Meditation and stress

One of the most common reasons that people cite for wanting to learn meditation is to reduce stress.

Stress is of course unavoidable, and the point of stress reduction and stress management programs is not to eliminate stress from our lives entirely. Life is always going to be full of challenges, and a life without some turmoil is not only impossible but is also undesirable.

Many stress therapists, of course, recognize that regular meditation and relaxation can be of significant help in reducing stress to manageable and healthy levels, and relaxation and meditation exercises are now widely taught. Many therapists and psychiatrists are taking up meditation themselves, not only so that they can teach it more effectively to others but in order to deal with the very stressful demands of their own jobs, which can result in burnout.

A considerable amount of research has shown that meditation has benefits on mental health, including a reduction in proneness to depression, an increase in emotional positivity, and an increased ability to deal with life’s inevitable stresses.

People often think of meditation as being nothing more than relaxation, and there is a famous book on meditation and health entitled “The Relaxation Response.” Meditation, however, not only involves relaxation (the cessation of unnecessary effort) but promotes mindfulness, which helps the stress-sufferer to recognize unhelpful patterns of thought that give rise to the stress response, and also involves the active cultivation of positive mental states such as lovingkindness, compassion, patience, and energy.

There are a number of books available that explore how meditation can help you to deal with your stress, and give information on “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction”, or MBSR, a program developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, which uses the principles of mindfulness meditation to help long-term pain sufferers learn to deal with their afflictions.

Thich Nhat Hanh

One of the best known and most respected Zen masters in the world today, poet, and peace and human rights activist, Thich Nhat Hanh (called Thây by his students) has led an extraordinary life. Born in central Vietnam in 1926 he joined the monkshood at the age of sixteen.

The Vietnam War confronted the monasteries with the question of whether to adhere to the contemplative life and remain meditating in the monasteries, or to help the villagers suffering under bombings and other devastation of the war. Nhat Hanh was one of those who chose to do both, helping to found the "engaged Buddhism" movement. His life has since been dedicated to the work of inner transformation for the benefit of individuals and society.

In Saigon in the early 60s, Thich Nhat Hanh founded the School of Youth Social Service, a grass-roots relief organization that rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools and medical centers, resettled homeless families, and organized agricultural cooperatives. Rallying some 10,000 student volunteers, the SYSS based its work on the Buddhist principles of non-violence and compassionate action. Despite government denunciation of his activity, Nhat Hanh also founded a Buddhist University, a publishing house, and an influential peace activist magazine in Vietnam.

After visiting the U.S. and Europe in 1966 on a peace mission, he was banned from returning to Vietnam in 1966. On subsequent travels to the U.S., he made the case for peace to federal and Pentagon officials including Robert McNamara. He may have changed the course of U.S. history when he persuaded Martin Luther King, Jr. to oppose the Vietnam War publicly, and so helped to galvanize the peace movement. The following year, King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Subsequently, Nhat Hanh led the Buddhist delegation to the Paris Peace Talks.

In 1982 he founded Plum Village, a Buddhist community in exile in France, where he continues his work to alleviate suffering of refugees, boat people, political prisoners, and hungry families in Vietnam and throughout the Third World. He has also received recognition for his work with Vietnam veterans, meditation retreats, and his prolific writings on meditation, mindfulness, and peace.

He has published some 85 titles of accessible poems, prose, and prayers, with more than 40 in English, including the best selling Call Me by My True Names, Peace Is Every Step, Being Peace, Touching Peace, Living Buddha Living Christ, Teachings on Love, The Path of Emancipation, and Anger. In September 2001, just a few days after the suicide terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, he addressed the issues of non-violence and forgiveness in a memorable speech at Riverside Church in New York City. In September of 2003 he addressed members of the US Congress, leading them through a two-day retreat.

Thich Nhat Hanh continues to live in Plum Village in the meditation community he founded, where he teaches, writes, and gardens; and he leads retreats worldwide on "the art of mindful living."

Thich Nhat Hanh's key teaching is that, through mindfulness, we can learn to live in the present moment instead of in the past and in the future. Dwelling in the present moment is, according to Nhat Hanh, the only way to truly develop peace, both in one's self and in the world.

Mindfulness for Beginners

Reclaiming the Present Moment--and Your Life

An Invitation to the Practice of Mindfulness

We may long for wholeness, suggests Jon Kabat-Zinn, but the truth is that it is already here and already ours. The practice of mindfulness holds the possibility of not just a fleeting sense of contentment, but a true embracing of a deeper unity that envelops and permeates our lives. With Mindfulness for Beginners you are invited to learn how to transform your relationship to the way you think, feel, love, work, and play—and thereby awaken to and embody more completely who you really are.

