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| Meditation for Women | |||||||||||||||||||
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Women tend to be more susceptible to mood swings due to hormonal changes. In today`s world women are handling everything, from home to office. We tend to ignore the fact that in every field a different mindset is required. A woman is professional at her work place and needs to more tone down at home with her kids and children. Different women experience pressure, mental and physical stress, in different ways. Therefore, it is advisable for women to do meditation to keep her strong and going!
The first step to practicing meditation is learning to breathe in a manner that facilitates a state of calmness and awareness. The following simple exercise is recommended by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder and director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, as an effective method for achieving this state. Find a quiet place where you won`t be disturbed and practice the following exercise for several minutes each day:  1. Assume a comfortable posture lying on your back or sitting.
2. If you`re sitting, keep the spine straight and let your shoulders drop. 3. Close your eyes if it feels comfortable. 4. Focus your attention on your belly, feeling it rise or expand gently on the in-breath and fall or recede on the out-breath. 5. Concentrate on your breathing, `being with` each in-breath. 6. Every time you notice that your mind has wandered off the breath, notice what it was that took you away and then gently bring your attention back to your belly and the feeling of the breath coming in and out. 7. If your mind wanders away from the breath, then your job is simply to bring it back to the breath every time, no matter what it has become preoccupied with. 8. Practice this exercise for 15 minutes at a convenient time every day, whether you feel like it or not, for one week - and see how it feels to incorporate a disciplined meditation practice into your life. Be aware of how it feels to spend time each day just being with your breath, being `in the moment` without having to do anything. For daily meditation, one can try the following: 1. Sit comfortably in a chair or lie down on a mat on your back 2. Allow your body to begin to relax. Close your eyes. Close your mouth and place the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth. 3. With your eyes closed, bring your attention to the area around and below your navel. 4. Allow yourself to begin to breathe into the area. You may use either breathing technique 5. And as you breathe into the abdomen, into the belly, notice a warmth from the center of the abdomen, beginning as a small glow and imagine it getting brighter and brighter until there is a ball of light filling your abdomen. Allow yourself to feel this ball of light, any color that you`d like  6. Now, as you breathe, notice the energy moving up into the area of your heart and opening up into your chest
7. Now feel it move to the area in front of the arm, just below the shoulder bone. This energy moves from the area below the shoulder bone, down the outside the arm all the way to the thumb, on the inside of the thumb 8. Feel the warmth and the movement of energy down this channel 9. When it gets to the end of the channel at the tip of the thumb, move your focus over to the index finger, where the Large Intestine Channel begins 10. The energy then moves through the hand, up the outside of the arm, coming up over the shoulder, up the side of the neck, and up to the outside of the nose. 11. Then move to the Stomach Channel, which begins below the eye. It flows down the neck, over the front of the body, through the chest, down outside the navel, around the pubic area, then down the outside of the leg, to a very important point, just below the knee, where the energy of the body becomes very strong. It then moves on down across the front of the foot and into the top of the toes, where it meets the Spleen Channel 12. The Spleen Channel allows food energy to move through the body and impacts digestion 13. Now move the energy inside the big toe, coming up the arch of the foot, in front of the ankle bone, on the inside of the leg, all the way up by the knee, continuing inside the leg, and up the front of the body, curving around the ribs, and ending in the sides of the torso, also known as the costal area. 14. The Spleen Channel then connects internally with the heart 15. The Heart Channel emerges from the heart into the center of the armpit, moving down the inside of the arm, all the way to the small finger, where it attaches to the Small Intestine Channel which is a very good channel to help open up the brain 16. This channel runs up the outside of the arm, coming all the way back up, across the scapula, up the back of the neck and around the ear, where it ends in front of the ear 17. This connects to the Bladder Channel, the longest channel, at the inside of the eye 18. From the eye, the channel comes up across the top of the head, down the back of the neck where it splits into two parallel lines which they extend down the whole back on either side of the spine, connecting the organs together 19. The two rows of the Bladder Channel are side by side, then connect again at the back of the buttocks, coming down the back of the middle of the leg through the knee, all the way down the leg, around the ankle bones and into the little toe  20. The Bladder Channel connects with the Kidney Channel on the very bottom of the foot. The Kidney Channel moves up from the foot, around the inside of the ankle, all the way up the inside of the leg, up around the navel. And this channel comes all the way up to the upper part of the chest, where there are some of the most important points
21. Here the Kidney Channel connects with the Pericardium Channel, which starts in front of the arm, moves down the very middle of the arm, into the palm of the hand, to the middle finger, where it then connects with the Triple Burner Channel, the channel that helps to regulate the temperature of our bodies. This begins on the fourth finger, comes up over the top of the hand, all the way up the arm and around the elbow, over the shoulder, coming up the neck and around the ear, where it connects with the Gallbladder Channel. 22. The Gallbladder Channel is the most crooked channel on the body. It zigzags across the top of the head, comes down the back of the neck, across the shoulder, down the side of the body, zigzagging again on the side of the body, and all the way down over the hip and the deepest point in the muscle of the body in the buttocks, then moving down the side of the leg, all the way down to the top of the toes, to the fourth toe. 23. You pick up the Liver Channel on the big toe. It comes across the top of the foot, and again towards the inside of the foot and around the ankle, up the middle of the inside of the leg by the knee, all the way up the inside of the leg. This channel circles the genital area, coming up into the ribcage near the liver, yet on both sides of the body. And then we return again to the lungs. 24. Once you have completed the cycle, sit or lie peacefully, allowing yourself time to make the transition back to your surrounding environment in a graceful manner. The above exercise can only be done if you have a teacher or guru, under whose guidance you can learn to meditate in the above way. And after you have learnt it, you can practice it regularly at home or whenever you get time, and the results will be amazing. Benefits of meditation on Women`s health and Pregnancy:  Women and gynecological problems: Meditation the answer to all. Stress is both a trigger and a result of gynecological problems. Meditation can lessen the stress and diminish associated symptoms such as pre-menstrual depression and anxiety.
Meditation puts mothers in tune with their babies. Mantra Japa is especially appropriate for pregnant women. After birth, daily meditation becomes a precious time to refocus and make sense of the many new thoughts and feelings, which can be running through your mind, brought about by the events of childbirth and new motherhood. Improvement of body and health-When your mind focuses on a particular part of the body, the blood flow to that part increases and cells receive more oxygen and other nutrients in abundance, which is very necessary for a mother-to-be as well as for her unborn child. Often pregnant women are found complaining of body pain because of carrying the inborn child around. Not only pregnant women, but women above the age of 30, during their menstrual stage are found to complain of body ache. Regular meditation decreases muscle tension (any pain due to tension) as well as headaches, giving an instant relief to the body. Anxiety and mood swings are just around the corner for mother-to-be as well as for women who reach their menopause stage. Meditation reduces anxiety attacks by lowering the levels of blood lactate. It increases serotonin production, which influences mood and behavior. Low levels of serotonin are associated with depression, obesity, insomnia and headaches. | |||||||||||||||||||
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The process of self-discovery involves, stripping off false layers of identity, going back through all the conditionings.It is when a woman realizes - "I am not that, and not that, and not that", and then dawns a realization - "Yes! I am that". The place for this self-discovery is your own private