What is Meditation Exactly?
What is Meditation Exactly? First, let me tell you what it is not…
It’s not a religion and it’s not used to escape reality. It’s not about being zoned out, absent of thought or even about giving up control of one’s mind. To me, meditation is about mindfulness. Intentionally, creating the time to focus your awareness on and pay attention to what your mind is doing right in the moment. Subsequently, achieving a mentally and emotionally calm, clear state of mind.
A few weeks ago, a good friend of mind re-posted this photo to her Instagram story. It is literally a live high-tech image of my mind before and after meditation.
Our brains are constantly active – I mean that’s its job, right? Controlling every function of our bodies; thoughts included. Seldom, do we take the time to be still and focus exclusively on our thoughts. Through the practice of meditation we are quieting the mind, which is key to our overall health. Practicing mediation daily has documented health benefits which include:
- Stress management
- Pain management
- Increased sense of harmony within social and physical surroundings
- Sleep better at night
- Improved work performance on task
- Improved awareness of mental capacities
- Increased sense of well-being
If you’re not screaming sign me up, you must have not read all of those benefits correctly!
There are many forms of meditation and believe it or not, most of us have practiced some form of it before – Zen, Mantra, Transcendental, Vipassana, Chakra, Qigong to name a few.
I was inspired to begin practicing meditation after reading the New York Times Best Seller, “The Four Agreements”, by Don Miguel Ruiz. Being a beginner to the practice, I began using and am now a strong advocate of Headspace , the guided meditation app – where during each session you are provided with a brief explanation of how the mind behaves during meditation, you are guided through a particular meditation technique, and the session finishes with suggestions on how to integrate this technique into everyday life(Headspace,2019).
Will you incorporate meditation into your journey to operating at an elevated sense of well-being?