The brain is the biggest consumer of energy in the body, and the mind uses it a lot.
When a lot is running through your mind, your brain goes into overdrive.
This leads to chronic fatigue in some people, and in some others, eating disorders.
When I wake up in the morning and my mind is clear, I feel more energetic to do my morning workout.
When I wake up in the morning and my mind is preoccupied, I have to push myself through it.
I also find that a clogged mind makes me to over-indulge in food. I now understand that it is a coping mechanism to fuel the brain further in its overdrive. Unfortunately, over-eating comes with its own postprandial torpor, which then further clouds an already clogged mind.
For some friends I know, they stop eating well, and you see them emaciate. Because the mind just keeps riding the brain, sucking energy and life out of them, without any renewal.
This is why I have included meditation to the start and end of my day. For me, meditation is silent listening. Being silent and listening to the mind. When the mind knows you are truly listening, it stops running around and stays still.
The mind is a spoiled child that has been spoiled with attention in your formative years. It is too late to try and tame or ignore it. Trying either will only make you run mad. Be silent, listen to it, and it will be still.
Its stillness is both an energy and life source, as it frees your brain to take care of its other duties in your body.
For those that find silent listening hard, fasting also helps. Fasting basically makes the mind to focus on only one thing – food. It is a matter of survival at that point, especially as the mind never chooses fasting. The mind goes quiet as you progress with a fast, because it quickly realises it no longer has the luxury of riding a fed brain.
Rigorous exercise also helps. It focuses the mind on trying to stop you from pushing yourself, and it reduces its chatter on almost every other subject. As you sweat and keep going, the mind shrinks into stillness.
Conscious breathing is also a technique that works. The mind sees conscious breathing as odd, and assumes there must be a present danger. It goes still because it figures out that the brain needs all its present energy to survive this unknown threat. Conscious breathing sometimes also helps you with silent listening to the mind.
More people are using therapy as a way to finally listen to their minds and get stillness. By clarifying through words, and accepting through acknowledgment, the mind grants them stillness, for a while.
The mind is a great energy consumer in humankind. Learning to keep it still releases energy for other important aspects of your body and life.
Most people experience no stillness from birth to death, ultimately requiring external doses of energy to keep going.
Whatever you do, make time to keep it still. It just might be your greatest opportunity for vitality.
– Osasu Oviawe
The mind
