Breathing is often spoken of as the most natural act of life, something we do without effort or awareness. Yet in spiritual and psychological traditions, breath is never seen as merely a physical function. It is a bridge between body and mind, between intention and energy, between the visible and the subtle.
The statement reminds us of a crucial truth: breath becomes effective only when guided by thought, intent, and purpose. Without this inner alignment, breathing exercises are reduced to mechanical movements empty repetitions that may not only be ineffective but, in certain practices, potentially destabilising.
In esoteric understanding, breath is a carrier of energy. But energy, by its very nature, is neutral. It takes direction from thought. This is why the principle “energy follows thought” is so vital. Where awareness goes, energy flows. When breath is practised without clarity, it is like releasing power without a destination scattered, unfocused, and sometimes overwhelming.
Modern wellness culture often promotes breathing techniques as quick fixes: breathe this way to calm anxiety, that way to gain vitality, another way to awaken higher states. But what is often missing is conscious purpose. Why are you breathing in a certain rhythm? What inner state are you cultivating? What quality of awareness are you inviting into the body?
True, dynamic breathing is not about forcing results. It is about cooperation between the mind and the life force. When the practitioner understands what they are doing and why they approach breath with humility, presence, and respect. The breath then becomes a conscious act, not an unconscious habit.
Without this alliance between thinking and breathing, practice becomes hollow. Worse, it can lead to imbalance mental agitation, emotional instability, or a false sense of progress. This is why ancient traditions always emphasised preparation, self-knowledge, and ethical grounding before introducing advanced breathing practices.
Reflectively, this teaching extends beyond formal exercises. It invites us to ask:
• Am I living with intention, or merely going through motions?
• Do my actions carry awareness, or are they disconnected from thought and purpose?
• Where is my energy flowing each day and what thoughts are directing it?
When breath and thought move together, life itself becomes more deliberate. Each inhale carries awareness; each exhale releases confusion. In this union, breathing transforms from a survival mechanism into a practice of conscious living.
The true power of breath, then, does not lie in technique alone but in the quality of consciousness behind it.
Osoji: The Japanese Ritual of Cleaning the Self Through Cleaning the Space
In Japanese culture, Osoji is more than a yearly deep-cleaning ritual. Practised traditionally at the end of the year, Osoji literally means “big cleaning,” but its essence goes far beyond dusting corners or washing windows. It is a quiet, intentional act of clearing not just physical spaces, but emotional and mental residue accumulated over time.
Osoji is rooted in the understanding that our outer environment reflects our inner state. When clutter gathers in our homes, it often mirrors unprocessed thoughts, unfinished emotions, and unspoken tensions within us. By cleaning the space, we symbolically create room for clarity, renewal, and fresh energy.
What makes Osoji deeply spiritual is the mindfulness behind the act. Cleaning is not rushed or mechanical. Each movement is done with awareness, respect, and gratitude, for the home that sheltered us, for the year that shaped us, and even for the challenges that taught us something about ourselves. In this way, Osoji becomes a ritual of acknowledgment rather than avoidance.
Psychologically, Osoji supports emotional regulation. Letting go of broken items, unused objects, or unnecessary clutter helps the mind release attachment to the past. It subtly signals to the subconscious that it is safe to move forward. Order in the external world creates a sense of internal stability, reducing anxiety and mental overload.
At a deeper level, Osoji teaches us impermanence. Dust will return. Life will get messy again. But the practice reminds us that we always have the ability to pause, reset, and realign. It is not about perfection, but about intention.
In a world that glorifies constant doing, Osoji invites us into conscious simplicity. It whispers that healing does not always require dramatic change sometimes, it begins with clearing a corner, wiping a surface, and breathing differently in a lighter space.
Perhaps the true ritual of Osoji is not cleaning the home, but clearing the heart with gratitude for what was, acceptance of what is, and openness to what is yet to come.
Why Positivity Can Trigger Discomfort in Others: A Spiritual and Psychological Reflection
Positivity is often seen as a strength, yet not everyone responds well to highly energetic or optimistic people. In fact, a consistently positive person can sometimes trigger discomfort, judgment, or even dislike in others. This reaction is not about positivity itself, but about what it reflects within the observer.
When someone is feeling emotionally drained, insecure, or disconnected from their inner peace, another person’s joy can feel confronting. The mind may label that joy as inauthentic or assume the person is “wearing a mask.” This belief often arises not from truth, but from internal conflict.
Why Positive Energy Feels Inauthentic to Some People:
People who are struggling internally may find it difficult to believe that someone else can genuinely feel hopeful, calm, or enthusiastic. If their inner world is dominated by stress, fear, or self-criticism, positivity can feel unrealistic or performative.
