Inner calm, improved motivation and concentration, better mood control and heightened senses. Sounds good doesn’t it? And you don’t even need to take any mind or mood altering substances. Your body is a temple of untapped resources.
The ancient art of meditation is a powerful tool that can help any stressed out woman as she tries to create the perfect Christmas. Meditation can aid you in ways you may not have thought possible.
Forty-year-old Jean Lawrence from Northamptonshire has always found this time of year particularly stressful:
“In my house at this time of year I have to cook for 15 people, wrap all the presents, fill the kids’ stockings and turn a blind eye to family politics. Christmas used to be a stressful and unpleasant event that I had come to dread.”
Last year however, Jean decided to take matters into her own hands and completed a short meditation course in the run up to Christmas and as a result had a calm and stress-free Christmas. Well, apart from the hangover on Boxing Day of course!
Women all over the Western world will be pulling their hair out come 25th December. You can imagine the scene.
Excitedly torn wrapping paper is carelessly strewn around the kitchen floor and the table is still not set. You’ve just missed the Queen’s speech on TV that you’ve been looking forward to for oh I don’t know how long. The Yorkshire pud is still in the oven and the beans and carrots are simmering, but now the roast pork is overdone and the crackling is looking more like burnt bacon than the juicy pieces you had envisaged.
Meditation helps
Now imagine this. You wake up on Christmas morning before little Sally, Mandy and Harry wake you up. You sit cross-legged by the window with the perfect antidote to Christmas stress, and clear your mind of mince pies, cooking, and stockings.
You feel and experience your breathing, and when your mind starts to wonder away into a thought, you notice it float by but release the mind from the thought and continue to focus on your breathing and bodily sensations.
The idea is that every time your mind comes back to the breath, your mindfulness increases. This is called breath-based meditation but there are plenty of other types if you don’t feel this would be suited to you.
Now when the children come bouncing buoyantly into your room on Christmas day you feel calm, serene and ready to face – and enjoy – the day. If you feel yourself getting frazzled later on, just take another ten minutes to meditate and empty your mind and that cloudless sky will be yours again in no time at all.
This time when Aunt Sally has one too many sherries and starts flirting with your husband, you will be armed with your new mindfulness. You will be able to see any negative thoughts that may arise from this situation standing like dominoes on a conveyor belt.
Armed with your meditative tools, you will merely view the floating domino-like thoughts and let them pass. Perhaps you will then take a further two minutes to yourself to regain your meditative stance by doing some deep breathing and abdominal exercises.
In the past you may have jumped onto the conveyor belt and joined all those domino-like negative thoughts until they escalated into a messy heap on the floor of your mind.
Different types of meditation
You do not need to be a meditation expert to benefit from this practice. There is more than one method to the practice although they all have the same aim of focusing on the present.
Breath-based meditation (see above) is when you observe the rise and fall of the breath in a controlled manner. Or you could use tools such as a candle where you observe and focus on the flame.
Mantra meditation focuses on a specific word or sound and is similar to visualization meditation. This is where you use images to still the mind.
A popular visualization is the ‘golden flower’ mediation, where you visualize light filling your body from head to toe and imagine darkness filling your body when you breathe out.
Meditation benefits
There are more benefits to meditation though than feeling slightly less frazzled during the festive holidays. Several studies have demonstrated that subjects who meditate for as little as ten minutes a day show decreased anxiety and a significant increase in alpha waves (relaxed brainwaves).
On a more physiological side, Harvard Medical School found meditation activates the part of the brain in charge of the automatic nervous system, which controls functions such as digestion and blood pressure that can be compromised by stress.
Controlling these bodily functions through the mind could help ward off stress-related conditions such as digestive problems, infertility and heart disease.
Meditation can also relieve symptoms of panic attacks, pain and depression. Emotions that are partnered with these mental health problems are in the mind, not the body. Grief is mostly memory, sense of loss and abandonment.
These are concepts based on what has happened to you in the past. If you can meditate and bring yourself back to the present moment, the sensations of pain or grief are not nearly as strong.
Swami Vishnu-Devanda, a Sivananda meditation expert and teacher says that yoga and meditation can “help to balance, harmonise and strengthen the body, mind and soul. It shows the way to perfect health, mind control, and perfect peace with one’s self and the world.”
Sivananda yoga and meditation centers can be found throughout the world, visit www.sivananda.org for details of meditation classes and courses.
