“Meditation is like a gym in which you develop the powerful mental muscles of calm and insight.”
– Ajahn Brahm
During these past two months, I’ve found myself with cabin fever, homesickness, amongst many other things. At one point I felt due to Covid and quarantine, I should’ve been working on the next greatest business idea or crushing a goal. While I have used the additional time to come closer to goals and recently added graduate school to my list of things there was also times where I was mentally drained. I then decided that I would use my extra time to focus on mindfulness.
Mindfulness is a quality or state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations.
Now that is easier said than done. The only mindfulness training I could say I had before was a 1 credit undergrad course in meditation, so I figured why not start there! So for those of you who have not meditated before you begin with the focus on breathing and then pose and there are many different forms of meditating. Now I know breathing is an involuntary movement but research shows that we tend to lean to thoracic breathing which utilizes the upper half of the lungs while deep breathing (I won’t use diaphragmatic breathing as the diaphragm is engaged in both to my common knowledge) utilizes more of the lower half of the lungs.
Breathing thoughts
When it comes to breathing you look at where the breath is coming from and how long the inhale and exhale. Controlled breathing exercises can help lower blood pressure, relieve stress, help with anxiety & depression, help with tension headaches and insomnia. Personally, I’ve found that at first it was hard to maintain a breathing pattern, I tend to go for shorter, quick breaths but after some practice I was able to breathe deeper and I do find it helps me to fall asleep as I’m a bit of an insomniac. You’ll find in doing your own research that based on the results you’re looking for your exhale and inhale time may need to vary. I’ll leave some links at the bottom of the page!
Pose
As for the pose there’s seven main points to a meditation pose and I found a great post to explain them as it does vary in preference from person to person. My go to pose are Quarter Lotus and Burmese as I am stiff as a board and need to stretch a lot more. My hope is eventually to be able to do Full Lotus but that will come in time.
All in all I find mediation to be a great practice and if your anything like me, my greatest thinking comes randomly in conversation, listening or watching something and so I find that sometimes the baffling moments I find the answers randomly in the calmness of meditating. It is nice to slow down as I find that I’m always rushing or multitasking so I never quite have the time to “enjoy the moment”. Meditation also draws forth a well of emotions so do be aware as sometimes I find myself crying with really no specific thought in mind but oddly enough I feel better after. So remember that while we do focus on the physical we can only get so far with spiritual and mental growth and training. I hope you had a good read and let me know what works for you! I’m always interested in learning more.
https://www.yogajournal.com/meditation/everything-need-know-meditation-posture
