Many people see meditation as something we have to do sitting down, eyes closed, and without moving. Thats one of the myths of meditation, along with trying to not have any thoughts. There are many forms of movement and activities that can be done in a mindful way, such as hiking, walking, dancing or even stretching.

Being outdoors is a way to relax when life is stressful and to connect intimately to nature. Im grateful to live in Northern New Mexico, where there is so much open space. I especially enjoy hikes and walks during this season of autumn, feeling the cool air on my skin, the sun on my face, noticing bird calls and seeing many interesting creatures. Horned lizards are one of my favorite wild friends, as well as bluebirds and jackrabbits. In the mountains, we can see and feel the effects of the breeze through the trees and bird calls that are very different from those that are heard at lower elevations.

As the seasons cycle forth, walking or hiking brings us intimately in relation with our environment. In the spring, the greening of wild parsley, phlox, wild primrose and other plants wake up. In the summer, wildflowers and home gardens are awash in bright colors. In autumn, trees announce the change of season with hues of yellow, orange and red leaves. Soon, all will be monotone as the cycle of the seasons continues.

Although hiking can also be a time to think, plan and work out situations, that is very different from walking meditation. Mindful walking is a meditation practice that invites us to disconnect the thinking mind and bring awareness to the present moment through our senses. Walking meditation, Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) taught, is a profound and pleasurable way to deepen our connection with our body and the earth. It is a meditation practice wherein we breathe, take a mindful step, and come back to our true home." What Thay calls our true home is the present moment the here and now that connects and grounds our awareness in the body.

When I teach mindful movement to students and adults, the instructions are to move slowly, step-by-step following the rhythm of the breath, and then stop every so often to look around. When done with eyes closed, we notice everything much more directly and intimately. Many people have never walked this way since the more common way is to move quickly and to engage in conversation along the way. It takes focus to stop the mind chatter and to connect to the environment around us without words. Its really grounding to walk slowly without a destination, to notice trees, plants, birds and other natural elements.

Herein lies our true home: connecting to the body through all of its sensations.

First, make sure you have enough space around you so you wont bump into anyone or anything as you move. This activity is really fun to do outside bare-footed and with eyes closed.

Anne-Marie Emanuelli is the founder and Creative Director at Mindful Frontiers LLC. With over two decades of meditation experience, she leads meditation workshops, classes and provides coaching for children, families, individuals, groups, and classrooms. She is a certified meditation leader as well as a certified labyrinth facilitator. A full audio version of featured practices can be heard on the Welcoming a Mindful Future podcast. Our website can be access at mindfulfrontiers.net.

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Mindful movement: Hiking, walking as a meditation practice - The Taos News

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MEDITATION: Please don't try to eat your own fruit - Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

Can virtual reality deepen contemplative practice? Ross Nervig dons a headset and explores the promise and peril of mesmerizing worldscapes.

Purple skin is a popular flesh tone where I am going. Im meeting with Jeremy Nickel, an executive at Tripp, a VR meditation app that offers mesmerizing worldscapes, guided visualizations, and captivating breathing exercises. Hes agreed to give me a guided tour of the various landmarks in their metaverse.

The first place Nickel takes me is to the Zen garden. A digital breeze gently blows through the trees around the garden. There are stone benches and cairns weathered by the elements. Off to one side is a peaceful looking zendo.

This is one of our most popular spaces, reports Nickel. Its modeled after the backyard of one of our designers grandparents in Taiwan. We also have ancient ruins and a Tibetan temple in the mountains.

I turn around in a full circle, taking it all in. Its not perfect. Nobody would mistake this for the real deal, but there is a certain tranquility to the space. Its peaceful enough to make me forget that Im wearing a brick-like pair of VR goggles on my face and holding controllers in my hands.

Although virtual reality has been around for decades, it only recently entered the cultural arena with the arrival of affordable headsets. While VR remains almost totally the domain of the gaming industry, a few contemplative organizations like Tripp have carved out spaces where VR users can learn about and practice meditation. Curious, I borrowed a VR headset to explore a few of these meditation platforms while speaking with some thought leaders at the intersection between Buddhism and VR.

When people go into virtual reality, they dont expect to find a person leading meditations, remarks Nickel. They expect to find video games and people blowing things up. I think people in this world really know they need meditation, but they dont know how to get it.

The people who are using our app are not the people you usually see in Buddhist communities, he continues. Theyre younger, theyre more male. Theyre finding something in VR that they havent found elsewhere, which is a reason to meditate.

