Secrets to Increase Family Bonding

Every day, at an appointed hour, sit peacefully with your eyes closed and breathe. Then repeat the following affirmations.

 I have a safe and happy home.

 I enjoy unconditional love.

 The food I eat and the water I drink here nourishes me.

 God blesses us and keeps our children safe.

 This home is a sanctuary and a refuge.

 All conflicts can be solved.

The Ideal Householder

The ideal householder leads on earth a consecrated life, not unmindful of any duty to the living, or to the departed. His wife, the glory of his house, is modest and frugal, adores her husband, guards herself, and is the guardian of his house’s fame. His children are his choicest treasures; their babbling voices are his music; he feasts with the Gods when he eats the rice their tiny fingers have played with; and his one aim is to make them worthier than himself. Affection is the very life of his soul, of all his virtues the first and greatest. The sum and source of them all is love. His house is open to every guest, whom he welcomes with a smiling face and a pleasant word, and with whom he shares his meal, courteous in speech grateful for every kindness, just in all his dealings, master of himself in perfect self-control, strict in the performance of every assigned duty, pure, patient and forbearing with a heart free from envy, moderate in desires, speaking no evil of others, refraining from unprofitable words, dreading the touch of evil, diligent in the discharge of all the duties of his position, and liberal in his benefaction, he is one whom all unite to praise.

Create Positive Field to have a Ideal Home

Fill your home with affirmations, positive strokes, a peaceful atmosphere and a nurturing space that enhances prana. Make it sparkling clean, fragrant with incense and flowers, and beautiful. Be respectful of the sacred forces that can animate it.

Avoid violent, depressing television programmes. Just as you would not allow a terrorist into your home, do not allow them into the blessed space of your home. Surely you are the protector of the field that exists in your home.

A healthy home is a healing space, a nurturing positive mind-field. It can be a place where all wounds are healed. If your home is not a sanctuary, but a battle-field, do something about it. Get help, maybe professional help. Family dynamics can cause disease or reverse it.

Reserve time for laughter and happiness—schedule time for it, like you do for your work. Laughter, smiles, compliments and hugs create a powerful positive field in the home.

Involve in Happiness Creating Activities

• Singing together.

• Thanking your gurus.

• Being loving and giving affirmations to parents and elders.

• Forgiving those who harmed you in your life—let go.

• Calling forth the highest from others.

• Thinking of God, the source of all abundance.

• Celebrating Abundance. Praising God.

Celebrate Everyday

The poorest among mankind celebrate and give thanksgiving to the gift of life and the bounty of Nature. All over the world, harvest is a time for rejoicing. In early January, the whole village celebrates Pongal in Tamil Nadu. The four-day long festivities are like an island of joy in the midst of life’s stormy business. All old things are burnt in a huge bonfire. New clothes are worn. Overflowing joy and good fortune are celebrated by the Pongal pot of plenty which boils over with rice and jaggery that will be eaten at the celebration. The house is newly painted and decorated. A whole day is devoted to tending to cows. Their horns are painted and bodies decorated, and they are given rest and good food. The last day is devoted to going out and seeing friends and relatives, watching movies and generally celebrating life. The saying is that when the ‘Thai’ month (that starts in mid-January every year) is born, a way will be found to solve all problems.

Celebrations lift you out of the trough of despondency. They fill you with the energy to make a new beginning with the help of God and the family. Why can’t we make every day an occasion to rejoice? It is up to each family to celebrate and enjoy life on a regular basis. A special movie on television can be celebrated with hot popcorn, dinners on Saturday nights can be an opportunity to dress up. We can make affirmations for the family a way of life

Need of Family Network

Today, however, the family, as the ‘shock absorber of society, to which the bruised and battered individual returns after doing battle with the world,’ in the words of Alvin Toffler in his landmark work Future Shock, is going through a transitional phase. The breakdown of the joint family has led to a  loosening of extended family relationships. The powerful mother-in-law of the joint family is emerging as the subdued caretaker of children, helping the educated daughter-in-law augment the double income of all upwardly mobile young couples. The large, amorphous, supportive joint family that supported a wide variety of people and bestowed unconditional love for the crippled, the old and the helpless, has been reduced to the nuclear family where everyone is in sharp focus. Much like the modern  corporation, there is no place to hide, no place for passengers, and everyone has to pull their own weight. It is our mission to restore to it its traditional role as a place of rest and healing, albeit in a new paradigm. There should be one person in the family who can cushion the blows of the outside world. Someone who is not too busy to listen, give support, and manage the daily tasks of living. This could even be a paid caregiver or cook. Networking with parents, in-laws, neighbours, domestic help and friends is the key for working mothers.

Tips to be healthy

•    Take care of your health. You cannot deliver a prize-winning performance with a broken-down body.

• Force the world to look at issues like: What kind of world are we leaving for our children? Where have leisure, poetry and caring been banished? Why has the door been shut on the smiles and joy of our children? Why do we have no time for our friends or small acts of kindness? Why are deadlines so terrible that they extract death as the price? None of us would mind dying for great causes, but to diefor a power-point presentation, seems slightly frivolous.

