More on Traditional Meditation January 28, 2009
Posted by themindspa in Uncategorized.Tags: breathing, concentrative meditation, Ivor Murray, Meditation, Meditations Ltd UK, mindfulness, Mindspa, traditional meditation
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There’s not much factual evidence to present for the beginnings of early meditation. It is thought that people have been meditating for over 5000 years. However, it is 500BC when the Buddha appeared and became such a central proponent of meditation that his word and the practice of meditating spread across Asia. As his words and practices travelled to each country, they were adopted and adapted by that particular culture. This is why today there are very many different forms of traditional meditation and offers us a link to its origins in spiritual practices.
While there are many individual forms of meditation technique around the world, there are two main forms of meditation. The first form is ‘Concentrative Meditation’ and the second is ‘Mindfulness’.
Concentrative Form: This form of meditation focuses the mind onto an image, sound or more frequently, the breath. It allows the mind to become still whilst developing awareness, calm and clarity. This focuses the attention on a single thing that also promotes physical stillness. Placing your attention on breath and breathing is the most obvious and natural way to meditate on a single thing. Slowing the breathing to a deep, calm and relaxed pace is the best way to achieve a tranquil state of mind. Together, your calm mind and your relaxed breathing work together in sync to soothe each other. This leaves you feeling focused, relaxed and still.
Mindfulness Form: Mindful meditation is a form that exists to increase your detached consciousness of the world around you. When you meditate mindfully you allow every part of your environment to permeate your consciousness without actively focusing upon it. Whilst mindfully meditating, you simply allow yourself to notice the things that are going on around you, without making connections to them. Whatever travels through your mind is simply allowed to pass through without giving it any attention. No thought is followed through, it is simply allowed to exist and pass. Mindfulness allows people to remain calm and focused during difficult, stressful times when the mind would normally flit one from thing to another.
In my next blog, I’ll talk about some of the modern approaches to meditation that now exist.
-Ivor-
Ivor Murray is the Managing Director of Meditations Ltd.
Traditional Meditation January 23, 2009
Posted by themindspa in Uncategorized.Tags: Buddhism, Ivor Murray, Mantra, Meditation, Relaxation, traditional meditation, Yoga
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Traditional meditation takes many forms and the techniques used are equally diverse. In this post, I’m going to discuss the four elements required to perform simple, basic traditional meditation.
Traditional Meditation requires four elements:
- A Peaceful Place
- A Comfortable Posture or Position
- A Point of Focus for your Attention
- An Open and Receptive Attitude
Let’s look at each of these individually, in order to better understand traditional meditation practice.
A Peaceful Place
Meditation traditionally requires a quiet, peaceful place. After years of practice, it may be possible to find stillness in even the most cacophonous environment, but in the beginning, a quiet place will help you find inner calm. A place with few distractions will help you to focus, so somewhere quiet in your house, with phones turned off or unplugged is best.
A Comfortable Posture or Position
Finding a comfortable position to begin your meditation is vital. Physical relaxation is core to finding mental stillness. Find somewhere that you can lie or sit quietly and relax your muscles.
Traditionally, of course, there are certain postures that have become associated with meditation. Yoga, Buddhism and Islam influence these postures. The most effective position is a seated one, with a straight spine; this allows the weight of the body to be even throughout the body. Lying down is acceptable for beginners, but it is also the same position for sleep, and therefore, more likely to induce sleep than calm wakefulness.
Many people associate traditional meditation with the Lotus-Flower position. This is where someone sits cross-legged, with their feet on their thighs. This is very painful and perhaps even impossible for beginners, and not something that you should trouble yourself trying to achieve at first.
A Point of Focus for your Attention
Traditional meditation requires something to focus your attention upon. In some traditional approaches, it may be a mantra - a chant of special words. In other traditional meditation practices, it might be your own breathing. Most people chose to meditate with their eyes closed, which makes it easier to focus.
Making yourself aware of your breathing is one of the simplest ways to create a point of focus for beginners to meditation. Meditation is not the time for deep thoughts, science has shown that brainwaves are at their most restful during times of absent thoughts of no importance.
An Open and Receptive Attitude
Like beginning anything, an open mind is important to commencing traditional meditation. An open attitude requires a detachment from the distractions of your environment, the sounds of the room, the movement of your body, the thoughts that dart through your mind. It’s very simple, don’t push and don’t resist, accept everything as it is and deny nothing.
Your thoughts will wander when you first try to maintain a passive state of mind, but through practice, you can learn not to criticise yourself, but to notice what has occurred and reposition your attention back to your point of focus.
-Ivor-
Ivor Murray is the Managing Director of Meditations Ltd
The Benefits of Meditation January 21, 2009
Posted by themindspa in Uncategorized.Tags: anxiety, benefits of meditation, depression, Ivor Murray, meditation technique, Meditation uk, Meditations Ltd, sleep problems
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I’ve already written about what meditation is, and I’ve explained why it can be so beneficial to all. In this blog post, I want to further explore some of the mental and physical benefits of meditation.
Although meditation is usually associated with spiritual advancement, there are many physical and mental benefits that can be achieved through regular meditation. Meditation is not magic; there are clear scientific principles behind why meditation is physically and mentally beneficial. Here is my exploration of some of those benefits.
Mental Benefits
There are many key mental or psychological benefits to meditation. Some are the result of the core physical benefits, but many are the natural by-products of the mental stillness and calm offered by meditation.
Mental benefits include an increase in the individual’s capacity to focus and concentrate. This is one of the earliest benefits, quietly meditating helps to steady the thoughts and reduce the mental ‘noise’ that our sporadic thoughts create. Meditation can help with people who are experiencing depression, by helping them relax, refocus their thoughts onto a positive track.
