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The PRACTICE of Meditation |
You can read many books about meditation and you will find many practices.
Just like apples there are an array of varieties and only you can decide which one you like.
One word which will be common amongst them all though will be the
word “Practice”. If you come to a class and expect something amazing to happen you will probably be disappointed. You would not have one tennis lesson and expect to play the following week at Wimbledon………..?? Meditation is learned in stages, the method that I teach starts very simply by encouraging your mind to relax and become quiet, keeping the focus on the movement of your breath as it moves in and out through your nose.
 Sounds easy but most of us are not used to being still in ours bodies let alone in our minds and that is where the practice comes in. You watch the breath the mind begins to relax but then it hears a noise, for instance a phone ringing and quickly it starts to ask a myriad of questions, “what was that?” “I wonder who it is?” When you become aware that your mind has become distracted you draw your focus back to the breath and once again the mind relaxes and becomes quiet. Notice that I say the mind becomes quiet and relaxed not blank, we will never make the mind blank, why would we, our mind is a wonderful thing capable of many things including imagination, but we can get caught up in the whirlwind of our thoughts, both past and future which can lead to anxiety or depression, we can get lost in fantasy and miss out on the beauty of the present moment. So meditation helps us stay real and in the present moment and what is more real than the breath. So we practice watching for the mind to follow those distractions both internal and external and we gently with patience draw the mind back to watching and being with the breath resting in the hear and now.
Last year I had a very painful shoulder which kept me awake at night. It has been proven that regular practice of meditation is more restorative than sleep and so my saving grace was meditation. It helped me cope with the pain and gave me the rest I needed. I now practice regularly. This encouraged me to start teaching meditation and last October I began a class at Physiologic.
If you feel meditation would be a useful tool to have in your life please contact Physiologic. The class is on a Monday afternoon from 2.15pm to 3.00pm. For the first four sessions we ask for a donation to “MIND” then you need to book and pay for your place for the next sessions. The cost works out @ £5 per session part of which is still donated to the charity.
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