02.28.10
Posted in Meditation at 3:50 pm by Douglas Simchic
Even though, it is quite impossible to replicate the effect of human touch, many massage chair manufacturers have come close. Because of this, the massage chair has become a very hot item in the market today. If you do not own one yet, this list of seven things you would love about massage chairs can surely help you make a decision.
1. A massage chair is convenient. Getting a massage from a therapist means that you have to call to make an appointment, drive all the way to the spa center, and wait forever in line. Having a massage chair right inside your home is a lot more convenient, as you do not have to leave the house, wait for your turn or go search for a reliable therapist. You can have a relaxing massage therapy without having to stress yourself or go through all the trouble.
2. Get a massage any time you want with your own massage chair and the you won’t have to wait in line for hours or get onto a table that someone else has just climbed off of-spa centers are usually packed with different people getting massages.
3. Having a massage chair as a long-term investment for your health is worth around $1000 to a whopping $5000 for a massage chair…is it worth it? You bet, this would seem like a small price to pay if in exchange of this, you would be able to get optimal relaxation and health improvement. Moreover, if you calculate the price that you would have to pay for a therapist each time you would want to get a massage, this one-time expense can be less costly.
4. Some people are not comfortable with the idea of getting a massage in public (vending massage chairs) or in front of a total stranger (massage therapists). With a massage chair, you can enjoy the benefits of a massage therapy in the privacy of your own home. A massage chair can give you a private massage.
5. State of the art technology is put into each massage chair giving most manufacturers of massage chairs the ability to utilize the high-tech engineering and high quality materials to produce an efficient and reliable electronic massage chair. Most of the newer chairs have even added additional features like a full body heating system, recliners, arm and calf massages, and even an MP3 player.
6. Aside from a massage chair providing a soothing massage, this chair can also double as a piece of furniture that can add beauty and class to your home, and since most chairs come in leather, it will only add to the value of your home.
7. You can always get a massage that feels right. With a massage chair, you can do away with the guessing game. You can easily adjust the chair’s intensity and speed to get a massage therapy that feels right for you.
It is only after you buy yourself a massage chair that you would be able to realize what this list really means.
Dr. Alan Weidner has the Inada Sogno massage chair – the most anticipated chair on the market! Call 888-259-5380 for info.
categories: massage chair,massage chairs,self improvement,motivation,massage therapy,leisure,travel,investment,shopping,investment,spa,relaxing,benefits
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Posted in Meditation at 2:56 pm by Clayton Twiss
Meditation music downloads can surely help create a conducive atmosphere for your meditation sessions. You probably think the whole meditating thing is easy. But sometimes, it\’s just impossible to get in the right frame of mind without calming music.
That\’s why music and meditation mp3s have become so commonly used among those who frequently meditate. Sure, I know a lot of people who still choose to meditate without any musical soundtracks, but it can prove to be a challenge when the noise outside is just too loud.
One of the many beneficial attributes to using meditation music downloads is that they\’re easily adaptable. You\’re not required to go through any expensive course to learn how they work. It would help if you knew these 5 basic guidelines about meditation and how listening to music can make it a lot easier for you:
Stick to a schedule you can keep. Meditate as often as you want, but one brief session a day is more than enough to keep you productive. In using meditation download files, you will soon realize that you can easily create a routine that way.
Choose a nice location to meditate. Depending on your preference, any space in your home or workplace can be effortlessly used for meditating. But this could be challenging if you\’re surrounded by people all the time. When you listen to meditation music downloads, you can tune out even the most boisterous of your family members.
Get yourself in a very comfortable position. Keeping a calm pose is necessary for successful meditation. Swap sitting and lying positions between meditating sessions to see which one you find more comfortable. Either position is fine, just make sure that your spine is straight the entire time.
Get rid of any and all distractions that may break off your concentration. Make sure you don\’t have any distractions during your meditation session. Switch your cellphone off, tell your kids to keep it down during meditation time, or lock your doors if you want. Meditation music downloads not only tune out physical noise, but mental and emotional noise as well.
