Five Minute Breaks for Yoga and Meditation: Spirituality and Empowerment Series, #1

By Shweta Singh

Stress, modern living and women...we need to control stress, a little bit at a time. And mostly we need to begin through an effective and self-driven path as our days are so packed. This book offers Five Minute meditations through the ancient practice of Kundalini Yoga from the Upanishad that can enhance spiritual power and mental clarity for all, especially for women. The old Hindu traditions are benchmarks for reaching an evolved state of being and this book is grounded in them. At the same time, it is cognizant of modernity and new interpretations and modifications needed to make them work for us. It offers a succinct take on Hinduism and a interesting interpretation of Kundalini, the sleeping snake of energies we need.
We all have too much to do, too few supports, and it is a constant stress to cope. Meditation and Yoga can help one reconnect the spirit. It is just five minutes at a time that can nourish the body and give the mind, a much-needed break. This book offers a few Five-Minute meditation practices to unlock the Kundalini energy with nature to enhance your spiritual power and deep peace and oneness with self and the Universe. The mental clarity all of us seek especially women can be found in the ancient texts of Hindu religion and this book is draws on them and explains it in a simple way for the uninitiated.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Think Women Company
• Release date: Jun 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781953428042

Shweta Singh

Shweta Singh works as an Associate Professor in the school of Social Work and Women and Gender Studies Program at Loyola University Chicago. She is the founder of Think Women Company located in Chicago. She is also a coach and hosts a podcast – working like women. She brings the ethos of the Indian Subcontinent, post-structural feminism, Hindu spirituality, and poverty consciousness, and innate dignity and cheer of women and practice of womanhood to all her fictional characters. 'Identities of women' is her award-winning theory that informs all her writing, research, advocacy, entrepreneurship, and media work.

Book preview

Dedication

To My Original Adheer Som who introduced me to this topic...and gave me so many books. The original tantric and writer in the family! One who deserves numerous Ph.D.’s – the treasure trove of true knowledge  

Prologue

MY GOAL IN WRITING this book or rather manual for Kundalini Meditation is to cultivate the very beginnings of consciousness - a sense of self - in the reader. And then to plant the seeds of an enduring association with the invisible divine - the Universe. While, I can’t claim any kind of evolved higher powers or siddhi in doing so; I definitely feel a calling to do so as a Certified Yoga practitioner and an avid practitioner of Kundalini Meditation.

I experience and observe the multiple and continuous stresses in our increasingly unpredictable world. Our fears and uncertainty are on the rise and we are losing ourselves to small and big worries, every moment. The biggest casualty of this phenomenon is what is the most needed buffer i.e.,  our relationships - our sambandh. The urban world and its consumer values have seeped deep into our very core and make any sustained giving and receiving a tough task for each one of us. Easily disappointed and even more easily exhausted, we run around seeking solace in new and old obsessions...but surviving under pressure means that we battle issues of time management, stress control and choosing the right things.

Survival becomes a constant negotiation with new or changing circumstances. Stress is a normal reaction and response to this experience. However, the uncontrolled stress becomes the problem. This uncontrolled stress is found to be a precursor to all kinds of disease and intensifies preexisting poor health.  

The Five-Minute-Breaks proposed in this book through the Kundalini can be invaluable in sustaining care for self and others. 

I engage with Hinduism as a teacher, an academic, and practice it as a born and believing Hindu woman - most of my scholarship and creative writing caters to the feminine and female identity. In the sense of Hindu divine though, the spirit is universally feminine.

Over the years, I find that from an early age, teaching and learning meditation can be instrumental in health and wellbeing...a basic teaching from Brahamcharya Ashram in Hindu thought for children and young adults.  It was supposed to create the space for unrestrained time to build a relationship with self and universe through knowledge.

Also, Hinduism is vast and does require several aware lifetimes to grasp its full import in my opinions. My limited purpose in this text is to frame the main ideas of Hinduism and human beings in reference to each other, only for the beginning of an integrated Kundalini and Yoga practice for the uninitiated.

I hope that all who read this book will begin or build on a deeply meaningful relationship with Self and the Universe through the Kundalini Path and develop the ability to observe and reflect and simply be...like the divine feminine for Five Minutes at a time.

This Book is a sort of precursor to my book on the Living Goddess Guru Kshri.

Epigraph!

When Shiva and Shakti Meet, the state of completion, of merging identities, of merging energies is the unity we aspire to... in Kundalini meditation. 

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The Take of Hinduism on Human Existence

HINDU RELIGION OR HINDUISM is one of the oldest ones on the planet. Indian civilization - almost the whole of Indian Subcontinent and its norms, mores or ways of being have been around for a while.

Its origin places it anywhere from two to Five Thousand years in documented evidence. And it is understood that the name Hindu has come about from the words Sindhu (the seven-river basin) or Indu (Moon). The changes in name, a result of the inability to pronounce the right name, of the many visitors to this ancient land. 

When one says, oldest, it becomes relevant for a couple of reasons - One is experience, the longer you have been around, the more time you have had to live through a whole range of situations, circumstances, and phenomena of all kinds. The second is that the civilization had a lot of time to evolve and create and recreate.

Thus, a  plethora of absolutely amazing body of work exists that can answer many questions on life and living for human beings across ages and for relationships of human beings to their world – including other beings. These beings in the Hindu traditions range from fellow humans to the entire animal and plant kingdom, the nature entities like rivers and the sky and even beyond like the planets. Furthermore, the relationships with groups and systems and institutions are also delineated in numerous texts of old and new.

The key texts though remain the Vedas. Hence Hinduism is referred to as a Vedic religion too. The four Vedas of multiple stories of their divine origins, the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sam Veda, Athar Veda that contain a treatise on several topics ranging from