Meditation is a group of mental training techniques .You can use meditation to improve mental health and capacities, and also to help improve the physical health. Some of these techniques are extremely simple, so that you can learn them from a book or an article; others require guidance by a qualified meditation teacher.

Tomar nota

  • You sit or lie in a relaxed posture.
  • You breathe regularly. You breathe in deep enough to get enough oxygen. When you breathe out, you relax your muscles so that your lungs are well emptied, but without straining.
  • You stop thinking about everyday problems and issues.
  • You concentrate your thoughts upon some sound, some word you repeat, some image, some abstract concept or some feeling. Your whole attention should be pointed at the object you’ve chosen to focus upon.
  • If some foreign thoughts creep in, you just stop this foreign thought, and return to the object of meditation.

The different meditation techniques differ according to the level of concentration, and how foreign thoughts are handled. By some techniques, the purpose is to concentrate so intensely that no foreign thoughts occur at all. In other methods, the concentration is more relaxed so that foreign thoughts easily pop up.

When these foreign thoughts are discovered, one stops these and goes back to the pure meditation in a relaxed fashion.

Tenha em mente

Thoughts coming up, will often be about things you have forgotten or suppressed, and allow you to rediscover hidden memory material. This rediscovery will have a psychotherapeutic effect.

  • Meditation will give you rest and recreation.
  • You learn how to relax.
  • You learn how to concentrate better on problem solving.
  • Meditation often has a great effect upon the blood pressure.
  • Meditation has beneficial effects upon inner body processes, like circulation, respiration and digestion.
  • Regular meditation will have a psychotherapeutically effect.
  • Regular meditation will facilitate the immune system.
  • Meditation is generally pleacent.

Lembre-se

Hypnosis may have some of the same relaxing and psychotherapeutic effects as meditation. However, when you meditate you are in control yourselfby hypnosis you let some other person or some mechanical device control you. Also hypnosis won’t have a training effect upon the ability to focus.

  • Sit in a good chair in a comfortable position.
  • Relax all your muscles as well as possible.
  • Stop thinking about anything, or at least try to not consider anything.
  • Breath out, relaxing all the muscles in your breathing apparatus. Breath in so deep that you feel you get enough oxygen. Breath out, relaxing your chest and diaphragm completely. Every time you breathe out, think the word “one” or another simple word inside yourself.
  • You should think the word in a prolonged manner, so that you hear it inside you, but you should try and avoid using your mouth or voice.
  • If foreign thoughts come in, just stop these thoughts in a relaxed fashion, and keep on concentrating upon the breathing and the word you repeat. As you proceed through this meditation, you should feel steadily more relaxed in your mind and body, feel that you breathe steadily more effectively, and that the blood circulation throughout your body gets more efficient.

Nota final

You may also feel an increasing mental pleasure throughout the meditation. As any kind of training, meditation may be exaggerated so that you get tired and worn out. Therefore you shouldn’t meditate so long or so concentrated that you feel tired or mentally emptied. Meditation may sometimes give problems for people suffering from mental diseases, epilepsy, serious heart problems or neurological diseases. On the other hand, meditation may be of assistance in treating these and other ailments. People suffering from such conditions should check out what effects the different kinds of meditation have on their own kind of health problems, before beginning to practise meditation, and be cautious if they choose to start to meditate. It may be sensible to learn meditation from an experienced teacher, psychologist or health worker that use meditation as a treatment module for the actual disease.