ajapa japa or I’m chanting as we speak, sweetie

I have managed to keep up quite a lot of routines that are giving myself a good turn, and hopefully those small virtues outweigh the vices—if I take time to count.  The yoga and taking time to meditate and relax, however, have become shadows of their former regiments.  It’s never comfortable (nor necessary, fortunately) trying to account for why one stopped cultivating a good habit, but introspection is something that I hope to rediscover.  Looking for a mantra to repeat in my head, I came across this website (one carefully and genuinely tended, which sadly seems kind of rare nowadays)that presents the fundamental mechanics of yogic meditation and rewarding practises that one ought to develop in a clear and accessible way.
I decided that I would stick with the classic mantra that I picked up—the Soham, understood to be a vocalization (though mantras are only to be repeated mentally) of one’s natural circulatory rhythm.  As a boustrophedon (from backwards to forwards), the words pose the question “Who am I?” and the answer “I am that I am,” but the sound and the its resonance through one’s mind and body is the important manner. Reaching the point when the silent chanting becomes sychronous with one's breath and pulse and one know longer thinks about the words and act, having become automatic and second-nature, is called by ajapa japa. I have some ways to go yet.  I also learned that there is a long established Christian tradition of meditation akin to Eastern practises (and not some latter day appropriation or concession). The choice sacred word, what a mantra means, has a distinctive Eastern ring and is often left untranslated in the Bible, as they original translators could not determine the stress and tone of the Arimaic on paper. The intentionally ambiguous Maranatha could be pronounced (in one's head, while meditating) as either maranâ thâ' or maran 'athâ' and so either as the prayer Come Lord or as the declaration The Lord has Come.

tadasana or yoga-on-ice

A correspondent from the local's Swiss edition gives an intriguing and inspiring review of a fusion activity taking place on the slopes that tower above the Engadine.

A veteran instructor of yoga and skiing brings her two skills together to deliver to the guests of the resort at St. Moritz a certain mindfulness and meditation when it comes to engaging in that seasonal sport that many visitors, however experienced, try to cram into one get-away weekend per year and maybe tend to be a bit reckless and rushed to get their money's worth. In addition to imparting techniques that can build on awareness and improve maneuvers (as mental and physical preparation—not that one assumes the tadasana, the mountain pose, while on a run), the pause and circumspection can also train hectic holiday-makers to take it slower and adjust their focus to savouring quality over quantity.

ped x-ing or hand-jive

The X in X-mas comes from an initialism of the Greek name for Christ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, a shorthand employed by Biblical scholars and others to abbreviate things to do with Jesus or the Cross (writ both large and small—Celtic monks in Germany monasteries incidentally invented a lower-case script with punctuation for the Greeks to make reading easier) and these signs and signals are reflected in the iconography of Jesus and the saints in hand-gestures that amount to a sort of finger-spelling. These poses, each understood to audiences in a specific way, were in turn a traditional and long-established system of rhetorical gestures used by speech-makers in Antiquity to cue their listeners to something important or to mark a transition.

A parallel supplemental language is to be found in the mudrās of the Buddhist tradition, which while having symbolic significance in their portray are moreover a kind of digital yoga, each pose and arrangement having a specific mental and physical influence on the practitioner—not to say that these similar gestures, used as rites and sacraments, ingrained in Western depictions of religious figures do not necessarily have a more profound meaning and stimulus about them, as well, nor that Eastern orators and choreographers do not have a vocabulary for grandiloquence in speeches neither.

autogenesis or tous les jours à tous points de vue je vais de mieux en mieux

Though I am sure to count my progresses as things to be grateful for, it is a very simple matter, as fundamentally apparent as those things that are easily overlooked, to forget and forego the basic lessons. That's why people adopt, however imperfectly, dogmas and mantras because such a manner of conduct and orientation, albeit with more meaning than merely preserving one's sanity and health, can be simpler to adhere to rather than entertaining all sober and sometimes contradictory evaluations of everything at once. I know it is nothing outstanding to turn inward or transform opportunities and advantage into problems—probably because we have grown more accustomed to difficulty and means to success are biased by experience and not readily recognisable, but I try to let go and leave work for another day—when I am being compensated for it with something other than beans, despite assurances that they are magic.
I do not feel under enormous, possessing pressure, regardless whether self-imposed, and do not feel especially stressed by work and its attending worries, but there's always room for improvement. Posing an open-ended question, as it were, I got quite a bit of solicited answers, and what stuck me the most was how relaxation and coping was about striking a balance between engagement and retreat, withdrawal. One of the suggestions that rose above, on the footnotes of predecessors like Émile Coué, a trained apothecary who turned to psychology and self-help after witnessing the placebo-effect in his pharmacy—who introduced the phrase, “Everyday, in every way, I am getting better and better,” was autogenic training, formalised by Johannes Heinrich Schultz, who despite some unforgiving tenets that he was free to prosecute, like advocating euthanizing handicapped people and treating homosexuality with a war of attrition. These methods were sadly en vogue at the time. Schultz went on to devise a regime of visualisations and postures meant to exercise that balance these passive and active functions and appetites—eventually eliciting an appropriate and measured response. I'd like to learn more, I think. Some have even described this latter day extension of yoga and meditation as the breakthrough and bridge that the like of Freud and his school were seeking. Has anyone tried the original techniques, unincorporated into the programme of others?