Meditation
MEDITATION
Editors Note:
The number of people practicing meditation at least to some degree has skyrocketed worldwide in the last decades and meditation has been becoming a mainstream topic, since about year 2000 or so.
This is a matter of great satisfaction for those who have the Vedas in their heart and for all spiritually minded people.
Meditation started been brought to the West in the second half of the 20th century and this was especially from India: it was brought back by people who had practiced it in India; some other people learnt it from an Indian Master traveling to the West. So some Westerners started learning and practicing meditation and receiving the benefits from it, thanks to the Indian tradition.
At about the same time, the various schools of Buddhism (the Tibetan ones but not only, also the Japanese ones, the Thai ones, the Vietnamese ones and so on) and the related masters also started teaching meditation in the West. And more recently (from about the year 2000) they played a special role in making meditation really popular in the West: Buddhist leaders, out of compassion, gave a green light for meditation to be spread without restriction, even to those not having a spiritual quest; soon mindfulness entered the field of health, sometimes hospitals, and even jails... Scientists started working with persons having been practicing meditation for a long time; a large number of scientific studies were published, all showing various benefits of meditation for physical and mental health.
As the same time, we should not focus too much on the role played by the Indian tradition versus the Buddhist one: we know that meditation has been a discipline existing in India since immemorial times. Meditation goes back to VEDAS: it was practiced intensively by the Rishis and their students. Then by ascetics, yogis and so on, from times immemorial. Buddha was raised in the Indian context and he naturally adopted meditation for himself, then taught it to disciples. While there may be differences, the two streams come from the same original spring.
And today, what counts is the experience of meditation and the benefits one can get from it. This is what Mrs Rinsy will now explain in detail.
MEDITATION
Meditation is a technique which helps improving concentration and also provides relaxation to the body as well as to the mind. Meditation has lots of other benefits too.
People practice meditation to develop positive mood and vision, self-discipline, healthy sleeping habits, and other beneficial habits.
Benefits of Meditation
Reduce Stress
Mind and body are interconnected. So a mental or physical stress causes an increase in hormone levels in the body, especially in cortisol, the stress hormone. Cortisol has many harmful effects such as the release of cytokines, which are molecules bringing inflammation. These effects can interfere with sleep, generate depression and anxiety, increase blood pressure and lead to fatigue and sluggish thinking. Stress may cause inflammation response in our body. Mindfulness meditation can reduce this inflammatory response and also can improve the symptoms of stress related conditions like irritable bowel syndrome (a commonly found disorder which affects the large intestine and causes pain in the stomach), posttraumatic stress disorder (a mental health condition precipitated by a stressful incident, characterized by wind, diarrhea or constipation) and fibromyalgia (which causes pain all over the body accompanied by fatigue and also affects sleep, memory and mood).
Controls Anxiety
Meditation can help relieve anxiety by lowering stress levels. Also, meditation is good in managing work-related anxiety. When a person is practicing meditation, she will learn to control even the rhythm of breathing and thereby will get control over everything that is happening inside.
Promoting emotional health
Some meditation practices may lead to a better self-image and a more positive outlook on life. Studies have shown meditation has a favorable impact on depressed people. People who receive meditation therapies may experience reduced depressive symptoms. Also, meditation lessens negative thoughts.
Increases self-awareness
There are different forms of meditation. Some kinds of meditation will enable a better self-understanding. Meditation improves concentration and attention, as well as self-awareness. By improving self-awareness, it helps develop a better personality. Self-inquiry meditation tries to assist you in learning more about yourself and also how you interact to those around you.
Some forms of meditation will help you to recognize harmful or negative thoughts. The idea is that, as you become more aware of your thinking habits, you can lead them to more creative models. Meditation can help you build more creative problem-solving abilities.
Improves attention
Meditation helps to enhance attention. Meditation can reverse brain patterns causing distractions, anxiety, and inattention. Even if you only meditate for a few minutes each day, you will get benefits.
Developing Kindness
Some types of meditation can help you and others develop more positive attitudes and actions. When we think and experience good ideas and feelings, we become more energized and productive. Meta meditation, also known as love-kindness meditation, encourages you to think and feel positively. Through training, people learn to give this kindness and patience externally, first to friends and then to acquaintances and ultimately to enemies.
