What is Meditation?
The FOCUSandFLOW approach embraces an inclusive idea of meditation that recognizes it as having roots in diverse healing, transformation, and spiritual traditions and found in the rituals and practices of cultures around the world. Meditation is NOT limited to Buddhist practices (such as mindfulness) and is found in multiple religious traditions including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
Here is Dr. Shelly Harrell's formal definition:
"Meditation is a culturally-diverse family of methods involving the intentional, self-induced, and
sustained regulation of attention and
emotion in order to enhance
consciousness and bring one into
intimate connection with internal,
relational, and/or spiritual
experience, thus creating the
conditions for transformation, healing,
and/or optimal well-being. As 'consciousness praxis',
meditation can be thought of as encompassing a variety
of contemplative strategies for deepening and
expanding experiential and/or spiritual awareness in the
context of larger values-centered, transformative
and liberatory purposes intended to be manifested in how
we live individually and collectively".
Some Meditative Practices
*External focus (Mandala, Candle, Image)
*Open Awareness (Mindfulness,
Zen)
*Concentration (Contemplative, Quotation, Reading)
*Transcendental Meditation
*Repetition (Sound, Chant, Word)
*Movement (Walking, Yoga, Tai Chi, Qigong, Dance)
*Expressive (Drawing, Writing,
Painting, Coloring)
*Imaginal
(Guided Imagery, Visualization)
*Spiritual (Prayer,
Scripture-centered, Higher States of Consciousness)
*Music (Drumming, Playing, Listening)
Some Benefits of Meditation:
-Increase Neural Connections in the Brain
-Improves Memory
-Improves Learning
-Improves Capacity for Focused Attention
-Improves Problem-Solving
-Increases Positive Emotion
-Helps Emotion Regulation
-Helps Impulse Control
-Improves Blood Pressure and Cardiovascular Reactivity
-Pain Control
-Subjective Well-Being
-Facilitates Behavior Change
-Stress Reduction
-Improved Task Performance
-Associated with Increased Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors
-Increased Compassion and Empathy
On Meditation: A FOCUSandFLOW Quote Collection
"Meditate that
you may know truth.”
~Khemetic/Ancient
Egyptian saying
“Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves and see what is going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting.” -Thich Nhat Hanh
"Why meditate? To live in the moment. To dwell in the harmony of things. To awaken.” –Ram Dass
Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you. ~Rumi
"Why meditate? To live in the moment. To dwell in the harmony of things. To awaken.” –Ram Dass
Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you. ~Rumi
“There is no greater magic than meditation. To transform the negative into the positive. To transform darkness into light – that is the miracle of meditation.” -“Osho” Rajneesh
What's
encouraging about meditation is that even if we shut down, we can no longer
shut down in ignorance. We see very clearly that we're closing off. That in
itself begins to illuminate the darkness of ignorance.
-Pema
Chodron
Meditation…
opens the door for all other significant things: love, prayer, God, light,
music, poetry. ~Bhagwan
Shree Rajneesh
“In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.” -Mahatma Gandhi
“Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts
in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing
without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.” -Voltaire
“Meditation reveals that the obvious place to begin is
not in some other place, it’s right here.” ~Angel Kyodo Williams
“Meditation has several phases. It
has an active moment of sitting down, visualizing, chanting, whatever means the
person has; then stillness of mind; then action, going out and doing something.
It may be doing what you saw in the stillness. It may be what you
saw on the screen of your mind before the stillness. The action is as
much a meditation as are the sitting and the contemplation.” -Dhyani Ywakoo
“Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely the path that is your life.”
–Jon Kabat-Zinn
“Through meditation and by giving full attention to one thing at a time, we can learn to direct attention where we choose.” -Eknath Easwaran
“Meditation helps keep us from identifying with the “movies of the mind”. –Joan Borysenko
“Meditation is to see deeply into things, to see how we can change, how we can transform our situation.”
-Thich
Nhat
Hanh
“Meditation is the life of the soul: Action, the soul of meditation; and honor the reward of action.” -Francis Quarles
“One does not practice meditation
to become a great meditator. We meditate to wake up and live, to become skilled
at the art of living.” -Elizabeth Lesser
Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy,
spiritual bliss or tranquility, nor is it attempting to be
a better person. It is simply the creation of a space in which
we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our
self-deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes. ~Chögyam Trungpa
spiritual bliss or tranquility, nor is it attempting to be
a better person. It is simply the creation of a space in which
we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our
self-deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes. ~Chögyam Trungpa
“Where
there is peace and meditation, there is neither
anxiety nor doubt.” –St.
Francis of Assisi
meditation, which consists of
holding certain ideas in the
mind long enough to enable
them to form emotional
connections, tends to break
connections, tends to break
up the crust of habit and to
create a new will.
~Walter M. Horton
create a new will.
~Walter M. Horton
”Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and
be still.”
~Psalm
4:4
“Meditation is a continuous process, and
can be said to
have three stages: relaxation, interiorization, and
expansion." ~John Novak
Meditation
is not a way of making your mind quiet. It is a
way of entering into the quiet that is already there—buried
under the 50,000
thoughts the average person thinks
every day. ~Deepak
Chopra
Meditation is
listening to the Divine within. ~Edgar Cayce
"Meditate upon these things;
give thyself wholly to them;
that thy profiting may appear to all." 1
Timothy 4:15
“Meditation
tells you only one thing: God is.” -Sri Chinmoy
"Evening, and morning, and
noon, I meditate, and make
a noise, and He heareth my voice." ~Psalms 55:17
a noise, and He heareth my voice." ~Psalms 55:17
The words were unexpected, but so incisively
true. So much of prayer is like that—an encounter with a truth that has sunk to
the bottom of the heart, that wants to be found, wants to be spoken, wants to
be elevated into the realm of sacredness. ~Sue Monk Kidd
You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation... and that is called love. –Herman Hesse
“Fishing
provides that connection with the whole
living world. It gives you the opportunity of being totally immersed, turning
back into yourself in a good way. A form of meditation, some form of communion
with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self.”
-Ted
Hughes
“Prayer
is when you talk to God. Meditation is
when you're listening. Playing the piano allows you to do both at the same time.” -Kelsey Grammer
