Get busy

When you recognize a negative thought, get busy. If you simply sit, you will keep thinking a lot.

Improve circulation in your body

If your head is filled with too many thoughts, lie down on the floor and keep rolling. You will see that your circulation in the body improves. When circulation improves, the mind feels better. That is the reason they do Shayana Pradakshinam (a form of worship done by rolling on the floor). Experience it and see how your mind changes.

Shake hands with negative thoughts

If you keep resisting negative thoughts and try to push them away, then they will follow you like ghosts. Shake hands with your negative thoughts. Tell them, ‘Come here and sit with me. I will not leave you’, and you will see how they quickly disappear. Thoughts are scared of you.

If you become scared of negative thoughts, they will control you. But if you shake hands with them, they will disappear.

Pranayama and meditation

Pranayama and meditation are the best ways to apply brakes to a buzzing mind. It is very effective and instantly calms your mind down.

Intestinal cleansing

If you are bombarded with too many negative thoughts, know that something must be wrong with your bowel movement. Do Shankh Prakshalan (intestinal cleansing). This will also help.

Move around

Get up, do your exercise, sing, dance, do yoga, meditation, pranayama; all these will help.

Become a witness to your thoughts

You cannot stop a thought or know a thought before it comes. And when it comes, it also goes away immediately. If you are a witness to the thought, it simply drifts away and vanishes. But if you hold on to it and chew on it, then it stays with you. Thoughts come and go, but that which is the basis of thoughts – is the atma (soul). And that is what you are. You are like the sky, and thoughts are like clouds. This could be the nearest example one can give. Clouds come and go in the sky, but can they disturb or limit the vastness of the sky in any way? No, not at all.

So when you fly above the clouds, when you go beyond the clouds, you see that the sky is untouched. It is the same, it is unchanged. It is only the thoughts that keep moving. This is what happens in meditation when you come into Sakshi bhaav, i.e., when you simply become a witness to the thoughts.

We do not have to attach ourselves to the thoughts. That is foolishness. Whether they are good thoughts or bad thoughts – they come and go. You are far above and beyond all this. This is called the Vihangam Maarg – it means rising above thoughts and seeing that you have nothing to do with these moving thoughts.

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Editor’s note:
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