I am not sure where my initial interest in meditation came from?
But I am grateful something sparked an interest!
My own journey into meditation had a slow start! Meditation
had been something I wanted to get into for many years, mostly because I heard
it was good for improving sleep, relaxation and was beneficial for your mental health.
Back then I didn’t really know many
people who meditated. (I knew people who prayed and now can see that ‘meditative
prayer’ also has similar positive effects on the body and brain.) For
about eight years, 'Start meditating'
was my New Year’s resolution fail. I
had a real ‘block’ with meditating and never managed to do it for more than a
couple of days in a row. I had ‘sort of’
decided I couldn’t meditate ‘I wasn’t that sort of person’. Looking
back it was like trying to learn to do something like trying to learn read without anyone teaching me how. It’s
hard to commit to something every day when you don’t really know what to do and
you don’t feel you are doing it right.
Also my body/mind put up a lot
of resistance to being still and quiet. I
was used to being on the go all the time – I loved being physically, verbally and mentally active. (Similarly when I first
tried Yoga, I found one hour yoga sessions painfully boring. (I will write
another blog post about my positive experiences in yoga.) I had
become the queen of mediation procrastination!
In January 2013 when I was searching on the internet
for a running group in Manchester I ‘randomly’ came across a meditation group called
Brahma Kumaris (BK’s) The BK’s offer free spiritual self-development and meditation
courses worldwide. First I went along to
the BK centre on a Saturday afternoon for a workshop on ‘Relaxation’. Then I
attended a four week
introductory course teaching spiritual knowledge and meditation, and did a
further four weeks on another meditation course (Approx. 2hrs each week). I have meditated
consistently ever since. BK’s is a fabulous organisation and I would encourage
anyone who wants to develop their meditation practice to go along to some of
their workshops and talks. (www.brahmakumaris.org)
*(I have shared my adapted meditation technique in
the previous meditation blog – this technique works well for me and I am happy
to help anyone who is at that point where they want to meditate but are just
feeling stuck, or who are experts in meditation procrastination! Just drop me
an email.)
Meditation can easily become part of your daily
routine. You don’t need any special equipment to do it, and you can tap into a
free source of stress relief and calmness on a daily basis. You will begin to see
meditation as an integral part of your mental hygiene. In the same way you clean your teeth every
day to prevent tooth decay, meditation can prevent the decay of your mind.
It puzzles me why it took 35 years for me to ‘find’
meditation? Why didn’t someone teach it to me when I was a child? Why isn't meditation taught at schools from
day one? A quote from the Dalai Lama on children learning to meditate:
“If
every 8 year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence
from the world within one generation.”
Now I’m not convinced childhood meditation would eradicate all world violence,
but I can understand where he is coming from. I went through sixteen years of formal education
without ever being taught how to manage stress, cope with negativity, relax, or
to care and love my self. Developing the
skill of meditation and other spiritual self-development tools in my opinion should
be as important as learning to read and write.
Why keep these skills a
secret? If we had a world population
that had tools to help them manage their emotions there would be a lot less
people on antidepressants and other mood altering medications, there would be
less violence and crime which is often bred out of pure frustration. Food, alcohol and other drugs are used by
many, as ‘self medication’, the only way they know how to alter their state of
stress or emotion. Once you can meditate you can alter your feelings and emotions. Some individual teachers and a few schools are introducing
meditation and mindfulness to their pupil’s day’s but it isn’t yet part of the global
curriculum. Goldie Hawn and the ‘Hawn foundation’ have
developed a successful program called MindUP.
This involves teaching children about their brain and how to manage
their emotions better, breathe/meditate and be mindful.
“Based in
neuroscience, mindfulness and positive psychology, MindUP™ teaches children
greater emotional self-control, resiliency and helps develop better
decision-making skills. MindUP™ teaches kids about their brain, their most
powerful tool and how to reduce stress. In 15 lessons, MindUP™ provides
training for complex problem solving skills and building greater concentration.
The end result – children are able to engage in learning, becoming less reactive
and more focused in school.” www.thehawnfoundation.org
(You can watch a short video about MindUP@ https://youtu.be/tAo_ZSmjLJ4)
I believe these sort of programs greatly benefit the
pupils and staff in schools and need to become more common place. If we help the youth to deal with their mental
and physical health when they are young then hopefully they will manage the
stresses and strains of modern day life with a little more ease when they are adults – leading to
less: anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, cardiac problems, domestic
violence, anger etc.
Often a lot of things that are pushed onto us or sold to us by
the media and society are things we have to buy/spend money on. ‘They’ want us to believe we can buy our
happiness in material goods, foods and drinks. All these things give short term pleasure leaving people always feeling unsatisfied and wanting and yearning for more ‘stuff’. Meditation
on the other hand is free for everyone, from every walk of life to enjoy –
there isn’t a big multibillion dollar industry advertising it and making
billions in profit from it. We know meditation,
gentle exercise and a nutritious diet helps reduce depression/pain/anxiety/weight
gain/ blood pressure etc. But these problems are all also ‘fixed’ by drugs and
these drugs make the pharmaceutical industries billions and billions of dollars.
“The global pharmaceuticals market is
worth US$300 billion a year, a figure expected to rise to US$400 billion within
three years.” WHO, 2015
It is in the
best interests of the pharmaceutical companies to keep people in a drug
dependant state. Governments make $$$
from the taxes of these ‘super pharma’ companies. I don’t think that this is the only reason why
meditation isn’t pushed from the ‘top’ but it could be one of the contributing
factors?
Also worryingly these
‘super pharma’ companies spend one-third of all sales revenue on marketing and
advertising their drug products. (WHO 2015) This is
about twice the amount they spend on research and development. This means they want to make a profit more
than they care about the effects of the drugs that they are selling to you. I
think this is really worrying! The governments care more about their tax profits
than they care about your health. Don’t
rely on the drug companies, your government (who influence the school
curriculums and recommend ‘ideal’ food guidelines) or the medical professionals
to make positive decisions based solely for the good of your health; where
there is money to be made there is a lot of room for corruption and misguided information.
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