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Meditation for Greed | Minimalism vs Consumerism

Are we here at Ahimsa Meditation leaning towards ultra-minimalism or even asceticism? Are we trying to monetize meditation and create consumer products for this ever increasing market? Our stance is neither of these options. Let us disucuss consumerism, values of enough and how meditation for greed can help us all.

Whilst we think that healthy minimalism is great and our society’s insatiable nature of consumption should be addressed, we are also great advocates of human progress.

Humankind has evolved to live more peacefully and we should enjoy the results of such progress. One of the biggest examples is that we are now able to nourish our bodies with plant-based foods without the need for killing innocent animals.

We are also capable to diagnose and treat many diseases, we have environment-friendly cars and so on. Yet if you look into worldwide statistics, there are so many people who die from overconsumption and lavish lifestyles. Much more when compared to people who suffer from malnourishment and hunger. Mindful living starts with meditation for greed as a tool to take our insatiability.

It just shows that consumerism, being the driving force of a capitalist society, also steers us all in a very wrong direction. This destructing direction is clearly visible today. We are horrified that billions of innocent animals are slaughtered every year for our food. Global warming is not just a distant scare anymore. Violence is on the rise even in the most developed nations.

Lifestyle

When it comes to our lifestyle, we are capable to live happy right at this moment provided that have “enough” of our basic needs.

What are those? Everyone should have enough food, shelter, clothing, and medicine. It would be irrational to ask a man to be virtuous if they cannot get at least these.

Nutrition

Healthy nutrition can also showcase how aiming for ‘enough’ benefits to our bodies. Plant-based whole foods provide enough protein for your balanced nutrition. You also can get enough fiber from whole grains, oats, pseudo grains like buckwheat and quinoa. Enough doesn’t mean bare minimum, you can nourish your body with enough nutrients and vitamins by eating food derived from non-violent sources.

As opposed to that, think about junk food. It simply doesn’t give us what we need from food. Instead, it fills us with toxins. Materialistic values fill us with psychological toxins. Junk values are distorting our minds. Materialism is KFC for the soul.

That’s how our current system trains us “there is never enough”.

Enough & Happiness

Thich Nhat Hahn in his book “The Art of Living” says that there are a few mindfulness trainings and one of them is directly focused on finding true happiness. He suggests the following mantra or contemplation can be added to your meditation routine: “I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude, not on external conditions, and that I can live in a present moment happily simply by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy.”

This allows us to forego that annoying thought that creeps in from time to time – ‘Am I good enough?’ It is not productive. You most probably already have enough of everything to be happy.

R. and E. Skidelsky in the book “How much is enough?” suggest at least three major building blocks of a strategy how to create a better world for everyone: reduce the desire to consume and distribute the fruits of productivity more evenly. They suggest that societies could introduce basic income, reduce the pressure to consume by creating a tax on consumption (i.e. luxury items) instead of on income, and significantly reduce the advertising. They hope that people can discover for themselves ways of life in which money-making is not central.

Greed

When greed is our ultimate motivation, it’s clear that no matter how much we have, it’s simply never enough.

Gandhi said something similar: “There is enough in this world for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

Meditation for greed

Meditation can provide an effective platform to deal with greed. Being a close observer of your own self allows us to see clearly own true inner needs and wants. And not the ones that are dictated by our consumerist society. You may then realize that the luxury items, that are merely some symbols of your status, are simply your ego’s desires, not yours. Values of enough come to the surface.

When you use our most simple way to meditate but add there a contemplation about your greed, you will be able to face it directly, observe it and understand it better.

What happens next is that your greed will lose its grip over you. You will live in an abundant place of plenty where you have enough of almost everything you need. It brings you an enormous amount of happiness and also clarity how to live your life.

And that’s a very good thing. You may call it simplicity or values of enough, your own kind of minimalism, but it is a journey of finding a better life.

Meditation For Forgiveness

Forgiveness is not easy

We all carry a lot of grudges and that’s quite natural. Yet this ‘baggage’ is not really healthy.

We are hurt often and we feel guilty ourselves, but sometimes we also blame others. Well, it is inevitable that someone should be blamed for a failure or a mistake, don’t they?

Funny thing is, it should not be this way.

Hurtful feelings are widespread

Many of us ruminate and hurt ourselves with these distractive thoughts. Some of us direct this blame towards our enemies. Whilst it is all logical and so on, it is not productive or helpful.

When you lose someone really close to you, it is unbearably hurtful. And sometimes you can blame yourself for your mistakes or wrongdoings. Yet you can’t change the past and your future simply hasn’t emerged yet. All you can do is just to learn from these experiences and move on.. hopefully, to be a better you.

Losing someone or experiencing a break-up are those instances when we really feel tender. Forgiveness is a thing that might heal some of the wounds we have. It is definitely important when we turn to ourselves and explore how do we actually relate to ourselves.

