This week our Senior Editor of World Voice Column, Elizabeth Atalay, interviewed our Senior Editor of Africa and Middle East Region, Purnima Ramakrishnan, about Heartfulness Meditation in relation to the International Day of Yoga.
Elizabeth Atalay: What is Heartfulness Meditation?
Purnima Ramakrishnan: Heartfulness is to feel the already existing deep inner connection of the human being with the heart. It means to experience every single aspect of life in a natural way of the heart. It means to live life in the best way possible.
EA: Why Heartfulness?
PR: We are all connected with each other only though our hearts. In any relationship, personal or professional, in any decision making process, in any life altering situations, in any thing which ever matters or commences or ceases, it is the heart which matters. We feel in our hearts to do or to be or to exist.
We always listen to our hearts. We need this deep connection with our hearts. That is the core of our existence. That is what matters for us, as human beings, in our lives, to be happy and joyful and to be able to follow our hearts. So Heartfulness is a way to do this with a deeper and more connective consciousness with the heart.
EA: Is Heartfulness a type of meditation?
PR: I personally feel “meditation” is a very over-rated word in today’s world. When you close your eyes and think for some time to make a decision, are you contemplating, are you meditating on that aspect? When you sit down silently, by the mountains and close your eyes and feel the peace all around you, do you call it meditation?
When you hug your baby and feel that beautiful joy of a hug, which you would continue to prolong for as long as your baby lies still, is it meditation or is it just an experiencing of joy/love? That is Heartfulness indeed. That is meditation too, if you call it that way. We are meditating every single day, every minute on something or the other. Our hearts are always “working” on something, at times even on stillness.
www.Heartfulness.org
EA: So do you practice this Heartfulness meditation? If yes, how?
PR: I sit down, close my eyes, and suggest connecting to my heart. I am aware of my heart. Sometimes a few mundane thoughts come along the way – everyday thoughts about everyday life situations. But I still continue with my connection, I continue to feel the brightness in my heart, the stillness in my heart. I feel the joy and peace there, I try to tap into it. And it feels good.
EA: As a #WorldMom of World Moms Blog, how do you think this is useful for mothers?
PR: As a #WorldMom, I say, we mothers are the care-takers of this world, care takers of our babies, children and of our families, which make the structure of the society. It helps mothers stay balanced, stay happy, spread the joy in the family. Personally, it helps me be more connected and intuitive to my child’s needs and well-balanced in my mind for my own personal happiness and development.
EA: Is this something which everyone can participate irrespective of their religious and social/national constructs?
PR: Can everyone (irrespective of their beliefs) go to the doctor when they are unwell? Of course! Taking care of one’s body is a primary duty.
But very often we ignore the cry of help from our own hearts and minds. And to meditate everyday, to feed the soul, to take care of the soul, to enrich the heart, is a duty.
Once I started doing it, I felt it gave me a lot of strength, joy and well-balanced, holistic, emotional and mental life.
EA: Would you be able to help the World Moms with an experience of this?
PR: Yes, definitely. We could have it over skype if our contributors and readers would like to join or I could also suggest local centers where they can go and experience it.
EA: Lastly, how is this Heartfulness Meditation related to the Intenational Day of Yoga?
PR: Ah! Here comes that aspect, where all this discussion started!
India has always been a hot destination for spiritual seekers. From the time of Paul Brunton, India has always been a mystic place with seekers coming here for spirituality. And recently too, the Prime Minister of India, Honorable Mr. Narendra Modi has been instrumental, in the UN’s declaration of 21st June as the International Day of Yoga. Indians have been yogis always, India has been the house of meditation.
All the yogic postures and breathing exercises are fundamental to train the body to be able to sit in meditation for hours together.
The yogis meditated for centuries together, in the jungles and in Himalayas.
Everything they did is for this final act of being able to meditate effectively. However today, we are easily offered this way of the heart, to be able to meditate effectively, to connect with our hearts, for short moments during the day whenever we feel a need, whenever we feel the want, and to experience the joy. So, yes, yoga evolves into meditation, eventually in an aspirant’s journey.
Everywhere in India on June 21st, (including Rajpath where the Presidential Residence is present) and all across the world, different schools of Yoga and meditation are organizing Yoga demonstrations and meditation sessions.
Here at World Moms Blog, we would like to invite the contributors, readers and fans of World Moms Blog for a meditation session on Heartfulness.
Venue: Here on World Moms Blog
Time: Check in any time on June 21st for a video here on World Moms Blog to guide you through heartfulness meditation with Purnima.
Edited on 21 June, 2015, International Day of Yoga:
There is a video below about Heartfulness Meditation. If you are interested, please try to do this in the following way.
1. Gently close your eyes. Relax your body. Empty your mind.
2. Suppose that the Source of Light in your heart is attracting you from within your heart.
3. Rather than trying to visualize it, simply tune in to your heart and be open to any experience that you may have.
4. Do this for as long as you can. It could be 30 minutes. It could be longer or shorter than that too.
5. If your mind wanders and ‘thinks’, gently bring your attention back to your heart.
If you like to do this often, then please do it everyday. It rejuvenates your heart and mind and you feel so ready to take on the world. Please leave your comments in this page and/or contact me through this page – here.