With the click of a button, Nickel and I are somewhere in the Himalayas, outside a Tibetan-style temple. It is austere and majestic, and all around us craggy snow-capped peaks mingle with the heavens. I can sense my body feeling colder, wanting to reinforce the story my eyes and ears are telling me.

We enter the temple. Its empty right now, but during sessions it fills with avatars, some looking like cartoon versions of their human counterparts, others sporting purple skin, green mohawks, and robes the color of the cosmos.

In Tripp, professional meditation teachers lead participants through meditations like Focus, where one learns to become more aware of the present moment through attention-stimulating gameplay mechanics, or Calm in which meditators are guided through a relaxation practice. Tripp also offers Enlighten, a collection of teachings from accomplished mindfulness instructors, as well as Connect, where VR users interested in meditation can gather together for live teachings, real-time meditation sessions, and discussions around the finer points of practice.

Going into VR, I had some reservations, admits Nickel. Since you can make your avatar look like whatever you want, you can tell a fake story about who you actually are. So with that much inauthenticity possible, how do you have the core of truth? How do you build a community with trust and all the things you need for spiritual growth?

But I was so wrong. The CEO of Tripp, Nanea Reeves, has a term I love: the digital veil. You start to realize people are more real in virtual reality than they are in physical reality because of the digital veil protecting them. People will say stuff at our check-ins before a meditation event that they havent even told their wives. Theres something about it that creates this vulnerability. The place where I worried we wouldnt be able to trust and connect and be authentic turns out to be the greatest place Ive been to meet people.

The final stop on our tour is a simulation of the overview effect. The overview effect is a paradigm shift that occurs for some astronauts whove been able to view the earth from outer space. They are filled with a sense of wonderment, self-transcendence, and a strong fellow-feeling for the billions of people back home. Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut from the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, put it like this: You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it.

Nickel leaves me to experience the session alone. The program begins on the ground. Over a period of ten minutes, I travel skywardfrom sea level, to the Himalayas, into the clouds, and then beyond into space. I travel until Im about as far from my home planet as the International Space Station would be. Im able to move orbitally around the little blue marble, viewing its seas and land masses in the light of the sun. On the earths dark side, cities are lit up like scatterings of sparks. Those little, intense points of light mark communities whove banded together, on this rock hurtling around a gaseous ball of fire.

Im surprised at the feeling of buoyancy and the warmth with which I regard the world after this experience. Though Im glad to be out of the goggles, its not hard to fathom the power of virtual reality and the role it might play in the future of our spiritual lives.

On a mountain hike in 2007, artist and molecular physicist David Glowacki nearly died in a fall. While suffocating because of a punctured lung, he had an out-of-body experience. Looking down at himself lying at the bottom of the cliff, he saw not his physical body, but a form composed of orbs of light, with light escaping into his surroundings. Glowacki felt no fear. Instead, peace overtook him.

This near-death experience inspired aNUma, a series of virtual reality simulations of what its like to see the body not as cells and matter, but as light and energy. He enlisted his best friend, the Buddhist lama Karma Justin Wall, to help as lead designer.

It began as an art project to explore what its like to be an energy body, exchanging energy and playing in that way in virtual space, explains Lama Karma.

Lama Karma invites me to an aNUma session known as Ripple. After donning my VR headset, I enter into a dark space. Overhead, a vault of stars is twinkling. Surrounding me are beings made of smoke and light, each representing somebody whothrough a VR headsethas joined the circle from their home, somewhere across the globe. For hands, they have small quavering balls of light. Where their hearts are supposed to be there are larger orbs of light. Looking down, I realize I too am a being of smoke and light.

The conversation among us is minimal. Its bizarre to hear normal, everyday voices emanating from ephemeral entitiesone expects something a bit more ethereal. Lama Karma, however, has the soothing voice of a veteran meditation guide. We form a loose circle around something that resembles a wriggling string of moleculeslike one might encounter peering through a microscope at amino acids. We check in as you would before a meditation session IRL.

Of the experience were about to begin, Lama Karma says, Im trying to navigate the boundary between innovation and loyalty to the tradition. Making it more open in a meaningful way without sacrificing depththats been my project. The main thing is for this to be beneficial to people who are not Buddhists, have no interest in meditation, and would otherwise not have a point of contact with it.

