stress management

Stress Relief at Work & Home Through Eye Exercises

Posted in stress management, techniques on August 3rd, 2009 by Vlad Moskovski – 3 Comments
Working at a computer all day can be difficult and puts strain and stress on the eyes leading to blurriness, redness, reduced vision, and headaches. Our modern lifestyle reduced the natural freedom of eye movements to a straight and short laser-like stare, aimed at our screens for hours at a time. To undo this strain, our eyes need exercise just like our bodies and minds. Here is a quick eye movement exercise to reduce stress, sooth, relax, and promote healthy eye motion.
Begin by getting into a comfortable sitting position. Taking a few deep breaths, get centered and focus on your eyes. Moving your gaze upward, begin to make gentle up and down motions with your eyes, tracing a nearby wall or just focusing on the movements themselves. Repeat this up and down motion approximately ten times then bring your eyes to center and close them for a moment.
To make the motion smooth, you can imagine your eyes tracing a straight and unbroken line. After the completion of each series of directional movements, bring your eyes to center and close to give them some rest.
Opening them again, begin to move them left to right, repeating this motion another ten times.  Opening, look to the upper left corner of your vision and trace a line down to the bottom right, and back diagonally to the upper left. Do this ten times, center, close, and repeat the diagonal motion in the opposite direction.
Next, moving your gaze up, begin to trace a smooth clockwise circle, including as much of your peripheral vision as possible. Once completed, repeat in the counter-clockwise direction. After doing both directions, center and close the eyes. Keeping them closed, bring your hands together and rub them vigorously until you feel heat between your palms. Bringing the palms to your closed eyes, cup eyes and let the heat and darkness sooth and relax your eye muscles. Take a few deep breaths here to finish the practice.
In summary here is the order: up and down, left and right, diagonal, and finally circular in both directions. Enjoy and practice whenever your feel strain or pressure building up in the eyes. Done often, this exercise will keep your eyes healthy and strong!

Working at a computer all day can be difficult and puts strain and stress on the eyes leading to blurriness, redness,eye of the catreduced vision, and headaches. Our modern lifestyle reduced the natural freedom of eye movements to a straight and short laser-like stare, aimed at our screens for hours at a time. To undo this strain, our eyes need exercise just like our bodies and minds. Here is a quick eye movement exercise to reduce stress, sooth, relax, and promote healthy eye motion.

Begin by getting into a comfortable sitting position. Taking a few deep breaths, get centered and focus on your eyes. Moving your gaze upward, begin to make gentle up and down motions with your eyes, tracing a nearby wall or just focusing on the movements themselves. Repeat this up and down motion approximately ten times then bring your eyes to center and close them for a moment.

To make the motion smooth, you can imagine your eyes tracing a straight and unbroken line. After the completion of each series of directional movements, bring your eyes to center and close to give them some rest.

Opening them again, begin to move them left to right, repeating this motion another ten times. Opening, look to the upper left corner of your vision and trace a line down to the bottom right, and back diagonally to the upper left. Do this ten times, center, close, and repeat the diagonal motion in the opposite direction.

Next, moving your gaze up, begin to trace a smooth clockwise circle, including as much of your peripheral vision as possible. Once completed, repeat in the counter-clockwise direction. After doing both directions, center and close the eyes. Keeping them closed, bring your hands together and rub them vigorously until you feel heat between your palms. Bringing the palms to your closed eyes, cup eyes and let the heat and darkness sooth and relax your eye muscles. Take a few deep breaths here to finish the practice.

In summary here is the order: up and down, left and right, diagonal, and finally circular in both directions. Rub hands together and cover. Enjoy and practice whenever your feel strain or pressure building up in the eyes. Done often, this exercise will keep your eyes healthy and strong!

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Dealing With Emotional Pain Through Kriya Yoga: A Lesson In Acceptance & Rejuvination

Posted in Advice, everything yoga, stress management, techniques on July 24th, 2009 by Vlad Moskovski – 5 Comments

In the science and philosophy of yoga it is said that, “whether pain or pleasure, both are the product of the mind.”  A friend related his sad and inspirational story bringing this axiom to life. He is going through a tough time in his relationship, experiencing much pain and anguish. As I listened and comforted him in his pain, I realized that he is looking at the situation as a means to remain motivated and focused on his life goals.

tongue on fireIn Kriya Yoga there is a notion of tapas which literally means to burn or purify. While it is easy to to run away from pain, and the mind tries to do so constantly, what would happen if we were to accept it and learn from it? Performing tapas means to see that pain as a burning fire, consuming our inner impurities and weaknesses, purifying our spirit and making the mind stronger. In doing so, we can practice acceptance welcome these “negative” emotions with open arms and the warm embrace of a long lost friend. Tapas provide us the means to practice mental discipline and self-restrain in situations where that choice is the hardest and most challenging.

Sometimes, a thing can be pleasurable but eventually lead to something painful, however in this practice, we are taking something painful and turning it into something positive and good. This form of yoga can only be achieved in the active state, in our daily lives and through our interactions with the outside world. May we all strive to see the deeper lessons and practice a little yoga in our lives.

