The difference between Exercise, Saadhana, and Meditation
Exercise:
Exercise is a physical activity with a biological outcome that stimulated the body to grow strength or endurance. It has a temporary carefree or good feel effect, disrupts the hormonal balance thus nonsustainable under any adverse circumstances. Very good for growing children up to middle age, after which it leads to injuries and the benefits are very small as compared to Saadhana and Meditation.
Endorphins: any of a group of hormones secreted within the brain and nervous system and having a number of physiological functions. They are peptides that activate the body’s opiate receptors, causing an analgesic effect.
When a person is engaged only in exercise:
- The Individual will always live with a feeling of a limit and a limit that needs to be overcome to feel satiated.
- Extreme physical exercises are very dangerous after a certain age and especially for those with high levels of stress. Only professional sports people can sustain extreme physical exercise.
- Cause imbalance in mind, heart, emotions, and spiritual integrity. The damage to the body has to be paid in the terminal phase of life if it is egoistically driven.
- Routine, repetitive, and rigid exercise regimes should be avoided and offer minimum results.
- Exercise is an important aspect to maintain physical strength, dexterity, and mobility, depending on the age, inclination, region, climatic condition, daily routine, and lifestyle exercise should be taken up.
- The general thumb rule is exercise is anything that can be done anytime, anyplace, without props and till the last day of your human existence.
- Exercise – is the physical activity that should prime the organs of the body to function optimally.
- Maintaining a good healthy, balanced, and low intake is the key for the best results.
- It will have maximum impact on the anna maya kosha, pran maya kosha, will stimulate the mano maya kosha and the vigyan mana kosha and barely touch the anand maya kosha.
- This constitutes Yama – Restrain and Moral Responsibilities, Niyama – Positive duties and moral vows, and Asana – Posture.
Saadhana:
Saadhana means to accomplish or bring together all the elements that constitute your existence i.e. mind, body, heart, and spirit. Saadhana is a methodical discipline to attain a fine balance between the mind, the body, the heart, and the spirit, it results in detachment from a lot of activities and people that do not resonate with the individual’s belief and faith that take the individual on a path of Spiritual awareness and eventual self-realization.
When a person is engaged only in Saadhana:
- He / She experiences hormonal balance, reduced stress, a sense of satisfaction, joy fullness, and being at peace with existence – Anand Maya Kosha will be activated.
- A dedicated and an advanced saadhak ,
- Will also experience healing of the mind. The body, the heart, and the spirit.
- Will make lifestyle changes with great ease.
- Will experience anand – blissfulness at the individual level.
- Will master the art of stress management.
- Will become detached and unmeshed from relation and relativity, and will experience connectedness.
- This constitutes Pratyahara: Sense withdrawal and Dharana: Focussed Concentration.
Examples of Saadhana (Individual Pursuits)
- Yoga
- Kriya’s
- Martial Arts (Indian/Chinese/Korean/Japanese)
- Buddhist Spiritual Practices
- Art and Music
- Exploration of Nature (Terrain, Ecosystems, Plants and Animals)
- Extreme Sports
- Any activity that expands the ability of the individual beyond his/her belief about the limits of the self
- Isolation
Meditation:
Meditation is an English word that the English fail to define. Meditation constitutes Dhyana and Samadhi.
Dhyana in simple terms is a focused technique to bring all the sense energies to a single point slowly and gradually such that all senses connect and balance out and the individual can activate / de activate any sense at WILL.
SHOONYA (Nothingness) is a state of being between Meditation and Samadhi.
Samadhi is the complete dissolution of sense – The merging of the body consciousness with the universal consciousness – YOGA.
