Mind-body and relaxation techniques , Mind-body and relaxation technics ,  :

A group of healing methods which emphasize mind-body interactions with intended benefits that include relaxation and emotional well being.

(See also: Mind-body and relaxation techniques, Alternative Health, Body Mind and Soul)

Mind/Body/Spirit Medicine:

Mind-body medicine (also referred to as psychoneuroimmunology-PNI) focuses on the interactions among the brain, mind, body, and behavior, and the powerful ways in which emotional, mental, social, spiritual, and behavioral factors can directly affect health. It regards as fundamental an approach that respects and enhances each person’s capacity for self-knowledge and self-care, and it emphasizes techniques that are grounded in this approach.

Mind-body medicine typically focuses on intervention strategies that are thought to promote health, such as relaxation, hypnosis, visual imagery, meditation, yoga, biofeedback, tai chi, qi gong, cognitive-behavioral therapies, group support, spirituality, and prayer. The philosophy of mind/body medicine views illness as an opportunity for personal growth and transformation, and health care providers as catalysts and guides in this process.

(See also: Mind/Body/Spirit Medicine, Alternative Health, Body Mind and Soul)

Body-Mind Rhythmic Movement

A system created by Susan Kramer. Elementary academic instruction using rhythmic movement patterning as a way to develop and reinforce the bodymind connection.

(See also: Body-Mind Rhythmic Movement, New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

SOUL

The illusion of separation from spirit. It should be understood that the spirit is that which seeks manifestation and appears as a soul/body. The soul is that which characterizes, shapes, informs, moves and operates the material flesh and action it its unique expression. Without the soul, the body is no more than an automaton or zombie without meaning or purpose. Without the body, the soul is a wraith and an unfinished blueprint -- electricity without a plug. The Psyche is that entire part of the soul that ranges from all the depths of the Unconscious as its roots merge with the physical body all the way up to Consciousness itself, which is the intended goal of the spirit, like the fruit or blossom of a plant. That ultimate product, consciousness, is what the Greeks called the nous and which we translate, somewhat innacurately, as "the mind". But theosophically and alchemically speaking, Mind is much larger. It is the field encompassing both being and non-being, in which the spirit dwells, a continuum or sphere of containment for the All (that is, unaccessable "omiscience"). In short, the spirit seeks to know itself by means of the soul's use of the body as a tool to create consciousness. When, however, the soul identifies too strongly with the body, it soon becomes corrupt, turning into a mere slave of the flesh and the spirit is checkmated and imprisoned.

(See also: SOUL, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

BODY-MIND CENTERING: a movement-reeducation approach that explores how the bodyÕs systems contribute to movement and self-awareness. The approach also emphasizes movement patterns that develop during infancy and childhood. Incorporates guided movement, exercise, imagery and hands-on work.

(See also: Body-mind centering, Alternative Health, Body Mind and Soul)

 As humanity moves forward in understanding and acceptance of the next level of soul development, it would be wise to remember that we are not here to suffer, rather we are here to transcend suffering and become the stars that we truly are.

Read more here: » Body Mind and Spirit: Soul Purpose And Co-creation

Soul. The yuch, or nephesh of the Bible; the vital principle, or the breath of life, which every animal, down to the infusoria, shares with man. In the translated Bible it stands indifferently for life, blood and soul. " Let us not kill his nephesh ", says the original text: "let us not kill him ", translate the Christians (Genesis xxxvii. 21), and so on.

(See also: Soul, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Body And Soul: The individual souls are eternal, manifold, eternally separate from one another, and distinct from the body, senses and mind; and yet capable of apprehension, volition, desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, merit and demerit. They are infinite, ubiquitous or omnipresent and diffused everywhere throughout space. A mans soul is as much in New York as in Bombay, although it can only apprehend and feel and act where the body is. The soul and the mind are not objects of perception.

Excerpt from All About Hinduism by Sri Swami Sivananda

Read more here: » Body And Soul: Vedic Philosophy - Body And Soul

soul: The real being of man, as distinguished from body, mind and emotions. The soul - known as atman or purusha - is the sum of its two aspects, the form or body of the soul and the essence of the soul (though many texts use the word soul to refer to the essence only). -

-       essence or nucleus of the soul: Man's innermost and unchanging being - Pure Consciousness (Parashakti or Satchidananda) and Absolute Reality (Parasiva). This essence was never created, does not change or evolve and is eternally identical with God Siva's perfections of Parashakti and Parasiva.

