Episode 1: What Is Mental Hygiene (and Why It Matters More Than Ever)

Welcome to Mental Hygiene, a space to care for the mind like we care for the body, daily, gently and with love. Posted by Yogi Churu and Susan Hoo, this podcast brings ancient Yogi wisdom into modern life, offering practical tools to cleanse the mental clutter, restore inner stillness, and reconnect with your true self. Take a breath, you're exactly where you need to be. Welcome to Mental Hygiene. Hello everyone, I am Yogi Churu. Welcome to the Mental Hygiene podcast, I'm here at my good friend, Susan. I am a facilitator and practitioner of mental hygiene for over 30 years. And Susan introduced herself to all our friends here. Hi everyone, my name is Susan, some of you my name is Prinder Kumari. I'm also a yoga meditation teacher and I have over the years been studying practicing mental hygiene with Yogi Churu for so many years. It's just such a beautiful, powerful, transformative practice and I'm so excited to be able to share this with our audience. So Yogi Churu, I know many people probably have the question, why do we want to start another podcast and why about mental health, mental hygiene these days? So yes, there are many podcasts out there which address mental health and mental hygiene and they have a certain angle on how to assist people from Western science and so forth. And we are looking at mental health from the Eastern point of view, from the Vedic point of view. So there are a lot of similarities and slightly differences and since my upbringing of working at the mind has been from the Eastern side, so without why not use our podcasts for how the Eastern practitioners of mental health go about it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I love that. Also, the methods, all the practical techniques we're going to share, they're deeply rooted in tradition. So it's nothing Yogi Churu on myself, we just made up. I really love it. Even if you never practice yoga or meditation before, the practical techniques can be really applicable to any time in any day and it's really timeless, a practice that's having that wisdom from tradition. So I'm super excited about that. And also about a year and a half ago, I wrote a book, a practical guide to mental hygiene. And as we were launching the book, we talked about also doing a podcast then, we book itself. But some of the practices that we're going to learn through the podcast are in the book, but somehow as time manifested, it's been a year and a half later. So now we're just coming and catching up with the book with the podcast. Yeah. And for anyone who hasn't read that book yet, it's such a beautiful book. It's very easy to follow. There are many basic, but also universal, yes, this is the book here. Many basic, but very universal principles that we can all apply to our daily life. And if you can practice this step by step through the book that's introduced, it's absolutely going to transform your life. So yes, so that's one of the reasons why we're trying a new podcast, because just adding to what's already out there, I'm pretty sure those are helping a lot of people. But I'm also sure that the techniques we're going to present can help others as well, because in my last 30 years of teaching, I've helped so many people and myself to purify my mind and to make my mind my best friend. So it should work for everyone else as well. Yes. And I can definitely attest to that. All those practice that I've been learning from Yogi Churu from day one, from Yogi Nejira from being able to get to know the mind a little bit has been so helpful, not just on the yoga mat, on the meditation cushion, but really it translates into day to day life. So before we even start, Yogi Churu, how do you define mental hygiene? Definition of mental hygiene, hygiene we know in the West means clean, right? So there's a Sanskrit word called Pavitra, pure purify. So how to purify the mind and first we have to know where is the mind. In the West, we have, we can say dental hygiene, everyone knows dental hygiene, but you have to know where your teeth are. You don't take your toothbrush and brush your hair, brush your forehead, no, you have to know where the teeth are. So then mental hygiene, we have to figure where is my mind and once you find out where the mind is, oh, then you have to understand, okay, why do I have to have mental hygiene because each and every one of us, we might not know where the mind is, but each and every one of us know, we have a lot of thoughts that goes in and out of the mind and then just like we have dental plaque, the wishes of the East understood, we have mental plaque through thoughts and emotions. And so just as we have to remove the dental plaque daily, every human, we also have mental plaque. So mental hygiene and remind us that it is something that should be done regularly, right? Taking care of it. So the first aspect of mental hygiene is figure, what is the mind? Where is the mind? And then we need something dental. What is the, how do we get a mental brush, mental brush to brush or clean, purify the mind? So an easy definition is to purify the tension away from the mind on our regular basis. Mm-hmm, such a beautiful way of defining it, now that we're on the talk, so how do we define the mind? Where is the mind according