Thoughts can be toxic. Negative, dark and self pitying thoughts make us feel anxious, insecure, nervous and stressed. Stress lowers the immune system, leaving us open to disease. Since stress is mainly provoked by thoughts, we need to constantly check that our thoughts haven’t run away with negative feelings. Negative thoughts provoke negative feelings that in turn provoke negative thoughts, before we know it we are feeling low and anxious.

Sometimes we find ourselves in stressful situations and we can’t help feeling stress, but it’s our decision of how to allow our thoughts to flow throughout that time, which is going to determine how affected we really are by the situation. By creating awareness we can spot the very moment we are giving into negative destructive thoughts.

We are responsible for our own state of mind and therefore responsible for keeping our thoughts ‘clean’. Happiness is but a state of mind, doing a Daily Thought Detox is the best way to keep happy.

Evening Thought Detox:

Following from the breathing exercises on yesterday’s blog, a daily mini meditation is a great way to detox the mind before going to sleep.

When finished with the 9 cleansing breaths, allow yourself to just relax and breathe without counting. Continue to take the breath deep into your diaphragm and exhale fully.

Allow the body to sink into the mattress, feel the heaviness of its mass. Remain with the eyes closed and take your awareness to your feet and slowly bring it up all the way through the body. Relax each area with a full exhale. When you get to the head take time to relax the mouth, the eyes, the forehead and eventually the whole head.

Remain with the eyes closed and just be. Any thoughts that come into your mind just brush them away, don’t judge them or allow a thought process to start, allow thoughts and images to come and go, be a spectator. At first this will be difficult as we are so used to fixate and analyse whatever thoughts come to us. Don’t be hard on yourself, each day it will be a bit easier. With time and patience you will soon be meditating and able to truly relax.

If you find it hard to meditate why don’t you do a guided meditation? There are many free guided meditations online, its just a matter of finding what you feel most comfortable with. At times of stress I find it hard to focus on meditation and my mind wonders with thought, before I know it I’m worrying about something instead of meditating. At these times I plug in my headphones and do a guided meditation online, it always helps me to relax and detox my mind. The Chopra free guided meditations are very good for beginners:

http://www.chopra.com/ccl/guided-meditations