Why we need to demystify meditation

People who meditate regularly report an improved sense of emotional steadiness, a reduction in stress levels, clearer thinking, increased creativity and better sleep.

I was surprised and pleased while at the wonderful Body&Soul Music Festival in midlands Ireland recently to see almost 1000 festival goers, many of them young people, turn up for a meditation event on the festival main stage.

These people took an hour out of their celebratory weekend to be silent, to tune into their breath, to practice gratitude and to join in sending good vibes out to all the festival goers and beyond. This was remarkable and a phenomenon worth exploring.

What did they want and what did it do for them? If we can understand this, it may help us understand why meditation is becoming part of the life of many ordinary people, and is becoming a core part of their wellbeing routine along with exercise and diet.

Some of those who turned up for meditation last weekend said they felt more at ease and at peace after the meditation and were in better mood to enjoy their weekend. Some others told me they felt strange but good after, as they had rarely spent time in silence while not asleep or busy doing some task.

Meditation is being demystified these days. Gone are the times when it was seen as an abstract practice for Yogis or “Spiritual seekers”. We can see it has practical applications in our everyday lives. People who meditate regularly report an improved sense of emotional steadiness, a reduction in stress levels, clearer thinking, increased creativity and better sleep.

Meditation is like exercising any muscle, only here the muscle is that of our awareness. When we stop, close our eyes, follow our breath and do not allow ourselves to be carried away with our thinking, we become more settled and at rest in ourselves. People are realising that thinking can become an addiction and one which we can choose not to engage with sometimes. I was amazed recently to read that almost 30% of people said that they looked at their Facebook as the first thing they did on waking each morning- the pull to get involved in thinking and mental activity is powerful.

Research has shown that we may only have between 80-100 thoughts each day; mostly we recycle the few we have and often go over and over the same content in our heads for much of the day. Most of our thoughts are about the past and the future and we often suffer in this constantly thinking- regretting the past and fearing the future. By doing so we send cocktails of hormones surging through our body, (adrenalin being one) as we fear what may happen tomorrow and wonder about what we or someone else did yesterday. Much of this is useless thinking, what we fear often doesn’t happen and we cannot change the past. We know this but cannot stop the thinking. Meditation can help a lot with this. Just watching the thinking, and not getting involved with the thought is hard at first, but gets easier and is very useful.

Simply closing your eyes for 10 minutes, listening to your breathing, and bringing your attention back to the breath each time it strays into following and getting involved with a thought, will show results for many people if they do it regularly for a few months. Most of us search for happiness, but usually we search for it outside ourselves, but what if happiness is an ‘inside job’ and we have more power to increase our sense of personal happiness without recourse to buying more objects or gaining success in other ways outside in our lives?

If we want to get help in preparing a calm mind before a job interview tomorrow or if you want meditation to be part of your spiritual practice in raising your level of consciousness, meditation can help across this wide spectrum of desires. The good news is that meditation is for everyone and the young festival-going public have got that message.

Meditation can open the door to happiness inside our hearts and minds. Taste it and see.