Over the course of an hour or so, were guided to meditate while performing simple movements: bringing our hand-lights to our bodies with the in-breath, opening our arms with the out-breath, pairing off and mimicking each others movements in a sidereal kabuki, breathing the orb of our heart-lights out of our bodies toward the center of the circle so our lights mingle. The underpinning of the session is the Buddhist compassion meditation practice called tonglen, taking and sending, which helps dissolve the border between ones inner life and the outside world.

Entering this environment, it already felt familiar to me, says Prima Mai, a longtime meditator from the Canary Islands. This energy body is like a personal memory. We are not so dense. We are not so much me and a separate other.

Shes not wrong. Uncannily, aNUma taps into our intuition that were more than just corporeal bodies, that theres a little something extra in the mix. In the aNUma space, that little something extra is on display.

Good VR is something that fundamentally aims to be aesthetically pleasing and immersive. For our purposes, we hope that it is also embodied and infused with wisdom, says Lama Karma.

Toward the end of our session, Lama Karma guides us through a demonstration of aNUmas future direction: end-of-life care. Its latest offering is called Clear Light. Each of us is asked to turn around so that the circle of practitioners is facing into the twilight darkness of space. Again, bringing our hand-lights to our bodies with the in-breath, opening our arms with the out-breath, we breathe our glowing heart orbs away from ourselves. With each breath, the orbs of light move farther away until their luminosity is no brighter than the stars in the virtual sky. Then their light goes out entirely. The idea is to help those whove been diagnosed with a terminal illness familiarize themselves with the final letting go that is death.

Tripp users undergo a simulation meant to trigger the overview effect, that is, a prosocial paradigm shift experienced by astronauts when viewing Earth from space.Buddhist teacher Andrew Holecek writes and teaches about lucid dreaming and dream yoga. He says of VR: This is the closest thing Ive experienced in the waking state to lucid dreams. Holecek connected with Jordan Quaglia, an associate professor of psychology at Naropa University, to explore VR for its potential in the contemplative arts.

In 2018, the two coauthored a paper about lucidity and virtual reality detailing an experiment to assess whether lucid dreaming trainees felt more or less fear when faced with a threatening scenario in virtual reality.

Putting on a VR headset, participants were asked to walk along and step off a plank seemingly high above a city. In reality, they were walking on a wooden board lying on the lab floor, but in their headsets, they were many stories up in the air.

Although their rational minds knew they were completely safe, many participants could barely bring themselves to step foot on the plank, let alone take the leap of faith and jump off the end. But participants trained in lucid dreamingin seeing through illusionexhibited less fear and greater ability to step off the plank than the control group.

One of the really exciting things about virtual reality, says Quaglia, is the chance to experience lucidity in profound ways that reflect back on our real-world experiences and offer perspective. Virtual lucidity is not only conceptual awareness or knowing that one is having a virtual experience. It can go deeper than that baseline level of awareness.

Even renowned Buddhist teachers have found the VR experience helpful.

A few years ago, American nun and teacher Pema Chdrn tried VR and wrote about the experience. She described how she enjoyed the illusion of flying, her fearlessness in the face of the reptile and spider simulations, and how the feat of walking that plank fifty stories up left her palms sweaty with terror. The experience seems to have had a profound effect on her; she uses it as a springboard to discuss uncertainty, insecurity, and groundlessness. The Tibetan teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche has also donned a VR headset and now references the experience in his dharma talks.

VR is really good at two things, says Alex Haley, a researcher at the Interactive Visualization Lab at the University of Minnesota. Its good at training, and its good at changing perspectives.

Theres research to show how VR helps us understand people of different gender, race, age, and abilities. One study demonstrated that if I put you in front of a digital mirror with a different virtual body, youll start to respond as if that were your real body. Swapping bodies cultivates empathy and understanding in really cool ways.

Holecek echoes Haleys sentiments: We dont transform through philosophy or cognitive gymnastics. We transform when we feel things.

Haley imagines a person curious about Buddhist meditation using VR to access a teacher and a Buddhist community from their living room. The VR headset itself acts like a pair of blinders against possible distractions, occluding the outside environment. Particularly if youre a beginner, says Haley, that can be extremely helpful, allowing you to contain your attention within whatever the virtual world is.

Holecek too sees VR as a boon for teachers trying to reach new meditators. When theres no cultural adaptation taking place, thats how traditions go extinct. If you dont adapt, you die. This is an all-hands-on-deck time. This is not the time to sit back and watch with caution. Why not engage virtual reality as a skillful means instead of putting your head in the sand and hoping your tradition will maintain itself?