Here, the teacher, scientist, and clinician who first demonstrated the benefits of mindfulness within mainstream Western medicine offers a book that you can use in three unique ways: as a collection of reflections and practices to be opened and explored at random; as an illuminating and engaging start-to-finish read; or as an unfolding “lesson- a-day” primer on mindfulness practice.

Beginning and advanced meditators alike will discover in these pages a valuable distillation of the key attitudes and essential practices that Jon Kabat-Zinn has found most useful with his students, including:

• Why heartfulness is synonymous with true mindfulness
• The value of coming back toour bodies and to our senses over and over again
• How our thoughts “self-liberate” whentouched by awareness
• Moving beyond our “story” into direct experience
• Stabilizing our attention and presence amidst daily activities
• The three poisons that causesuffering—and their antidotes
• How mindfulness heals, even after the fact
• Reclaiming our wholeness, and more.

The prescription for living a more mindful life seems simple enough: return your awareness again and again to whatever is going on. But if you’ve tried it, you know that here is where all the questions and challenges really begin. Mindfulness for Beginners provides welcome answers, insights, and instruction to help us make that shift, moment by moment, into a more spacious, clear, reliable, and loving connection with ourselves and the world.

Includes a complete CD with five guided mindfulness meditations by Jon Kabat-Zinn, selected from the audio program that inspired this book.

What is mindfulness?

We especially like Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness:

'Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way;
On purpose,
in the present moment,
and nonjudgmentally.'

Kabat-Zinn, if you haven’t heard of him, is a famous teacher of mindfulness meditation and the founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.

First of all, mindfulness involves paying attention “on purpose”. Mindfulness involves a conscious direction of our awareness. We sometimes (me included) talk about “mindfulness” and “awareness” as if they were interchangeable terms, but that’s not a good habit to get into. I may be aware I’m irritable, but that wouldn’t mean I was being mindful of my irritability. In order to be mindful I have to be purposefully aware of myself, not just vaguely and habitually aware. Knowing that you are eating is not the same as eating mindfully.

Let’s take that example of eating and look at it a bit further. When we are purposefully aware of eating, we are consciously being aware of the process of eating. We’re deliberately noticing the sensations and our responses to those sensations. We’re noticing the mind wandering, and when it does wander we purposefully bring our attention back.

When we’re eating unmindfully we may in theory be aware of what we’re doing, but we’re probably thinking about a hundred and one other things at the same time, and we may also be watching TV, talking, or reading — or even all three! So a very small part of our awareness is absorbed with eating, and we may be only barely aware of the physical sensations and even less aware of our thoughts and emotions.

Because we’re only dimly aware of our thoughts, they wander in an unrestricted way. There’s no conscious attempt to bring our attention back to our eating. There’s no purposefulness.

This purposefulness is a very important part of mindfulness. Having the purpose of staying with our experience, whether that’s the breath, or a particular emotion, or something as simple as eating, means that we are actively shaping the mind.

Left to itself the mind wanders through all kinds of thoughts — including thoughts expressing anger, craving, depression, revenge, self-pity, etc. As we indulge in these kinds of thoughts we reinforce those emotions in our hearts and cause ourselves to suffer.

By purposefully directing our awareness away from such thoughts and towards some “anchor” we decrease their effect on our lives and we create instead a space of freedom where calmness and contentment can grow.

The Seven Pillars of Mindfulness

NON-JUDGING
consists in taking the position of an impartial witness to your own experience. It requires that you become aware of the stream of judging and reacting to inner and outer experiences and step back from it. This habit of categorizing into good and bad or positive and negative locks us into mechanical reactions that we are not even aware of and that often have no objective basis at all. Tip: observe over 10 minutes how much you are preoccupied with liking and disliking what you are experiencing.

PATIENCE
it demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things unfold in their own time. Practicing mindfulness give us the chance to give time and space to our own unfolding. Why rushing to the next “better” moment when after all each one is your life in that moment.

BEGINNER’s MIND
practicing mindfulness means to take the chance to see everything as if it was for the first time and not allow our illusion of knowing prevent us from being present to our experiences. Tip next time you meet someone you know well try and see something new in this person.

