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Do you know Zazen practice of Buddhist?  I assume some of you have seen Buddhist monk sitting on the floor folding their legs, and occasionally being hit by a wooden stick (ouch!).  It is a form of meditative discipline of Buddhist and it helps sharpening concentration.

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The way of sitting and ideal location to sit for this zazen practice can vary depending on sect or school of Buddhism; however, regardless of the method, all is supposed to help you to straighten your posture and stablise your breathing pattern.  According to an article, such practice of Buddhist is currently catching attention of Japanese women.

The reason why zazen practice is now being so attractive to Japanese women seems to be because zazen not only helps people to correct bad posture and breathing patterns, but improve the level of beauty from within by correcting negative habits from your daily life!  Also, zazen practice is believed to be a good opportunity to relax your mind and body staying away from your thoughts while practicing zazen, and this let you taking one step back to objectively observe your busy daily life.

For those who have never seen zazen practice, I have found a movie to share with you.

Hmn, I am not an everyday zazen practitioner myself, and of course, this movie shows just an example of zazen practice in Japan, but you can see that it seems the form of zazen sitting can be pretty flexible (i.e. folding legs or just sit on the floor with your knees bent) unlike my impression (or prejudice…), and they are more focusing on the outcome from the zazen practice rather than strictly sticking to single form, which can be seen in easy zazen on a chair!!  For such a user friendly approach, there seems to be more people enjoying zazen practice nowadays not just for the mental practice reasons as a part of Buddhist practice but also for relaxation purpose.  I don’t know why but it sounds like zazen is make its way over to our modern life to help us out, and I cannot deny the fact that I’m more than interested to try it myself, too!!

What do you think about today’s article?

If you have actually tried zazen before either inside or outside Japan (or Asia even) please share your experience episode with me!  I will be looking forward to hearing from you 🙂

Source: Walker plus

This is JAPAN Style!