Meditate before, not after, meals. Meditating when you\’re full is not ideal because it can only distract you. What happens is that you feel more satisfied and more lazy on a full stomach, leading you to ignore proper meditation altogether. Make use of your meditation music downloads before meals and let them nourish you with food for the mind and the soul.
None of these are set in stone; they\’re meant to help you get started until you find what suits you best. By incorporating meditation music downloads in your sessions, you can start your meditating routine the best way and continue doing so for a very long time.
To learn more regarding seriously effective online meditative audio program, you should browse through this Holosync review to help you get started. You can discover helpful binaural beats info from this brief Brain Evolution System review as well.
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Posted in Meditation at 5:59 am by admin
Meditation music produces measurable results. It slows our heartbeats down to about one beat per second, which can allow us to relax, let go, meditate and/or fall asleep.
There are different types of meditation however, and different types of music are appropriate for each. A relaxing meditation is intended to help you slow down and release stress, so the best music is easy to listen to and has elements that embody peace and harmony. The instruments and type of music are those that you associate with these qualities. This can differ from person to person. For example, you might associate flute music with lilting tunes and it might then invigorate you, while someone else may equate flute music with peaceful forest scenes or waterfalls.
Positive music is the best kind for meditation because it has beneficial qualities and is emotionally and spiritually uplifting, many believe even healing. Additionally, it can be relaxing, calming, or even physically and mentally stimulating. Positive music is not about lyrics, but about the music itself.
The music of the ’50s was almost all positive, so much so that there was no need to call it that, as there was no “negative” music to speak of. Today’s music is much different; heavy metal, grunge, punk rock, and other genres all contribute to a large body of negative music, music that expresses and evokes images of anger, fear, ugliness, hatred and pain. Even classical music written with a lot of discord can be considered negative. In the early 20th century, the works of Arthur Schonburg were rejected and in some instances almost caused riots amongst concert goers. Since then discordant music has been accepted and incorporated by modern music composers and music schools.
Negative music has become a part of modern tv and movies, forming the basis of music scores that evoke terror, suspense, and fear, and thereby helping to shape modern culture.
Positive music, on the other hand, has been present through all time, and thanks to modern media, people are becoming aware of positive music forms they never even knew existed before, examples of which are Gregorian chants and ancient Jewish and Arabic music. Positive music has the ability to transform and uplift, infuse people with feelings of content and wellbeing.
This is not to say that sad music is negative. I’m thinking specifically of the music of Sarah McLachlan when I say that a singer/songwriter can reach deep and then soar, and leave you with a feeling of being understood in your sadness, yet uplifted with comfort and hope. There is rock music such as the music of the Moody Blues or U2 which can evoke images of angels.
This is not a statement about any particular genre of music in its entirety, just that if you listen carefully, you will recognize whether the music you are listening to is positive or negative by the way your mind, body, emotions and psyche react. When you are practicing a relaxing meditation, you can learn to choose the right music, and positive music is a great place to start.
Daniel Kobialka played principal second violin with the San Francisco Symphony for decades, sharing the stage and recording studio with some of the great musicians and conductors of our time. Visit his website to read his articles and learn more about the healing power of meditation music.
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02.27.10
Posted in Meditation at 4:44 pm by Albert Williams
Discovering the best classes for Pilates totally depends on the instructor. The instruction quality totally depends on the kind of instruction your instructor has had. The kind of certification that your instructor has and your natural talent for it plays a very vital role. Finding and choosing the right kind of Pilates classes that is suitable for you is not an easy task and might require you to do a little bit of research and searching.
It will also entail asking a lot of questions to determine who can teach Pilates classes best in your area. Besides experience there are a number of things that you should look for in an instructor. The type of class you take is also important, different types of classes will give you different things in terms of fitness benefits.
Queries that need to be cleared
You might consider asking these questions to an instructor as rude or disturbing but do bear in mind that these questions are very important. The most important question that needs to be asked first is the place from where the instructor got his certification and the time duration for which they have involved themselves with Pilates.
