Meditation and My Health

           When you begin a meditation practice, it's very possible that your focus and concentration will be affected by various bodily aches and pains. After all, when is the last time you attempted to sit quietly for twenty to thirty minutes at a time? Many of us unconsciously hold tension in large muscle groups such as those surrounding the neck and shoulders. We may feel pain in these areas once we've eliminated our usual distractions and are attempting to sit quietly.

            For many of us, the practice of meditation seems like a foreign notion. In an era of full-time, morning-to-night distractions and distractibility, the concept of quietly sitting with nothing else to do seems impossibly ridiculous. Why would anyone do that, we ask, as we text message with one hand and channel surf with the other.

            Of course, this lack of ability to pay attention and focus for more than 15 seconds at a time is at the core of many of our health issues. Learning how to meditate correctly directly addresses this problem, providing training in developing concentration skills. But meditation offers an abundance of additional benefits, many of great significance to our overall health and well-being.

            Years of research have documented the profound benefits of meditation, including reductions in elevated blood pressure levels, stress reduction, pain management, and even rewiring of neurologic connections in the brain. Thus, there are many reasons to begin meditation practice. The key question is how to get started.

            Learning how to meditate is actually straightforward. There are many types of meditation practices. Some utilize a mantra, a silently repeated short harmonic phrase. Others involve specific breathing methods. Others focus on the breath itself without utilizing specific instructions on how to breathe.

            When my wife Jeanine teaches her Ayurveda meditation classes, she uses the “So Hum” method. With each inhale she instructs her clients to say the sound “So” internally .Focusing on each breath then exhaling through the mouth saying the sound “Hum” to yourself .

            The "practice" part of meditation relates to practicing paying attention, paying attention to the breath. Your mind wanders, eventually you notice this, and you return to the breath. That's all there is. There is no requirement that you need to stay focused. A person is not a "bad meditator" when they find they are continually thinking of other things. The power is in the practice itself. By actually sitting down to meditate, by actually setting aside that time to be still you will derive unexpected benefits. The more you practice, the more your practice becomes a habit, the more you will gain.

            What is a recommended length for meditation sessions? There are no rules. The key is to begin, and then to continue. Starting with a five-minute session, twice a day, is a very good beginning, building up to two 30-minute sessions per day. Again, your meditation practice is not a contest. What works for you will work for you.

 

References

1.     Marchand WR: Mindfulness-based stress reduction, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, and zen meditation for depression, anxiety, pain, and psychological distress. J Psychiatr Pract 18(4):233-252, 2012

2.     Hasenkamp W, Barsalou LW: Effects of meditation experience on functional connectivity of distributed brain networks. Front Hum Neurosci 6:38, 2012 [Epub 2012 Mar 1]

3.     Brewer JA, et al: Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 108(50):20254-20259, 2011

4.     Jeanine Graykowski .certified Chopra center perfect health instructor www.creatingperfecthealth.blogspot.com 8/2010