Relaxation Moments

Relaxation, Peace and Serenity for the Mind and Body

Why You Should Make Meditation Part of Your Morning Routine

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morning routine

A morning routine consists of activities to help focus your intent for the day ahead. It can be comprised of things that make sense for you, and everyone’s morning routine will be different. However, one thing you should definitely think about including is meditation. The benefits of implementing an everyday habit when you first wake up are quite vast, and meditating during that time can totally boost those advantages. Let’s take a closer look at this concept to help you understand why you should make meditation part of your morning routine.

About Morning Routines

A morning routine is a habit of setting aside a regular amount of time each day for some sort of purposeful intention. It sets the tone for the rest of your day, and it can be comprised of various activities. The amount of time you spend on your morning routine is up to you. However, an hour is a significant amount that doesn’t seem to give people too much trouble to attain. You can fit a great deal of purposeful meditation and spiritual growth work into that time. Beyond meditation, you may want to consider adding some of these activities to your morning ritual:

• A glass of water with lemon for hydration and energy
• Stretching or short exercise routine to warm your body up
• Reading to open your mind and motivate you
• Journaling to flesh out the ideas from what you’ve read or to reflect on issues of interest
• Daily planning to get set for your day and to limit any surprises
• Goal setting to place focus on your intentions for the day ahead and to provide you a map

These are just some examples. Your morning routine should be meaningful and useful to you. Feel free to get creative with it. You’ll probably need to experiment a bit to figure out the best combination. But don’t worry; it will come with time.

Why Morning Meditation?

Meditation is an excellent form of self-care. You’re purposefully setting aside time to focus your thoughts and to spend a quiet moment to work toward achieving your highest self. Meditating helps you to create the calm and quiet mindset you need to start the day off right. It also helps you to develop the focus that can be carried onward as you encounter various problems or issues, making problem solving much easier. In fact, your overall state of mind will be enhanced through meditation. You’ll feel you’re more motivated to accomplish your goals, you have more persistence to push through obstacles and you’re more patience when encountering minor difficulties. All of these are good things.

How to Make It a Habit

Creating a morning routine of meditation and mindfulness might take some work. Like most new activities, it will take practice to become a habit. However, there are some things you can do to help make this a habit that sticks. One way to do this is to know your why. Write down the reasons why you’d like to make this routine a daily habit. Stick the list somewhere visible as a reminder and to motivate you. You may also want to recruit a buddy to share the experience with you. Having an accountability partner is useful because you’ll have a support system and someone to whom you must answer if you find yourself slacking. Your morning routine buddy can be a spouse or roommate within your home or a friend who doesn’t live with you. Just be sure to check in with that person at least every few days and as needed for encouragement. Don’t give up. Try to at least commit to your morning routine for a month. As you may know, repetition is the key to forming lasting habits.

Meditation is a crucial part of a strong morning routine. Hopefully, you now get a better picture of how the two go hand in hand, along with the powerful benefits they can offer. Give it a try for a month and see just how your life transforms.

Finding Spirituality Through Meditation

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mindfulness meditation

So you want to begin adding spiritual practice to your everyday life, but you don’t know where to start. Whether you currently are engaged in a formal religion or if you simply feel a calling to get in touch with your highest self, adding activities to enhance your connection to the divine is definitely worth the investment of your time and energy.  Meditation is one of the most impactful things you can do to receive the types of benefits you seek in a relatively short amount of time. The practice of meditation involves focusing your thoughts and releasing the stress of your everyday life. Taking this mindful step daily can have powerful effects on your life. Let’s examine this idea further by looking at the ways you can find spirituality through meditation.

Move Beyond Consciousness

We often hinder ourselves from reaching our goals due to issues such as fear, skepticism or outside influence. Meditation lets you overcome such things by putting you in touch with your higher self, leaving behind your ego. You’ll begin to gain clarity on your experience, thus having the ability to move forward in a more purposeful manner. Moving beyond your ego allows you to flourish in a more authentic way and to live in a way is unhindered.

Enhance Connections

This unfettered spirit attained through meditation brings you more clarity and the ability to leave behind your ego and the limits it can put upon you. Getting in touch with your higher self through meditating will open you up to new connections, as well. When you approach the world in a more open manner, not held back by fear or societal constraints, you’re more likely to connect with others on a more authentic level. You won’t be held back by limiting factors and can reach for the kinds of relationships and interactions that are important to you. While spirituality can be a solo pursuit that is quite personal, meaningful relationships do nourish your soul.

