Danny Davis
In this article: Learn to cultivate balance and find your center to attain coordination between each facet of your being.
Your Complete Guide To A Centered Mind
The faster the world moves, the greater the uptick in the need for a centered mind. To have a centered mind assumes two things. One, that you are where you ought to be in a spatial sense, your location in the physical world; and two, internally, within the landscape of your being.
How someone defines being centered is an individual experience and will not be the same from one person to the next. However, there are overarching characteristics that are universally required. The most obvious one is having balance. Refraining from being on either side of a teeter-totter, but rather holding equilibrium at the perfect pivot point that keeps you effortlessly aloft.
Obtaining balance, finding your center, is something that necessitates coordination between each facet of your being. Herein, we will explore individual steps that cultivate the integration of the entire self into a smoothly functioning whole.
This takes you in the direction of that deservedly sought-after prize of possessing a centered mind. In essence, this is a road map to obtaining that prize. As with any good map, clear directions are needed.
To pursue the integration of the components of a person, each part will be assessed individually.
To this end, there will be focused sections that discuss what Ayurveda or yogic traditions refer to as the five bodies:
- The physical body (Annamaya Kosha)
- The energetic body (Pranamaya Kosha)
- The mental body (Manomaya Kosha)
- The emotional/psychic body (Vijnanamaya Kosha)
- The blissful/spiritual body (Anandamaya Kosha)
The pieces will be melded into a unified whole, which is their natural state when we are at our best.
Cultivating Your Center
The Physical Body
The physical body is the foundation, if it isn’t solid, everything else crumbles. It is essential to have the most smoothly running system possible. The starting point for each person is different. It’s not important where you are today, it’s where you’re heading that matters.
1| Optimize Fuel Delivery
Begin with the basics. How is your fuel delivery? In other words, are you in state of balanced blood sugar, perfect oxygen saturation, and ideal hydration? If you are, then you feel energized, clear and ready to move on to the next step in the self-assessment.
If not, it’s important to look at why. Perhaps the food you’re eating is not of high quality, or in the right balance of macronutrients for your body’s needs. Or it could be that you have poor air quality, circulation issues, anemia, blood pressure problems, or are recovering from an illness.
Possibly, it’s that you don’t drink enough water, or that the water you’re drinking requires filtration. Maybe it’s a combination of all of the above, or some other specific problem unique to your circumstances. The point is, to get the fuel delivery piece right, means tuning in, assessing your habits and environment, and weeding out the factors that undermine your health.
A food journal is a very informative and simple way to get to the bottom of issues you’re having. It will make it plain if there are specific foods that trouble you (digestion issues), if you aren’t drinking enough water (dehydration), if you’re skipping meals (hypoglycemia), eating too little protein (nutrient deficiency), etc.
It doesn’t have to be tedious, just engage your curiosity and the detective work can actually be fun.
2| Support Immune Function
Next in line is checking in with your immune system. This means rooting out infections, sources of inflammation, and healing your gut if you’re suffering from intestinal permeability (leaky gut). An elimination diet can be a great tool for helping in this effort.
Dr. Michael Ruscio, an expert gut and thyroid researcher and bestselling author, has a great write up and easy to follow plan here.
3| Detox
The next step for physical health is detoxification. This includes daily elimination, sweating and deep exhalation. This means eating in such a way that you naturally evacuate your bowels each morning and drinking adequate water so your urine is virtually clear.
Moving regularly so you can sweat, ridding your body of unwanted build up, and keeping your lymph from stagnating (remember lymph doesn’t have a pump, you move so it can). Breathing deeply and consciously, in and out through your nose.
It can also entail specific cleanses, fasting, removal of environmental toxins, heavy metals and EMF. Again, each person has unique needs and challenges, so the steps will be individual.
4| Support Brain And Immune Function
The final step for physical well-being is checking in on your brain and endocrine system. In other words assessing your hormonal health, stress levels and trauma history. These higher order issues can require clinical assessment and assistance, but regardless there are simple steps you can take on your own.
Get in line with your circadian rhythm. In an article for BMJ Journals, Kelly et al, describe the natural course of human development and how it is linked to the cycles of the planet, the most notable impacts being related to the regular 24 hour variations in temperature and light.
