A Healthy Inspired Life

10 Good Reasons to Meditate 

                    

Derived from the Greek language, meditation apparently shares a linguistic root with medication.  Medi- meaning to care for, attend to, pay attention, is the root. 

But one change of a letter entirely influences the method we choose to pursue and maintain our well being. Meditation vs. Medication. That one letter change is a Big Game Changer when it comes to maintaining well being.

Among natural and very low cost remedies for restoring health and maintaining well being, you may be unaware that you are missing one of the most obvious supports available to you.  

There is a lot of buzz about mindfulness, meditation, and the benefits of creating a daily practice.  The big question is how to begin.
The good news is this is easy to remedy because this brief manual is designed to guide you. And it is as obvious as the nose on your face. 
Literally. 

The health remedy and support I am referring to is mindful breathing.

As the founder of the Maine Mindfulness Project, I help people of all ages learn how to utilize breath in order to help the mind and body achieve deeper levels of stillness and relaxation. This begins by using the nose as our center of breathing. 

The mindfulness aspect of the meditation practice occurs as we place ninety percent of our attention on the breath as it moves into and out of the body to create spaciousness and helps to settle and quiet the mind. We leave ten percent of our awareness watching how successful we are at keeping our focus on the breath.  This ten percent is like a hidden camera that simply informs us when the mind begins to wander away from breath.  
We then gently guide it back to reapply it on the breath. 

At first, it takes a little practice to get used to how easily distracted and busy our minds are. They are always like this. There is actually a term for it called “monkey mind.”  The innate nature of mind, settled and clear and peaceful and present, is powerful.  So much so that the analogy is that this innate mind is as strong as an elephant; it can move almost anything and its embodied presence is immediately noticeable. 

However, when we begin through meditation to try to locate, access and lasso this power we discover some immediate obstacles.  The first of which is that this mind is not alone.  There is a lot on it!  

It is being led and controlled by chaotic distractions under the direction of a much smaller creature.  A monkey has tethered this great elephant to its rope and is jumping all around chasing after its own distractions, and the elephant under its own ignorance, is just following the little monkey around.  The monkey is a quick, impulsive, active creature and is easily distracted.  It likes to jump around from branch to branch, swing wildly on vines, and then stops to rest only after it has exhausted all of its wild energy.  
For example, the monkey is drawn by certain food it wants, “Mmm, bananas!  Come on, let’s get some!”  Then the monkey decides to explore some new places, “I think I will try to get high to see what that is like, lots of other monkeys are doing it so it must be fun.”  Again, the elephant, generally a very grounded being, finds herself up in a tree with no clue how she got there or how to get down.  She is tied to the monkey mind and is now in a real predicament. 

The elephant sways along behind, “Sure, OK, why not?”  Never really stopping to think, “Hey, I don’t even eat bananas!  I am not designed for getting high.  Why I am following this silly monkey?” 

But there is hope! 

In our own experience, we can think of this pattern as just following our random impulses without really pausing to examine why or what we are doing.  Just like the elephant being led along by the monkey.  

Sometimes this leads us to some pretty unhealthy places, people, choices, and behaviors.  That’s the truth and the bad news.  But here’s the truth and the good news:  We can take control of the elephant because we are more clever than that little monkey!   

Now we have to respond with laughing at ourself, not belittling ourself, because almost everyone has a monkey mind.

That is really accurate for the way our thought patterns jump from tree to tree or more accurately, from one thought to the next.  The difference now is we are able to actually experience and witness how wild they are! Not really under our control or anyone else's for that matter, the mind is free to get distracted and attracted by whatever little whim, worry or wonder draws its attention. What happens next? Often the mind is free to engage continuously with its own fascination and rumination, sometimes going on and on and on, without any reigns to draw it back. 

Meditation is a practice to become familiar with the mind and then gradually learn how to gain more mastery over it. We begin to do this by using a mindfulness breathing practice.  Just five 2 minutes sessions a day will produce a solid 10 minutes of meditation spread out in strategic time periods to help establish your practice.   Beginning at or before sunrise (preferably, but a bit later is fine, too) each morning, you can start to transform your relationship to stress, anxiety, insomnia, unclear decision making and a host of other attention challenges and energy grabbers.   

By creating a peaceful space and applying present moment awareness, people are able to gain or regain a sense of balance, health and well being. To date, I have taught meditation in several Maine high schools, colleges, universitues, hospitals, interfaith venues, and established a Meditation Practice at True North Health Center. 

As a featured speaker at Maine’s first ever TEDx conference in 2010, I gave a presentation called “Breath as Inspiration” to a sold out crowd of leading professionals, politicians, and cutting-edge movers and shakers.  You can access that at www.mainemindfulnessproject.com.

Thousands of people from all over the world, after learning the five basic techniques and by simply trying the "2 Minute Miracle" a two minute meditation, no one has yet to report that there was no immediate benefit.  Check it out for yourself.

Here are ten good reasons for you to try to learn to meditate.

1. Meditation is much more cost effective than medication.
2. Meditation works to cure health ailments without the risk of harmful side effects.
3. Meditation helps you achieve feelings of peace and relaxation.
4. Meditation has (almost) no risk of overdose.
5. Meditation is a practice to be shared and is enhanced by being in the presence of other meditators.  (Whereas sharing pills is illegal!)
6. Meditation takes a little time, effort and commitment, but so does creating and establishing a healthy lifestyle.         
7. Meditation is available without a prescription.
8. Meditation improves self esteem and lowers depression.  (These results were reported in a recent study of college women at Brown University).     
9. Meditation sharpens perception and memory recall.
10. Meditation is non-addictive and effective for pain management and speedy recovery. 

Meditation attunes us to an embodied awareness of feelings of peace, balance and well-being in a way that medication often does not. Once we become familiar with this internal awareness we are more capable of sensing influences that disrupt this ease and can then more readily identify factors that create disease. 

I am not advocating that meditation replace medication in all instances. What I hope you'll do is think about it first.  Then decide how you might use meditation instead or in addition to medication to gain the maximum benefit for your health and happiness, not to mention your wallet!  

Go Love,
Lisa