to the yogic philosophy? The wishes of the Vedas, they, one thing I like, what I started to study, I understood, in the West week say a practitioner of yoga is a yogi or a yogini. That's tradition. But as I started these great wishes when I was in there and I realized, wait, wait, wait, we might use the phrase, the word yogis to define them, but they are so evolved with the mind. We could easily say that our psychiatrist today, understand the mind, maybe 10% of what these wishes knew about the mind. So sometimes it's hard to just say, oh, am I yogi because I'm not just someone who teaches the postures, able to go deep and study the mind, so the, yes, the yogis they did the postures, but they also did the mental purification. So we can term, we can use the terminology for them as deep psychiatrists, deep psychologists as well, because they understood the mind and how to train the mind and concentrate the mind and purify the mind. So yeah. So the word yogi just limits the potential of where, from where the practices were coming, what we're going to use in our podcast. These wishes were not just someone who did a 200 hour, no, no, these wishes were people who sat for hours upon hours, weeks, months, years in stillness, in silence and understanding how the mind works and thoughts and patterns and tension and this is the type of yogis. These are the types. The practices what we're going to learn is coming from these, yeah, so and I was so fortunate to have learned from some wishes like that and so I got to practice them and then we get to see that the lineage where it comes from, right, we have these profound, we call them siddhas, the adepsa and the original fongdened fathers of these practices are Shiva, Brahma and truly years we have so many go-tam, then in the recent years we have La Jaitanya and then had the six Goswamis and the most profound person who reached it, we would say Shila Prabhavad, who understood the mind inside of them? Beautiful and I love how rich these practice they are, they have, they're deeply rooted in tradition, they're connected to lineage. So again, it's nothing that's just man-made, it's nothing that we just recently discovered or developed but they really have the potency that can trace us all the way back pretty much to the minute, yes, and yeah and even though they are so ancient but they are so practical to every single one of us, just like I said earlier, every single day living in this human body, living in a human society, we have so much tension, we have the tension through being engaged in a society, doing our work, through communication with other people, the limit entity and from the universe, from the other nature, every single day we have so much stress that we are all holding onto and a lot of them might be in our physical body in the more other layers of us but a lot of those stress they are all subtle, they're the mental stress, emotional stress, sometimes even some sort of energetic stress and I think more and more people these days are become aware of how much harm stress can cause to our well-being but also how much, how much in a way trauma that the human body, the human mind can hold and being able to practice mental hygiene regularly, we release the stress, we release the tension, we stop the building up like the gentle plug, the mental plug, we stop them from even building up so they don't develop into anything that's even bigger in balance and I love how you always say this example that you say it from your teacher, comparing mental hygiene with dental hygiene, yes, we spend so much time every single day as a part of day to day life, we care for our dental hygiene but how much are we investing into our mental hygiene, to our mental health, and that's why we ask the research and I said every part of our organism is important, small fingers important, our heart is important, what different parts of us have more importance, I can lose my small finger and still live, I cannot lose the heart, else else, the heart has more importance than my small finger, even though the small finger is important, so the question is always asked, every part of us is important, which is more important, our teeth or our mind, definitely our mind but our senses friends might not agree, yeah, so we know everyone knows the mind is more important than the teeth, but all over the world everyone practices dental hygiene, everyone brushes the teeth daily, but yet we know the mind is more important but we don't do anything for mental hygiene, why is that, we live in a society now where I would say 95% of the society right out of the 8.7 billion of us, maybe a 5% care for mental health and do the work but most of us ignore it and just do dental and bodily hygiene right, we can walk into a store and find shampoo for the hair hygiene, lotion, colone perfume, skin hygiene, soap, but what about that mind, yeah absolutely and I think more and more people are becoming aware of how mind overbody, how the subtle parts of us, your thoughts, your emotions can very much influence our physical body as well, so how can we, by practicing mental hygiene also increase our overall being physically but also on a subtle level, so I think that's the power of mental hygiene, and just like brushing your teeth, it doesn't have to be something very fancy, something