Category: how to live

If you are like most of us, you love a good short cut, a sweet hack.  You don’t have time to read, study, learn. No, you don’t want to get the book or take the course. You just want me to tell you what to do. “Give me the damn advice” you say. Whats the take away? What do I need to know? How do I do it?

Today I was thinking about how we can better learn and absorb the things we need to know and do to get to a better place in our lives. A place that is true to our hearts. A place where we feel authentic and true.  Where we are not fragmented.

Okay, so there’s an important directive in yoga to help you benefit the most from each posture and to keep you from injuring yourself.  The advice is “Alignment before depth”.

Most good yoga teachers will remind you over and over again, alignment before depth, because if you don’t get the alignment correct first, you will never get the full benefits from the pose. This is really important for people who like to rush through things, those who try to hack their development.

Yoga is not for the impatient. Some postures can take up to ten years to master.

Understanding that your posture must be in perfect alignment before you can go deeper into any pose, you understand that getting ahead of yourself is a complete waste of time.

So you scan your body in the mirror and run through the alignment checklist. Arms straight?  elbows locked? core engaged? and so forth.

I argue that if we want to better our lives, we should strive to energetically align ourselves first. We might follow this same yoga rule in our everyday moments.

There are benefits to aligning our minds with our hearts and our bodies before we get involved in anything or with anyone.  Yes, before making any more decisions, we might take a moment to meditate on whether or not our mind, heart and body is in alignment, in agreement, before we choose to do something or be with someone. Why?

Because without having our whole being in agreement (mind, body and heart & soul) we tend to make bad choices and even worse decisions.

How to begin aligning your heart with your mind and your body.

When your head, heart and body are in alignment, when everything is in agreement and when every part of you is saying yes, yes this is a good decision, you know you are on the right path.

You aren’t fragmented, full of doubt or feeling uncertain. Every part of your body and mind is connected.

But we can’t get in alignment if we are one big stress ball of angst. So let’s get started with setting up the ideal conditions for energetic alignment.

Let’s start with how to align our spine, to strengthen our body. Here are four simple exercises to improve your nerd neck and straighten your posture.

Now, a check in with the heart.  Feeling numb? Building your emotional intelligence will help to resolve this issue.  Stop disassociating, denying and disowning your emotions, they serve a purpose. Watch How to Feel Your Emotions

 

1. Get in the right mindset

Soothing and calming the mind to reduce stress and to think from a more relaxed state is key to aligning your mind, body and heart. If your mind is scattered, you won’t be able to connect with anything else.

Thinking Mind vs Observing Mind

Most of our psychological and emotional stress happens because our Thinking Mind and Observing Mind are “fused” and we don’t recognize the difference.

Separating your Observing Mind from your Thinking Mind is a habit that takes practice. But once you begin to do it, you’ll feel yourself becoming less and less of a slave to your thoughts and your emotions. You’ll take more control of your internal daily life and feel better about it.

Read the full article Mark Manson’s Your Two Minds

Drain your brain of unnecessary thoughts and empty your mind with a ten minute meditation with Headspace. Do this daily.

Go deep. Read The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer

2. Soften & Strengthen Your Heart

You can’t hear your heart if it’s pumping wild with anxiety.  Listen to Tara Brach’s Guided Heart Meditation (34 min) for loving presence.

Read her books Radical Acceptance and True Refuge so that you can begin to learn to think and speak from the core of your being.

3. Listen and Engage Your Body

You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t breathing. Breathing is so underrated. It’s so natural we tend to forget about it, but most of us barely breathe throughout our days. Be aware of your breath. Learn how to breathe to change your body chemistry, a wonderful demonstration from Wim Hof

Soften your neck, shoulders and remove tension from your body using acupressure.

Wake up your brain by banging the heavenly drum

Move for inspiration with this kung fu warm up

Inspired by A 7 Step Process to Align Your Body, Mind and Soul for Optimal Creativity

 

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Igor Morski

Polish graphic designer, illustrator and set designer. Presently, he focuses on mixed media graphic art, based manly on photo manipulation, drawing, recently also 3D.