Many of us treat ourselves like.. well, awful.. Just sit down and have a five-minute break from everything. Allow yourself some alone time. Can you see how you usually address your own self?

We often start picking on our flaws. We are our own worst critic. But why? Why cannot we just forgive ourselves for being … well, simply ourselves?

Meditation as a tool to practice forgiveness

Meditation teaches us… or frankly speaking, opens our own eyes on who we really are.

We look into ourselves, we are in ‘being’ mode instead of ‘doing’ and it reveals our true nature.

Ability to forgive actually increases our well-being. Everyone can increase their self-compassion, self-care (nutrition and activities), practice forgiveness, gratitude, but also realise how connected we all are and that we want ultimately the same thing. We do not need to seek and strive to prove how ‘special’ we are, but rather be kind to ourselves and others.

Don’t think of forgiveness as a sign of weakness, it is quite the opposite. Forgive and let all those toxic energies leave your body, mind, and emotions. This allows you to start letting go of the emotional traumas of your past. This, in turn, enables you to heal naturally. Forgiveness is a very important step to your freedom and meditation is a tool to help you do just that. See our basic instruction and learn how to meditate today.

‘Putting yourself in an altered state of mind, and tapping into your spiritual energy during a forgiveness meditation can help you quickly and lovingly release your negative thoughts and feelings’ (https://www.wikihow.com/Forgive-Using-Meditation).

Forgiveness meditation

Jack Kornfield advises that during your regular meditation practice you can decide to start breathing ‘into the area of your heart, let yourself feel all the barriers you have erected and the emotions that you have carried because you have not forgiven – not forgiven yourself, not forgiven others. Let yourself feel the pain of keeping your heart closed. Then, breathing softly, begin asking and extending forgiveness’.

Try incorporating this forgiveness meditation into your loving-kindness practice. Having a lot of energy drawn from wishing yourself and others well-being, health and peace will also help you to forgive and heal.

We hope you can look deeper into yourself and heal some of your traumas with forgiveness meditation.

Meditation for Beginners: Just One Thing You Really Need

Meditation is no longer a hype. Even though you can read about it from various magazines, newspapers and online, it is not a trendy thing anymore. It is here and will stay as an effective tool to cultivate one’s mind. Meditation for beginners could be confusing.

Meditation today

Similarly, as with nutrition, it started to accumulate a lot of ‘things’ and ‘stuff’ around. Quite often it is simply commercialised in order to make a profit on you meditating. Think about expensive apps or fancy cushions, music and special clothing, luxury retreats and events. Whereas there is nothing ultimately wrong with all of these, it may pose a problem for a beginner to meditation. Any newbie might start thinking that meditation is just a spiritual tool, but it needs a lot of effort and resources in order to start practicing.

It cannot be further from the truth!

Meditation happens when you concentrate and observe, you pay full attention to what you are doing and being mindful about it. Meditation can be a sitting one, walking, but also during yoga, cooking or running and so on.

In order to practice meditation, you do not anything. Well, except for your time to dedicate to it fully.

You do not even need an enormous amount of time – research has shown that 15-30 minutes of a daily meditation practice that happens regularly (read, every day) is enough for everyone to start experiencing profound changes in their mood, ability to cope with stress, become calmer and more emotionally stable. For more research and benefits that go beyond calmness and relaxation, but also positively influence your physical and mental health, simply visit our Benefits of Meditation page. We update it with the most up-to-date research on meditation practices and mindfulness.

Meditation for beginners: first steps

So if you have decided to try meditation, we have also got a very straightforward guide to meditation. You simply sit and concentrate on your breathing.

For the step by step instructions, please visit our How to Meditate page. It is very simple and you do not need anything at all, simply allocate some time to it.

Time is most probably our most precious resource

Meditation will bring great results for you if you find regular time slots when you simply practice meditation.

Try to avoid distractions at that time and create some sort of a habit. Many people like to meditate first thing in the morning, it energises them for the whole day and fills with serene, calm and pro-active energy.

Start avoiding excuses, and even though you may travel that day or have an important errand to run, remember to find an alternative time to practice. Maybe you simply need to set up your alarm 30 minutes earlier that day and you would be totally fine?!

It cannot be stressed enough how important is this regular practice. Think about it the other way – don’t you think that your health and happiness are important enough for you to dedicate just 30 minutes of your time per day?

If a person is not sure, and many of us were there too, it means that the world has sucked him or her in so much that they are no longer masters of their own time. People who cannot allow themselves to get away from their routine for just 30 minutes most probably do not like themselves enough to simply say that their health and happiness are worth it.

It may sound a bit egoistic, but if one is calmer, more composed and feels good about themselves, they are capable of more harmonious relationships with others. They can enjoy whatever they are doing much more. As we are very interconnected, our meditation practice is not only beneficial for us, it allows us to live in a better world. This world is peaceful and joyful.