May help to manage addictions
Through meditation, people can build a mental discipline and thereby break down dependence or addiction by increasing self-control and awareness of the motivations of an addictive behavior.
Improves sleep
Insomnia appears to have become fairly frequent these days. A person who is meditating regularly can lessen insomnia severity and get a good sleep at night. Also, practicing meditation regularly and becoming skilled in meditation will help that person to control or redirect the negative thoughts that are a frequent cause of persistent difficulty in falling or staying asleep (insomnia). In addition, meditation will help to relax your body by releasing tension and place you in a peaceful state in which you are more likely to fall asleep.
Helps to control pain
Your perception of pain is related to your mood and can be elevated in stressful situations. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to help people reduce discomfort and improve their quality of life. Mindfulness meditation plays a major role in reducing the chances of depression in people who suffer from chronic pain. When comparing a person who is meditating regularly with another who is not doing meditation, one can find that the regularly meditating person shows greater ability to cope with pain and even experiences a reduced sensation of pain.
May lower blood pressure
Meditation can also benefit physical health by lowering heart strain. High blood pressure can cause atherosclerosis, or artery narrowing, which can result in a heart attack or stroke. Meditation has been proved lowering blood pressure in a variety of ways. Meditation helps in controlling the relaxation of nerve signals and fight or flight response so there will be a balancing of the blood pressure.
Most of the meditation forms do not require special tool or space to practice. You can practice meditation daily for a few minutes.
How often you should meditate and how you should feel while you meditate
There are many various recommendations for how often and how long you should meditate. Some sources say that you should do meditation one hour every day, but you may not have that much time.
How frequently you meditate is seems to be less important than making meditation a habit of your day. And it is important not to be in conflict with yourself about the length of time you meditate: doing a 90-minute meditation one day is good - but feeling guilty the next 6 days of the week because you do not have this much time is not very positive!
Meditation seems to be recommended if your schedule doesn't allow you to do your normal amount of physical exercise. In its own way, it will keep you healthy.
Mindfulness meditation is an internal training practice that helps you to reduce negative thoughts, building positivity, and calm down your mind and body. It combines meditation with the practice of mindfulness, which can be defined as an internal state that involves being completely focused in the present so you can recognize and accept your thoughts, emotions and sensations without judgment.
During meditation, beginners as well as longtime practitioners may get distracted. During meditation, one should focus on a single point. When asked to focus on a single point, the mind tries to wander. In other terms, you get distracted. For example, the mind will start exploring your worries instead of focusing on your breathing. You can restart the process at any time if you become distracted. Later on, the duration of meditation and the amount of time that you can concentrate on a single subject will increase. This is actually an indication that you have improved your attention and concentration level. Once you achieve control of your mind with fewer distractions, you will start to enjoy practicing meditation. After some time, regular meditation allows an observation of one’s emotional process, allowing the person to have a better self-knowledge.
Meditation influences both mind and body. At the start of the session, you may experience various aches and sensations throughout your body. It is due to the reflection of feelings of your mind by the body. Sometimes, people may become tired and be tempted to give up. But always keep one thing in mind: once you overcome this discomfort, you will be able to enjoy more positive vibrations of mind and body.
Disappointment is a common feeling among beginners. It can occur even with more advanced meditators. While frustration may trigger some to stop practicing, everyone has to understand that such frustration is part of normal and healthy meditation. Like any emotion, it is something you must observe, not react to, and learn to give up. Despair, fatigue, boredom, and restlessness are all possibilities. Again, use these emotions and put them into practice. Notice where you see most of these feelings.
Be curious about these feelings and pay attention not to place any judgment on them or follow them with thought.
The other feeling is calm. Calm or inner peace, although not every person can feel it at least in the early stages, is one of the most well-known benefits of meditation. This is actually the result that gives people most satisfaction: many tell that the calm they feel when they meditate motivates them to practice meditation again and again. The calmness coming with meditation can be described as deep and peaceful serenity.
Meditating can lead to an interesting experience. First there should be a long period of calm, during which the mind is at rest. Then suddenly, it goes beyond: the mind is empty and vast and as beautiful as the clear blue sky. This is a level of intense concentration in which only consciousness is present.