-       soul body: anandamaya kosha ("sheath of bliss"), also referred to as the "causal body" (karana sharira), "innermost sheath" and "body of light." Body of the soul, or soul body, names the soul's manifest nature as an individual being - an effulgent, human-like form composed of light (quantums).

-        

It is the emanational creation of God Siva, destined to one day merge back into Him. During its evolution, the soul functions through four types of outer sheaths that envelope the soul form - mental, instinctive-intellectual, vital and physical - and employs the mental faculties of manas, buddhi and ahamkara, as well as the five agents of perception (jnanendriyas), and five agents of action (karmendriyas).

 The "soul body" is not a body in sense of a case, a vessel, vehicle or enclosure for something else. The soul body is the soul itself - a radiant, self-effulgent, human-like, super-intelligent being. Its very composition is Satchidananda in various subtle levels of manifestation. It is the finest of subatomic forms, on the quantum level.

The soul form evolves as its consciousness evolves, becoming more and more refined until finally it is the same intensity or refinement as the Primal Soul, Parameshvara. The experiences of life, in all the various planes of consciousness, are "food for the soul," reaping lessons that actually raise the level of intelligence and divine love. Thus, very refined souls, whether embodied or in the disembodied, ajiva, state, are like walking intelligences with inventive creativeness and powers of preservation, beaming with love and luminosity in their self-effulgent bodies of quantum light particles.

See: atman, evolution of the soul, indriya, kosha, Parashakti, Parasiva, purusha, quantum, Satchidananda, spiritual unfoldment.

(See also: Soul, Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Soul:

The spiritual element of a person, generally believed to be immortal.

(See also: Soul, Psychic, Psychic Dictionary, Parapsychology, Parapsychology Dictionary)

Mindfulness: A state of awareness, of oneself and others, as well as nature.

 (See also: Mindfulness, Buddhism, Body Mind and Soul)

MIND

Mind very much resembles matter, both in its degrees of density and in its peculiarity of design. That's not surprising since the one derives from the other. We might also say that they are mirror images of one another. Just as matter varies in the size of its conglomerations, from the circumferences of giant stars and galaxies to the infinitely small subatomic world of its constituents, so mind ranges through the levels of experience infinitely above and below consciousness. There is no Not-Mind - not ever - except within the Ultimate Void itself.

Hypnosis sheds a faint light on certain levels of consciousness beneath the ordinary. By means of the intense concentration and focusing of attention that hypnosis evokes, we are able to accomplish feats of mind and body that otherwise only yogis know. Hypnosis works by forcing a thread of memory awareness deep into the mind labyrinth, which, however deeply it may penetrate the darkness, is always tied tightly to the ordinary consciousness at the top. Without that Ariadne's thread, the more deeply we were to concentrate on something, the more we would be lost to the world. The more attention we bring to bear on anything, the deeper into a simulacrum of sleep we proceed, as our surroundings and the outside world disappear into this darkness and outer sensations are walled off - presumably to prevent distraction. Since this state of concentration so much resembles sleep, in fact, the slightest lapse of the will sends us drifting towards unconsciousness. Ordinary sleep is a mirror-like repetition of the fragmentation of superconsciousness that we shall see results in abandonment of the self. However, as concentration proceeds ever more inward, the more the inner landscape is illuminated and narrowed. This "inner light" of laser-like consciousness is shared by the vegetable kingdom. (Its character can be recognized in psychedelic intoxication of various kinds). Finally, as we proceed into the unconscious itself we enter a quantum universe of our own. Here we find ourselves in the very "consciousness" of matter itself, with its links to everything in the universe. Presumably, death is but a deeper descent still, a proceeding into the actual heart of Mind, leading into the Void, which is the womb of all manifestations. Ordinary consciousness is obviously the link between higher and lower planes. It is a delicate balance between retreat into self-absorption and abandonment of the self to the sensory experience. It is maintained with great difficulty, for we have a tendency to drift out of it into one or the other of the two diametrically opposed realms of experience that it separates. These realms, of course, are infinitely more attractive than boring, old, routine mind. Within this narrow water-hole of ordinary consciousness, however, lie all the accomplishments and discoveries of human history. Indeed, it is this narrow and unreliable bridge that human society has learned to exploit as "civilization". Unfortunately, it has been examined but superficially and little has been done to stretch its dimensions or protect it from disintegration. Consequently we know almost nothing either of its limitations or its potential powers.