Improve Empathy and Compassion

In fact, it’s been shown that meditation can even make you a more empathic and compassionate person. These are important character traits among highly spiritual people. Feeling compassion for others, as well as yourself, allows you to get in touch more readily with your higher purpose. A 2013 study by Harvard and Northwestern University researchers showed that the participant group who underwent eight weeks of training in two different meditation types responded more compassionately to a staged scenario involving providing assistance to a person in distress. Only 15 percent of those in the non-meditating group made an effort to help a person struggling with crutches, while 50 percent of the meditation group acted to assist.

Lessen Emotional Reactivity and Increase Calm

As reported by the American Psychological Association, meditation can decrease one’s levels of emotional reactivity. Researchers studied people with various experience in the practice of mindfulness meditation. They found that meditation significantly helped participants to disengage from pictures that were emotionally upsetting, focusing their attention on a cognitive task instead. The ability to balance emotions with practical considerations is a valuable skill when it comes to reaching a high level of spirituality.

Meditation offers so many tangible benefits. It’s been proven to be good for your body and mind. It also goes deeper by helping to prepare you for spiritual pursuits. Once you begin a practice of meditating, you’ll see for yourself the ways in which it can help you to grow as a person.

Finding Peace of Mind Through a More Spiritual Life

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One of the primary aims of pursuing a spiritual practice is to live a more intentional, connected and peaceful life. Obtaining that sense of calm during times of crisis or adversity requires building a strong internal fortitude and the ability to focus on the present moment. These are some of the abilities you gain through divine study and actions. During today’s polarized and chaotic times, it’s especially beneficial to be able to find contentment from within. Let’s look at the ways in which finding peace of mind through a more spiritual life happens and how you can return to that tranquility when times get stressful.

Clear Mind

Practices like mindfulness meditation teach our minds to block out what’s happening around us. This type of focus has many benefits. One is that you can think more clearly and learn to become more objective when facing problems or difficulties. A clearer head will let you make better decisions and solve problems more rationally.

Inner Control

Spirituality in general calms the mind through obtaining a connection with what you determine to be sacred. You can enhance that sense of inner peace through practices like yoga, meditation and communing with nature. The focus on and acceptance of what’s within can fortify you when outside forces become too much. There’s no need to succumb to the stressors of something external when you feel strength and serenity from within.

Sense of Purpose

Spirituality gives you a greater sense of purpose on this earth. You feel more in the driver’s seat of your life and that you are choosing your own circumstances. That’s an incredibly liberating feeling. Cultivating a purposeful life through spirituality lets you feel that you’re truly living, rather than just existing in this world.

Feeling of Connection

Whether it’s through formal religion or your own spiritual path, you’ll feel a greater sense of connection when you pursue the divine. Perhaps your spiritual journal has led you to spend time hiking in nature. Thus, you’ll develop an affinity with our planet. If you go to church or other spiritual meetings, you have a built-in connection with the other attendees who are of like mind and philosophy. It’s a comforting feeling.

Share the Love

When you’ve begun to develop a sense of inner peace and serenity, you’re able to share that with those around you. The ripple effects of this can actually be quite significant. When you’re calm in a stressful situation, those in your midst can gain strength from your vibe. Your ability to look at things more proactively instead of reacting blindly will greatly improve you interpersonal relationships, making them more harmonious with less strife.
There are merely a handful of the benefits that come to your peace of mind through spiritual practice. Your spirituality is something that you can build upon and that no one can take from you. Use it to create the peaceful life in which you want to live.

Religion and Faith

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Religion and Faith

The concept of spirituality differs from organized religion. Neither is necessarily better than the other, and they can be related. However, they’re not the same, as had commonly been accepted in the past. You don’t have to embrace a religion in order to be a spiritual person. Spirituality encompasses a wider set of circumstances and evolves over time. It’s something that an individual determines and shapes, rather than a doctrine or structure to be followed. That’s not to say you can’t be a deeply religious person who is strong in your particular faith and still pursue other spiritual endeavors. The two can exist simultaneously. To make things a bit clearer, let’s take a look at some of the more specific ways in which spirituality differs from religion and faith.

