Subtle Mind Exercise

This week we experienced another integral health exercise.  In comparing the Loving Kindness and Subtle Mind exercises, I think I was much more successful with the Subtle Mind exercise than the Loving Kindness.

Loving Kindness focused more on the emotions that one experiences and taming them by turning them from negative to positive through thoughts of kindness and love.  It required you to turn feeling of kindness toward yourself, those that had harmed or wronged you, and others in general.

The Subtle Mind exercise concentrated solely on breathing.  As thoughts come to mind, you allow them to dissipate by returning your focus back to your breath.  This was extremely difficult for me since I had just had a bad experience with one of my sons.  Thoughts of what had transpired kept flooding my mind and I would think, “Back to breathing, back to breathing”.   While I was able to become calmer, my mind never experienced the stillness that the exercise mentioned.  The goal is to allow the mind to float along and as thoughts come to mind, to not allow the mind to grasp them so that it eventually evolves into unity consciousness.   

Although the narrator stated early on that this technique can take some time to learn and be successful, I think I would have to practice this a lot because my mind is always racing with thoughts.

The connection of spiritual wellness to mental and physical wellness goes beyond psychology and physiology.  It moves into the inner most being where one experiences the more subtle aspects of the mind and experiences the spiritual body.  According to Dacher, this is where we can imagine freedom from the physical body, and where we can begin to understand the true nature of disease and death.

I think for me, the connection of the spiritual to the physical is profound.  I know that when I am not feeling connected to God through prayer or quiet time to read the Bible or just be silent and listen for God’s voice, I feel more anxious and irritable.  When I am in community with other believers, my stress level is lower, I feel connected and love, and a part of something bigger than myself.  That helps me to have a more positive outlook on life which in turn puts less stress on my physical body.