Meditation for beginners is easy

Have a go at it. Sit for 10 mites to start with. Do the same tomorrow and the day after. Call it a ritual, a habit or simply something how you show some love for yourself and others. Do it for others too. Follow our basic instructions and don’t hesitate to ask questions if something is not super clear. Thanks and have a good start with your meditation practice.

Meditation, Love and Self-Compassion

Many people start on their journeys to meditate and cultivate their minds. It’s awesome!

Yet for a majority of them, their practice of meditation is a sporadic tool or an activity that they need to find time for.

Surely, in our hectic and always changing world finding time is quite difficult. It is possible though if we get our priorities right.

Do you have 20-30 minutes for yourself a day? Start worrying if the answer is ‘No’

Meditation is in a way an expression of love to your own self. Do you love yourself enough to dedicate 20-30 minutes of your daily time to meditation?

Ones that tend to say that it is difficult to find time simply do not care about themselves enough. Because their routine, that eats all their free time, can be adjusted.

When you start practicing meditation, it starts to teach you to return to a self-compassionate mode and simply be. When you show some discipline in the beginning and form a habit of daily meditation, you will see that it is not even about loving yourself. But it is about being open and kind to everything and everyone.

What happens next is truly wonderful – you start bringing the benefits of meditation to your everyday life. Your attentiveness and love for your body will ensure that you eat well. Awareness of your eating patterns will quickly help you to eliminate usual nasties – refined sugars, processed foods, and white flour just to name a few. Kindness to others would help you to realize how awful it is to kill someone for your own food. And you will probably become vegetarian or even vegan.

When it comes to your mind, self-compassion allows you to observe your thoughts and not to cling to the disturbing ones. Remember, you are not your thoughts.

Similarly, your inner peace will allow you to be compassionate to others. But it is very difficult to be genuinely kind and warm-hearted to others if you nurture hate inside yourself. Loving-kindness then simply spreads to others in your life.

Meditation. Love. Ego. Compassion.

People think that meditation is being egoistic and spending time frivolously. And it cannot be further from the truth. You indeed develop yourself, listen to yourself clearly and view things from a calm and peaceful perspective. Yet it spreads! You actually let go of your ego’s strong grip and think about others. You wish others to be healthy, happy, safe, free from harm and peaceful. And then it spreads once again. Your own meditation, ability to feel self-compassion and love to yourself is actually important on a global level. No pressure though!

Hopefully, you will find some discipline to practice meditation on a daily basis. There are countless ways how to help you do that easier – establishing rituals and forming habits, creating cues and committing with other people. Yet quite soon you will be able to simply be better off.

Check out our basic instructions on how to start meditating or if you’re quite comfortable with it already, have a look at Vipassana Meditation guide. We wish you a good daily meditation practice. Much love and self-compassion!

Mindfulness Meditation for Grief

One person said that one cannot teach mindfulness meditation for grief before they have experienced that.

Dare to believe them?

Well, whether it is true or not it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it’s really difficult.

It’s bloody hard, ok?

It’s almost like torturing yourself with a stick/fire, you name it.

Tragedy happens…

Simply put, when we lose the loved one, the world is no longer the same. We are shaken. We are torn. There is nothing so much familiar anymore. We think about the reasons. We are torturing ourselves because we’re so hurt. And we are!

Yet what’s different between a seasoned meditator and one who has never attempted to cultivate their mind in this way, is that the former has learned about the pause.

A pause?

Yes! We believe that your ability to take a pause during the time your thoughts attack you with some sh*t and then manage your response is crucial for you to eventually feel better mentally.

We, of course, do not think losing someone is in any way similar to that. It is much more severe and you feel it. Oh, dear, you really feel it. 🙁

Yet there is something you can do.

Accepting your pain is a first step to begin your healing

You can take this experience and accept it. To be honest with you, there is nothing you can do apart from being in a denial.

If grief is dealt with effectively, it can become a tool for the development of great insight. If on the other hand it is dealt with unskilfully, it could initiate a whole chain of chronic dysfunction, confusion, depression, avoidance behaviors, and general unhappiness (quoted from Malcolm Huxter in his ‘Grief and Mindfulness Approach’)

Face your loss and feel it

Next step, you feel that loss. You know, it is just never going to be the same way ever again. Sounds like a tragedy? Well, it is! That’s why it is so bloody hard and painful. You feel pain, you experience it and you eventually accept it. It is what it is.

You know, you are already way in front of many people who just prefer to avoid any pain at all costs.

Averill (according to Kalish, 1985) has named three stages of coping with grief:

shock,
despair,
recovery.

So this acceptance and a very deep and painful feeling of your loss comes in the first stages and it is very natural.

