just as repeated practice of Sun Salutations builds strength and stamina, so regular meditation enhances the capacity for perception, awareness, and efficiency in processing. It can ease anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, and many other health issues.
The greatest benefit meditation offers may be freedom from the tyranny of thoughts that occupy the mind. You know those negative thoughts that tell you that you aren’t good enough, or that he’s wrong and you’re right, or that you don’t have time for yoga or meditation in your busy life.
I know, I sound like a broken record. But, I have been doing this for a long time, I see the results, not only in my own meditation, but in my clients. When a client comes to me I am usually their last resort. I know meditation is the number one place to start for any kind of healing, I’ll be honest, I lose some of them, because they can’t see how something so simple, as Ayurveda, can make them well. But the ones who follow my guidance, find themselves, and wellness in meditation.
Meditation has both short-and-long-term benefits to brain structure and function. Long time meditators have a thicker insula, the part of the brain that links the emotional center with the thinking center. The amygdala, the part of the brain tied to the fight-or-flight impulse, is more active than in non meditators.
But meditators also seem to be better able to calm that response than others.
We become what we meditate on. All we are is the result of what we have thought. Now, I’m sounding like a broken record again. Every illness you have started with a thought first. What happens in meditation is that we slow down the furious fragmented activity of the mind and lead it to a measured, sustained focus on what we want to become. As the mind slows down, we begin to gain control of it in daily life. For most of us staying present for even a minute is challenging.
Approach your mind as if it were a toddler learning table manners, you wouldn’t seat a two-year old at a linen-topped table and expect her first meal to be a quiet, graceful affair. You have to repeatedly show her what to do, gently reminding her to focus on getting the food in her mouth and patiently asking her to settle down, eventually, perhaps after years of loving reminders, she might sit with poise, employing the techniques you showed her those many, many times. Your mind needs the same kind of love, attention, and care you would show your toddler.
Its first attempts to stop its wild ramblings and to focus on one simple thing will likely bring up resistance. Your mind may be exhausted by a few minutes of focus, throw a temper tantrum, or try very hard to do as you ask but still wander off, since that’s the life it’s used to, just sit with it, like your child at the table, acknowledging how well it’s doing and noticing when it goes astray but never punishing it, just bringing it gently back to the task at hand. Don’t expect it to get the hang of this new idea in just a sitting or two--but know that if you stay with it, your mind will become more and more able to stay focused and do as you ask. Despite the oft-heard instruction to “still the mind,” the practice is not meant to help you get rid of all your thought--and you wouldn’t want to. Your ability to think is one of the greatest gifts in life, something to truly cherish. You are simply training yourself to become more aware of your thoughts and more important, of how you relate to them--a process that can change the very landscape of your live.
Nancy Adams Certified Thai Therapist
and Ayurveda Consultant
These are my own thoughts. I sometimes take writings from others to support my own ideas.
No comments:
Post a Comment