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| What is meditation – how to meditate |
Meditation is a group of mental training techniques. You can use meditation to improve mental health and capacities and help improve physical health. Some of these techniques are very simple to learn from a book or an article; others require guidance from a qualified meditation teacher.
WHAT IS MEDITATION
Most techniques called meditation include these components:
1. You sit or lie in a relaxed position.
2. You breathe regularly. You live deep enough to get enough oxygen. When you breathe out, you relax your muscles so that your lungs are well emptied but without straining.
3. You stop thinking about everyday problems and matters.
4. You concentrate your thoughts upon some sound, some word you repeat, some image, some abstract concept, or some feeling. Your whole attention should be pointed at the object you have chosen to concentrate upon.
5. If some foreign thoughts creep in, stop this foreign thought, and go back to the object of meditation.
The different meditation techniques differ according to concentration and how foreign thoughts are handled. By some methods, the objective is to concentrate so intensely that no foreign reviews occur.
In other techniques, the concentration is more relaxed so that foreign thoughts easily pop up. When these foreign thoughts are discovered, one stops them and goes back to pure meditation. Reviews coming up will often be about things you have forgotten or suppressed and allow you to rediscover hidden memory material. This rediscovery will have a psychotherapeutic effect.
THE EFFECTS OF MEDITATION
Meditation has the following effects:
1. Meditation will give you rest and recreation.
2. You learn to relax.
3. You learn to concentrate better on problem-solving.
4. Meditation often has a good effect on blood pressure.
5. Meditation affects inner body processes, like circulation, respiration, and digestion.
6. Regular meditation will have a psychotherapeutic effect.
7. Regular meditation will facilitate the immune system.
8. Meditation is usually pleasant.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HYPNOSIS AND MEDITATION
Hypnosis may have some of the same relaxing and psychotherapeutic effects as meditation. However, when you meditate, you control yourself; hypnosis lets another person or some mechanical device control you. Also, hypnosis will not have a training effect on concentrating.
A SIMPLE FORM OF MEDITATION
Here is a simple form of meditation:
1. Sit in a good chair in a comfortable position.
2. Relax all your muscles as well as you can.
3. Stop thinking about anything, or at least try not to think about anything.
4. Breath out, relaxing all the muscles in your breathing apparatus.
5. Repeat the following in 10 – 20 minutes:
— Breath in so deep that you feel you get enough oxygen.
— Breath out, relaxing your chest and diaphragm completely.
— Every time you breathe out, think the word “one” or another simple word inside yourself. You should think of the word in a prolonged manner and hear it inside you, but you should try to avoid using your mouth or voice.
6. If foreign thoughts come in, stop these thoughts in a relaxed manner, and keep on concentrating upon the breathing and the word you repeat.
As you proceed through this meditation, you should feel steadily more relaxed in your mind and body. It would help if you thought that you breathe steadily more effectively and that the blood circulation throughout your body gets more efficient. You may also feel an increasing mental pleasure throughout the meditation.
THE EFFECTS OF MEDITATION UPON DISEASES
As with any training, meditation may be exaggerated so that you get tired and worn out. Therefore you should not meditate so long or concentrate that you feel tired or mentally emptied.
Meditation may sometimes cause problems for people suffering from mental diseases, epilepsy, serious heart problems, or neurological diseases. On the other hand, meditation may be of help in the treatment of these and other conditions.
Before beginning to practice meditation, people who suffer from such conditions should check out the effects the different kinds of meditation have on their type of health problems. Be cautious if they choose to begin to meditate. It may be wise to learn meditation from an experienced teacher, psychologist, or health worker that uses meditation as a treatment module for the actual disease.
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