kriyayogamalaysia

Habit of Happiness 6 – Inner-Peace through the Physical Body

From our e-book “Filling our Life with Celebration”

In addition to our physical body, we also have four other bodies which form layers over our physical body, that is, the energy, emotional, mental and causal bodies.

Understanding this helps us to understand why most Yogis choose to be vegetarian. When we eat meat, in addition to taking in the physical body of the animal, we also take in its emotional body as well. When the animal is slaughtered, there is intense fear and anger. When we eat the meat of that animal, the emotional body of the animal induce negative thoughts and emotions. This makes it more difficult for us to calm our minds during meditation. It also adds on to the stress we feel in our day to day life and we become irritable. It is not sinful to eat meat but we need to accept the additional burden that needs to be cleared away during our practice.

Fresh fruits and vegetables contain a higher amount of prana or life force. When we are filled with prana, we feel livelier and it is easier to be present or practice awareness. Prana is a very important concept in Yoga and the practice of pranayama which draws prana into our bodies is a very important part of Yoga. Eating more fresh fruits and vegetables is an easy way of filling ourselves up with prana.

We can start the shift away from eating meat by limiting ourselves to fish which has a lesser impact on us as compared to other forms of meat. We do not need to be very strict about this, for example, if a friend invites you for dinner and is not aware that you are now a vegetarian, you may choose to eat meat in order to avoid embarrassing your friend. You just need to put in more effort inyour practice later on.

The mind and body is one. We can observe this from our own experience. When we are tired, our thoughts and emotions tend to be negative. Similarly, when we face mental stress, we tend to fall ill. Research has shown that there is a close correlation between cancer and prolonged mental suffering. It is therefore important to keep our bodies healthy so that positive thoughts and emotions arise more easily within us. The following are useful habits to achieve this end:

• Regular exercise.

• Practicing Yoga asanas or postures, clears the energy blockages in our energy bodies and thus, prevent illnesses.

• Eating before 7pm so that our digestive systems get a good rest when we sleep.

• Sleeping before 10.30pm and getting up early the next day.