Meditation: The Foundation For Good Health

Ever wonder what meditation really is? Although most people think meditation is something that we must work to achieve, in reality, meditation is actually our natural state.

Our usual state—which can be characterized by effort, resistance, and a feeling of separateness—is actually an inauthentic way of being. In the meditative state, which we can culture through practice, we’re in harmony with the deepest and truest aspect of ourselves. It is a state which generates an ongoing dynamic flow in our lives that feels real, creative, light, playful, graceful, confident and balanced. We gradually let go of all of the layers of the false self (ego) and the struggle with various aspects of our lives which invariably come with the false self.

A good metaphor to remember is to think of yourself as a pond, one where the waters have become muddied. Through stillness in meditation, the mud (your thoughts and related emotion) settles, and the water becomes crystal clear. In this way, meditation is a powerful practice which can help us to achieve our highest potential in all ways, including all aspects of health.

Physically, meditation is extremely restful and regenerative for the entire body including the organs and endocrine glands. It decreases muscle tension and blood pressure, helps increase energy levels, improves digestion and circulation, while enhancing the immune system. It also helps in the detoxification of cells and organs, increases metabolism, neutralizes the effects of stress and compensates for disruptions caused by exposure to processed foods, chemicals, unnatural light and sounds, disconnection from nature and improper sleep.

Mentally, meditation allows us to access clarity, creativity, intuition, discernment and natural intelligence. It increases our ability to focus and our powers of concentration while training the mind to return to the present moment again and again, which is of course the only place to be.

Through meditation, we learn to catch negative thoughts before they create emotional reactions and to observe thoughts without identifying with them. If we are willing to see, we can become aware of thought pattern grooves that keep us 'stuck.' Meditation keeps us in contact with our true nature so that we can make choices that support us on an authentic life path.

Meditation gives us the opportunity to experience emotions as energy that simply needs to be in motion, effectively decreasing the effects of our emotions on the physical body and creating a friendliness with all emotional states. This leads to less resistance and peacefulness, regardless of our current circumstances. We become less interested in investing energy in grasping for the so-called good emotional states or pushing away the so-called bad emotional states and become more comfortable allowing everything to be as it is without moving to fix or change or necessarily figure things out.

In this way, meditation teaches us to witness emotional energy without getting caught up in it, so that it can move through our beings, more easily allowing us to return to our centre which is free and content.

Spiritually, true meditation is about pure connection to the spirit. It therefore opens up communication with our authentic self and directs us unwaveringly along our true path.

Meditation creates a clearer connection with All That Is (a term that is often used for God, Creator, Spirit, or any other term that feels comfortable for you). It helps us to see the bigger picture in our lives, which can assist us in receiving guidance from our higher selves. Through this practice we begin to feel less separate from others and more open to feelings of oneness and unity.

Everyone can benefit from the practice of meditation and anyone can learn. The desire to meditate often comes from the sense that there is more to life than we’re currently experiencing. An ongoing meditation practice that is fueled by the simple, but profound, desire to experience a life that is free and real.

Although meditation has been seen in the past as something that only holy people, monks or renunciates practice, it is possible—and even desirable—for us to incorporate this practice into our daily schedules.

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