WAYS TO MEDITATE

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There are countless ways to meditate, but all boil down to four basic techniques.

The first way involves focusing your concentration on something.  For example, you can focus all of your attention on an object such as a candle, or on an image, or on a sound, or on your breathing, or on walking.

The second way involves learning about yourself and your world by observing your thoughts about a topic without judgement or emotion.  This is called mindfulness, insight or awareness meditation.  

The third way involves thinking deeply about a topic, for example it could be a passage in a book or on a virtue such as compassion.  This is called analytical meditation.

The fourth way involves visualisation using your imagination. For example you can visualise a peaceful scene, such as gazing out on the ocean when you meditate.  You can even buy a CD which guides you through a visual meditation if you wish.   Visualisation can also be used in a practical way to help you achieve your goals.    

Happy meditating!

THE BENEFITS OF MEDITATION

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"The gift of learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this life."   

 -  Sogyal Rinpoche

The benefits of meditation can be divided into four parts:  medical, concentrative, spiritual and emotional. 

Medically, meditation may improve your physical health and it does this in two main ways:-

1.     It helps the body to relax; and

2.     It helps to calm the mind.

This helps to restore the body to a state of balance.  Stress affects every system in the body in a negative way, for example high blood pressure can lead to heart disease.  The immune system also weakens under stress, making you more susceptible to various illnesses.    

Meditation can lower blood pressure, calm the nervous system, reduce muscle tension, lower cortisol levels in the body (a hormone associated with stress) and strengthen the immune system.  Serotonin is known to increase by meditating (a neurotransmitter that helps regulate mood, appetite and sleep). 

Being calmer in body helps us to be more mentally, spiritually and emotionally peaceful too.  Studies have also been done which suggest that meditation may also help manage chronic pain and assist (as an adjunct to treatment) in healing various illnesses. 

There have been several studies that suggest that meditation may also slow the ageing process. 

Meditation can help to increase your powers of concentration, a mental skill that’s useful in all areas of life, especially in areas of study, career and sport, where an increased ability to focus can improve your performance and help you to become more successful at what you do.   

Spiritually, it can help you live in the present moment (making the most of what you have) and give your more clarity, insight and self awareness.  It can also help to increase your powers of intuition, which is useful for making the right decisions in your life.   

Emotionally it may help you to be more balanced and give you more happiness, calm and inner peace. 

Remember, consistent regularity is the key to gain the benefits of meditation.  But the good news is, once a routine is established, meditation can become pleasantly addictive. 

An important tip for beginners:  it’s best to start off slow.  Rather than trying to meditate for half an hour to an hour, start off with five to fifteen minutes, then gradually increase the time as you get more comfortable with it (if you wish to do so).  If you start off with too long a meditating period, you might find it too much of a chore, and that might discourage you from continuing on with your practice.   

As a general rule of thumb, aim to meditate for a minimum of ten to fifteen minutes a day.  As your concentration improves, you might find yourself naturally wanting to extend this time.

Another good book on meditation I can recommend is “The Meditation Experience” by Madonna Gauding.  It includes a meditation CD and journal to record notes, meditation and mindfulness excercises and techniques and a section on combining meditation with yoga, walking, Tai chi and Chi kung.  Click on this link to check it out at Amazon bookstore. 

For further reading on the many benefits of meditation, check out these books: 

Do you want to meditate? by Eric Harrison

Hurry up and meditate by David Michie

Working with meditation by Madonna Gauding

How to meditate by Paul Roland

Meditation for wimps by Miriam Austin

INTRODUCING MEDITATION

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Do you need to clear your headspace and are curious about learning how to meditate?  What images come to mind when you think of meditation?  Do you think of some mystical, holy Guru sitting on a mountaintop chanting ‘Om’ in the lotus position?  Or perhaps of a lone monk meditating in some remote cave?  Do you think that you’re just too busy to meditate or that it just sounds too difficult or that your mind is just too active?  Do you think that meditation is only for mystics or spiritual people or for people in certain religions? 

Let me dispel such myths.  Far from being mystical, meditation is very simple, practical and down to earth.  Its benefits are available to everyone, regardless of religion or beliefs, not just an elite few.  And the ones who say they’re too busy, it’s too hard and their minds are just “too active” are often the ones who would benefit from meditation the most!

Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years and is now no longer the precinct of Buddhist Monks and New Agers.  It has now been embraced into the mainstream, with many Doctors now often recommending it to their patients as an aid to improve their health and wellbeing.

Meditation is defined as the practice of focusing one’s attention on an object and holding it there.  The ‘object’ can be anything, for example the breath, a word or phrase, a physical object like a candle or even sounds, like birds singing outside your bedroom window in the morning.  The attention on the object is usually held for a specified period of time, which can vary from five minutes to an hour or even several hours (think meditation retreats).

There are many ways to meditate, so you can decide which technique suits you best and stick with that or use several different techniques for variety if you wish.  There are several very common meditation techniques, such as focusing on the breath, but meditation can also be done creatively.  You can meditate while walking, sitting in a park or by the sea, coloring a mandala, or even walking a labyrinth.  It can even be combined with other practices, such as yoga, Chi Kung and Tai Chi to enhance it’s effectiveness.

Meditation can also be combined with mindfulness as a daily practice for greater happiness, inner peace and personal growth.  Whereas meditation can be defined as focusing one’s attention on an object for a specified period of time, mindfulness can be defined as deliberately and non-judgmentally paying attention to the present moment.  The practice of meditation provides a good training ground for the practice of mindfulness as with daily practice over time, it can enhance your powers of concentration (which comes in very handy when you’re trying to focus on the present, rather than engaging with your mind as it prattles on and on about the awful day you just had at work). 

You can take advantage of the several enforced waiting times in a day by doing quickie ‘spot’ meditations, for example in situations where you’re forced to wait, such as standing in a queue at the bank or sitting in your car waiting for the lights to go green.  Instead of fuming at the long queue or cursing at the red lights, try focusing on the ‘in’ and ‘out’ movement of your breath.  Quickie ‘spot’ meditations can last anywhere from thirty seconds to five minutes, depending on the situation you find yourself in. 

If thoughts come into your headspace while you’re trying to focus on the object of your meditation, don’t engage with their banter, rather strive to accept and observe those thoughts without judgment, then gently direct your focus back on the object of your meditation again. 

The many benefits of both meditation and mindfulness have been well researched and documented.   Well if it’s so good, you may ask, why isn’t everyone doing it and doing it every day without fail?  Because like achieving many worthwhile objectives, it requires work and self discipline but once persevered with, the benefits can be numerous and possibly even life changing. 

To gain the benefits of meditation, you should try and set aside time to meditate every day, or at least several times a week.  If you let weeks and months go by before you try meditating again, you’ll be mentally ‘out of shape’ and most likely find it harder to do. 

If you’re keen to start meditating straight away, I recommend reading "Hurry up and meditate" by David Michie.  Best of luck with the headspace clearing.