An important aspect of every religion is prayer. A prayer is an action or practice of communicating, commonly with a sequence of words, to a deity or spirit for the purpose of worshiping, requesting guidance, confessing sins, or to express one’s thoughts and emotions.

The great spiritual traditions offer a wide variety of devotional acts. There are morning and evening prayers, graces said over meals, and reverent physical gestures.

Prayers exist in many different forms. Some Christians bow their heads and fold their hands. Native Americans dance. Some Sufis whirl. Hindus chant. Orthodox Jews sway their bodies back and forth. Quakers keep silent. Almost every religion has it’s own form and structure.

What you didn’t know

Prayers, apart from nourishing your soul, are also good for health!

A Malaysian study suggests that prostration in praying is benefic for one’s health.

Salah (the Islamic prayer), is an exercise which is good for hearth and spine. It also enhances memory and concentration abilities.

The Islamic prayer consists of the following steps:

1. standing with hands on top of each other at chest level
2. bowing down with hands resting on knees
3. standing up from bowing with hands by the side
4. going in prostration (sajjda) once
5. lifting face up from prostration but sitting on the ground
6. doing a second prostration (Sajjda) and then getting up

These psysical movements that a Muslim does during prayer strenghten the joints and muscles and stimulate blood circulation. Consequently, they also prevent the stagnation of bloog in the veins of the legs (which may lead to coagulation and other problems).

Sajdah is a unique position or stance in the regular prayers, which a Muslim is supposed to offer at least five times a day.

Although the basic purpose of obligatory prayers isn’t to provide an exercise for people, it is being increasingly recognized that it has plenty of medical advantages.

Sajdah is a unique position as this is the only position in which brain (or head) becomes lower than the heart and hence for the first time the blood gushes towards the brain with full force whereas in all other positions (even when lying) brain is above the heart when it has to work against gravity to send blood to the brain.

In the position of Sajdah due to the increased blood supply the brain receive more nourishment and it has good effect upon memory, vision, hearing, concentration, psyche and all other cognitive abilities. People who offer their prayers regularly have more will power and can cope with the difficulties of life in a much better manner. They have fewer incidences of headaches, psychological problems and other defects of cognitive function.

Prostration in prayer 

Not only the Muslim prayers have such benefic prayer movements.

Another Readers Day here at Project Armannd.

Today’s question is, as the title suggests: Are you living your life or just reacting to it?

What am I trying to say by this? Well, in short, if you live your life you should be able to easily remember at least one or two highlight events from the past 7 days of your life.

Start thinking now…

… Did you recall something? Was is withing 5-10 seconds? If the anwer is positive, congratulations! You’re not just wasting your life away!

If it’s taking longer than ten seconds to think of something… it means you haven’t exactly lived your life… you just sat quietly in your corner and reacted to the things that came your way.

The perfect case would be to have at least one highlight memory from each single day that passes by.

These memories could be anything from something like the birthday of a friend or a parent, to something as big as having a baby or getting married. The important thing is to be able to recall them very easily.

So, what are your highlight memories of the past 7 days? Share them with us!

This is the third part of the “I can read your mind” series.

In the previous two articles you have read about the meanings of four eye positions (up and to the left & right, middle left & right).

This is the final post on eye positions. I will cover the meanings of the two positions left, down and to the left and down and to the right.

Down and to the left

This eye position indicates the creation of a Feeling / Kinesthetic / Sensory impression. When in kinesthetic mode, a person thinks by feeling.

Events and things are often described in terms of feelings, using expressions such as “The way I feel about that…” or “Do you get the same feeling as me?”.

Down and to the right

The position indicates an Internal Dialog.

Have you ever seen a strange loner type walking around deeply in thought? I bet you never knew that it’s eyes had this position.

If someone talks to themselves this is the direction their eyes move.

How can this information help

You can tell the way the other person thinks by watching

Big day today! Want to know why?

The blog celebrates a month of existence!

It’s not a lot of time, but it has been enough to gather a small group of loyal readers. A big and warm “Thank You” to all!

The highlight articles of the first month:

1. Drinking problems? – How to stop drinking
2. How to wake up early
3. The honey ghost – is skinny sexy?
4. The happiness recipe. 56 tips for a happier life
5. The money blueprint
6. Good visual memory? Put it to the test
7. Connections between weather and psychology
8. Flag colors – psychological influences?
9. 4 reasons why personality tests are evil
10. Take control

Some of them are my favorites too, but I would also like to name some other very interesting posts:

• The brainwashing industry. An insight article on the advertising industry.
• Information overload. Data asphyxiation. Learn the symptoms of information overload and how to fight them.
• Don’t rush. All in good time. A post on why is it important to move through our lives one step at a time.
• The outside noise and the inside peace. Article on the importance of silence and how it can help you improve yourself and the world around you.
• Simplify. Short post about simplicity and how it drives stress away. Nice inspirational story in there.
• I can read your mind – part I & part II (more to come!). A series of articles on how to read and interpret indicators of the communication process. You’ll learn to “read” what is going on in peoples minds.

Now some miscellaneous figures regarding the first month of existence.

Confidence per se isn’t bad. It frees us from the paralysis by analysis. The moment when confidence turns into a problem is when it becomes overconfidence.

Overconfidence refers to the human tendency to be more confident in one’s behaviours, attributes and physical characteristics than one ought to be. Surveying drivers, Ola Svenson (1981) found that 80% of respondents rated themselves in the top 30% of all drivers.

Overconfidence may cause people to persist in situations where their expected outcome is poor. In some situations, this might ironically cause them to improve their outcomes via greater effort.

Nevertheless, this bias can be counterproductive and lead to “exploitable” behaviors.

Almost all of us are being overconfident. Are you feeling different?