Progressive Relaxtion

Progressive Relaxation

This technique is often most useful when you tape the instructions beforehand. You can tape these instructions, reading them slowly and leaving a short pause after each one.

• Lie on your back, close your eyes.
• Feel your feet. Sense their weight. Consciously relax them and sink into the bed. Start with your toes and progress to your ankles.
• Feel your knees. Sense their weight. Consciously relax them and feel them sink into the bed.
• Feel you upper legs and thighs. Feel their weight. Consciously relax them and feel them sink into the bed.
• Feel your abdomen and chest. Sense your breathing. Consciously will them to relax. Deepen your breathing slightly and feel your abdomen and chest sink into the bed.
• Feel your buttocks. Sense their weight. Consciously relax them and feel them sink into the bed.
• Feel your hands. Sense their weight. Consciously relax them and feel them sink into the bed.
• Feel your upper arms. Sense their weight. Consciously relax them and feel them sink into the bed.
• Feel your shoulders. Sense their weight. Consciously relax them and feel them sink into the bed.
• Feel your neck. Sense its weight. Consciously relax it and feel it sink into the bed.
• Feel your head and skull. Sense its weight. Consciously relax it and feel it sink into the bed.
• Feel your mouth and jaw. Consciously relax them. Pay particular attention to your jaw muscles and unclench them if you need to. Feel your mouth and jaw relax and sink into the bed.
• Feel your eyes. Sense if there is tension in your eyes. Sense if you are forcibly closing your eyelids. Consciously relax your eyelids and feel the tension slide off the eyes.
• Feel your face and cheeks. Consciously relax them and feel the tension slide off into the bed.
• Mentally scan your body. If you find any place that is still tense, then consciously relax that place and let it sink into the bed.

Yoga

 

The word yoga is related to the English word yoke. Yoga is the union of body, mind, and spirit—the union of your individuality with the divine intelligence that orchestrates the universe. Yoga is a state of being in which the elements and forces that comprise your biological organism are in harmonious interaction with the elements of the cosmos. Established in this state, you will experience enhanced emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being and will increasingly notice the spontaneous fulfillment of your desires. In yoga—in union with spirit—your desires and the desires of nature are one. As you participate in the process of creativity along with the infinite being, your worries fall away and you feel a sense of lightheartedness and joy.

 

There is a spontaneous blossoming of intuition, insight, imagination, creativity, meaning, and purpose. You make correct choices that benefit not only you but also everyone affected by your choices. When in the book of Matthew Jesus says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” he is expressing the core principle of yoga. His intelligence is aligned with cosmic intelligence, his will with divine will.

 

Traditionally, there are four forms of yoga: Gyan, Bhakti, Karma, and Raja. Gyan yoga is the yoga of understanding.
The yoga of understanding is also the yoga of science. (Science is after all, the knowledge of nature’s laws.)
The laws of nature are God’s thoughts. Science is God explaining God to God through a human nervous system.
Science is not an enemy of spiritual awakening but rather a potentially helpful friend. Today’s science reveals to us
the mysterious nonlocal domain where everything is instantly correlated with everything else—where time,
space, matter, energy, and information resolve into a field of pure potentiality. This is the realm where the immeasurable
potential of all that was, all that is, and all that will be manifests and differentiates into the seer and the scenery, the observer and the observed, the knower and the known.