very big, we can easily do it anytime at any point of the day and once they become a part of the life, then it's more of a regular maintenance versus then like when you had a cavity, you have to go to dentist and go through some sort of more surgical procedures, yeah yeah and you hit it right on the nail, it's not something esoteric right, it's there a lot of easy practices, the masses can do and then you can build upon those and go deeper and deeper and deeper, but it's easily accessible for us, our mind is easily accessible, right, if I ask anyone here, things are not taught of a mango through your mind, everyone can close their mind and think their eyes and go into their mind and think of a mango, most people can, right, so the mind is easily accessible, so then how to learn the art of doing something that is not expensive, it's very cheap to go ahead and it's cheaper than a toothpaste actually, cheaper than a toothbrush, right, the mental hygiene techniques, yeah, and the mind can be so powerful, I'm sure everyone can relate to that, whenever the mind is actually calm, the mind is focused, we're able to be, so we are being able to achieve so much, you can be so creative, you can be so productive, you can be so inspirational, but only when we also take that time to care for the mind to develop that relationship with the mind, so that the mind becomes our friends, rather than constantly trying to pull away from this precious life, the present moment that we always live through, yeah, yeah, and, you know, if we were taught as kids in preschool or primary school, okay, you have physical education, we didn't get mental education, yeah, mental, and because of society, we ignore that part of our evolution, we care so much about the physical, then there's an imbalance in our evolution in this life, so let's try and bring balance to the physical and the mental, because they work together, right, most of the, or scientists now has figured out which the yogis, which the reaches of the ish understood a long time ago, that most physical diseases we have in the body are from psychosomatic tension, all the tensions in the mind, someone's angry for sure, it breaks down and comes into the cells, into the atoms, into our molecules, into our organs, into our systems, and those tension creates the diseases in the body, and then simultaneously they understood, wait, if someone's mind is a peaceful, kind, compassionate, their person body is healthy healing, absolutely, the disease and healing is in the mind, and so, and then vice versa, right, the reaches of the ish understood, this physical body, when you brush the skin, soap, and you brush the teeth, the mouth is feeling good, the tongue is crepe, your dental hygiene is good, your physical hygiene is good, it then starts to affect our mind, happy when we are clean, right, so it's both ways, but we want to do half of it, let's do the other work as well from inside out. Beautiful. Yeah, Yogi Chari, when I first started practicing and training with you, the first thing you told me to do is to do a meditation sandwich, it's a mental hygiene, one scene a morning, one scene an evening, I was actually just speaking to someone about that this morning, it's so powerful, sometimes we might not, I might not have time to sit for 20, 30 minutes of meditation, but even just carving out this a few minutes in the morning in the evening, you're setting a tone for your day in the morning, making the friends with your mind right away at the beginning of the day, then towards the end of the day, no matter what happened in between, hopefully, because of the mind was already in that state, that's more peaceful, we can navigate a little bit better, but even sometimes during a day when a lot of things start to happen, triggering different emotions, triggering different thoughts, by adding the second layer of that mental hygiene practice towards the end of the day, we get to really unwind, we get to very intentionally release that tension, personally for me, that's been such a powerful practice, and that even affected my physical, my asthma yoga practice so much as well, so thank you for sharing that. The meditation sandwich, mental hygiene sandwich right in the morning, if we find five minutes, just to spend time with the mind, and then in the evening, five minutes with the mind, calm the mind, before we go to sleep, it will affect our sleep, a lot of the stress and anxiety that shows up in sleep, people can't sleep, people have nightmares, so many things, that stress, anxiety, they pervades our sleep as well, so a little practice at night helps us out of the sleep, a little practice in the morning helps us to go through our day more gracefully. So if someone's very new to mental hygiene, to the practice of purifying the mind, caring for the mind, what would be the sum of the first techniques that we can start practicing, that's practical, that's accessible, any point of the day. So the fundamentals is on the stand or makeup, we have this physical body, we have a mind, and we also have something called the breath. Now the breath is a bridge between the physical and the mind, alright, so we can't see the breath, right, air, we can't see, but you can feel it, if you blow, and you feel it coming in, you feel it going out. So already the breath