MEDITATION. On a normal Saturday afternoon, stand in a well-attended pedestrian zone: on the weekends, the pedestrian zones of Germany overflow with people. Pure stress. And it can be completely different…
How about not being influenced by all the hectic hustle and bustle around you? What would it be like if you could make your way with a smile on your face while everyone else around you is in a hurry? And what if only a little practice, 10 minutes a day, is needed? Would you then give meditation a chance?
Meditation?
Hardly any technique is underestimated as much as meditation. Hardly any other technique has so many different and positive effects on mind and body, hardly any other technique can change life so much.
And there is hardly a technique against which there are so many prejudices as against meditation.
Admittedly, I also had my prejudices until about 3 years ago.
Until I tried it and was amazed how much better I felt through a few simple exercises.
Meditation – What is it actually?
Meditation means mindfulness and concentration exercises through which the mind should calm down and gather. But it can also be used to expand consciousness. The desired states of consciousness are, depending on tradition, described differently and often with terms or phrases like silence, emptiness, oneness with body and mind, being here and now or being free of thoughts.
What will meditation do for you?
No fear, you as a person, as a personality, remain the same. But your stress perception and your everyday attitude, your state of mind, your joie de vivre, will change for the better.
Here is a small diagram:
You are sitting at a motorway on which many cars pass by. There are small, fast cars. There are big, loud trucks that block everything. But there are also colorful, funny hippie campers that sound like Scott McKenzie’s San Francisco.
These cars are your thoughts. They all drive past you and vie for your attention. Normally you run after them and let them distract you. You don’t calm down, you are stressed.
Meditation changes the whole thing:
The cars drive by, honk their horns, are loud and colourful, but you just sit there and watch them smiling. You don’t let them distract or influence you, and you don’t run after them. How relaxing, isn’t it?
That makes the big difference on a Saturday afternoon. While everything around you is rushing and noisy, you notice it, but you don’t let it impress or influence you. The stress bounces off you like a rubber ball from a concrete wall.
A small task: Mindfulness
After these impressive points there is only one thing left: Action!
So before I introduce you to some simple but effective meditation techniques, I have a little task for you: Mindfulness. 10 minutes daily. For the next 7 days. Nothing more.
Until then you have already got to know the basics of meditation, tried something out, and can look forward to some super exciting techniques, which I will then introduce to you.
How does mindfulness work?
You take 10 minutes a day. You go to a place of your choice (sofa, park bench, subway) and sit or stand still for 10 minutes. And then you concentrate with all 5 senses on all the impressions that penetrate you at that moment:
- What do you smell around you? Are there different smells?
- What do you hear? Who do you hear? People, animals, the wind?
- What do you feel? Feel your breath, feel your feet on the ground, your clothes on your skin.
- What do you taste? Is your mouth dry, moist?
- What do you see? What is happening around you? Pay attention to every detail.
Addendum: Observe your thoughts. Dislodge annoying, unnecessary thoughts and concentrate on the here and now.
Take your time and observe what happens, how your state of mind changes, how stress and fatigue decrease. Try at least three times during the next week.
Meditation goes just like that – in between – but is also very suitable as part of a morning routine.
If after these three exercises, which you have really concentrated and unbiasedly completed, you cannot observe anything positive about yourself, you may dismiss meditation as esoteric stuff.
But if you notice what it does, how your state of mind really changes and you feel better, then enjoy these 10 minutes, make them a daily ritual.