VR can teach us about our relationship to reality, whatever that is, says Quaglia. Whether lucidity is cultivated in dreams or waking experience or in virtual experiences, they all point to a similar truthour relationship to reality isnt just happening to us. It is a more creative process that we can actively participate in.

According to Holecek, One of the ways VR can help us understand the nature of reality is through seeing the process of how we construct it, how we get lost or immersed in the display.

But when I ask Holecek about the dangers of VR in meditation, he says: The promise is in direct proportion to the peril.

Driven by money, operators in the VR industry are trying to muscle their way into the attention economy. Developers feel pressure to gamify and commodify the experiences they create. As Quaglia says, The companies creating these headsets are, to some degree, invested in the opposite of what we value as contemplative practitioners.

I think with any technology, whether its VR or anything else, theres a danger that the medium becomes the method, says Haley. Users need to understand that VR is only half the journey. The other half is integration. How does a VR experience inform your life going forward, moment to moment?

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Inside the World of VR Meditation Lions Roar - Lion's Roar

In a world where the din of daily life often drowns out the melody of happiness, Mr. Ramanujam Muralidaran, the Executive Director of the Happiness Center Lagos, offers a symphony of wisdom. He declares that music, meditation, and celebration are not mere ingredients but the very essence of holistic well-being, echoing the rhythmic heartbeat of Nigerias cultural heritage.

With over two decades of experience as a wellness coach, Ramanujam disclosed this life-affirming revelation at the Happiness Beats Live Music and Meditation show, a harmonious event that got every spirit lifted. The show was a testament to the profound cultural significance of music where rhythm flows through peoples veins. In a conversation withThe Guardian, Ramanujam revealed musics profound impact on the human soul. He posits that music has the power not only to uplift spirits but to kindle the embers of energy and to facilitate connections among souls, adding that it is a sentiment deeply ingrained in the heart of every nations musical tradition where every note carries the stories of generations.

Yet, in a contemporary world characterised by relentless hustle and bustling metropolises, the importance of celebration often gets drowned in the cacophony of lifes demands. Ramanujam emphasised that todays fast-paced existence has left many struggling under the weight of stress.

In the heart of Lagos a city of long commutes and hectic schedules, stress has become a ubiquitous companion. People nowadays have a dire need for taking care of stress, remarks Rami, his words echoing the collective sighs of many city dwellers.

To address this, Rami introduces a unique breathing technique, a treasure trove of wisdom passed down through generations, much like the tales of Nigerias folklore. This technique not only enhances physical health but also bestows upon individuals the serene focus required to navigate lifes tumultuous waters. When you have more energy, Rami passionately asserts, you feel better when you come back home. This echoes the spirit of resilience and optimism found in Nigerias age-old proverbs and stories.

Music is more than just a secret sauce; it is the very spice of life. Rami acknowledges that music has the profound ability to balance the logical and creative facets of the brain, providing respite from the relentless stress of daily life. It is a sentiment that harmonises with Nigerias diverse cultural tapestry, where music is an inseparable part of everyday existence.

There are two sides of the brain; one is the logical side and one is the creative side. They say that the left is the logical side and the right is the creative. So, what happens is we often end up using more of the logical side of the brain in our lives when people listen to any music, it suddenly changes their state of mind. So, music is like a secret sauce that is added to the food. It just brings that little bit extra in the mind and also what music does is that it helps to let go of the stresses, it helps you relax, more so when you listen to some song, you are so engrossed in the song that you just let go and somewhere the mind relaxes. So, when you do anything creative, it can be music, it can be art, it can be writing, it can be singing, dancing. It balances out both sides of the brain, he explains.

The choice of music, Rami advises, is akin to selecting the perfect spice for a culinary masterpiece. It must align with ones surroundings and activities, resonating with the cadence of life at that moment. This advice mirrors the intricate and nuanced selection of spices in Nigerian cuisine, each offering a unique flavour to the tapestry of life.

The General Manager, Sales, Events and Partnerships, Francisca Ukabiala, added that stress is the number one factor that causes illnesses in the body and in the mind, stating that it starts to manifest in diseases, aches and pains, and if its not taken care of, it leads to other very bad conditions.

So, aside from treating stress, we take care of the outcomes of stress, like pain. We find a lot of people with arthritis, we find people with back pain, knee pain, diabetes, and high blood pressure, we basically reset the body through detoxing and other natural means to bring the body back to what it ought to be.