Individual Focus

Religions are comprised of congregations or followers. Their focus in on sharing their teachings with a group of people within their ranks. Spirituality, on the other hand, is a very uniquely personal endeavor in which the individual creates their own meaning. You decide as an individual which direction to take with your spiritual studies. You may choose to pull certain guiding principles from a particular religion or philosophy and combine them with tenets unrelated to any organized group whatsoever. When it comes to following a spiritual path, what matters is that the practices resonate with you.

Less Structure

Most formal, organized religions are quite structured. Followers are often expected to attend worship in a specific meeting space on a designated day. Rituals are frequently part of that worship service, and as a rule, the entire congregation must follow along. You can practice your spirituality in a much more fluid way that best fits your lifestyle. What matters most on a spiritual journey is the way in which you personally decide to format your practice and how you choose to prioritize your beliefs.

Solitary

Your spiritual path is usually one that’s walked alone. While you have the benefit of choosing your own guideposts as you go, doing so can be a bit of a lonely process. When it comes to religion, most folks can depend on their congregation members for support, guidance, socialization and fellowship. Each has its own merits.

Definition of Truth

When it comes to spirituality, what you consider to be truth is pre-determined only by you. Most organization religions have a holy book or document that spells out universal truths for followers. There can be a great deal of comfort in following the gospel truth as you see and believe it. However, some people prefer the ability to look for their own version of truth in the world through their lived experiences and through research.

These are merely a few of the differences between spirituality and religion. Spiritual pursuit, combined with meditation, can help you to live each day more fully and in alignment with your own personal truths.

What is Spirituality

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Autogenic Relaxation

Spirituality is a concept we hear a lot about these days. However, you may not really be sure what the term means. That’s because it’s evolved quite a bit over the years. Once, the word referred to being religious. Whenever someone spoke of being spiritual, you could almost guarantee they meant they were speaking about their formal religion. These days, the term is more fluid. It extends to refer to any form of growth process aimed at reaching a higher consciousness. Spiritual activities of all types allow people to move toward becoming their best selves and to focus their intent on living a purpose-driven life. These activities can include meditation, yoga, research, fellowship, communing with nature and more.

The Importance of Spirituality

Spirituality brings a connectedness to the world around them that many people feel they are lacking. Engaging in these types of activities can help you center you on your purpose, pushing you to move toward the types of things that are important to you in life. Spirituality can also help us to appreciate the here and now, as well as to notice the beauty in the world around us. Spiritual moments abound and are found nearly everywhere. Something as simple as appreciating the laughter of a child can be considered to be spiritual because taking note of it has led you to experience feelings, such as joy, that go beyond the mundane or the everyday. It’s easy to get lose in the daily tasks of survival mode. A spiritual study can help to move your life beyond what simply must be done to get by. It can help you to truly live.

Ways to Embrace Spirituality

To get started embracing spirituality right now set aside time each day for yourself. If this goal seems too much or too indulgent, you can begin by at least scheduling out some time a few days each week to devote to yourself. Self-care, reading, enjoying a favorite hobby or pursuing a new interest are all some activities you can engage in to help you feel renewed and to mindfully nurture yourself, making you a priority. It’s also spiritually rewarding to do good deeds for others. This can be as simple as taking time to visit an elderly neighbor who doesn’t see family often or by taking on a full-fledged volunteer campaign to help a local charity. When you work on behalf of those in need, you’re making a connection that transcends the everyday interaction. You could also take time each day to just practice gratitude, making a list of what’s good in your life and giving thanks. This act acknowledges your fortune to the universe and demonstrates your appreciation. There are so many other ways in which you can bring the spiritual into your daily life.

Spirituality Vs. Religion

Though the terms were once used interchangeably, spirituality and religion are seen by most to be two separate things. Spirituality can be an aspect that falls under the umbrella of religion. It’s part of what makes up a religious practice. But religion itself refers more to a formal and organized group or study that revolves around a common belief system, deity or deities. The purpose of religions is to spread their teachings, as well as to nurture a following that continues throughout generations Spirituality is something that is a bit more personally focused. It refers to the way in which an individual views their own belief system and their pursuit of life’s meaning.

Hopefully, you now feel confident that you have an understanding of the concept of spirituality. It is a broad term that encompasses quite a bit. Ultimately, what’s important is the way in which you feel it pertains to you and your goals.