Self Improvement Blogs

Today there's enormous interest in all issues associated with health. There has been an explosion of health centres, gymnasiums and alternative cures because folks know how important health is to their experience of happiness. Everyone understands that to be effective at work and at home, to enjoy our leisure and our non secular life we have got to be healthy.

Everybody experience discomfort and pain all of the time to varying degrees. Even if we are sitting in a chair we have discomfort after a while. Maybe our home or office is not air-conditioned. That may actually make us uncomfortable. We have back and neck Problems because of hours spent at a PC. Maybe a sporting activity has lead to some imbalance in the body bringing agony.

Even though we've got more clinics, hospitals, treatments and experts to help us there hasn't been a consistent drop off in our physical suffering or Problems. In truth people seem to be getting more ill, more frequently. More and more folk take sick days from work. There are new diseases that were unusual years ago- Aids [*COMMA] Protracted Fatigue syndrome, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Nutty Cow Disease and many others.

Although new treatments have been invented for old and new illnesses their effects are uncertain. Sometimes the complications of drugs can be worse that the original symptoms. Kava Kava was withdrawn from the shelves in Health Food stores due to doubt over the side effects. Yet people are willing to take any medication or use any treatment because they are frantic to get well.

There are many people now who understand that only the leading indications of illness are being handled. We improve for a bit and then sickness returns. For example we will take aspirin for a pain. That agony might vanish for a bit but regularly returns. Aspirin does not cure pain permanently because it doesn't destroy the root or basis of the pain. If the real cause of a sickness is not destroyed then we will continue to become ill.

Buddha asserted the roots of all illness is in the mind. If we have deadly roots in our mind they'll at last produce psychological and physical sickness; stress, depression, anxiousness and so on. Aches, pains, stomach abnormalities, skin sicknesses and cancer all arise from poison in our mind. Buddha encourages us to have a look at the relationship between our psychological activity and our health.

What is it that makes our minds unbalanced and that leads to imbalance in our bodies, leading to illness? It's what Buddha called our delusions; negative states of mind like anger, attachment and jealousy and the why me sydrome that plagues millions.

We can see how attachment can harm us with respect to food. Because for us food is a real source of happiness we eat too much and eat the wrong things. We eat as the food looks, tastes and smells good, not because it is good for our bodies. Often a craving sets in that can't be satisfied regardless of how much we eat. Our attachment leads us to seek different, stronger and more exotic foods all the time. We pile on weight and and assorted infirmities begin to appear. We see some unfortunate folk who become housebound and completely immobile because of extra weight. Food is murdering them.

If we live with hate in our mind, our heart experiences powers of adrenalin continually. This will not only damage the heart, but affect each organ in the body ultimately. It could take many years for the results of anger to be felt physically but eventually our body will take the toll.
The only possible way to be actually healthy is to remove this inner poison of the delusions from our mind. Buddha’s teachings are called ‘Medicine for the mind” because they explain techniques for destroying delusions and cultivating instead minds of loving kindness, compassion and knowledge which bring inner peace and balance to our mind and our body.

Through the practice of meditation we apply the medication to our mind and destroy the root of our suffering. Meditation is the trail to mental and physical health and happiness for everyone, Buddhists and non-Buddhists. It is simple to learn and even 10 minutes of meditation a day can have extraordinarily beneficial effects on our health and general well-being.

In his book” Change Your Life”, Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso writes:

” When the turbulence of distracting thoughts subsides and our mind becomes still, a deep happiness and happiness naturally ensues from within. This feeling of happiness and contentment helps us to deal with the busyness and difficulties of daily existance. Most of the tension and anxiety we typically experience comes from our mind and many issues we experience like ill health are caused or worsened by this stress. By doing 10 or 15 minutes breathing meditation a day we may be able to reduce this stress. “.

Jonah White loves quantum jumping and likes to work on his NLP talents.