[Home]

Meditation

Meditation can add depth to the kind of reflection we are seeking to examine at this time in our life. Here we discuss some techniques that can be empoyed easily for the novice.

I'm sure if I mention the word meditate or meditation, you almost immediately think of Tibetan monks, the hippies of the 60's, or someone not so like you.

But if you are to clear the noise in your head and start sorting through the many things you need to sort through, you will need to learn to meditate or at least to quiet the voices.

All day, every day, we rush around going over what just happened, or what is about to happen today, this week or this year.

Some define meditation as a form of spirituality, but I believe meditation is the means by which we experience and get in touch with our spirituality. This is about gaining enough quiet in your mind to calm your emotions and think through higher thoughts.

Here are a couple of ways to begin meditating that can all work to relax the mind.

Visualisation
This requires a very specific vision in your mind's eye. It might be a single object, like a flame from a candle, or it might be a vista that makes you swell with joy. With this sort of meditation, you concentrate entirely on the vision and let everything else in your world fall away.

Quietening the mind through emptying it of thought
This is what you might consider the 'usual' form of meditating. To achieve it, you need a very quiet space and as few obvious distractions as possible (i.e. no kids, dogs, husbands or phones likely to go off near you!)

Sit comfortably and concentrate on your breathing. In. Out. Don't worry about what your brain is doing otherwise.

Just concentrate on the act of breathing and the air passing in and out of your nostrils.

Each of these forms of meditation is really doing the same thing. It is calming the mind to focus on a single thing. It is giving you enough quiet time to allow your brain to relax, which in turn will allow it to refresh and come up with new and interesting ideas. You'll be surprised and delighted with what eventuates.

Start with a few moments a couple of times a day. Try to find small corners in your day to insert quiet times for meditation.

Work on expanding your meditation times to a meaningful 30 minutes a day. Alternatively, try to find one minute in each hour to spend meditating.

You don't need to be expert at this for it to work, but like anything, practice will improve the results you achieve.

There are many more people better equipped to discuss this at length and teach the deeper levels that can be achieved, but for the rank beginner, this is enough to get you going.

Take the time to spend an hour with Jon Kabat-Zinn as he leads a meditation workshop at Google.

Return from Meditation to Reflection