Use mindfulness meditation for grief to move on with your life

Yet we need to recover. Otherwise, this deep unsatisfaction and despair can, unfortunately, turn into a very serious depression.

We believe that meditation is a tool for how you can get onto a road of recovery effectively. It doesn’t mean it would be quicker or less painful, but it would be a recovery after all.

Mindfulness meditation helps to heal psychological problems (addictions, unresolved grief or trauma). In order to reap the benefits, it is important to develop a consistent practice, daily if possible. (From “The Meditation Bible” by Madonna Gauding)

From personal experience, meditation does calm you down but it is not a (or “A”) solution! But it can be a tool for you. Though you can do much more with it. Spiritually, you do not need to be religious, you can simply believe that you benefit from cultivating and developing your own mind.

This is how mindfulness meditation helps to recover from grief

Mindfulness meditation does not teach to avoid your emotions or suppress it, it is about facing them and observing. It is almost like befriending your grief. Your grief needs to be understood, realized and then it can be worked upon.

The main recommendation for anyone coping with grief is to withdraw your emotional energy from your life (deceased) and invest it in social activity (without any uncertainty or guilt). (see more at buddhanet.net)

Vipassana meditation can complement your mindfulness meditation for grief by providing you with various insights on where you can invest your emotional energy.

For us at Ahimsa Meditation, we invest our emotional energy into teaching people how to meditate and how to be better off by means of mindfulness meditation. Join us.

Let’s talk about our desire to be special

We hope that with this article we would be able to start a conversation with everyone of you about a modern goal that everyone is or needs to be special.

Do you really need it? Is it OK to be special at all? Is it healthy to strive to be special?

What is it ‘to feel special’?

It seems that this ‘specialness’ comes from our own natural selection. Our feelings of uniqueness and superiority lie in the heart of that value system of survival. Some animals do that too. Unfortunately for other species, killing is the way how the strong ones assert their ‘specialness’. This behaviour is what we can call a very pedestrian one, arrogant and mindless.

We have been talking about evolution and human progress also to showcase that we have all the means to move past this behaviour and live a life of moral meaning. We have learned how to grow enough food on the planet and cure many diseases. Our progress should ensure we live better. That also means we all live better, no matter of a social status and background. This is how we can inject moral meaning into all aspects of our life.

Violence to justify that we can feel special?

Killing others for food is simply not an option. We do not need to do that. It is unethical. We are not special compared to a goat or a pig, we do not have any right to kill them. Nowadays our survival does not depend on them.

Deeply embedded in Buddhist thought is the intrinsic moral value of sentient life. Not just the value of human beings but the value of all organisms that have subjective experience and so are capable of pain and pleasure, of suffering and not suffering. This value in turn imparts value to other things such as helping people, being kind to dogs etc.

How can we deal with this social notion of ‘specialness’?

Mindful mediation can help us to examine our stories carefully. We can listen to our inner voices from the ground up. This allows us, if we choose of course, to separate truth from fabrication. We can ditch the need to feeling special and instead live by your own intrinsic values, in synergy with others.

One of the suggestion from us at Ahimsa Meditation is to look at the concept of non-self, or letting go of your ego. It will help to get rid of the ‘specialness’ feeling.

Meditation offers us to see clearly that there is a way to live that is not going with the natural selection flow or completely against it. Robert Wright, in his book “Why Buddhism is True” said that there is a concept of Middle Way where you are attuned to the impermanence, non-self and unsatisfactoriness of living and it brings liberation and happiness”.

Clearly, we are so easily inclined to accept the aim of feeling special because we think our life would be better off like that. Yet what it does, is something very opposite – it enslaves us in this rat race of ‘more, more and yet some more’ (it could be money, fame, you name it). You have a moment of feeling ‘special;’ and then it vanes, you need to become even more special. This may never end. It means you are not living your own life, it’s almost like someone programmed it for you.

Letting go of your ’specialness’ and ego will mean you can listen to what you really need and want. You can start living your life by your own rules.

How is it to live with an aim of ‘specialness’ for you?

We’ve all been (or still are) there. Let’s help each other and share our stories of how the aim of being special is actually not helpful at all.

What are your thoughts, contemplation and advice for others? Please leave your comments below or send us a message through Contact form – let’t share. Thank you.

Meditation for Stress | Mindful Stress Management

Stress: who is to blame?

Without taking much time to introduce the topic, it’s very clear that we all live with much more stress than ever before. We have seen the emergence of Big Food, Big Pharma and other big businesses that make us sicker, poorer and very stressed. What’s incredible, they do it at our expense too!

Yet it should be another way around. Inded, we are developing so many tools and human progress should allow us to live better. See our article on Evolution, Nonviolence, and Meditation if you want to learn more about this. Meditation for stress should be that ultivate tool how we can combat stress effectively. Let’s dig deeper.

