The Neuroscience of Meditation

World Healing Meditation

As a preparation for group World Healing sessions, i.e. sending unconditional love to the planet and its people, we must meditate. I have received numerous requests regarding ‘how to meditate’. In response, I have crafted a short article on the topic for all others who are new to meditation.

What is Meditation

Meditation is simple. However simple does not mean easy. Meditation is an ancient Eastern technique that gives the mind a work-out by offering it a vacation. Sounds wonderful? It is.

Benefits of Meditation

Meditation can promote overall good health, if done properly and frequently. The list of specific physical, mental, emotional and spiritual benefits of meditation that have been reported, seems endless, and include:

PHYSICAL: Makes you sleep better, lowers blood pressure and cholestol, helps you manage stress, boosts your immune system, improves your breathing and heightens your senses. MENTAL: It clears the mind, calms you and helps you study; it strengthens the mind making it more effective in problem solving; enhances intuition and greater creativity. EMOTIONAL: It shifts one’s attitude towards the positive and alleviates the effects of depression; it reduces anxiety and fear; it helps dissolve anger and increases emotional stability. SPIRITUAL: Meditation is most commonly tied to spirituality and religion – eg. it’s central to Buddhism. Meditation is said to bring one closer to one’s spiritual leader – God. The more advanced the meditating practioner, the greater the spiritual benefits, so that eventually, Enlightenment or Self – Realization is reached.

Types of Meditation

There are numerous types of meditation, which usually fall into 2 categories:

Mind-focusing Meditation Mindfulness (& Mindlessness) Meditation

As this article is for beginners, let’s start with the easiest: mind-focusing meditation.

How to Meditate

Before you begin, decide how long you want to meditate. Beginners should not overdo it, start with just 8-10 minutes and build up to 30 minutes or longer. Make some time for meditation everyday, ideally at the same time of the day.

Sit in a comfortable position, in which you can stay a period of time. Straighten your back and try not to wiggle. Ensure you won’t be disturbed during your meditation, so turn of your phone and get the the ‘do not disturb’-sign out. If you keep a watch nearby, you can keep track of time. Either close your eyes (easiest) or concentrate your eyes on one point, say on a flame or meditation image. You are now ready to begin meditating.

Mind Focusing Meditation

You can concentrate on your breath or mediate on a word, concept, mantra or object. Start with the breath and count your intakes. While you focus on the breath, let go off arising thoughts. Initially, it’s a coming and going. ‘Thoughts come up, and you let them go. New thoughts come up, and you let them go.’ Don’t cling to the past, don’t live in the future, don’t mind disturbances in your present environment. Just witness your breath. Deal with the process as an observer.

Doing this becomes easier over time. After all, meditation is mind-training, and you’re building strength of mind. Tip for superactive & busy beginner minds: have a notepad and pen handy to jot down your first 15 thoughts. Meditation will be easier after this.

You’ll find that that the process of simply counting breaths will make you more peaceful and joyful. Once you reach a more stable level of concentration, change counting your breaths to repeating a word/phrase/idea that you want to concentrate on, for example ‘We are one world healing’.

Repeat daily.

Mindfulness and Mindlessness Meditation

The major difference between the form of concentration meditation and the mindfulness form of meditating is that in concentration you focus on content, while in mindfulness it is not about the content of your focus, but about the quality or level of your focus, or awareness itself. Mindfulness meditation is a way to raise your level of awareness, of consciousness immediately, without having to deal with and become involved in the infinite possibilities of content.

Mindfulness is quite different. While in mind-focusing meditation you focus on content, in mindfullness meditation you focus on being focused. You raise your level of awareness. The objective is for you to become fully alert and to witness everything that is, including your mind’s content when it arises. As a result, you’ll become unattached to your thoughts, and you’ll start witnessing your mind instead of being involved in it.

More advance practitioners can try mindlessness meditation. This type of meditation involves stopping the mind’s every activity immediately and retaining that state of no-thought (or mindlessness) for as long as possible.

Krishnamurti on Meditation

For Jiddu Krishnamurti (UN Peace Metal-winner, proclaimed new incarnation of Maitreya Buddha, and well-known writer & speaker on purpose of meditation, human relationships, and how to enact positive change in global society) ‘meditation’ meant something different than the practice of controlling the mind. Instead, it was choiceless awareness in the present.

In the Preface of his book , Jiddu Krishnamurti wrote: “Man, in order to escape his conflicts, has invented many forms of meditation. These have been based on desire, will, and the urge for achievement, and imply conflict and a struggle to arrive. This conscious, deliberate striving is always within the limits of a conditioned mind, and in this there is no freedom. All effort to meditate is the denial of meditation.

“Meditation is the ending of thought. It is only then that there is a different dimension which is beyond time.”