The Art of Meditation: How the Art of Meditation Can Change Your Life and How to Do It

By now we have all heard that regularly practicing meditation is one of the most effective ways to manage stress and take care of our emotions and mental state. It has become a popular, mainstream recommendation for the health of the body and mind.When you fit meditation into your day, you bring much more of yourself to all the other hours of your day — you bring your whole self rather than your stressed-out self. — Jeff Kober
But what is meditation?Mention meditation to someone and you might hear one, or many, of these responses:“I’ve tried meditation, it doesn’t work for me. I can’t turn off my thoughts.”“I’m not a yoga person.”“That’s just woo-woo stuff — not for me.”“I don’t have time for that, I am way too busy.”“I’m religious, I don’t do that weird stuff, it isn’t part of my religion.” and many others…Have you encountered any of these, or thought them yourself, when you hear the recommendation to meditate?Many of us have these thoughts. Most people say or think at least one of these when they start or hear about meditation.In rebuttal:

• Meditation is not about the elimination of thoughts, as most of us commonly believe at first, but more about the awareness of your thoughts.
• Meditation is part of the eight-limbs of yoga, yes, but you don’t need to do the physical practice to yoga to benefit from meditation.
• Meditation can help us use our time more effectively, making it vital for the busiest of folks.
• Meditation doesn’t have any weird “magic” or “channeling” or “woo-woo” involved. It is a science-based training of the mind.
• If you belong to a religion and are scared that meditating is heretical, think of this. God asks you to pray. Meditation is taking the time to listen. All good conversations require this two-way street.

Most of us have what is commonly referred to as a “monkey mind”. What is a monkey mind? Think of a monkey, always darting here and there, never still, always curious, always looking.This is a metaphor for our minds, always on, always thinking and searching for answers and asking those questions which our minds just never seems to stop generating.Our thoughts are like these monkeys, running here and there, always on. Meditation is about learning to calm down our monkey minds.Many meditation teachers speak about this wandering mind. We can think of our mind wandering as training, the more it wanders the more times we can practice bringing it back.

• It is the act of bringing your mind back to the present moment that teaches and calms your mind.

The practice of meditation is simply becoming aware of our thoughts wandering and bringing them back (again and again) to your breath.Over time you will find that your thoughts wander less. But they will always wander. You are human and that is the way the mind works.Meditation brings attention to our thoughts. We can start to have more control over them, to a point, and thus over our emotional states.