Meditation isn’t a one-size-fits-all practice; it’s like a buffet offering different techniques. In this blog post, we will delve into the intricacies of 3 BEST meditation techniques, and their benefits.
Each method, such as THE BREATHING TECHNIQUE, provides a unique approach to achieving mindfulness and relaxation.
Breathing technique involves observing your breath to bringing your mind to a specific point in your body, often referred to as the “center of the body” or the “home of the mind”. It’s like finding a place of retreat and rest for your mind, just like your physical body has a home.
While scientifically this point is said to be two finger widths above the navel, it’s perfectly fine if you don’t feel it exactly there. The most important thing is to feel comfortable and relaxed during your meditation practice.
To practice this technique, you can start by taking a deep, soft, and gentle breath; then exhale to release any negative energy. Try observing your breath for about 5 minutes. As you continue, gently guide your attention towards the center of your body. This may take time and practice, but trust in your intuition to guide you. Explore where your breath naturally pauses or comes to rest. This is the point that signifies the home of your mind during meditation.
The breathing technique offers numerous benefits for both body and the mind. By focusing on the breath, we activate the body’s relaxation response, reducing stress and anxiety.
Equally crucial is THE MANTRA METHOD, involving the repetitive internal recitation of specific words to liberate the mind from any concerns and to foster relaxation.
This technique employs phrases such as “Clear and Bright” or the well-known Thai Mantra “Samma Arahang”, meaning “the right path to the purest state of the mind”. It’s akin to guiding the mind toward the correct route for achieving mental purity and cultivating inner peace. Utilizing phrases like “Hakuna Matata” (meaning “no worries”) or motivational affirmations such as “YOU CAN DO IT” can also contribute to achieving the desired state of relaxation during meditation.
However, it’s crucial to avoid words that may distract or evoke emotions related to specific events, as these can divert attention from the pursuit of inner peace. For instance, using a phrase like “You are Amazing” might inadvertently lead to memories of unappreciative moments and disrupt the meditation session.
Now, let’s engage in this together using the mantra “Clear and Bright”. Spend the next 5 minutes focusing on this mantra, allowing your mind to detach from responsibilities and worries.
Now, let’s explore the third effective meditation technique: THE VISUALIZATION TECHNIQUE. As the name suggests, this method involves visualizing specific images to guide the mind and enhance its control. Our minds naturally gravitate towards various images from the past, present, and future. Meditation provides a means of gaining control over these mental wanderings, aiming to bring the mind to a standstill and foster focus.
In this technique, the emphasis is on focusing on a particular object, preferably a spherical one like the sun, full moon, or a crystal ball. While visualizing something beautiful, like yourself, might seem appealing, it’s essential to avoid distractions. Thoughts about changing your hair color or choosing the perfect lipstick shade can lead the mind astray. The recommendation is to fixate the attention on a spherical object, preventing the mind from wandering into different scenarios and ensuring it remains focused and still.
Choosing the right technique is a personal journey. Inner peace is not about perfection but about finding what resonates with you.
Therefore, I invite YOU to Join “The Mind Stories Session with WPI“ every Monday and Thursday at 7 PM Thailand Time, an initiative by the World Peace Initiative. Let someone guide you through these techniques and discover what works best for you.
Whether you prefer the simplicity of focused breathing, the creativity of visualization, or the rhythmic harmony of a mantra, there’s a meditation technique that aligns with your unique journey toward inner peace. So, take a deep breath, close your eyes, and embark on your meditation journey today.
In our quest for personal growth and self-improvement, we often find ourselves struggling to stay motivated and consistent in our efforts. Passion and enthusiasm alone may not be enough to sustain us on the journey towards becoming the best version of ourselves. However, there is a powerful tool that can help us overcome these challenges and pave the way for real development: MEDITATION.
Before delving into the role of meditation, let’s understand the significance of self-image and self-ideal. Self-image refers to our perception of ourselves in the present moment, while self-ideal represents the future version of ourselves that we aspire to become. It is natural to have the desire to continually improve and bridge the gap between our self-image and self-ideal.
WHY? The Struggle for Sustainable Change
Many of us have experienced the frustration of trying to break bad habits and establishing new ones.
