Meditation and Mindfullness
So what is Meditation?
Meditation isnât about becoming a different person, a new person, or
even a better person. Itâs about training in awareness and getting a
healthy sense of perspective. Youâre not trying to turn off your
thoughts or feelings. Youâre learning to observe them without judgment.
And eventually, you may start to better understand them as well.
Learning to meditate is like learning any other skill. Think of it like
exercising a muscle that youâve never really worked out before. It takes
consistent practice to get comfortable.
Meditation has been scientifically proven to boost the immune system,
lower blood pressure, relieve depression, increase productivity, and
promote creative thinking.
Mindfulness, which has its roots in the teachings of the Buddha, can be
a transformative practice for Buddhist and secular practitioners alike.
The practice of compassion, or Bodhicitta which is central is the
Buddhist path, has also been proven to improve health, emotional well
being, increase happiness, improve personal relationships, and benefit
families and communities at large.
Itâs estimated that 95%of our behavior runs on autopilot. Thatâs because
neural networks underlie all of our habits, reducing our millions of
sensory inputs per second into manageable shortcuts so we can function
in this crazy world. These default brain signals are so efficient that
they often cause us to relapse into old behaviors before we remember
what we meant to do instead.
Mindfulness is the exact opposite of these default processes. Itâs
executive control rather than autopilot, and enables intentional
actions, willpower, and decisions. But that takes practice. The more we
activate the intentional brain, the stronger it gets. Every time we do
something deliberate and new, we stimulate neuroplasticity, activating
our grey matter, which is full of newly sprouted neurons that have not
yet been groomed for âautopilotâ brain.
A basic meditation method for beginners
The first thing to clarify: What weâre doing here is aiming for mindfulness, not some process that magically wipes your mind clear of the countless and endless thoughts that erupt and ping constantly in our brains. Weâre just practicing bringing our attention to our breath, and then back to the breath when we notice our attention has wandered.
- Get comfortable and prepare to sit still for a few minutes. After you stop reading this, youâre going to simply focus on your own natural inhaling and exhaling of breath.
- Focus on your breath. Where do you feel your breath most? In your belly? In your nose? Try to keep your attention on your inhale and exhale.
- Follow your breath for two minutes. Take a deep inhale, expanding your belly, and then exhale slowly, elongating the out-breath as your belly contracts.
Welcome back. What happened? How long was it before your mind wandered away from your breath? Did notice how busy your mind was even without your consciously directing it to think about anything in particular? Did you notice yourself getting caught up in thoughts before you came back to reading this? We often have little narratives running in our minds that we didnât choose to put there, like: âWhy DOES my boss want to meet with me tomorrow?â âI should have gone to the gym yesterday.â âIâve got to pay some billsâ or (the classic) âI donât have time to sit still, Iâve got stuff to do.â
If you experienced these sorts of distractions (and we all do), youâve made an important discovery: simply put, thatâs the opposite of mindfulness. Itâs when we live in our heads, on automatic pilot, letting our thoughts go here and there, exploring, say, the future or the past, and essentially, not being present in the moment. But thatâs where most of us live most of the timeâand pretty uncomfortably, if weâre being honest, right? But it doesnât have to be that way.
We âpracticeâ mindfulness so we can learn how to recognize when our minds are doing their normal everyday acrobatics, and maybe take a pause from that for just a little while so we can choose what weâd like to focus on. In a nutshell, meditation helps us have a much healthier relationship with ourselves (and, by extension, with others).