappenings that are discouraging rather than nurturing quality social life and positive attitudes. This type of mental programming is the basis of a great degree of mental depression in the community.

In our western countries, the criteria for news ‘content’ is sensationalism. Reports are rated and duly welcomed according to the extent of crime, corruption, rape, murder, and violence from domestic issues to the international front. The bias towards negative subjects seems additionally polluted by the focus upon sex of some kind to appease the current addiction and the degraded appetite for perversions of all kinds including unforgiveable harm to children.

If thoughts and ideas are food for our minds then our libraries are available to offer an alternative abundant and wonderful range for individual choice of nutritious and enriching reading matter. Here we are left free to browse and nourish our minds according to our better values and those of our inherited culture. It would seem that as long as ‘hard copy’ books remain available through publishing houses, we will at least retain our freedom of choice of mental nourishment as we insist upon in selecting our food.

To avoid mental pollution that is even more dangerous an issue than pollution of our physical environment we must be alert to withstand efforts to programme our thoughts negatively. But we must assert our freedom to determine for ourselves the quality of material that we consume in our responsibility to develop and maintain health of mind and body by recognizing and avoiding toxicity in all its forms.

Technorati Tags: avoid toxic thoughts, good thoughts are antidepressant, mental environment, mental health and positive thoughts

Emotional anger when out of control can do harm to ourselves and motivate us to harm or hurt other people or even material things.

Pent up frustration and stress could be readily excused as we try to cope with life and react to our difficulties and problems. However, we all have to find a way to channel this energy in an appropriate and constructive manner – until we find a positive way to act in life.  Then, increasingly, as we find the strength to focus constructively, our reactions are less of a problem.

Most angry people are reacting, often without conscious thought.  The cause is more often than not from emotional rather than rational issues. Someone who is mentally well does not habitually display anger. As we do we like to feel repressed anger in our own  personality, we do not appreciate it in the mood of any companion.

Anger is a recognized symptom of mental illness when it is firmly established as a habit Anger is a condition when emotional energy can well up from the subconscious and is capable of erupting like a volcano with equal potential to harm or hurt.

That hurt begins with the physical and psychic hurt to the one who is feeling anger. It starts with their increased blood pressure, nervous and muscular tension, interference with normal physiological function and by contributing to their totally negative self image. No one reflects with joy upon their past displays of anger or is proud of their demonstrated loss of self control.

So many people who have, in anger, just inflicted pain upon another will say “I didn’t mean to do it!”  But this is not good enough. The act was committed by them, no one else, and it is they who are responsible whether it is a physical action or related to subtler behaviour.

All anger, whether held inside us or expressed towards others is harmful. Anger can lead to broken relationships, poor health, violent behaviour and ‘crimes of passion’ including road rage or murder. And those whose anger has been allowed to grow unchecked are often inclined to suicide.

Unfortunately anger is infectious. When someone displays anger towards us, it is easy to react in defence and respond angrily, even though we were relaxed to begin with. We have to practise resisting such reaction.

Technorati Tags: anger, destructive results, frustration, hitting back in anger, resist getting angry, understand it is weakness

Pride in ourselves comes more easily when we know that our body is in good shape, vital and functioning freely without impediment.

Similarly, our self confidence increases when the same principles are applied to our psychological health, when positive, creative thoughts and ideas govern our emotions.

Mental health is becoming recognized as an issue that threatens to dominate medical issues in the community in the future with serious personal ramifications even more distressing than physical disease.

Prevention is the wisest path to follow. This is a relatively simple matter if each of us chooses to become as focussed on the natural rules that must be followed to establish mental fitness as we do in our disciplines to create physical fitness.

       The rewards are great!

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The basic emotions of a human being we know as feelings of contentment, happiness or joy, suffering or pain, sympathy, kindness, anger, envy, jealousy, compassion, irritation, fear, faith, anxiety, hatred, love, yearning, desire, and so on.  In each person these ingredients are developed and exercised differently to make up a different and unique recipe of emotions that define his individuality and which separate him from other people around him.  Many of the basic ingredients may be common but how these ingredients are blended is up to the choice of each individual. These familiar feelings or emotions may be cultivated and blended harmoniously or can be thrown together in a recipe which results in a chaotic and violent emotional disposition.

Untrained emotions are usually a hotch potch of emotional and often unconscious responses to one’s life experiences without having been sorted or cleansed to eliminate the negatives, which regrettably, often predominate. This state continues until the person grows discomforted in being always in anger, depression, fear or other unpleasant emotional states and uses his will to alter his mood.

To alter one’s emotional pattern requires time and patience do all efforts involved in self culture. Success depends upon our own clear goal and also a degree of friendly encouragement from others as we seek emotional equilibrium, a state that allows us to feel in a state where our minds can direct and control our feelings appropriately.

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It is more generally applied in the process of learning and gathering information that can be shared with others and increased by exchange and communication with others on an impersonal level.

