Discover the Power of Meditation – Part 2
May 9, 2024
By Helena Keenan, Day Spa Manager at Polynesian Spa
Second Step – Preparation
This the next step in the four steps described in part one. We might think that relaxing would be a simple activity but many of us have developed engrained habits of behaviour that make it difficult to fully let go and relax. This is where the training in awareness and essentially retraining our mind and our brains comes into play.
Jon Kabat Zinn described Mindfulness Meditation this way: “Mindfulness is paying attention in a particular way in the present moment, non-judgmentally.”
We need to understand better how to pay attention and focus. Focused Mindfulness has a narrow inward focus, Open Mindfulness has an open outward focus. I practice a guided meditation that takes you through a series of awareness exercises where you focus first on the space between your shoulders (çonvergent) and then on the space around your shoulders (divergent)– narrowing and broadening your focus. It’s surprisingly relaxing.
Qualities of mindfulness are:
Presence
Acceptance
Patience
Perseverance
Like learning anything new, we need to practice over and over bringing the above qualities to our practice to develop our meditation skill.
Other aspects of our present-moment experience include body sensations, emotions, and thoughts. These can be used to train our awareness as we hold our focus on different parts of our body, for example on our breath as we breathe in and out.
When I first began meditating, I learned the direct approach of sitting still in silence, closing my eyes for a period of about 20 minutes. I really struggled with this as I found it hard to sit still, my body always seemed to be uncomfortable. I would be distracted by the discomfort and unable to relax and meditate. I did eventually learn to meditate with perseverance and patience and practice, but I found I would always need to set aside 40 minutes or more to meditate as it usually took me about 20 minutes to fully relax, quiet my mind and let go into a meditative state.
Years later when I finally learned the Mindfulness Meditation gradual approach and specifically learned to relax by practicing Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR), this completely changed my practice. Combining this practice of relaxing my body before meditation allowed me to develop this skill to point that when I sit to meditate, pop on my headphones and close my eyes its like flicking a switch and I am instantly in meditation.
