Plato used to say you should practice death daily.

It’s about you reminding yourself that you are not immortal. Your soul is, but your existence here on earth is limited.

When you imagine yourself dying today, or tomorrow being your last day here on earth, you remind yourself of what is of value to you, what has meaning.

I am saying this to bring one subject into discussion. Sleeping.

We believe that 8-10 h of sleep a day is a necessity. Yes it may have been when we were growing, at a young age. But now sleeping is mostly due because we feel we have nothing beautiful to wake up to. Or there is no other form known to us, of how we can relax.

When we talk about work and we feel “compelled” to wake up early, we do so much effort, alarms, cold water, coffee, whatever will get us on our feet.

But when we have to wake up for ourselves, when we “enjoy” a free day we just go for a 12 h sleep. And for most of the people it is because there is no pleasure greater than this. There is no planed day for which they should get up to do some interesting things.

It is like life it is not worth living.

It is like we are sleeping our life. Sleeping, eating, reproducing, the basic needs of any animal.

“We do so much efforts into creating problems, stress, we create so many thoughts that can bring our energy down. But when it comes to happiness, we just sit and do nothing, like we expect everything just to fall from the sky.”

We where trained to work and dedicate our time and energy for someone else’s dream rather than our own.  

It is very peaceful to sleep, when your brain and thinking process is out of the way, and you forget about your identity, you are just peaceful.

But will you do the same if this where one of your last day on earth? Or would you call everybody to meet, say to them whatever you didn’t got the chance to say, your parents, that you love them and they did a great job, your loves one, how much they mean to you, go and see nature, have healthy food, do some exercise for the body and thanking him that he supported you for all this years, and all the bad choices you made. Showing love and gratitude to everyone. And probably trying out the things you never had the courage, time, resources to do.

The body is happy when you sleep because it seems like you’re not giving him a choice to experience bliss, to jump from a parasympathetic “fight or flight” when the mind is under stress to a sympathetic mode “rest and digest”- grow and heal, when the mind and body is at peace.

For me one of the purposes of you being human, is to be conscious, if not, your experience would have been reduced to one of an animal. But your purpose here on earth is so much greater than this, and you know it, that is why you are not satisfied about your existence.

It’s like being drunk on some kind of products and unconscious, and people telling you that you had fun, or you being aware and having a memory of being blissful. It is scary, and there is no fun of you being unaware, if you where in some kind of other activity that doesn’t involve sleeping.

You feel you are awake now, just because you didn’t experienced other states of being awake. But you have felt the same in other circumstances, for example when you thought your body is at your peak, until you didn’t get to do some physical exercises for at least 30 min.

So what if you can develop the means to go-jump to this state consciously, what if there is a chance that yoga with all its myths about meditation and breathing and other practices, can make your experience being awake and blissful like being asleep and unconscious, or even more, would you take that chance, would you try it?

“The eyes are the mirror of the soul and reflect everything that seems to be hidden; and like a mirror, they also reflect the person looking into them.”   ― Paulo Coelho

 As a part of the “warm up” in yoga there are exercises that emphasis also eye movement. Just because we didn’t got the chance to practice them until now, doesn’t make yoga less complete.

These days there are many workshops helping people with eye problems, doing various exercises so they improve their sight viewing. A part of the exercises come from a long time ago, because it was understood that vision disability is mostly, like all things, related to muscles of the eye, and there are only imbalances that trough exercises they may improve, prevent or heal.

But we are looking at the bigger picture today. It was a subject that I was paying attention more this week.“When two people meet and make eye contact they find themselves in an immediate state of conflict.They want to look at each other and in the same time they want to look away (*duality of thought*). The result is a complicated series of eye movement back and forth” Body language – James Borg

Emotions as feelings, as many other things are expressed through movement of the eyes, different muscles, vocal cords, gestures, postures etc. So even if the mind is thinking she can hide the truth, the body is always revealing the truth about someone. Some of them can be controlled, but there is always a part that is out of our reach.