What we practice here is Ayurveda medicine. Ayurveda medicine is an Indian traditional medicine that is over 5,000 years old and is approved by the World Health Organisation. The main difference between Ayurveda and other local practices that we have in Nigeria is that Ayurveda is very formalised. So, Indians have documented this medicine over the years, unlike our Ijaw Mama or the Alagbos who would treat, who would do bone setting, treat infertility, treat palsy, give massage, but where is it documented? she questioned.

The Happiness Center Lagos, a sanctuary for the soul, is not confined to mental well-being alone. It is a medical wellness centre, reminiscent of the age-old herbal remedies and traditional healing practices that have sustained many communities for years.

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Music, meditation and celebration: Essential ingredients for holistic well-being - Guardian Nigeria

LAS VEGASWearable company Oura, the maker of the "smart ring," has tapped Headspace to integrate physical health with stress management and meditation and mindfulness services.

During the HLTH conference, Oura unveiled new features to enable members to understand when and how they experience stress and recovery in their daily lives,

Chronic stress has a significant impact on overall health. According to the American Psychological Association, 77% of people experience stress that affects their physical health, and those stressors cancontribute to other health concerns like high blood pressure, cardiovascular health, anxiety and depression, and more.

Oura's new features offer individuals with user-friendly ways to measure stress and better understand its physical and mental impacts, both day-to-day and over time.

The "daytime stress" feature identifies stress triggers by continuously measuring small changes in biometrics like heart rate, HRV, and temperature. By capturing readings every 15 minutes, Oura's wearable can help identify stress triggers.

A new, AI-powered journal function in the Oura app, enables users to speak and record a short journal entry and use a single gesture to record mood and mental state. Speech recognition transcribes the text, while AI-powered auto-tagging automatically creates context for a members Oura data.

Later this winter, Oura will roll out a measure of "stress resilience" and provide insights, education, and recommendations for managing stress to improve ones overall health.

When the Oura ring alerts users to a high-stress situation, they can access selected Headspace meditation and mindfulness content. The integration of Headspace's programsprovides a deepened view into ones mind-body connection and understand how stress impacts our physical health, the companies said.

Digital mental health company Headspace, whichmerged with Ginger in a $3 billion dealin the fall of 2021,offers meditation and mindfulness services alongwith on-demand coaching, therapy and psychiatry services.

Hardware and software are equally important to the URA experience. Today, we have exciting news on both fronts, each stemming from requests from our community. Members asked us for a way to manage daytime stress and support recovery, and we listened, said Tom Hale, Oura chief executive officer, in a statement.

Ouras partnership with Headspace marks the how consumer wearable tools are expanding their capabilities to help increase access to mental health support.

It's not the first cutting-edge tech partnership for Headspace. The company also is collaborating with Meta to integrate its mindfulness content into Meta's Quest 3 Virtual Reality headset.

"The Headspace experience is a virtual playground for your mind and a place to hang out with your friends and wind down, find your focus and feel more energized," Headspace told TechCrunch.

The Headspace VR experience will focus on mindfulness experiences to improve users' performance across any VR apps and mindfulness experiences that help users transition out of VR and back to the real world, TechCrunch reported.

Headspace says this virtual reality and mixed reality world is an opportunity for it to expand its mental health resources and make its service more accessible to people around the world, the company told TechCrunch.

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HLTH23: Headspace, Oura partner to bring a high-tech approach to ... - FierceHealthcare

ReadingAfter Messiah, columnist and author Aakar Patels first work of fiction, is a fairly surreal affair. The book is carefully undated, few characters possess names, even locations are unspecified. Yet, the backdrop is all too familiar in fact, I only had to look up from the book and glance at the newspaper to find developments uncannily similar to a key narrative in the novel.

All of which makesAfter Messiahan unsettling experience, something like equating a movie watched at the cinema with a subversive act. Patel has emerged as one of the most consistent and acute chroniclers of Indias recent history. Fiction, I suspect, allows him to explore areas barred to most by a basic sense of self-preservation. But is it dystopia? Is it satirical? Wishful thinking? Futurist fantasy?

It may be all of those but, above all,After Messiahis a philosophical meditation on power and the nature and future of that power in the India of today. The narrative opens with the sudden demise of the messiah of the title referred to only as the Big Man in the text at the grand inauguration of an incomplete hospital. (The humour here, as in all of Patels writing, is always sly and sardonic; his eye for the ridiculous is second to none.) A bureaucratic scramble for his successor throws up a few names, the unlikeliest of whom is the little-known daughter of a deceased party founder.

