Sailing Away With The Setting Sun

As the day comes to an end, we watch the ships head towards the horizon. Bidding them adieu as they sail away with the setting sun. The picturesque moment is the perfect end to a fun-filled vacation day. Between sailing and simply soaking in the midday sun on the beaches of Martinique, it’s nice to be able to sit back and breathe a moment of clarity and peace.

Source: http://www.vivaboo.com/sailing-away-with-the-setting-sun/
Image By Kenzoka

Drop the cookie! Eight ways to curb and control your appetite.

by Vanessa Streeter

Having trouble resisting the urge to reach for another one-bite-and-it’s-gone, 100-calorie treat? Me too. Those snacks are like a Lay’s potato chip–you can’t eat just one, especially during periods of high stress. If life’s stresses are causing you to lose appetite control, try these eight appetite-controlling foods and tricks instead:

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Drink water. There’s some debate on whether drinking water can physically suppress appetite. But, reaching for a glass of water can give your mind time to allow your craving to pass.

Exercise.  Aerobic exercise helps by temporarily reducing appetite. The theory is that the heart-pumping exercises suppress appetite-controlling hormones like ghrelin, a hormone found in our stomachs that increase before meals.

Appetite-controlling foods

Grab some green tea, but make it spicy-not just hot. A recent study showed that a green tea and capsaicin (what makes peppers hot) combo results in an appetite-suppressing cocktail. The combo curbs hunger and increase satiety.

Eat water. Try soup, an orange, a grapefruit or other juicy foods to fill you up. It’ll give your food volume, helping you resist the urge for that cookie.

Eat chocolate, but make it dark. Dark chocolate is especially helpful during cravings for fatty, salty and sugary foods, according to a small study at the University of Copenhagen. Participants in the study also ate fewer calories at mealtime when they consumed dark chocolate.

As they say, eat an apple a day to keep the Doritos away. High in soluble fiber and low on the GI scale, these fruits help you eat less. Bananas and raw dates also have similar characteristics.

Mental Tricks

Eat slowly and steadily: This gives your body time to realize when you’re full. Set the mood with music. Skip hip-hop and other fast-paced music. With faster music, your fork matches the rhythm, resulting in you eating more.

Go ahead and give in. Eat the cookie! The occasional treat gives your taste buds what they’ve been craving. If you continue to ignore the cravings, you may eventually give in, then binge.

Source: http://www.simplyenjoylife.com/

Breathing Meditations

Generally, the purpose of breathing meditation is to calm the mind and develop inner peace. We can use breathing meditations alone or as a preliminary practice to reduce our distractions.

A Simple Breathing Meditation

The first stage of meditation is to stop distractions and make our mind clearer and more lucid. This can be accomplished by practising a simple breathing meditation. We choose a quiet place to meditate and sit in a comfortable position. We can sit in the traditional cross-legged posture or in any other position that is comfortable. If we wish, we can sit in a chair. The most important thing is to keep our back straight to prevent our mind from becoming sluggish or sleepy.

The first stage of meditation is to stop distractions and make our mind clearer and more lucid.

We sit with our eyes partially closed and turn our attention to our breathing. We breathe naturally, preferably through the nostrils, without attempting to control our breath, and we try to become aware of the sensation of the breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils. This sensation is our object of meditation. We should try to concentrate on it to the exclusion of everything else.

At first, our mind will be very busy, and we might even feel that the meditation is making our mind busier; but in reality we are just becoming more aware of how busy our mind actually is. There will be a great temptation to follow the different thoughts as they arise, but we should resist this and remain focused single-pointedly on the sensation of the breath. If we discover that our mind has wandered and is following our thoughts, we should immediately return it to the breath. We should repeat this as many times as necessary until the mind settles on the breath.

Benefits of Meditation

If we practice patiently in this way, gradually our distracting thoughts will subside and we will experience a sense of inner peace and relaxation. Our mind will feel lucid and spacious and we will feel refreshed. When the sea is rough, sediment is churned up and the water becomes murky, but when the wind dies down the mud gradually settles and the water becomes clear. In a similar way, when the otherwise incessant flow of our distracting thoughts is calmed through concentrating on the breath, our mind becomes unusually lucid and clear. We should stay with this state of mental calm for a while.

Even though breathing meditation is only a preliminary stage of meditation, it can be quite powerful. We can see from this practice that it is possible to experience inner peace and contentment just by controlling the mind, without having to depend at all upon external conditions.

So much of the stress and tension we normally experience comes from our mind

When the turbulence of distracting thoughts subsides and our mind becomes still, a deep happiness and contentment naturally arises from within. This feeling of contentment and well-being helps us to cope with the busyness and difficulties of daily life. So much of the stress and tension we normally experience comes from our mind, and many of the problems we experience, including ill health, are caused or aggravated by this stress. Just by doing breathing meditation for ten or fifteen minutes each day, we will be able to reduce this stress. We will experience a calm, spacious feeling in the mind, and many of our usual problems will fall away. Difficult situations will become easier to deal with, we will naturally feel warm and well disposed towards other people, and our relationships with others will gradually improve.

Source: http://www.how-to-meditate.org/breathing-meditations.htm/

Living in Harmony

Living in harmony means physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Harmonic living means to sense the inter-connectedness with all creation, and realizing our potential as happy, healthy and fulfilled individuals. It means listening to the wisdom within.

Living a harmonic life means living it every day, not only now and then sitting isolated from the world, doing a religious contemplation, away from the pressures of ordinary life or some withdrawing from what is felt difficult and dangerous. Although we need some periods in isolation far away from the everyday life's turbulence, we must learn how to live a harmonic life whatever we do, whichever situation we are in.

Today's fast-paced life brings with it large amounts of stress. Some researchers report that the proportion of workers who were feeling highly stressed at work more than doubled from 1985 to 1990. Stress at the workplace is estimated to cost U.S. industry $300 billion annually and 60-80% of industrial accidents are due to stress. One thing is changing the environment so that such stress is not likely to occur. Another and much more powerful way is to change ourselves to better cope with stressful situations and live a harmonic life even when the situation normally would cause stress.

We know from recent research that stress plays a significant role in cardiovascular disease, cancer, gastrointestinal, skin, neurological and emotional disorders, as well as lots of disorders associated with immune system disturbances, ranging from the common cold and herpes, to arthritis, cancer, and even AIDS.

What you need to do to live a harmonic life is to build in periods of retreats where you can step away from your everyday life and reassess and re-evaluate how you are conducting your life. This will help you to be fully in the present with an open heart and gradually feel a more harmonic way of living.

If you are able to set aside at least half an hour a day doing meditation you can gradually experience a harmonic life included a real sense of joy and peace.

Source: http://EzineArticles.com/109091