This meditation balances the brain and relieves stress. It takes only three minutes but can have a profound effect.
Yoga and meditation are effective technologies for clearing the clutter of the mind’s incessant chatter to reach a state of inner quietude where intuition flows and the solutions to even the toughest problems can be discovered.
The Practice
Posture: Sit in Easy Pose with a straight spine. Raise the arms with the elbows bent until the hands meet at the level of the heart in front of the chest. The forearms make a straight line parallel to the ground.
Eyes: Fix your eyes at the tip of the nose.
Mudra: Spread the fingers of both hands. Touch the fingertips and thumb tips of opposite hands together. Create enough pressure to join the first segments (counting from the tip) of each finger. The thumbs are stretched back and point toward the torso. The fingers are bent slightly due to the pressure. The palms are separated.
Breath: Inhale slowly and deeply through the nose. Exhale through the rounded lips in eight equal, emphatic strokes. On each exhale, pull the navel point in sharply.
Continue for 3 minutes. Then inhale deeply, hold for 10-30 seconds, and exhale. Inhale again, and shake the hands over the head. Relax. You may build the practice slowly to 11 minutes but note that longer times are only for the dedicated, serious practitioners.
Comments
The five elements, or tattvas, are Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Ether. If the five elements (tattvas) are strong, in balance, and located in their proper areas of the body, then you can resist stress, trauma, and illness. You do not get confused in conflicts between the two hemispheres of the brain as they compete for the right to make and direct decisions.
Yogis have long recognized that the best decision-making takes place when the left and right hemispheres of the brain are balanced and synchronized. Since the left brain questions and the right brain accepts, an individual’s analytical and creative thought processes are most effective when a state of balance in neutrality is achieved.
This meditation uses the hand mudra to pressure the 10 radiance points in the fingers that correlate to the zones of the brain in the two hemispheres. The equal pressure causes a kind of communication and coordination between the two hemispheres of the brain.
The deep inhale gives endurance and calmness. The exhale through the mouth strengthens the parasympathetic system from a control band of reflexes in the ring of the throat. This calms reactions to stress.
The strokes of the exhale stimulate the pituitary to optimize your clarity, intuition, and decision-making capacities. It resolves many inner conflicts, especially when the conflicts are from different levels of your functioning: spiritual versus mental versus physical or survival needs.