The head of state shakes off herat-the-pleasure-of ignominy, discovers her autonomy, and appoints Mira Mandal as stop-gap leader of the shocked and bereaved country. No one is more stunned at her elevation, however, than the Big Mans second-in-command, Jayeshbhai a Luca Brasi to the Godfather and Swamji, a regional strongman of the party.

Author Aakar Patel | Photo Credit: K. Murali Kumar

In every way, Mira is the antithesis of the one who has gone before. A grassroots lawyer with an activist daughter and no visible partner, she is a fascinating creation: moral, relatable, idealistic, and therefore vulnerable. Supporting Mira are two top bureaucrats, Ayesha and Prabhu Patel only hints at their back stories, just enough to keep them interesting and an anonymous house manager, who has seen leaders come and go while in charge of their residence. The conversations among these four, who develop an organic alliance at a critical historical moment, form the fulcrum of the book, with as much said as unsaid.

These three characters and, to a limited extent, the head of the state are the vehicles for the articulation of Patels central concerns about power in an electoral democracy. That power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely is less than a truism today, but corruption is rarely limited to one individual or even a coterie of individuals. From the very first moments of the birth of a nation for what is a nation such as India but a compromise? and possibly before the ink on the Constitution runs dry, the pulls and pressures of power begin nipping away at the foundation. As the past decades have proved, democratic institutions are only as strong as the individuals upholding them.

Describing the PMO the author never refers to the position in any other way Patel writes: Under the Big Man, [the PMO] had become absolutely enormous. The office had come to dominate the government and its branches. Ministries no longer took decisions that concerned investment or even appointments. These orders came from the PMO and only when it was something of interest to the Big Man... Ministries focused on delivering the finest possible event or ceremony the Big Man could preside over. Actual delivery of governance was less important... It was not very different from a kingdom. The republic existed and even appeared to exist... there was a legislature but it met irregularly and did not debate at all. The law was the instruction sent down from the PMO.

Over the course of the narrative, a particular law becomes the flashpoint for Mira. Not the anti-national law that incarcerates Miras daughter this section was traumatic reading in the context of the October 3 raids on media portalNewsClickand the questioning and arrest of its journalists under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act but another that allows the state to capture land for development. Miras decision on this count is preceded by a fine section on the inherent violence in the idea of the state.

After Messiahmay not qualify as great literature the writing is almost too spare, the plot line almost secondary to polemic but it is an important book of ideas, using fiction to force engagement with facts almost too brutal to contemplate upfront. For those who have steered clear of Patels somewhat dense works of non-fiction (Our Hindu Rashtra, 2020;Price of the Modi Years, 2021), this is an introduction to a critical school of thought on India today.

The reviewer is a Bengaluru-based writer and editor.

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Review of After Messiah by Aakar Patel | A meditation on power and its nature in India today - The Hindu

Household chores like sweeping, hanging out the washing and ironing can be more relaxing than meditation or yoga.

That's according to a survey of 2,000 Brits that discovered what makes us de-stress.

Mundane tasks that don't require much thought were voted the best way of finding a moment of calm.

But most bizarrely, mashing potatoes, building flat pack furniture and just watching the washing machine cycle are some tasks Brits say they find the most therapeutic.

More than half of people surveyed (56 per cent)believe everyday tasks can be more relaxing than meditation or yoga, according to the survey commissioned by eBay.

Unsurprisingly, half of those surveyed (49 per cent) said making a tea or coffee eases their stress and anxiety levels.

But watering the plants (31 per cent), grating cheese (12 per cent) and even wiping kitchen surfaces (21 per cent) were also among the top 30 stress-busters.

The survey revealed that around half (49 per cent) of people believe tactile tasks with an end product are among the most relaxing.

So, it is no surprisethat crocheting (14 per cent), cleaning the car out (12 per cent) and making flatpack furniture (six per cent) were also on the list.

Household chores that many would consider to be boring were also hailed for their tension-reducing effects.

Folding washing (25 per cent), ironing (23 per cent), going to the supermarket (20 per cent) and even sorting the recycling (13 per cent), were labelled as relaxing tasks.

Just like meditation and yoga, mundane tasks can cause the brain to release hormones that boost mood,says Cranfield University psychologist Dr Lisa Dorn.

