Filling Your Day With Happiness

The path of yoga is an inward journey. The journey is botha metaphor and a reality. In this exercise you will be enjoining your mental awareness and the pranic aspect of your breathto travel With in your body. Initially, this may seem like a fantasy or a new use of your imagination, but in reality you will be learning to literally travel through your body. Once this skill is developed, your inner vision will become quite profound and may be used as a diagnostic tool for the skilled practitioner.

Thousands of years ago, the adepts of yoga were able to accurately diagram the neuropathways of the body through their power of introspection. Their ‘inner vision’ was more accurate and profound in understanding the body’s metabolism than what modern medicine has discovered through the dissection of a corpse.

The technique of inward traveling for the advanced relaxation sequence is quite simple. Allow your breathand mental awareness to fl ow together in the sequence written in the text and illustrated in the diagram. Keep your awareness in the central core of your physical body. The breathis not to travel along the surface of the body but rather through the center of your body. For example, as your mind and breathtravel during exhalation from the crown of your head to your toes, keep them fl owing in the innermost core of your physical body.

Exhalation begins at the crown of the head and flows toward the feet. Inhalation always concludes at the crown of the head. No matter from where in the body your inhalation begins, you always continue inhaling until you reach the crown of the head and then stop.

The first phase of this exercise begins upon completing the first five breaths. Bring your awareness to the top of your head and exhale from the crown of your head down to your toes. On exhale, empty yourself and expel all of your toxins, fatigues, stress and strains. On inhale, know that you are inhaling energy from the atmosphere. Inhale from your toes through your ankles, knees, hip joints, spinal column, coming back to the crown of the head. Do not allow the breathto pause or stop. Let the mind and breathfl ow together exhaling toward the toes, inhaling up to the crown of the head for 10 full breaths. Please note that this exercise begins With an exhalation and ends on the 10Th inhalation. Thus you enter the second phase of the exercise With an exhalation.

The second phase is to exhale from the crown of the head to the ankles and inhale back up to the crown of the head for 10 complete breaths. Next, phase three begins on exhale from the crown of the head to the knees and inhaling from the knees to the crown of the head for 5 full breaths. In phase four, you exhale from your crown to the bottom of your torso - your perineum - and inhale from the perineum to the crown of your head for five full breaths.

In phase five, you exhale from your crown to your navel center (the solar plexus), and inhale from the solar plexus to the crown of your head for five full breaths. In phase six, you exhale from your crown to the heart center in the middle of your chest, and inhale from the heart center to the crown of your head for five full breaths. In phase seven, you exhale from your crown to the throat, and inhale from the throat to the crown of your head for five full breaths.

In phase eight, you exhale from your crown to the bridge between the two nostrils, and inhale from the bridge between the nostrils to the crown of your head for five full breaths. During this phase your breath should become very fine and short. Even the motion of your lungs will have a shorter rhythm. The focal point is where the nasal septum joins the face directly above the upper lip. This spot is located at the junction between two nostrils on the face and not on the nose - technically, the junction between the philtrum and the septum.

Filling Your Day With Happiness

Hippocrates said, "Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity." I agree With him. However, I feel that most of us do not take the opportunity time provides us. One of my professors joked that the purpose of time is to prevent everything from happening at once. And yet, when I talk to my overstressed patients, it seems to them that everything is happening at the same time. In the pursuit of happiness, time management is absolutely essential.

Time provides structure to your life and it is the light of the sun that provides structure to time. Modern life is starting to obscure the sun and the moon from being visual frames of reference. Fewer of my patients can respond affirmatively to my questions, "Did you see the beautiful sunrise today?

Did you notice the color of the moon last night?" The human race is starting to go inside into condos, office buildings and massive shopping malls. The more disconnected we become from the source of the time principle - the sun - the more difficult time management will be. Many say that time is too precious to waste, yet they lack the skills needed to make the best use of it because they have lost contact With the sun and the moon. The science of Ayurveda can help you re-establish this link between your life and your time.

Ayurveda states that the first step in time management is to recognize that your emotions from yesterday are still infl uencing you today. If you go to bed angry or worried, you will wake up angry or worried. In this sense, sleep acts only as a slight recess from the feelings that inhabit your waking moments. Your bedtime mood will usually determine your morning experience. Freedom comes when you apply this whole new way of thinking about time to every day and, especially, every night.

Attaining your goals is much easier when you understand the secret relationship between yourself and time. For thousands of years, Ayurveda has provided a systematic way of allowing people to determine their own constitution and discover the optimal way to use every hour of the day. With just a little bit of knowledge, you can make time work for you. This ancient science is still accurate today.