They went on to discuss the association between insufficient, low quality and poorly timed sleep, and “the risk of disorders, pathologies and dysfunctions such as insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes (T2DM), obesity, metabolic syndrome (MetS), cardiovascular disease and even all-cause mortality
So, sleep is important and timing matters as well. Going to bed around 10 PM and waking up around 6 AM are good rules of thumb. If this isn’t possible, just aim to get closer. We’re all works in progress.
Find methods to manage stress and make them an integral part of your life. This is where exercise, meditation, breath-work, regular contact with people you love (that you enjoy being around), time outdoors, and reframing, can work wonders.
That last, is a foundational tool that can work synergistically with all the others. It isn’t always possible to avoid or eliminate potential triggers, but how you respond to them can make or break your quality of life. Sometimes the simple practice of adjusting your attitude and expectations can be a miracle worker.
Finally, don’t ignore trauma in your life. Whether it’s big “T “ Trauma (major life event) or little “t” trauma (insidious, slow-drip upheaval), it can be a major factor in whether or not physical health is attainable for you.
Along with the aforementioned stress busting techniques Medical News Today recommends aromatherapy, art therapy and pet therapy. Also, simply talking to a friend, getting talk therapy, or using some other modality such as Emotional Freedom Technique (tapping) or Family Constellation Therapy, can prove beneficial.
The Energetic Body
The energetic body can be viewed as the framework which builds upon the foundation of the physical body. On average, a person sitting in a room emits roughly the same energy as a 100 watt bulb. This is measurable and even visible with thermal imaging. Cellular communication occurs as electrical impulses, thus we are animated and kept alive, by electricity. We are undeniably energetic beings.
This energy is not solely held within our bodies, but according to researcher Rollin McCraty, also emits outward from us to a distance of several feet. Again, this is measurable. As we emit, so too do we absorb.
There is a continuous transfer occurring between us and the world at large. In fact, in a PubMed study, Helm et al showed that the heart and respiration rates of couples synchronize while engaging with one another across various tasks.
In addition, it’s not only people we are impacting and being impacted by on a continuous basis. An example of this is inhaling the air released from trees as oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, which the trees then absorb, and around we go in a reciprocal cycle.
Another example is eating food grown from the earth and then excreting wastes which again become soil, creating another interdependent circle.
However, the exchange doesn’t end there. We are impacted by light, sound, and vibration as well. All you need do is recall a bad sunburn, being temporarily deaf from a loud concussion, or feeling your heart rate change from deep bass tones on a loud stereo, and interactions with the world which create direct physiological results, can be personally verified.
With this understanding in mind, how might we engage with this energy in a way that maximizes its impact? How do we increase it, focus it, even direct it? The following methods are far from exhaustive, but they’re a good start.
1| Explore Eastern Traditions
There are many possibilities here, but martial arts such as Tai Chi, and movement and breathwork practices such as Qigong, Nishino Breathing Method, and yoga are all time honored and proven to be beneficial. Engaging in these practices generates flow, opening blocked channels in your energy and increasing your connection to your energetic body.
A study by Ohnishi St and Ohnishi T. for the Journal of Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, demonstrated that seasoned practitioners of the Nishino Breathing Method were more sensitive to the impact of Ki (the Japanese term for biofield), that Ki has a particular wavelength, can be specifically directed, and that all volunteers reacted to Ki, even when blindfolded.
Studies such as this lend credence to what is a commonly reported experience of people engaging in energy work.
Another avenue to explore, in this same vein, is to garner outside assistance by receiving energy work from an acupuncturist, reiki practitioner, Ayurvedic doctor, etc. Each modality assists in supporting and optimizing the flow of energy in the body through unique means.
2| Light Up Your Life
Get out in the sun and absorb the spectrum of visible light. These rays interact with your body on many levels from the surface to the deep and each color of light affects the system in different ways. For added benefit, incorporate light therapy on the red spectrum.
To get an in depth discourse on the physical impacts of light and the consequent health benefits check out, The Ultimate Guide To Red Light Therapy by bestselling author and founder of The Energy Blueprint, Ari Whitten.
