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Mindfulness Meditation to Help with PTSD

PTSD, Meditation, and Psychotechnology

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health issue that some people develop after they have been exposed to a shocking event in their life. It can be it life-threatening situation, combat, incarceration, natural disaster, sexual assault or similar.

The US. Department of Veteran Affairs stated that 8 out of 100 veterans clearly experience PTSD. They have stated that it is normal to have upsetting memories and feeling. However, if they last over a few months, it is time to get help. Majority of people diagnosed with PTSD are prescribed psychotherapy which is 53% effective and medication which is 46% effective on average. Meditation for PTSD is growing popularity too.

We at Ahimsa Meditation refer to mindfulness meditation as psycho-technology. It is a practice to help people suffering from the first symptoms of PTSD to cope with it and potentially fully recover before it goes any further. Though it is also very effective as a complementary practice to help sufferers who are taking medication or attending psychotherapy sessions.

Scientists agree that mindfulness meditation helps with PTSD

Meditation can help with common mental health issues like OCD, PTSD, panic attacks (from “The Effortless Mind” by Will Williams, founder of World Meditation Day).

Researchers from Maharishi International University taught meditation to prisoners with a standard prison program as a comparison. They found that 4 months later the prisoners doing meditation showed fewer symptoms of trauma, anxiety, depression; they also slept better and perceived their days as less stressful (from S. Nidich et al., “Reduced trauma symptoms and perceived stress in male prison inmates through Transcendental Meditation Program” in Permanente Journal 2016; doi.org/10.7812/TPP/116-007)

Prison Mindfulness Institute offers a 6 weeks mindfulness course dedicated to nurturing inner peace and more effective rehabilitation for prisoners and ex-convicts. Resettlement programs in the United Kingdom prisons also feature mindfulness as a pathway to effective rehabilitation after incarceration. Meditation for PTSD is a growing area of interest in the US, UK and worldwide.

It is not surprising that both ex-military, police force and prisoners are recipients of mindfulness meditation practice sessions specially designed to help or in some cases even prevent PTSD. See more information and scientific references on meditation practice benefits.

Mental health is important and mindfulness is an integral part of the treatment of various psychological disorders such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), borderline personality disorder and more (from “The rough guide to mindfulness” by Albert Tobler and Susann Herrmann).

Mental muscle training

Mindfulness training may indeed build up the “mental muscle” in these brain regions in people who are trying to change addictive behaviors. In this way, they are able to notice cravings and related self-referential thinking patterns, allowing them to ‘ride this wave’ of experience rather than being sucked into it.

Randomized control trials demonstrated improvement through mindfulness training for a long list of conditions: coping with diabetes, cancer, chronic pain, work stress, chronic fatigue syndrome, stress eating, HIV quality of life, smoking cessation, hot flashes, insomnia, substance use disorder. (From “Mindfulness and Psychotherapy” 2^nd Edition by C. Germer, R. Siegel, P. Fulton.)

For PTSD and everyone’s suffering from traumatic experiences in the past, we introduce an element of ‘clarification of values’ mediation to extend a participant’s circle of compassion and nonviolence. This is done by means of mindfulness meditation.

Mindfulness meditation invites your fear for tea

Trauma-related and PTSD themed mindfulness meditation simply wants to invite fear for tea. You just have a chat, look at it, observe and simply accept.

You can think about as ‘what we cannot hold, we cannot process, what we cannot process, we cannot transform. What we cannot transform, we cannot transform haunts us’.

With post-traumatic stress disorder, Ahimsa Meditation would like to focus on two characteristics that would be great to contemplate during your practice to help deal with your PTSD. These are:

impermanence, which allows anyone to stop being reluctant to accept that everything is changing all the time;
suffering or unsatisfaction that occurs as a result of clinging to our day-to-day desires.

How do you employ mindfulness meditation for PTSD?

