Meditation as a tool

[Cara-Lea 41]

In another thread I posted that I use meditation and journaling as a way to handle my mental hunger and I was asked to give more details about that. I felt like this is a topic that deserves a separate post, rather than hiding it in a post about something else entirely.

I started meditating a number of years ago as part of a therapy program I was going through that combined mindfulness practice and Cognitive Behavior Therapy. When I first started I thought all you were supposed to do was sit and be quiet, and the truth is.. more often than not, I would fall asleep. It took being taught how to meditate for me to understand that meditation is a very active practice, even if you are physically still. I also used to believe that the goal of meditation was to think nothing at all, when in fact, the goal is actually to train your brain to put it's attention where you choose for it to be.

One of the most basic forms of meditation is to sit and "follow your breath". This means to sit and simply focus your attention on your breathing. For some people they prefer to focus on the feeling of the breath entering and exiting the nose, other people prefer to focus on the feeling of the breath entering and leaving the lungs. It doesn't matter which works better for you, just do whichever feels more natural for you. The idea is to keep your attention on your breath, and when your mind wanders, guide it back to the breath gently. There is no need to get upset that your mind has wandered.. everyone's does. The goal is to simply catch that your mind has wandered and send it back to what it is supposed to be doing (following your breath). It is good to start off trying to do this for less than 5 minutes when you first start. Very few people can just dive in and start meditating for 30 minutes or longer.

Another great way to start is to actually used guided meditations. There are plenty of these out there, look at YouTube or search for meditation apps on your phone. Guided meditations will often give you a visualization to use to practice focusing your attention. My personal favourite guided meditations are by Jon Kabat-Zinn - you can definitely find these on YouTube.

I am also a big fan of the book "peace is every breath" by Thich Nhat Hanh as a entry way into meditation.

I find that the mental discipline my meditation practice has given me is helping me with my mental hunger because I am more skilled at re-directing my thoughts. So when I catch myself with a craving for something that I am currently not allowed to have, I gently re-focus my thoughts onto something more useful. Some days are harder and I have to keep re-focusing... some days I can just gently say "enough of that now" and I can move on and leave the craving behind.

The other technique I mentioned, journaling, I don't feel quite as qualified to talk about... I use journaling erratically, and with no conscious technique. I simply write what I am thinking/feeling. I know there are schools of thought that say you should never go back and read your journal entries, but I find I actually learn from reading my journal entries. I often manage to express myself more thoroughly and coherently in writing than I am able to do verbally. So I actually find I get more out of reading my writing than through the writing process itself.

I hope I haven't made this too boring, and that maybe it has been useful to a couple of people.

[GreenTealael 25,430]

Great post! Thanks for all of the details!!!