Karmic Seeds Body Mind & Spirit

"A man must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings. — Albert Einstein "Be kind to yourself and others. Come from love every moment you can." — Deepak Chopra "Make finding the good in others a priority." — Zig Ziglar

by Manorama   Prana means breath, life force, energy, and soul. But to truly understand prana requires that we make some clear distinctions.  Prana: Sanskrit & Its Yogic Origins  The word prana derives from:  Sanskrit Prefix Sanskrit Root Pra √an Pra  as a prefix to verbs means: forward, onward Pra  as a prefix to nouns: intensifies the root, or can mean that that root holds a place of source or origin and that the root meaning is in its most perfect state The root  √an  means to breathe, to be alive, to live.  Thus the noun prana means that state of perfect aliveness. To connect with prana, as yogis-in-training, is to connect with the original state of intelligent aliveness. An integrated understanding of prana will allow you to live in perfect harmony with all that is around you and to stay connected to the essential knowledge that lies deep within you.  What Constitutes the Pran...

We forget how powerful our words are and when we make promises it is up to us to make sure we keep our words sacred. Ever since human beings could speak to one another, they have been making promises and keeping them or not keeping them. Those who keep their promises are regarded as people of integrity, while those who don’t keep their promises are regarded as people who at best can’t be taken seriously and at worst can’t be trusted. Sometimes we forget how powerful our words are, and we use them haphazardly or unconsciously, creating expectations that are never fulfilled, leaving disappointment and distrust in our wake. On an even deeper level, there are promises we may have made to ourselves that we don’t remember because they have slipped into our unconscious. An early heartache may have been followed by a promise never to trust love again. Without realizing it, we may be fulfilling that promise and wondering why our love life looks so grim. At an even deeper level, many people w...

Don’t you wonder why ancient mantras have become remarkably popular these days? There is something profound and mystical about these mantras. On the look of it, they are mere words and sounds, but there is no denying of the fact that these  mantras  play a significant role in rejuvenating the soul and our subconscious mind. Mantra: According to Deepak Chopra, the New Age Wellness Guru, the word ‘mantra’ consists of two parts. The first part, ‘man’ means mind in Sanskrit, whereas the second part ‘tra’ means instrument. Therefore, he interprets mantra as ‘the instrument of mind’. These are powerful words, sound or vibrations that can be used for meditation. Meditation is referred to as a practice to train the mind or induce a mode of consciousness. It promotes  relaxation of mind  and body, develops compassion, patience, love, concentration and generosity.  Meditation  many a times involves repeating a mantra with closed eyes. Mantras for meditation are chose...

Anxiety is a feeling experienced by most of us at least once in our lives. It is characterized by excessive uneasiness, apprehension, and sometimes even panic attacks.  Anxiety disorders, which are much more severe than simple anxiety, are among the most common mental health problems in the United States. They affect 18% of the population and can be based on phobias, social setting stressors, and much more.  Some sufferers like to use healing crystals along with traditional therapy to help treat their anxiety. Many people believe that having these crystals around them really helps. Crystals work on the premise that all the mental, physical, and spiritual ailments of the world are the product of negative energy. Healing crystals are believed to have the ability to remove this negative energy from a place or a person. “In crystal healing, I work in partnership with them by placing them on or near the body in order to affect healing change. They do this by allowing the ...

Often yoga is described as a journey for self-understanding-- a process for uncovering your true nature. Once we maintain a consistent yoga practice, we change—physically, emotionally, and mentally. Change is good! If we are different, we interact with others in a different way as well. Yoga can help us resolve issues in our relationships--past and present and future. Initially, changes manifest from our physical asana practice. We feel stronger, more flexible, and more open. This in turn effects how we relate to others and they relate to us. As we move beyond our physical yoga practice, these changes become more profound. To go further into personal transformation, try following the first two limbs of the Eight-limbed Path of Yoga, the Yamas and Niyamas. The Yamas are five personal observances: ahimsa or non-violence, satya or truthfulness, asteya or non-stealing, brahmacarya or moderation, and aparigraha or non-grasping. So, for instance if you practice Ahimsa or non-harming in...

