Want To Live Longer? Meditate

Meditation basically means performing a series of practices or techniques meant to control or focus attention. A lot of them originate in Eastern spiritual or religious traditions. Several cultures around the world have used these techniques for thousands of years.

Although meditation can be achieved through several techniques, the basic principles are always the same.  Among these principles, the most important is the calming of the mind with a deep sense of focus and erasing fantasies and wandering, negative, and obstructive thoughts. This leads to a clearing of mental debris to prepare the mind for an enhanced quality of activity.

Meditation is to deliberately control your attention to change your state of consciousness. You can direct your attention to things such as spiritual realms, uplifting thoughts, breathe, colors, sounds, symbols, etc.

Some people, especially protestant Christians, mistakenly associate meditation as being a “New Age” thing. They see it as incongruent to their dogma. Unfortunately this denies them of the health benefits of meditation.  Some Catholics especially, nuns and monks, and a few lay people practice meditation as a form of prayer contemplating on the birth, life, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.  Christ himself lived 40 days in the desert where it is believed he spent most of his time meditating.

Meditation is actually different from prayer. The latter is an activity in which you present a “To do” list to your God while in the former, we don’t “speak to God”, even in our minds. We instead silence our minds and “tune in” to that silence.

The practice of meditation is starting to be understood by science especially in regards to the health benefits and well-being it provides, especially as people who meditate on a regular basis are shown to live longer than people who don’t meditate.

These days, a lot of individuals utilize meditation outside of its cultural or religious settings as a kind of mind-body healing that can help address various types of mental and physical problems, including:

• Depression, stress, and anxiety
  
  
• Anxieties due to chronic (long-term) conditions like cancer and HIV
  
  
• Addictive behaviors, such as alcoholism, chronic smoking, and drug addiction
  
  
• Pain
  
  
• High blood pressure – The NIH (National Institutes of Health) released a report recommending meditation as one of the first-line treatments for high blood pressure

Meditation combined with standard treatment may also be needed to achieve optimal results.  Talk to a physician if you plan to use meditation for medical purposes.

In the course of our everyday modern day living, It is so easy get overwhelmed, even when there’s no anxiety and stress (as a result of medical problems) involved.  The truth is, anxiety and stress often tend to aggravate medical problems. 

We are continuously barraged with demands upon our time and attention. Meditating regularly can give our mind some time to silence itself and adjust to the strains and stresses that are unavoidable realities of our daily life.

Those noisy motorcycles, cars, and neighbors, scammers, corrupt and stupid people, etc., all these contribute to mind pollution. Shut them out mentally and allow your mind to be cleansed in order to focus more on more meaningful and deeper thoughts.

With the constant attempt of clearing your mind – to think of nothing, the process of meditation takes on its own energy. The outcome is calmness, serenity, and peace that inevitably open your mind to new insights helping you live a stress-free, contented, healthy and long life.

In his book The Relaxation Response, Harvard Medical School’s Herbert Benson M.D., recommends a meaningful mantra or chant that your spirituality be included to the basic meditation process.  Dr. Benson says that “When you open yourself, and break the train of everyday thought, you can sense an energy or force stirring within you”.

Here are some helpful tips for an easy and quick meditation:

• Quietly sit in a comfortable position
  
  
• Close your eyes
  
  
• Try to relax the muscles
  
  
• Be self-conscious of your breathing
  
  
• Breathe in calmness and peace. Quietly utter a mantra, a word, or a chant over and over again to yourself
  
  
• Perform this process for about ten minutes or so
  
  
• Don’t fight it if you find your mind wanders – just bring it back gently to your mantra, chant, or word.