Feeling of the body during Meditation
Meditation is a technique that allows you to blur the lines between your body and mind. The feelings that arise in the mind are very much linked to the sensations coming from the body. So, when during meditation the mind experiences a feeling of frustration, the body may reflect it as fatigue, a sensation of heaviness, lethargy or tiredness.
When you experience peace of mind during a meditation, this is usually reflected by good body sensations: the body can be felt as light weighted, airy, soft or flexible.
At the peak of meditation state, the body will become more relaxed and free from tiredness and sleepiness.
Meditation is difficult to define solely in terms of mind and body. There are some aspects that go beyond mind and body.
Changes in the brain during meditation
During meditation, a person narrows her focus into the present; in this process, a lot of things happen in the brain. Meditation does, in fact, play an important function in the development of numerous brain regions. When one person repeatedly does some activity, the neural connections involved for that particular activity get improved. For example, if you regularly focus on a single point, the neural connections of the prefrontal cortex will improve and you will be able to concentrate more than before. That is to say, there will be lesser distractions than there were previously. The same is happening during meditation. Some studies found that meditation may, over time, increase the concentration of grey matter in the hippocampus and other anterior parts of the brain.
The grey matter and the left hippocampus contribute to learning, cognition and memory, which in turn lead to better memorizing capacity and more careful behavior.
Meditation calms sympathetic nervous system
The sympathetic nervous system (the “fight-or-flight” response) tends to be de-activated by meditation. The sympathetic nervous system, or fight or flight hormones, is activated when a person feels fear. By meditating, this will be de-activated and the person will be free from anxiety. When you face a threat, your sympathetic nervous system gets activated and releases stress hormones that help you either run or fight. Once the threat has passed, your parasympathetic nervous system is activated, allowing you to relax. Meditation essentially de-activates the sympathetic nervous system while activating the parasympathetic branch. Studies have found that this exercise can over time help reduce pain, depression, stress and anxiety.
Meditation for Depression
Meditation alone can’t cure depression. But it can make a drastic change in your thought pattern. Because depression involves a lot of negative thoughts. So while meditating you will become more self-aware and it will improve self-confidence; then you will have more positive thoughts than negative ones. Meditation will also assist you in managing your emotions. If you are living with depression, you may have chronic symptoms such as low mood and, in some periods, depression may become deeper for a time. Meditation makes it easier to listen to your symptoms when they arise and adopt corrective measures: when you start experiencing more negative thoughts or notice increased irritability, fatigue or loss of interest in what you normally like to do, you may decide to focus on caring for yourself so that things do not get worse.
According to studies, cognitive therapy based on mindfulness meditation can help minimize the likelihood of depression recurrence. Some other studies found that meditation could have even more benefit for managing depression.
Meditation methods employed by Mental Health Professionals
When it comes to mental health experts, they assist their customers in achieving comprehensive mental health and a great sense of well-being. In counseling, there are some specific aims for each client. Meditation strengthens the client's self-awareness, which leads to insight: the client comes to know what he should improve to achieve his goals, as defined with the counsellor. This is why many therapists include meditation into their therapy plans.
All methods of meditation tend to induce a relaxation response: the mind grows at rest. Muscles relax during meditation, and blood pressure tends to drop. The heart rate and breathing rate slow down. Over time, brain's neurons may form new connections. These physical changes help clients handle challenges better. Guided imaging, progressive muscle relaxation, mindfulness meditation and focused breathing are described in detail below.
Guided Imagery
The therapist uses guided imagery to help the client visualize/imagine happy objects or scenes. In order for guided imagery to be effective, the counselor must first obtain a thorough understanding of the client's background. The counselor then proposes photographs to focus on, based on what objects the patient is resting on. The client is instructed to close his or her eyes and sit comfortably with his or her feet on the floor. And then the therapist guides the client to imagine a place which he feels safer, calm and he likes the most. Next, he is invited to explore sensory impressions. The client recounts the scene, including the sights, sounds, and even odors triggered by it. During therapy, the therapist may also play a theme song. That will help the client to mentally engage to all the five senses. Simultaneously, the counselor looks for signals of contentment in the client, such as facial expressions and voice tone. When breathing slows down, the muscles become relaxed and mental functions are in peace.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR)
Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is a technique that can be done at home by following the instructions given by the therapist. The therapist tells the client to tighten and release each muscle group in turn. The therapist asks the client to hold the muscle tightly for 15 seconds then instructs to release it. Then the therapist instructs to feel the tension in the muscle and also to feel the relaxation of that particular body part. The procedure is paired with slow breathing. The therapist then moves on to another muscle group after a little rest. Starting at the toes and working up to the head, this technique is done in a systematic manner. The muscles gently tighten, not strain. The client reports the sensory difference between willpower and rest after each pause. The client feels peaceful throughout his body at the end of the PMR.