Not all certified instructors have been studying Pilates for a length of time. This is because prerequisites for training vary from one board to another. Some boards require that a potential instructor study the movement for a certain length of time while others will allow someone to sign up for a course right away without much experience.
Another important question you should ask before signing up for Pilates classes is if your instructor will not teach certain people. Not all instructors feel comfortable teaching everyone, for example some instructors will not feel comfortable teaching pregnant women, and others might not be able to teach someone who has certain health complications.
Scrutinizing Classes
The most apt way of finding if you will enjoy Pilates lessons is by scrutinizing a class. Take a close watch on how the instructor interacts with his students. Is there a practice of wiping the equipments after its being used by a client? And are you comfortable with the teaching style of an instructor.
Everyone works out for different lengths of times. You might not be ready to do a full hour of Pilates. Check if all sessions are the same length and if there are any that might better suit you. Although certification does not always guarantee that someone is a good instructor is does mean that your instructor has had some training.
If your instructor has had comprehensive training then they will have studied anatomy, physiology, and possibly may have had some sports science training. Training like this is important to make sure that students are not pushing themselves too much.
Know more on benefits of pilates. Correct pilates equipment will help you to achieve better performance with your pilates.
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Posted in Meditation at 3:57 pm by Kenji Minamoto
In as much as exercise is good for the overall well-being of your body, so too does a person\’s chakras gain from exercises that will develop and improve them. In executing the following chakra exercises, keep in mind that the main aim is always to enhance your chakra\’s health and balance, and in so doing boost your overall health and balance also.
Prior to conducting the actual exercises, it\’s always best if you quiet the mind, breathing deeply and steadily. Once relaxed, now you can start warming up. Once you are fully warmed up, you can now proceed with the chakra exercises.
Root Chakra
* Lie flat on your back and flex your legs. Shift your legs towards the right, and also turn your head in the opposite direction. Keep the position for several counts and then repeat it on your other side.
* Still lying flat on your back, place your arms along your sides, bend and raise your knees in the direction of your head, along with your head off the floor and lifted towards the ceiling. Hold this position for three counts, then repeat two times.
* Stand up and spread your legs until you are squatting. Just be sure you stay balanced, with your feet flat on the floor. Keep this position for several counts.
* Resume lying on the floor. Relax.
Sacral Chakra
* Repeat actions one and two of the root chakra exercise. Straighten your legs, keep the position for three counts, and repeat two times.
* Stand up and extend your arms to your side on a 30 angle. Softly lift one foot up from the ground until it is level with your other knee. Keep on holding the position for several counts, and repeat with your other leg.
* Resume lying on the floor. Relax.
Naval Chakra
* Repeat step one of the root chakra exercise. Move onto your stomach, raise one arm and its other leg off the floor. Maintain, and repeat with your other side. Repeat twice.
* Standing straight,breath deeply and pay attention to your naval area. Let out your breath sharply, pushing all of the air out from your lungs. Do this two times.
* Resume resting on the floor. Relax.
Be sure you enjoy a minute of silence in between your chakra exercises in order for you to profit fully from the progress you have made in the course of your work.
For more information on how to open chakras you can check out this website How to open a chakra
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Posted in Meditation at 4:22 am by admin
Since 1990 I have had the privilege of being the personal Mind Trainer to many of the world’s elite achievers. My consultation practice involves mind training using Neurofeedback (brain feedback) and Bioeedback (body feedback) computer analysis. I train brains. I fine tune minds to enhance performance of every kind.
Most of the people I work with are not high achievers when they first come to me, rather they are bright, motivated, educated individuals basically free from psychological problems. Their goal in seeking mind training is to bring their performance in their chosen field to a higher level. They intuitively know that if they are going to excel in their field, they need to be firing on all neurons. Mind Training is essentially the same process for Gold Medalists, Top Traders, Nobel Prize Winners, or anyone else who is engaged in peak-performance-oriented endeavor, and it always begins at the same point of self-awareness — with the realization that if they spend a lot of time honing their talents and a lot of money practicing their skills they cannot afford to have their state of mind interfere with their best performance.
