|
|
| |
|
| |
| |
| |
|
Hello, once again – Here is the next article from my book, “Freedom From Agoraphobia.” It teaches a daily practice that is rapidly sweeping our culture – meditation. It’s importance and benefits cannot be over-stated. And it is especially valuable for anyone who suffers from anxiety. If you have not meditated before, get ready for an activity that will change your life! And always for the better. So, here goes… As always, since I am an M.D., I cannot express my point of view without being concerned about liability. So please note this disclaimer before reading further: Any medical information in this article is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. Article Thirteen Meditation Or How To Become Relaxed and Aware Why Meditate? Meditation is a valuable method of self-growth that adds greatly to Behavioral, Cognitive and Insight-oriented therapies. In recent years, it has become increasingly recognized that meditation significantly helps our bodies, our minds and our emotional states. A few decades ago, it was considered by many to be some strange and useless practice mostly engaged in by gurus and people wearing saffron-colored robes who chanted in the street. I can recall my parents referring to it as “contemplating your navel”. However, as Western scientists have looked into it, they have found that meditation produces very real and tangible benefits. Blood pressure and heart rate go down to healthier levels. Physical and emotional tensions are reduced. This, in turn, puts less strain on the heart, causes less acid secretion in the stomach, decreases headaches, increases immunity to illness and much more. It seems that just about everything in our bodies works better when we are relaxed. The same is true for our minds and emotions. We perform better at mental tasks when we are not tense. We concentrate better, think faster, are more creative and remember more. Emotionally, too, we are much improved. When relaxed, we are happier, more loving, more forgiving, less frustrated and more able to laugh. Although meditation is a great way to get in a relaxed and healthier state, that was not its original purpose. Instead, meditation has accurately been called “awareness practice.” This is because it consists of practicing being aware of all that is going on in our here-and-now experience. Most of the time, we allow our attention to flit from one thing to another without even being conscious of where it is directed. This is kind of like being in a dark room and shining a flashlight here and there but without even paying attention to what we are lighting up. Thus, we decide what to have for lunch, think about whether we came off O.K. when telling our friend about our latest worry, feel angry at the jerk who just pulled his car out in front of us, recall that crash we read about where two people died, think how the news has nothing but gruesome stuff to report, consider limiting the amount of TV the kids are watching and on and on. But if someone offered us a goodly amount to tell her everything we had thought for the last five minutes, she would probably be able to keep her money. It’s like our eyes saw the stuff in that dark room but it did not register in our minds. Now if we went into that dark room with some good incentive to come out being able to report what was in there – like we’d get a reward for each item we could name – we’d do a lot better. This is the essence of meditation – paying attention to what we are aware of each moment. Not just being aware of it, but being conscious of the fact that we are aware of it. So we wouldn’t just think about how we appeared to our friend, we’d pay attention to the fact that we were thinking about how we appeared to our friend. In other words, we might say something to ourselves such as: “Oh, now I’m re-running my conversation with my friend to see how I appeared.” Then if someone were to ask what we’d been thinking about, we wouldn’t get splinters from all that head scratching. Someone jokingly described a meditation teacher asking a student what she was aware of during her meditation. The student responded that she had heard a bird singing outside. “Yes,” said the meditation teacher, “but did you hear the bird while breathing in or breathing out?” This was an exaggeration, but it makes the point: in meditation, we are trying to be as completely aware of what we are perceiving as we possibly can. In addition to the physical and emotion benefits of meditation, we learn how to live consciously. This is quite an improvement over going around kind of dreaming all the time but having forgotten the dream as soon as we try to recall what we were dreaming about. How To Meditate (Sorry, but it’s another of those SBNE things. You know - simple but not easy.) There are all sorts of styles of meditation depending upon what philosophy or religion your teacher espouses. Here is a simple, non-denominational and generic set of meditation instructions. It contains all the essentials for obtaining the benefits we are after: 1. Sit in a comfortable chair with your feet flat on the floor and your hands resting in your lap. Unlike meditation practices requiring uncomfortable body postures like the lotus position, your goal is to make your body comfortable so that you can forget about it as much as possible. Do whatever does this for you. Most people find that sitting upright in a non-reclining chair that is not too soft remains the most comfortable throughout the meditation period. In our method, you are welcome to sit against the back of the chair. 2. Before you start, choose a focus. Your focus is something on which you will steadily keep your attention throughout the time of your meditation. The reason for having one is that it is much easier to become aware of what your attention has strayed to if you have been keeping it on a particular focus than if you have just been randomly floating around in the silence. (More on this in #5.) The rise and fall of your abdomen as you breathe is one of the more common choices of focus. Some people prefer to repeat a word with each breath such as “peace” or “relax.” Others prefer a short phrase. Still others prefer to focus their attention on some other spot in the body. The area just above the bridge of your nose or the sensation of the air going in and out of your nostrils are examples.