Psychologically, this is a form of projection. When we cannot access a particular emotional state within ourselves, we may doubt its existence in others. Spiritually, this reflects a disconnection from gratitude and presence.
The Role of Jealousy and Emotional Triggers:
Highly positive or energetic individuals can unintentionally trigger feelings of jealousy. This jealousy is not always about wanting what the other person has externally, but about longing for the inner freedom they seem to embody.
Such encounters activate emotional triggers, reminding people of unresolved wounds, unmet needs, or forgotten dreams. Instead of acknowledging these feelings, the ego often responds with judgment, criticism, or withdrawal.
From a spiritual perspective, triggers are invitations for self-awareness. They reveal areas where healing, compassion, and growth are still needed.
Authentic Positivity Is Not Denial of Pain:
True positivity is not about ignoring pain or pretending life is perfect. Authentic positive people are often those who have faced adversity and consciously chosen resilience over bitterness. Their energy is not forced; it is grounded in acceptance and inner work.
This form of positivity grows from a gratitude mindset, gratitude not for an easy life, but for lessons learned, personal growth, and the ability to stay present despite challenges.
Gratitude as a Path to Inner Peace:
A gratitude mindset shifts attention away from comparison and lack. It anchors awareness in the present moment and fosters emotional regulation. When gratitude becomes a daily practice, joy no longer feels foreign or threatening, it becomes attainable.
Instead of seeing another person’s happiness as a reminder of what is missing, gratitude allows us to see it as proof of what is possible.
Spiritual Growth Through Self-Reflection:
Discomfort around positive people is not a flaw it is feedback. It asks important questions:
• What am I resisting within myself?
• What part of me longs for ease, joy, or authenticity?
• Where can I practice more compassion toward myself?
Spiritual maturity is recognizing that another person’s light does not diminish our worth. Their joy does not invalidate our pain. It simply illuminates a path we may not yet have walked.
Choosing Growth Over Comparison:
When positivity is met with curiosity rather than judgment, and comparison is replaced with gratitude, emotional healing begins. We stop perceiving light as a threat and start recognizing it as a reminder of our own potential.
The journey inward begins not by dimming others’ light, but by gently turning toward our own.
Your Subconscious Learns Faster from Peace Than Pressure
We often believe that growth comes from pushing harder through self-criticism, pressure, and constant correction. But the subconscious mind doesn’t learn well in survival mode. It learns best when it feels safe.
When you pressure yourself, the mind tightens. Fear takes the lead. The nervous system shifts into protection, not learning. In that state, the subconscious is focused on avoiding danger, not absorbing insight. Repetition driven by stress may create compliance, but rarely transformation.
Peace, on the other hand, creates openness. When you approach yourself with calm awareness instead of judgment, the subconscious relaxes. Patterns become visible. Emotions can surface without resistance. This is where real change begins not by force, but by understanding.
Gentle consistency teaches the mind that change is safe. Compassion tells the subconscious it doesn’t need to defend old habits anymore. In peace, the brain rewires naturally, because it is no longer fighting itself.
Healing, learning, and growth are not accelerated by harshness. They are deepened by safety.
Your subconscious listens more closely when your inner voice is kind.
Awareness, Acceptance, Action: The Three Pillars of Healing
Healing Begins When We Become Aware, Accept, and Act
Healing is often imagined as something that happens to us, time passing, pain fading, wounds closing on their own. But true healing is an active inner process. It is not accidental. It unfolds through three essential ingredients: awareness, acceptance, and action. Miss one, and healing remains incomplete.
1. Awareness: The Moment of Truth
Healing always begins with awareness.
Awareness is the courageous realization that something within us needs attention. It is the moment we stop running on autopilot and turn inward. This may arise as emotional exhaustion, repeated relationship patterns, anxiety, anger, or a quiet sense of dissatisfaction that refuses to be ignored.
Awareness does not judge. It simply observes.
It asks:
• Why am I reacting this way?
• What pain is being triggered?
• What pattern keeps repeating in my life?
This stage is often uncomfortable because awareness strips away denial. But without awareness, there can be no change. You cannot heal what you refuse to see.
Awareness is not about fixing it is about seeing clearly.
2. Acceptance: The End of Inner Resistance
Once awareness dawns, the next step is acceptance and this is where many people get stuck. Acceptance does not mean approval of what happened to you, nor does it mean resignation. Acceptance means acknowledging your inner reality without shame, guilt, or self-blame.
This is the phase where you say:
• This is where I am.
• This is what I feel.
• This is what shaped me.
Self-acceptance softens the inner war. It replaces harsh self-criticism with compassion. Healing cannot occur in an environment of self-rejection. When we shame ourselves for being “too sensitive,” “too weak,” or “not healed enough,” we deepen the wound instead of tending to it.
Acceptance creates emotional safety. And safety is the soil in which healing grows.