Practising meditation for PTSD is really easy and you can try it right now with these simple instructions for a concentration meditation on breathing with elements of vipassana meditation directed at post-traumatic stress disorder:

Find a quiet place and set your alarm for an initial 10 minutes (more if you feel comfortable to start with a longer session).
Sit cross-legged on a floor (use a mat and a cushion to level your hips with your knees), place your arms on your lap. Only sit on a firm chair if the cross-legged position is very uncomfortable. In general, your posture should be fairly relaxed but not sluggish, so you won’t meditate yourself to sleep. Surely, the full lotus is the most stable and firm posture, yet you can adopt half-lotus or a simple cross-legged position too.
Take a few really deep breaths as so other people would be likely to hear you breathing. It should make you feel relaxed fairly quickly.
Close your eyes and start paying attention to sounds, smells, your posture, and breathing. Simply make a mental note on what you are observing. No need to judge it or dwell on it.
Pay attention to how your body feels. Start doing so by scanning your body from top to bottom and notice how even the smallest parts of your body feel. Don’t try to change anything or judge. It’s all good, you are being attentive, that’s it.
Move the focus of your attention to your breathing. Do not try to change it, just let it be. No judgment please, do not allow to be violent towards yourself. Notice where in your body your breathing starts, how it flows and how it ends. To help you settle with this pattern, you can start counting your breaths from 1 to 10 and then revert back to 1. If your attention shifts to something else, notice the very fact of this happening and then gently get your mind to count the breaths again and again. Yet these ‘jumps’ happen all the time, so be kind to yourself. The more skillful you become, the less monkey-like your mind learns to be. Every single time your mind gets back to counting breaths, it also gets stronger. This, in effect, gives your mind a proper training.
When you have established a good concentration on breathing, invite your mind to contemplate on the fact that all things change; it is just the way of life. Think about life and death, but also about these traumatic experiences that get you where you are now. These will change too. This is impermanence in your life. Accept it and relieve yourself from the pressure of stress factors. They will come and go too.
Obviously, these stress factors come with unsatisfaction and sometimes suffering. It happens because you cling to positive states, and quite naturally averse to things that cause you pain. You want to get rid of your traumatic experience and get back to happy memories. Yet the issue is that it doesn’t usually help. Yet it only creates more stress. If you look directly at your trauma and try and make friends with it, you can contemplate whether you can simply let go of your attachment to that trauma. This will definitely alleviate your stress. If you cannot just let go of it, simply say ‘yes I accept my [your own traumatic experience goes here], and that’s why I feel stressed’. You acknowledge your suffering and, paradoxically, it will subside. You will feel it less and with time it will disappear.
These two very specific but open contemplation themes are going to change on a daily basis. Things change, so is your meditation practice. Yet with time, you will become familiar with both of these characteristics and your level of stress will gradually lessen. You will accept these as the universal truth. Everyone experiences dissatisfaction and all things are impermanent. Your full acceptance and absence of clinging are key to lower your stress.
Your inner values can give you an emotional boost. Contemplate about what they are for you. Why do you wake up in the morning? Is it something that you do, how you serve others, how you connect with other people? How do you help your kids or maybe your customers? Re-connect with your inner values, feel the power of them. Contemplate them during your meditation.
Continue for your set amount of time. When finished, allow your mind to rest for 30 seconds with no focus on anything at all. Just observe and let it simply flow.
Finish by making a mental note how you feel now, what you are going to do next and open your eyes.

You have just completed a session of mind training or cultivation that specifically targeting PTSD.

If you allow awareness to embrace your doubt, your unhappiness, your confusion, your anxiety, your pain, these mental states cease to be ‘yours’. They revert to being recognized as merely ‘weather patterns’ in the mind and body (from “Falling Awake” by Kabat-Zinn).

Be aware of your trauma and your stress will lessen

Surely, this awareness or self-observation will help you to come to terms to whatever was giving you that much stress. It is a gradual process. It is a journey, but it is so much worth doing. Try it today or forward this guide to people who may need it.

We aim to engage with ex-military, police force, ex-prisoners and victims of violence or sexual abuse to help them overcome this enormous trauma. Mindfulness meditation for PTSD works well in conjunction with therapy and rehabilitation programs. Connect with us, support us and let’s cultivate inner peace together.

Meditation to Reduce Anxiety

Meditation has been known since ancient times as a good way to be alone with yourself and leave problems aside. Meditation includes complete physical and psychological relaxation and helps control stress and emotions. This training method will defeat depression, insomnia, fatigue and other problems associated with emotional stress. The physical health of a person suffers from emotional stress, natural processes in the body are disrupted. Meditation will also help to cope with similar failures in the work of internal organs. When a person gets rid of anxiety and stress, the body directs all its forces to self-healing.

The benefits of anti-anxiety meditation

Meditation in stress is aimed at combating anxious thoughts and focusing on your own body. The relaxation process affects the following processes:

reduces blood pressure;
reduces stress hormone production;
improves blood circulation;
normalizes the rhythm of the heart and breathing;
improves concentration; uplifting;
helps focus on good events and forget about sorrows and disappointments;
relieves depression and chronic fatigue;
gives self-confidence.