3. Set a timer or some sort of alarm for the length of time you have chosen to meditate. 4. Close your eyes and let your attention rest on your focus. 5. Your mind will inevitably stray to thoughts (like “this is stupid”), feelings (like your nose itching), planning (like what you are going to do as soon as you are through with this), sounds (like people talking in the next room) and wonderings (like are you doing it right). Now comes the essence of meditation: try to be aware that your attention has strayed and gently bring it back to your focus. Your goal is NOT to never stray from your focus – that is impossible. Instead, your goal is to become aware of what you are paying attention to as soon as you can and then bring your attention back to your focus. You will quickly understand the term used amongst meditators – “monkey mind”. The mind jumps from this to that to that just like a monkey jumping from branch to branch in a tree. Your mission (and do choose to accept it) is to keep track of where the monkey is. One author (Stephen Levine, “A Gradual Awakening”) likens the meditator to a person sitting on a hillside overlooking a railroad track. As an endless train goes by, you observe what is in each car, trying to never get caught up in what is going on in any one of them. Instead, you notice what is in the first car as it goes by and then in the second as it goes by. So your gaze remains straight ahead all the time. There may be things of great interest in some of the cars but you keep your gaze still and looking forward as the next car passes in front of you anyway. So, one car may contain a man eating breakfast, the next a vision of paradise, the next a child playing, the next a bomb exploding, the next a couple making love, the next a person looking embarrassed and the next a scene from your vacation at the beach. Of course, while meditating, each time you notice that you are following some scene in a railway car, you turn your attention back to your focus (looking straight ahead). You stay with your focus until you become aware that you are following another railway car. Then (as you will have guessed), you go back to your focus – looking straight ahead. I don’t imagine you will be shocked to learn that a number of the cars contain a bored person (you). But you may be surprised to find that if you note the bored feelings and go back to waiting for what comes next, the bored feelings go their way after a few times just like all the other scenes in the cars. 6. Your alarm goes off and your meditation is over.
