Title: |
Meditation, the basics. | ||
Author: |
Joe L. Gaskovski | Section: |
General Wellness |
Submitted: |
February 2007 | Expertise base on: |
Experience |
In short, meditation is the practice of calming the mind. That means removing unwanted, unnecessary, and unproductive thoughts that fill our mind with endless chatter and distraction. Meditation has been practiced now for thousands of years and by countless individuals around the world. The fact that it's been around that long and used by so many people suggests that it must have some value and benefit, so what could that be? Let's take a quick look and find out.
Doctors studying longevity have found that the one thing that helps centurions (those who live past 100 years of age) live as long as they do is meditation. These very long-lived individual seem to cultivate a sense of peace, of well-being and somehow to maintain a long-term positive attitude. They do this through some form of meditation. Additionally, for those who regularly practice meditation it has been proven to promote overall inner peace and general wellness.
The benefits of meditation include:
- Promotes a deep sense of inner peace
- Help to improve self-esteem
- Supports increased creativity
- Promotes physical health and healing by stimulating the body's immune system
- Help to slow (even reverse) the signs of aging
- Reduces stress
The way in which we take advantage of the benefits of meditation is through simple meditation exercises where we use the basic experience of our body and our thoughts as a way to rebalance ourselves. The basic practice of doing a meditation is by directing the mind onto one specific area, usually through the breath. Once the mind begins to maintain a gentle focus on a single aspect then the meditator starts to connect with nature and himself or herself and may even feel a general sense of unity or one-ness that often comes along with it. This feeling of unity or connection has been shown to support increased communication with the body and to allow positive thoughts to stimulate positive physiological and psychological effects within the person.
The techniques to do effective meditations are easy to learn and can be readily incorporated into any lifestyle. Here is an example exercise to get you started in meditation. It has two parts, first a grounding exercise that is followed by a breathing exercise.
A basic grounding exercise:
- Sit on the floor (preferably padded) or in a comfortable chair with your legs crossed or in a half-lotus position with your hands relaxed on your lap. Keep your spine straight. Close your eyes and imagine a ray of light moving down along the base of your spine from your head down to the earth.
- Image this glowing ray of light is growing wider until it completely surrounds you inside it. This now becomes our protected grounded space.
- Remain in this position with this image for as long as you can while sensing the strength of the ground that supports you and the warmth of the light that warms and heals you.
It's really that simple. This little exercise should begin to give you a sense of the feeling of wellness that quickly happens when we begin to meditate. Remember, the more we feel grounded, the more aware we tend to become. Now that we feel what it's like to feel grounded, we should take a moment to cleanse our personal space. This is nothing more than releasing other people's negative energies that may have surrounded us, and usually those we are not aware of them.
- In order to clear away those negative energies from our space, simply imagine holding a vacuum cleaner in your hand that pulls in all the negative debris out of our space.
- As the negative debris is cleared away, image the warm light filling in the space that's left behind until our entire personal space becomes a positive protective field around you.
Next we move to a simple breathing exercise:
- Start by paying attention to your breath, slowly inhale through your nose (to a count of 4) and exhale through your mouth (to a count of 8) and then repeat.
- With each in-breath imagine that your body's cells are being fueled with fresh oxygen rich air full of positive healing energy. With each out-breath imagine your cells letting go of stress, illness and worries.
- Allow any thoughts that enter your mind to pass through as if they were drifting clouds. Let them come and go, drifting away without any effort from you at all. Be sure not to follow any of those thoughts, simply acknowledge them and let them drift away.
Doing this simple little grounding and breathing exercise is enough to begin your meditative learning experience. Remember, regularly practiced meditation brings balance between mind and body and all it takes is 10 to 20 minutes a day.