3| Eat Living Food
Food doesn’t all move through you at the same rate and it certainly isn’t created equal in terms of quality and nutritional value. In general, fresh food contains measurably more energy, which is passed along to you when you consume it. In Ayurveda, some foods are considered Pranic, or energy giving and others Tamasic, or energy draining. Foods that give life are typically closest to their natural state, fresh and uncontaminated.
Foods that drain life are animal products, things that are heavily cooked, fried, aged, or processed, as well as stimulants and alcohol. This is common sense stuff, but it can also revolutionize the way that you approach eating.
When you look at food as fuel, it’s easier to consider whether it’s likely to power you or bring you to a grinding halt.
The Mental Body
The mental body is the layer of experience that rests right at the center of the five bodies. This is interesting in the context of cultivating a centered mind because it’s so literal. The mental body is the fulcrum, without proper function here, balance is but a distant dream.
Getting a handle on the thought process entails proper use of the intellect and careful honing of awareness. For the intellect to be useful to us, it is vital to remember that at its best, it is a sharp tool of dissection. We want it for analysis and problem solving, not for cutting ourselves to ribbons.
To hone awareness entails being deliberate in how you use your time and where you allow your focus to rest. Allowing your awareness to be hijacked by the abundant attention grabbers in the world, is one of the more obvious ways the mental body becomes distorted and out of your control.
Let’s explore a few of the many methods for getting a handle on your intellect and making awareness the practice that it ought to be.
1| Be A Conscious Architect Of Your Thoughts
Just as food can energize, or diminish your system, so too can the thoughts you habitually think. Spending concentrated time considering what you want to populate your mind, can be an incredibly powerful way to increase your energy and generally enhance your wellbeing.
In an article for Stanford News, Nathan Collins summarized some of the array of demonstrated impacts of thoughts on human experience. These ranged from the well studied placebo effect, to a person viewing their physical work as exercise exerting an influence on their lifespan, to a sensation of fulness, or an increase of blood pressure based upon how foods are described and what they are said to contain.
In other words, we can influence how we feel and how our bodies actually function, based solely upon how we think. It therefore seems logical to make it a practice to think in the way we’d like to feel.
Allowing the thought process to run unchecked can lead to many undesirable outcomes. Similarly, conscious thinking, deliberately choosing thought patterns you want to experience, can have a host of physical and mental benefits.
The key is to tune in, observe what kinds of thoughts you’re having and how they’re making you feel. Don’t be critical, just be aware.
As you work on this, if you find a negative stream of thought keeps emerging, try focusing on something you want, someone you love, a great memory, a thing of beauty, or any positive idea that has meaning for you personally. In this practice, the more the merrier.
Utilize Miller’s law, or the seven, plus or minus two, concept. Namely, that short-term memory can only hold between five and nine items at a time. If you consciously conjure up five or more positive ideas, they will crowd out the ones you’d rather not be having. This is far more effective than trying not to think, “Bad” thoughts.
2| Sharpen The Knife, But Use It Wisely
Apply the intellect where it is useful and keep its nose out of places it doesn’t belong. For instance, it’s great to use the intellect when preparing for an exam, writing a report, learning a new skill, or memorizing a route to a desired destination. It’s an ideal instrument for compiling data, creating a step-by-step plan of execution and implementing memory tools.
However, the intellect has much less of a place in accessing creativity, feeling deeply and being open to new ideas. Over analysis in those domains can squash ingenuity, corrupt and/or distance you from felt experience and diminish your flexibility when experiencing novel notions since everything is being compared and contrasted and given a value judgement of good vs. bad.
When you keep in mind that the intellect has a functional role and choose to utilize it mindfully, it becomes something that supports you, making it a faithful servant rather than a tyrannical master.
The Emotional/Psychic Body
The emotional/psychic body is another layer of intelligence that functions primarily outside of the intellectual domain. It is an experiential dimension that often defies rote definitions. This is a higher order level that touches upon purpose, virtue, service to a greater cause, etc. It can be considered the domain of wisdom.
