practice yoga and meditation

Yoga for Teens card Deck that shows 40 favorite poses each with step by step instructions, yoga to go pose sequences, lifestyle tips, breathing exercises and meditation prompts.

Now I am not a teenager but I bet these cards will help me with my yoga and meditation practice…after all yoga has been the best exercise for all ages for centuries. :)

My new friends have both been to an ashram to study the teachings of Gurumayi. I am now reading her book “My Lord Loves a Pure Heart..The Yoga of Divine Virtues”.

I am hoping for enlightenment and a peaceful heart.

Exhale negative energy,breathe in positive energy,exhale negative energy…repeat until negativity disappears!

has a finished attic that has been divided into 3 separate rooms. I haven’t used them yet. But have decided to take the eastern facing room and make it into my yoga/meditation room. I am thrilled to have a special place set aside for this. :)

so this morning I restarted my pilates in the mornings and yoga in the evenings.

That coupled with a brisk walk after work should be a well rounded work-out routine. :)

which has a whole channel (FIT TV) dedicated to being fit and fabulous. I have been practicing my yoga nad pilates with those shows for the last week.

Today I decided to record the series in case I miss a session.

pilates in the morning and yoga in the evening. It is starting to become a want to instead of a need to goal.

I am looking for an actual yoga class to join. I think getting out with others will be beneficial for me in many way.

Meditation is still difficult for me. When I pray it is usually short prayer throughout my days and my mind is off to other things.

With meditation you have to clear your mind totally…impossible so far. :(

for Pilates and Yoga but if I don’t take them out of the box, put them in my DVD player, and play along they are not going to do me any good at all.

Tonight I will start with a basic yoga mediatation ritual before I go to bed and set my alarm a little earlier for pilates in the morning. :)

Your attraction to a useful philosophy now may have you doing yoga or studying religious practices in a foreign culture. But this isn’t an idle intellectual diversion; you truly want to apply what you learn to make your life better. Luckily, energetic Mars fuels your serious intentions and gives you the stamina to follow through on whatever you start at this time.

... and you can learn how he does it, says academic-turned-Buddhist monk

By Anthony Barnes
Published: 21 January 2007

To scientists, he is the world’s happiest man. His level of mind control is astonishing and the upbeat impulses in his brain are off the scale.

Now Matthieu Ricard, 60, a French academic-turned-Buddhist monk, is to share his secrets to make the world a happier place. The trick, he reckons, is to put some effort into it. In essence, happiness is a “skill” to be learned.

His advice could not be more timely as tomorrow Britain will reach what, according to a scientific formula, is the most miserable day of the year. Tattered new year resolutions, the faded buzz of Christmas, debt, a lack of motivation and the winter weather conspire to create a peak of misery and gloom.

But studies have shown that the mind can rise above it all to increase almost everyone’s happiness. Mr Ricard, who is the French interpreter for Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, took part in trials to show that brain training in the form of meditation can cause an overwhelming change in levels of happiness.

MRI scans showed that he and other long-term meditators – who had completed more than 10,000 hours each – experienced a huge level of “positive emotions” in the left pre-frontal cortex of the brain, which is associated with happiness. The right-hand side, which handles negative thoughts, is suppressed.

Further studies have shown that even novices who have done only a little meditation have increased levels of happiness. But Mr Ricard’s abilities were head and shoulders above the others involved in the trials.

“The mind is malleable,” Mr Ricard told The Independent on Sunday yesterday. “Our life can be greatly transformed by even a minimal change in how we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world. Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time.”

Mr Ricard was brought up among Paris’s intellectual elite in the 1960s, but after working for a PhD in biochemsitry he abandoned his distinguished academic career to study Tibetan Buddhism in the Himalayas.

A book of philosophical conversations he conducted with his father Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher, became an unlikely publishing phenomenon when it came out in France in the late 1990s.

Mr Ricard is to publish his book Happiness for the first time in the UK next month.