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Tree Pose
Benefits: Strengthens legs, ankles, knees; stretches chest, shoulders
Helps: A scattered mind, poor balance, poise
1. Stand with your feet together in mountain pose (tadasana), hands in prayer position.
2. Lift your right foot off the floor, turn your right knee out to side and place sole of your right foot on your inner left thigh anywhere between your knee (not on it, above it) and your groin. Gently press your foot into your leg and your leg into your foot as you reach your left foot into the floor. Hold for three to five breaths.
3. Extend your arms overhead if you like. Trying various arm positions can test your balance further. Or close your eyes. Hold for another three to five breaths.
4. When you’re ready to come out of the pose, release your right foot from your left leg, turn your right knee to point straight in front of you, and lower your feet and hands.
5. Switch sides and repeat.
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Child’s Pose, Wide-Kneed Variation (Balasana, variation)
Benefits: Stretches back, groins, inner hips, inner thighs
Helps: Indigestion, a scattered mind
1. Begin in downward-facing dog pose (adho mukha svanasana). Lift your heels and separate your knees, as you lower them to the floor.
2. Then lower your torso to the mat, keeping your hands stretched out in front of you. Stay here for five breaths or 5 minutes, based on how you feel.
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Headstand, Tripod Variation
Benefits: Strengthens core, arms, back
Helps: Fatigue, balance
- Kneel on the floor with your glutes resting on your heels. Place your palms on the floor, slightly in front of and just outside your knees. Bend your elbows to 90 degrees. Place your head on the floor.
- Straighten your legs so you come into a modified downward-facing dog pose (adho mukha svanasana).
- Place your right knee on your right upper arm and your left knee on your left upper arm. Bring your toes together and lift them toward the ceiling, straightening your legs and coming into a headstand. Hold for three to five breaths.
- To come out of the pose, bend your knees, fold them in toward your chest, and lower your feet to the floor.
- Bend your knees and push yourself back into child’s pose (balasana).
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Manage Your Mind
1. Be in the present:
If you take care of the present, if what you do today is good, then you will just move toward your ultimate realization. That is the purpose. Other things, worries, this that, “What will happen?”, “Where do I live?”, “What do I eat?”, “Who am I with?”, all these things are not so important.
2. Keep correct knowledge only in the mind:
Correct knowledge will calm the thought waves down. This correct knowledge, that all will merge as one, will keep you peaceful. Incorrect knowledge such as, “I want to go be with my friends on the beach in Florida.”, or “Maybe I should go to Hawaii.”, all of this is incorrect knowledge and will create a lot of waves in the mind. Thoughts like, “What is the difference of Hawaii or Florida?”, “What’s the difference between this friend or that friend?”, will create a lot of waves in your mind and you won’t go anywhere.
3. Do self study and listen to scriptures:
Correct knowledge is not that easy. That is why you have to study and listen to the scriptures so that it is imprinted in the mind that such thoughts actually are good and are possible. Nourish yourself with it and you will be fine.
4. Practice of non-attachment.
This is the practice of non identification with the thoughts waves, which means not being distracted.
5. Manage your mind. Concentrate.
Don’t let it loose.The mind is very fast. Every thought is a lot of energy and very, very fast. So abhyasa, constant practice of restraining of the thought waves is needed. Then you don’t have much stuff floating around. What if and what if and I’m afraid of this and I fantasize about that, etc. You have too much energy in your mind, junk, garbage, erroneous understanding! Focus. Learn how to transform all this material that you think is free. It’s not free, it’s harmful material. The energy in your mind that is not used or channeled properly is energy that pulls you down. That is why you cannot go into the concentration and meditation state. So you need to create space by reducing the erroneous understanding, the memory, the sleep, and the verbal delusion and by increasing the correct understanding. Then you have a chance to clear your mind.
6. Use up the energy of the mind through Karma Yoga.
If you can’t meditate, then do Karma Yoga with the tremendous energy that you have. Usually we say we don’t have time to do it but it’s just that the mind is so used to being in the dull state and it enjoys the jumping state. The wrong habit is the mind doesn’t enjoy the concentrated state, specially it doesn’t like something selfless and detached. That is why focusing on Karma Yoga (selfless work) is very helpful to calm the mind down.
by Swami Sitaramananda
