Meditation in Amsterdam - The Body can Help Meditate
How does one get good at meditation techniques?
In my Amsterdam meditations I often get this perception that meditation is something we do with our minds. The beginner tends to be totally in his or her head, trying to achieve this or that by sheer force of mental will.
The opposite is in fact the case, and one could say that many successful ways to meditate, take us through a number of physical techniques or places of focus, without ever referring to thoughts or feelings in our minds. After a full session of certain breathing exercises for example, accompanied with body awareness, someone could get the feeling this is not the real meditation, just a bunch of exercises.
The answer is, its both. Meditative techniques are indeed just a bunch of exercises where we manipulate aspects of our attention and our body, which are easy to influence, as opposed to say, trying to quite the mind.
The body and certain functions of it, such as the breath have an incredible influence on whether we have a meditation session that gets us closer to mindfulness, or one where we spend the whole time trying to fend off intrusive thoughts. This is why much of the work that needs to be done at the start of the meditation journey has to do with the body.
The brain produces mind. But the brain is not floating in space. It is instead influenced by all the neural connections that it shares with our muscles and our vital organs. So in order to send signals to the brain that place it in a good meditative disposition, our manipulation of the body needs to become a primary focus.
Things such as breath, closing our eyes, sitting in a comfortable position and straightening our backs, and more advanced techniques such as hand mudras are all working in the service of putting the mind in a certain state. If the body is in a correct physical state, the mind has no choice but to become meditative, and the opposite also applies.
The efforts which have to be invested at the beginning of the journey are higher because our power of awareness and presence is not yet strong enough, and things such as noise, or distractions in the environment will inevitably distract. As our presence grows we become more resistant to the effect of these outside stimuli and even learn to use them to increase our presence. Ultimately the goal is to have the meditative disposition become second nature. A trait that we carry with us in daily life and which is retained regardless of the outside circumstances.
All this work done with the body at the start of our journey into meditation are made easier by the fact that the physical body is the most tangible part of ourselves. It also begins to strengthen our mind body connection, which gives a grounding effect and starts to have a positive effect on our health through the balancing of our inmune and endocrine systems, as well as the neural systems that deliver messages from the brain to our vital organs and back.
So the key message of this short post is, don't neglect the body in favor of becoming a "mental" meditator. Disciplines such as yoga firmly state that transformation of the mind happens through the body and not aside of it.
Namaste
Pablo Bran
www.meditationamsterdam.com
In my Amsterdam meditations I often get this perception that meditation is something we do with our minds. The beginner tends to be totally in his or her head, trying to achieve this or that by sheer force of mental will.
The opposite is in fact the case, and one could say that many successful ways to meditate, take us through a number of physical techniques or places of focus, without ever referring to thoughts or feelings in our minds. After a full session of certain breathing exercises for example, accompanied with body awareness, someone could get the feeling this is not the real meditation, just a bunch of exercises.
The answer is, its both. Meditative techniques are indeed just a bunch of exercises where we manipulate aspects of our attention and our body, which are easy to influence, as opposed to say, trying to quite the mind.
The body and certain functions of it, such as the breath have an incredible influence on whether we have a meditation session that gets us closer to mindfulness, or one where we spend the whole time trying to fend off intrusive thoughts. This is why much of the work that needs to be done at the start of the meditation journey has to do with the body.
The brain produces mind. But the brain is not floating in space. It is instead influenced by all the neural connections that it shares with our muscles and our vital organs. So in order to send signals to the brain that place it in a good meditative disposition, our manipulation of the body needs to become a primary focus.
Things such as breath, closing our eyes, sitting in a comfortable position and straightening our backs, and more advanced techniques such as hand mudras are all working in the service of putting the mind in a certain state. If the body is in a correct physical state, the mind has no choice but to become meditative, and the opposite also applies.
The efforts which have to be invested at the beginning of the journey are higher because our power of awareness and presence is not yet strong enough, and things such as noise, or distractions in the environment will inevitably distract. As our presence grows we become more resistant to the effect of these outside stimuli and even learn to use them to increase our presence. Ultimately the goal is to have the meditative disposition become second nature. A trait that we carry with us in daily life and which is retained regardless of the outside circumstances.
All this work done with the body at the start of our journey into meditation are made easier by the fact that the physical body is the most tangible part of ourselves. It also begins to strengthen our mind body connection, which gives a grounding effect and starts to have a positive effect on our health through the balancing of our inmune and endocrine systems, as well as the neural systems that deliver messages from the brain to our vital organs and back.
So the key message of this short post is, don't neglect the body in favor of becoming a "mental" meditator. Disciplines such as yoga firmly state that transformation of the mind happens through the body and not aside of it.
Namaste
Pablo Bran
www.meditationamsterdam.com
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