Be kind to yourself

I am wide a wake at 3 am in the morning and there was this urge to write and convey this message to all of you. Most of the time, we are worried how other people look at us and we attempt to please or convince them that we are good or we are up to  their standard. This is called peer pressure or follow the Jones. When our neighbour have a big car, then we must have a big car and if they renovate their house , then we cannot lost out to them, We add pressure to our self caring for other people more than our self. This is really ridiculous.

If we apply kindness and loving compassion to our body, then our body will be more relax and it will listen to us and will perform better. There is always this body-mind combination. If you have a relax body, you tend to have a relax mind but it may not be the case that you have a relax mind , then you have a relax body. But, most of the time , there is a very close link. Lets say you travel alot and you meditate alot , your body will be stressed because of the physical movement but you could have a relax mind due to the discipline of the mind. If we moved around a lot, normally, we will have a tense body and if we give it enough rest, it will recover more easily and make our body relax. Finally, our body will behave or perform better to co-ordinate with our movement and further relax our mind.

Talking about meditation, it is different from concentration. In meditation, there is a stillness of the mind and if we concentrate, there is a force or pressure exert on our mind to focus. Meditation relaxes the mind but concentration will tense up the mind by the pressure exert by us if we force it to focus. These are two different things. If you record the level of relaxation in these two exercise, you will find that concentration actually put more pressure on our body and will hurt it more than relax it. So, it will be harmful on our body.

We should not be too demanding on our body. There is a time to stress it or exercise it but we also must give it ample time to rest.  Resting is not doing nothing but giving time to the body to heal and recover from an exercise or constant movements. By understanding our body more and paying attention to its needs, we will be more compassionate to it. If we can exercise kindness to other people, why can't we be kind to our self. There should be a universal compassionate feeling to our people and our self.

I have seen people exercising everyday and they have a beautiful body but when we talk to them, they are very tense and is always on the move or their mind is always fixating. Hence, we should balance our body needs and give it enough rest and attention before it hurts our body and also our mind.  Buddha always preach the middle path, we should not follow the extremes but balance our needs through moderation. Please continue to exercise but in moderation unless you are going for a competition.

Here I wish all of you a relax body, a relax mind and eternal bliss and happiness within you.

Have a good and pleasant day.

Namaste.