Meditation
What is Meditation
Meditation is a process of training in attention and awareness, gaining a more healthy perspective for your life. The practice brings more calm and balance to your mental and emotional landscapes, as well as opening doors within your consciousness to greater understand your true nature.
It is not about getting rid of our thoughts but instead learning to observe them, a little bit like grandparents watching the children play. In this way, our thoughts do not hold the steering wheel of our reality. This can be a very good thing! Considering humans have around 6200 thoughts per day on average, with many of them being either negative or nonsense (nature communications journal).
“I have lived with several Zen masters – all of them cats.” Eckhart Tolle
Meditation is a little bit like going to the gym for your consciousness, just as we can train and feed our bodies to be far more healthy, we can train our minds to be too. When we train our bodies, it can make many tasks feel a lot easier, from getting up in the morning, to climbing the stairs or catching a bus. When we train our consciousness, it affects the way we experience everything within our reality; this can be as simple as feeling far less irritated throughout the day, to shifting your experience of how you relate with the world around you and within you.
“Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we’re doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we’re doing. The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves.”
Pema Chodron
Why do it?
Meditation is highly effective for relieving anxiety and stress, it helps by calming the nervous system, gives us space to put things into perspective, to make better decision and to cope with difficult situations. By familiarising our nervous system with being in the calmer, parasympathetic state, rather than the sympathetic (fight/flight response), our body is better able to function, all the way from our digestive to our immunity systems.
In 2011, Massachusetts General Hospital researchers fMRI brain scanned 51 adults before and after 8 weeks of mindful meditation training. They found that the meditators had effectively silenced the "electrical activity" within their primitive amygdala, and in effect, had far fewer "anxiety, worry, and fear signals" within their brains.
However, what amazed the neuroscientific community the most was that the participants had dramatically decreased the size of their amygdala. Demonstrating the incredible neuroplasticity of the brain and the powerful role of meditation in greater brain health and function - that was only with 2 months meditation!
Awakening
Beyond the numerous holistic health benefits, a meditation practice can open the door to something far more precious, the awakening of your true essence. A deeply personal journey of self-discovery, connection and understanding.
One that no one else can walk for you. A path of recognising for our ’selves’, that we are neither above nor below anything or anyone in the entire universe. Where we may experience a profound connection to all that is within the web of life.
“The beginning of freedom is the realisation that you are not “the thinker. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realise that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence.
You also realise that all the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace -
arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.”
Eckhart Tolle
Would you like to join Awaken Academy’s Free 2 week meditation journey?
It is suitable for both beginners and experienced meditators. Meeting you wherever you are at and supporting you to deepen your practice and your awareness of your energetic body. The meditations slowly increase from 11 minutes on the first day to 30 minutes by the end of the two weeks.
This Series is designed to guide you with:
Finding profound presence through your Breath
Resting peacefully within your Heart
Balancing Awareness & Attention
Experiencing your subtle energetic bodies and pathways
Resting in your True Nature
Click here to receive the Free Meditation Series
Wishing you peace of mind and an overflowing, joyful heart x