We rush to work each morning, sitting in the office for 8 hours with a quick lunch in between, we then rush again to catch the public transport in peak hours going home. By the time we finish dinner and washing the dishes, we have hardly any energy left in our bodies.
During winter season like now in Australia, we have the tendencies of going straight to bed after dinner. We thought that we are getting rest by sleeping early but the next morning when we wake up we feel even more tired and sometimes headache as well. Does this ever happen to you before?
That is because even though in our sleep our mind actually does not get it's deserved rest as we may still have worries from our workplace, relationships and financial matters etc. If we bring with us worries to our beds, our minds actually cannot rest at all.
This is exactly why meditation is so helpful today in helping people cope with stress in their life. The ultimate objective of meditation is to keep your mind still. Ajahn Brahm has said that if you want to strengthen your body, you exercise it and if you want to make your mind stronger, keep in still. It is really the opposite that you do with the mind as compare to the body. I used to think that thinking will make me wiser and strengthen my mind but it is not the case because we tend to have lots of unskillful thinking pattern most of the time. These unskillful and sometimes unhealthy thoughts do not make our mind stronger, they give us worries instead. Most of us focus on negative thoughts and prolong thinking pattern like this will lead us into depression. It is in fact a very dangerous thing to do.
During meditation, your aim is to calm down your mind. Sitting in an upright position, you adjust your body to a comfortable position for you. Closing your eyes will cut off all the distraction around you and you will be able to enter into meditative state more easily. Use the Buddhist approach of mindfulness to notice any discomfort in your body. If there is any pain in the body, acknowledge it instead of trying to ignore it. Acknowledge the pain and just let it be without ever trying to fight it. That is because the more you fight it the worse it is going to get.
Once your body is comfortable, you may want to focus on your breathing. Simply notice it as the air enter into your body through your nose as well as the air coming out of your body. Imagine breathing like the wave in the ocean. Ajahn Brahm teaches us to think about breathing in peace (or any other positive thing such as happiness) and exhaling out letting go (or stress, worries etc). Concentrate on this for at least 15 minutes and you will enter into a deeper state of meditation. 30 minutes meditation is a good start for beginners as it is not too long and enough to relax the tension in the mind. It is indeed a very relaxing experience and there was once I felt the tingling sensation in my brain as if it has been massaged for 30 minutes.
We have to practice it everyday if we want to reap the maximum benefit out of it. Just like your body, we don't get fit by just going to the gym once a week for an hour, you have to at least work out 3 times a week and 2 hours each time in the gym to see any apparent result. So meditate regularly and may we all enjoy a life free of worries and good health.
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