Heightened awareness is the opposed of focused attention or concentration. Attention becomes more and more generalized and cognizant of every petal on every flower in the garden, then every vein in every leaf. . . But now, as attention fans out, mind loses its coherency and begins to fragment. Under the influence of psychedelic drugs the attention is so fragmented that it merges altogether with the outer world and the inner self is abandoned to the chaos of the interface. The loss of the inner self, however, is usually accompanied by extreme panic as it attempts to jump from scintilla to scintilla.

For a time, the fragmentation of expanding mind can be kept under control by the use of amphetamines or cocaine in ever-increasing dosages. By means of these substances, alertness and intelligence are increased because attention is spread infinitely thin across a wider and wider spectrum of sensory experience coming in from the outer world. The "outer world" includes, of course, the consciousness of one's own body, as well as reflexive self-observation. At the same time, the inner self is being supplied with increased energy and speed too, so that it can maintain consciousness of itself and stave off chaos by racing back and forth around the ever-enlarging periphery of experience. As we are all very well aware, however, this path quickly comes to an end.

Fortunately, the heightening of externalized consciousness can be achieved without drugs, through mysticism. The sensory awareness can either be bypassed or used as the vehicle of its own transcendence. If the inner self is voluntarily released to heightened consciousness, which we sometimes refer to as leaving the ego behind in order to enter Nirvana, peace descends at once and chaos is transformed into the so-called "mystical experience." This process, once begun, can continue into such total absorption that the individual consciousness ceases to exist at any point and we could refer to that as a more or less permanent trance.

(See also: MIND, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

Soul Generally, the manifesting vehicle or garment in which an ego clothes itself. First in serial order is the monad, on whatever plane and of whatever class; its vehicle or carrier is its efflux, the ego; which in its turn clothes itself in its own vital garment which is soul. Cosmically, therefore, soul is the vehicle or upadhi of spirit.

As the monad creates for its manifestation successive vehicles, soul in its widest sense includes all these, even the physical body; but it is usually used in an aggregative sense to designate the intermediate nature, excluding the monad on the one hand and the physical body on the other. Such division produces the triad of spirit, soul, body, where soul is the vehicle of spirit, and body is the vehicle of soul and spirit.

The soul is evolved by experiences on different planes. In itself it is merely a vehicle; but, informed by the monad, through the latter's ego, it is a living conscious entity. The broad meaning is particularized with qualifying adjectives such as animal soul, human soul, etc. Saying that every living thing -- animal, vegetable, or mineral -- has a soul, refers to the intermediate nature of the being, of which its physical body is the vehicle. Souls, like bodies, are aggregates of innumerable subordinate lives or life-atoms of various orders. Equivalent to the Greek psyche and the Hebrew nephesh.

(See also: Soul, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

five states of the mind: A view of the mind in five parts: conscious mind, subconscious mind, subsubconscious mind, superconscious mind and subsuperconscious mind.

Also about the three phases of mind: A perspective of mind as instinctive, intellectual and superconscious: individual mind, universal mind and instinctive mind.

(See also: Mind, Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Mind

Key concept in all Buddhist teaching. Frequent term in Zen, used in two senses:

(1)  the mind-ground, the One Mind ... the buddha-mind, the mind of thusness ...

(2)  false mind, the ordinary mind dominated by conditioning, desire, aversion, ignorance, and false sense of self, the mind of delusion ... (J.C. Cleary, A Buddha from Korea.)

The ordinary, deluded mind (thought) includes feelings, impressions, conceptions, consciousness, etc. The Self-Nature True Mind is the fundamental nature, the Original Face, reality, etc.

As an analogy, the Self-Nature True Mind is to mind what water is to waves -- the two cannot be dissociated. They are the same but they are also different.