Over the decades I’ve seen what is now called the “Performance Enhancement” industry grow from the first enthusiastic mental grasp of Olympians like Benji Durden, Olympic Marathon Team who in 1980 said, “If you train your mind to expect the unexpected, you can emotionally lick anyone”, to today’s superstar performers in every field imaginable, including Corporate America where Lauren Holmes, Author of Peak Evolution, asserts, “We can harness powerful evolutionary forces to function and achieve goals beyond our current potential”.
Today we know, from such excellent research as Florida State University Psychology Professor, K. Anders Ericsson’s Expertise and Expert Performance”, that the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers – whether in chess or surgery, ballet or computer programming, golf or financial market trading – are nearly always made, not born.
If we look at recent Behavioral Science research regarding Human Potential Development we’ll find that there is a core set of dynamics that distinguish the high achievers in any field of endeavor – including day to day life. The main recurring theme is that achieving high levels of success is as much a function of the self development of the person as the system being used to accomplish the goal.
But how to proceed with our own self development with such an ocean of “how to” material now available that when we search on Amazon under the words “self development”, we get over 47,000 results and even a search on “peak performance” generates over 10,000 results?
The dilemma is not just how do we navigate this sea of information, but how do we even find our way to the dock so we can embark on this voyage in the right self development ship? Let’s ask some of today’s leading peak performance researchers for some simple directions.
Professor Dean Keith Simonton of UCLA has spent his career teaching dynamics and determinants of high achievement through examinations of high levels of success in such things as: award winning science, presidential leadership, military genius, music and literature masterwork and more.
In his treatise entitled Greatness, Professor Dean Keith Simonton points out that mastery of any domain requires approximately 50,000 “chunks” of information. This applies across all domains, from chess to sports to scientific research and beyond. In order to develop their talent and acquire the experience, the great individual needs to be able to sustain focused attention on work for considerable amounts of time.
Here then is our first direction — self development depends on acquiring a vast cache of information and acquiring it requires time and attention.
Several of the world’s foremost “experts on expertise” (one of whom was K. Anders Ericsson), in their seminal book, The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, showed that future expert performers engage in intensive training activities over a period of ten or more years in the cultivation of superior performance. Success, they find, rather than being a result of talent, is instead a function of intensive, deliberative practice conducted while in a state of heightened attention and concentration.
Our second direction then is that Self development depends on being able to achieve and maintain heightened states of attention for lengthy periods of time.
From his research on heightened states of attention, University of Chicago Psychology Professor, Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi (pronounced ‘Me-hi Chicksent-me- hieé) author of Flow – the Psychology of the Optimal Experience has found that this kind of sustained attention is only possible when a person enters a pleasurable mental/emotional state while immersed in effortful activity. He has dubbed this state The Flow, since one of its main characteristics is a perceived mental state where things just seems to flow naturally. The Flow state is what allows achievers to be both productive for sustained periods and able to overcome periods of doubt and discouragement on the way to success.
Our third direction is that, since we already know that talent can be developed by time and attention, we must learn how to achieve the pleasurable optimal mind state for immersing ourselves in effortful activity.
Simonton further examined the specific works of some of the most eminent creative individuals in different fields and came to a startling conclusion. The odds of generating an achievement of lasting merit did not increase over the creator’s lifetime! To put it another way, the greatest writers, artists, and thinkers produced as many or more clunkers to works of genius throughout their careers. They were successful, Simonton notes, because they simply produced more.
Our fourth direction is that if we are to be productive in terms of acquiring information, spending time, developing our attention and achieving high performance mind states, we must also be prodigious in our productivity.
As I follow these directions and travel the leading edge paths of peak performance research it becomes self evident that each path leads us directly to the benefits of training our minds. Most books in the information sea of self development psychology emphasize such techniques as positive thinking and visualizations. These can be helpful to some degree, certainly. However to transform ourselves into a peak performer, by following these four directions, we clearly begin to see that it is necessary to transform our mental state – our state of consciousness.
