THE KIND OF MEDITATION THAT ACTUALLY WORKS
We have all tried some form of meditation or another. Thanks to Oprah and popular culture, we have all read a little bit about meditation and maybe tried a class or two as well. While it has become one of the most tossed around words in wellness these days, one thing remains, not all meditations work for every body.
Dr. Sara Lazar a Harvard University neuroscientist, said that “meditation is definitely more than a placebo effect.” She did a literature search of the science and “ saw evidence that meditation had been associated with decreased stress, decreased depression, anxiety, pain and insomnia, and an increased quality of life.”
Some of her research indicates: that “the prefrontal cortex of 50-year-old meditators had the same amount of gray matter as 25-year-olds.”
Studies by other scientists have shown also that meditation can help enhance attention and emotion regulation skills.
However, why is it that meditation doesn’t work for everybody? Fortunately, each individual is a dynamic entity who is experiencing their own unique set of events in life. So stress levels and coping mechanisms vary for each one. However, a one-size-fits-all meditation will fail in some cases, because not everyone is made for ‘sitting still’ or ‘staring at a candle’ or repeating a mantra in a language not native to them. It just doesn’t work for all of us and we should not be trying to tailor our uniqueness to fit into one mode of being.
What actually works and helps make meditation a daily part of our lives is a system that actually celebrates each one’s uniqueness. That is why after studying Mindfulness Meditation, Zen Buddhist Meditation and various other modalities, it was in Instinctive Meditation that I understood fully the benefits of a life that has a daily practice of meditation. Further evidence in the way my clients responded to it, confirmed that each one of us is unique and therefore a method that works for one person may not work as well for another.
Even the idea that individuals like us, who live in big cities and are committed to active and thriving lives should follow a system created by celibate male monks atop the Himalayas is against the grain of who we are. (Unless of course, we have aspirations to live as celibate male monks on the Himalayas!)
Come and try a session of Instinctive Meditation, a system that caters to your individual need and can easily be made a part of your life without having to add or subtract anything. And what it will do is enhance the quality of your life while bringing you the benefits of meditation.
Join our Kula for $35 on July 12th after Center Class.