• Do not get stereotyped into how others see your role: as a mother or an all forgiving rescuer in the workplace. Encourage men to discover their so-called feminine qualities of sensitivity and caring. Do not

stereotype men!

• Affirm women who are role models instead of trying to find chinks in their armour. Network with them. There is a queen-bee complex, which causes successful women managers to surround themselves

with male managers and discourage the entry of women. Identify this and speak up when required.

• There are points in a woman’s life-cycle when her intensive physical presence is needed. There are high priority interactions which cannot be delegated. Build a support system with family, household staff, neighbours and friends to help you enjoy these times. Men too have been deprived of active participation in these peak experiences in the past. Make your company recognise and

respond to these realities.

• Hitch your wagon to the pursuit of daily and consistent learning. Be Saraswati. Bring your heritage of creating wholeness from leftovers, and wealth from waste. Be Lakshmi. Call forth the courage to speak, write and act for what is true and good for all. Be Shakti. Be all woman. Be all human. Celebrate the fact that you a woman.

Tips to Assess family welfare

Here are some questions which helps you to understand your family welfare.

1. Is your family important to you?

2. Do you spend quality time with members of your family?

3. Would you like to increase the amount of quality time you spend with your family?

4. Does your family include those outside the nuclear family?

5. Is your family linked together through the internet, letters or phone calls?

6. Is respect from your family important to you?

7. Do you show appreciation for things your family has done for you?

8. Do you seek to make your family life different from what it is today?

9. Do you do things to bring about a happier marriage and family life?

10. Do you seek out books and classes that would help you to be a successful parent?

11. Do alcohol and tobacco play a part in your life? Is it a problem?

12. Do you speak up too much or too little in your family?

13. Is there too much fighting in your family?

14. Do you have a bad temper?

15. Does your family do fun things together?

16. Are you considerate in handling of misunderstandings between family members?

17. Do you come from a broken or divorced family?

18. Given the present situation, is there anything you could do to strengthen family ties?

19. Could you possibly use outside help such as counsellors and friends, to assist you in attaining a solid family now or in the future?

a. Good: More than 10 Yeses

b. Adequate: More than 6 Yeses

c. Poor: Less than 5 Yeses

Good out of Bad

Our life provides us with a chance to achieve the highest in ourselves, by using pain as stepping-stones to enlightenment. No one can avoid bad times, but we can ensure that we look at this time as a time for growth and learning. When the mind-numbing pain that immediately follows loss has subsided, we can take proactive steps to provide emergency attention to heal our body, mind and spirit. Pour music into soul. Touch people whom we love. Explore new places. Reach into great books and study alternate futures. Pamper yourself and ask your loved ones for hugs. Meditate. Be silent. Plug into the universe. Let go. Let God catch you. Our sankalpa or intention must be pure. Be clear about the goal. Be non-judgemental. Love and seek to understand with tenderness. Learn and immerse yourself in knowledge. Learn all we can about our chosen field from books, internet, from people, competitors. Remain focused. Never give up. Never, ever!

Happiness Mantras to Improve our Wellness

v  The world is like a buffet counter at a five-star hotel. Let’s not grab everything on our plates. Let us be choosy, so that we may avoid spiritual indigestion and physical exhaustion.

v  Let us replace stress with positive emotions that engender joy. Let us increase our HQ.

v  ‘I felt like a waterfall,’ said Diane Roffe-Stainrotter, gold-medallist skier in the 1994 Winter Olympics. The joy of a job perfectly executed, fills the body with the chemicals of bliss.

v  Professor Mihalyi Csikzent speaks about a state called the flow, which athletes, musicians, surgeons—in fact everyone—experiences when they are at their best. It is the experience of doing your job with  total immersion in it. So absorbed are you, that there is no place for anxiety or niggling worries.

v  Finding a job you love is one of the ways you can immunise yourself against heart problems.

v  A good marriage is a protective shield against heart attacks.

Traditional Systems

The indigenous health-care system is commensurate with the traditional habits, lifestyle and value systems of a particular culture from where it has evolved.  For example, the Keralites, in spite of coming into contact with western culture, do not endorse its systems, and hold on to their own traditions. Perhaps that is why their age-old habit of using a high cholesterol diet has not resulted in an increased incidence of heart disease. The indigenous systems of medicine continues to have a stronghold in Kerala.

All health-care systems, including modern medicine, are in agreement today over the issue that a patient’s psychological state has much to do with the healing process. Minor activities like taking

part in a satsang, singing a tune you enjoy, and dancing for fun to your child’s delight can make you feel contented and allow the good chemicals flow.

Religion

Religion, said the communists contemptuously, is the opiate of the masses. But if religion can calm the mind and slow down the heart and pulse rate, if it can make the engine of life work sturdily and longer, why not adopt it?

