Meditation – Page 2 – Royston Frederick's Alternative Therapies

31 Aug

Learn how to meditate

I believe that meditation should be practiced everyday for our daily wellbeing. Meditation can help balance us on a mental, physical and spiritual level. I look at it from the perspective that the mind is the gate keeper at the gates of the spirit and in order to pass through we have to quiet it to reach our true selves. We move through our lives connecting and disconnecting to things within and around us and in some instances to our peril. Without understanding who we are we are unable to make simple decisions within our lives. Sometimes we find that the choices we are considering or have considered has left us feeling unbalanced inside. These feelings leave what I would call strings, stagnant energy, and energetic blockages throughout the body.

To help release these energetic or physical disturbances the parasympathetic nervous system needs to be activated. Stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system helps promote digestion and slows or shuts off non-essential functions within the body giving your body time to rebalance itself. This can be done through quieting the nervous system using meditation, yoga, energy work (Reiki, Jin Shin Jyutsu, etc.) or listening to positive relaxing music.

The power of the breath

Sometime in your life you may have heard of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. To keep it simple and non-scientific the sympathetic nervous system is our fight or flight response. This part of the nervous system can induces stress, anxiety or states of depression. I think of it as never turning off the lights, electronics, and anything with power in the house. The parasympathetic nervous system on the other hand is our rest or digest system. When you meditate you are basically telling your body to relax or shift down to a lower gear like in a car or when you fall to sleep.The objective of this post, is to show you as the reader how to do a quick meditation in order to relax your parasympathetic nervous system. Your focus is on your breath not any external influences. This easy meditation will teach you how to relieve stress in your body by consciously listening to yourself breath in and out. Most people I’ve encountered tell me that they can’t meditate because they can’t quiet their mind, or they don’t have enough time to commit to it, or they need to be more active and meditation is too slow for them. The purpose of meditation is to connect with your mind, body and spirit and by doing this you have to tune everything else out. Meditation slows your mind down relieving stress a major cause of anxiety and depression, which can lead to other forms of disease within the body. Meditation teaches you to listen to what your body needs amounts other things.

Benefits of Meditation

Meditation is a spiritual art that has been practiced for several millennia throughout every continent of the world. This practice is inching it’s way back from obscurity embedding it`s self into the Western culture now promoting meditation through science and medicine. This phenomenon has also presented it`s self in new age trends such as Yoga, meditation groups, spiritual retreats and the list goes on. I myself have been practicing various forms of meditation for 5 years now and it never ceases to amaze me of the power of the the breath. I have had several clients whom I’ve suggested meditation for stress, anxiety and lowering their blood pressure. I have a client in particular who came for a massage and had an elevated blood pressure. After the massage I spent 2 minutes walking her through a guided meditation and to her surprise her pressure was not only 12 points lower than it was before I started the session, but according to her the lowest it’s been in over 5 years of living with this aliment. Read More →