“Three things cannot be for long hidden: The sun, the moon and the truth” Buddha

You can tell somebody’s mood just by looking at them. The body is like an open book. Are the eyes looking, relaxed, anxious?

We just need to pay more attention to the body. We developed an intuition that sometimes tells us not to trust, some people, even if they communicate something that sounds truth, the body contradicts the words.

So you may pay more attention to your intuition, since you are such an amazing machine beyond your knowledge or belief.

Every time a speaker is trying to deliver a message it will start by giving a gaze to the listener, just to verify he got the attention. After the eyes are looking away, in order not to have distractions in conveying the message. When the message is delivered, he looks back to notice the impact of his message delivered to the listener.

The listener in the meantime, if he’s interested, is keeping 70% of his gaze on the speaker eyes, gestures, voice etc.

If the speaker is looking too much at the listener it means he’s trying to force a message, if the listener is looking too much time away studying the surrounding it means he lost the interest in the subject

If the speaker/listener is keeping his eyes relaxed he will express confidence and trustworthy, if his eyes look anxious, fast movements, you will feel something is wrong.

When you are speaking with someone and you keep the gaze to their eyes and higher, most probably that person is a stranger.If it’s going to be in his eyes and to his mouth, he’s probably a friend, colleague, someone familiar.If a person is looking even lower than the chin, it means that probably that person is interested for more.

Staring to much in the eyes of someone brings discomfort. Usually if you will look too much it means you think you are dominant, usually the person who feels dominated/irritated it will look down.

If you feel superior you will raise your chin up, and blink slowly, like people don’t deserve your attention, your look.

When someone is speaking and looking:

-right and down, they most probably are accessing feelings

-left and down: talking to themselves

-right up: imagine something

-left up: visualize something like a memory

-right middle: reconstructing a sound

-left middle: remembering a sound

So what has this to anything related to yoga? Well yoga is studying all the behavior of the body through its postures. Every posture in yoga is a posture of strength, it activates something, either the strengthening of something, healing of a particular part, release of some stack emotions in the body, or just preparing the body for higher energies.

Some of the postures are there in a position of strength for the body, mind, something that is changing the perception about yourself, that keeps you present, that reminds you who you are, accessing a forgotten memory or dwelling in the future.

There are so many things that cannot yet be explained, and probably never will be. But what we are interested in is the results. Is the result of one action that really counts, not how the alchemy takes place.

“One can talk endlessly, describing, pilling words upon words, coming to various forms of conclusions, but out of all this verbal confusion if there is one clear action, that action is worth ten thousand words“

The consequences of an action. Yoga is making you aware of the consequences. So instead of being a victim and just falling into situation, you become an aware being, taking the decisions and life in your hands.

 You can notice a fake smile, just by looking at the muscles that activates during the smile, the symmetry of the face.

 Every single feeling, every single thought, every imbalance of the mind is manifested in the body either through a chemical reaction- subtle or a diseases-gross.

 Technology and ignorance are mostly creating more comfort to our sedentary life and poison our body with artificial products and unnatural food, thoughts and misdirected actions. Makes it impossible for the soul, to live in this “temple”. It is not the soul who is feeling bad, the soul is immortal, is the body who feels all your decisions and choices, like you are lowering/depleting your body of energy instead of rising it.

Practicing yoga is healing, bringing balance back to the body due to your imbalance life style, thinking, and actions. We are helping the body to perform its duty, to keep ourselves happy and healthy. We increase our awareness into the body, bring more sensibility to each part of the body.

How can we listen to the body if we are “deaf”? The body for long periods of time sent us messages through disease and all kind of reactions, saying that we have to make better choices. But it is like after years and years of ignoring, we don’t feel anything anymore. We just get sick, instead of preventing it from the first signals the body is sending. The body just got numbed.

