7 ways to clear the mind of negative thoughts
1 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 and you will see the circulation in the body improves.
When circulation improves then 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 there is a change in your mind.
2 Shake hands with negative thoughts
If you keep resisting negative thoughts, and try to push them away, then they will follow you like a ghost. 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 get scared of negative thoughts then they will control you. But if you shake hands with them, then they will disappear.
3 Pranayama and
4 Meditation
Pranayama and Meditation is the best way to apply brakes in the buzzing mind.
It is very effective and instantly calms your mind down.
5 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). That would also help.
Move Around
6 Get up, do your exercise, sing, dance, do yoga, meditation, pranayama; all these will help.
7 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 which 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.
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