is, we call it subtle, subtler than the physical, we see the physical body, we can't, we don't see the air moving in and out, but we know it's there, or ribcage is expanding as we inhale. Now the fundamental practices is training the mind to appreciate the physical body, and to spend time with the body, in the West we're not trained to spend time with the body, but we don't know my tongue, my index finger, ring finger, knee, ankle, just to be with the body. That's already purification, bringing the mind where, in the body, and we're trying to make the mind our best friend, then we're trying to bring the mind in the present moment, because the mind is always projecting, we know in the past, and the mind is always projecting in the future, that is the nature of the mind. So once you understand the nature of the mind, we want to say, oh, wait, wait, wait, the reaches out of the mind, we need memory, we need to know where we live, who our parents are, we need to know how to get back home, right? So we need memory. So we're grateful the mind was engineered with memory. We're also grateful that the mind is engineered to project in the future, we, goals, and everyone you meet set goals, especially like we say, new year resolution, right? So we want to make ourselves better. So we set goals tomorrow, I'm going to do this, this, this, or in one month, I'm going to stop this or I'm going to do this. So we set goals. Now, after we set goals and we can tap into the memory, the reaches from the east understood, we also are engineered with being in the present with the mind until hygiene, then is to help us to come into the present moment. Because in the present moment, we start to live our life at its fullest. If you ask anyone who wants to live their life at its fullest, absolutely, so how do you do it? Being in the now, in the present, and it's easier said than done because we've been trained to go in the past and future constantly in our daily life. If you hear people's conversations or fellow human, but whenever they speak, they're going to, oh, you know, last night, I did this tomorrow, next week, next month, oh, and last month, and the mind, the conversation tells us we are in the past or future. That's where you find the possess being here in the now. And when we do it, we stay in the present in a sleet in second. Yeah. And I feel like whenever we're in those fleeting seconds, when we're actually physically there, everyone loves that moment. That's what we call that flow stay, where in the meditative stay, whether you're focusing on your work, how your physical work, how, whether you're writing something or drawing something or dancing, that's the moment, like you're saying, you'll be sure, we liberated the mind and suddenly we're living to the fullest because we're not letting, we're letting the mind release any sort of attention from the past or from the future. Yeah. All right. And then you see, right? People let themselves go in our culture. There are many ways. Right. If you see the swimmers, swimming, right, they're in the present moment. And then you, you also, you mentioned dancing people go down there, just there. If they just let go the past and feel and just be there, they're in a zone, right, writing. If you just let things flow, music, anything, if you can just let and come here, right? So practices we're going to share to the podcast are going to help people to be in the present, but then you can also add it to other things that you do. So let's talk about your life out at it. So. Call us. Yes. So bring in the mind and the present, when we spend time with the body, then the next thing we spend time is with the breath, each and every one of us are breathing. We are not breathing yesterday, we're not breathing tomorrow, we are breathing. So if we can connect the mind to the breath, we can then start to live in the present moment. And so initially we tell people, let's fall in love with our body. Let's fall in love with the breath, all in love with the mind, right? That's how I'm trained, I'm trained to love my mind, love my breath. I'm trained to love my body and when you do, when you start to, then you start to, you don't want to escape from, if you love something, love someone, you want to spend more time. You don't want to escape from them, right? So yeah, so our culture today, we're not trained to spend time with the breath. We understand, you know, that the breath is the backdrop to life, for me to talk, I need to breathe, for me to walk from here to the shop, I need to breathe, for me to do anything I need to breathe. So we're always breathing. And so the reaches, they recognize that the breath is a beautiful present from God. Beautiful, if it's someone's birthday, if someone gets a present, what do they do? They appreciate it, they say, thank you, they take care of it, they just look at the present. No, they also spend a lot of time with your present, yeah, they take off the ribbon, what's in here? I want to see what's in here, so they can, so today God has provided us with the breath. And as a gift, a present of the present moment, but we don't open the present of the present moment, we leave the present tied up with the ribbon because we are going in the future or the fast. So it's a beautiful thing to open the present of the present moment. I