Let’s remember who we are, and what this body can do for us. Yoga is just another mean to your betterment. Used to reach the full potential of the body, not only the physical one. 

|Improve your own being.|

What is happiness? Happiness may differ from one person to another, but we are all in pursuit of almost the same things: love, peace, abundance, health, longevity, and other.

How do we express happiness?

This is almost universal. First you want to share the feeling, it seems that if you are the only one who enjoys your “victory” it is just sad, and so you need someone to share that joy. Sharing is what makes us feel even better, the sweeter is the victory.

So separation, individualism is not the way to happiness.

Another thing you may feel is to jump out of joy, to scream, is like every chakra has touched a full potential, like every cell of your body is energized. You fell so good that you can run for miles, there is no fatigue in your body, and you have to let it out. To send that vibe as far as possible.

So your mind will always understand happiness trough the expansion of your body, through the cells when they are energized, proper nutrition, oxygenation. A healthy body generates happiness. Your brain doesn’t make the difference, you can use movements in order to generate signals to your brain which are similar with the ones the brain is generating when a feeling of “happiness” takes part.

It is your soul who wants to expand, when he is experiencing positive vibes. He wants to explode, because it follows the same rules as the universe, his purpose is to expand, and it needs to have space in the body to manifest, to create a flow of energy without blockages.

All this blockages are either due to lack of inactivity, suppressed emotions, unfulfilled desires, etc. And they are sucking the energy of your body, or acting as blockages for the energy to pass freely.

Sadness manifest itself the opposite way, you want to destroy things, you want to get small, to hide, to be alone, “flexion”.

Hell was described by many wise minds as a lonely soul. A lonely soul is the hardest thing to bear, you can be in hell but if you have someone by your side, things are just easier. Sharing pain makes it goes away, even if just a little. And that is the expression-expansion of your heart chakra speaking, socializing, creating vibration.

Yoga’s main preoccupation is to open the body, to energize the cells, to reduce/destroy blockages, is preparing the body to experience a new level of energy. Is like enlarging the resistance of your body so it can support higher forms of happiness and energies, and maintain them.

Yoga is just creating space for the soul to manifest, to trust who you are, to fall in love of yourself, doubt less what you feel, use your intuition more, creates a fearless expression of yourself.

This is what everyone is actually searching for, to feel free and not judged, for what they are and what they feel, a fearless expression of who they are, so they don t feel the need of approval or justification in front of anybody.

You may say no, but then take a close look to the people surrounding you. Are  they not your friends, the people who makes you feel appreciated, loved by who you are, yes they may judge, but they do so, because your ego is to big sometimes, they correct the impure things in you, search for your betterment.

Society created an utopic image of what a person should be, something that cannot be reached, and is making you frustrate and follow that your whole life. Just because you want to have a feeling of belonging.

But this is your beauty, your perfection, your uniqueness, the “bad and good” together, the fact that you work towards your betterment, that you follow your heart and passion, that you are euphoric, enthusiastic about your hobbies.

Paulo Coelho said something like “When you do what you love, and get lost into that action, you have a feeling of God in you, you create something out of love, out of God, you are being used by God in that moment.”

Love all the sides of you, accept and have more patience with the things you want to change about yourself. Develop kindness and patience towards all living things. Do not harm yourself, try not to harm others.

Open your mind, be more in touch with your soul, increases the empathy you have toward others. Become more compassionate. Raise your awareness level.

You will realize that the pursuit of your goals and happiness is by taking joy, in your actions, it may take sacrifice sometimes, but doing what you love will get you less attached to your goals.

Make small changes every day to your betterment. Even if is one more breath that you are aware of, or a small kind of kindness. A thought of gratitude, for who you are today, and take pride in all the courage and situation you have dealt with. Being here today is just another proof of how strong you are, and how stronger you can become.

The awareness and search of spirituality, is growing all around us. It is your decision if you want to do small steps towards your happiness, or steps behind, hiding in your comforts and fears.

“You can only die once, but fear, can make you experience “death” 1000 times.”