Mindfulness Meditation
To teach mindfulness meditation, the therapist instructs the client to focus on a specific item. The client is invited to see thoughts wave as clouds in the sky and to abstain from any judgment.
Once they have learned Mindfulness Meditation, clients may need some help to again and again come back to a mindful attitude in their ordinary lives; to better remember, they can use the sound of a ticking clock, for instance, or a lovely picture...
Focused Breathing
Paced breathing, interstitial breathing, abdominal, deep, slow, and diaphragmatic breathing are all terms used to describe this form of meditation. Keep your body in a comfortable position to practice concentrated breathing. You can lie down with a pillow. You will feel more comfortable if you place a pillow beneath your neck and knees. Place one hand in the centre of your upper chest and the other on your stomach. That's where the rib cage meets the diaphragm. Slowly inhale through the nose, pulling the breath down towards the stomach, and then pushing the stomach up on the hands while keeping the chest still. During exhaling through pursed lips, the stomach falls downward and tightens the abdominal muscles by keeping the chest still.
Nāḍī Śuddhi Prāṇāyāma
The Nāḍī Śuddhi Prāṇāyāma (alternate nostril breathing) entails breathing through one nostril at a time. Inhale through the open nose while closing one nostril with your thumb or index finger. Then, close the other nostril (with index or thumb of the same hand) and exhale, then inhale, slowly. You can pair this process with counting: if you do so, count a longer time for exhaling (for instance 8 measures) compared to inhaling (for instance 4 measures).
In conclusion: it is quite certain that meditation has numerous benefits for both body and mind. But do not forget the benefits do not appear overnight: they come along with regular practice.
****************
Article Prepared by:
Mrs. Rinsy M.
Counseling Psychologist
Editors Note:
The number of people practicing meditation at least to some degree has skyrocketed worldwide in the last decades and meditation has been becoming a mainstream topic, since about year 2000 or so.
This is a matter of great satisfaction for those who have the Vedas in their heart and for all spiritually minded people.
Meditation started been brought to the West in the second half of the 20th century and this was especially from India: it was brought back by people who had practiced it in India; some other people learnt it from an Indian Master traveling to the West. So some Westerners started learning and practicing meditation and receiving the benefits from it, thanks to the Indian tradition.
At about the same time, the various schools of Buddhism (the Tibetan ones but not only, also the Japanese ones, the Thai ones, the Vietnamese ones and so on) and the related masters also started teaching meditation in the West. And more recently (from about the year 2000) they played a special role in making meditation really popular in the West: Buddhist leaders, out of compassion, gave a green light for meditation to be spread without restriction, even to those not having a spiritual quest; soon mindfulness entered the field of health, sometimes hospitals, and even jails... Scientists started working with persons having been practicing meditation for a long time; a large number of scientific studies were published, all showing various benefits of meditation for physical and mental health.
As the same time, we should not focus too much on the role played by the Indian tradition versus the Buddhist one: we know that meditation has been a discipline existing in India since immemorial times. Meditation goes back to VEDAS: it was practiced intensively by the Rishis and their students. Then by ascetics, yogis and so on, from times immemorial. Buddha was raised in the Indian context and he naturally adopted meditation for himself, then taught it to disciples. While there may be differences, the two streams come from the same original spring.
And today, what counts is the experience of meditation and the benefits one can get from it. This is what Mrs Rinsy will now explain in detail.
MEDITATION
Meditation is a technique which helps improving concentration and also provides relaxation to the body as well as to the mind. Meditation has lots of other benefits too.
People practice meditation to develop positive mood and vision, self-discipline, healthy sleeping habits, and other beneficial habits.
