The loving kindness exercise and the Subtle mind practice differentiate in that the Loving Kindness is more of a practice of imagery and harnessing your emotions. You feed off of your love for others and pass it on to everyone else. Breathing in their suffering and exhaling health and love. It is not only beneficial for our health due to it's powerful use of emotions, and even forgiveness. But it can also be used to help others through the prayer technique. The subtle mind is an exercise meant to calm your brain activity which will ultimately help connect yourself to your inner self. In this one, you try to let any thoughts come and go as you concentrate only on your focal point- the breath. Once you have mastered this you can begin to focus solely on the silence of your mind.
The breath is much more powerful than I had ever imagined. Did you know that we only use about 1/6th of our lung capacity? We could train to use much more to benefit our mind-body-spirit health.
RESEARCH: Master Lu's Five Element Breathing techniques.
Our spiritual wellness is directly correlated with our mental and physical wellness. It all starts with our inner self. Our spirit motivates our mind, and like the 'pillow affect', it will directly manifest into our physical body. This is caused by the neuropeptides that our body uses to communicate with our mind.
~Thomas
Thomas,
ReplyDeleteI did not know that we only use about 1/6th of our breathing/lung capacity. Yes, with the diaphramatic breathing this could help not only calm our mind but calm our body as well. Our mind is where all our thots start and thus, our thots to exercise, eat right, and control all our thots. The body-mind and spirit are all intricately related.
I enjoyed your post.
Bikeee