Meditation

              May is Meditation Month, so it seems fitting to do a post on the topic. Meditation is a practice of training or quieting your mind to achieve a healthier outcome. Practitioners work on quieting the “monkey mind” which is the thousands of thoughts that clutter our thinking. Once we clear out the clutter, there is clarity. For Caregivers, meditation can provide relaxation and a means to center yourself so you can see your way more clearly and do all the things that must get done. In a real practical way, for me, meditation helped me decompress quicker. I found, through meditation, rather than needing hours in front of a tv or on the Internet to calm down, I could get myself centered in minutes and feel better.

                There are many methods of meditation and you can start with the Internet and even take a class. I think the most important thing to realize is that you are not your mind. Your mind is a tool for thinking. I believe thoughts do shape our reality, so it is vital to realize and be in tune with what is going through your mind. The challenge is that the average person will have 65,000 thoughts per day, and most are repeats from the day before, and the day before that and so on. The key to meditation is to be present, and control your thoughts from wandering to things that happened yesterday and in the past. Let them go. Control your thought traffic and focus on the here and now. Become aware. Aware of your mind and body. Science has proven there is a comparison to what happens to us during sex and the disconnect with body, same thing with meditation. You can lose track of time and a sense of your body and surroundings, and just be. It sounds easier than it actually is, so start slow, and plan to meditation for a minute and see how you do. You can build from there. They call it a meditation “practice” because that is exactly what it is – something you will want to do daily. The benefits are worth it.