What is Meditation?
What is Meditation?
How can we demystify something that is readily available to us all?
What is meditation and how can it help you?
To answer ‘What exactly is meditation?’ itself presents a conundrum. Meditation is not an exact science nor a perfect art. Meditation is a state of profound stillness, of body thoughts and feelings.
The ability to simply sit and be.
Meditation Explained...
Meditation is an activity, a choice, something we do intentionally. It is an active process of letting go. The habit of our minds is to produce thoughts. We tend to follow our thoughts, to create a dialogue in our heads. The process of meditation is to let go of our thoughts by not following them, by simply letting them go.
Everybody can meditate. Whilst meditation should be something that comes naturally to us all – the ability to simply sit and be, rather than constantly rushing around doing things, or worrying about things we haven’t done or should be doing – for many people it is neither habitual nor regularly practised and can seem hard to do.
Meditation leads us to profound stillness; it enables us to reach a place of inner silence, to stop the chattering of our minds. Being in this state of inner calm and silence is the time when we can really know who we are. Meditation helps us to make better choices in life and believe in ourselves.
Research shows that meditation impacts on our whole systems. Brain scans show the parts of the brain associated with positive emotions such as happiness, and compassion become stronger and more active as people meditate; and regular meditators have a boosted immune system compared with those who don’t.
It is a way of getting to know ourselves intimately, to connect with one’s true self; peeling back the layers that we have created over the years to protect ourselves, or to be the person we think other people think we should be – the person we are in response to the external environment – and become the person we are inside our true selves..
Meditation is an internal state. It allows us to experience our own worlds from a deeper place within ourselves. It allows us to be centred, to stay in the present moment without constantly re-living the past or making up a future that we cannot know. Meditation is simply a process of letting go: a state of being not doing.
"Resting in our true nature and disregarding all other distractions"
(9 Secrets of Successful Meditation, Samprasad Vinod)
What meditation isn't...
Meditation is an active choice, it is not a passive activity that we can let somebody do to us or for us. That is why at Devon and Dorset Meditation we aim to teach a simple technique that you can use in your daily life
- It’s not weird or a hang over from the hippy period - it’s just not yet a natural part of western culture. In India tiny children naturally sit to meditate on a daily basis
- It is not hard - we can dispel the image of meditation as a higher level practice reserved only for holy men and ancient yogis. In reality with proper guidance, meditation is easy and fun to learn
- It takes years of dedicated practice to receive any benefits from meditation - not so. The benefits of meditation are both immediate and long-term. You can begin to experience benefits the first time you sit down to meditate and in the first few days of daily practice
- Meditation is not sleep - we remain in a state of consciousness which we sometimes refer to as superconsciousness - but it can greatly aid sleeplessness through its calming effect and quieting the mind
''I just wanted to thank you for the fabulous mediation sessions on the last two Mondays; you are an inspirational teacher and I loved every bit of it! I am determined now that the meditation door has been opened for me it will never be closed again.''
Jane
