MEDITATION
Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years. Meditation is a group of mental training techniques that involves relaxation, focus, and awareness. Meditation is to the mind what physical exercise is to the body.
You can use meditation to improve mental health and capacities and also to help improve physical health. The practice is usually done individually, in a still seated position, and with eyes closed.
Most techniques called meditation include the following components:
1. You sit in a relaxed position.
2. You breathe regularly. You breathe in deep enough to get enough oxygen. When you breathe out, you relax your muscles so that your lungs are well emptied but without straining.
3. You stop thinking about everyday problems and matters.
4. You concentrate your thoughts upon some sound, some word you repeat, some image, some abstract concept, or some feeling. Your whole attention should be pointed at the object you have chosen to concentrate upon.
5. If some foreign thoughts creep in, you stop this foreign thought and go back to the object of meditation.
The different meditation techniques differ according to the degree of concentration and how foreign thoughts are handled. By some techniques, the objective is to concentrate so intensely that no foreign thoughts occur at all.
In other techniques, the concentration is more relaxed so that foreign thoughts easily pop up. When these foreign thoughts are discovered, one stops them and goes back to pure meditation in a relaxed manner. Thoughts coming up will often be about forgotten or suppressed things and allow you to rediscover hidden memory material. This rediscovery will have a psychotherapeutic effect.
EFFECT
Meditation has the following effects:
1. Meditation will give you rest and recreation.
2. You learn to relax.
3. You learn to concentrate better on problem-solving.
4. Meditation often has a good effect on blood pressure.
5. Meditation has beneficial effects upon inner body processes, like circulation, respiration, and digestion.
6. Regular meditation will have a psychotherapeutic effect.
7. Regular meditation will facilitate the immune system.
HYPNOSIS AND MEDITATION
Hypnosis may have some of the same relaxing and psychotherapeutic effects as meditation. However, when you meditate, you control yourself; by hypnosis, you let some other person or some mechanical device control you. Also, hypnosis will not have a training effect on the ability to concentrate.
SIMPLE FORM OF MEDITATION
Here is a simple form of meditation:
1. Sit in a good chair in a comfortable position.
2. Relax all your muscles as well as you can.
3. Stop thinking about anything, or at least try not to think about anything.
4. Breath out, relaxing all the muscles in your breathing apparatus.
5. Repeat the following in 10 – 20 minutes:
• Breath in so deep that you feel you get enough oxygen.
• Breath out, relaxing your chest and diaphragm completely.
• Every time you breathe out, think of the word “one” or another simple word inside yourself. You should think of the word in a prolonged manner and hear it inside you, but you should avoid using your mouth or voice.
6. If foreign thoughts come in, stop these thoughts in a relaxed manner, and keep on concentrating upon the breathing and the word you repeat.
As you proceed through this meditation, you should feel steadily more relaxed in your mind and body, feel that you breathe steadily more effectively and that the blood circulation
throughout your body gets more efficient. You may also feel an increasing mental pleasure throughout the meditation.
THE EFFECTS OF MEDITATION UPON DISEASES
As with any training, meditation may be exaggerated so that you get tired and worn out. Therefore you should not meditate so long or so concentrated that you feel tired or mentally emptied.
Meditation may sometimes give problems for people suffering from mental diseases, epilepsy, serious heart problems, or neurological diseases. On the other hand, meditation may be of help in the treatment of these and other conditions.
Some research suggests that meditation may help people manage symptoms of conditions such as:
• Cancer
• Asthma
• Depression
• Heart disease
• High blood pressure
• Sleeping problems
• Headaches
People suffering from such conditions should check out what effects the different kinds of meditation have on their own kind of health problems before practicing meditation and being cautious if they choose to begin to meditate. It may be wise to learn meditation from an experienced teacher, psychologist, or health worker that uses meditation as a treatment module for the actual disease.
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