Would you like to try on the next advanced stage after a few days? Let me know and I shall help you with a few more resources and contacts. Or you can do it through this page here too.
Above Video and photo credit to www.Heartfulness.org
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
Her feature on The Huffington Post is going viral, and her e-mail inbox is currently overflowing with media requests. Caitlin Domanico of “United We Feed” is a World Mom on a mission through photography to unite mothers in how we feed our babies. We look forward to following the journey she has launched as she continues to capture the diversity of mothers feeding their babies around the globe. We are excited to bring you her guest post on World Moms Blog today…
To the mom who is feeding her baby,
You decided how to feed your child long before they were ever born.
“I am going to breastfeed.”, you said. Or maybe you said, “Nursing is not for me, I will pump.” Maybe neither of those were an option for you. Maybe formula was your milk of choice, or maybe, just maybe, your doctor informed you that it will be necessary to use a tube to help your child thrive.
I see you. I see you feeding your child every single day.
I see you feeding your child on very happy days, and on very sad days.
I see you feed while you sing and coo and gaze into your baby’s eyes.
I see you feed while you are filled with pain and sorrow, as you try to find a smile through the tears.
You feed at first thing in the morning, you feed in the wee hours of the night while the rest of the world is sleeping.
You feed while you are out to eat, and while you are on vacation.
When you are at work or at the store, you leave your baby with a loving caregiver and ensure they have enough to feed your little one.
One thing is very apparent while noticing you and your baby — the insurmountable amount of love that exists between you.
You smile and your baby smiles. You frown and your baby frowns.
Your baby holds your shirt, your hand, twirls your hair, and kicks her feet with joy and contentment.
Your baby loves you and you are smitten over him.
Maybe your bottle was filled with pumped milk, or maybe is filled with formula, but that doesn’t matter to me.
Maybe your baby gets her milk from you while breastfeeding, or maybe she nuzzles in close and as her pump delivers milk directly into her stomach so that she can grow and develop, but either way, it doesn’t matter to me.
I know it matters to you, and it should.
Please don’t take that to mean I don’t care, and that I don’t respect your choices as a mother, because actually, it is quite the opposite.
I care.
I care about you as a mother.
I care about your beautiful child.
I support and respect you, because you are a good mom. There are so many ways to be a good mom, and you are one of the best.
You see, I fed my first child with breast milk and formula, and now, six-years-later, she is a gem. We are close, so close that at times, I wonder how I ever lived without her. She had both types of milk and she is absolutely lovely, just like your little one. My second daughter only had breast milk, a decision she made when she refused a bottle. She is incredible, just like your little one. She loves her mama and takes every opportunity to snuggle in close, just like your little one. I know where you have been, because I had the cherished task of feeding my babies, too.
Motherhood is tough, and mommy guilt has worn-out it’s welcome here.
Tonight, when you hold your dear one close and feed them before bed, feel proud that you are apart of a community of women who love fiercely, protect feverishly, and support one another, no matter how they choose to feed their babies!
xoxo,
United We Feed
About the Author:
Caitlin Domanico grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania on a small horse farm. Now a mother of two, Ava (6) and Genevieve (nearly 2), Caitlin resides in Montgomery County with her daughters and her husband. She operates a photography studio in the center of her town, where she focuses on capturing families and specifically, documenting motherhood. During the week, Caitlin can be found having dance parties with her daughters, photographing families, or part-time teaching as a special education teacher in birth-3 services. Caitlin’s photo series “United We Feed” had gained international recognition for empowering and uniting women and the many ways they nourish their babies. For more photos head to her photography site!
Photo credits to Caitlin Domanico. This has been an original guest post to World Moms Blog from Pennsylvania, USA.
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
I grew up in a family full of dynamic, resourceful, and strong women. My grandmothers were both widowed and had to raise their children (one had 6 children, the other 9) with nothing but agricultural produce and handcrafts. My mother and aunts displayed the same tenacity in their lives, and I witnessed similar characteristics in other women in my neighborhood and social circles.
This sparked a debate in me. I was baffled: “With such a healthy heritage of Basotho women, why do we have so few in leadership?”
My personal search for an answer to this question led me to explore avenues commonly considered to be reserved for men. I wanted to be a medical doctor like my father and grandfather, which led to me compete with my male counterparts from primary school through to university. I managed to earn a number of over-achiever certificates, but my dream of being a medical doctor did not materialize. I ended up with a Bachelor of Science degree with a double major in biochemistry and psychology.
After graduation, I entered the telecommunications field. I soon learned that the corporate world, like school, tended to reserve certain roles for men–including most senior offices, despite the high level of educated women in our country. Of course, this is not unique to Lesotho, but a global phenomenon.
Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a gender gap in mobile phone ownership in developing countries as well. (Men own more of them.) When I was presented with a project to reduce the mobile phone gender gap, I ran with it! With the eradication of the mobile gender gap, women will be enabled to participate in the global economy while improving their livelihoods.
The project focuses on women working for the company, women in the community, and the company’s female clients. Internally, a network of women was formed in order to inspire leadership, achievement and accountability among women. The Sisters’ Circle meets monthly and holds quarterly workshops to work towards this.
Externally, I am very excited about the creation of an internship program. Our goal is to give female graduates work experience, build a talent pool for the company, and help to bridge the skills gender gap that might otherwise hold these women back.
I wish to see more, if not all, major employers in the country adopt a similar projects so that our women believe in themselves and realize that that they have what it takes to lead organizations and governments. Ideally, empowering females should start in the classroom, so our daughters know and believe that they are equally able as our sons to become doctors, telecommunications executives, or whatever their heart and head desire.
What does your place of work do to empower women?
This is an original post to World Mom Blog by guest writer Mho Mosotho in Lesotho. She is a colleague of WMB contributor Dee Harlow.
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
When I was about 5 years old, I had a best friend. One of those you never forget. We did everything together but one of the things we liked best was to travel to outer space courtesy of my best friend’s older sister, Kiki. By bedecking her room in blankets and scarves and with the assistance of a swirly office chair, Kiki would take us past comets…to planets untouched by girl-kind.
Many years and many lost and remade connections later, I was thrilled to visit with Kiki last summer at her home near Palma de Mallorca of the Balearic Islands in Spain; not far from where my own parents live.
It turns out that Kiki is still taking people on exciting and unlikely journeys….only now she does so with a camera crew in tow. As a journalist and correspondent for the UK’s Unreported World, she takes people from Northern Uganda and the side of a 15 year old deaf boy with no means to communicate, to the front lines of the Kurdish resistance in the battle with Isis and the families caught in the cross hairs.
Since my last visit with Kiki was on a perfect summer day with our sons in the pool, I had to ask her what drew her to leave idyllic Mallorca to pursue these stories. (more…)
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
Two months ago, we had our first experience going to a medical clinic in a foreign country.
Come to think of it, we managed nearly four years in Paris without needing to do so. It helped that we lived across the street from a pharmacy (a distinct Parisian ‘landmark’). Those days, we relied heavily on self-medication and the advice of our friendly pharmacist.
This time around, these options couldn’t cut it. Our 22 month-old daughter had already been ill for a week and wasn’t getting any better.
Having only recently arrived in Abu Dhabi, we had no idea about which pediatrician to consult. Armed with a recommendation from a mum’s group, I called up only to find out with some panic that the earliest appointment was in four days’ time. After some frantic telephone conversations with my husband, we made a dash for a walk-in clinic which closed its doors at 1pm.
While this may be common in many countries, it is not something that we would have encountered back home. In Singapore, we could always see our pediatrician at short notice after a quick phone call. This was always reassuring, especially for first-time parents who made a big deal out of every rise in temperature or unusual cough.
Our experience at the clinic made me a little homesick and left me wishing for many things, big and small, that we often take for granted back in Singapore.
This feeling was further intensified a few days later, when news broke that Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, had passed away.
Amid the numerous news reports and posts on social media from friends and folks back home, I felt a keen sadness for the nation’s loss of the man who made Singapore what she is today.
Countless politicians, heads of state, journalists and media outlets inundated us with statements, commentaries and judgements on the life and impact of our “giant of history”. I leave this to them.
What I’ve been mulling over, what preoccupies me as a parent, is what Mr. Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy entails; it’s what he has left Singaporeans, our future generations and my daughter.
Every opportunity is available to my daughter:
She has access to education from an early age and will never have to struggle for the right to go to school.
She can run around freely in our neighbourhood and enjoy her childhood innocence in playgrounds.
She can go out with her mother now, or alone in the future, without restriction or the necessity of being accompanied by a male presence.
She can travel around our little island on public transport, and see marvellous skyscrapers and iconic buildings, all set amidst verdant flora.
Her safety outside our home is not an issue that her father or I have to worry our heads about, neither does she need to be anxious over whether her parents will get home safely at the end of the day.
She will have friends from so many different cultures and nationalities, and she can be proud of being able to claim heritage from multiple cultures.
Every opportunity awaits my daughter, for her to make something out of it.
For these and many other reasons, my heart hangs heavy and yet swells with pride for our tiny island and I long for the next time we arrive again at Changi Airport, to see the sign “Welcome Home”. It is a home and country that a visionary built. It may not be a perfect place but my daughter has so many things to be thankful for.
This is an original, first post to World Moms Blog from KC, who is currently stationed with her family in Abu Dhabi but born and bred in Singapore. This is their first international job posting with their daughter, TT, who is now 22 months old. You can read more about Singaporean-expat life through KC’s eyes on her blog, Mummy In Transit, or through her Facebook page at www.facebook.com/mummyintransit .
The image used in this post is credited to the author’s friend, Jacob O’Quinn, and is used here with permission.
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
