Six Ways to Make 2019 Your Most Harmonious Year Yet
It is imperative to go beyond the surface in order to find oneself. In this sense, there are two schools. The first, based on spirituality, lies in the ability to turn the negative into positive energy and works through methods like Ayurveda, Reiki, and tai chi. The second, in forms including feng shui, hygge, and the ever-viral KonMari method, focuses on sensoriality to structure a sense of being. Each school has a wealth of mindfulness and lifestyle techniques that promise to offer a truly harmonious start to the new year.
A traditional method of well-being, regeneration, and health, reiki's key ingredient is touch, whether applied to oneself, others, an animal, or a situation. To practice it, position your hands on the stressed part of the body to generate healing energy intended to release tension. Reiki emulation promotes self-healing by absorbing accumulated stress, truly managing to solve your problems with the strategic use of touch.
Associated with Chinese Taoism and the medicine of Hakim dervishes in northeastern Afghanistan, this thousand-year-old science cultivated in India is part of UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list. Ayurvedic methods are in keeping with the ancient knowledge of body wisdom, which involves treating the patient as the disease. Built on herbal medicine, meditation, singing, and yoga, Ayurvedic treatment helps to maintain a balance between body and mind.
Literally meaning "wind" and "water," feng shui is an ancestral art of Chinese origin with the goal of harmonizing environmental energy and transforming everyday life into a kind of allopathic poetry for body, mind, and soul. The principle? Achieving physical and moral fullness by properly arranging one's environment. Banishing sharp shapes for curves, installing plants (with the exception of cacti and other aggressive plants), and focusing on bright rooms are some of the basic rules that govern feng shui.
A discipline practiced for centuries in China, tai chi is much more than a martial art, proving also to be a successful relaxation method. The principle is to slowly and continuously perform soft gestures, with breathing at the center of the exercises to circulate the energies deeply. Dropping the shoulders, moving fluidly, keeping the joints flexible, and staying focused makes for a narcotic session of movement.
"Living in an orderly house has a positive influence on all other aspects of your life." This philosophy drives Japanese organizing consultant Marie Kondō, whose KonMari cleaning method has become popular through a bestselling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and a new Netflix series, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. This method promotes mental appeasement through arranging and sorting, and encourages practitioners to declutter by keeping only items that "spark joy." Kondō proposes to folding and arranging linens in vertical slices, which allows for considerable space saving as well as a complete view of the clothes. On your marks, ready, put away!
The art of living is to the Danes what freedom is to the Americans: essential, even vital. This Scandinavian way of life that provides well-being and comfort comes with a name: hygge (pronounced hoo-gah). The principle? Transform the trivial moments of everyday life into privileged moments. How do we do it? Nothing is more simple: just savor every corner of life: dinner with friends, watching a Netflix show, hosting a family barbecue, and sipping a cup of hot chocolate while reading a good book. Get ready to embrace candles, a steaming tea mug, and a couch overflowing with cushions!