Sri Aurobindo writes about a grand spiritual concept of health:

For nearly forty years I believed them when they said I was weakly in constitution, suffered constantly from the smaller and greater ailments and mistook this curse for a burden that Nature had laid upon me. When I renounced the aid of medicines, then they began to depart from me like disappointed parasites. Then only I understood what a mighty force was the natural health within me and how much mightier yet the Will and Faith exceeding mine which God meant to be the divine support of our life in this body…

Negative emotions—anxiety, fear, depression, anger, impatience, hostility, aggressiveness,  over indulgence of any desire—cause imbalance. Moderation leads to harmony.   An integral view of health demands an integral view of life.

To attune the different elements of our nature around this central nucleus is the next step. Without such a reorientation and reorganisation of our life, it will not be possible to establish in ourselves the law of harmony and peace which is so necessary a condition for integral health.

Meditation And Pranayama

One way to break the pattern of stressful living and strive for personal wellness is to change the responses to tough situations. There is, of course, no way to make the situations less tough. Meditation and pranayama provide a way of reducing the automatic and violent reactions to stress. You can actually control autonomous systems like heartbeat and pulse rate, which were thought to be outside the individual’s control. Knowing and practising meditation can provide you with a silent space where you can retreat into peace: slow breathing, steady heartbeat, low pulse. This space is always available within a person who has learnt to meditate. While you cannot change your job, family or your life-situation, you can certainly learn to breathe more peacefully, thus reversing the process of excitation and avoiding the emotional hijack. It is not possible to learn meditation by thinking about it, any more than it is possible to learn swimming by talking about it. If you have to swim, you have to get into the water. Learning meditation and understanding your breathing patterns through pranayama are the best investment you ever make. 

Ardhanareeshwara Model

The new millennium is a time for growth and promise for women. It is time for them to emerging from the stereotypical role of how others see them: as a mother or an all forgiving rescuer in the workplace. Men too are replacing their conventional roles as the bread-winner or boss with the ‘Complete Man’ image, where it is permissible for them to cuddle babies and shed tears, and discover their so-called

feminine qualities of sensitivity and caring. The sharp man/woman divide, the Mars/Venus chasm has been miraculously bridged by the challenge of the times. It is a time to build partnerships and collaboration. To be ‘ardhanareeshwara’ is the challenge all human beings face today. This is why the ratio of men to women in the IT industry begins to approach that magical figure of perfect collaboration, fifty-fifty.

Your Family Health Assessment

Here are few questions to judge about your family health and by answering these questions, you can analyze your family health conditions and you can improve the health.

Answer Yes (Y) / No (N)

1. Is your family important to you?

2. Do you spend quality time with members of your family?

3. Would you like to increase the amount of quality time you

spend with your family?

4. Does your family include those outside the nuclear family?

5. Is your family linked together through the internet, letters or

phone calls?

6. Is respect from your family important to you?

7. Do you show appreciation for things your family has done for

you?

8. Do you seek to make your family life different from what it is

today?

9. Do you do things to bring about a happier marriage and

family life?

10. Do you seek out books and classes that would help you to be a

successful parent?

Do alcohol and tobacco play a part in your life? Is it a

problem?

12. Do you speak up too much or too little in your family?

13. Is there too much fighting in your family?

14. Do you have a bad temper?

15. Does your family do fun things together?

16. Are you considerate in handling of misunderstandings

between family members?

17. Do you come from a broken or divorced family?

18. Given the present situation, is there anything you could do to

strengthen family ties?

19. Could you possibly use outside help such as counsellors and

friends, to assist you in attaining a solid family now or in the

future?

Score

a. Good: More than 10 Yeses

b. Adequate: More than 6 Yeses

c. Poor: Less than 5 Yeses Score

Role of the Wife

Dr Dean Ornish, MD, the founder and president of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in California, and author of six best-selling books, says that men who feel that their wives love them are much more likely to reverse heart disease than those who feel the opposite. The home can be the cause for disease. It can also be the safe sanctuary for healing and reversal of disease. Everyone talks of quality time nowadays. Once, a girl from Kuala Lumpur told me about her exciting marriage to a man from LA. ‘We have a really good time on holidays,’ she said. Another bright young yuppie from a major bank said her husband worked for the same bank in another city. ‘We meet on weekends and feel just like we did when we were dating!’ she said her eyes shining. Is this looked forward-to weekend the alternative to the solid permanence and possible boredom of a traditional marriage? Are the constant travels away from each other the basis for the ‘open birdcage’ marriage to which the bird always returns from its travels? Today, when we look back, we believe that contentment is happiness

Today's Children Tomorrow's Future

The children of today are tomorrow's future. Children need the security of a simple, dependable schedule. Ambiguity or lack of dependability in family life is known to affect the individual’s capacity to live in a secure long-term relationship in the future. The family provides the love and nurturing required for the survival of children. Most working couples say, ‘I wish I had more time at home.’ If they cannot go home during working hours can their homes come to them? A classic turn-it-upside down thinking tool. Can children meet their parents for a picnic or lunch at the office? Can couples plan business travel together? Can the office incorporate a Saturday children’s day into its schedule to improve participation of the family? An open house for them to see the world their parents inhabit?

The teenage years of a child are a crucial time when family can make all the difference. This is a time of acne, broken hearts, a newfound interest in the opposite sex, in looks and clothes. The children of this century are much smarter and grasp things faster.