Implementation and inspiration:
Lifestyle and everyday practice

Lifestyle

Five Keys to Well-being advocates good posture, effective breathing, efficient movement, stress release and relaxation as tools to improve quality of life, and teaches one to implement these in a way of being that truly embraces body-mind-spirit principles as an integrated whole, as a lifestyle practice. When you make the Five Keys of Well-being a part of your lifestyle, a not so subtle change takes place; realities and priorities shift to place well-being at the forefront of your life focus. These shifts are more a shift of consciousness than window dressing, more an awareness than a default setting.

Five Keys is an invitation to live in the spirit of life, and this includes everything life has to offer. This means making room for work, play and rest in proper proportions. Choosing a high quality of life is more than adopting a technique to fit one's lifestyle, but an attitude with which to shape one's lifestyle. Making well-being a part of your everyday life means taking care in all your actions; how you think, eat, exercise and interact with others. Such care requires taking responsibility for the self, objective self-criticism, discipline and self-motivation.

There is nothing exclusive about well-being; it is available to all who sincerely wish for it. Health and well-being are brought about by the simple things in life, and more often than not by natural things that are readily available, and often free of charge. Enough sleep, good nutrition, exercise and pursuing a hobby, a dream, or ideally, a job that includes one's passion and interests, and spending time with friends and family; these are the simple things and values in life that determine the quality of everything else. One may, realistically enough, not get all of these things right at the same time. However, awareness of these, and even a connection with only some of these elements will serve anyone well.

The legacy of one's life is left behind in the landscape. It is left in the buildings and art we create, our achievements at work, our offspring, and the rubbish we do not recycle. In the landscape of the human heart one also creates a legacy – have the courage to dream and have visions, and the courage to live them. Your spiritual practices should help you to dream, and create and allow these dreams to reverberate through your life, to bring fulfillment into everyday living.

Everyday living has to teach one more about life. Living with a healthy balance of passion and feeling, and detachment from the results of work and other endeavours, may bring forth equal happiness and satisfaction as a deep breath, eating lunch, the challenges of relationships, enjoying the natural wonders of the world and enjoying modern technology and its comforts may. Such a level of consciousness or state of being encourages the development of an optimal, holistic physiological and mental state, to maximize one's potential.

Wholesomeness brings together love of life and enjoyment of the fruits of one's labours. Enjoying material comfort while striving for inner fulfilment is a realization of body, mind and spirit. The sensuous qualities of physical pleasure, as an essential ingredient of the spirit-being appreciating material life, may appear paradoxical, but a thinking, physical and spiritual being should have all body-mind-spirit aspects in balance. One cannot create heaven on earth without the love-expressions of generosity and kindness. When we give it to ourselves and share it with others one may live in the glory of the oneness of a wholesome universe.

Everyday practice through continued awareness

The aim of Five Keys is to achieve total comfort in the body. It does this by placing the body in a physical position in which it can move and breathe easily, while optimizing nutrition and mental and emotional health.

’Everyday practice’ means to make a conscious effort throughout the day, every day, to adhere to the principles of well-being. We spend every day of our lives in our bodies. It is with and in our bodies that we experience life, move, sit, sleep, think, and sustain all its activities and pleasures by eating and breathing. Because we are in our bodies all the time, it is possible to practice good posture and effective mobility every moment of being alive. Right action is inspired by awareness of the tremendous impact that good or poor posture has on breathing – posture influences the health or condition of the entire body just like nutrition determines the quality of every living cell.

To understand health, one must understand that the body is only the frame of a larger energy being, and that every thought and every action has either an enhancing or debilitating influence on the health of the total being. Such understanding comes from theoretical knowledge as well as from practical experience. Continuous education and awareness go hand in hand.

Such awareness and education is not so much a special effort made to learn a lot in a little time, or putting in many hours of study, but rather a continued willingness to experience the flow of life.

A FEW FOCUSSED MINUTES A DAY

One needs focused time to learn and maintain any technique. Five Keys requires only a few minutes of concentrated practice every day to set a standard for all day awareness, including an important attitude of making time for quality self-care or 'me' minutes. Regular practice re-enforces the new, improved habits. Never let a day go by without at least a few minutes of the Keys practice:

In one session – 10-20 minutes daily, or very regularly, of all aspects the Five Keys. Do a few minutes of deep breathing, exercises and relaxation.

Short, multiple sessions – 3-5 minutes of one or two Keys at different hours of the day or alternate days of the week, or in any convenient combination. Do breathing in the morning, relaxation at a break during the day, mobility and stretch exercises during a walk, and breathing and stress release at bed-time.

Include focus/meditation/visualization exercises as part of your practice at regular intervals.

ANYWHERE, ANYTIME

Make the best of existing exercise opportunities. Utilize otherwise unproductive minutes spent over-analysing, speculating, waiting and becoming stiff from immobility:

Stretch and breathe when walking and exercising.
Take a break and practice mobility exercises when working long hours.
Meditate during times of stress or duress.
Stretch tight shoulders with a Supported Table stretch against the roof of the car when you stop.

Focus on breathing

Acquiring an effective breathing technique requires regular, dedicated practice. Set aside a few minutes for this purpose in your everyday exercise or meditation routine. As breathing is a most important aspect of the Five Keys and the most inconspicuous of all the exercises, it can easily be done anywhere, any time: turn waiting in the car, a queue or relaxing in the bath into an opportunity for deep breathing.

Being Yoga on Facebook
Follow Being Yoga's Inspirational Quotations & Useful Links