So book yourself in and have yourself a merry – and calm – little Christmas this year using the tools of meditation to help both your body and mind cope with the stresses that this festive time of year can all too often bring.
The ancient art of meditation is a powerful tool that can help any stressed out woman as she tries to create the perfect Christmas. Meditation can aid you in ways you may not have thought possible.
Forty-year-old Jean Lawrence from Northamptonshire has always found this time of year particularly stressful:
“In my house at this time of year I have to cook for 15 people, wrap all the presents, fill the kids’ stockings and turn a blind eye to family politics. Christmas used to be a stressful and unpleasant event that I had come to dread.”
Last year however, Jean decided to take matters into her own hands and completed a short meditation course in the run up to Christmas and as a result had a calm and stress-free Christmas. Well, apart from the hangover on Boxing Day of course!
Women all over the Western world will be pulling their hair out come 25th December. You can imagine the scene.
Excitedly torn wrapping paper is carelessly strewn around the kitchen floor and the table is still not set. You’ve just missed the Queen’s speech on TV that you’ve been looking forward to for oh I don’t know how long. The Yorkshire pud is still in the oven and the beans and carrots are simmering, but now the roast pork is overdone and the crackling is looking more like burnt bacon than the juicy pieces you had envisaged.
Meditation helps
Now imagine this. You wake up on Christmas morning before little Sally, Mandy and Harry wake you up. You sit cross-legged by the window with the perfect antidote to Christmas stress, and clear your mind of mince pies, cooking, and stockings.
You feel and experience your breathing, and when your mind starts to wonder away into a thought, you notice it float by but release the mind from the thought and continue to focus on your breathing and bodily sensations.
The idea is that every time your mind comes back to the breath, your mindfulness increases. This is called breath-based meditation but there are plenty of other types if you don’t feel this would be suited to you.
Now when the children come bouncing buoyantly into your room on Christmas day you feel calm, serene and ready to face – and enjoy – the day. If you feel yourself getting frazzled later on, just take another ten minutes to meditate and empty your mind and that cloudless sky will be yours again in no time at all.
This time when Aunt Sally has one too many sherries and starts flirting with your husband, you will be armed with your new mindfulness. You will be able to see any negative thoughts that may arise from this situation standing like dominoes on a conveyor belt.
Armed with your meditative tools, you will merely view the floating domino-like thoughts and let them pass. Perhaps you will then take a further two minutes to yourself to regain your meditative stance by doing some deep breathing and abdominal exercises.
In the past you may have jumped onto the conveyor belt and joined all those domino-like negative thoughts until they escalated into a messy heap on the floor of your mind.
Different types of meditation
You do not need to be a meditation expert to benefit from this practice. There is more than one method to the practice although they all have the same aim of focusing on the present.
Breath-based meditation (see above) is when you observe the rise and fall of the breath in a controlled manner. Or you could use tools such as a candle where you observe and focus on the flame.
Mantra meditation focuses on a specific word or sound and is similar to visualization meditation. This is where you use images to still the mind.
A popular visualization is the ‘golden flower’ mediation, where you visualize light filling your body from head to toe and imagine darkness filling your body when you breathe out.
Meditation benefits
There are more benefits to meditation though than feeling slightly less frazzled during the festive holidays. Several studies have demonstrated that subjects who meditate for as little as ten minutes a day show decreased anxiety and a significant increase in alpha waves (relaxed brainwaves).
On a more physiological side, Harvard Medical School found meditation activates the part of the brain in charge of the automatic nervous system, which controls functions such as digestion and blood pressure that can be compromised by stress.
Controlling these bodily functions through the mind could help ward off stress-related conditions such as digestive problems, infertility and heart disease.
Meditation can also relieve symptoms of panic attacks, pain and depression. Emotions that are partnered with these mental health problems are in the mind, not the body. Grief is mostly memory, sense of loss and abandonment.
These are concepts based on what has happened to you in the past. If you can meditate and bring yourself back to the present moment, the sensations of pain or grief are not nearly as strong.
Swami Vishnu-Devanda, a Sivananda meditation expert and teacher says that yoga and meditation can “help to balance, harmonise and strengthen the body, mind and soul. It shows the way to perfect health, mind control, and perfect peace with one’s self and the world.”
Sivananda yoga and meditation centers can be found throughout the world, visit www.sivananda.org for details of meditation classes and courses.
So book yourself in and have yourself a merry – and calm – little Christmas this year using the tools of meditation to help both your body and mind cope with the stresses that this festive time of year can all too often bring.
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