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In recent decades in America, with the influx of Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist and other Eastern teachings, the word meditation has become strongly associated with stress-reducing and life-enhancing awareness training techniques that originated in Asia over 2,500 years ago. While some Westerners have been attracted to the Eastern philosophies, the promises of spiritual enlightenment, or the mystical aura that often surrounds these traditions, others have been attracted by the claims that meditation can lead to healthier and happier lives. Despite the growing popularity of meditation, for many people, the concept of meditation remains rather mysterious.
One reason for the haziness clouding many conceptions of meditation is that the term has been used to refer to a host of different activities. These activities are comparable in that they typically aim at a beneficial self-reflexive shift in consciousness – that is, they aim at consciously directing one’s own consciousness to create a beneficial shift in that consciousness. Yet under this broad definition we will find a variety of techniques used for a variety of purposes within a variety of cultures and worldviews. Meditation techniques have been developed to take advantage of latent capacities of consciousness in the contexts of different systems of religion, philosophy, mysticism, psychology, and medicine. The possibilities are limited only by the creativity and the flexibility of the human mind. The diversity of meditation techniques can be overwhelming to the beginner who is wondering how and where to start. So how can one narrow the field? Here are some suggestions:
If you are drawn to meditation, ask yourself: What benefits would you like to get out of meditation? What practices seem to suit your goals and sensibilities? What resources are available in terms of teachers, literature, and supportive communities? If possible, talk with people who have experience with the approaches that you are most drawn to. Then experiment with an open mind and be prepared to invest some time practicing the technique before seeing results. Note that many meditation techniques require considerable practice to master -- just as learning a musical instrument does.
Meditation for Stress Reduction
For many Westerners and Easterners alike, the prospect of stress reduction -- broadly conceived -- is the main allure of meditation. Buddha, the world’s most famous meditation teacher, said that all of his teachings point to just one thing: how to alleviate stress in order to achieve inner peace for the benefit of all. The stress that the Buddha sought to alleviate included a wide spectrum of stress conditions -- from minor stress as is common in experiences of low level tension, anxiousness, worry, irritation, nervousness, craving, etc. to major stress as is common in experiences of intense fear, anxiety, rage, despair, obsession, longing, etc. The Buddha himself used a medical model to describe his approach to stress reduction:
Symptom: There is an unpleasant symptom: stress.
Diagnosis: Stress arises due to certain causes and conditions.
Prognosis: Good news! Stress can be alleviated!
Prescription: There are measures that can be taken to alleviate stress.
The Buddha was a pragmatic proto-psychologist who prescribed consciousness training practices for dissolving stress. Following in Buddha’s footsteps, in recent decades Western medical researchers have been conducting studies on the effects of a number of meditation techniques and have concluded that these practices can indeed be powerful tools for improving mental and physical well being. Because some people are uncomfortable with the spiritual context of these meditation practices, several Western medical doctors and researchers have developed meditation programs that focus on the mechanics of the techniques and largely avoid Eastern cultural references. For instance, Herbert Benson, M.D., developed a "Relaxation Response" technique at Harvard Medical School as a more secular version of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation; meanwhile John Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., developed "Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction" (MBSR) on the basis of Buddhist meditation techniques at the UMASS Medical School. Because these Westernized meditation techniques have clinically proven psychological and physical health benefits and can be accessed without subscribing to any special ideology or religious beliefs, such approaches to well being – often discussed in terms of stress reduction -- have been increasingly embraced among people of all religious (and non-religious) orientations.
Why reduce stress? From a subjective standpoint, being "stressed out" often involves unhappiness enough to motivate seeking relief. But there are other powerful reasons to look for an antidote to stress. From a modern medical standpoint, stress has been shown to suppress the body’s immune system, making it more susceptible to sickness and disease – and slower at recovering from them. Research suggests that stress helps account for 50% of family doctor visits and 50% of deaths under the age of 65. Stress has been implicated in heart, stomach, and auto-immune disorders, fibromyalgia, chronic pain, headaches (including migraines), backaches, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, PMS symptoms, infertility, insomnia, depression, anxiety, chronic anger, eating disorders, addictive behaviors, and other conditions. Stress reducing meditation techniques often reduces risk for such afflictions and can often play an important role in alleviating them.
In addition to being a health risk, stress can adversely impact our performance at work, at school, in sports and performance, and in our relationships. Stress-induced problems in our health, performance, or relationships tend to cause even more stress. In this way, stress and the stress-induced problems can exacerbate one another, causing a vicious cycle. If we are not good at coping with stress, it can make our lives a mess!
