FIVE-MINUTE REFRESHERS🔗

do when you're feeling stressed out at work?

Or when you're tired at the end of a long day?

Please don't reach out for a cigarette, or turn on the TV!

A short meditation session can refresh you in a few minutes.

Here are a few easy five-minute refreshers

you can try out at work or home.

This meditation works wonders when you are stressed.

Start by exhaling deeply.

Always start by exhaling. Focus on exhaling, deeply, powerfully. When you have exhaled totally, pull in your stomach and wait for three seconds before inhaling again.

Then inhale as deeply as you can. Hold your breath for three seconds. Then start to exhale.

Then inhale, exhale again. Create a rhythm in your breathing. Go slow, let the breath enter and leave your body totally.

When you exhale deeply, you also throw out the toxins from your body. You throw out the stress. After 10-12 cycles of breathing, you will find that the stress is gone, the tension is released!!

This technique energizes the brow chakra, located on your forehead between the two eyebrows. This chakra is known as the ajna, which literally translates as Command.

This is the master chakra. This chakra is the seat of will. When it is activated, you will experience intense clarity of understanding. Your reasoning and decision-making capabilities are enhanced.

Above all, the third eye is the eye with which you look inward. You begin to see within for the first time.

Sit in a comfortable position with your eyes closed.

Bring both your palms up to your eyes, and place them very gently on the eyeballs. Your touch should be like a feather; apply no pressure on them. In the beginning, you may be pressing without realizing. Slowly, put lesser and lesser pressure on the eyeballs.

There is energy flowing outward through the eyes. It is a very subtle energy. You are touching your eyeballs to turn the flow of the energy back in, into yourself. If you press into the eyeballs, the eye will begin to resist. Touch as if you are not touching!

When you touch gently, your thoughts also still. When your eye-movements increase, your thoughts are also racing. When the eyes are still, your thoughts also freeze. Have you noticed?

With the gentlest of touches, you will soon start to feel the energy moving back inwards. When the energy falls back, you will immediately feels a freshness, a lightness, moving all over your face, your head. The energy hits your ajna chakra. In a few minutes, you feel clear and refreshed.

When you continue the meditation for upto half an hour, the energy moves downward into your heart. Your heartbeat slows down. Your whole body will feel relaxed.

This is an excellent technique for instant relaxation. You don't even have to enter into meditation. Simply by placing your palms gently upon your eyeballs, you can rest your eyes. Whenever your eyes are feeling tired, if you have spent too many hours before the TV or the computer, try this technique.

When you continue to practise this meditation for months, you will start feeling a permanent energy in your ajna and heart areas. In the beginning it will be just a trickle of energy, but in a year's time you will feel a flood of energy inside you at all times.

With the awakening of the ajna, you will experience a clarity of purpose. You begin to see your own reality. And with the activation of the heart chakra, you will feel immense love flowing from you. You will feel connected with Existence.

Close your eyes.

Start with the toes.

Tense your toes as much as possible. Do not relax them. Move on to your feet and ankles, then upwards to your calves, your knees, your buttocks. Move upwards quickly, because you won't be able to hold your breath for longer than a minute at most.

Now move up to your waist, to your stomach. Tense your stomach muscles as tightly as possible. Automatically, your groin muscles will also get tensed.

Move upwards to your chest and back. Tense all the vertebrae along your back. Tense your arms - starting from your fingers and moving up to your biceps. Tense your shoulder blades, your neck and throat muscles. Try and hold the tension in your neck muscles especially.

Move to your face.

Your face has more muscles than you are aware of.

Tense the muscles in your mouth, nostrils, eyes, eyebrows, forehead and cheeks. Squeeze your eyelids shut. Clench your teeth. Screw your face into a tight ball. Remember not to relax the rest of your body during this time.

Stay in this state of tension for as long as you can. When you can't hold your breath any more, expel it in one big gush, simultaneously relaxing your limbs and face utterly. Stay in this state of physical and mental relaxation for a minute.

This technique relaxes both body and mind, and refreshes you in just two minutes. If you have the time, repeat the process thrice.