Many so-called biohackers recommend using magnesium supplements to get a better night sleep. It helps to calm down that exhausted nervous system. In many cases, this does work really well. You can start with a very low dosage of magnesium (best to use is in the powder form), say 50 or 100 mg and then slowly increase up to 400-500 mg. It is safe to use but you will see how much is enough for you.

This is all great, but it falls down to a current healthcare approach. All it does is treating the effects, but not the cause.

What we need instead is to pay attention to what’s causing your stress and working on it. You sometimes cannot change the circumstances or actual events, but you can change your response to them.

We can rewire ourselves to be less responsive to everyday stress factors and choose to live a more serene life.

Why are we so stressed?

There are so many reasons why we are increasingly stressed.

A prominent Buddhist monk and author of a vast amount of books on meditation, Thich Nhat Hahn said that ‘having 6 sense organs, toxins can come not only through mouth’. According to him, we feel anxious or worn out being stressed because of devastation, cravings for possessions, sex or advertising – we are in contact with toxins.

Our issues with employment could be a huge stress factor. Unemployed job seekers showed reduced destructive self-talk that floods us with thoughts of hopelessness and depression. It means that the way how we relate to our gloomy self-talk has a direct impact on our health.

Prolonged exposure to stress hormones (especially cortisol) destroys healthy muscles, bones and cells. It also weakens the immune system. Julian Daizan Skinner and Sarah Blades in their ‘Practical Zen’ book have quoted the American Medical Association: ‘stress is implicated in 60-90% of physician visits’. This has been documented by Avey H. et al., 2003, ‘Health care providers’ training, perceptions and practices regarding stress and health outcomes’, Journal of the National Medical Association 95,9,833, 836-845.

It’s huge! Stress destroys your health and also a reason for the majority of your doctor visits.

Nutrition and stress

Our nutrition is another cause of stress. Let’s hear from Dr. Dean Ornish, who has conducted a lot of scientific research. He has helped many people to reverse diseases that were triggered by their lifestyle choices. He said that “for the last 36 years my colleagues at the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and the University of California have conducted research proving the power of a whole-foods, plant-based diet in combination with stress management techniques, moderate exercises like walking and love and intimacy. In addition to preventing many chronic diseases, these comprehensive lifestyle changes can often stop and reverse the progression of illnesses. This includes coronary heart disease, early-stage prostatic cancer, and type 2 diabetes”.

Have a look for some tips on how you can change your nutrition for the better in our Nutrition of Nonviolence course.

Have you also noticed that in this world of connected devices and the ultra-speed Internet, we are being really disconnected with each other? Chinese people actually celebrate Single’s Day. It became a big shopping event for them.

Loneliness spurs high levels of pro-inflammatory genes. Various stress reduction programs can not only lower these levels but also lessen the feeling of being lonely. (J.D. Creswell et al., “Mindfulness-based stress reduction training reduce loneliness and pro-inflammatory gene expression in older adults: a small randomized control trial” Brain, Behaviour and Immunity 26 (2012).

Is mindfulness meditation for stress effective?

One of the core benefits to meditation and mindfulness is an ability to cope with anger and manage the response to everyday stress factors.

Dan Buettner in his ‘Blue Zones’ book said that there is a theme amongst all people who live longer than 100 years. The key factors are a plant-based diet and effective stress management.

Meditation can also reduce high levels of the stress hormone cortisol and resulting toxic belly fat. See Jennifer Daubenmier et al., “Mindfulness Intervention for Stress Eating to Reduce Cortisol and Abdominal Fat Among Overweight and Obese Women: an exploratory randomized controlled study”, Journal of Obesity (2011): 651936.

One study even found that 8-week meditation class tripled the amount of weight lost by a group of elderly women when compared with those who did not use similar techniques. (Eirini Christaki et al., “Stress Management Can Facilitate Weight Loss in Greek Overweight and Obese Women: A Pilot Study” Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics 26, 2 (July 2013): Supplement 132-39). See more at “Meditate your weight” by Tiffany Cruikshank.

Meditation lessens your stress on a genetic level too

In research published in 2013, Benson and his team found that meditation doesn’t just change brain activity, blood pressure and reports of how stressed people feel. It changes the activity of certain genes. And it does it so within minutes. Even first-timers show an increase in the activity of genes involved in the function of mitochondria and secretion of insulin (which regulates blood glucose levels). There is also a drop in the activity of genes involved in triggering potentially damaging inflammation (linked to depression) and stress-related pathways. Benson investigated that the duration of individual meditation should be 10-20 minutes a day. (Taken from Emma Young book called “Sane”)

This is where we are coming to a very trendy topic of genetic research.

There is evidence that meditation practice even slows the effects of the ageing process. Mindfulness may have an effect on the length of telomeres which are the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes. It reduces stress and stress arousal. Meditation fostering positive states of mind may bring about hormonal changes, which may promote telomere maintenance. See more on this in “The rough guide to mindfulness” by Albert Tobler and Susann Herrmann.

