Meditation is an effective way of focusing your mind to bring about relaxation, peace, and tranquility. It will help you to gain a new perspective and enable you to stand back from your problems. Meditation is often practiced as means of spiritual self-enlightenment. But it can also be used to relieve stress and promote relaxation.
What is meditation?
All forms of meditation focus on quietening the mind. The intention is to direct your concentration so that it is filled with peace and calm and can not take off on its own and become stressed.
When the mind is calm and focused in the present, it is neither reacting to memories nor worrying over the future, two major sources of chronic stress. Meditation techniques can be divided into two basic groups:
Concentrative Meditation: This focuses your attention on something specific, such as the intake of breath, or an image or phrase, in order to still the mind and facilitate the emergence of a greater awareness and clarity.
Mindfulness Meditation: Also known as vipassana or “passive awareness,” this describes a state of mind where you are aware of, but detach from, everything you are experiencing. Your attention is aware of sensations, feelings, images, thoughts, and sounds without thinking about them; you observe without making judgements. This means experiencing what happens in the here and now to gain a calmer, clearer, and non-reactive state of mind. If you use the analogy of a camera, it is like looking through a wide-angle lens –you experience more and your attention becomes broader
Meditation and the Brain
The brain is the body’s computer, the center of all our thoughts, feelings, and sensory experiences, and the coordinator of all our bodily functions. The brain sends and receives messages via the spinal cord to all parts of the body. Brain cells communicate with each other by producing tiny electrical impulses.
Meditation affects the electrical activity of the brain, causing the production of high-intensity alpha waves-brain waves associate with deep relaxation and mental alertness. These in turn help to undermine our habitual stressed responses to dangers and difficulties.
The Benefits of Meditation
Being able to control your mind instead of allowing your mind to control you will bring peace and harmony into your life. Those who meditate regularly are less anxious, calmer, mentally more alert, and more efficient in managing time and energy. Research suggests that meditation confers the following benefits:
- More relaxed body
- Improved sleeping patterns
- Lower blood pressure and reduced pulse rate
- Lower levels of stress hormones in the blood
- Improved circulation
Meditation classes include a 4 week training program. Each classes is 2 hours long and participants learn how to achieve a meditative state as well as information about principal and foundation of meditation.
Registration is required prior to participation in these classes.
Please note group classes are currently unavailable.
