By Radhika Vachani

Author of The Most Powerful Tool for Personal Transformation and Happiness

 

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You experience your entire life through your mind. If your mind is not in order, if it is not a healthy place to live, nothing you do or achieve will ever make you happy nor give you the satisfaction you are looking for.

Human beings mostly operate from a very superficial layer of consciousness where the conceptual mind, driven by the ego and the senses, determines how you think, feel and act. This energy sphere is fraught with restlessness and chaos, as it is oriented in the physical world, which is volatile, impermanent and uncertain.

To live a more wholesome and meaningful life, you must learn to go beyond this layer and access deeper levels of consciousness, living in a more awakened state.

You have access to a vast amount of intelligence, creativity and wisdom within you—you just have-to learn how to access it.

The main way to do so is through training your mind to focus on your breath.

The breath is the most powerful tool for your personal transformation. It is the only aspect of you that takes place in the present, not in the past, nor the future. When you become aware of the breath multiple times throughout the day and breathe slowly, feeling each inhalation and exhalation, you start to transform your mind.

The mind is the root cause of all unhappiness, and with simple exercises practiced regularly, you can learn to relax and tame your mind, and transform yourself and your life experiences.

Here are three simple ways to become more mindful and to help train your mind to experience peace, each and every day:

1. Start Early. Every morning, when you take a shower and/or brush your teeth, do this simple task with complete concentration. Every time your mind starts to wander off, you should be alert enough to recognize this and simply draw the mind back to the breath.
2. Set Reminders. Download mindfulness bells onto your phone and set a timer for every hour, or less. When the bells go off, take a few moments to breathe consciously, feeling each breath. Do this about 5 times, breathing slowly. This helps move your mind away from its restless and chaotic state to become more present, mindful and alert.
3. Just breathe. Spend 5 minutes or more every morning to sit quietly with yourself. Sit upright on a chair or in a cross-legged position in a quiet room. Close your eyes, and place your middle and index finger gently on your navel. Slowly inhale starting at the navel all the way to the upper palette of your mouth. Allow your abdomen to extend out as you do this, feeling your fingers extend out as well. Then slowly exhale as you draw your navel into the spine, feeling your fingers moving inwards towards the spine. Do this bout 5 times, and then come back to normal breathing. For the next few minutes, just feel the breath, training your mind to focus on the breath. Set a time for 5 minutes and increase the time as you get better at this.

When we are not mindful and alert, we get caught up in a mind that is constantly dreaming, distracted and chaotic. We are unable to be present to all that is occurring around us and within us, and as a result, life just passes us by. Yoga is a science of the here and now, and when we train our minds to focus on the breath, we are in fact training the mind to become more present and alert so that we can live our lives with fullness.

 

 

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RADHIKA VACHANI is the author of Just Breathe: The Most Powerful Tool for Personal Transformation and Happiness. She is also a motivational speaker, yoga and holistic wellness expert, and the Founder of Yogacara Healing Arts in Mumbai, India (www.yogacara.in). Radhika also runs life-transforming retreats all over the world, in the Himalayas, Ladakh and at her Retreat Center outside of Mumbai in Alibaug. To learn more, visit www.yogacara.in  or connect with Radhika at radhika.vachani@yogacara.in and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.