Some of us have an especially clear subjective memory upon which we rely as a reminder of our own learning whether physical, emotional or mental. In the deeper levels of our psyche, involving our soul wisdom and our spiritual experiences, we rely entirely upon our own preservation of the secret or sacred private world into which few others are invited.

Some of us have a wonderful capacity for clear recall of what is related to factual or scientific information gleaned through the intellect and by study. This applies to wider issues beyond the personal and embraces information that we share and consider fundamental to reason.

Others possess unusual aspects of memory that we cannot really share or even understand the process involved…..

For instance, the capacity to regress one’s memory back to the birth experience is a rare faculty unless cajoled through the assistance of a psychologist.

The memory of past lives that can occur when regression slips beyond the first consciousness in the womb to remembering past life experiences. This is known to happen under therapy but also spontaneously as a rare conscious function of memory.

Spectacular memory feats have become more generally known to us through individuals who possess extraordinary abilities both or recording information and of recall.

For example, there are individuals who can memorize musical scores or orchestrations of sound through auditory memory or by the visualization of the score.

There is also photographic memory or eidetic memory. Few share the ability but those who can demonstrate it can astonish us with a range of talents ; the capacity used in mathematical calculation; in recording and recalling data with speed to challenge a computer; in speed reading and recall of volumes of books;  in memorizing registration numbers of vehicles; in retention of names of people, and in the many arts, sciences and specific skills that have been known in human culture including the skill of recalling emotional experiences that produce emotional and physical responses enough to make us laugh or to weep – a faculty well known to actors.

Allowing that these wonderful talents exist as a potential in the human brain and mind is one thing.

To train our own memory as we wish, and to be able to rely upon accurate recall remains our personal task and responsibility.

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However, in spite of the emerging proof of the dangers of these psychiatric drugs and their potential to effect mind changing behavior negatively, even to a point of suicide, most doctors continue to claim that by far the most prescriptions they make out in their practice are for antidepressants for adults, and increasingly Ritalin for ADHD or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in children. 

Where once our social concern focused upon the dangers of hallucinatory drugs, mind drugs have now become big business, regardless of the damage they cause the brain.

Doctors who once trustingly followed the claims of the pharmaceutical industry are now disenchanted with toxic chemical drugs.  There is a move by some professors in psychiatry to ban their use in the U.S. as has already been done in some other countries where dedicated psychiatrists are inclined to explore the older methods or seek safer, more natural, alternative methods of treatment.

The increasing threat of litigation from patients seeking compensation may serve to motivate this.

This is a serious issue indicated by more than 12 million entries in Google on the Dangers of Psychiaric Drugs.

Technorati Tags: antidepressants cause brain damage, behavioural changes, can cause suicide, no psychiatric drugs for children

Stillness becomes a time of interesting experience. We become first aware of our physical comfort or otherwise, then of the constant rhythm of the breath, and of our senses that maintain our increasing awareness of ourselves as we shut out the external world by closing our eyes.

It is worth persevering with the simplest practice of stillness. When we cease external muscular activity, we allow ourselves opportunity to discover more of the natural processes of Nature as it refuels our energies with the natural vital processes and patterns that in their mysterious way, maintain the health requirement for our body and nervous system. We begin to allow a lightness and peace to prevail in our mood as we realize the faith that we can choose to place in the great natural processes of life.

Feel that the sensation of elevation and lightness grows to the extent we surrender to stillness and become conscious of the comforting, positive energies of nature.

Keep practicing this simple meditation.  It will help in many ways and is a direct tonic for depression.

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It is reasonable to suppose that many children who have symptoms related to hyperactivity or learning problems have causes related to normal problems of domestic or school environment. Most families have to cope with children having behavioural problems of some kind. These children are in need of care and counseling rather than drugs – drugs that change the chemistry of their brains and can produce serious long term side effects that cannot be reversed.

The main drugs these children are given are stimulants such as dexamphetamine and methylphenidate or Ritalin.  Ritalin side effects are noted in 986,000 postings on Google. The dangers of psychiatric drugs is becoming a serious issue to concern the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) in the US seek to abolish antidepressants and psychiatric drugs for children altogether.

Some even believe that Ritalin and others such as Fidolin, Neurontin, Concerta, Lithium, and Statin are being used as a legal form of administering drugs that have a propensity for addiction and at worst affect the brain and behavior towards suicide and violence. This has been shown in the cases of violent outbursts and gun killings involving schoolchildren over recent years.

If your children display behavioural problems or give you concern as parents that you cannot cope with, then seek assistance through psychologist and counselors before allowing any drugs to be given as medicine to your children.

To quote psychiatrist, Harvard graduate Peter R. Breggin, M.D. Director, International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology

“The drugging of children has gotten so out of hand that America is waking up to this. This is a national catastrophe. I’m seeing children who are normal who are on five psychiatric drugs.”

 ……………………………

Technorati Tags: ADHD, child care, counselling, natural health measures, no drugs for children, psychological aid