According to the American Psychosomatic Association, regular meditation increases the body’s immune function, helps control pain and fight depression
Thanks to meditation:
✔stress level decreases
✔general mental and physical health improves
✔we are less concerned with other people’s personal lives (less gossiping or sticking on social platforms) and stop complaining about problems to our colleagues , friends and family
✔actually, problems seem smaller, and we, on the contrary, become bigger and closer to our true “I”.
But meditation is so sad and boring! You just have to sit and try to breathe properly in anticipation, when, finally, the thoughts will leave your head, but their noise only increases, and everything around interferes, causing irritation. “I haven’t washed the dishes yet and I haven’t taken the clean linen out of the washing machine…”, “I have to defend the project in the morning, but I don’t have any conclusions about it…”, “I need to go to Pochaina and buy this little blue dress with embroidery, because Natalya is still on the way he will be caught from work tomorrow…”, “I was billed last month for the light as if I had not two rooms but a whole Tesla factory!..”, “Hey! Birds, why are you so colorful?! Can’t you see? I’m meditating here !!”
This is definitely a mess! But don’t worry. You just haven’t had normal meditation yet. We offer for consideration several types of meditative classes that may help you choose your own source of peace.
First, it is not necessary to just sit
Meditating while walking is a good way to calm your mind, especially if you focus on the rhythm of your steps or certain measured movements as you walk (rather than, say, focusing on your breathing). A walk in the forest, through the labyrinth of streets – any seemingly aimless walk is actually a centuries-old practice of contemplation, common among many spiritual denominations, including Catholicism.
Kata is a formal practice of martial arts, including tai chi
The movements of this practice are so complex that it is impossible to think about other things, which allows for deep meditative concentration. This is not to mention yoga, the varieties of which are currently admired by the whole world.
Daily meditation through household chores and actions
This is washing dishes, cooking dinner, cleaning out closets, cuddling with relatives or a loved one, pushing a stroller with a sleeping child for a walk, playing with pets, ironing socks or just the process of getting dressed for work. Without forcing yourself and not for the sake of a illusory big goal, focus on any of your actions or on a work task and you will turn into a real master of kung fu who observes his own movements in harmony with himself and the universe.
Listening to calm music, especially tunes without lyrics, creates a meditative state, allowing you to drift away from extraneous thoughts with the sounds.
❤And then there is loving-kindness meditation, guided relaxation, breathing meditation, Zen meditation, mindfulness meditation, Kundalini, Pranayama…
The fact is that in any case there is the SAME meditation that suits your needs, tastes and general outlook well. It’s just a matter of finding the right fit
Meditation is supposed to be a quieting of the mind where you think about nothing, filtering out the background noise and finding peace instead. This is why any exercise can be meditative: at a certain point, you can only think about the exercise. But of course, during each meditation session, the number of your thoughts will increase and try to distract you. It happens to everyone, especially in the beginning, but here’s a secret: it happens all the time, even to Zen masters. And this is normal. The trick to meditation is not to completely eliminate extraneous thoughts. And to allow them to pass through your consciousness without capturing you.
In the first stages of training, you will lose a lot of time. You will meditate for a while and suddenly realize that you have stopped somewhere on the way to nirvana to mentally list the to-do list for the week or to think about the global problems of humanity, and maybe at the same time you are trying to make a discovery in quantum mechanics (what is that, anyway?). in the end, this will happen less and less, and eventually you will learn to let mad and insidious thoughts pass through you, not giving them the power to take you captive, and you will continue to meditate, calmly noting to yourself: “That’s how a fool gets into your head. But let…”
Secondly, meditation should not last long
We are familiar with stories about Gichin Funakoshi (also known as the Father of Modern Karate), who meditated all day while standing under a waterfall, and about psychedelic activities, when people spend whole days and even weeks in a kind of trance. But this does not mean at all that during meditation you will have to stand on your head for hours without losing concentration.
When studying the effects of meditation, subjects meditated for less than an hour or less than 15 minutes. And even such sessions led to significant improvements in people’s physical, emotional and psychological health.
Some of the masters go even further and advise to start with one minute of meditation per day. This will not be enough to get an immediate tangible result, but it has two advantages:
🏆 you are among the champions of meditation in advance – anyone is able to allocate one or two minutes for a leisurely walk (even to the store) or mindlessly stare into window or in a quarterly report (we assure you – few people around you will notice it, and even if they do, so what?)
🌈you will be pleasantly surprised how much this moment of self-absorption (or, on the contrary – elevation) will change all the following minutes of your life. And such short-term useful stops can be made at any time and in any place. But just not behind the wheel, please.
And finally, thirdly: to meditate you don’t need to be a person of a certain type or character
Meditation has long lost the reputation of hippies, covered in holy oil and dust from under the feet of Krishna yogis, martial artists or vegans. Anyone can do it. Here is a partial list of certain social groups that actively practice meditation or encourage their people to practice meditation regularly:
– at least a few of your friends
– professional athletes
– singers, creators and 🎭actors (the same X Hugh Jackman, Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger)
– special forces of the military forces
– an impossibly long list of CEOs and entrepreneurs, including Richard Branson and Elon Musk
Anyone can meditate for their own healthy life and peace of others. It only lasts a minute – literally. And you can start today.
🙏🙏Om Mani Padme Hum…
