Aparigraha…

Time commitment – 10 minutes everyday This exercise is simple. All you need to do, is write something that no one else will see. Just you. But, you have to follow a short process, and a few house rules. Write at the same time everyday – Can be in the morning, or in the evening, or …

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Would you like to prepare for death?

Time commitment : 10-15 minutes, after every yogic practice The standing joke in yoga classes, is that everyone’s favourite pose is śavāsana. Most people think of this āsana to be easy, but nothing could be further from the truth. Yoga Guru Shri B.K.S. Iyengar has called it “the most difficult āsana to master.” And he did know more than a thing or …

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Don’t do anything!

Time commitment – 10 minutes every alternate day From observing, to observation. From total involvement, to no involvement. The no-mind exercise has a simple procedure – DON’T DO ANYTHING FOR 10 MINUTES. You may think that this is the easiest exercise of the lot. It isn’t. On the contrary, it is the most difficult exercise for …

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Take a walk…

Time commitment : One hour every week We spoke about connecting with nature in an earlier post. This exercise is an extension of the “walk in the park” aspect of that exercise. A few points to note: No devices – Not even a mobile (especially not a mobile). You may be tempted to take photographs on the …

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Embodiment…

Yesterday, we had a look at how Sanatana schools of thought address the concept of collective effervescence. Today, let’s look at embodiment. Most religions usually prescribe some kind of movement that marks the activity as devotional. Such movements are proven to enhance feelings of communion, similarity and trust, which means it makes a group of …

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Collective effervescence…

In his book – The Anxious Generation – Jonathan Haidt speaks about “drawing on wisdom from ancient traditions and modern psychology to tray to make sense of how phone-based life affects people spiritually by blocking or counteracting six spiritual practices: shared sacredness; embodiment; stillness, silence, and focus; self-transcendence; being slow to anger, quick to forgive; and …

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How valuable is your attention?

Tristan Harris, a former ethicist at Google, created a PowerPoint presentation for his fellow Google employees in 2013. Titled – A call to minimize distractions and respect users’ attention, Harris noted that products made by just three companies – Google, Apple and Facebook – were shaping (and now controlling) how humanity spent it’s limited attention …

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Five commandments…

1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, …

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On public speaking…

“In fact, public speaking anxiety may be primal and quintessentially human, not limited to those of us born with a high-reactive nervous system. One theory, based on the writings of the sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, holds that when our ancestors lived on the savannah, being watched intently meant only one thing: a wild animal was …

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Not again!

I visited the doc yesterday – the allergy was getting the better of me. He prescribed some nasal sprays and an allergy tab, and so I walked down to the pharmacy to get them. They made me wait more than an hour, and then informed me that the request had been declined. Declined – by …

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