Benefits of Meditation
Reduce Stress
Mind and body are interconnected. So a mental or physical stress causes an increase in hormone levels in the body, especially in cortisol, the stress hormone. Cortisol has many harmful effects such as the release of cytokines, which are molecules bringing inflammation. These effects can interfere with sleep, generate depression and anxiety, increase blood pressure and lead to fatigue and sluggish thinking. Stress may cause inflammation response in our body. Mindfulness meditation can reduce this inflammatory response and also can improve the symptoms of stress related conditions like irritable bowel syndrome (a commonly found disorder which affects the large intestine and causes pain in the stomach), posttraumatic stress disorder (a mental health condition precipitated by a stressful incident, characterized by wind, diarrhea or constipation) and fibromyalgia (which causes pain all over the body accompanied by fatigue and also affects sleep, memory and mood).
Controls Anxiety
Meditation can help relieve anxiety by lowering stress levels. Also, meditation is good in managing work-related anxiety. When a person is practicing meditation, she will learn to control even the rhythm of breathing and thereby will get control over everything that is happening inside.
Promoting emotional health
Some meditation practices may lead to a better self-image and a more positive outlook on life. Studies have shown meditation has a favorable impact on depressed people. People who receive meditation therapies may experience reduced depressive symptoms. Also, meditation lessens negative thoughts.
Increases self-awareness
There are different forms of meditation. Some kinds of meditation will enable a better self-understanding. Meditation improves concentration and attention, as well as self-awareness. By improving self-awareness, it helps develop a better personality. Self-inquiry meditation tries to assist you in learning more about yourself and also how you interact to those around you.
Some forms of meditation will help you to recognize harmful or negative thoughts. The idea is that, as you become more aware of your thinking habits, you can lead them to more creative models. Meditation can help you build more creative problem-solving abilities.
Improves attention
Meditation helps to enhance attention. Meditation can reverse brain patterns causing distractions, anxiety, and inattention. Even if you only meditate for a few minutes each day, you will get benefits.
Developing Kindness
Some types of meditation can help you and others develop more positive attitudes and actions. When we think and experience good ideas and feelings, we become more energized and productive. Meta meditation, also known as love-kindness meditation, encourages you to think and feel positively. Through training, people learn to give this kindness and patience externally, first to friends and then to acquaintances and ultimately to enemies.
May help to manage addictions
Through meditation, people can build a mental discipline and thereby break down dependence or addiction by increasing self-control and awareness of the motivations of an addictive behavior.
Improves sleep
Insomnia appears to have become fairly frequent these days. A person who is meditating regularly can lessen insomnia severity and get a good sleep at night. Also, practicing meditation regularly and becoming skilled in meditation will help that person to control or redirect the negative thoughts that are a frequent cause of persistent difficulty in falling or staying asleep (insomnia). In addition, meditation will help to relax your body by releasing tension and place you in a peaceful state in which you are more likely to fall asleep.
Helps to control pain
Your perception of pain is related to your mood and can be elevated in stressful situations. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to help people reduce discomfort and improve their quality of life. Mindfulness meditation plays a major role in reducing the chances of depression in people who suffer from chronic pain. When comparing a person who is meditating regularly with another who is not doing meditation, one can find that the regularly meditating person shows greater ability to cope with pain and even experiences a reduced sensation of pain.
May lower blood pressure
Meditation can also benefit physical health by lowering heart strain. High blood pressure can cause atherosclerosis, or artery narrowing, which can result in a heart attack or stroke. Meditation has been proved lowering blood pressure in a variety of ways. Meditation helps in controlling the relaxation of nerve signals and fight or flight response so there will be a balancing of the blood pressure.
Most of the meditation forms do not require special tool or space to practice. You can practice meditation daily for a few minutes.
How often you should meditate and how you should feel while you meditate
There are many various recommendations for how often and how long you should meditate. Some sources say that you should do meditation one hour every day, but you may not have that much time.
How frequently you meditate is seems to be less important than making meditation a habit of your day. And it is important not to be in conflict with yourself about the length of time you meditate: doing a 90-minute meditation one day is good - but feeling guilty the next 6 days of the week because you do not have this much time is not very positive!
Meditation seems to be recommended if your schedule doesn't allow you to do your normal amount of physical exercise. In its own way, it will keep you healthy.
Mindfulness meditation is an internal training practice that helps you to reduce negative thoughts, building positivity, and calm down your mind and body. It combines meditation with the practice of mindfulness, which can be defined as an internal state that involves being completely focused in the present so you can recognize and accept your thoughts, emotions and sensations without judgment.
