Guidance For Meditating Well
The first point of meditation is to go into a deep relaxation. We are aiming to slow our brainwaves from beta to alpha and then to theta. When we access these slower brainwaves, we are calming and quietening the mind and taking our attention off our outside world. If we are calming the mind, we are calming the body and vice versa – it’s all one interconnected organism. We are giving our minds and bodies the opportunity to reset, reharmonise, recover, restore, reenergise, heal, grow, improve. Possibly, the Holy Grail of meditating is to achieve gamma frequency brainwaves where the mind and body achieve an extremely high level of coherence – as if having a complete reboot – but this is unlikely to be achieved without much practice, and not required if we learn to gently update and upgrade on a daily basis.
The second point of meditation is to learn to focus and hold our attention where we choose. We quieten the mind and relax the body by staying focused and not being distracted. In daily life, we are confronted and bombarded by so many distractions, challenges and tasks. The more we can learn to calmly put and hold our attention where we want it to be, the more in control of our own minds and emotions we will be.
There are many ways to meditate but they all share the same purpose of trying to become absorbed completely into the moment. Staying focused and relaxing are two skills that can be learned and improved with practice. Whilst some may find that they can enter into a focused state quite easily, most people will find that their mind wanders and they are easily distracted. Just like learning any skill, time and patience is required to continually move towards mastery.
Also, just like training an animal, we must persevere. The enormous benefits of meditation have been scientifically proven time and time again. Through training ourselves to be able to meditate well, we can expect to be able to relax more easily, be calmer generally, lower our baseline stress levels, think more clearly, enjoy more positive and peaceful interactions with others – all of which improves our health and well-being. Trust in the power of small accumulations.
Meditating and being calmer in everyday life is a way to counteract the harmful effects of stress. Stress comes in many forms and is a very real and present threat to our health in this complex modern world. Meditation is just one form of exercise we can practise to lower stress and improve our lives.
N.B. At this point, I need to point out that there is a small minority of people who suffer a negative reaction with meditation. If you have experienced this, don’t worry. The most likely cause is that the brain is now feeling safe enough to start to try and process some material that has been kept locked away for good reason. Probably the best course of action would be to seek out a good quality counsellor/psychotherapist to help deal with unresolved emotions from painful past experiences. The benefits of meditation are still available to you but the overall point is to continually achieve a greater state of inner peace so, at some point, in some way, those painful emotions will emerge. Better to deal with them in a controlled way rather than have them take you by surprise.
When we meditate, we are aiming to reach a state where we are deeply absorbed in our own awareness. To reach this state, we need to stop thinking and analysing. We need to get past our thoughts, get past our bodies, get past our problems, get past our relationships, get past what’s going on in our environment, etc. etc. etc. If we find ourselves thinking, we need to gently bring our focus back to the task. Again, just like training an animal, if we persevere, eventually our minds will relent and become more focused. Some people find it easier than others and some days are easier than others but as long as we put in regular practice, we can all improve and reap the benefits.
It is useful to try and maintain a good upright but relaxed posture with a straight back. You can sit in a comfortable chair, kneel with a firm cushion under your bottom (about 6″ high) or, if comfortable, use a cross-legged/lotus sitting position, again with a cushion underneath to tilt the pelvis to help maintain a straight back. Lying down is not recommended as we are too prone to falling asleep. Meditation brings many of the benefits of sleep – like activating the immune system – but is different from sleep in that we are training ourselves to hold our attention and become uniquely aware of our own consciousness.
As mentioned above, we are aiming to slow our brainwaves. In normal adult daily life, our brainwaves are predominantly in beta, where much of our focus is outside of ourselves on our environment. (When we are feeling stressed, our brainwaves are in high beta.) Every night, before sleep, our brainwaves slow to alpha as melatonin is released, we feel more relaxed and our focus starts to shift more inward. As we drift into sleep, our brainwaves slow to theta where we enter a more internal, relaxed and dreamy state. When we are in deep sleep, our brainwaves slow to delta. When it is getting time to wake up, serotonin is released which then starts to increase the frequency of our brainwaves and we pass through theta, then alpha and then up into beta so we can go about our day. When meditating, we do not want to reach delta, but if we can get to theta we will be meditating well. (As hinted at above, there is another highly beneficial state we may learn to achieve with good practice. Gamma brainwaves look similar to high beta waves but occur when the whole brain enters a highly coherent state – the opposite of feeling stressed. When people experience gamma waves, they tend to report feeling immense feelings of love and connection, they may have what they describe as a mystical experience and their bodies may go into a state of super healing. All of these have been studied and verified scientifically.)
Below, I have added a 40-minute recording of a meditation I have created. Two useful ways to help enter a relaxed and focused state is by focusing on the breath and/or focusing on what you feel in your body – a body scan. I find that meditating using a body scan has unlimited potential. In this meditation, I start with the breath and then guide you through a thorough body scan. Also, focusing narrowly inside ourselves whilst becoming aware of the wider space outside of our bodies at the same time is an excellent mental exercise that helps us relax deeper.
All you have to do is follow the instructions and have a clear intention of letting yourself go into as deep a state of relaxation as you can. If you find yourself struggling to relax, stay with it and go easy on yourself. Just like doing exercise, each time we do it we feel better afterwards but we don’t expect any one session to be the be-all and end-all. Enjoy treating yourself to some time out and try to make a commitment to yourself to practise and improve over time.
