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An important stress management teaching is the idea that if you calm your mind your body will also be calmer and that if you relax your body your mind will be more peaceful. The concept is referred to as calm mind calm body and calm body calm mind. If you calm your mind your body will be more relaxed and stress free and that will improve your health and mood. If you relax your body you’ll be calmer. So you should try some calming exercises or techniques for stress management. Calming exercises could include affirmations, breathing exercises, meditation, Pilates, stretching, walking and yoga.
A helpful calming stress management technique that could help you to calm quickly is mindfulness meditation. In mindfulness meditation you try to pay attention to how you feel, what’s happening and any sensations you have including sounds. You try to live in the present moment (which is sometimes called be here now) and feel what is happening in the time period. Try to be very attentive, alert and conscious of what is happening in the present moment. Pay attention to what you’re doing and how it feels. This technique should help you to be more centered and peaceful.
From time to time throughout the day pause and do some kind of calming or mindfulness exercise. You can try the calming techniques in this article or make up your own. You could stretch and look around the room. You could massage your hands or neck and shoulders. You could count to ten, do things more slowly or carefully or try to be more calm and peaceful.
One simple way to do this is to breathe deeply. Slow breathing can help you relax. Exhaling more slowly than you usually do can also help to [...]
Any dog or horse trainer will tell you that what is fed to an animal influences its behaviour. Although we like to forget this when it comes to ourselves, what we eat has a huge influence not only over our physical well being, but also over our thoughts, and ultimately our emotional and spiritual well being. The yogis of ancient times knew this, and many classical yogic texts, such as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, contain advice on a yogic diet. However, proper diet is a controversial subject. Nutrition has been extensively researched by modern science, and there seems to be as many ‘proper’ diets as there are scientific studies. It is more than a bit confusing for someone to devise their own individual diet amidst so much, often contradictory, advice.
The advice given below is based on the classical yogic texts and on the author’s experience. It also gives pointers for further research and experimentation.
Unlike modern scientists, yogis are not interested in the chemical content (protein, vitamins, etc…) of the food. Instead, food is traditionally classified according to its effect on the body and mind, using the the three Gunas: Sattva (the quality of love, light and life), Raja (the quality of activity and passion, lacking stability) and Tamas (the quality of darkness and inertia, dragging us into ignorance and attachment) :
Sattvic food promotes clarity and calmness of mind and is favourable for spiritual growth. It is “sweet, fresh and agreeable” and includes most fruits, nuts, seeds, vegetables, particularly green leafy vegetables, whole grains, honey, pure water and milk (with the reservation that commercially produced milk may not nowadays be so sattvic…). Given the amount of pesticides and chemical fertilisers used on commercial crops, only organic products still qualify as Sattvic, and tinned or frozen [...]
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