Discipline for the Body; Meditation for the mind.

Discipline is for the body while meditation is for the mind. Your awareness, calm, and focus will increase through proper meditation. Masters in the art of mortal combat often teaches the “mind over matter” techniques in order to achieve maximum potential. The subtle differences can mean victory or defeat in combat. Improper tuning of awareness causes a weak stance for the enemy to exploit. Entering combat with a clouded mind renders you impaired in making decisions whether to attack or defend. An anxious mind will result in an un-calmed body which wastes more energy than needed; you will have been defeated by your opponent even before the combat begins. This counts also for your everyday life; with a calm mind your progress improves fast with a troubled mind you stand still or reverse.

The Meditative Process

You may have heard it said that the human mind is like a computer – complex and processes a lot of information. Well that’s actually an understatement because in reality it is more powerful than any computer in the world and the key to unlocking this power is meditation. Here is a simple analogy about the meditation process: the human mind is constantly filled with thoughts and emotions and sometimes they drift, change and overlap one another, but they often change in about a tenth of second – that’s how fast thoughts spark your neurons. When you meditate you are attempting to control your mind (i.e. your thoughts and emotions) into a calmer state, because according to tradition a calm and more focused mind will have no limits.

1. Attaining a Single Mind

Before you can enter a meditative state you must first attempt to control your physical body. Without this, a single mind meditation would be impossible. Here are some things that you can focus on to calm your mind:

1. Breathing in general or breathing to certain area.
2. A sound
3. A sensation
4. An emotion
5. A mantra
6. A thought
7. Something we see or vision

2. Entering an Empty Mind

According to meditation experts, attaining a singularity of thought leads one to access their spiritual higher self or awareness. It’s hard to explain it in simple terms so I’ll just cite examples from famous people in history. If you’re familiar with Edgar Cayce, Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla and Srinivasa Ramanujan, then you must also know about the miraculous methods in which they have all got their understanding about the things they said. Every single one of them spoke of some kind of transcendental meditation and connecting to the so-called “akashic records,” which is supposedly the repository of all the knowledge that there is in our universe and elsewhere.

Benefits Gained Through Meditation

Extensively using your abdomen during breathing exercises for meditation will have positive effects on your health. In particular the kidneys, liver and spleen are massaged by your diaphragm as you inhale. As you exhale your kidneys releases hormones. It is a naturally occurring chemical compound that has bio-catalyst properties. In turn it helps the various chemical processes in your body to work out smoothly; however, as you age the production of these hormones is reduced over time and only through breathing exercises and meditation can it be maintained.

Meditation makes people wiser and be at peace with themselves and their surroundings, in fact, you would rarely find any person who meditates and is a troublemaker at the same time. It just contradicts their beliefs and practices.

There are so much more benefits that meditation can bring into your life but perhaps the best way to explain it is for you to experience it yourself. Why not try this for a month?

Johanna Oosterwijk, ND.