So I feel obligated to write this post having discovered meditation. Here me out, I’ll raise some good arguments in this post.
What is meditation?
“Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.” – Source
Meditation isn’t just a fad anymore like it was in the 70’s-90’s. It’s now scientifically proven that meditation alters the brain. It alters the shape of the brain, how your thoughts and emotions are controlled.
“Meditation practice prompts regulatory mechanisms when participants face aversive stimuli, even without an explicit request. Moreover, some studies reported increased insular activity in meditators, consistent with the hypothesis that meditation helps foster an interoceptive awareness of bodily and emotional states.” – US National Institute for Health. Source.
There you go. All the evidence you need that meditation works. Guess what though, meditation beats sceptics too! You don’t have to believe in meditation for meditation to work for you!
I started my meditation journey only a few weeks ago and already I am seeing benefits. I was seeing benefits from day 3. I took up the what the hell challenge, 10 minutes a day for 10 days and if you don’t see any benefits just stop. By day 3 I was meditating for 20 minutes a day and now I meditate for an hour or so a day. I’m not saying you need to by any means.
How is it benefiting?
So what changes have I noticed? The immediate changes are that I am a whole lot calmer. I found after around 5 days I could get myself into a thoughtless state even if I were simply walking around. This was the lightbulb moment for me. If I could get myself into a thoughtless state while I’m out and about then my life has just gotten a whole lot easier. Being able to let your thoughts go is one of the main goals of meditation. Our brains are wired so that feelings are mainly based on memories. Mediation helps us control those memories and makes it easier to let those thoughts go. You find in mediation that because you are concentrating on letting your thoughts go, you are thinking about your thoughts as they happen. That means your thoughts aren’t really your own right? Doesn’t that make it a whole lot easier to let them go without judgement?
How to meditate?
There are many ways to meditate and it may take a while for you to figure out what works for you. You can meditate using your breath, using a repeating mantra, counting or simply just being. The idea is to shut your brain off. We have so many thoughts going through our minds at any one time that it’s no wonder things get on top of us. We came from caves where simply surviving was life. Now we have it better than any other generation before us. There have never been more home comforts and convenience for humans than there is now. This has come at a cost though as we have lost touch with who we really are.
All humans want are two things, when you strip away all of the materialistic shite. They are peace and happiness. Peace and happiness come from within.
- Breathing Meditation. Make yourself comfortable. You don’t need to sit in any kind of position or worry about things like that for simple mindfulness meditation. Breathing in and out through your nose deeply, say in your head “breathe in”, “breathe out” for each breathe. By saying this in your head that’s all your mind can really do. Thoughts will pop into your head and you will get distracted. This is perfectly normal and will go down a little each day until you hear and see nothing! Whilst you are doing this you can body check (see below) which will help relax your entire body. Daily Calm | 10 Minute Mindfulness Meditation | Be Present – YouTube
- Mantra Meditation Breathing deeply in and out through your nose, repeat a mantra. A good mantra to use is Aum mantra. It’s the typical mantra you would think about when meditating. The repeating mantra is similar to the above technique. AUM CHANTING ~ OM at 396 Hz | Universal Mantra ➤ Dissolves Negativity, Removes Fear – YouTube
- – Counting Meditation
- – Simply Being