During meditation, beginners as well as longtime practitioners may get distracted. During meditation, one should focus on a single point. When asked to focus on a single point, the mind tries to wander. In other terms, you get distracted. For example, the mind will start exploring your worries instead of focusing on your breathing. You can restart the process at any time if you become distracted. Later on, the duration of meditation and the amount of time that you can concentrate on a single subject will increase. This is actually an indication that you have improved your attention and concentration level. Once you achieve control of your mind with fewer distractions, you will start to enjoy practicing meditation. After some time, regular meditation allows an observation of one’s emotional process, allowing the person to have a better self-knowledge.
Meditation influences both mind and body. At the start of the session, you may experience various aches and sensations throughout your body. It is due to the reflection of feelings of your mind by the body. Sometimes, people may become tired and be tempted to give up. But always keep one thing in mind: once you overcome this discomfort, you will be able to enjoy more positive vibrations of mind and body.
Disappointment is a common feeling among beginners. It can occur even with more advanced meditators. While frustration may trigger some to stop practicing, everyone has to understand that such frustration is part of normal and healthy meditation. Like any emotion, it is something you must observe, not react to, and learn to give up. Despair, fatigue, boredom, and restlessness are all possibilities. Again, use these emotions and put them into practice. Notice where you see most of these feelings.
Be curious about these feelings and pay attention not to place any judgment on them or follow them with thought.
The other feeling is calm. Calm or inner peace, although not every person can feel it at least in the early stages, is one of the most well-known benefits of meditation. This is actually the result that gives people most satisfaction: many tell that the calm they feel when they meditate motivates them to practice meditation again and again. The calmness coming with meditation can be described as deep and peaceful serenity.
Meditating can lead to an interesting experience. First there should be a long period of calm, during which the mind is at rest. Then suddenly, it goes beyond: the mind is empty and vast and as beautiful as the clear blue sky. This is a level of intense concentration in which only consciousness is present.
Feeling of the body during Meditation
Meditation is a technique that allows you to blur the lines between your body and mind. The feelings that arise in the mind are very much linked to the sensations coming from the body. So, when during meditation the mind experiences a feeling of frustration, the body may reflect it as fatigue, a sensation of heaviness, lethargy or tiredness.
When you experience peace of mind during a meditation, this is usually reflected by good body sensations: the body can be felt as light weighted, airy, soft or flexible.
At the peak of meditation state, the body will become more relaxed and free from tiredness and sleepiness.
Meditation is difficult to define solely in terms of mind and body. There are some aspects that go beyond mind and body.
Changes in the brain during meditation
During meditation, a person narrows her focus into the present; in this process, a lot of things happen in the brain. Meditation does, in fact, play an important function in the development of numerous brain regions. When one person repeatedly does some activity, the neural connections involved for that particular activity get improved. For example, if you regularly focus on a single point, the neural connections of the prefrontal cortex will improve and you will be able to concentrate more than before. That is to say, there will be lesser distractions than there were previously. The same is happening during meditation. Some studies found that meditation may, over time, increase the concentration of grey matter in the hippocampus and other anterior parts of the brain.
The grey matter and the left hippocampus contribute to learning, cognition and memory, which in turn lead to better memorizing capacity and more careful behavior.
Meditation calms sympathetic nervous system
The sympathetic nervous system (the “fight-or-flight” response) tends to be de-activated by meditation. The sympathetic nervous system, or fight or flight hormones, is activated when a person feels fear. By meditating, this will be de-activated and the person will be free from anxiety. When you face a threat, your sympathetic nervous system gets activated and releases stress hormones that help you either run or fight. Once the threat has passed, your parasympathetic nervous system is activated, allowing you to relax. Meditation essentially de-activates the sympathetic nervous system while activating the parasympathetic branch. Studies have found that this exercise can over time help reduce pain, depression, stress and anxiety.
Meditation for Depression
Meditation alone can’t cure depression. But it can make a drastic change in your thought pattern. Because depression involves a lot of negative thoughts. So while meditating you will become more self-aware and it will improve self-confidence; then you will have more positive thoughts than negative ones. Meditation will also assist you in managing your emotions. If you are living with depression, you may have chronic symptoms such as low mood and, in some periods, depression may become deeper for a time. Meditation makes it easier to listen to your symptoms when they arise and adopt corrective measures: when you start experiencing more negative thoughts or notice increased irritability, fatigue or loss of interest in what you normally like to do, you may decide to focus on caring for yourself so that things do not get worse.
