meditation – Meditation in Oxford

Reasons to try meditation

Post author:Tejvan Pettinger
Post published:July 26, 2019
Post category:How to meditate

In recent years meditation has become much more popular in the west. People from all walks of life have been trying meditation to find a greater sense of peace and learn to switch off the pressures of daily life. People may try meditation for quite a few different reasons, but these are a few of the benefits you might get from meditation.

Keeping things in perspective

In the hectic hustle and bustle of life, it is easy to let things get out of perspective. We can become constantly pressured by demands and deadlines. However, if we take time to meditate, we learn that our world doesn’t collapse around us if we take 15 minutes out of our day for quiet reflection. In fact, with a good meditation, our problems will seem less pressing and demanding. No matter how busy we are, it is always worth finding 20 minutes to find time for our own meditation.

Concentration

Modern life can make us increasingly distracted, and reduce our attention span. It seems like we are always trying to do several things at once, but not really doing anything well. Meditation teaches us the very important capacity of concentration. Concentration means developing the ability to focus on one thing at a time. This capacity to concentrate will help us in all aspects of life; ff we can focus on only one thing at a time, then we will be much more effective in a variety of tasks.

Practical stress relief

When we meditate we can substantially relieve the stress and tension we may have in our daily life. Unburdened of our thoughts, we feel a greater sense of freedom. From a practical perspective, this ability to let go of stress can help our physical and mental health. Quite a few studies have shown the link between a peaceful mind and a healthy body. If we carry stress around in our mind, we can be more prone to some physical ailments. This ability to de-stress both mind and body is a great benefit of meditation.

Learn to switch off from our thoughts

Sometimes our thoughts are our own worst enemy. If a train of negative thoughts gets into our mind, we can become depressed or unnecessarily worried. Meditation teaches us that we can detach from negative thoughts and emotions. This improved control and focus of our mind is a real secret of developing happiness.

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Finding time for meditation

Post author:Tejvan Pettinger
Post published:December 2, 2013
Post category:Getting started How to meditate

One of the challenges in developing a regular meditation practise is finding the actual time to meditate. We have 24 hours at our disposal, but finding 20 minutes for quiet reflection can be surprisingly difficult! However, to give ourselves the best chance in getting the most out of meditation, we need to cultivate a regular daily practise. As we get into a daily routine of meditation, it becomes much easier to find time. We start to enjoy meditation so much, we want to do it before anything else; but in the beginning we need to make quite an effort to make sure we can always find 15 minutes in the day.

To find time for meditation, these are a few tips that we might consider.

Give it a high priority. The most important thing is to give meditation a priority in our life. If we feel the importance of meditation, then we will make sure we find the time to meditate. It is like anything in life, what we value, we give ourselves time for.
Set a weeks challenge. It is very helpful to set targets. For example, we could set ourselves a challenge to meditate for 20 minutes everyday for a week. This target is quite achievable and not too daunting. After we have managed it for one week, it will be easier to make it a second week. Then we can set ourself the challenge to meditate for a month, and see how different we feel at the end.
Don’t give up. Don’t be discouraged if you find meditation difficult. One of the biggest problems beginners face is that meditation is often more difficult than we would like. We sit down with the best intentions to keep the mind calm, but it isn’t as co-operative as we would like. However, even if we don’t feel we are doing a particularly good meditation, we should remember we are still getting a great benefit from it. Sometimes, we need to put in quite a few hours of practise, before we can take it to the next level. Sri Chinmoy suggests for absolute beginners to meditation, it is useful to get in the habit of simply sitting still for a few minutes a day. We shouldn’t expect too much in the beginning. Our capacity will increase the more we meditate. (more…)