If we are not happy – we find it difficult to sleep. And if we can’t sleep, we are not happy. Catch 22. Quite a few of us have difficulty getting sound sleep at night. Harder we try, with our eyes tightly closed, more sleep alludes us. It is definitely bad news for our mental and physical health. Our thinking becomes sluggish and our performance suffers. We wake up feeling groggy and end up being irritable – in a way readying ourselves for another night of sleeplessness.Don’t do that…break the cycle.A few small changes can lead you to sound sleep and happy waking up. Make sure that your surroundings are clean, bed neat and clean and temperature right. If you have to drag yourself out of the bed to manipulate A/C or fan, or you find a small crumb of chocolate you just had on your bed, it impacts peace of mind. Have your pick – a small glass of wine or a mug of warm milk. If you are struggling to relax, these come in handy. Both work towards relieving muscle tension and calming the mind. Relax your mind and body. Don’t continue challenging work, be it mental or physical, till the time you crash on your bed. Give your mind time to calm down and your body to cool at least an hour before it is sleep time. So that you do not carry your work stress to bed with you. A few minutes of meditation as you are getting ready to sleep has a marvellous calming effect. If you are not into meditation – do some slow breathing. Hold your breath for a second or two, then release, counting to four. Focused breathing helps in letting go off tension and calms you. At the same time, deep breathing helps to relax your muscles too. Pay attention to your body’s natural clock. Each one of us has a natural clock which governs circadian or 24-hourly rhythm of our body. Our sleeping patterns too are decided by it. Normally, a person would sleep for 7-8 hours starting anytime between 9 to 11 PM. Sometimes we push sleep away due to various reasons. If it becomes a normal practice, rhythm of our body is disturbed and sleep starts eluding us. Listen to your body’s rhythm and sleep when your body and mind signal fatigue and sleepiness. Limit caffeine. Caffeine, as is, is not healthy for us. Among other things, it can cause insomnia. As it increases the metabolism of the body till the time it is in our body, it is strictly advised not to have caffeine at least for four to five hours before going to bed. Spray lavender oil. If it is stress that is keeping you away from sleep, try using lavender aroma oil or light a lavender candle. However, be sure that if you use aroma oil, use it sparingly. Just a few drops sprayed on your pillow would be enough. If you opt for a lavender candle, keep it at a safe place not too close to the bed. It is known for helping relax your emotional state Make sure your dinner is the lightest meal of the day. Avoid food that takes long to digest, or is overly stimulating. Avoiding carbohydrates completely would be a good idea. It does not only aid peaceful sleep, but also helps you wake up lighter and brighter. Practice Yoga. There are gentle yoga stretches and exercises that ease you mind and body. Practicing them half-an-hour before you hit the bed would lead you to peaceful sleep. A word of caution though, seek expert advice and do not go for rigorous exercises at night. Breathe in fresh air. In the earlier days, people used to go for a gentle stroll post dinner. Do take a short and slow walk post your dinner. It helps cleanse the mind and get the food settled. When you close your eyes to sleep you feel peaceful and in synchronisation with your body rhythm. Make sure to finish all your chores before going for that stroll. Warm relaxing bath does the trick. Some of us believe in aura and some don’t. For the believers, a warm bath helps in removing the bad influences of the entire day, making us feel pure and light. For those who don’t believe in it – a nice warm bath makes us feel relaxed and calm. Switch off TV at least 30-45 minutes before going to bed. More often than not, news as well as shows make us glued to them by making us emotionally charged. It hinders our sleep. Make sure you are at peace with yourself when you go to sleep. In case sleep eludes you for a few minutes, don’t reach out for you mobile to check chats and updates. Better still your cell should not be your bed mate. Keep it away, focus on your breathe and lead yourself to calmness. Peace will follow.
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What is a conversation? it is much more than talk, which can be mere chatting about nothing in particular, or communication, which need to be no more than transmission of information to passive audience
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It all depends on where our mind is! If it is in a complaining mode then more and more unpleasant situations will crop up out of thin air! As such their roots are in the mind and manifestations are in the external world. We create our miseries inside and see them outside. Unhappiness breeds in the shallow pool of unconsciousness.
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The cunning mind makes a compromise. It goes not paying lip service to them, saying, "I am following you, " but it goes not doing what so ever it wants to do. You continue your anger, you continue your sex, you continue your greed, but you go on saying that greed is bad, anger is bad, sex is bad - that it is a sin.
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The Earth, despite being called as the ‘blue planet’ is facing its worst water crisis in generations. The bitter irony is that out of 71 % of surface area covered with water, only less than 1 percent is available for human use. While the demand for potable water is ever increasing, one has to bear in mind that the supply will always remain constant
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Positive action Creating micro forests for our cities, tree clusters, and green belts and engaging communities and school children, is the only way forward, if we wish to keep our air and water worth consuming.
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SWAMI ANAND KUL BHUSHANDoes saving the environment start with an individual? Or will international organizations do this job? How can this become a chain reaction? How does meditation encourage saving our planet?All these questions for Earth Day, 5 June, have a single answer.This planet is all we have. And we have almost ruined it. Unless we clean up our planet, we will face disaster. There is no Plan B. And no Planet B. Life has blossomed on this planet. Now we are exploring other planets to find out if human life is possible out there in outer space. Thus we are exploring other planets to settle and also ruin them with our greed and wars.But the answer lies in our inner space. We have never explored it. Too busy to survive in this mad race, motivated by greed and power, we hurtle along without bothering about our vast, unlimited inner space. Once you are aware of your inner space, you are aware of your consciousness. You are aware of awareness. This can lead you to protect and preserve this planet.The dangerous and deadly situations of urban pollution, climate change, deforestation, and slaughter of wildlife, destroying ecosystems, water shortages, over population, ozone layer depletion, acid rain, and energy crunch are some of the concerns that are discussed in international conferences and assemblies. But the answer lies at an individual level.“Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best,’ urged Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout movement.When you star exploring your inner space with meditation, you are gradually transformed. Then you start acting responsibly, with love and compassion for nature. The each individual act of concern for nature starts a positive chain reaction.Osho says,” It is strange that logical scientists go on denying that there is anything inner in man. They accept the outer and they deny the inner; they accept the things in their house and they deny themselves. It is simply ludicrous, but it cannot go on for long. More and more intelligent people are searching inwards because the outer search has led to death -- to the ultimate death. The inner search will lead you to deeper layers of life and finally to the eternal life in the same way as the outer search leads you to death, because objects are dead.”Today, on Environment Day we have to ponder and take decisive action. So to save ourselves and our planet, we have no alternative but to explore our inner space with meditation. All these global meetings and protests with news making slogans are of little help if each person continues on this disastrous slide. Remember, we have no Planet B. And with our plant, we can be happy.
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If we study the life of successful persons we find that they have very strong power of positive emotions in their character and that helps them to go on scripting a successful life which is not measured by material gains alone
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