I have been meditating for 35 years. I encourage all my clients to develop a meditation practice. Initially this might mean attending a yoga class to focus on relaxation and breathing. Yoga Nidra meditations are helpful, or learning a wisdom practice like zazen, zog chen or vipassanna. It helps to have a teacher or a method to follow.
Meditation does not come quickly or easily in the beginning. Meditation is a skill that you can train so that over time you can more quickly reach the deeper states of nourishment rejuvenation and bliss. Once it is established as a state, Meditation is a resource you can draw on.
Here is an example of a simple meditation
Choose a comfortable posture. Allow your spine to sit like a pile of stones.
imagine you are a pot of tea. allow the heavier elements, “tea-leaves” inside you to settle downwards like sediment, while clear fluids rise upwards
allow this this to continue for a few minutes
when your awareness has settled into your navel and lower belly you are ready to focus on your breath
bring your focus onto the breath. As you settle more over many cycles of the breath, the breath slows and settles and then breathing begins to happen differently, involuntarily, almost like diffusion, until it becomes very fine, like drawing silk. Then the mind can also become calm and rest in the breath. As the breath relaxes and expands outwards, the mind can rest outwards. As the breath draws inward, the mind comes to the centre.
Thus through meditation we can find ‘the breath within the breath”, a more subte way of breathing and following the breath. We discover that we can gradually change our state through practice and at will and can also surrender and drop into the ever-changing present moment.
Medication takes consciousness away from the ego-mind and connects it to deeper grounds of being in the body-mind and to feeling and sensing states.
This may have correlates in the cingulate cortex, the felt sense of self.
Here we are more at one with our surroundings and can connect to the deeper mind where creativity and intuition reside.
Meditation on the body and mind allows time with non-attachment and non-identification with the mind contents, freeing us.
Meditation is very nourishing.
There are legends of yogis who can live only on air.
In Chinese Medicine Breathing and food are the main sources of post-natal qi energy, and especially meditative breath is very nourishing and can improve sleep, and energy levels and is an evidence-based treatment for better mental health as well as for the body.
Meditation has been shown to repair telomeres, reversing some of the signs of ageing.