Structured Mind Training, using various brain training modalities such as Biofeedback, Neurofeedback, Brainwave Entrainment etc., gives performers the skills to transform consciousness as we change our mind states at will to create optimal peak performance mind states such as The Flow. Further, Mind Training also gives the performer specific practical mind management skills throughout the self development process. Ericsson describes many of these necessary skills in his many books on expert performance, such as: general and practical intelligence, affecting differences in brain activity, self-regulated learning, deliberate practice, knowledge management, creativity and mitigating aging. Each mind management skill mastered fosters transformation of consciousness in the greatest sense.
Our fifth direction then is that self development requires those who aspire to greatness in any endeavor must become skilled at transforming consciousness through mental training.
In the book Peak Performance: Business Lessons from the World’s Top Sports authored by several performance experts we learn that the Greats are great because they have potency, performance skills, and they practice powerfully. Their potency comes from their sense of purpose, performance comes from skill in achieving peak performance states, and powerful practice comes from transforming consciousness at will. These attributes enable the world’s Greats, in any area, to perform beyond their current level, continually creating new peak performances for themselves and even for the developmental evolution of our species.
Developing our minds using various structured mind training tools available today enables us to develop our potency, performance and practice – in other words Mind Training develops our Greatness. In fact, its development right from the very first stages of our self development journey, from mind training for skills to more easily acquire information, to achieving peak performance mind states, to mastering mind management skills, through to transforming consciousness at will, and through it all we are directly engaged in the process of developing our measure of greatness within.
No wonder Mind Training is the self development ship where people are flocking to navigate the vast sea of their Human Potential. Mind Training’s voyage is one of ongoing peak performances, and its route is Greatness.
Patricia Chamberlin’s track record as a Professional Mind Trainer to elite achievers in every field, including Top Financial Market Traders, Gold Medal Athletes, Award Winning Celebrities and countless others, confirms her ability to enable ordinary people to excel in extraordinary ways.
Patricia has had a wide range of mind training experience during her 25- year career, including Human Potential Author, Keynote Speaker, TV and Radio Host, and Internationally Syndicated Columnist. Public Broadcasting System made a film featuring Patricia and her widely acclaimed brainwave training work. In 1990, she founded MindPower Mind Training for Peak Performance.
Patricia has over 20 years experience training the minds of financial professionals, world-class athletes, educators, corporate leaders and elite achievers in all fields of endeavor. After becoming an accomplished Trader herself six years ago, her private mind training practice has specialized in mind training for Financial Market Traders.
MindPower Courses
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02.26.10
Posted in Meditation at 10:35 pm by admin
Meditation is a group of mental training techniques. You can use meditation to improve mental health and capacities, to improve your motivation for your goals and also to help improve the physical health. Some of these techniques are very simple, so you can learn them from a book or an article; others require guidance by a qualified meditation teacher.
WHAT IS MEDITATION
Most techniques called meditation include these components:
1. You sit or lie in a relaxed position with closed eyes.
2. You breathe regularly. You breathe in 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, you just stop this foreign thought, and go back to the object of meditation.
The different meditation techniques differ according to the degree of concentration, and how foreign thoughts are handled. By some techniques, the objective is to concentrate so intensely that no foreign thoughts occur at all.
In other techniques, the concentration is more relaxed so that foreign thoughts easily pop up. When these foreign thoughts are discovered, one stops these and goes back to the pure meditation in a relaxed manner. Thoughts 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 reduce stress and 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 upon the blood pressure.
5. Meditation has beneficial effects upon inner body processes, like circulation, respiration and digestion.
6. Regular meditation will have a psychotherapeutically 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 are in control yourself; by hypnosis you let some other person or some mechanical device control you. Also hypnosis will not have a training effect upon the ability to concentrate.
