Are Meditation and Rest Really Beneficial For Your Holistic Health?
Meditation and mindfulness are common words these days, and people often associate them with spirituality. However, they’re not just for those seeking or practising spiritual enlightenment; they can be beneficial practices for everyone’s natural health.
Meditation, mindfulness, rest; however you look at it, can be beneficial for healing the body and the mind naturally; they’re not therapy-specific, but more come from a Traditional Chinese Medicine Philosophy viewpoint; Yin.
If your energy has been lacking over the past year, it may be time to look at creating a holistic balance for the upcoming summer activities by nurturing your Yin. You see, Yin creates Yang. You can’t expect to have a healthy Yang if you don’t first nurture your Yin.
Understanding Yin & Yang
Yin and Yang are naturally complementary forces, mutually interdependent. To maintain a healthy balance, we need to recognise when these complementary forces need help realigning our body. If we don’t get a good night sleep, the Yang cannot settle into Yin.
While Yang (our upper body regions) represents warmth, energy and vitality, Yin (our lower body regions) is cooling, soothing and moistening. We need to be conscious of how we nurture our Yin energy to balance out the Yang. Yin is ‘the quiet’ in which we reconnect with ourselves.
We can nurture our Yin energy by introducing foods that complement those actions within our body – slow-cooked meals, soups, deeply nurturing foods that help us feel warm and cosy inside. Foods that make us feel full and happy.
Meditation is a wonderful way we can connect to Yin, turning our intention inward, focusing on our holistic health by getting adequate rest, relaxation and deep nutrition.
To Build Your Inner Yin Through Meditation
The Southern Hemisphere’s Winter solstice, 21st June, heralds the shortest day of the year, which, in turn, brings with it the longest night. In the Yin and Yang theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine, this is called the Yang within Yin.
The Winter solstice is an opportunity for reflection. Cooler days and cosy nights inspire introspection. Take this time to ponder some personal questions in terms of your holistic health:
- What did you like about the last 12 months since the previous Winter solstice?
- Do you like the direction your life is heading?
- How was your health during Spring and Summer?
Reflect on how your daily choices impact your health now:
- Is your life bringing you joy and a sense of belonging?
- Are you feeling like life is happening around you, not within you?
Meditation & Mindfulness Tips
Meditation doesn’t need to be the act of sitting cross-legged for hours, chanting or humming. While this is meditation in the traditional sense, meditation or practising mindfulness is whatever works for you.
Multiple studies[1] show that meditation can boost your overall brain power and one’s ability to concentrate. From a Yin Yang viewpoint, it is believed to help reduce stress and its impact on your body and health, cleanse your heart chakra of negative emotions that can create energy blockages and illness, and increase your intuition.
So, how do you meditate or practise mindfulness if you have never done so before?
It can be as simple as removing stimulants from our daily life, such a reducing television or internet time. Introduce a fragrance in the house that inspires warmth, comfort, and connection, or creating a calming and relaxing environment with music and good conversation.
Give time to yourself to focus on your health holistically; take the time to nurture your Yin. Treat your body to a massage, take a quiet walk in nature, lie down in the middle of the day or just stop what you are doing for 10 minutes each day to watch the moon rise over the beach or the sunset over the mountains.
If Traditional Chinese Medicine is something you would like to explore, book an appointment with one of our qualified and certified Gold Coast Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners today. Call 07 5571 0001 or make an online appointment via the button below.
[1] http://faculty.washington.edu/wobbrock/pubs/gi-12.02.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0361923011001341
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3004979/