The process of self-improvement often requires sustained effort and resilience. It is not as simple as just stopping a negative behavior and replacing it with a positive one. This is where the challenge lies – how can we make lasting changes and maintain consistency?
Meditation, contrary to common misconceptions, is not a religious or cultural practice. It is a mental exercise that allows us to achieve a state of stillness, focus, and inner peace. What initially drew me to meditation was its unique perspective on self-development and its potential to strengthen our willpower.
HOW? Developing Willpower through Meditation
Willpower can be defined as the strength of character or resoluteness to persevere towards our self-ideal. Meditation acts as a catalyst in developing this willpower. By cultivating a regular meditation practice, we can enhance our ability to stay committed to building new habits and sustaining them over time.
Meditation acts as a prop, providing stability and balance on our journey towards self-improvement. It helps us build and reinforce habits, overcome obstacles, and maintain sustainable growth. Just like a hiking pole supports us on a challenging mountain climb, meditation supports our progress towards our goals.
Here are two important benefits of incorporating daily meditation into your self-development journey:
Cultivate a Positive & Growth Mindset: Self-limiting beliefs can often hinder our growth and progress. Thoughts like “I can’t do it”, “I am not ready”, or “I have never done this before” can hold us back.
Daily meditation helps combat these thoughts by fostering a positive outlook on everything. It allows you to cultivate a mindset of growth and resilience, enabling you to overcome obstacles and reach your full potential.
Attain a Calmer and Clearer Mind: Daily meditation helps achieve a calmer and clearer mind. In our day-to-day lives, we often face stress and overwhelming responsibilities at work, school, or in our personal lives. This mental clutter can hinder decision-making and lead to giving up on our goals.
By incorporating meditation into your daily routine, you create space for mental clarity and peace. This allows you to make decisions that align with becoming the best version of yourself, overcoming challenges with a sense of calm and focus.
Daily meditation is indeed a powerful practice for achieving a daily push towards your self-ideal.
Be reminded of the opportunity to meditate with the World Peace Initiative through The Mind Stories Program. I encourage you to join these sessions either on Mondays or Thursdays at 7 PM Thai Time. This will further provide valuable guidance and support on your meditation journey.
Embrace this opportunity to cultivate inner peace and personal growth. Take a step towards a brighter future by immersing yourself in the transformative power of meditation. Remember, the path to self-discovery begins with a single breath.
Our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and attitudes can positively or negatively affect our complete biological functioning. Our minds can actually affect how healthy our bodies are. On the other hand, what we do with our physical body (what we eat, how much we exercise and even our posture) can impact our mental state (positively or negatively). This results in a very complex mind-body interrelationship.
The brain plus the peripheral nervous system, the endocrine plus the immune system, and so, all the organs of our body and in turn all the emotional responses we have, do share a common chemical language and are continually communicating with one another.
The history of mind-body connection
Awareness of the mind-body connection is by no means new. Until approximately 300 years ago, virtually every system of medicine throughout the world treated the mind and body as a whole. During the 17th century is when the Western world started to see the mind and the body as two distinct entities. In this view, the body was equivalent to a machine, complete with replaceable and independent parts with no connection whatsoever to the mind.
This Western viewpoint had definite benefits, acting as the foundation for advances in surgery, trauma care, pharmaceuticals and other areas of allopathic medicine. However, it also significantly reduced scientific inquiry into humans’ emotional and spiritual life and downplayed their innate ability to heal on their own.
In the 20th century, this view gradually started to change. Researchers began to study the mind-body connection and scientifically demonstrate complex links between the two. Extensive research has confirmed the medical as well as mental benefits of meditation, mindfulness training, yoga, and other mind-body practices.
What exactly is meant by the “mind”?
It’s important to understand that “mind” is not synonymous with brain. Instead, the mind consists of mental states such as thoughts, emotions, beliefs, attitudes, and images. The brain is the hardware that allows to experience such mental states.
Mental states can be fully conscious or even unconscious. We can have emotional reactions to situations without being aware of why we are reacting. Each mental state has a physiology associated with it which means a positive or negative effect can be felt in the physical body. For example, the mental state of anxiety can cause you to produce stress hormones.
Various mind-body therapies focus on becoming more conscious of mental states. Using this increased awareness, one can guide the mental states in a better, less destructive direction.
