Healthy Influence

Thursday, February 25, 2010

For me, a typically good day starts with getting up at 5.00 am. I have always seen my Grand-parents and also my parents start their day at early hours. I, however, thought that I belonged to the ‘nocturnal’ category of humans, who can stay awake and active till very late at night, but could only laze around with a heavy head and tired body if made to get up early. It took me more than three decades to finally develop a routine in which I am able to get up at 5.00 am without experiencing any unpleasant lethargy.

My Chachaji has always stressed upon the importance of doing the same thing, be it meditating, preparing for exams, or doing creative writing, at the same time and at the same place. It is only now that I have started experiencing the power of maintaining regularity in my writing work.

My father says that learning and playing a sport is the most interesting form of exercising. For past few months, I have been playing tennis on every alternate day. I jog for a couple of miles on the non-Tennis days, always reminding myself of what Doctor Sanjay Gupta says about the wholesomeness of jogging in the open air as a form of exercise. I could never really appreciate the tremendous power of some breathing exercises till one day I sat through the entire video program on Pranayaams taught by Baba Ramdevji. I made it a habit to do Anulom-Vilom, Bhrastrika, Kapal Bhati, and Bhramari every day after coming back from Tennis and jogging.

I learnt to practice Yogic breathing and Yoga Nidra at the Shri Shri Yoga program. Yoga Nidra is an amazing technique to relax our body and freshen up our mind in less than fifteen minutes when we cannot afford to sleep for a couple of hours.

I learnt to meditate and retrace the lost connection with the Infinite by practicing the techniques taught in the lessons that I receive from the Yogoda Satsang Society founded by Shri Paramhansa Yogananda.

Mrs. Aine Greeney ,a prize winning  Irish author, in one of her workshops on Creative Writing, taught me to develop and maintain a strict discipline of writing at least one page every day.

With each passing day, I have started realizing that a good life is but a sum total of all the good influences received, retained, and put to use.