Following on from my post on the Power of the breath I shared how breathwork has been a valuable tool for me to use to create stillness and activate physiological changes. What goes hand in hand with breathwork is meditation.
The word “meditation” can conjure images of a Buddhist monk, sitting for hours in deep silence. It would be amazing to have no commitments, to be that enlightened and to enjoy such a restorative practice but let’s bring it into our modern reality.
If your car has an issue, it can’t be repaired on while travelling 100km/hour along the freeway. Neither can our mental health. We can only work on ourselves when we stop and take the time to properly look deeply under the hood.
Meditation benefits include decreased stress levels by lowering blood pressure, heart rate and inflammation in the body. There have been small scale scientific studies which demonstrated the physiological changes around stress and inflammatory chemicals, however as you’d expect the larger studies are often attached to pharmaceuticals to address these issues in our body. How would you feel knowing that you can improve your stress and overall wellbeing without needing a prescription?
Other enjoyable side effects of meditation include managing anxiety, understanding yourself better and being in the present moment.
To understand how and why meditation works, we first need to understand that our brain generates electrical energy in the form of brain waves. In descending energy frequency:
Gamma – highly alert, deep concentration, anxious or agitated.
Beta – active, alert or stimulated.
Alpha – very relaxed, calm and passive.
Theta – deeply relaxed, inwardly focussed, associated with the subconscious.
Delta – dreamless sleeping.
Most of our day we are using beta brain waves, occasionally moving between the others for a moment, or perhaps in high beta or gamma states when worrying or feeling stressed out. Typically, most will experience theta only right before falling asleep. Meditation slows your brain waves to alpha and theta, which can produce relaxation, being in a flow or feeling fully connected to mind and body. Personally, meditation makes me feel very centred and calm, with a deep sense of knowing.
My meditation experience has been like learning any other new exercise, initially awkward, needing practice, giving up at times and then making small changes to find what worked for me. I wasn’t ‘good’ at it straight away; my mind didn’t suddenly switch off like the books said it would, as a type A personality, I found that incredibly frustrating. It has taken consistent practice and exploration for me to reap the full benefits. Of course I am not at monk status of meditation, but I would love to share my tips on how to integrate meditation into your daily life that doesn’t require sitting cross-legged for hours at time.
My next post will go into the methods and examples on how to bring meditation into practice in everyday life. To get you started as an introduction, try this mini meditation:
Find something in nature to look at, it could be a flower, trees, animal, moving water or clouds. Sit in stillness and focus on your breathing to have slow smooth breaths in and out. Then let your eyes and gaze soften, fully noticing every part of what you are looking at. Appreciate the shape, movement, colours. Continue observing this element without rushing, if thoughts come up, just let them arise and then fall away.
The point of this form of meditation is that it brings you to the present moment and takes the brain’s focus away from yourself, allowing you to appreciate nature and extend the moment between thoughts. It can be done as a bite sized meditation at any time of day for as long as the time you have. The brain may try to take over initially, with the ego wanting to get back to your busy thoughts but try to gently sit with it and each time you will find it becomes easier.
Thanks for reading. Please feel free to reach out to me and share your experiences of meditating. Keep an eye out for my next post on the different ways to calm your brain waves through meditation.