Cultivating this body is a process of going deeper, looking beyond surface, facile explanations and creating a space that is quiet which fosters profound contemplation. The more attuned to this body a person becomes, the closer they are to what esoterics and mystics refer to as enlightenment, or liberation.
Even without such ambitions, the act of quieting the mind and going inward has many demonstrably positive consequences and is worthy of the effort. A few ideas that support this effort are as follows:
1| Meditation
This can take many different forms and be of a variety of durations. The most important variable seems to be consistency, hence a daily practice is ideal. There is a heap of evidence that there are many psychological as well as physiological benefits to regular meditation.
An interesting review in PubMed conducted by Morgan et al, demonstrated that in addition to the psychological and restorative effects of mind-body therapies there is also significant immune influence and a reduction in markers of inflammation10.
So, not only does meditation and mindfulness reduce things like anxiety and high blood pressure, but it also helps you to be better equipped at fending off illness in general.
2| Service To Others
This concept is oft touted by everyone from religious leaders to recovering addicts, and for good reason. Caring for someone other than yourself is a profound way to connect with your compassion and increase your scope of care.
Many people realize unconditional love for the first time when they have a child. This special experience allows people to, as esteemed thinker and author Ralph Waldo Emerson so beautifully put it, “…Find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.”
This is wonderful starting point, but the greater goal would be to increase your capacity to care until it included everyone and everything. By routinely doing things for the betterment of others, whether they have two or four legs, are feathered, furred, or nude, isn’t the important point.
The goal is to get outside of yourself and act on the behalf of another that needs you. In this way, we open parts of ourselves we didn’t know existed, continually becoming better versions of ourselves.
The Blissful/Spiritual Body
This is the body that entails the realm of bliss, or rapture. To reach this is to feel unbounded joy, ecstasy of a limitless nature. Let’s be honest, this isn’t something that can be passed along via a simple guide. This is an extraordinary process that requires a lifelong commitment and perhaps even then, is never attained.
Still, it is possible to generate a thoroughgoing openness that enables you to tap into that infinite well of goodness, at least some of the time. I like to think of this as going into vessel mode. Essentially, this means getting out of your own way, quieting the mind and allowing love/grace/light, etc., to move through you.
It’s finding your own way to what Aldous Huxley described as “Deep Reflection.” I like this description because it runs counter to expectation. Something deep and dark doesn’t typically reflect, but in reality, it requires profundity to allow universal truths to flow in, fill you, and pour forth.
So, how does one cultivate this idealized state? Again, it seems there are many methods, but a few are as follows.
1| Make Breathing A Practice
Mindful breathing techniques have a host of benefits from increasing vagal tone (encouraging parasympathetic function), to optimizing energy. The science of pranayama is extensive and there are many studies that validate its effectiveness. These practices also have the added benefit of fostering that vessel-like state, opening the door to joyfulness.
2| Sing A Simple Song
Or, chant, if that’s your preference. Even humming has a pronounced positive physiological impact that is becoming more widely recognized as a healing modality. Intoning AUM, or Om, or Amen, is a very old multicultural method for entering a devotional state, which is to say, a receptive state. At the very least, any of these efforts have the benefit of putting you into parasympathetic mode where you can rest, digest, feed and breed. Essentially, it increases the likelihood that you will experience pleasure.
Bringing It All Together
As disparate as the five bodies may seem at a glance, it should be obvious that what is good for one body is undoubtedly good for the others. They have a fundamentally synergistic quality and the more effort you put in to any one of them, the greater the benefits to them all.
Especially if you keep in mind that the separation between them is only an intellectual exercise, making complex ideas easier to understand and implement.
Yoga means union, and fundamentally that is what mindfulness practices are about. Consciously working to create the ideal conditions where each of the facets of being become fully integrated. Again, this is a life’s work, but when it becomes a desired goal, the path forward is made clear. Each step dovetails into the next making the way simpler and plainer to see.
The benefits can be observed in countless studies, but the most profound results will be experienced in each individual life. By taking the steps outlined here-in the increase in wellbeing will be far reaching.
A centered mind is not least among the outcomes of these practices, but it isn’t the end of the road. Peace, an unshakeable calm, is a wonderful thing, but bliss is even better.
