Stress Be Gone
Meditating your way – away from it all to a place of peace and contentment
There are times when everyday life gets a little too hectic, busy and stressful. We’ve all felt those moments when primal scream therapy sounds awfully appealing. Or perhaps you’ve felt like getting away from the primal screams… to a place of peace, relaxation and comfort.
Stress is defined as mental and physical tension or strain. And, we all have stress… of one sort or another. Interestingly, outside influences are not the cause of inward stress. Rather, stress is a result of how we handle the influences from outside. Some people handle stress with ease and seem to be impenetrable to tension and strain. Some among us panic or have an anxiety attack upon the slightest provocation. In other words, stress is a term used to describe our individual reaction to pressures and tension.
Stress is an unavoidable consequence of life. As Hans Selye (who coined the term as it is currently used) noted, “Without stress, there would be no life.” However, just as distress can cause disease, it seems plausible that there are good stresses that promote wellness. Stress is not always necessarily harmful. Increased stress results in increased productivity – up to a point. However, this level differs for each of us.
Meditation is used to ease stress, chronic pain, and anxiety by giving the mind and body a break from the pressures that sometimes accompany daily life. The mind and body can be calmed by restful meditation, focusing on breathing, an image, or a sound.
Meditation is very closely tied to breathing and breathworks and is a form of directed concentration. People who meditate learn to focus their awareness and direct it onto an object: the breath, a phrase or word repeated silently, a memorized inspirational passage, or an image in the mind’s eye.
Meditation has many documented, immediate benefits and effects including:
• lowered blood pressure,
• decreased heart and respiratory rate,
• increased blood flow,
• and other measurable relaxation responses.
Many newcomers to meditation think the goal is to stop all thoughts. Of course, that’s not possible. What you want to learn is to withdraw attention from the endless chains of associated thoughts that stream through the mind. Dr. Phil McGraw calls this our internal dialogue. What we want to do instead is to focus our attention on the object of meditation. Whenever you become aware that your attention has strayed — to images, sensations, thoughts of dinner, to-do lists, or whatever — gently bring it back to your chosen object.
It takes practice to acquire a meditative state, but, once this is accomplished, it is quite successful. Meditation can take several forms, and it is important that a person choose the one that is right for them.
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