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Meditation Guide: The Nature of Your Mind

Posted in everything yoga, stress management on July 23rd, 2009 by Vlad Moskovski – 2 Comments

kids playing with waterWhen we are kids, our mind is in its early stages of development, extremely pliable and relatively unconditioned. For many it is their happiest time. Not because there is a lack of responsibilities, but because the mind has not yet taken control of us. Have you ever observed kids playing? One falls or hits the other, “ouch that hurt.” They cry, and they cry, and soon they get distracted by a fluttering butterfly or a rolling ball and they are off, happy as a bird, completely forgetting that they were crying and upset just a moment ago. That is the power of the mind, or should I say the lack of control of the mind over us at that tender age.

Now let’s go forward in time to a similar situation. We are hurt, we are in pain, a loved one said something hurtful or painful to us and we cry. No ball or butterfly will bring us out of this state. What has changed? We may think to ourselves at this point, “Aha, we are adults now, our lives are much more complicated and we have so many responsibilities. Life is not so simple anymore!” The truth of the matter is that although we do have more responsibilities as adults, this does not mean that life has gotten more complicated. Rather, we have allowed our mind to steering us, and now it says, “I want all emotions: negative, positive, hurtful, and joyful. It does not matter. Give me anything and I will cling to it.” That is the current state for many people. If only we could get that pesky mind to stop for just a moment, how wonderful would that be! How peaceful would we feel!

As we grow up, we begin to identify ourselves with the mind deluding ourselves into thinking that we are our minds. Through meditation and constant self observation we can reach the realization that we are not our mind. We are something different. In yoga it is called the seer. We are the seer and the mind is a pool of water which reflects that seer. Through some blunder we have associated ourselves with the reflection instead of the original image. It is like staring at yourself in the mirror and thinking that the image in the mirror is the real you.

See also: Meditation Techniques: How to Master Your Mind

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Meditation Myths – 6 Common Beliefs About Meditation

Posted in Advice, everything yoga, stress management on May 15th, 2009 by Vlad Moskovski – 3 Comments

1. Meditation has to be done sitting – with legs crossed and eyes closed: Nothing could be further from the truth, meditation is the act of concentration and focusing on one specific object with the conscious exclusion of all else, typically experienced as an altered state of consciousness. This can be done while you are walking down the street, staring at your computer, brushing your teeth, etc. In fact, many millions of people frequently practice a non-conscious type of meditation for many hours each day, it’s called watching TV. As an example of a non-sitting meditation, I was working with somebody who has a much slower pace than me and as a result I was starting to become agitated and wanting to rush him. Not only would this not work, it would certainly aggravate him thereby making the situation worse. Solution – I did a quick mental visualization to become more patient. Patience, for me, is a little, old, Chinese man standing before me with a serene and peaceful expression on his face with his hands clasped behind his back. When I conjure up this image and simultaneously take a deep breath, I become calmer and embody the patience that I see in him. Works for me every time and takes about five seconds; this is one form of meditation.

2. Meditation has to be practiced under supervision and requires “learning”: While it does help to work with a meditation teacher to gain greater and deeper understanding of meditation traditions, anybody can practice simple and straightforward meditations without prior knowledge or formal training. With a little bit of willingness, curiosity, and experimentation it is easy to learn to meditate and you can even come up with your own forms of meditation after a while; it’s not so much about what you do, rather, it’s the end result and what you get out of the practice that really counts.

3. Meditation has to be practiced for a long time to gain benefit: This is probably one of the biggest stumbling blocks for many people and I frequently run into people who say, “I am too busy to meditate, I don’t have the time…etc.” Throughout the day, I frequently engage in meditation techniques to center myself or create a state of calm, excitement, patience, or concentration; the duration of these practice commonly lasts anywhere from 20 seconds to 1 minute. Many people have a hard time sitting down and staying still for more then five or ten minutes, therefore, I recommend starting slow by engaging in frequent but short meditation sessions. It is just like training a muscle, you don’t start bench pressing 200 pounds, start with what you can handle and slowly progress from there.

4. Meditation is only for spiritual people and hippies: Personal trainers, coaches, and professional athletes know the importance of being mentally fit in order to perform well in competitions. Stress is very high for these athletes and they are trained to reduce stress and maintain focus through visualizations, positive self-talk, and other meditative techniques, although they may not call it meditation. Athletes are not the exception, many people in the world are under stain and stress, and could use help with focus and concentrate. Therefore, I believe that everyone should know and use such practices to improve their lives.

5. Meditation is not for me, I don’t need it: To this person I would say, “You don’t know what you are missing out, give it a try, you can always stop if you don’t like it.” If something is unknown, foreign, or outside our comfort zone, we say it’s not for me, I don’t need it. I have yet to meet a person who has not been able to see the benefit of creative visualization, breath and emotional state control, or positive self talk once I was able to dispel their fears and get them to actually try it. The line, “What do you have to loose?” works great because there is absolutely nothing at stake; as I have often heard, “Fear is the mind killer.”

6. I can’t meditate, I am too stressed out: As funny and ironic as this may sound, I have personally been told this. In a state of panic or high stress, it becomes difficult to think, to concentrate, and panic is often the next step. For people that have managed to drive themselves to this point I say, “Take a deep breath, let it out, now take another. Good, now do that for a count of 20 and see if you feel any different.” It’s as simple as that, nothing fancy, just focusing on breathing in and breathing out while counting in your head sometimes makes an enormous difference.

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