Yet let’s not hide behind our genes. What we can do here and now if to become more compassionate and kind to ourselves. Meditation trains one really important mindfulness skill: loving-kindness and compassion. Just have a look what V. Burcha nd D. Penman wrote in their book “Mindfulness for Health”: “Cultivate self-acceptance and care towards yourself and others. This reveals the similarities and connections between us all, dissolving stress and reactivity so that life becomes warm and wholesome once again”.

How long do you need to practice meditation for stress?

We have shown already in our meditation articles and especially the one that describes the benefits of meditation practice that you will see changes just after a continuous daily meditation practice of just 15-20 minutes.

Doctors Goleman and Davidson insist that it needs to be regular. They said that a large drop in cortisol under stress seems to kick in with continuous practice. It means that it’s easier to handle life’s upsets.

In their book, “The Science of Meditation”, they have also provided why you should aim to make it a regular practice. They quoted a research paper that said that ‘the long term meditators achieved the best results in the reduction of cortisol levels’. The study observed long term meditators who all practiced vipassana and loving-kindness meditation over a period of at least 3 years. They engaged in a daily practice of at least 30 minutes and a few intensive meditation retreats. Each was matched on age and sex with a non-meditative volunteer to create a comparison group. They also gave saliva samples for cortisol levels. See more in Melissa A Rozenkratz et al., “Reduced stress and inflammatory responsiveness in experienced meditators compared to a matched healthy control group” Psychoneuroimmunology 68.

Holistic mindfulness to help with stress

Clearly, it is a matter of combining your efforts. You can do your body much better by switching to a plant-based diet. You can cultivate your mind and become more emotionally stable by means of mindfulness meditation. All of this enables you to be kinder and more compassionate to yourself, but also manage your stress better.

Buddhists were writing about it all along. Have a look at the work of Ajahn Amaro “A Holistic Mindfulness”. He said that Buddhism provides guidelines for behavior and speech that might help you to reduce stress and live more comfortably. He talks about holistic mindfulness by means of meditation and ethical living. You do not need to be religious to live like that. Simply extend your circle of compassion to all living beings (including yourself) and become disciplined in your daily meditation practice.

It Is Too Much | When Enough Is Enough

It is too much…

Let us ask you a quick question.

Have you ever been in a situation when you felt it is just too much of everything?

Surely it can be too much with work, other people, mounting stress, and simply a lot of things going on. You simply cannot go on like this anymore. It is when enough is enough. The awareness of it is the first step. Can you imagine there are millions of people who are subjected to acute stress on a daily basis without actually giving it any thought? They probably think it is simply ok to feel that overwhelmed and have that much on their plate all the time. Sounds crazy, isn’t it?

Yet according to many research studies, our life becomes more and more complex, hectic and full of chores that we need to do. Multitasking is not a skill to learn to be productive, it is a myth. It is actually a very unhealthy one – it really harms our mental health.

What to do and how to cope with this?

It is very important to have a tool at hand because this ‘it is too much’ feeling can arise quickly like a storm and then you are simply smitten.

What does one need to learn to skillfully cope with this?

Let’s get to the very basic semantics here. When we say that ‘it is too much’, we mean that these additional jobs, monies, and tasks are simply way above what we can handle. It is very probable that we do not need to do all that at all. Yes, we might earn less money or have a slightly more frugal lifestyle. Yet we may be a lot happier.

This is where the whole concept of enough comes into play. First, after realizing that it is too much, you simply say that you’ve had enough of this busyness and craziness. Enough is enough.

When is enough enough

Though to actually figure out how to get out of this vicious circle you need to find your own point of enough. It is that point where you are content. Feel that you are enough as an individual (why would you think anything different anyways?) and you have enough (money, place to live, clothes to wear, you name it). You can simply enjoy the present being in a very comfortable sense of enough. You have enough and you are enough. Clearly, you do not lack anything.

To progress further on your journey, you can employ meditation techniques. They will help you to center and feel at peace, they will guide you to the universal truths of impermanence, non-self and unsatisfactory conditions. When you contemplate on these, you cultivate your mind and feel this enormous pressure of constant busyness lifting off your shoulders. That’s when you re-discover your inner values and they start guiding you to your own point of enough. What’s enough for you? It’s very probable that you already have much more than that and you can start serving others instead of engaging in never ending rat race of more and more wealth.

What can you do if you feel that it is enough?

Be kind to yourself. Say that everyone feels like that once in a while. And that’s ok. We live in a very busy world.

Though it is a bit of a lame excuse. We choose how to live our lives. Or at least we should.

So why not you take some time for yourself and start meditating.