love that. And also the beauty is, this is the present, the breath, it automatically happens without us even paying attention to it, it's such a present, but it's also something that we get to control. And just by controlling the breath, we get to control the state of mind we're in. And when we're more and more able to anchor ourselves in this present of your breath, then we start to shift our entire experience. Even when life gets a little bit stressful, even when we feel a little bit lethargic, we can use those different types of techniques by controlling the breath, we get to shift the mind as well. Yeah. And the wisdom culture knows it right when someone is stressed enough, yeah, I will see that. Okay, breathe. Totally. Mm-hmm. So how about we know it subconsciously, now we're going to teach you how to be with it unconsciously. Mm-hmm. Beautiful. So Yogi Chereja, how has mental hygiene of practice helped you personally over the last three decades and more? Oh, man, once I met, when I was a teenager, when I found the practices of mental hygiene through the Yogi Pat, my mind at the time was going through a lot of fluctuations of pleasures and distresses and then a lot of mental tension, right, a lot of mental anxiety, mental distress, fear, I mean, like every human goes through and the practices came into my life at the right time to help, to help me grow out of my low self-esteem. I used the mental health, mental hygiene practices to develop amazing self-esteem, being born in a developing country, you know, with not much wealth. So you're, there's a certain, and I was, you know, the way I was, you know, my mom and dad were never together. So I just happened to, I'm on this earth, right? So I didn't grow with my, a household, with mother and father and so, so there's that sense of low self-esteem when I would be in school with friends who had mother, father, you know, matured, like they had like launch boxes to come to, I didn't have those, so there's that, so I could see how it was affecting me, but because I was good in school, I was able to like somehow ignore it, but it was still in the subconscious mind, my loose mind, and then, so I saw home, the practices helped me to develop my self-esteem, recognized I am no less than anyone on this planet, right? As far as I started to connect with my higher self. And then also a lot of fear, because at the time in my country, there are a lot of, a lot of gangs and a lot of my, no, I had two sets of friends, right? So the friends from school, structured with mother and father and family, then I had some friends from the soccer pitch, who were like me, no parents, right? Mother, you know, I grew up with my aunt and she was strict and like that, but I still had like leeways, right? One of my friends didn't had that kind of structure like I had to, and my aunt was staying school, so I kind of had that. But then those other kids who didn't had parents, you know, they went into gangs and before they were 16, 17, a lot of my friends unfortunately started, from that side started to pass away. Those out of friends from school, they went on to be lawyers, doctors, engineers, politicians of the country, but then, so when these friends on the other side started to, there's a lot of fear because I could easily get swayed and pull and, but then that's when I found, and I was like, ah, the material, the quick fix that my friends wanted that quick, well, quick money, quick fast living, all of a sudden that became insignificant to me. Mm hmm. Wow. That's powerful. And your teenager back then. Yeah, I mean, my, my ego is just, oh wow, well, let's, I want to go chain, I want to find the car. I want to big up. That's what I saw. That drove my friends from this and they want to make the money real quick and got into the wrong thing. So I was able to connect to my bread, started appreciate life. I don't want to put toxins in my body. I'm not going to sell drugs, do drugs, you know, that was not my thing. It's, that's, I understood, right? So the mental health practices, my tell, I came from, from then made me understood anything quick is not going to last forever. Wow. So that's all. And then over the years, I've seen as I went into my 20s, I had different challenges, right? Different fears, different anxieties, different, and I was able to get through those in my 30s. For it is every decade I saw as we, as I in go through different ups and downs in life. And, you know, the mental hygiene practices has been steady and constant has helped me to get through them. Mm hmm. Wow. That's incredible. And, yeah, and I would never have imagined that because for as far as I've known, you know, each other, you have always been so calm and so in a present moment and so connected to a higher self, but, um, sounds like the practice of mental hygiene has really planted all those seeds, even from when you were much younger and were able to help you keep on this path of keep going inwards, keep connecting also keep sharing, keep inspiring other people to join the practice to transform their lives for the higher purpose of life, rather than just having a constant, like, have a quick fix in our lives. Yeah, and, you know, like, like, the, the reaches of our, of the lineage where this comes from, a lot of it, it drew like one amazing, powerful Yobu