3. Action: Turning Insight into Transformation
Awareness shows the wound. Acceptance holds it gently. Action is what transforms it.
Healing requires conscious, aligned action small or big that supports your well-being. This may look like:
• Setting boundaries where none existed before
• Seeking therapy or holistic support
• Ending cycles that keep reopening the wound
• Practicing self-regulation and emotional honesty
• Choosing rest, nourishment, and self-respect daily
Action is not about perfection. It is about consistency.
Many people remain stuck in insight alone knowing what hurts but never changing what reinforces the pain. Healing completes itself only when inner realization meets outer movement.
Healing Is a Process, Not a Destination
Healing is not linear. You may revisit awareness again and again. Acceptance may deepen over time. Action may evolve as you grow. But when these three elements work together, healing becomes sustainable:
• Awareness brings clarity
• Acceptance brings compassion
• Action brings change
Healing the self is not about becoming someone new. It is about returning to who you were before the wounds taught you to abandon yourself. And that return begins the moment you choose to see, accept, and act.
The Psychology of Hitting a Wall
There comes a moment in life when everything feels stuck. No clarity. No movement. No motivation. Just the sense that you’ve hit a wall.
Psychologically, this moment is often misunderstood. We label it as failure, exhaustion, or weakness. But more often than not, hitting a wall is not a sign that something is wrong with you it’s a sign that something within you is ready to change.
A wall appears when the old ways of thinking, coping, or surviving no longer work. The mind resists this moment because it thrives on familiarity, even when familiarity is painful. Growth, however, demands disruption. When the brain can no longer rely on its usual patterns, it pauses. That pause feels uncomfortable, even frightening but it is deeply meaningful.
In psychology, this phase resembles a transition state. The nervous system is recalibrating. The psyche is shedding outdated beliefs. You may feel tired, emotionally raw, or confused because your inner world is reorganising itself. What feels like stagnation is often integration happening beneath the surface.
Breakthroughs rarely arrive with loud announcements. They come quietly after surrender, after reflection, after allowing yourself to stop pushing. When you stop forcing answers, insight begins to emerge. When you stop fighting the wall, you start listening to what it’s asking you to release.
This is why many personal transformations begin with burnout, heartbreak, uncertainty, or deep self-questioning. The wall is not there to punish you; it is there to redirect you. It asks:
Who are you becoming now?
What can no longer come with you?
Instead of asking, “Why am I stuck?” try asking, “What is this moment teaching me about myself?” Often, the wall is the threshold between who you were and who you are ready to become.
So if you feel like you’ve hit a wall, pause. Breathe. Be kind to yourself.
You are not failing.
You are restructuring.
And on the other side of this stillness, a breakthrough is quietly forming.
Look Well, Therefore, to This DayBy Saint Kalidas
Look to this day,
for it is life,
the very breath of life.
In its brief course lie
all the realities of your existence;
the bliss of growth,
the glory of action,
the splendor of beauty.
For yesterday is only a dream,
and tomorrow is but a vision.
But today, well lived,
makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,
and every tomorrow
a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
This timeless poem by Saint Kalidas carries a quiet yet powerful truth: life does not happen in the past or the future it happens now.
We spend so much of our inner world travelling between what has already happened and what has not yet arrived. The mind replays old memories, regrets, conversations we wish had gone differently. It also races ahead, worrying, planning, anticipating, fearing. Yet neither yesterday nor tomorrow actually exists outside our thoughts.
What does exist is this breath.
This moment.
This day.
Kalidas reminds us that the entire essence of life is contained within today not in some grand future achievement or in the perfection of the past, but in how fully we inhabit the present. Growth does not happen someday; it happens now, in small choices. Action does not belong to tomorrow; it belongs to what we do with this moment. Beauty is not something we find later; it is something we notice when we are present enough to see it.
The poem gently dissolves our attachment to time. Yesterday, he says, is only a dream not because it was meaningless, but because it no longer has substance. Tomorrow is merely a vision not because it lacks importance, but because it has not yet taken form. Both live only in the mind.
And yet, here is the paradox:
When today is lived well, it transforms both.
A present lived with awareness turns yesterday into a memory we can hold without pain, and tomorrow into a direction filled with hope rather than fear. This is not about forcing happiness or controlling outcomes; it is about showing up fully with honesty, compassion, and presence.
“Look well, therefore, to this day” is not a demand. It is an invitation.
An invitation to stop postponing life.
To stop waiting for clarity, healing, confidence, or permission.
To meet this moment exactly as it is unfinished, imperfect, alive.
Because this day ordinary as it may seem is the very breath of life itself.
And it is enough.
