In the United States it has now been estimated that over 10 million Americans practice some form of meditation daily whilst in Europe their counterparts are catching on and for good reason. Scientists are saying that not only is it boosting their immune systems but it is also, from the result of brain scans they have done, rewiring and even reshaping the brains of the meditators.
Richard Gere does it, Goldy Hawn does it, Sir John Harvey Jones does it, Jet Li does it and Sting too. With a celebrity list of acting, sports and entrepreneurial practitioners - meditation is the holistically minded person’s secret garden.
Meditation is the greatest gift that you could ever give to yourself. The purpose of meditation is to introduce you to the sky like nature of your mind which may give you freedom from possible eons of mental and intellectual darkness. All spiritual traditions practice meditation especially Buddhist, Sufi and Hindu paths. By arresting the intellect and putting the ego on notice, we can return to our long forgotten core consciousness. The practice is not to be a pursuit that brings the mind into a mental dullness or torpor it is rather a release, or gradual unveiling of the mind into a luminous, crisp and alert awareness.
Looking For Mind - Buddhist Meditation
Contemporary scientific research into meditation began in the late 1960's when an Indian researcher called BK Anand found that yogis could meditate themselves into trances so deep that they did not react when hot test tubes were placed on their arm. The most significant breakthrough came in 1967 when Dr Herbert Benson a professor of medicine afraid of what his peers would say to a study on transcendental meditators, sneaked 36 of them into his laboratory and found that when they meditated they used; 17% less oxygen, lowered their heart rates by three beats a minute, and increased the brain waves that come just before sleep. His studies went on to be known famously as The Relaxation Response.
Several years later a Harvard psychiatrist called Gregg Jacobs studied meditators and found that the front part of their brains became deactivated when they meditated. By deactivating this part of the brain he found that the meditator can lose a sense of boundaries and feel more at one with the world. In 1997 a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania called Newberg, discovered in bone fide meditators that the brain does not shut down as it was commonly thought but shifts its energy and blood to different parts of its structure especially those connected with emotions and immunity.
Everybody remembers a place when they were at total peace, all the clouds of thinking had dispersed and the mind fell into its natural state wherein the power of now begins. People are always yearning to return to this ‘peak’ experience
The Power of Now
Echart Tolle is one of the best paradigm shift pioneers on the teaching circuit today and in his best selling book The Power of Now he lullaby’s the intellect to sleep in order to release a rarely witnessed space of serenity. When he realised that there existed what can be best described as an 'I am' and the 'persona of self' he put an end to this internal civil war and fired the persona. After this reconnection to what he fundamentally was and is, underneath the trickery of his ego, he spent the next two years sitting on a park bench in a state of what he describes as being "the most intense joy". People eventually had to ask what was making him so inanely happy, the result - his best selling book.
Mantra – That which protects the mind
Sound vibrates and by creating certain vibrations in the body one can literally serenade the mind into peace. Everyone remembers Tina Turner chanting in the movie about her life in front of a Buddhist shrine. Chanting sacred syllables brings the mind home. By repeatedly chanting Om Ah Hum you can purify the space you are in, all sounds and the thoughts and emotions.
In No Sense
Contrary to popular opinion children can meditate if encouraged. When I interviewed a Montessori school educator from India she told me that the kids in her school ask for what they call a ‘silence’. That is 40 four year olds, preparing a circle of chairs sitting quiet and still for forty minutes at a time.
Little Sips are Better Than Gulps
NASA’s astronauts explore outer space whilst authentic meditators explore inner space psychenauts. The ultimate peak in meditation is enlightenment but there is a slight catch. There is no such thing as an enlightened person there is only enlightened activity. For those who have not started meditating – don’t. For those who have – never give up as you are only ever one eye blink away from total awakening.
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Ralph Quinlan Forde - CEO www.stargatenutritionvitamin.com the author and Holistic Medicine Consultant has contributed to the following publications over eight years, The Independent on Sunday, The Sunday Herald, IVENUS, Tescos Magazine, The Irish Examiner and The Sunday Tribune. He is also the founder of www.medicinebuddhafoundation.org. His book The Book of Tibetan Medicine is now in 11 languages http://thebookoftibetanmedicine.blogspot.com