Yogi, Jura Maharaj. His stepmother rejected him, his, um, and he went and, boom. So a lot, you read a lot of stories about beings who didn't had it on a gold platter, you know, but they had their, they had their anger and frustration and they went and purified. So, we have examples of these and people like Arjun who, you know, their, their land got stolen from them, and yet they were able to overcome their obstacles, their mental, with mental power. And, yeah, so, and Yobu Yogi, how has mental hygiene helped you? Well, it really helped me to become, for one, become a better person for you also knowing why I'm doing what I'm doing every day. For, for me personally, I think I lived a pretty typical life going to school with parents at home and I've always been quite lucky. I've always had big group of friends and had always been pretty successful at whatever schoolwork or everything I do, but I never felt truly fulfilled. I was always constantly chasing. If I get this recognition, if I become this popular girl at school, I will be happy if I go get this degree, I'll be okay. And I just ended up going to move to different places, getting different degrees, and when I moved to New York, I was still chasing, but I was lost. I, yeah, I would always come trying to like have big parties with different friends. I can feel like, okay, I'm feeling validated, but a part of me was always searching for something that actually gave me meaning to life. I even used to change jobs every year after I got like, got out of two grad schools, decided I'm not going back to school again, but I just couldn't stay committed to a job. I think, if I change to the next job, maybe I'll do something meaningful in helping someone. And then the practice, the yogi philosophy really has helped me to understand that it's not about the circumstances outside. I can have everything in the world that I desire for, but if I'm not happy within, it's never going to matter. And finding yoga, I was able to hold down to my day job for a longer period of time, even though eventually I let that go to really pursue teaching yoga. And I was also able to feel happier without having to constantly needing something to fulfill that desire. Yeah, so in a way, I think I'm a better person because of this practice. Yoga philosophy, mental hygiene, especially with meditation, when I really started training with yoga tribes, saw such a big shift. Even the way that I was approaching my asthma, my physical practice changed so much. Yeah, I don't know what happened there, but definitely blessings from teachers and from Krishna for sure. We get purified by living in the present more and more. We start to do our asthma exercise even more mindful, even more with, so we start to get deeper experiences. Absolutely. And it becomes less, less goal oriented. And how do I put it in a nice way, less goal? Yes. So it's like, yes, I'm still trying to improve myself, but it's not just about the outcome of that, but rather all the realizations all about what you were saying earlier, take because I love my body, which is a gift. It's also present to me. I want to take care of it versus, oh, if I get into this cool pose, I can look nice. I can look good. And that really shifts the entire experience. Yes, yes, yes. And yeah, you know, the as we start to do everything more and more with awareness. This is what this is what mental hygiene does for us. It allows us to do everything with the physical and the mind with more awareness, more awareness than we're doing it to care with respect, with, you know, we cherish in those activities, we cherish our friendships, we cherish our family, we cherish our food, we cherish because it's allowing us to be in the present, right? Today, people are eating on the go, not really contemplating, oh, I'm grateful for my tongue, my teeth, my digestive system. We don't even connect anymore with mind. The body is like almost nonexistent in the mind, right? This past here, and we forget, oh, there's this whole that's doing a lot of service for us. So as we start to evolve when the mental hygiene practices, everything becomes, we start to do, we don't stop doing things, we just start to do them with more awareness. And when we start to do with stuff with more awareness, we start to live life more fully. Absolutely. And when we're able to develop that better relationship with our own bodies, our own mind, we naturally start to appreciate others a little bit better. We start to have more healthy relationship, more healthy friendships with other people, other living entity. And then this mental hygiene practice will come more than just, you know, what we do on a meditation cushion, what do we do when we are stressed out? It becomes a part of our lifestyle that we live by every single day. Yeah. And then we are able to empathize with fellow human brothers and sisters of all different age groups. We can empathize with the teenager's all day. And then fear they have, we can start to communicate with our peers and, you know, and understand they're going through the similar ups and downs like we are. And then the seniors and how to respect the elder, you know, so mental hygiene allows us, practices help us to live in society in a more graceful manner. Empathetic to the juniors, share with our peers, respect our elders. So