Generic meditation (40 mins)
Further Advice
There are many apps and videos online to explore to find something that is right for you. I would recommend finding about 20 minutes a day, or longer if you have time. Little and often is better than long infrequent sessions. Personally, I don’t use any specific apps, I have downloaded some ‘meditation music’ that I put on and then focus on some phrases in my own mind that help me go into a calm, relaxed, focused state. Phrases such as: ‘find your peace’, ‘find your calm’, ‘find your stillness’, ‘find your inner self’, ‘find your centre’, ‘let your mind and body find its natural balance and harmony’, ‘relax’, ‘quieten you mind’, ‘let your body be still’, ‘notice everything you are feeling’, ‘feel your energy’, ‘feel your frequency’, ‘feel your consciousness’, ‘find your true self’, ‘let go’, ‘focus’, ‘go within whilst being aware of what you are feeling outside your body’, ‘tune in’…are some of the phrases I say to myself.
Personally, I have been inspired by the work of Dr Joe Dispenza, despite my initial scepticism. He has written books that I think are worth reading, especially ‘You Are the Placebo’. My advice as a ‘Brit’ is to try and let go of any possible cynicism we may have towards someone who may come across to us as being very ‘American’. I have put a lot of time into researching what Joe Dispenza says and I really do believe he knows what he is talking about and that he is sincere in his work to bring the power of meditation and the understanding of our consciousness to anybody who wants to access it. I believe that humanity is in the very early stages of learning what we are capable of achieving with this conscious mind and Joe Dispenza is one of the pioneers in pushing forward this learning.
Joe Dispenza is endeavouring to show how science and spirituality are coming together. He is explaining what eastern mystics have been saying for thousands of years but in terms of accepted modern scientific understanding. More importantly, he is proving what he is saying by demonstrating the power of what is possible when we focus our minds with clear intention. With the meditations he has developed and teaches all around the world, people are experiencing results nothing short of miraculous in terms of healing from conditions that mainstream science says isn’t possible. He collects the data on his findings and distributes it to the mainstream scientific community. These data clash with current scientific understanding of what human beings should be capable of – or not – and so these results can be too much for established scientists to believe. Many scientists want Dr Dispenza to fail because the conclusions are too challenging to their established beliefs, whilst others are seeing the empirical evidence, researching it for themselves and then changing their beliefs of what is possible.
Some of his teachings include:
Energy centres: traditionally called ‘shakras’ (meaning wheels), these correspond to the hormonal centres down the centre of the body that contain a plexus of neurons (brain cells). Each energy centre, under specific circumstances (for example, when strong emotion is present), is capable of ‘thinking for itself’. One aim in our meditation is to relax deeply so that our energy centres reharmonise and realign, opening up our bodily channels of communication, so that our bodily systems become coherent and work together for the good of the whole body.
The body’s energy: our body has electro-magnetic energy flowing through it and outside of it, just like the magnetic energy of a magnet or the Earth. We can’t see it, or feel it but it is there. It is this electro-magnetic energy that is measured when someone has an fMRI or EEG scan in a hospital. Dr Dispenza measures energy levels before, during and after meditations to show how beneficial changes can be brought about. One of our focuses in meditation is on our energy.
Dr Dispenza explains important understandings about the quantum world, the subatomic, and how that relates to what can become possible in our lives. Essentially, every atom which makes up the universe is itself made of virtually 100% energy. That means that our minds and bodies, and everything in the material world, is really made of energy, not matter. Dr Dispenza explains, demonstrates and proves through the data he captures, that when we understand how this energy inter-relates, we become far more able to create the life we want rather than be passive observers. An important point to try and reach in our meditations is to get so in touch with ourselves as a pure energy, as a centre of consciousness, that we step out of this material world and enter a very real quantum universe. If we can get to the point where we are ‘nobody, no-one, no thing, nowhere, in no time’ then we are entering a realm where possibilities are unlimited, where space and time do not exist, and where the laws of quantum physics now rule.
Universal consciousness: caveat – this may be too much for many people. If it is too much for you to consider the idea that there is a unified loving intelligence that permeates the universe, maybe this meditation is not for you! Personally, I believe that science will one day prove that the energy of our consciousness comes from and is part of a greater universal consciousness that we are able to interact with if we know how. For me, meditating is a means to getting back and staying in touch with this guiding, loving force. It is not easy, it is not clear and I may be getting it badly wrong but I believe that some human beings alive today are showing us the way we can achieve so much more than mainstream experts would have us believe. There are thousands of documented anecdotes of people who claim to have had mystical experiences where they have glimpsed, felt and entered into a different reality where they felt pure love, peace, harmony, unity, and complete understanding. Many people have had life-changing experiences such as these which they describe as having seen the truth that everything is connected.
Dr Dispenza realises that words are not enough to convince people. He is collecting the data to prove that what he is saying is true. In this modern age, we are rightly sceptical of those who proclaim to be the experts in whom we should be blindly putting our faith. When there is enough data, that challenges the current paradigm, eventually there is a ground swell and change in the understanding, beliefs, knowledge and awareness of humanity starts to shift. But the fact is that, if the work that people like Dr Dispenza are doing is true and factual, then it will eventually become accepted as mainstream. We all have the choice of where we want to be in that shift in understanding. We can be at the front being part of the change. We can be in the middle going along with the masses. Or we can be at the back, kicking and screaming and fighting the inevitable change because we find it too threatening to the status quo with which we have become comfortable. I know where I want to be.