It happens that the problems were crushed so badly that the idea arises to start taking sedative drugs. But do not rush into such a decision, because any drugs have adverse reactions, and are not suitable for everyone.

Meditation relieves fear and anxiety, as it is a natural sedative for the body. During relaxation, relaxation occurs in all parts of the body and internal organs. The flow of blood to the vessels improves, the cells are saturated with oxygen, the heart begins to work in a normal rhythm, breathing becomes calm – all this reduces nervous tension and helps to correct the emotional state.

How to practice meditation to calm anxiety

Practicing meditation is really easy and you can try it right now with these simple instructions for a concentration meditation on breathing:

Meditation for anxiety starts when you find a quiet place and set your alarm for an initial 10 minutes (more if you feel comfortable to start with a longer session).
Sit cross-legged on a floor (use a mat and a cushion to level your hips with your knees), place your arms on your lap. Only sit on a firm chair if the cross-legged position is very uncomfortable. In general, your posture should be fairly relaxed but not sluggish, so you won’t meditate yourself to sleep. Full lotus is the most stable and firm posture, but you can adopt half-lotus or a simple cross-legged position too.
Take a few really deep breaths as so other people would be likely to hear you breathing. It should make you feel relaxed fairly quickly.
Close your eyes and start paying attention to sounds, smells, posture and breathing. Simply make a mental note on what you are observing. No need to judge it or dwell on it.
Pay attention to how your body feels. Start doing so by scanning your body from top to bottom and notice how even the smallest parts of your body feel. Don’t try to change anything or judge. It’s all good, you are being attentive, that’s it.
Move the focus of your attention to your breathing. Do not try to change it, just let it be. No judgment please, do not allow to be violent towards yourself. Notice where in your body your breathing starts, how it flows and how it ends. To help you settle with this pattern, you can start counting your breaths from 1 to 10 and then revert back to 1. If your attention shifts to something else, notice the very fact of this happening and then gently get your mind to count the breaths again and again. These ‘jumps’ happen all the time, so be kind to yourself. The more skillful you become, the less monkey-like your mind learns to be. Every single time your mind gets back to counting breaths, it also gets stronger. This, in effect, gives your mind a proper training.
When you have established a good concentration on breathing, invite your mind to contemplate on the fact that all things change; it is just the way of life. Think about life and death, how are your thoughts are coming and going. This is what it’s called impermanence. Accept it and relieve yourself from the pressure of stress factors. They will come and go too.
Obviously, these stress factors come with dissatisfaction and sometimes suffering. It happens because you cling to positive states, and quite naturally averse to things that cause you pain. You can contemplate whether you can simply let go of your attachment to that stressor. This will definitely alleviate your stress and relieve anxiety. Yet if you cannot do it, by simply accepting that ‘yes I cling to that, and that’s why I feel anxious’ you acknowledge your suffering and, paradoxically, it will subside. You will feel it less and with time it will disappear.
These two very specific but open contemplation themes are going to change on a daily basis. Things change, so is your meditation practice. Yet with time, you will become familiar with both of these characteristics and your level of anxiety will gradually lessen with this meditation for anxiety practice. You will accept these universal truths: everyone experiences dissatisfaction and all things are impermanent. Your full acceptance and absence of clinging are key to lower your anxiety with meditation.
Continue for your set amount of time. When finished, allow your mind to rest for 30 seconds with no focus on anything at all. Just observe and let it simply flow.
Finish by making a mental note how you feel now, what you are going to do next and open your eyes.

You have just completed a session of mind training or cultivation that specifically targeting anxiety.

Anxiety can be one of the obstacles to meditation. It can be a part of restlessness that creates a barrier to meditation practice. But don’t be alarmed. If you do not judge yourself for being restless at some point during meditation but simply acknowledge the fact, it will actually lessen your anxiety. It’s a paradox, but also a fact.

At the end of the practice, work with breath holdings:

deep breath – a delay of 5-10 seconds. – exhale.
inhalation – a delay of 15-20 seconds. – exhale. + circular rotation of the shoulders – exhale.
inhalation – delay of 15-20 seconds. + fast circular rotation with shoulders – exhalation. Relaxation. Stay in this state, feel the emptiness and silence inside, the lack of emotions. You just have it.

