Why start meditating?
Lockdown is the perfect time for building a steady meditation practice. But maybe you want to get started and don’t know where to begin? Or do you find it difficult to transition from yoga into meditation? Here’s some information about the benefits of a steady meditation practice to help you along the way.
Training the mind
In modern day life many of us spend a lot of time training our body but tend to forget about the mind. Your mind is that thing that probably causes you a whole lot of agony with it’s constant chatter, worry and never-ending stream of thoughts. That’s why it’s often called the monkey mind. Wouldn’t it be great to have a way to tame that inner monkey? Well, just like fitness is a training for your physical health, meditation is a training for your mind.
Crazy monkey mind
Although it’s mostly not necessary or even useful, it is often our habit to automatically cling to everything our crazy monkey mind tries to offer us (in the middle of the night do you really need to worry about that one thing your coworker said two weeks ago?). With meditation you can learn that not every thought that passes through your mind holds some type of inherent truth or importance and that not every worry has to be solved immediately. You could say that through meditation you can change the relationship with your inner monkey. Meditation gives you the tools to choose if and how you respond to events, feelings and thoughts, instead of just responding automatically. Aaah, can you imagine that monkey-less bliss?
You are successfully meditating when you meditate
Maybe you’ve tried it out and noticed your are never able to stick to the focus of the mediation (e.g. your breath, parts of your body, your third eye chakra etc) and now you feel like meditation is just not working out for you? Don’t worry, this is normal and natural, your mind will always produce thoughts, it’s what it is designed to do. Getting distracted and getting your mind back, that is meditation. Just know that meditation is attention training and so your attention ‘muscle’ will get stronger when you train it more. And also remember that there is no right or wrong experiences in meditation: you are successfully meditating when... you meditate.
Darcy Ecoma Verstege
Ready to try it out?