A quieter mind significantly helps learning and memory, because your thinking has become less cluttered and you can now focus on one topic or task at a time. Anxiety levels drops as meditation aids emotional stability, and this means that you can maintain a calmer and more relaxed approach to difficult and stressful situations. It’s easier for those that meditate to take a step back from their current circumstances and get a wider perspective on the situation.
Another key benefit is the assistance that meditation offers those with sleep problems. Insomniacs often use meditation techniques to overcome their inability to sleep.
These are just a few of the mental benefits, now let’s look at the physical ones:
Physical Benefits
One of the core physical benefits is the positive effect upon your cardiovascular system. Meditation can lower the respiration rate, decreasing your oxygen consumption. Relaxed breathing can help to improve the airflow through your lungs. Meditation can also lower the heart rate and increase the blood flow. Improvements in respiration and heart-rate are welcomed by most individuals, and people with high blood pressure can greatly benefit.
Relaxed breathing and slowing the heart rate helps to ease muscular tension and calms the nervous system. All of this has a cumulative effect upon diminishing physical and psychological stress.
In some types of meditation, the physical positioning required to obtain optimal breathing can greatly benefit your posture and prevent lower back and neck problems.
Many people that meditate experience increased energy throughout the day and sleep more restfully at night. Impressively, when studied, a group of people that meditated regularly were shown to have a much younger physical age than their real age.
These are only some of the benefits that meditation has to offer, and there are many more. In the next few blogs, I’ll focus on meditation techniques, offering a perspective on some excellent traditional and modern methods of achieving all of the above-mentioned benefits and more.
-Ivor-
Ivor Murray is the Managing Director of Meditations Ltd.
Why Meditate? January 18, 2009
Posted by themindspa in Uncategorized.Tags: Ivor Murray, Meditation, Meditations Ltd, Mental Holiday, Mental stillness, Mind and Body, Stillness
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Meditation is a personal experience, it is not shackled to any particular religious belief, nor does one have to give up their existing beliefs or place one’s faith into a particular spiritual path to enjoy its benefits. So, why should you meditate?
One of the reasons that people meditate is to give their mind and body a peaceful rest. The mind does not receive complete rest even during sleep, the mind continues processing information and of course, dreaming. In order to achieve optimum activity during your waking hours, your mind must take a break from time to time and meditation offers the individual the mental holiday the mind requires.
When your mind takes a mental holiday, it behaves much the same as you do when you’ve had a restful break, it is refreshed, clearer and more able to focus.
Without a mental holiday, the mind is cluttered, you find it difficult to concentrate, and the mind jumps from idea to idea, image to image and thought to thought, without the ability to remain still. Meditation offers that stillness.
We have so much going on in our lives these days, so many pressures and demands upon our time from work, family, friends and life in general. When do you get the opportunity to be truly still? Perhaps quietly reading from time to time, on holiday or perhaps when we are sick from work. But these occasions are not the norm and so the mental stillness required to give us holistic refreshment is seldom achieved.
Meditation offers a physical and mental break from the demands of life, allowing the mind to quieten, the body to be at repose and the opportunity to recharge yourself to occur. Many physical and mental ailments can be relieved through meditation and I’ll speak about these in my next blog post.
-Ivor-
Ivor Murray is the Managing Director of Meditations Ltd.
Meditation: What is it Really? January 16, 2009
Posted by themindspa in Uncategorized.Tags: Meditation, Mind and Body, Stillness, Yoga
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When many people think of meditation, they think of Ancient Eastern philosophies, chanting monks, josticks and sitting cross-legged in a Yoga position. It’s true that traditional meditation is the development of spiritual awareness and growth. But true meditation, in its purest form, doesn’t need to be about mimicking Eastern mysticism to find it’s centre. Instead, it’s about finding rest, stillness for the mind and body.
Meditation is the practice of using techniques to achieve calm of mind and body. Through countless philosophies and innumerable definitions of its meaning, meditation has become shrouded in mystery. Meditation is about obtaining a quietening of the mind and tranquillity in the body.
In the West, people are bombarded with demands, needs and messages. It’s not difficult to locate the cause of so much physical, mental and emotion stress. No wonder people can’t sleep and become ill and depressed. The mind is constantly racing, it cannot find pause. The body is continuously restless, it is unable to become still.
Meditation is a natural method of relieving the body and mind of the ‘noise’ of daily life, without having to sit on a mat, humming. As more people become aware of the great benefits of meditation, doctors are prescribing meditation as an anti-dote to stress-related illness, insomnia and other health problems.
Meditation is a means of transforming your physical and mental state, but it is not magic. It is a way for all people everywhere to achieve clarity, concentration and positivity. Meditation is found in many guises, often in our daily life without realising. When we are quietly listening to a piece of music, deeply accepting the sound and allowing it to affect us, this is a type of meditation. When we quietly become aware of our breathing around sleep time, the body and mind join together to form a kind of meditative state. Finally, meditation is the cultivation of a positive state of mind and being.
There are many means of achieving this positive state, and I will write about some of these in the future. - Ivor -
Ivor Murray is the Managing Director of Meditations Ltd, a company whose aim is to inspire people to meditate and develop a calmer, less stressful and more fulfilled lifestyle.
Hello and Welcome to The Mind Spa Blog! January 12, 2009
Posted by themindspa in Uncategorized.Tags: Coping with Stress, Ivor Murray, Meditation, Meditations Ltd, The Mind Spa
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