Meditation Myths – 6 Common Beliefs About Meditation
Posted in Advice, everything yoga, stress management on May 15th, 2009 by Vlad Moskovski – 3 Comments
1. Meditation has to be done sitting – with legs crossed and eyes closed: Nothing could be further from the truth, meditation is the act of concentration and focusing on one specific object with the conscious exclusion of all else, typically experienced as an altered state of consciousness. This can be done while you are walking down the street, staring at your computer, brushing your teeth, etc. In fact, many millions of people frequently practice a non-conscious type of meditation for many hours each day, it’s called watching TV. As an example of a non-sitting meditation, I was working with somebody who has a much slower pace than me and as a result I was starting to become agitated and wanting to rush him. Not only would this not work, it would certainly aggravate him thereby making the situation worse. Solution – I did a quick mental visualization to become more patient. Patience, for me, is a little, old, Chinese man standing before me with a serene and peaceful expression on his face with his hands clasped behind his back. When I conjure up this image and simultaneously take a deep breath, I become calmer and embody the patience that I see in him. Works for me every time and takes about five seconds; this is one form of meditation.
2. Meditation has to be practiced under supervision and requires “learning”: While it does help to work with a meditation teacher to gain greater and deeper understanding of meditation traditions, anybody can practice simple and straightforward meditations without prior knowledge or formal training. With a little bit of willingness, curiosity, and experimentation it is easy to learn to meditate and you can even come up with your own forms of meditation after a while; it’s not so much about what you do, rather, it’s the end result and what you get out of the practice that really counts.
3. Meditation has to be practiced for a long time to gain benefit: This is probably one of the biggest stumbling blocks for many people and I frequently run into people who say, “I am too busy to meditate, I don’t have the time…etc.” Throughout the day, I frequently engage in meditation techniques to center myself or create a state of calm, excitement, patience, or concentration; the duration of these practice commonly lasts anywhere from 20 seconds to 1 minute. Many people have a hard time sitting down and staying still for more then five or ten minutes, therefore, I recommend starting slow by engaging in frequent but short meditation sessions. It is just like training a muscle, you don’t start bench pressing 200 pounds, start with what you can handle and slowly progress from there.
4. Meditation is only for spiritual people and hippies: Personal trainers, coaches, and professional athletes know the importance of being mentally fit in order to perform well in competitions. Stress is very high for these athletes and they are trained to reduce stress and maintain focus through visualizations, positive self-talk, and other meditative techniques, although they may not call it meditation. Athletes are not the exception, many people in the world are under stain and stress, and could use help with focus and concentrate. Therefore, I believe that everyone should know and use such practices to improve their lives.
5. Meditation is not for me, I don’t need it: To this person I would say, “You don’t know what you are missing out, give it a try, you can always stop if you don’t like it.” If something is unknown, foreign, or outside our comfort zone, we say it’s not for me, I don’t need it. I have yet to meet a person who has not been able to see the benefit of creative visualization, breath and emotional state control, or positive self talk once I was able to dispel their fears and get them to actually try it. The line, “What do you have to loose?” works great because there is absolutely nothing at stake; as I have often heard, “Fear is the mind killer.”
6. I can’t meditate, I am too stressed out: As funny and ironic as this may sound, I have personally been told this.
In a state of panic or high stress, it becomes difficult to think, to concentrate, and panic is often the next step. For people that have managed to drive themselves to this point I say, “Take a deep breath, let it out, now take another. Good, now do that for a count of 20 and see if you feel any different.” It’s as simple as that, nothing fancy, just focusing on breathing in and breathing out while counting in your head sometimes makes an enormous difference.
The realization that my mind and my thinking dictate how I perceive the world made me ask many questions of myself that never had occurred to me previously. I started with seemingly simple questions such as, “Why do I think the way I do? What makes me act or react in this way? Why do I keep thinking about this topic even though that event occurred long ago?” These questions and the answers that I uncovered became a major part of my self-exploration and I quickly realized that they were not so easy to answer. After many years of asking, questioning, observing, studying, and analyzing, my conclusion is that the mind is a filter. It determines whether something is good, bad, happy, or sad. Painful or pleasurable is all in the mind if one examines the thought process. There are a number of ways to illustrate what I mean here, but I will start with an analogy.
We all have a story in our heads, or at least I think we do. This story tells us who we are, how we should behave, what we think of the outside world and how we relate to it. It seems odd, but looking within myself one day I found a story unfolding, a tale of reality yet unconfirmed. But, I was already telling myself how this would happen and what it should be like. This is the story of my personal story, and how I changed it and what it means.