TRUST
developing a basic trust in yourself and your feelings is an integral part of meditation practice. Do not get caught up in the reputation and authority of your teachers. It is impossible to become like somebody else. Your only hope is to become more fully yourself.

NON-STRIVING
almost everything we do is for a purpose. Meditation not! Actually this attitude can be a real obstacle in meditation. Although meditation takes a lot of work and energy, ultimately it is about non-doing. It has no goal other than for you to be yourself. The irony is that you already are! Do not sit to get relaxed, enlighten or sleep better. Sit to learn to carefully see what is happening and accept it.

ACCEPTANCE
often acceptance comes after we have gone through intense period of emotion turmoil and anger. Doing that uses up our energy in the struggle instead of using it for healing and change. You are much more likely to know what to do and have the inner conviction to act when your vision is mot clouded by your mind’s self-serving judgments and desires or its fears and prejudices.

LETTING GO
when we pay attention to our inner experience, we discover that there are certain thoughts, feelings and situations that the mind seems to want to hold on to. If pleasant, we try and prolong our experience, if unpleasant, we try and get rid of them. In meditation, we try to intentionally put aside the tendency to elevate some aspects of our experience and reject others.


As presented by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 'Full Catastrophe Living'

Mindfulness Meditation For Beginners

By Axel Gjertsen

It’s refreshing to take a break every now and then, from the hustle and bustle of modern life. No matter whether you’re at the office or in the mountains, all it takes to become mindful is a conscious in and out breath…

In this post we’ll take a close look at how to get started with mindfulness meditation. There is no need to have any previous meditation experience and I can assure you that mindfulness is both fun and easy to learn.

What is mindfulness?
Everyone knows what it’s like to be under stress. It’s an unpleasant mental state that makes you restless. When you’re stressed out the mind speeds aimlessly from one thought to the next, in an endless cycle.

Mindfulness on the other hand, is a state of relaxed attention. Whenever the mind is centered, it’s naturally calm. The absence of aimless thought processes calms the mind.

When and where can I practice?
Mindfulness can be practiced anywhere and at anytime. But in the very beginning, it’s best to practice where there are few distractions. For example, in the bedroom just after waking up in the morning or before going to bed at night.

It’s ideal to practice mindfulness meditation while commuting. You can also take a short break to center yourself when you’re having a busy day at work.

Practice mindfulness meditation alone or with friends. It’s really inspiring to practice in a group.

How do I know that I’m mindful?
As a beginner, it’s somewhat difficult to know for sure since everything is new. If you’re asking the question, it’s unlikely that you’re mindful. However, with practice you will familiarize yourself with mindfulness and recognize the mental state.

Whenever you catch yourself thinking during practice, you have regained mindfulness. Celebrate that moment as opposed to putting yourself down for getting caught up in thinking. Now that you’re mindful, gently go back to your meditation object. That’s a skillful approach to mindfulness meditation.

Which mindfulness technique is best for me?
Try the mindfulness techniques that interest you and stick to one that comes easily for you. The more natural the practice feels, the better. In this post, you’ll be introduced to a wide range of mindfulness techniques that are suitable for beginners.

Mindfulness Meditation
To be mindful is to give relaxed attention to your meditation object, as opposed to concentrating with all your might. Don’t try too hard which only makes for physical and mental tension. A relaxed body makes for a relaxed mind, and the other way around.

Always make yourself as comfortable as possible. Lying down is one of the best postures for mindfulness meditation, since it’s natural to relax the body while lying down. However, any body posture will do as long as it’s comfortable.

Some meditators find it helpful to put up mindfulness reminders in their homes and at work. You can either post small notes, nature photographs, incense sticks, images of Christ, Buddhas or anything else that reminds you of mindfulness. If you want to be discrete, bring a small pot plant to work and let that be your mindfulness reminder.

There are endless opportunities to practice mindfulness throughout the day, a moment here and a moment there. It’s not about putting in hours of practice. A conscious in and out breath is all it takes to reap the fruits of mindfulness meditation. Over time, your attention will grow more steadfast, you will get more deeply relaxed and feel more refreshed.

Mindfulness meditation is the perfect tool when you have some time at hand. Give relaxed attention to your meditation object while waiting for the train, bus or plane.

For some meditators it’s easier to concentrate with the eyes closed. By closing the eyes, you eliminate many distractions. Others find it easier to practice in a dark room or with the lights dimmed low, which is calming and also removes distractions. Try and see what works best for you.

Only give attention to one meditation object at the time.

Best of luck with your practice!