OCTOBER 9, 2014        BY ANGELA WILSON We all know that yoga does a body (and a mind) good. But up until recently, no one could really say with any degree of certainty why—or even how—it improves conditions as varied as depression and anxiety, diabetes, chronic pain, and even epilepsy. Now a group of researchers at Boston University School of Medicine believe they’ve discovered yoga’s secret. In an article published in the May 2012 issue of Medical Hypotheses journal under an impossibly long title, Chris Streeter, PhD, and his team hypothesize that yoga works by regulating the nervous system. And how does it do that? By increasing vagal tone—the body’s ability to successfully respond to stress. The Study: The Effects of Yoga on the Autonomic Nervous System, Gamma-aminobutyric-acid, and Allostasis in Epilepsy, Depression, and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. What Is Vagal Tone? Most of us don’t even know we have a vagus that needs toning...

by  Kathleen Bryant   “Be yourself.” Haven’t we all been given this advice at one time or another? Self-realization is one of the aims of yoga, described by Patanjali in the third sutra: “Tada drastuh svarupe avasthanam” or as B.K.S. Iyengar’s translates, “Then the seer dwells in his own true splendor.” Looking more closely at Sutra 1.3, we see that tada means “then.” Drashtuh is from the root “drsh,” which means “to see” (familiar to many as the root of drishti, a word often used in an asana class). Sva is “one’s own,” and rupe is “form” or “nature.” Avasthanam has been translated as “abides,” “resides,” “dwells” … or as I learned from Tucson meditation teacher Sanjay Manchanda, it’s that aspect of us that endures, that carries a sense of “always here.” But first we have to still the choppy waves of chitta—the mindstuff (see Sutra 1:2). Considering the mind’s relentless chatter, we are fortunate to catch brief glimpses of this enduring Self, denoted with ...

How well do you know your own mind? Yoga traditions teach that mind has four parts or functions,but the part we know best—or  think  we know best—is  ahamkara,  the ego mind. One of the aims of yoga is to spend more time in  buddhi,  often referred to as higher mind. But how do we distinguish between the two? As mediators can confirm, trying to grasp the mind is like trying to catch a slippery fish with your bare hands. As long as there is movement—i.e., thought, judgment, emotion—the ego is in play and higher mind is tantalizingly out of reach. We’re often told that we need to cut off the ego, like Ganesha’s head. Not only is this unlikely, it’s not fully advisable. A more practical approach is to learn to recognize the ego—come to know your own mind. Consider the Sanskrit roots of  ahamkara :  Aham  means “self” and  kara  (from  kri ) means “doing” or “acting.” Thus,  ahamkara /ego is the self that is doi...

– Sally Kempton, Yoga Journal,  Just Let Go We can’t use detachment as an excuse not to deal with fundamental issues such as livelihood, power, self-esteem, and relationships with other people. (Well, we can, but eventually those issues will rise up and smack us in the face...) Nor can we make detachment a synonym for indifference, or carelessness, or passivity. Instead, we can practice detachment as a skill—perhaps the essential skill for infusing our lives with integrity and grace. The Bhagavad Gita, which is surely the basic text on the practice of detachment, is wonderfully explicit on this point. Krishna tells Arjuna that acting with detachment means doing the right thing for its own sake, because it needs to be done, without worrying about success or failure.  Questions, Questions Yet the Bhagavad Gita doesn’t deal with all of our questions. That’s just as well; the real juice of the inner life is discovering, step by step, how to find these answers for oursel...

“Your life is a sacred journey. It is about change, growth, discovery, movement, transformation; continuously expanding your vision of what is possible, stretching your soul, learning to see clearly and deeply, listening to your intuition, taking courageous challenges at every step along the way. You are on the path… exactly where you are meant to be right now… And from here, you can only go forward, shaping your life story into a magnificent tale of triumph, of healing, of courage, of beauty, of wisdom, of power, of dignity, and of love.”

1. Our minds are conditioned – that is an obvious fact – conditioned by a particular culture or society, influenced by various impressions, by the strains and stresses of relationships, by economic, climatic, educational factors, by religious conformity and so on. Our minds are trained to accept fear and to escape, if we can, from that fear, never being able to resolve, totally and completely, the whole nature and structure of fear. So our first question is: can the mind, so heavily burdened, resolve completely, not only its conditioning, but also its fears? Because it is fear that makes us accept conditioning. 2. I wonder why we divide life into fragments, the business life, social life, family life, religious life, the life of sport and so on? Why is there this division, not only in ourselves but also socially – we they, you and me, love and hate, dying and living? I think we ought to go into this question rather deeply to find out if there is a way of life in which there is no ...