sábado, 10 de enero de 2009

Personal hints on RELAXATION and, eventually, meditation.

I have always wondered about how to meditate. Everybody tells so many good things about meditation that I felt curious. Although I tried to read and I did ask a few persons, I used to find generic, esoteric and scarcely useful answers. After many asking and much more trying, I come out with my personal method.

I am happy to share with you how to relax body and mind … or at least how to try to!



Situation

Put yourself in a comfortable position, with comfortable clothes (maybe pyjama) in a quiet room (no TV or noisy music) and with low light.

Get a comfortable position, not stressing hands, arms or legs.

Breath deeply, for a few times, trying to relax all muscles. If you feel that your hands are crisp, or any leg, arm, etc. is tense, when expelling air, try to ease that part of your body and relaxing that muscle.

Close your eyes and keep breathing for a short while, until you are sure that no muscles are under stress. Now you can start the next process of relaxation / meditation.

Relaxation

The clue for meditation is concentrating your mind in one simple process, such as breathing in and out very slowly. Many thoughts will come to your mind (mostly those that worry you), let them come, but try not to “catch” them but to let them go as they came.

Breathe slowly and concentrate on the air that you get in. Then expel it out as slowly as you can, being conscious all the time about how you expel the air out.

My trick is to try to count while I pull the air out of my lungs. I count slowly, first until 6… then until 8 … and when I am more relaxed I count until 10 or 12… but never feel scarce of oxygen…It is not an exercise of apnoea!

Breathing should me made with your stomach, not your lungs. This means that you push your stomach out to get air in trough your mouth or nose, and them you push your stomach in, in order to take air out of your lungs. How it works is making your diaphragm move up and down, and making the air move out and in, in your lungs.

Keep doing this as long as you can.

The difficulties will appear in the form of thoughts and ideas that come to your mind and distract you from your breathing exercise. Let them in, but they will go out as soon as you restart thinking about your breathing, feeling the air in and out, concentrating on your stomach in and out, and counting slowly while you expel the air slowly through your mouth/nose.

It is not easy, and it may take you some days to advance, but if you insist you will finally realize that you are succeeding and that worrying thought are kept away and that you body gets in a slow mood.

Hint: Reading a book for a while before doing this may help you.

Hint: Do not do heavy exercise or exciting things before going to sleep.

Hint: Do not do any intellectual work that puts your mind busy before going to sleep.

Hint: Do some exercise/sport every day.

Hint: Do think that things happen for good, and that there is nothing important enough to keep you worried all day and night.

Good luck….and give me your comments on how you manage!!