She said: 'These everyday tasks can also release endorphins which relate to "pleasure centres" in the brain, creating a general feeling of well-being.

'Regularly increasing your endorphin levels can also boost your mood and brain function and ward off anxiety and stress.'

This could be because we are able to turn off from worries and concerns in life and focus at the task at hand instead, she says.

Dr Dorn added: 'From a psychological perspective, people get into a zone, or mental state, in which they dont need to think and are fully immersed in a feeling of energised focus and enjoyment.

'It's as if action and consciousness melt together as people concentrate on the task rather than their worries and concerns.'

Concerns that occupy and stress out the minds of most Brits include money, work, family and health, the poll revealed.

On average, Brits have 10 moments of relaxation a day, with one in three (33 percent) claiming they are having less stress-free moments now compared to three years ago. Almost half (49 percent) wish they had more periods of calm in their lives.

More than half of people surveyed (58 per cent) said they found that phones and computers made it harder for them to relax, but 71 per cent watch TV to switch off.

Others said going for a long walk (58 per cent), watching a film (48 per cent) and reading (45 per cent) helped them unwind.

Source:Research of 2,000 Britons was commissioned by eBay and was conducted by Perspectus Global in September 2023

Excerpt from:

Forget yoga and meditation... try mashing potatoes or building flatpack furniture: Brits reveal their favourit - Daily Mail

Updated Oct 11, 2023 | 10:05 AM IST

Know the significance of Amavasya of Pitru Paksha

Photo : iStock

Saturday, October 14 is the last day of Pitru Paksha. This day is called Sarvapitri Moksha Amavasya. The significance of Amavasya of Pitru Paksha is very high in Hinduism because on this day, Shraddha and incense meditation is performed for all the ancestors.

This day Shraddha rituals is performed for all those ancestors whose date of death is not known and also for those for whom one has forgotten. One should perform the Shraddha rituals during Pitru Paksha.

According to astrologers, the ancestors are greatly pleased by the incense meditation done during Pitru Paksha. It is believed that people whose ancestral deities are not satisfied have to face many problems in their daily life. They struggle to achieve their goals and face obstacles every step of the way. To please such ancestors, Shraddha must be performed during Pitripaksha.

How to meditate under sun on Amavasya

On Amavasya day one should wake up early in the morning and have a bath and then prepare to worship. After worshipping one should prepare pure Satvik food for the ancestors. The preferred dish to be prepared is kheer-puri. Cover the place where you want to meditate with incense sticks and cow dung.

Sprinkle Ganga water at the place where you want to meditate. Burn the pots made of cow dung and when the smoke stops coming out from the embers of the pot, then offer jaggery, ghee, kheer-puri on the embers. Keep meditating for your ancestors.

After this take some water in the palm and offer it to the ancestors from the thumb side.

If you wish, you can also meditate on incense with the help of a Brahmin. By doing this you will be able to meditate properly. After performing Shraddha, make some donations to the Brahmin and provie food to them and to the needy people.

Do this auspicious work on Amavasya

Donate money, grains, shoes, slippers and clothes to the needy people on Amavasya. If possible, also serve food to them.

One can also keep food outside the house for cows, dogs and crows. Donate money or grain to a cow shelter for the care of cows. Feed green grass to cows. One can also make balls of flour and feed them to the fishes in rivers or ponds.

On Saturday one should donate oil for Shani Dev and light a lamp in front of Hanuman ji and recite the Hanuman Chalisa.

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Amavasya of Pitru Paksha on 14th October: Do Incense-Meditation for Those Whose Date of Death is Not Known - Times Now

Let me start by saying that Im not much for fad diets. I believe that the constant losing and gaining of weight and going on and off of diets throughout a persons life can have negative consequences for your health in the long run. But that said, ten years ago I had reached a low point in the food consumption arena. Thats my euphemism for confessing that I had a problem with junk food. My wife saw this and brought it to my attention, and together (with much cajoling needed on her part) we began what is known as the Whole 30 diet. Nothing fancy, just common-sense eating. The idea is that we were to eat only whole foods for a month. No extra sugar, no sodium, no dairy. Just the healthy stuff.

Within those thirty days I had lost twelve pounds and an inch off my waist, so we decided to keep going. Another three months later, and I had lost a total of 25 pounds. My skin was starting to clear up, I could sleep easily at night, and I was able to stop all allergy medication because my symptoms were non-existent. It was a miracle cure...or was it?

