Being at Rishikesh for a month, is still making me intoxicated with its vibes. Learning yoga in the lap of mother nature can’t pamper your mind and body any more. When we say that we are doing yoga, it merely does not mean an hour in our mat. The purpose of yoga is to elevate your consciousness. Just because we are born as human, we can take the privilege of doing everything consciously, like eat consciously, breathe consciously, talk consciously etc. etc. and that is what Yoga is all about. Bring consciousness in all your activities.
In Bhagwat Gita Lord Krishna says, ‘’Yogah Karmasu Kaushalam’’- Excellence in action is Yoga. Being 100% present in the present. Bringing awareness in all your actions enhances the quality of actions. A simple illustration to this is, just focus on your breathe and breathe normally without any effort. You will notice that your breathe was deeper than your normally breathe but without any effort. Thus awareness increases the quality without much effort.
So how do we live yoga or how can we be aware. Creating awareness is being mindful all the time. Lets start with bringing mindfulness in our basic daily activities:
- Awareness in breathe: Keep check on your breathe. Focus on how you breathe each time, because its your breathe that holds the connection of you with the world.
How to create awareness in breathe?
An easy way to breathe is with So-ham , inhale with So and exhale with ham. This will immensely help to create the awareness of the breath. - Awareness in Eating: The second most crucial sustainability is our food. Being aware of what we are eating makes the food act differently in our system. Studies have shown that if we just observe our food and owe respect to what is going inside, makes the food act differently in our system.
How to create awareness in our eating?
Chewing the food properly is one of the best ways to be mindful towards our food. - Awareness in Thoughts: Third most crucial thing is our mind. The most difficult thing is bring the mind is our control. We are always carried away by the fluctuations of our mind. Thoughts just pop up in the mind without permission and they even carry the power to make us restless throughout. Isn’t it taking away lot of your energy !!! Our mind is living at its will since many years. To control the thoughts, we need to address them.
How to create awareness in Thoughts?
Meditation helps best to overcome this. Just sit in a calm environment and listen to your mind, let the thoughts come and go. Do not judge the thoughts, let them just come and go. Let your mind talk out to you and one day you will suddenly start feeling calmer and lighter. - Awareness in speech: When we speak not only our mouth talks but also our body which we commonly know as gestures and postures. Only we know that how many blunders we have created with wrong way of speaking, though our intentions were true. With awareness, you distance yourself from distractions and you choose to speak and act mindfully. Bringing awareness will calm our tone, our body postures will be in control and it will give us the time to think before we speak.
How to create awareness in Speech?
Whenever possible pen down your feelings before you say. This will give clarity of thought and will improvise your actions the next time when you are reacting in the similar situation.
Deepak Chopra quotes it well by saying, ‘’ As long as we are trapped in thought, we remain its prisoner. Freedom is awareness which is not on time’’
– Rutu Trivedi Panjwani