In order to lead healthier, happier lives that contain less stress, meditation practices can be extremely beneficial, as stress depends mainly on how we react to events rather than the events themselves. There are meditative techniques that offer ways to beneficially…
(1) …transform a stress reaction that has already arisen and is full blown;
(2) …transform a stress reaction as it is arising and gaining momentum;
(3) …transform a stress reaction at its very onset before it gains momentum; and
(4) …transform the habits of the mind so that the mind stays effortlessly peaceful in situations that previously would have been experienced as stressful.
These boons are often achieved progressively (starting at 1 and moving towards 4) as one’s skill increases. For reducing stress, I have found certain practices to be particularly beneficial due to their adaptability to different situations and their acceptability to people of different cultural orientations. These include MBSR and especially the ancient Buddhist stress reduction practices upon which MBSR is based -- including insight meditation; tranquility meditation; mindfulness practice; and cognitive reframing.
If you are interested in getting a small taste of meditation and its stress-reducing benefits, you may enjoy trying the following exercise. Admittedly, learning meditation from an article is not ideal. It is very helpful to work with a teacher who can guide you in real time and answer questions. But a little experimentation may be useful and fun.
This exercise is to be performed only in a safe, stable environment -- the kind of environment in which you would be comfortable and safe taking a nap. These instructions are necessarily abbreviated. If the exercise produces any discomfort, please feel free to modify or stop the exercise. Let your intuition be your guide for what is right for you.
1) Find a quiet, comfortable, and still space where you can spend some time with
minimal interruption.
2) Stretch your body to release any surface tension.
3) Enter a comfortable seated position and close your eyes.
4) Take three or four deep, slow, relaxing breaths. Pay attention to the sensations of the air moving through the nostrils, sinuses, windpipe and lungs. On each breath,
* inhale slowly and deeply;
* hold the breath for a moment and relax in the hold;
* exhale slowly and let go of tension with the exhale.
* Repeat (or return to natural breathing if there’s any discomfort).
5) Return to natural breathing, feeling the sensations within the whole body.
6) Relax the jaw, shoulders, belly, and any obvious muscle tensions.
7) Allow the belly to be soft, expanding and collapsing effortlessly with the breath.
This stress reducing meditation technique involves moving your awareness through regions of body sensations in an unhurried cycle of Sensing, Relaxing, and Accepting. While it is important to include the entire body, you can experiment with using smaller body regions (scalp; forehead; eyes; nose; tongue; lips; jaw; etc.) or larger body regions (head; shoulders; arms; hands; chest; belly; etc.). Using smaller regions will often take more time and more concentration and will allow you to work more deeply. Using larger regions will take less time and less concentration. Feel free to experiment to find an approach that works well for your time and concentration resources.
1) Sense: bring affectionate awareness to the sensations in a particular body region.
2) Relax any tensions that are present in that body region.
Feel any palpable shift when relaxing.
Let subtle tensions drain away and dissolve.
3) Accept the sensations that are present – letting them flow without any resistance.
In other words:
Let pleasant feelings come and go without trying to hold onto them.
Let unpleasant feelings come and go without pushing them away.
Let that region of the body relax and find a spacious equilibrium.
Let whatever arises be ok. Welcome it! This is radical acceptance.
4) Slide your awareness to the next body region and repeat meditation steps 1-3 until you’ve moved through the whole body.
5) Bring affectionate awareness to the entire volume of the body and continue to embrace the sensations that are arising. Sensing, Relaxing, Accepting -- allowing sensations to flow in spaciousness. Rest in this peaceful awareness of body sensations.
6) If you notice that your mind has wandered away from the body sensations, notice if your body has become tense while the mind was focusing on an object of fascination or aversion. If so, systematically re-relax the body and continue to dwell in the affectionate full body awareness of (5).
This exercise can be used:
* as a way to prepare for a challenging day where you want to be calm or perform well;
* as a way to dissolve pent up stress at any point in the day;
* as a way to prepare for sleep (try it lying down);
* and as a rejuvenating exercise. If you can rest in the relaxed awareness of (5) for 20-30 minutes without spending much time in the distraction of (6), you will typically experience a surge of energy that’s roughly the equivalent to that of a 3 hour nap. I don't recommend this as a substitute for sleep, but it can be an excellent way to rest and rejuvenate during the day!
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