To approach the sutras "making discriminations and nurturing attachments is no different from the Zen allegory of a person attempting to lift a chair while seated on it. If he would only get off the chair, he could raise it easily.

Similarly, the practitioner truly understands the Dharma only to the extent that he "suspends the operation of the discriminating intellect, the faculty of the internal dialogue through which people from moment to moment define and perpetuate their customary world of perception." (See this book, Introduction.)

See also the following passage: The mind ... "creates" the world in the sense that it invests the phenomenal world with value. The remedy to this situation, according to Buddhism, is to still the mind, to stop it from making discriminations and nurturing attachments toward certain phenomena and feelings of aversion toward others. When this state of calmness of mind is achieved, the darkness of ignorance and passion will be dispelled and the mind can perceive the underlying unity of the absolute. The individual will then have achieved the state of enlightenment and will be freed from the cycle of birth and death, because such a person is now totally indifferent to them both. (Burton Watson, The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-Chi.)

 (See also: Mind, Buddhism, Body Mind and Soul)

soul

Immortal essence of all beings. The expanding spark of divinity within life

(See also: Soul, Body Mind and Soul)

Soul

The life of the individual, the astral body That part of the individual which survives death and lives on into the otherworld, before being reincarnated.

(See also: Soul, New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Soul: The true identity of a human being, the immortal self that surpasses death and lives on into the other world.

(See also: Soul, Alternative Health, Body Mind and Soul)

Health is a key factor in the human evolutionary process. Health is not just physical fitness or absence of disease. In ancient India, the term health had a much wider connotation; it was something that went beyond physical and mental dimensions. The spiritual dimension reinforces and also uplifts the physical and mental dimensions of health.

Read more here: » Mind, Body, Spirit: Strike a Balance

A Theosophical definition of Soul :

Soul

This word in the ancient wisdom signifies "vehicle," and upadhi  - that vehicle, or any vehicle, in which the monad, in any sphere of manifestation, is working out its destiny. A soul is an entity which is evolved by experiences; it is not a spirit, but it is a vehicle of a spirit  - the monad. It manifests in matter through and by being a substantial portion of the lower essence of the spirit. Touching another plane below it, or it may be above it, the point of union allowing ingress and egress to the consciousness, is a laya-center  - the neutral center, in matter or substance, through which consciousness passes  - and the center of that consciousness is the monad. The soul in contradistinction with the monad is its vehicle for manifestation on any one plane. The spirit or monad manifests in seven vehicles, and each one of these vehicles is a soul.

On the higher planes the soul is a vehicle manifesting as a sheaf or pillar of light; similarly with the various egos and their related vehicle-souls on the inferior planes, all growing constantly more dense, as the planes of matter gradually thicken downwards and become more compact, into which the monadic ray penetrates until the final soul, which is the physical body, the general vehicle or bearer or carrier of them all.

Our teachings give to every animate thing a soul  - not a human soul, or a divine soul, or a spiritual soul  - but a soul corresponding to its own type. What it is, what its type is, actually comes from its soul; hence we properly may speak of the different beasts as having one or the other, a "duck soul," an "ostrich soul," a "bull" or a "cow soul," and so forth. The entities lower than man  - in this case the beasts, considered as a kingdom, are differentiated into the different families of animals by the different souls within each. Of course behind the soul from which it springs there are in each individual entity all the other principles that likewise inform man; but all these higher principles are latent in the beast.

Speaking generally, however, we may say that the soul is the intermediate part between the spirit which is deathless and immortal on the one hand and, on the other hand, the physical frame, entirely mortal. The soul, therefore, is the intermediate part of the human constitution. It must be carefully noted in this connection that soul as a term employed in the esoteric philosophy, while indeed meaning essentially a "vehicle" or "sheath," this vehicle or sheath is nevertheless an animate or living entity much after the manner that the physical body, while being the sheath or vehicle of the other parts of man's constitution, is nevertheless in itself a discrete, animate, personalized being. (See also Vahana)

See also: Soul , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

soul reading: Variation of psychic healing practiced by Niall Gerrard, an Irishman and a former student of metamorphic techniques (see metamorphic technique).

(See also: Soul reading, Body Mind and Soul, Alternative Health, Alternative Health Dictionary)