Meditation reduces anxiety, depression, tension, sadness, and reactivity to stress. It improves memory, self-awareness, goal-setting, and empathy. On a physical level, it increases immune response, and decreases blood pressure.
I could go on, or you could just watch this two and a half minute AsapSCIENCE video, "The scientific power of meditation."
(AsapSCIENCE videos also make me happy. I watch them with my 10-year-old and don't even feel guilty about the screen time. Just choose your videos carefully. We opted out of "Does penis size matter?" for example.)
And yet ... meditating is difficult. The basic premise is that you clear your mind, inducing an altered state of consciousness and deep physiological rest.
Ha. Just the thought of clearing my mind makes it race.
I've tried mindfulness meditation, concentrative meditation, body scanning meditation, and loving-kindness meditation, all with limited success. But this week, in a meditation workshop I started taking recently, I discovered chocolate meditation.
Take one piece of chocolate (we used Hershey's kisses), and focus on nothing but the chocolate for five minutes. Longer is probably better. Smell it, unwrap it, feel it against your teeth as you bite into it, taste the sweetness spreading through your mouth as the chocolate melts over your tongue.
Now this is meditation I can do. I think I'm supposed to progress to other, less interesting, food like peas and corn, but I'm a beginner. I'll stick with chocolate for awhile.
Actually ... I think I'll go meditate.
What's making you happy this week?
Being your sister makes me happy. Cheesy but true.
ReplyDeleteNo! That's what makes ME happy!
Delete2 snow days this week made me happy!
ReplyDeleteTeaching my classes makes me happy. I love meditation and have been preaching everything you said for a long time. I teach an 8 week summer course on it just for fun (no cost to students) because I think it is that beneficial. I do an eating medication, but use a boring thing like almonds. No more! I am going to use chocolate and watch my enrollments go way up!
ReplyDeletep.s. I loved the video on meditation. I will show that to my students. I have a theory that because meditation is so easy, people (myself included) don't do it as often as we want.
ReplyDeleteI gave a church lesson last year on Moses and the fiery serpents where if the people would only look to the brass serpent they would be healed - and I hypothesized that those who didn't look because it was too easy were like those who don't meditate for the exact same reason.
I actually started meditation last week after a long lay off and your post has now given me added motivation to begin to do this regularly again!