Meditation techniques for anxiety and Depression

There are three known methods for relieving depression and anxiety:

The technique is based on the alternate relaxation of all muscle groups – a person consciously relaxes the body, starting from the legs and mentally compares this state with the voltage that was a minute ago. The technique is effective and in nature resembles shavasana.
The technique is based on visual images – quiet and protected places where a person would feel calm and confident. You can move on and visualize the taste, smell, sensation of a loved one nearby.
The technique of fear and anxiety in the form of meditation consists of repeating phrases (affirmations) that give self-confidence, vitality and will.

By practicing exercises from anxiety and stress in the evening, a person is freed from physical and mental stress, acquires balance and balance. This meditation is for calming nerves, psychological relaxation, increasing control over stress and emotions. When you get rid of all the negative influences, your body will direct all its forces to self-healing.

Mantras Against Stress and Anxiety Mantras are certain words or a whole text that is repeated during meditation. Mantras are used in many religious denominations. They help to better concentrate on meditation. Mantras must be chanted. The main syllable used in mantras is “ohm”. There are various conditions, depression and stress from various situations.

Example of quick meditation for anxiety

The whole posture as a whole gives us a sense of peace, creates a calm zone inside the Heart Center for heart prana. In emotional terms, this meditation allows you to clearly see your relationship with yourself and with other people. If someone upset you at home or at work, meditate for 3-15 minutes before making a decision. Then proceed. In the physiological aspect, meditation improves lung and heart function.

Pose: Sit in a simple pose, make an incomplete jalandhara bandha (throat lock).

Eyes: closed or ajar 1/10, the gaze is directed straight ahead.

Mudra: Grasp the left palm, right. The thumb of the left-hand lies crosswise on the right thumb. Place your hands in the area of the heart.

Breathing: Focus on the flow of breath. Consciously control your breathing at every stage. Slowly take a deep breath through both nostrils. Hold your breath for as long as possible by lifting your chest. Then slowly, gradually, evenly exhale completely and again hold your breath as long as possible.

Time: from 3 to 31 minutes. For practice concentration and rejuvenation, do 31 minutes.

Completion: forcefully inhale and exhale 3 times. Relax.

Scientific Research on the Effect of Meditation on Anxiety

Few more studies to deepen your understanding of how mindfulness meditation helps to overcome anxiety:

Study at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine and published in JAMA Int Medicine showed that meditation can provide a level of relief from symptoms of anxiety and depression similar to that of antidepressant drugs. Peace and happiness, no prescription needed. (from Suze Yalof Schwartz “Unplug”)
A study showed a slowing of breathing after just 8 weeks of mindfulness meditation practice: 1.6 breaths slower. It means 2000 extra breaths for non-meditators per day; 800000 a year! These extra breaths are physiologically taxing and can exact a health toll as time goes on. As practice continues and breathing becomes slower, the body adjusts its physiological set point for its respiratory rate accordingly. That’s a good thing. While chronic rapid breathing signifies ongoing anxiety, a slower breath rate indicates reduced autonomic activity, better mood and salutary health. (from J. Wielgosz et al., “Long Term Mindfulness Training is Associated with Reliable Differences in Resting Respiration Rate”, Scientific Reports 6, 2016)
Researchers from Maharishi International University taught meditation to prisoners with a standard prison program as a comparison. They found that 4 months later the prisoners doing meditation showed fewer symptoms of trauma, anxiety, depression; they also slept better and perceived their days as less stressful (from S. Nidich et al., “Reduced trauma symptoms and perceived stress in male prison inmates through Transcendental Meditation Program” Permanente Journal 2016; doi.org/10.7812/TPP/116-007)

Loving – Kindness Meditation Practice (Metta)

When you are comfortable with basic meditation instructions, meta-awareness, self-acceptance and letting go of your ego, it is recommended that you incorporate loving-kindness (metta) practice into your meditation.

Ahimsa Meditation hopes that we all can spend some time actively practising nonviolence in your mind.

We can all send wishes of health, happiness, safety and peace to yourself and then to your family and close friends.

We can then extend it to our pets and people you know less. You can follow by sending these wishes to people we have difficulties with. Finish by sending loving – kindness to all living beings.

This is the very essence of loving-kindness meditation. You start reflecting on your own well-being, health, happiness, safety, peace and nonviolent life. Then gradually extend it to all circles of your life to include people and living beings you do not like or do not even know. It is a wonderfully warm and pleasant state of mind that you will develop.

Similarly, your loving-kindness practice can be practised longer with deeper appreciation and gratitude to everyone in your life including friends and family, pets, acquaintances, but also difficult people and the entire world.

