Tag: mindfulness

3 Ways Breathing Exercises Support Sleep, Creativity and Spirituality

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A young woman is in profile against a dark background, gently blowing dandelion seeds.

Breathing exercises improve relaxation, focus, and oxygen flow to the brain, enhancing creativity. They reduce stress and anxiety, remove major roadblocks to clear thinking, and boost overall cognitive function. In other words, they make life feel better. In this article, we’re going to touch on 3 main ways you can use breathing exercises: to prepare for sleep, to stimulate creativity, and to support spiritual pursuits such as meditation and prayer. Breathing Exercises and Sleep Many people seek out breathing exercises as a natural and non-pharmaceutical way to promote better sleep. There are several reasons why breathing exercises may be helpful…

Learn this Fast and Easy Way to Stop Repetitive Negative Thoughts

Using a double-stop photographic technique, a bearded person appears to quickly move their head from left to right, eyes closed with a peaceful facial expression

Are stressful thoughts and negative emotions often on a loop in your head? It’s not fun. In fact, it’s stress-upon-stress that seems to take on a life of its own. It begins with feeling anxious about something and then your thoughts and feelings seem to spiral into a vortex of stress and negativity. It can feel as if you have no control and instead are being held prisoner by your own negative thoughts and emotions. Does this describe what you or someone you care about is experiencing? This article will help get this negative jumble of thoughts and feelings under…

How to Keep Meditating When You’re Angry at Social Injustice

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A close-up of a pair of hands appearing to hold fire sparks that glow bright orange and yellow. The half-face seen above the hands appears to be male and is calm and relaxed.

How do you keep meditating in the face of rage against injustice? It isn’t easy to consider anger and outrage in a meditation practice. Any meditation practice. And certainly not one in which you try to focus on universal love. I mean, who wants to love their enemy? Someone who destroys the values that you hold as important. No one, that’s who. But are the benefits worth the effort? The answer to every question is always love. I believe that, I know it to be true. But when you feel the breath of the enemy on your face, do you…

5 Easy Ways to Stop Unwanted Thoughts in Meditation in 5 Minutes or Less

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A person with short hair and dangling earrings sits with eyes closed, thumb to forehead, fingers point upwards.The background appears to be a bedroom with white walls and soft sconce lighting.

When many people first begin a meditation practice, the biggest questions often circle around the logistics. How can I create a space of time to make a meditation practice? Do I have to do it every day? How long every day? How can I make it a regular habit? Will I be able to do it? These are all valid questions, and answering them becomes a highly individual experience. But there’s a bigger, more long-lasting challenge to growing your meditation practice. Nearly everyone grapples with this, not only in the early days of creating a practice but often during every…

What Is Higher Consciousness and How to Achieve It Through Meditation

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Have you ever wondered about higher states of consciousness? What they are, and how some people reach them? Do you ever wonder if you could reach a higher state of consciousness yourself? And if you could, what would that look like? Many people have different notions or ideas about what it means to achieve states of higher consciousness.  Some imagine yogis living high in the mountains, devoting their lives exclusively to the pursuit of higher consciousness. Others imagine it as a spiritual practice that leads to a sudden and complete awakening, or so-called enlightenment. And of course some people think…

Practice Makes Imperfect in Meditation and I’m Okay with That

Practice has been given a bit of a bum rap. Whether it’s sports of some kind, one of the arts, or any other discipline of the mind or body, we often expect the impossible out of practice. That is, we expect to be made perfect at the pursuit. Or at least some aspect of the pursuit. And then we take it as a personal failure when that doesn’t happen. Does this sound familiar to you in your meditation practice? If so, would you like to change that? There is another way of looking at perfection and imperfection – in meditation…