Benefits of Daily Meditation: Turning Back the Hands of Time

Have you ever daydreamed of turning back the clock to a more youthful, more energetic, more carefree time in life? Or perhaps having at your disposal a magical cosmic Undo button that could erase certain effects that have accumulated over the course of time—from stress, abuse, or other erosive habits that have left you with less than perfect health or a waning enthusiasm for life.

I experienced the need for a second chance at a clean slate earlier in life than most. I was only 25 when I received a diagnosis of cancer. That cancer was just the last in a whole host of serious problems I’d had. Those of you who are familiar with my story know that I had a horrendous childhood filled with sexual and emotional abuse. I’m certain I had post-traumatic stress disorder by the time I was four. By my teenage years, I was a complete wreck. At that point, I began doing everything possible to numb my feelings and run from them—I smoked, drank, took drugs, and acted out promiscuously. I was anxious. I was depressed. When my cancer announcement came, it was really time for a change. By then, I needed some truly powerful help to undo all that I had been through so that I could continue to live.

Amazingly, I found it—the way to turn back time and release the many effects of all of the stress that my mind and body had endured. That way was meditation. A daily practice of 20 minutes, twice a day, gave me much more clarity to address my disease and ultimately helped me to heal my cancer, release my addictions, and end my destructive streak and get on my true life path. I can honestly say that meditation is the best thing I have ever done for myself. So much so, that I haven’t missed a single day of it in 30 years.

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Golf Short Game Chipping Practice Tips, Ideas and Suggestions

Short Game Golf Master Class

- Turn 5 into 4
- Get up and down every time with our key short game recovery shots.

Many average golfers achieve little success at basic greenside recovery shots.
Improvement in your short game can reduce your scores dramatically.

Crowlands Heath Head Golf Professional Chris Jenkins will offer you a few short game ideas which you will find easy to implement into your own game.

Expert Chipping

Typically, I find that club golfers tend to use the same club, usually one of their wedges, for all chip and pitch shots around the green. That is fine if you have a sound technique and endless hours to refine your feel for distance, and judgement of spin. For those who don’t have endless hours to practise golf, a more reliable and consistent method involves the use of a variety of different clubs to get the ball close:

The idea is for the ball always to land a couple of feet onto the green, where the bounce is more predictable. Simply vary your club selection to produce sufficient roll to get the ball to the hole. This might be a wedge if the flag is close to you or it might be as high as a 5 iron if the flag is at the far side of the green. You can even use a rescue club or wood if you feel that’s the club which is needed to get the ball to the hole (fig.6).

Using this method is easier because you are always looking to land the ball in the same spot. Choosing the correct club, will dictate the spin and roll of the ball. There is less emphasis on ‘feel’ with this method, as opposed to what is required when a single club is relied upon to produce this shot to a variety of landing areas.

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Meditation Postures

A Right Meditation Posture plays a very important role during meditation. The activity of the mind and the body posture are directly related to each other. It is almost impossible to be alert and fully present when your body is not in a proper position. When we choose a Meditation Posture we should always bear in mind that

•  The Meditation Posture should always enable us to relax and it should be comfortable.

•   The Meditation Posture should enable us to stay alert and awake.

Many people stop meditating because they have learned to meditate in a posture that is only based on alertness and mental presence. The fact is that for most Western people it is hard to sit in the well-known tailor`s posture or the lotus posture without some form of support for a long time. Aches and discomfort soon demand more attention than meditation and make it more and more difficult to remain concentrated. Some people start to doubt whether meditation can be useful for them, they start to think it may be too hard for them and they doubt whether they are the right kind of people to benefit from meditation.

But this is not true and without forgetting that we should stay awake and alert we can also start meditating in a more comfortable position. Only when we get more experienced with meditation and we get used to sitting still for long periods of time has the moment arrived to get on to the more traditional Meditation Postures.

Traditional postures like the tailor`s posture; the lotus posture or the Burmese posture will ultimately enable us to experience our Meditations with even more alertness and consciousness.

- Guidelines for a good posture

- Choosing your Meditation Posture

- What Should we sit on during Meditation?

- What do we do with our body during Meditation?

- How to deal with physical pain?

- Common Meditation Posture Mistakes

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How To Get Yourself To Meditate

We know that meditation is beneficial. It’s hard nowadays to escape the ever present pictures of the smiling Buddha, and the articles praising meditations efficacy, reaching from calming the mind to lowering blood pressure.

But how do we get ourselves to fit yet another chore that’s “good for you” into our schedule?

There are no easy answers, because if you want to turn a blind eye, you will. Just like with going to the gym. Or eating your vegetables.

But those of you who are willing to take a shot at it, there are a few tricks to help push yourself.

First and foremost: Forget that your mind will be quiet. It won’t. It takes many years of consistent practice to come to a place of emptiness of thought.

In the meantime, look at it this way: Your thoughts will not be eliminated, but they will slow down, and that in itself will feel like a relief.

Allow your thoughts to be chaotic. How can we expect perfection without any or little training? We don’t expect it when it comes to our bodies. Or our professional skills. We know that it takes hard work to come to a place of mastery.

But somehow we entertain this illusion that we should be able to control our minds just like that; and when we can’t, we feel bad, and nobody wants to feel bad. So all good intentions go out the window, and there’s not going to be any meditation.

Accept that the mind is busy. When we say “the brain just functions that way” it’s easier to allow this busyness than to think, “I can’t pull it off, I am a failure”.

No one can, when they first sit down.

Be prepared for your mind to trail off, and to lose focus. Over and over and over.

But if you…..

Golf Diet and Nutrition Tips and Ideas

Food is positioned high up on our priority list.

The traditional pie & chips, washed down with a cold beer, certainly tastes great, but it leaves the fitness experts scratching their heads.

There are so many good reasons for a good diet, not least the fact that you will play much better golf.

Golf is less intensive, physically, but more intensive, mentally, than rugby, so the nutritional requirements are completely different. A golfer is expected to have muscular and mental endurance, and needs to concentrate for up to five hours at a time, making sure his muscular posture is consistent.

A good diet for better golf

Follow these tips, given by a registered dietician and enjoy better golf :

• Before a long day on the course, eat a low glycaemic meal (e.g. dairy foods, lentils, legumes, apples & other deciduous fruit, pasta, nuts, high-fibre bran, dried beans), which is easily digested. This will give you sustained energy & prevent the mental & physical ‘low’ that we often feel when we exercise on an empty stomach. If you don’t have an appetite, get hold of a meal-replacement milkshake.
• Eat something every 2 hours while on the course. Make sure you have nuts or raisins in your golf bag to carry through.
• Make sure you have enough water or sports drinks like Powerade or Energade to quench your thirst. Sports drinks are better than water, because they contain fluids, carbohydrates and electrolytes. Avoid alcohol for at least 24 hours before your round. Otherwise, have a good healthy breakfast before your tee-off.
• Before drinking alcoholic drinks after your round, make sure you’ve recovered your sugar levels by eating a sandwich and drinking a non-caffeinated soft drink. Alcohol reduces your blood sugar level and dehydrates you. It also delays the healing process, so if you’re injured, rather stay away from the 19th hole.
• At the halfway house, eat a meal containing carbohydrates and lean protein (e.g. a chicken sandwich.) 

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