If it can be said that there is any goal to what you do in meditation, that goal would have to be awareness of where your attention is at all times. In other words, go back to your focus after each of the railway cars. For example, if your focus was your breathing, it might go something like this: “Oh, now I’m watching a child – back to breathing – Oh, now I’m seeing a bomb explode – back to breathing – Oh, now I’m watching them make love – back to breathing…etc.” This, of course, is the unreachable ideal. But it is the direction your efforts should take in meditation. You will find that you go down various chains of thought before you realize that you are off your focus. This is normal. But as your attention becomes increasingly refined, your chains will become shorter and shorter before you catch your mind and bring it back to your focus. One direction your efforts should not take is going with your judgments about how well you are doing. It is natural to have those judgments but they are no truer or more worthy of your attention than anything else you see in one of the cars. In other words, they should be treated as: “Oh, now I’m making a judgment about how badly I’m doing – back to breathing…” Although it takes effort to be constantly catching yourself when you go off thinking about something other than your focus, there is a corresponding sense of relaxation afterwards. It seems as though the more effort at being aware you make, the more relaxed you will feel later. (Strange sort of exercise that leaves you more energized the harder you work.) At first, your meditation periods can be 10 or 15 minutes once or twice a day. You can gradually work up to 30 minutes twice a day, which is ideal. There is no such thing as too much meditation. The more you do, the healthier it is for you. Little periods of meditation throughout the day are also very useful. Meditation “centers” you. This means that it brings you back from whatever you have gotten caught up in to a calm place from which you can see things in perspective. Example: You are in the middle of making dinner and you get a call that one of the kids has “used the ‘f-word’” to his teacher and is being held in the principal’s office until you get there. You are instantly aghast! But 5 or 10 minutes of meditation before you go is an excellent way of getting back to the “big picture”: Nobody is injured or bleeding. The house hasn’t fallen down in an earthquake. Nobody will starve to death if dinner has to be late. If you do not kill that so-and-so kid yourself, there’s every reason to expect that he’ll reach his next birthday. So take that 5 or 10 minutes to sit down and pay attention to your breathing. The world won’t end and you will doubtless handle everything better for having gotten centered. Meditation is also the best way of relaxing as part of your Behavior Therapy (See Article 9). Each time you go further in your Systematic Desensitization, you will need to relax and bring your anxiety level down. You can use Whole Body Relaxation (as previously described) or you can use brief meditations for this. Since the more you meditate, the more powerful it gets, it soon becomes a highly effective way of reducing anxiety. Most importantly, meditation is the primary means of increasing your awareness. All day long, you are bombarded with events, thoughts, feelings and reactions. Allowing what goes on inside to pass by unnoticed is to be living in that dream world which mostly evaporates the moment you try to recall it. What did you do, think and feel yesterday? It’s mostly gone. A week ago? Blank. The you who lived then is forgotten. Her experience did not register then so you surely can’t get it back now. Meditation changes that. You develop your awareness of what you are conscious of – and so your experience does not pass by unnoticed. And the habit of being aware carries over from your meditation periods to the rest of your life. You are more present all day long. So you do not store up unnoticed angers, disappointments and tensions. You increasingly notice them as they occur and, just like the bomb that explodes in the railway car, you let them go and pass on to the next scene that comes. This prevents such emotions and reactions from hanging around in your unconscious mind creating anxiety or physical illnesses like ulcers and headaches. Early on, I found that my patients who had psychologically-caused physical illnesses denied having any emotional problems. They would say: “This can’t be psychological. I feel fine!” Well, of course they felt fine. They had neatly disposed of their feelings by converting them into physical reactions – like producing more stomach acid. If they felt their emotions rather than turning them into physical responses, they wouldn’t have to be eating milk toast and wondering how they could have burned holes in their stomach linings. In fact, such people have been found to not even have the words in their vocabularies for many of the emotions. A fancy word has been coined to denote this –“alexithymia” (literally, “without feeling words”). Persons who develop psychologically-caused physical illnesses are commonly found to be alexithymic. They are so unaware of their feelings that they have never even developed the vocabulary with which to express them. The point is this: it’s the unconscious stuff that gets you. Conscious anger will never eat a hole in your stomach. Only anger of which you are unaware will do this. And the essence of meditation is developing your ability to be aware. (That’s why we called it “awareness practice.”) So, of course it improves your health. Finally, meditation is the loving thing to do for yourself. You are paying attention to you. And you are taking time out to get back your perspective. It does not matter if the TV is blaring and traffic is roaring by. Just go into your room, close the door and start paying attention to whatever you are aware of. If it is the noise outside the room, fine! Just notice it and go on to the next railway car. It has been said that you should be able to meditate at a football game. Of course! Does your awareness shut off at a football game? No! So you can pay attention to what you are aware of at the football game. And eventually, you may also find that there is a silence going on behind all sound. (Hmm…)
Until next time, I wish you every success. It’s not an easy road but the rewards are at least as great as the difficulties. Mark Eisenstadt, M.D.
|
|
 |
|
||||
|
|
||||
Web design© 2003 by JK | With Help From Kickchat.com | |||||