Loving-Kindness meditation practice instructions

Therefore, if you want to structure this meditation into steps, there are the following ones that are included in your Metta Bhavana meditation:

Preparing for meditation by doing a body scan and dedicating some time on concentration on breathing;
Concentrating your attention on yourself;
Calling to mind a good friend of yours;
Thinking of a neutral person (someone you do not know much);
Turning your attention to a difficult person (a true challenge is to think about them with equanimity);
Concentrating on all four people (simply spread your loving kindness feelings and thoughts to everyone);
Allowing your metta to expand outward (and then spread it to the whole world of sentient beings – give your kindness to people in distress, oppressed farmed animals and so on).

How to develop your loving – kindness meditation practice (metta)

You can contemplate on the four beneficial states of mind: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. It is beneficial to start with loving-kindness and gradually ‘work’ towards feeling a total equanimity. In that way, you will feel calm and emotionally stable.

Acceptance and compassion practice begins from contemplating and wishing well for yourself. Then the practice extends to your family, friends, acquaintances, people you do not like or indifferent to and then the whole world.

Why metta or loving-kindness meditation is important for all of us?

Metta meditation transforms hatred into love, it develops compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. These are regarded as immeasurable characteristics by Buddhists.

Loving-kindness meditation practice brings a lot of benefits:

you may enjoy a much better sleep;
you may gain love and appreciation from other living beings;
your practice helps to protect everyone from violence and violent outbreaks;
your focus and swift concentration of mind improve;
you smile more, have better moods and therefore good looks;
you contemplate not only on good things; as you bring to mind difficult people in your life, you look directly to a reality of your life, therefore many kinds of insights are possible.

We all want well-being. It is about living a rich, full and meaningful life. Peace in our lives represents true acceptance. This unites all living beings and you can send kindness to them all too.

A Talk About Meditation, Nonviolence and Mindful Living

This is a talk that our Ahimsa Meditation teacher gave to newcomers to meditation that were interested in his views on how to approach meditation practice. This talk combines knowledge of Buddhist teachers but also medical professionals, so both spiritual and scientific expertise. Though even if you are practising meditation already, you can also relate to misconceptions of meditation that are discussed below. Do you find ‘mindful living’ a bit vague? We discuss some specific steps of how you can live with mindfulness today.

‘Killing may be a part of nature.. but as moral, responsible human beings, although we might have murderous impulses, we do not act upon them.

If you can’t love someone, just be kind to them. If you feel a lot of anger or hatred towards me, at least refrain from hitting or killing me.’

by Ajahn Sumedho in “Peace is a simple step”

Meditation doesn’t ask us to get rid of something or to become someone else, better or smarter. It simply promotes looking at the very nature of ourselves, others and the world more clearly.

The delusions of hatred and greed, our aversion to physical discomfort and pleasure seeking ‘hedonic treadmill’ are just a few of the defilements that truly run our lives.

We live in a world full of desire. It is being masterfully maintained not just by our own delusions and aspirations to live like ‘kings and queens’, but also by outside triggers like marketing and advertising messages, social pressure.

Start your meditation practice

Just 8 weeks of moderate meditation practice (we are talking about 20-30 minutes a day) start bringing incredible benefits for every one of you.

One of the benefits meditators start to notice early is the possibility to regulate their response. They are simply able to take a pause before taking an action. That’s how it’s possible to avoid taking life or harming any living being, to avoid stealing or taking what’s not ours, not to engage in sexual misconduct. We no longer need to lie or engage in divisive speech and definitely not to intoxicate our bodies with drugs or excessive alcohol that bring heedlessness to our actions.

Jon Kabat-Zinn said wonderfully about peace in his book ‘Mindfulness is not what you think’:

‘Peace is not farther than this very moment. Peace is something that we can bring about if we actually learn to wake up a bit more as individuals and a lot more as species; if we can learn to be fully what we actually already are; to reside in the inherent potential of what is possible for us being human.’

The foundation for meditation practice, for all meditative inquiry and exploration, lies in ethics and morality, and above all, in the motivation of non-harming.

Surely, regular practice is important. Don’t you think your life is worth it to allocate just half an hour a day for yourself? It’s easy to postpone or to make a valid excuse. Yet it is just half an hour for something that important! Make it regular and it will become the most important habit of yours (well, after breathing of course!)

Non-meditator’s brain is like an unworked dough. If you think about it, you need to persistently work on your dough and have a lot of patience for it to prove.