First, learn our basic practice of concentration meditation on breathing. Try our loving-kindness meditation (Metta) and see whether you start feeling more at ease with everything and everyone with it. Make progress with your practice with our vipassana meditation instructions. This is where you gain insights and further develop yourself and your mind based on your own intrinsic values.

That’s how your life becomes a life of enough, a place where you are content, happy and peaceful. You will want others to feel the same. Let us know!

Meditation for Sleep | How Meditation Fights The War Within

Sleep issues are on the rise

When I was a teenager it was much more easy for me to feel better when I had no sleep the other night. Nowadays it is simply unbearable. If I did not have a proper 7.5 or better 8 hours of sleep, I feel cranky and tired. When I had only a few hours of rest and that’s it, I become less than a human as I am so irritable, whiny and other quite nasty things.

When I’ve experienced that severe sleep deprivation the last time, I did not abandon my usual morning meditation ritual. Thankfully, this experience was pleasant, even though it was still very hard to concentrate. Yet when I’ve finished, I felt much better. I was more centred, composed and ready to react in a non-violent way towards myself or others. So here is your tip number one – to get on with your meditation practice even though it might be the case of making a much greater effort at the start. Your synergy of mind-body will thank you for that and you will feel better.

Though the main thing is not to get to the point of sleep deprivation, don’t you think?

First of all, we already know about some quick and easy tools on how to prevent bad sleep. We should stay away from blue light. Say no to the LCD screen on tablets, phones and laptops – it suppresses melatonin production. Stay cool – melatonin cools the body by several degrees. Do not overheat your bedroom. Avoid alcohol. For many people, these simple actions would be life-changing. Yet what about those millions of people who cannot get asleep because of internal rumination and worrying?

Meditation for sleep is a proven tool on how to get a night of better sleep and relax into it.

Why meditation is great for sleep?

Prolonged exposure to stress hormones (especially cortisol) destroys healthy muscles, bones, cells, and weakens the immune system. Awareness is important because the unconscious stress can lead to poor sleep, indigestion, chronic head and backaches, heart attacks. When our health deteriorates, we become more fearful and the situation becomes a vicious circle (taken from“Practical Zen” by Julian Daizan Skinner with Sarah Blades)

Ahimsa Meditation would like to serve everyone who is on the journey to eradicate the war within. Albert Tobler and Susann Hermann explained this “war within” as our difficulties, doubts, irritation, frustrations, distractions. They have stated in their book “The rough guide to mindfulness” that around one in four adults suffers from nocturnal rumination. This means there are so many of us who are not being able to sleep due to worrying. Sleep disorder must be one of the most prevalent endemic diseases of the 21^st century. More and more of us find it difficult to switch off.

Meditation is able to help us cultivate our mind and become emotionally stronger and more stable. This means we can cope with difficulties, stress factors, frustration and just that enormous stress on a daily basis much better.

Meditation for sleep

Let’s outline some very straightforward steps on how you can start meditating yourself to sleep.

Get yourself ready in bed, preferably lie on your back with your arms on the sides. Do all need preparations in advance, so you can do your 10-15 minute meditation and almost immediately go to sleep without any need to stand up and do some chores.
Take a few really deep breaths. You can place your palms on your belly and see how deep breathing makes them go up and down, slowly but deeply. It should make you feel relaxed very quickly.
Close your eyes and start paying attention to sounds, smells and breathing. You are relaxing into a state of awareness but also tranquillity.
Without making any judgment, make a mental note of how your body feels.
As with a basic practice, start performing a body scan. Yet with this meditation for sleep practice, you are going to make it a centre stage. Begin from a very top of your head and very slowly go down by paying attention to the smallest parts of your body. You are just being attentive to all the little details you are never so curious about during the day.
If it helps to sustain this body scan, try a visualization technique where you imagine yourself covering your body with a very healthy ointment. You simply visualize applying it on your ears, lips, shoulders, nails and so on. This is completely optional, you can opt for a more basic mental scan. See what will work better for you.
You are not doing it just to finish with your toes and stop. You can then go up and see how every little piece of you relaxes into bed, how your arms become just a bit heavier, how your chest relaxes and you feel a lot of calm and relaxation.
Continue very slowly until you feel you are ready to drip off. Just observe your meditation, your breathing and your body. Let it simply flow.

Enjoy your sleep.

Still not working: are there other meditation techniques for sleep?

Add concentration on breathing part. If you feel that your body scan isn’t working for you today, simply start focusing and counting your breathing. The monotony of the process and a very simple flow will calm you and aid your sleep. See our basic meditation practice to guide you on how to concentrate on your breathing.

Try Metta or Loving-Kindness practice. It has been also proven to further relax our consciousness that everything will be alright (it is as it is, right?). You can try and incorporate this practice too to help with your sleep. Additional kindness and compassion to yourself and others is just that bit that will make a lot of difference. See our recommendations on how to practice loving-kindness meditation here.

