We wake up in the morning. Then we reached for coffee or our smartphone to check emails. Jump into the bath and run to work. Is this your routine? When was the last time you really thought about what you were doing with your life? Are you happy and consciously living? One of my student asked me " I have everything in my life, why I am still not happy?" I told him " May be you have everything, but not YOU!. If you want to have this YOU, try practicing Yoga and Meditation"

The main rule for a good yogic practice is to live life consciously. What does it means to live life consciously? Do I have to focus more? Well lets have a look. In the past in India, the yogis used to live away from fast going life and perform all those yogic postures (asana) in order to control the mind, the ageing process and cultivate good health. But Yoga is more than just mastering postures and increasing your flexibility and strength. You get it anyway. The traditional purpose of Yoga practice, however, has always been to bring about a profound transformation in the person through the transcendence of the ego and to cultivate moderation, to commit to presenting ourselves before our highest awareness through meditation and relaxation.

Yoga gives us access to the storehouse of resources built into our body and mind. The body is the instrument through which we receive our tangible experiences. If we treat it with respect and care, we are that much more able to experience and direct our life effectively. Imagine the body as a high performance automobile. You would give it only premium gasoline to make it run smoothly. You would bring it to the service station frequently for oil changes and preventative maintenance. You would love it and take good care of it. Why not our body? We must treat our body at least as well as we would treat that car. It is the only vehicle we will get and it is, in fact, designed for high performance. In this modern and fast moving lifestyle, we are running so much away from that connection towards the reality of ourselves. Our body-car is getting old and damaged and the driver which is the monkey mind sitting on the drivers seat is insane and driving our mind and life into the darkness.

We all run through thousands of habitual behaviours everyday. Some serve to make us more efficient, allowing us to breeze through small tasks as if by second nature, but others have the potential to become life disrupting or even life threatening. You may get a small thrill from eating sugary foods, spending money, checking your phone, throwing back another drink, but chances are youre just distracting yourself from stress and pain that you dont want to deal with, removing yourself from the present moment—and jeopardising your long-term health and well-being in the process.

If this is your case, don't worry there is always a light to overcome darkness. Regular practice of  Yoga puts us in touch with our "high performance" abilities. It becomes easier to treat ourselves well. We eat in moderation, sleep in moderation, exercise in moderation: we create balance and well-being. Today, just like the lightbulb, meditation is a universal phenomenon - one helps illuminate our outer world, the other our inner world. But in the process of becoming universal, many misconception about meditation and yoga have arisen: that it is religion, that it is about sitting in difficult postures and perhaps you have to be flexible. I had once a guy who came to my yoga class with one leg, he was struggling with his destiny and this life journey he has to go through. He thought that he would not be able to practice yoga with his disability. But yet he did fantastic. And through the practice, he understood that the body is just an instrument to deal with our life topic and the soul is the true essence beyond physical existence. 

So even if you are physically disable, you can still do yoga. But Most of us have been taught that in order to be successful in life we need to struggle, to fight, to focus, to concentrate. The trouble with this approach is that the more we struggle, the more tense we become. And the more tense we are, the worse we perform. The meditative approach is to understand that in order to be at our best, in order to give each moment our best - and to receive the best from each moment, we need to be as aware as possible. And to be aware we need to be relaxed and find the balance within ourselves. Maldives is the best place to cultivate this in connection to the beautiful surrounding.

In this issue, I will share this very simple meditation with you.

Meditation to Release Stress and Clear Past Emotions

Come to a comfortable cross-legged sitting position or sitting on a chair with your feet touching the earth. Place your fingertips together, forming a tepee with your hands, fingers pointing up and thumbs pointing toward your heart centre. Look at the tip of your nose and inhale for 5 seconds, hold the breath for 5 seconds, then exhale for 5 seconds. Continue for 3-11 minutes then relax. If your breath is unsteady and shallow, it sends a signal to your body that its needs are not being met. This meditation creates a steady breath rhythm so that your body and mind can release stress and habitual ways of being. It is a very simple meditation yet very effective.

For more information about yoga, meditation and touch of soul healing, please visit our website : www.touchofsoul.eu