         

         

Meditation: 20 practical Tips for Beginners

Meditation is the art of focusing 100% of your attention in one area. The practice comes with a myriad of well-publicized health benefits including increased concentration, decreased anxiety, and a general feeling of happiness.

Although a great number of people try meditation at some point in their lives, a small percentage actually stick with it for the long-term. This is unfortunate, and a possible reason is that many beginners do not begin with a mindset needed to make the practice sustainable.

The purpose of this article is to provide 20 practical recommendations to help beginners get past the initial hurdles and integrate meditation over the long term:

1. Make it a formal practice. You will only get to the next level in meditation by setting aside specific time (preferably two times a day) to be still.
2. Start with the breath. Breathing deep slows the heart rate, relaxes the muscles, focuses the mind and is an ideal way to begin practice.
3. Stretch first. Stretching loosens the muscles and tendons allowing you to sit (or lie) more comfortably; also tretching starts the process of “going inward” and brings added attention to the body.
4. Meditate with Purpose. Beginners must understand that meditation is an ACTIVE process. The art of focusing your attention to a single point is hard work, and you have to be purposefully engaged!
5. Notice frustration creep up on you. This is very common for beginners as we think “hey, what am I doing here” or “why can’t I just quiet my damn mind already”. When this happens, really focus in on your breath and let the frustrated feelings go.
6. Experiment. Although many of us think of effective meditation as a Yogi sitting cross-legged beneath a Bonzi tree, beginners should be more experimental and try different types of meditation. Try sitting, lying, eyes open, eyes closed, etc.
7. Feel your body parts. A great practice for beginning meditators is to take notice of the body when a meditative state starts to take hold. Once the mind quiets, put all your attention to the feet and then slowly move your way up the body (include your internal organs). This is very healthy and an indicator that you are on the right path.
8. Pick a specific room in your home to meditate. Make sure it is not the same room where you do work, exercise, or sleep. Place candles and other spiritual paraphernalia in the room to help you feel at ease.
9. Read a book (or two) on meditation. Preferably an instructional guide AND one that describes the benefits of deep meditative states. This will get you motivated. John Kabat-Zinn’s "Wherever you go, There you are" is terrific for beginners.
10. Commit for the long haul. Meditation is a life-long practice, and you will benefit most by NOT examining the results of your daily practice. Just do the best you can every day, and then let it go!
11. Listen to instructional tapes and CDs.
12. Generate moments of awareness during the day. Finding your breath and “being present” while not in formal practice is a wonderful way to evolve your meditation habits.
13. Make sure you will not be disturbed. One of the biggest mistakes beginners make is not insuring peaceful practice conditions. If you have it in the back of your mind that the phone might ring, your kids might wake, or your coffee pot might whistle than you will not be able to attain a state of deep relaxation.
14. Notice small adjustments. For beginning meditators, the slightest physical movements can transform a meditative practice from one of frustration to one of renewal. These adjustments may be barely noticeable to an observer, but they can mean everything for your practice.
15. Use a candle. Meditating with eyes closed can be challenging for a beginner. Lighting a candle and using it as your point of focus allows you to strengthen your attention with a visual cue. This can be very powerful.
16. Do NOT Stress. This may be the most important tip for beginners, and the hardest to implement. No matter what happens during your meditation practice, do not stress about it. This includes being nervous before meditating and angry afterwards. Meditation is what it is, and just do the best you can at the time.
17. Do it together. Meditating with a partner or loved one can have many wonderful benefits, and can improve your practice. However, it is necessary to make sure that you set agreed-upon ground rules before you begin!
18. Meditate early in the morning. Without a doubt, early morning is an ideal time to practice: it is quieter, your mind is not filled with the usual clutter, and there is less chance you will be disturbed. Make it a habit to get up half an hour earlier to meditate.
19. Be Grateful at the end. Once your practice is through, spend 2-3 minutes feeling appreciative of the opportunity to practice and your mind’s ability to focus.
20. Notice when your interest in meditation begins to wane. Meditation is hard work, and you will inevitably come to a point where it seemingly does not fit into the picture anymore. THIS is when you need your practice the most and I recommend you go back to the book(s) or the CD’s you listened to and become re-invigorated with the practice. Chances are that losing the ability to focus on meditation is parallel with your inability to focus in other areas of your life!

Meditation is an absolutely wonderful practice, but can be very difficult in the beginning. Use the tips described in this article to get your practice to the next level!

By: Todd Goldfarb