We wish you to have a great sleep today. Continue with your meditation practice, develop it and have better sleep every day.

Can Mindfulness Meditation Help to Manage Your Weight? | Change Your Relationship with Food

Diets do not work

We have all been there – countless diets, strict regimen or simply a myriad of rules that are hard to follow. It’s not surprising we give up. A couple of weeks of struggle, maybe even a few months, but that’s it. It becomes tiresome. Diets are simply not sustainable as our relationship with food remains unchanged. And there are so many of them that we get simply lost which is which.

Let’s remember all those times we tried calorie counting, maybe even some apps to write down your food diary or maybe some more strenuous fasting or detox programs. It sounded like a good and logical idea at the start, but our crazy rhythm of life together with our doubts that it would work make it all very stressful.

Who needs even more stress? We get it a lot from work, why adding such extra pressure on ourselves? Especially we all know they don’t really work…

Right, this is beginning to look like a rant on our current predicament. Yet is there a solution to this? Can mindfulness meditation be that effective tool for weight loss we all want?

Sustainable change, food habits and relationship with food

Let’s look at people who have managed to quit smoking and did it with ease. Is there a thing that unites them all? Think about pregnant women. They quit not because they necessarily want that, but because they know it’s better for their kid. They are out of their own mind and they think about a bigger picture.

What lies behind our weight problems? For starters, it is our insatiability and a sheer abundance of junk foods – refined white flour goods, injected with sugar and sweeteners, processed foods that we either take away or buy as ready meals, the list goes on. We are subjected to so much stimulation and stress that we don’t really stop to enjoy simple foods anymore – we need big flavours and sensations. Big Food companies use that to their benefit of course. Majority of our current foods that are neatly placed on the supermarket shelves are processed – they are loaded with salt and sugar, artificial flavourings, preservatives and adjustments.

Functional food

Let’s go back to ancient times. We can hear Hippocrates saying ‘Let food be thy medicine’. It is that functional approach to food where we judge what to eat not by the colourful label or attractive smell, but by its nutritional content, by how many vitamin and minerals, it offers and also by fibre and other things we value in food. These are valuable because we live healthier and also happier when our bodies and minds get enough quality nutrients.

So the answer to the problem of dieting is that we should not just eat less of what we eat now, we should not simply list carbs or fats, we need to change our attitude to food in its entirety.

How do we talk to ourselves?

Let’s question our relationship to ourselves. Do we love ourselves? Do we think the way we talk to ourselves is coming from a view of kindness and compassion?

If we stop punish ourselves for whatever things we think we are lacking or failing, our relationship to ourselves becomes more harmonious. Yes, we do not hide behind the bush and we do not pretend we are perfect human beings. We are awake to our strengths and weaknesses too. We can be kind to ourselves when we recognize that we have done something wrong simply because that wasn’t our forte.

So coming back to our relationships, there is one that it’s in our head that dictates our food choices. If we change our relationship with food and start viewing it not from a hedonistic standpoint but from health and prevention of diseases, then it becomes very clear what to eat. It becomes easier to make choices, day by day, and without any guidance from this and that diet.

Ask yourself: is this food natural? Does it help me to be healthy? Will it have enough fibre to feed my gut bacteria. Will it keep me on the path to prevent possible illnesses rather than use drugs to reactively treat our diseases?

Preventive nutrition

You will agree that it is easier and also the most cost effective to think about preventive nutrition rather than eat crap but then spend on doctors and medicines.

We invite you to practice mindfulness meditation, incorporate loving-kindness into your daily routine and simply listen to yourself. Be kind to yourself.

The more you cultivate your mind in this way it becomes easier to understand what’s important to all of us. These are, amongst other things, physical and mental health, harmonious relationships and peaceful living and joy. This is all possible when you simply re-kindle the spark with your own values and outlook on life. It makes your food choices so clear an so easy, you won’t believe how much time and effort you’ve spent on countless diets that were alien to you.

This is how mindfulness meditation may for your weight-loss goals too. Yet it’s more accurate to think about meditation techniques that help weight management as we all have different goals, be it getting lean or building muscle.

Nutrition of Nonviolence helps to change your relationship with food

When you are ready to treat yourself better, we have prepared a special course and instructions. We’ve called it Nutrition of Nonviolence. You start being nonviolent to yourself, but then it spreads – you become healthier, happier and you stop killing innocent animals too. Everybody wins. Read our nutrition of nonviolence for recommendations or head to our Courses page to download a free guide in pdf format.

Get back to us with your stories, what works for you and what doesn’t. Did meditation help you to change your relationship with food and manage weight? Have you started being more at ease with food? Discuss this all with us. We are here to help.

Have a look at Dito’s Table, where the author’s taco craft meets Mexi-terranean cooking and a flexitarian way of eating.