A SIMPLE FORM OF MEDITATION
Here is a simple form of meditation. By this meditation technique, you should concentrate in an easy manner. This will allow foreign thoughts to pop up. These are handled one by one as they appear. You proceed as follows:
1. Sit in a good chair in a comfortable position.
2. Close your eyes and 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 the word in a prolonged manner, and so that you hear it inside you, but you should try to avoid using your mouth or voice.
6. If foreign thoughts come in, just 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, feel 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 any kind of training, meditation may be exaggerated so that you get tired and worn out. Therefore you should not meditate so long or so concentrated that you feel tired or mentally emptied.
Meditation may sometimes give 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.
People suffering from such conditions should check out what effects the different kinds of meditation have on their own kind of health problems, before beginning to practise meditation, and 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 use meditation as a treatment module for the actual disease.
Knut Holt is an IT consultant and marketer focusing on health items. —–TO FIND natural help against aging symptoms, acne, skin problems, hypothyroidism, hemorrhoids, heart problems, joint pain, over-weight and much more, PLEASE VISIT:—-
http://www.abicana.com
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Posted in Meditation at 7:32 pm by admin
A meditation technique where one focuses on the field or background and embrace all the perception around that field is called Mindfulness Meditation. It is in contrast to another meditation technique called concentration meditation, where one channels all the energy and focus on one specific object or subject, blocking all distractions around.
In mindfulness meditation, the meditator is trained to have an open focus of all the inter-related senses coming from the immediate environment while concentrating on a unifying object or a foundation from which to channel all the other senses that is being absorbed or experienced.
For instance, a person using mindfulness meditation can focus on his or her breathing, while at the same time incorporating other senses around him or her, like the sound of leaves on swaying tree branches nearby, a faint music playing, or the perception of movements from other people from a distance. The meditator incorporates his or her breathing in harmony with these surrounding senses.
In concentration meditation, the meditator holds attention on a single specific focus of thought, which could be a prayer bead, or a thought-based anchor for concentration like a mantra or repetitive prayer.
There is no argument on which of the techniques is better. Those who have developed a higher level of concentration also shift easily between mindfulness meditation to concentration meditation or vice versa in a single meditative session.
While concentration meditation trains the mind to withdraw all attachment beyond the self to develop full self-awareness, mindfulness meditation encourages the mind to recognize elements beyond the self to be able to know the whole self as a constitution of all the other elements.
Instead of being distracted, the meditator should acknowledge the existence of things beyond the self and incorporate it in harmony with the awareness of existence at that particular time and space to get a holistic perception of self.
Mindfulness meditation has a similar concept in the religion Buddhism, which also gives high importance on the practice of meditation to achieve self awareness and clarity of the mind. This is the Buddhism meditation technique called Vippasana, which advocates for various mind practices for the purpose of developing insights and general wisdom by seeing the true nature of the self along with the true nature of the surrounding realities. This is in contrast to the technique Shamatha, which develops one’s ability to focus the attention on a single point, unobstructed other realities beyond that point. This is the counterpart of concentration meditation.
In the western forms of meditation, there are concentration techniques devoid of any mystical or rigid religious beliefs. Still, mindfulness meditation finds it way in many of the modern schools of meditation, particularly in yoga, which promotes peace of mind by suspending realities filled with worries and fears, cleansing the mental state by invigorating mental relaxations and absorbing fresh perceptions like mind control, free will, and the presence of guidance and protection from a higher source.
Absorbing these positive states of mind requires mindfulness meditation, as it recognizes surrounding elements that are helpful in developing a healthier and renewed perception of the self.
http://www.yourbestmeditation.com/
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Posted in Meditation at 10:54 am by admin
There was a time when meditation or no meditation was a serious question for me. I come from a Protestant background where in my view (which is admittedly biased) prayer was a practice of reciting important-sounding words. I struggled for years with the concept of prayer. It did not make sense to me that in church other people should pray on my behalf, but then I thought that was just me being the rebel again, and I kept quiet about it.
Outside of church I read books about prayer, and the prayers of other people. Still, there was this feeling inside of me that it is not quite right. Eventually I gave up on figuring out what prayer is about and just got on with life.
