Meditation
What is Meditation?Meditation is a way to transform the mind through the practice of paying deliberate attention. With its deeproots in Buddhism, meditation is frequently mischaracterised as “woo-woo” for the average Joe. Dan Harris, author of 10% happier, lays it out nicely for a skeptical audience:
Despite what you might have heard, meditation does not involve joining a group, paying any fees, wearing any special outfits, sitting in a funny position, or believing in anything in particular.
It is a simple, secular, scientifically validated exercise for your brain.
What does Meditation do?
Meditation builds awareness of your thoughts, emotions / feelings and bodily sensations. It does this through consistent training.
Let’s take mindfulness meditation for example. In this practice, you give your mind a specific job to do (eg. focussing on your breath) This pulls your mind out of it’s habitual stateof constant processing in order to connect with the present moment.
Awareness is arguably the most important element of mindfulness.
Developing your awareness leadds o improvements in many aspects of your life, including focus, decision-making, patience and stress-reduction
What is mindfulness & what are the benefits?
A lot of people use the terms mindfulness and meditationinterchangeably, but they are actually different. Mindfulness is the art of bringing your awareness into the present moment and is achieved by a combination of breath work and visualisation. This helps you to relieve stress in the now.
On the other hand Meditation asks you to let your mind drift into a fourth state of consciousness that’s different from waking, sleeping or dreaming.
Researchers have analysed nearly 19,000 studies on meditation and concluded that there’s plenty of evidence that the practice can help to ease psychological stresses like anxiety, depression and even pain. In addition improved sleep, productivity and mood are some of the most common benefits.