Facilitating Balance

This book offers many practical tools to optimise our well being by: understanding our heart’s reaction to stress and how to minimise its impact, processing emotional trauma through meditation, becoming aware of natural cycles in the day, understanding how different foods impact on our mood and function; understanding basic principles of the complementary health model of Ayurveda. The complementary Ayurveda section explores a person’s constitution and predispositions, allowing a better understanding of us as individuals and how to optimise functioning using diet and activities. The book also looks at breaks, therapeutic use of light, food supplements, omega-3 fatty acids, alcohol, drugs, conflict resolution and sleep. This book is written by Dr Mudassar Hussain, a UK based general practitioner with training in Ayurvedic medicine and mental health. It comes with a guided meditation audio available as a download at the end of the meditation chapter. The guided meditation technique has been used effectively in various settings, allowing most people to learn to meditate after one session. People often think they cannot meditate because their mind will not be still, meditation actually helps your mind to process what it needs to, so it can then become quiet. It also helps you to watch your mind from a quiet place, i.e. practice mindfulness. Meditation is also shown to have a number of physiological and mental health benefits.