Definition of Meditation

Evidently, there are of course a lot of misconceptions of meditation. You are probably asking yourself whether it is religious? Is it just to relax or calm oneself? Is it about achieving some paranormal states like floating? Well, it doesn’t need to be. Yes, it could be religious, you can find it as a basis of many Buddhist traditions. It could be based on medical studies like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Therapy. It could, unfortunately, be utilized by some people who try to perform some sort of mystery act out of it.

Yet, as someone said, ‘life is exactly what you think it is’, meditation is simply a practice of cultivating your mind. And our task at Ahimsa Meditation is to introduce you to nonviolence and meditative practices where you learn how to be kind to yourself and others.

Being in touch with reality is what meditation is about, not the mystical states or going away from it. It is actually being and feeling the reality rather than surrendering to media/external influence.

Mindfulness

In our meditation practice we work to understand and live better with our desires, occasional ill inclinations, being too passive, restless or having too many doubts. Cultivating your mind by means of meditation helps everyone to be more self-aware.

Meditation is a practice that cultivates a beneficial state of mindfulness. Hence, meditation is a process, how you can achieve a state of mindfulness.

What’s the most common definition of mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the awareness that arises from paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.

(Kabat-Zinn, 1996)

Knowing about all those physical, mental and emotional benefits of meditation practice, why mindfulness? It is a state that enables you to live happily, with acceptance, non-judgmentally and by a strong set of intrinsic values. You do not need to be religious to know that there are universal teachings that govern almost all aspects of our lives.

Clarification of your own values for mindful living

This re-discovering of your own values doesn’t need to be painful – the goodness is already inside of every one of us. Yet we need to practice it.

Therefore, here is a short list of ethical actions that can become a guide for your own mindful livelihood:

Protect the lives of all living beings. To protect other beings is to protect ourselves.
Prevent the exploitation by humans of other living beings and of nature. This is a practice of generosity.
Protect everyone from abuse, preserve the happiness of individuals and families.
Practice deep listening and loving speech.
Consume mindfully (the provenance of produce is important for your well-being).

Thank you for your attention, hopefully, you find it useful and may want to use some of it for your own contemplation. Have a good meditation practice!

A Life of Nonviolence

In this short article, we want to discuss values, mindfulness, our ego, constant change and evolution, but also suffering and stress. We see that there is a life of nonviolence or Ahimsa way that is possible through meditation and training of our mind.

Life values

What is your main value as a human?

Is there such thing that can unify all humans and sentient beings – can it be “value of life itself”.

The act of taking someone’s life is an ultimate crime. We need to develop a reverence for life. Can we live without harming others? Can we extend this compassion and harmlessness to all living beings?

Our progress allows and requires us to thrive by living harmoniously with others.

Why be mindful of life

Let’s be mindful.

Mindfulness helps us to contemplate what is the value of life. It is anything but violence. It is not killing – be it others or yourself. So mindfulness is connected to kindness and compassion. It starts with you, your body and mind and then extends to your family and so on.

Mindful eating leads to mindful health, better care about our body. This, in turn, leads to mindful consumption and then to mindful relationships, both interpersonal and with nature.

Why hold back your ego

Hold on, put a mindful cap on, who are you?

Let’s think about it. Are we a collection of organs? Is there a soul? Is there a centre of our persona or so-called ego?

Such contemplation may lead us to a liberating effect of egolessness. There is really nowhere to go and no one to be, but just be.

Why you do not need to be afraid of change

We all change, we all sentient beings are born and die. We form communities, learn, enhance and develop our lives.

Enhancement brings evolution.

Natural evolution is happening all the time. Our wants are subjected to do the same but artificially. Our needs are actually not that big – we need shelter, food, clothing, medicine. The rest are wants – they create attachments, delusion and thus suffering.

Evolution, our progress and development also mean that we have now enough tools and ways how to grow enough food, secure food supply and stop relying on killing others for our own food, clothing or entertainment. We can stop that suffering. We should be proud of our achievements so far, they allow us to transform our living into a more peaceful and pleasant one.

Yet suffering is everywhere.

What we can do is to cultivate nonviolence, a non-harming way of life.

How? By kindness and compassion, joy when others do/live well and serenity in our everyday lives. This compassion that extends to all living beings makes it possible for us to live in harmony and peace with others. Everyone can start today – change nutrition, make their choice whilst shopping, give a helping hand at animal sanctuaries, feed the hungry, and all of this can be cultivated in your mind.

Meditation

Cultivation is possible through meditation.