Research on yoga and meditation has further explored and implied the connection between mind, body and spirit. Studies show that the mindful movement and breathing done in yoga activates the relaxation response (that is the rest-and-digest system), via the vagus nerve. Consequently, yoga happens to move the nervous system out of the “fight, flight, or freeze” response associated with stress into the “rest and digest” response — increasing the emotional well-being. Furthermore, yoga increases levels of GABA, a neurotransmitter in the brain that helps relax the mind.
Nutritional and emotional impact on mind-body
What goes into our body also impacts our mind and mental health. What we eat has the power to prevent or help reverse mental health challenges. The impact of food on our mood; moreover, the specific nutrients have been linked towards measurable positive outcomes in mental and emotional well-being.
In addition to that, the mind-body connection manifests in the communication between the brain and the gut. About 95 percent of serotonin, one of the primary hormones involved in the mood and emotion regulation, is produced in the gastrointestinal tract. Sometimes referred to as the “the second brain” or “belly brain,” this enteric (intestinal-related) nervous system consists of some 100 million sheaths of neurons embedded in the walls of the gut. Moreover, the information travels mostly from the gut to the brain rather than vice versa.
As a result, researchers have found that people with healthy, diverse gut microbes are less likely to suffer from anxiety and depression. Furthermore, studies demonstrate that replacing bad bacteria in the gut with good bacteria can significantly alter mood and emotional regulation.
For example, neurological pathways connect parts of the brain that process emotions with the spinal cord, muscles, cardiovascular system, and even the digestive tract. This allows major life events, stressors, or emotions to trigger physical symptoms. You may have experienced this aspect of the mind-body connection when you feel butterflies in your stomach — you feel nervous, or your heart feels like it is pounding out of your chest, or you are under intense stress.
These intersecting systems help to establish the mind-body connection that influences the maintenance of health or the development of disease. For example, emotions like anxiety can trigger increased stress hormones, which in turn may suppress the immune system and set the stage for infections.
When you experience emotional states like sadness, joy, or anger, physiological sensations happen to occur in different areas of your body. Emotions like anger, fear, guilt, anxiety, sadness, jealousy, and stress can manifest within the body and contribute to imbalance followed by a disease. For example, you are likely familiar with the way fear can contribute to upsetting digestion or how tension can often lead to headaches.
What you believe can lead to disease
One common way you may experience the interaction of belief and physical sensations is when dealing with chronic pain. In the essence, pain is a combination of the physical sensations you experience, the emotions you tend to feel, and the meaning that pain has for you.
Emotional suffering, physical pain, and other sensations share certain similarities in their neural pathways. For example, feelings of anger or insecurity can disrupt the regular beating of the heart and flow of the breath. This further activates the sympathetic nervous system in the same way that occurs when you are facing a threat creating an even greater sense of uneasiness and pain.
You can see this type of physiology playing out in people with a lack of social support, who are more likely to have cardiovascular and other health problems than those with consistent and supportive relationships. So, to avoid the build-up of toxic emotions, you need to remain present and aware.
Training awareness with mindfulness
Awareness is something that can be trained through a variety of mental health practices. Some mind-body practices include:
Gentle movement and meditation, such as yoga and tai chi.
Biofeedback, a type of therapy that uses sensors attached to your body to measure the key body functions. Biofeedback can help you learn more about how your body reacts. This may help you learn how to control your breathing, your heart rate, and other functions impacted by stress.
Progressive relaxation, a technique where you concentrate on tightening, then relaxing various muscle groups. This can be combined with other meditative and breathing exercises for a deep sense of physical as well as mental relaxation.
For these practices, you may need to seek help from an experienced guide, mentor, or professional. However, you can do some mind-body exercises right in your own home, car or office, and you only have to spare a few moments. For example, mindfulness meditation is something you can do when you have time, and you can find a few minutes to focus. You don’t need a guide, a yoga mat or any other special equipment. You just need to close your eyes, pay attention to your breath, and focus on the present thoughts. When your attention wanders, return it to the present moment.
This is how mindfulness can help you bring focus, tune out distractions and find a little calm in the moment — and over time, help your mind and body feel better, also learning to perceive mind-body interrelationship as something natural taking care of it as a whole.