it's a holistic way of living when we purify the mind. Absolutely. And even with the people that we might not necessarily connect to, but we also have more empathy for them. At least we have understanding for where they come from, rather than right away feeling that we have to divide from them. It's like either us or them, we start to have more empathy for others as well. Because when we start to do the mental hygiene practices, we start to have self-love, compassion for ourselves, forgiveness for ourselves. We start to develop all these here. And then when these are developing our own mind-body, we can then start to express it to the planet, to others, to our own degree, right? We can share compassion, share empathy, share. And then, oh, wow. And this, so when we meet someone who lives like that, we know they're doing something to help them purify their mind and heart daily. Amazing. What a beautiful way of living. I'm so excited for all of us to live from that way. I definitely aspire to live more and more in a present moment from that mindfulness. So I'm going to show you six work coming to it, the end of our first episode. Is there a few things that you think we can introduce to our audience that's practical that everyone can can use them as a little tool whenever they feel like, okay, my mind is really not on the right place right now. It's not really on my side. How can we have those simple little techniques that we can use to bring our mind back to the present moment? They're good. So anyone can, so we'll do a little practice and until we do our next podcast, you can use this chart. I'll do it in three minutes. So anyone can do a three minute in the morning, a three minute in the evening before you go to sleep. And then if you're having some kind of tension throughout the day, you can do this little three minute exercise to bring your mind in the present moment and live your life at its fullest. Amazing. Good. So let's come into a comfortable seated posture, close the eyes and bring your entire body into stillness. As you bring the mind into the body into stillness, let's bring the mind into the present moment to the breath at the entrance of the nostrils. You're not controlling the breath, let the breath go naturally, but you are aware. Feel the air moving in and out. And identify the slight temperature change of the breath. The incoming breath is slightly cooler and the outgoing breath with the body's heat is slightly warmer. Take your awareness to the rib cage. Try not to alter the movement of the rib cage. Just witness it as we inhale or a rib cage makes a small movement up and out. As we exhale, the rib cage makes a small movement in and down. As you keep the mind on the breath in the rib cage, the mind stays in the present moment. [silence] Take your mind's vision, imagine your windpipe going down from the base of the neck into the chest. Become grateful for the windpipe as the air moves up and down. Imagine the two bronchals, the windpipe splits into an ice v, the two bronchals, and imagine the left lung in the left side of your rib cage as it expands and contracts. Grateful for the left lung. Imagine your right lung expands and contracts. Grateful for the right lung. Grateful for the two nostrils, the windpipe, the lungs. Now, bring your gaze center of your eyebrows and recognize how your mind is much peaceful. As the mind is filled with gratitude, read a respirator system. Take a deep inhalation. Exhale, slowly, breath to normal. Open the eyelids. Thank you. Amazing, such a short meditation. I already feel so much calmer, so much more present. Thank you for sharing that yoga each other. So, yeah, so to anyone who's listening here, this is Mental Hygiene, our new podcast, and we want to talk about practical techniques that we can all do to bring a mind into the present moment, to be able to live to the force, and to really create that balance within ourselves. So if you are around, please come back to the podcast, connect with us, and we would love to hear from you as well. Yeah, thank you so much, Brenda. Thank you to our friends and listeners out there. Just mind a little time, three minutes, four minutes in the morning, evening, just to quiet the mind. And if you connect the mind to the breath, we are starting to spend time with the breath. You're connecting the mind and the now. And as you watch the temperature change, you watch the rib cage movement. We start to appreciate the organs in the hair as well. We start to appreciate and become grateful for our life, living our life at its fullest. Just like you brush the teeth, it takes three, four minutes in the morning, three, four minutes in the night. Please take advantage of the three minute, four minute mental hygiene, mental brushing. Yes, and it will definitely transform your life. All right. Thank you, Yogi Charoo. Bye everyone. Thank you for joining us with mental hygiene. We're ancient wisdom meets modern life, one breath at a time. If this episode brought you peace, insight, or inspiration, we invite you to subscribe, leave a review, and share with someone you love. To go deeper, connect with Yogi Charoo and Susan Hu, follow the journey on Instagram at Mental Hygiene Podcast. Until next time, keep your mind clear, your heart open, and your spirit grounded. Be well, be still.