Meditation is not just about concentrating and focusing your mind, it can provide seeds to possible insights. Studies proved that it enhances your well-being by strengthening physical and mental health.

How can you start improving your well-being in the context of nonviolent life? Consider employing a plant-based whole foods diet, practising mindfulness meditation and engaging in ethical business.

Plant-based whole foods nutrition is devoid of violence both towards your own body and others’. There should be no intentional killing when it comes to our livelihood and business activities. It is clear that we live in a world of abundance and overconsumption. Abusive marketing and advertising make us believe that our wants are actually our needs. It stimulates new wants in us all the time.

There are many triggers for violence. One of them is inequality. Income inequality becomes truly shocking when investment bankers earn a thousand times more than other workers. From the nutritional side, excessive consumption of sugar triggers increase in crime and violent behaviour, it also affects our current rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic.

It is evident that everything is truly interconnected: how we can care best for our bodies, train our minds, provide good nutrition and adopt a mindful approach to living.

How to live well?

There is a very simple solution that solves our current predicament – it is a mindful living based on the life-enhancing value of nonviolence. We can truly embrace it wholeheartedly and make it as a centre of all our activities, including nutrition, relationships, politics, business, environment and simply being in this world, we can solve a puzzle of happy living.

Benefits of Meditation Practice

Meditation is a training process in training the mind to concentrate and direct thoughts.

Someone uses meditation as a means to better know themselves and their surroundings. For others, meditation is a method to reduce stress and learn to be happy. Meditation offers countless different benefits to your body, mind and spirit. The rest that you get during meditation is much deeper than the rest during the deepest sleep. The deeper you relax, the more dynamic your activity becomes.

Physical benefits of meditation

Learning meditation and mindfulness techniques and regularly practicing it assists our kids ’education and supports their efforts. Students can boost their mental working capacity and they would be able to prepare for the exams more effectively.

Meditation effects on the brain

Meditation tunes brain waves to the alpha rhythm that heals. The mind becomes fresh, refined and in excellent condition.

If you use it on regular practice, meditation benefits for the brain will be as:

your anxiety and anxiety are reduced
increased emotional stability
improving creativity
the state of joy prevails
intuitive abilities develop
you gain clarity and peace of mind
problems lose their significance even before they enter your life

Meditation sharpens the mind by focusing on and expanding it through relaxation. Meditation helps you realize that the state of happiness is determined precisely by your inner mood, your position.

Benefits of daily meditation for cerebral hemispheres

One of the important effects of meditation is the balanced functioning of both cerebral hemispheres. Meditation has a great advantage over other types of practices in that with their help you can balance the work of the left and right hemispheres – this will add order to your life.

Usually, the activity of one of the hemispheres predominates. So, for more analytically oriented people, the left hemisphere dominates, which is responsible for logical thinking, verbal processes, and for those who are called artistic natures, the right hemisphere prevails. It is capable of intuitive perception of the outside world, and therefore it is associated, first of all, with creative processes, such as drawing, playing instruments, writing. Classes in energy and spiritual practices also belong to the right-hemisphere, because they are associated with the development of imagination, visualization ability, and other similar abilities.

Mindfulness meditation benefits for emotional background

Reducing stress is the most common reason people try to meditate. Usually, mental and physical stress causes an increase in the level of the hormone cortisol. This leads to sleep disturbance, depression and anxiety, high blood pressure, fatigue, and clouded thinking.

Chronic stress leads to inflammatory diseases. A study of mindfulness meditation found that regular practice of meditation reduces stress and eliminates the inflammatory processes it causes.

A large drop in cortisol under stress seems to kick in with continuous practice, so it’s easier to handle life’s upsets.

Benefits of daily meditation for the body

Meditation brings changes on a physical level – each cell of your body is filled with prana (vital energy). When the level of prana in the body increases, this leads to an increase in joy, calmness, and enthusiasm.

Physical effects of meditation on the body:

lowers high blood pressure
reduces the level of lactate (lactic acid) in the blood, eliminating anxiety attacks
reduces pain associated with stress, such as headache (tensional), ulcer, insomnia, muscle, and joint pain
increases the production of serotonin, which is responsible for good mood and social behavior
strengthens the immune system
increases energy level, because you get access to an internal energy source

Benefits of morning meditation in sleeping

It is known that meditation helps to regulate sleep and after you begin to meditate, you can get enough sleep in less time. Meditation provides at least short-term improvements, even for beginner meditators. For long practitioners who spend considerable time in meditation, the need for sleep is greatly reduced when compared with people from the same demographic group who do not meditate.

