03 Two minutes of Meditation

If there is a pill that is all natural and free, and we just have to take one a day to reduce anxiety and make life more satisfying, will we take it?

There really is such a pill in the world. It is called meditation.

Many religions understand the power of meditation, and each has a different approach, but they all have one thing in common. It will consciously empty our mind and focus.

Meditation has gone from reducing stress to preventing and delaying heart disease, high blood pressure, migraines, and even cancer.

Benson, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, trained patients to meditate for twenty minutes a day. The patient’s blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen consumption were seventeen percent lower than usual.

To practice meditation, all you need is a chair and sit quietly. It sounds very simple. However, many people who have tried it failed at the beginning because they cannot change the habit of wandering at will.

Veda Bharati, chairman of Rishikeshrama Retreat Center in India, proposed a two-minute meditation method. Before waiting for the bus, before meals, or before a meeting, you can stand or sit, straighten your back and neck, breathe through your diaphragm, and breathe in and out from your nostrils. Just take back the distracted mind and put everything down.

04 Beware of negative emotions

As practitioners of Life Cultivation, we are forever aware of our negative emotions and we try hard not to be angry for ninety seconds.

Lai Peixia said: “Anger has nothing to do with other people. There is a button inside you, so you can do whatever you want.”

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, who suffered a left-brain stroke, took great pains to recover from her stroke. She consciously chose not to revive certain old circuits in order to immediately return to a calm right-brain.

Because of her understanding of the brain nerves, she knows that as long as anger is triggered, certain chemical substances released in the brain will surge through the whole body, but the chemical components will disappear from the blood in ninety seconds. If she remains angry after ninety seconds, she has chosen to keep the circuit going. Otherwise, she would have let the anger run its course, and then she would go back to the present moment. She treats negative emotions like sneezing, facing her inner fire with awareness and compassion.

05 Rebuild the sense of health

The five senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste are important devices for human survival. In ancient times, human beings used the breath of the enemy to detect danger. But now human beings seem to have lost the functions of the five senses.

Neuroanatomist Jill found it useful to linger in the basic physiological responses of sensory circuits after her left-brain stroke. She feels pleasure in tasting food, eating, drinking, and enjoying them all at the moment.

We can help ourselves to find a way back to our right brain. Trusting our brains to replace unwanted thought patterns helps us experience inner peace in the present moment.

In fact, we have such an experience daily. When our body is tired, it will cry for help. When our heart is sick, a certain part of the brain will also have bad feelings. We should believe in the five senses and listen to the voice from the body. Then we will discover that we do have a sense of health which is the basis for the self-healing ability of the body and mind.

Experiencing illness and the pain of life may not be a choice for us, but not being kidnapped by the suffering of life and being gentle with ourselves is what we can do.
—–Wu Xixuan