Meditation Basics - Releasing Stress.

Do you somtimes feel overwhelmed by all the things you need to do during the day?

For years, I felt like a deer caught in the headlights of a truck, every day's reality was rushing towards me and I felt stuck unable to move away. I was in a daily chase going nowhere fast unable to take a breath.

Many of experience one or another form of this overwhelming and constant pressure without a healty way to release it.
We know a lot of unhealthy ways like overeating, drinking alcohol, popping prescription pills like candy and even doing different illegal drugs, all of that just to take off the edge.

For many years I used different mixtures to take the edge off and releasing the stress, what eventually led to more stress from addictions, hangovers and unfinished responsibilities.

How can we release the stress we build up in our daily lives?

Meditation is scientifically proven to lower stress and help to deal with our daily troubles, but very often when we think about meditation, we think about a monk sitting in a cross legged pose for hours and trying to think of nothing.
This approach simply doesn't help people living in an urban space in the 21st century, that approach is ideal for monks.

What we need are short meditaion exercises thay will help us relax, doing such an exercise for 10 minutes a day is usually enough to help deal with stress and anxiety.

Once I started doing relaxation exercises every day I noticed that I am much less sensitive to stress and I don't get caught up and overwhelmed by the things happening.
With every passing day I started getting more and more relaxed and I think that now I simply feel Unshakeable.

There are many different relaxation exercises out there and they are all built on the same principle technique that I will share with you right now, you need to find a quiet place that you can safely close your eyes in and not be disturbed for 10 minutes.

Set a timer for 10 minutes just in case you will fall asleep.

Read this exercise before performing it and if you want to really do a great relaxation exercise record yourself reading this exercise on your cell phone - read slowly and pause for 10-15 seconds between paragraphs.

Relaxation exercise

Sit comfortably and close your eyes

Take a deep breath in through your nose and a slow breath out through your mouth.

Continue breathing slowly and concentrate on your breath, feel the cool air filling your lungs when you inhale and the hot air exiting when you exhale.

While breathing move your attention to the skin of your scalp and imagine all the muscles and ligaments relaxing, once you feel a warm sensation in your scalp move on to your forehead and imagine it relaxing as well.

From the on move to your eyes and imagine your eyelids relaxing and becoming very heavy, move to your cheeks and imagine them relaxing, feel how your jaw relaxes.

Move to your neck and throat and imagine how all the tension in the muscles ia going away, move to your shoulders, arms, hand and fingers fell how they become relaxed and heavy.

Focus on your chest and feel it relaxing, imagine how your lungs, heart and diaphragm relax and function easily. Move to your stomach and imagine the muscles and all the internal organs relax and continue working effortlessly.

Relax your hips, thighs, knees and calves. Imagine how your feet relax and become heavy.

Now your body is deeply relaxed. In this state go again all over the organs from top to bottom and relax them even deeper.

Continue holding this state up to the point in which you will hear the alarm clock.

If your thoughts wander off gently gather them back to your deep relaxed state.

When you here the alarm clock, slowly count from 1 to 5 and open your eyes.

End

This relaxation exercise is the first step to learning how to meditate, but it has it's own merit not only in reducing stress but also in promoting health and helping the body to recover, in this deeply relaxed state your body starts cleaning and regeneration process that help to deal with almost any known medical condition, and that is proven scientifically.

Release your stress, relax and we will meet in the next chapter about meditation - The Safe Place.

Thank you for your time.

With love.

Eugene