Studies of the effects of meditation on the human body

Rick Hanson PhD is confident that mindfulness goes very far by changing how your brain operates. He quotes the following in his book “Just one thing”:

“Studies have shown that regular practices of mindfulness:

Thicken cortical layers in regions of the brain that control attention (Lazard et al, 2005)
Add neural connections in the insula, a part of the brain that supports both self-awareness and empathy for the emotions of others (ibid)
Increase the relative activation of the left prefrontal cortex, which helps control and reduce negative emotions (Davidson 2004)
Strengthen your immune system (Davidson et al, 2003)
Reduce the impact on pain and accelerate post-surgical recovery (Kabat-Zinn 2003; Kabat-Zinn, Lipworth Burney 1985”

Here is a huge list of benefits quoted in a wonderful book “The Science of Meditation” by Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson:

The first rigorous studies of how meditation affects attention were done by Amishi Jha et al., “Mindfulness Training Modifies Subsystems of attention” in Cognitive, affective and behavioral neuroscience. 7:2 (2007)”
After 8 weeks of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program – better focus and attention. The program consists of mindfulness of breath, body sensations scan, attentive yoga and moment-to-moment awareness of thoughts and feelings. It’s a daily attention practice.
Mindfulness also improves working memory: students up scores by more than 30% (Michael Mrazek et al., “Mindfulness Training Improves working memory capacity and GRE performance while reducing mind wandering” Psychological Science 24:5 (2013): 776-81)
Just 3 x 10 minutes of meditations improve cognitive control. Mindfulness also improves working memory: students up scores by more than 30% (ibid)
Better impulse inhibition went along with a self-reported uptick in emotional wellbeing. Cliff Saron’s study shows meditation improves the ability to inhibit impulse as stated by Bajinder K. Sahdra et al., “Enhanced response inhibition during intensive meditation predicts improvements in self-reported adaptive socioemotional functioning” Emotion 11:2 (2011): 299-312”. The study suggested 10 h of mindfulness over 2 week period.
The brain’s default mode activates when we are doing nothing that demands mental effort -> we are constructing ‘self’. Mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation quiet the default mode circuit. It means that self-focused thoughts and feelings that arise in the mind have much less “grab” and decreasing ability to hijack attention.
Mindfulness practice lessens inflammation day to day (not just during meditation). Benefits show up after just 4 weeks of mindfulness practice (~30hrs) as well as loving-kindness as quoted by E. Walsh “Brief Mindfulness Training Reduces Salivary, IL-6, and TNF-α in young women with depressive symptomatology” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 84:10 (2016) and T.W. Pace et al., “Effect of Compassion Meditation on Neuroendocrine, Innate Immune and Behavioural Responses to Psychological Stress” Psychoneuroimmunology 34 (2009): 87-98)
A large drop in cortisol under stress seems to kick in with continuous practice, so it’s easier to handle life’s upsets.
Unemployed job seekers showed reduced destructive self-talk that floods us with thoughts of hopelessness and depression -> how we relate to our gloomy self-talk has a direct impact on our health.
Meditation helps with high blood pressure. Just 14 minutes of meditation practice in a group who suffered from kidney disease, cardiac or hypertension lowered the metabolic patterns that lead to these diseases. It was stated by Jeanie Park et al., “Mindfulness in African-American Males with Chronic Kidney Disease”, American Journal of Physiology 307:1 (July 1, 2014)
Meditators have shown the “down-regulation” of inflammatory genes. Such drop, if sustained, might help combat diseases with onset marked by chronic low-grade inflammation. These include cardio disorders, arthritis, diabetes, and cancer.
Loneliness spurs high levels of pro-inflammatory genes. MBSR can not only lower these levels but also lessen the feeling of being lonely, as quoted by J.D. Creswell et al., “Mindfulness-based stress reduction training reduces loneliness and pro-inflammatory gene expression in older adults: a small randomized control trial” Brain, Behaviour, and Immunity 26 (2012).
Mindfulness associated with increased telomerase activity, in the work of N.S. Schutte and J.M. Malouff “A meta-analytic review of the effects of mindfulness meditation on telomerase activity” Psychoneuroendocrinology 42 (2014).

Start your meditation practice today with our simple instructions on concentration meditation (on breathing) or develop your regular meditation practice with our Insight Meditation (vipassana) instructions. Please get back in touch if you want to suggest a piece of research that we’ve missed or you have any questions.