Meditation: what is it, why and how?

Meditation as a state is a trance state of peace and relaxation of the body while maintaining full awareness. This is the cessation of mental work and mental movements that carry negativity and tension. Because most people are in constant internal dialogue with negative thoughts, meditation is often defined as stopping thoughts.

Related concepts: visualization, autogenic training.

Meditation as a process — any practice leading to a state of meditative trance. Prayer, dance, concentration… — any action can be meditation if it eventually leads to a state of meditative trance.

Historically, meditation (from Latin meditatio — reflection, reflection) is one of the methods of Indian spiritual practice, so everything related to meditation traditionally has a touch of esotericism, religiosity and something magical. See Traditional Forms of Meditation for details.

Meditative Absorption Methods

The literature describes hundreds of different methods for plunging into a state of meditative trance. Studies have shown that the most important (and common to almost all meditation practices) elements of such immersion are two things: 1) the absence of tension and 2) deep focus on the monotonously repeated action. Such an action can be both physical (for example, ritual dances in African tribes; exercises in martial arts; sorting out a rosary; reading a mantra aloud; concentration on breathing; etc.) or mental, imaginary (for example, concentration on a chakra; concentration on pulsations of the «astral body»; etc.).

While scientific studies do not support a relationship between meditation depth and posture, the most recommended posture for meditation is: sitting, back straight, head slightly down, legs crossed, hands on knees, palms up, palms open, thumbs and forefingers joined.

If a person calms down, relaxes and focuses his attention on a chakra or mantra, this is meditation for an oriental culture lover. It is no worse if a person focuses his attention on his breath or on the flame of a candle.

And our men at this time go fishing and, until they drink, they focus on the float, which has stopped in the middle of a quiet backwater. Great meditation!

Using Meditation

Meditation is often used in psychotherapeutic and spiritual practices for a wide variety of purposes, for example, to relieve tension, general relaxation, create a feeling of lightness and happiness, to reset the habit of negative thinking, create a base for positive attitudes and affirmations, sometimes to easily suggest some kind of or the images and beliefs that influence it. It is clear that this gives great scope for creative people — both for effective psychotherapy and for the psychotherapy of the sick and philosophical sermons of different quality.

Meditation is definitely beneficial for mental and physical health. If we remove high words and aspirations, then the real mechanism of meditation is simple and has been known to science for a long time: it is desensitization. As early as the beginning of the XNUMXth century, researchers discovered that fears and memories of traumatic situations are easily and effectively removed if the image that disturbs us is viewed against the background of complete bodily relaxation. Actually, if any image or thought anchors on muscle tension, we will get an image that strains us and thoughts that are difficult for us. If, on the contrary, we scroll problematic thoughts and memories that are difficult for us against the background of a relaxed body (plus, combine it with a light inner background and soft relaxing music), then tension and heaviness will quickly go away. And it will become easy on the soul!

There is nothing new here that goes beyond the limits of the work of combination reflexes according to Bekhterev. Today, all NLP ers and almost all psychotherapists use it, not always understanding the real mechanism of those useful procedures that they use.

Meditations are all the rage and sell well, especially when they promise you a «state of mindfulness» along with the health benefits. Here, please, be more careful: the “state of full awareness” is often promised, but in real practice it is often absent, being replaced, on the contrary, by a state of uncritical suggestibility.

Is this good or bad? It depends. If the client does not listen to anyone and suffers from this himself, then any specialist psychotherapist, in order not to suffer with his resistance, will offer him, under one pretext or another, to relax, close his eyes, after which he will most likely arrange a very useful “spiritual journey”, as a result of which the client seems to come to everything that the psychotherapist easily suggested to him. And really helped.

Could it be harmful or dangerous? Theoretically — yes, practically more often very useful. A scammer will deprive you of money without any meditation, problematic suggestions from watching television programs significantly cover any possible harm from meditation … Everything is determined by who is meditating with you. If a person is wise and worthy, learn from him and thank him. Do not trust him — look for another teacher or specialist.