These days, it feels like everything is a race: A race to get all the
boxes on your to-do list checked off. A race to make it to the next rung
of the professional ladder. A race to keep up with and perhaps even beat
out “the Joneses.” A race to make sure your kids have the perfect
academic, extracurricular, and personal qualifications so that they can
get into a good college. A race to make sure all the bills get paid,
even though you’re on a reduced budget.
However, instead of building the perfect lives we want, what we’re really doing
is racing each other into the ground…and over the edge. If this last
description of manic modern life sounds all too familiar, it’s high time
you stepped off the merry-go-round (for at least five to ten minutes),
sat down in a quiet place, and participated in a simple practice that
has been around for millennia: meditation.
“When people operate on low margins with time and money (which is
everybody I know right now), their stress levels can go through the
roof,” points out Stephan Bodian, author of Meditation
For Dummies®, 3rd
Edition, (Wiley, August 2012, ISBN: 978-1-1182-9144-3, $24.99).
“In many ways, meditation is the perfect antidote to the postmodern
predicament because it effectively reduces stress, increases energy, and
enables you to enjoy better overall health…and much more.”
Bodian, who is a licensed psychotherapist, served as the editor of Yoga
Journal for many years and has also practiced and taught meditation
for over 40 years. He has packed a fascinating array of facts and best
practices into this easy-to-read volume, which also includes a foreword
by Dean Ornish, MD.
“Since our culture programs us to expect a perfect life that is
impossible to achieve, our best efforts only cause us to become
overstressed, overscheduled, overstimulated, and overtired,” explains
Bodian. “This is all compounded by the fact that your body and mind have
been ‘programmed’ to respond to life’s inevitable ups and downs with
stress, anxiety, and dissatisfaction. But you have the power to change
all of that through meditation. You can program yourself to experience
inner peace, harmony, equanimity, and joy."
Before any false assumptions you’re harboring cause you to give up on
meditation before you even begin, Bodian assures that you can keep it
simple (you’ll see positive results after just five to ten minutes of
meditation a day) or explore the practice’s subtleties in great depth.
It’s entirely up to you.
If you’re intrigued but still not entirely sure that meditation is for
you, then read on for 11 more reasons why this ancient practice can help
you live your best, most healthy and fulfilling life:
Improving your mental and physical health. If you’re a
skeptic at heart, then you’ll be reassured to know that studies have
proven that meditation offers numerous benefits, including:
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Lower blood pressure
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Quicker recovery from stress
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Fewer heart attacks and strokes
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Reduced cholesterol levels
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Muscle relaxation
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Reduction in the intensity of pain
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More happiness and peace of mind
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More loving, harmonious relationships
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Enhanced creativity and self-actualization
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Reductions in both acute and chronic anxiety
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Heightened perceptual clarity and sensitivity
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…and much more!
“While scientific studies of meditation weren’t conducted until the
1930s (and have really taken off in the past 10 to 15
years), practitioners have been experiencing these significant benefits
for centuries upon centuries,” points out Bodian.
Awakening to the present moment. When you rush breathlessly
from one moment to the next, anticipating another problem or
anticipating a coming pleasure, you miss the beauty and immediacy of the
present, which is constantly enfolding before your eyes.
“Meditation teaches you to slow down and take each moment as it
comes—the sounds of traffic, the smell of new clothes, the laughter of
children, the coming and going of your breath,” explains Bodian. “In
fact, as the meditative tradition reminds us, only the present moment
exists anyway—the past is just a memory and the future is a fantasy.”
Making friends with yourself. When you’re constantly trying
to live up to expectations (your own or someone else’s) and adapt to an
ever-changing, competitive environment, you rarely have the opportunity
or the motivation to get to know yourself just the way you are. But when
you meditate, you learn to welcome every experience and facet of your
being without judgment or denial. You begin to treat yourself as you
would a close friend, accepting (and even loving) the whole package.
Connecting more deeply with others. As you awaken to the
present moment and open your heart and mind to your own experience, you
naturally extend this quality of awareness and presence to your family
and friends. And when you start to accept others the way they are—a
skill you can cultivate through the practice of meditation—you open up
the channels for a deeper love and intimacy to flow between you.
Relaxing the body and calming the mind. As contemporary health
researchers have discovered—and traditional texts agree—mind and body
are inseparable, and an agitated mind inevitably produces a stressed-out
body.
“As the mind settles, relaxes, and opens during meditation, so does the
body—and the longer you meditate (I mean both minutes logged each day as
well as days and weeks of regular practice), the more this peace and
relaxation ripples out to every area of your life, including your
health,” says Bodian.
Lightening up! Have you ever thought and worried yourself
into an uncontrollable frenzy…or even a meltdown? It’s easy to do: fears
feed on one another, problems get magnified exponentially, and the next
thing you know, you’re feeling overwhelmed, panicked, and desperate to
take a leave of absence from your own life.
“The good news is, meditation encourages an inner mental spaciousness in
which difficulties and concerns no longer seem so threatening, and
constructive solutions can naturally arise,” promises Bodian.
“Meditation also fosters a certain detachment that allows for greater
objectivity, perspective, and even humor.”
Enjoying more happiness. Research reveals that the daily
practice of meditation for just a few months actually makes people
happier, as measured not only by their subjective reports but also by
brain-mapping technology. In fact, meditation is apparently one of the
only things that can permanently change your emotional set point—your
basic level of relative happiness that scientists say stays the same
throughout your life, no matter what you experience.
Experiencing focus and flow. Have you ever been so fully
involved in an activity that all sense of self-consciousness, time, and
distraction dissolved? If so, you’ve experienced what psychologist
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls a state of flow.
“You might experience a state of flow when you’re creating a work of
art, playing a sport, working in the garden, or even making love,”
explains Bodian. “Athletes call it being ‘in the zone.’ Through
meditation, you can discover how to give the same focused attention
to—and derive the same enjoyment from—every activity.”
Feeling more centered, grounded, and balanced. For many
people, living in an increasingly flat and rapidly-changing world can
foster feelings of insecurity and of not having a “place” to call one’s
own. To counter these negative mindsets, meditation offers an inner
groundedness and balance that external circumstances can’t destroy.
Enhancing your performance at work and at play. Studies have
shown that basic meditation practice alone can enhance your perceptual
clarity, creativity, self-actualization, and many of the other factors
that contribute to superior performance. Plus, specific meditations have
been devised to enhance performance in a variety of activities, ranging
from sports to schoolwork.
Aligning with a deeper sense of purpose. When you practice
making the shift from doing and thinking to being (one way
to describe this is fully experiencing the present moment with love and
without ego), you’ll discover how to align yourself with a deeper
current of meaning and belonging.
“For instance, you might get in touch with personal feelings and
aspirations that have long remained hidden from your conscious
awareness,” suggests Bodian.
“If there’s any such thing as a ‘magic bullet’ that can help you survive
and even thrive throughout the 21st Century, then meditation
is it,” assures Bodian. “If you allow it to become a regular part of
your life, it will relieve your stress, disappointment, fear, anger,
outrage, and hurt while focusing your energy, making you more effective,
and even improving your mental and physical health.”