According to studies, cognitive therapy based on mindfulness meditation can help minimize the likelihood of depression recurrence. Some other studies found that meditation could have even more benefit for managing depression.
Meditation methods employed by Mental Health Professionals
When it comes to mental health experts, they assist their customers in achieving comprehensive mental health and a great sense of well-being. In counseling, there are some specific aims for each client. Meditation strengthens the client's self-awareness, which leads to insight: the client comes to know what he should improve to achieve his goals, as defined with the counsellor. This is why many therapists include meditation into their therapy plans.
All methods of meditation tend to induce a relaxation response: the mind grows at rest. Muscles relax during meditation, and blood pressure tends to drop. The heart rate and breathing rate slow down. Over time, brain's neurons may form new connections. These physical changes help clients handle challenges better. Guided imaging, progressive muscle relaxation, mindfulness meditation and focused breathing are described in detail below.
Guided Imagery
The therapist uses guided imagery to help the client visualize/imagine happy objects or scenes. In order for guided imagery to be effective, the counselor must first obtain a thorough understanding of the client's background. The counselor then proposes photographs to focus on, based on what objects the patient is resting on. The client is instructed to close his or her eyes and sit comfortably with his or her feet on the floor. And then the therapist guides the client to imagine a place which he feels safer, calm and he likes the most. Next, he is invited to explore sensory impressions. The client recounts the scene, including the sights, sounds, and even odors triggered by it. During therapy, the therapist may also play a theme song. That will help the client to mentally engage to all the five senses. Simultaneously, the counselor looks for signals of contentment in the client, such as facial expressions and voice tone. When breathing slows down, the muscles become relaxed and mental functions are in peace.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR)
Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is a technique that can be done at home by following the instructions given by the therapist. The therapist tells the client to tighten and release each muscle group in turn. The therapist asks the client to hold the muscle tightly for 15 seconds then instructs to release it. Then the therapist instructs to feel the tension in the muscle and also to feel the relaxation of that particular body part. The procedure is paired with slow breathing. The therapist then moves on to another muscle group after a little rest. Starting at the toes and working up to the head, this technique is done in a systematic manner. The muscles gently tighten, not strain. The client reports the sensory difference between willpower and rest after each pause. The client feels peaceful throughout his body at the end of the PMR.
Mindfulness Meditation
To teach mindfulness meditation, the therapist instructs the client to focus on a specific item. The client is invited to see thoughts wave as clouds in the sky and to abstain from any judgment.
Once they have learned Mindfulness Meditation, clients may need some help to again and again come back to a mindful attitude in their ordinary lives; to better remember, they can use the sound of a ticking clock, for instance, or a lovely picture...
Focused Breathing
Paced breathing, interstitial breathing, abdominal, deep, slow, and diaphragmatic breathing are all terms used to describe this form of meditation. Keep your body in a comfortable position to practice concentrated breathing. You can lie down with a pillow. You will feel more comfortable if you place a pillow beneath your neck and knees. Place one hand in the centre of your upper chest and the other on your stomach. That's where the rib cage meets the diaphragm. Slowly inhale through the nose, pulling the breath down towards the stomach, and then pushing the stomach up on the hands while keeping the chest still. During exhaling through pursed lips, the stomach falls downward and tightens the abdominal muscles by keeping the chest still.
Nāḍī Śuddhi Prāṇāyāma
The Nāḍī Śuddhi Prāṇāyāma (alternate nostril breathing) entails breathing through one nostril at a time. Inhale through the open nose while closing one nostril with your thumb or index finger. Then, close the other nostril (with index or thumb of the same hand) and exhale, then inhale, slowly. You can pair this process with counting: if you do so, count a longer time for exhaling (for instance 8 measures) compared to inhaling (for instance 4 measures).
In conclusion: it is quite certain that meditation has numerous benefits for both body and mind. But do not forget the benefits do not appear overnight: they come along with regular practice.
****************
Article Prepared by:
Mrs. Rinsy M.
Counseling Psychologist
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