Compassion Is Not an Action, It Is an Attitude
“Once you encourage the thought of compassion in your mind, once that thought becomes active, then your attitude towards others changes automatically. If you approach others with the thought of compassion, that will automatically reduce fear and allow an openness with other people. It creates a positive, friendly atmosphere. But without the attitude of compassion, if you are feeling closed, irritated, or indifferent, then you can even be approached by your best friend and you just feel uncomfortable.”
— Dalai Lama
There is something quietly powerful in this reflection by the Dalai Lama. It reminds us that compassion is not something we do after we meet others, it is something we carry within us before any interaction even begins.
When compassion is active in the mind, it subtly reshapes our inner world. Our tone softens. Our defenses relax. We listen more openly, without immediately preparing a response or a judgment. The world feels less threatening, not because people have changed, but because our lens has.
Compassion dissolves fear without effort. When we approach others with warmth rather than suspicion, we stop seeing every interaction as a potential threat. Conversations become safer spaces. Differences feel less sharp. Even silence feels less awkward. This is how a positive, friendly atmosphere is created not by forcing positivity, but by allowing kindness to lead.
On the other hand, when compassion is absent, even familiar relationships can feel heavy. We may feel closed, irritated, or emotionally unavailable. In such moments, it doesn’t matter how loving the other person is, even a best friend’s presence can feel intrusive. The discomfort does not arise from them; it arises from our inner state.
This is a humbling realization. It shows us that connection is less about who is standing in front of us and more about what we are holding inside ourselves.
Compassion begins inward. When we are harsh with ourselves, exhausted, or overwhelmed, it becomes difficult to extend warmth to others. But the moment we consciously invite compassion into our mind even gently it begins to work on its own. There is no need to perform it or prove it. It naturally changes our posture toward life.
Perhaps compassion is not meant to be practiced only in moments of conflict or suffering. Perhaps it is meant to be a quiet, steady attitude a way of meeting the world with less resistance and more understanding.
And maybe, in choosing compassion, we are not just easing others’ discomfort we are freeing ourselves from the weight of fear and emotional distance.
Because when compassion is present, connection flows. And when connection flows, life feels a little more human.
Holding Space: Offering Compassion, Not Opinions
In a world that rushes to fix, advise, and correct, holding space has become a rare and sacred act.
Holding space for someone does not mean having the right answers. It does not mean offering solutions, opinions, or moral judgments.
It means offering your presence, your compassion, and your empathy without trying to reshape their experience into something more comfortable for you.
When someone shares their pain, they are not asking you to solve it. They are asking you to witness it.
Compassion Over Correction
The moment we jump in with opinions,
“You should be stronger.”
“Look at the bright side.”
“Others have it worse.”
we unintentionally silence the speaker.
What they hear is not care, but dismissal.
Compassion says:
“I see you.”
“I hear you.”
“Your feelings make sense.”
It allows pain to exist without rushing it away.
Empathy Over Judgment
Judgment creates distance. Empathy creates safety.
When we judge, we place ourselves above the experience.
When we empathize, we step into it, without losing ourselves.
Empathy does not require agreement.
It only requires understanding.
You can disagree with someone’s choices and still honor their emotions.
You can remain grounded while allowing them to feel ungrounded.
That is the quiet strength of holding space.
Presence Is the Gift
Sometimes the most healing sentence is not advice, but silence.
A steady presence.
A calm nervous system sitting beside a storm.
Holding space means resisting the urge to fill the silence.
It means trusting that the other person’s process is unfolding exactly as it needs to.
No fixing.
No rescuing.
No preaching.
Just being there.
Why Holding Space Heals
When people feel emotionally safe:
They process faster
They access their own wisdom
They feel less alone
They build self-trust
Healing does not come from being told what to do. It comes from being allowed to feel, without fear of judgment.
A Gentle Reminder
You don’t have to carry someone’s pain to hold space for them.
You only need to carry your humanity.
Offer compassion, not opinions.
Offer empathy, not judgment.
Offer presence, not solutions.
Sometimes, that is everything.
Life goes on
Life Doesn’t Wait
Life manages its way anyway.
It doesn’t pause for our confusion, our grief, or our unfinished conversations.
It doesn’t wait for closure, clarity, or courage.
Life simply moves.
While we are overthinking, delaying, or holding on to what once was, life is already unfolding somewhere else quietly rearranging people, paths, and possibilities.
Days turn into years not because we are ready, but because time has its own rhythm.
This isn’t cruelty; it’s truth.
Life happens in spite of resistance.
It teaches us that control is an illusion, and presence is power.
The moment we stop fighting its flow, we realize that movement itself is healing.
You may not feel prepared.
You may still be hurting.
Yet life continues not to abandon you, but to remind you that staying frozen is optional.
You don’t have to run ahead of life.
Just walk with it.
One breath.
One step.
One moment at a time.
SELF LOVE AND SOUL HEALING 