Action Plans to Maintain Perfect Health

·         Start the day with a glass of warm water and a dash of lime.

·         Once a week have only fresh fruits until noon; let your lunch be the first meal of the day.

·         Kick the old coffee drinking habit.  Have a glass of fresh fruit juice instead.

·         Include foods with high fibre content – plenty of fruits, vegetables and grains – in planning your diet    

 Don’t rush through your meals.  Set aside enough time to appreciate, enjoy and digest your food.

·         Shop for groceries yourself.  Notice the look, feel and smell of fresh fruit and vegetables and enjoy their intrinsic goodness.

·         Make it a point to have dinner with the entire family at the table, and not in front of the TV.

·         Focus on your breathing.  Take a deep breath, then exhale slowly.  Repeat a couple of times a       day.

·         Learn to relax.  Spend twenty minutes consciously relaxing each muscle of your body.

·         Spend twenty minutes a day in silent meditation, prayer or contemplation.

Healthy food for good physical wellness

Food brings people together, allows human beings to feel satisfied and comfortable, connects us with the earth and provides us with health.  Eating should be regarded as a sacred act. In an orthodox Hindu home, food is offered to the family deity first and is then consumed as prasad or offering with the diety’s blessing. In both cases, food is offered as an oblation to the five pranas which are regarded as five fires. Even if one does not follow this ritualistic concept, one should make eating a fully conscious and peaceful act. Hurry, worry, anger, distractions and chattering should be avoided while eating.

Meditation for Wellness

In order to treat or prevent disease, it is essential to look into our emotional, mental and psychological environment, as our thoughts and emotions directly contribute to our wellbeing or otherwise. Some doctors believe that it is more important to know the patient who has the disease than to know the disease the patient has. Wise gurus, and now modern research, both believe that meditation can contribute enormously to an individual’s psychological and physiological wellbeing. It reduces stress, hypertension, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, depression, improves cardiovascular health, memory and concentration, work efficiency, and immunological resistance to diseases. As a result, some form of meditation has become an essential part of wellness programs.

Physical Wellness

‘Physical fitness is of utmost importance as it is the starting point for wellness of the mind and spirit. We would have perfect health as a state where all body parts function at their optimal level and wherein the body, mind and spirit are in perfect balance and in a state of bliss. Positive health implies perfect functioning of body and mind in a given society. To be healthy is to have the ability, despite an occasional bout of illness, to live with full use of your faculties, to be vigorous, alert and with a sense of joie de vivre, even in old age. In order to treat or prevent disease, it is essential to look into our emotional, mental and psychological environment, as our thoughts and emotions directly contribute to our wellbeing or otherwise. Your Happiness Quotient is directly affected by your physical condition. Hence it is said, health is the foundation for a feeling of wellbeing and joy.

Joyful Living

In order to experience the spontaneous happiness that bubbles out of your heart like a mountain stream. We need to concentrate on the following seven actions

1.      Physical Wellness

2.      Emotional Wellness

3.      Personal Wellness

4.      Family Bonding

5.      Nurturing Workplace

6.      Social Bonding

7.      Dharmic Living

Great mountain and beyond, a green sunlit valley is a beautiful and enjoyable sight. Only when you climb the mountain can you see the beauty of the journey ahead. Hence in the same way only when you learn the seven actions of happiness, you can realize and enjoy the real happiness.

Positive Mindspace

When the garden is clean, blooming and full of life, the snakes of anger have no place to hide; the thorns of greed get cleared away. Adbuta, or wonder, is one of the positive navarasas—the nine emotions. It heals and energises. To stand in wonder before the splendour of God’s creation is to be rejuvenated. The body and bloodstream are bathed in endorphins and serotonins which are Nature’s tranquillisers.’

Enjoy the nature - the chirping of the birds, the wind through the fluttering leaves, the murmuring river. The harmonious fabric of nature enfolds us in a blanket of pure beauty. The colours and shapes that flowed from the hands of the great Architect of the universe soothe us in positive emotions.

Life’s Greatest Gift

Happiness is a life’s greatest gift. There is joy to be found in the small things. Go peacefully amidst the noise and the haste. Enjoy the sweetness of everyday things. Events or people around us are not under our control. But our reactions, our responses to them are. Respond with love and peace. Focus on happiness and on cultivating happy people. Build protective walls against toxic events that threaten your tranquillity. Let the cells of your body be gently bathed in happiness, positive thoughts and healing energies. The Vedas speak of the self as a beautiful lotus growing in the muddy waters of life. With its roots in the muck the lotus rises above it, in perfect beauty and bliss.