How to practice serenity and gain well-being

Physical and mental health depends to a large extent on the state of mind. When we enjoy emotional balance, the underlying calm and serenity allow us to overcome difficulties and develop a life full of activities that at all times reinforce health and well-being.

Neuroscience investigates how our habits and our emotions feed back. Harmful habits reinforce latent emotions such as anxiety or depression. Instead, healthy habits support a serene and positive state of mind. Therefore, to the extent that our lifestyle depends on us, it is our responsibility to improve it if we want to live healthy and happy.

The World Health Organization recently recognized this when it maintained that “lifestyle medicine” can prevent or replace harmful habits with healthy ones such as healthy eating, physical exercise, mutually supportive social relationships, adequate sleep or Effectively manage emotions.

Meditating helps calm emotions. Discover more in the online course 21 meditations for calm from Escuela Cuerpominte.

10 tips to live with greater serenity and fullness

A life that is too fast, full of activities and too competitive, can generate an empty life experience. If we forget that we are here and now, and we fill our time with thoughts and actions that obey interests other than our own, we are in danger of becoming automatons. We lose our own life, we ignore the connection with ourselves.

When we are so disconnected from our essence, the most normal thing is that we experience anxiety and later other illnesses. But always we have the ability to access our being, within us, in order to lead a healthy, balanced and full life, which favors creativity, learning and continuous personal growth. The following 10 tips will help you experience peace of mind.

1. Time for you

Plan a sacred time and space in your calendar for yourself, to meditate, exercise, yoga, Pilates, running, simple stretching, jumping rope or knitting. It can be any activity that engages your body and mind and makes you feel calm. The important thing is that you respect that pause, understanding that it is gold for your health and well-being. Focus on the action itself and detach from the result. The simple fact of feeling the breath and bodily sensations, letting go of thoughts, transports us to the present moment.

2. Ask yourself who you are

Take the pencil and write as much as you can as an answer to the question “who am I?”. People don’t know each other well, but self-knowledge is not something you are born with or found by chance, it is something you seek and create. You can ask yourself the following questions:

What genuine gift or ability would I like to offer to the world? What would I like life to give me? What would I do if I were not afraid? Can I change something to get closer to these purposes? As a child or youth, what were my goals? dreams?

The answers to these questions help to rethink life in a positive way based on achievable goals in the short, medium and long term.

3. Learn to meditate

Train your mind to experience freedom, not to be a slave to your passions and emotions. To receive all the benefits of meditation, It is very important to generate a routine: every day at the same time.

As you learn, the mind asks you to spend more time in meditation. This is rewarded, because the ability to be present in the here and now is greatly increased, you begin to live in “mindfulness mode” and deeply enjoy the gifts that life offers you in each moment.

To start I propose this meditation in 15 minutes:

Lie down or sit down and perceive your body as a compact block, bring your attention inside as if you were trying to feel it inside. Stay focused for two or three minutes.Bring your attention to your breath feel the air enter your nostrils as you inhale and tingle, feel the temperature of the air, notice how the flow stops at the end of the inhalation. Notice how the air comes out as you exhale, notice the sensations that They occur on the tip of the nose and on the upper lip. Experiencing the sensations that appear in this triangle formed by your nose and your lip. Your mind can resist at first and can generate many distractions, such as repetitive thoughts and even emotions, but you can remain calm and come back again and again to the focus of observing your breath.Keep in mind that practice trains your mind. Little by little, with perseverance, you will learn to calm down and reduce mental noise.

4. Enjoy nature

I would like to highlight the importance of contact with everything natural when we talk about gaining serenity and regulating emotions. The feeling of enjoying all that nature can offer is truly unmatched. Enjoy, feel, live your walks in the countryside, gardens or parks like true balms that bring you calm, joy and well-being.

5. Recognize emotions

Not all feelings are simple and positive. You have to recognize that complex emotions are normal. The problem lies in hiding or rejecting them because you believe that they are not good or appropriate. So they only get bigger. To recognize and validate emotions you have to open yourself to them and feel them in your body.

For example, when I’m angry, I can feel a knot in the pit of my stomach, but if I am able to concentrate on the physical sensation, I watch the anger subside. Or when I feel sad, I notice a sensation as if my heart is dull or folded; if I detect and observe that bodily sensation, in a few minutes the sadness has become milder. This way of working with emotions is truly effective and can be learned through mindfulness practice.

6. Be kind to yourself

In many people the voice of self-criticism is so powerful that it can become a true internal executioner. The practice of self-compassion, which has nothing to do with feeling sorry for yourself, but rather empathy and understanding, It is the most effective method for self-esteem and security problems.

Every morning you can put your hands on your heart and dedicate some phrases like: «I am happy, I love myself, I take care of myself and I am healthy». Or you can connect with your inner child, who at this moment may feel vulnerable, and sincerely embrace him from your adult self. Cultivating these kinds of attitudes and feelings in your heart is healing medicine.

7. Be compassionate to others

As the Buddhists say, “If you want to be happy, practice compassion, and if you want others to be happy, practice compassion.” Put yourself in the shoes of others the brain changes and the whole body benefits.

Compassion can govern our relationships with others and we can cultivate it by mentally reciting, with a sincere attitude, two or three compassionate phrases. You can do it when you get up, when you go to bed or during a break in your tasks: “I want others to be happy”, “I want all people to be free from suffering and disease.”

Conscious listening to others is part of being compassionate: can you listen without interruptions and without thinking about what you are going to say back? Can you always respond in a kind way? How is your tone when you speak?

8. Write a gratitude notebook

The energy that is generated by giving thanks is unmatched for sowing well-being and peace. Just take a notebook and write three thanks every night that make us connect with our present and with the gifts that life offers us every day. For example, I love to be grateful for the kind and loving phrases that my teenage daughter addresses me, the feelings of connection with my surroundings that I experience when I walk or the food that I have on my plate every day.

9. Conscious eating

You can practice it at least two or three times a day and it consists of put all five senses in the act of feeding yourself. Observe the colors and shapes of the food you have on your plate, identify each flavor, each nuance, each aroma and the textures when you chew. Observe the emotions that arise. So food is experienced as a moment of mindfulness. This practice will teach you to eat slowly and help you make healthy food choices.

10. Rest and dream

A calm lifestyle is completed with rest and quality sleep. They are essential for the brain and the entire organism to regenerate and their balance to be strengthened. During the night, the brain cleans itself of cellular debris, learning settles and emotions are assimilated, which will allow us to start a new day with a serene attitude and full of energy.