Of course I had conversations with God in my head, but none of the books that I read described these conversations as prayer. The conversations were also quite one-sided, because I told God what he/she needed to know about my life. Listening to God did not even cross my mind, because at the time I thought “If I cannot see God, then I also cannot hear God”. I intuitively knew that there must be something or someone out there, but the thought that this someone or something was able to actually speak to me was too far-fetched for me to accept.
You will agree with me that having a one-sided conversation is quite lonely, especially when you want reassurance in times of need and encouragement in challenging times. All the time I felt a need to confirm that there is someone on the “other side” that was hearing me.
I kept searching and was introduced to meditation. I tried it initially because it was not recommended in my culture – the church was there to take care of my religious needs and that should have been enough. However, sometimes the way to get me to do something is to put obstacles in my way – especially if the obstacles are based on fear and misconceptions that I can expose.
I found meditation to be quite an interesting experience. It definitely helped me to relax. I always felt calmer and more secure after meditating.
I was surprised when I discovered that meditation does not mean losing your consciousness. I had this perception that when you meditate you actually leave your body, only to discover that during meditation I am still fully in charge of the process. I could compare it to driving a familiar route every day. I know exactly where to slow down, where to turn, how long it will take me to get to my destination, and I simply drive.
If you show me detail pictures of buildings or other landmarks along the route, I might not be able to recognise them, even if I have travelled the same route every day for a year. The reason for this would be that I in fact go into a meditative state while driving when the route becomes familiar, and my mind gets occupied with other things like planning my day or having a conversation with a passenger.
The same happens during meditation. This is because meditation is an inner journey. I still remain in charge of the route, and I can return to “reality” any time I want to.
I initially found that guided meditations work much easier for me. Meditation requires a still mind, but at the same time meditation stills the mind. Getting the balance right is not so simple when your life is in turmoil or when finding a quiet place to meditate in a busy household is a challenge.
Saying to yourself that you must clear your mind of all thoughts so that a meditation can be successful is like saying to yourself that now is not a good time to think of a yellow elephant. Guess what picture just popped into your mind? Yes – the same happens when you focus on having no thoughts in your mind. Suddenly all the thoughts tumble into your mind.
This is where guided meditations made a huge difference to me. Rather than focusing on clearing my mind, I was able to focus on the guided meditation. As a result I experienced the benefits of meditation much sooner.
Before I got to understand that I create my own reality and my own future, I experienced fear, anxiety and even depression. These also disappeared with meditation.
Probably the biggest surprise for me was to discover that while in a meditative state I have access to images, thoughts and information that made a massive positive difference to my life. Initially I thought that these images, thoughts and bits of information are just my imagination, and I was surprised at how active my imagination was.
But then I discovered that what I received during meditation somehow had a either a direct or a subtle link to what I experienced when I was not meditating. I tried to ask questions while I was “awake”, and found that I received very interesting answers while I was meditating.
Eventually I realised that meditation is probably a form of prayer – but meditation is about listening rather than about talking.
I am still working on this, but I think that prayer is a way of asking, whereas meditation is a way of getting answers. This definition works for me, because I get many answers during meditation – and it works even better when I first ask the questions and then do my meditation.
Not all the answers come during meditation. I have discovered that there are more coincidences and more synchronicity in my “waking” life, and often things just happen around me that make me feel “yes – there is another answer”.
The fears, anxieties and depressive feelings have disappeared, and instead I am much more at peace with myself, especially during uncertain times. And I believe that I have found a way of listening to God. It is quite comforting to know that my communication with God is no longer one-sided.
I have decided to use my experiences and provide guided meditations to other people who may want to try meditation but are not sure how to do it. I still benefit even from recording the guided meditations. Every time I do a meditation, I feel more in control of my life and my thoughts.
An link to an example of a guided meditation, as well as guidelines on how to practise meditation, is available on my purple blog.
I wish you a lovely journey, and trust that you will benefit from meditation as much as I do.
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