Few words about meditation

I have been planning this post for a long time, but there has always been something “more important”. But finally, it’s time to write about meditation. In the beginning I must said one important thing – I’m not very experienced in meditation. I tried and use several techniques, but I’m not a big source of knowledge about that. If you want to see professional opinions, professional descriptions and tricks, use good literature for that. I can only describe my feelings, my observations and what I think about mediation. It’s only my opinion, do not use it as general “rating”.

Why meditation

First of all – why I meditate and why you should try to meditate? I can’t say, that there is any important goal. Meditation in my opinion is not a road to target, it isn’t a book with next chapters and growing excitement. No. It’s a process, something like a eating habits: can change lof things, but without any milestones. I started meditation about three years ago because… I was interested in this topic. Read a bit about that, also looking for something to “slow down” life and sense of absence. Yes, I think for me this “absence” was the most important – I watched my life, but didn’t feel, not always. Meditation let me to change this.

How I meditate

How do I meditate? I set timer on my phone to few minutes (most often it’s eight minutes), sit down on chair, try to relax and close my eyes. Physically it’s all. Rest is in my head, in my awareness. I try to “feel” everything around. Listen to how fridge works, listen to birds which are outside, listen to traffic. It’s one of many available methods. You can observe your “painful places”, you can thank for everything good in this day or week. One of simplest methods is to watching your breath – inhale, then slow exhale. And again, focus on breathing, nothing else.

You don’t have to “fight” with your thoughts. You can just accept them – if you will be present, they will go away again. Probably, then new ones will appear, but you should also accept them. We can also treat minds as dealer – he wants to sell as something, but we can just refuse. Other method is to repeat affirmations: to be healthful, to be successful, to have great family, but also for everything good for your friends. It not only cleans mind, but changes attitude for other people.

During waiting

We have a lot occasions to meditate during day. How often do you wait on red lights on crossroads? How often do you wait on queues during shopping? How often do you wait when you are on auto service, or in queue on doctor, or many, many other, similar situations? It doesn’t matter how long – even one minute is good to meditate, improve mindfulness for this moment, observe, listen to and feel everything around. Of course a lot of use phone in such situations, checking social media, mails, websites – again and again and again. Why and for what? Try something else and decide yourself, what is more pleasant.

During some fitness activity

You can also meditate during some fitness activity. I mean static activity of course, it’s not possible when you are concentrated to do something complicated. Nice option is stretching – very important for many sports, but often overlooked. Last time I had knee injury and must stretch a lot. Not simple for few seconds, but each exercise for few minutes. It was fantastic occasion to also meditate. Stretching was a lot pleasant with that.

When walking

If you think, that you can meditate only motionless, you are wrong. It’s possible to meditate also when you are walking. Quite, slow walk for shopping? It’s good option to be more careful – try to listen to birds, try to listen to children near you, cars, wind, everything. Try to look at each puddle and observe reflections. Look at trees and their leaves, at grass, at buildings. Try to look everything that was there always, and was always ignored by you. You should feel the difference very quickly.

I know, that is only “a drop in the ocean”, only start of very interesting topic, but as I wrote in the beginning, I’m not a mediation specialist. I can only recommend to start, to try and evaluate this yourself. Without that, you will not know effects, you will not be able to talk about this and your experiences. Try, it’s only few minutes.

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