We are surrounded by junk food on a daily basis in this country. Look at the label of what you are eating the next time you go to start dinner. Sugar, sodium, MSG, yellow #5. The list goes on and on. Most (if not all) of these foods are more chemical than food anyway. It is as if bacon cheeseburgers everywhere have come together to form a united front against our ability to live long, healthy lives! To make matters worse, the more bad food you consumethe more your body craves it. This is both psychological and physiological.

When I think of stripping away all of the unhealthy ingredients in these foods, I cannot help but ruminate on what it means to be spiritually healthy as well. We are both physical and spiritual beings. Is the Biblical Christian plagued by extra, unwanted raw materials that hover around the purity of our Lords words? Just how pervasive is church tradition when it comes to interfering with sacred Scripture?

It is important to make the point here about staying true to the purity of Scripture, so lets begin by trying to define what I think are five core beliefs that Christians hold dear. This isnt a comprehensive list, but at its root, it would be difficult for me to imagine anyone holding to a Christian identity if they didnt agree on these five things. I believe all of these concepts are clearly stated in the Bible. Indeed, we need only Google the Apostles Creed to find many of them.

The big five are as follows: we know God to be a trinity (three in one), we know Jesus was resurrected on the third day, we believe in salvation through Christ alone, we understand the concept of original sin, and we profess the second coming of Jesus one day in the future. These are core principles of the faith, and they are repeated over and over again in the Bible. Even with a superficial reading of the text, they are hard to miss.

So then, why is it so easy to mess up religion? Why do so many stray from the center and off into the murky grey area? We know that staying true to the Gospel message was important to the writers of the New Testament also. Listen to this verse from 1 Timothy (4:16), Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.

I think that the problem lies in the fact that these Biblical truths are often mixed together with a little bit of sugar here, and a lot of sodium there. By the time we add MSG and a spoon-full of Yellow #5, we have such a watered-down version of the Good News that we shouldnt be surprised if the outside world wants none of it. They are hearing an amalgamated version of the faith, laced with political correctness and a good measure of personal opinion thrown in.

But imagine if we kept it simple, and we stuck to the big five without any additives or extras. Habakkuk says this in fact (2:2-3), Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Imagine if we made it plain.

I believe there would be less in-fighting within churches, and therefore less contempt for the word of God outside of the church as well. We feel so much better when we eat healthy and begin to heal our bodies from the inside out. Wouldnt this hold true for our spiritual selves also? No loaded baked potato with sour cream and butter for me; just serve it to me plain please. None of that other junk that will only slow me down.

Then reality comes rushing back in. Of course, we often cloud these marvelous truths with man-made traditions and supplemental rules. Its what human beings doit always has been. Im sure many well-meaning bishops and pastors throughout generations past have added a bit extra to their sermons here and there. Better to make it plain if possible, however. Once our skin begins to clear up and the allergy symptoms leave, the future of the church begins to look brighter. We may even drop some extra weight in the process.

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Pause to meditate: Guarding your spiritual health | Columnists ... - bdemo.com

Image for representational purpose only.

Source: Pixabay

Srinagar, Oct 10: The District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) Srinagar, under the aegis of NALSA and J&K Legal Services Authority in association with Kashmir Law Circle (NGO) organised awareness programme at ADR centre, District Court Complex, Moominabad, Srinagar, on Mental Health and allied issues.

The awareness programme was organised under the leadership and guidance of Jawad Ahmed, Chairman DLSA (PDJ) Srinagar on the occasion of World Mental Health Day celebrated globally every year on 10th October, as part of a calendar of activities issued by J&K Legal Services Authority Srinagar.

The programme commenced with the address by resource persons of DLSA Srinagar, Nadia (Kashmir Law Circle). The other speakers were Tasneem Kousar (Dy.LADC) and Neelofer (PLV).

The programme was attended by the Staff and Para Legal Volunteers of DLSA, Srinagar, students from Kashmir Law Circle and LADCs of DLSA Sgr.

The DLSA Srinagar also organised a half an-hour Yoga and Meditation Session for Relaxation and Peace of mind.

Sunila Kumari (JLA) conducted the Yoga session and shared valuable meditation techniques. She encouraged the participants to incorporate meditation practices into their daily routines for enhanced well-being and mental peace.

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DLSA Srinagar organises Mental Health Awareness & Meditation Session - Greater Kashmir