Why should we practice meditation?

Written with Kittirat Yothangrong

So many people spend so much time looking after their bodies with exercise, medicine and good grooming. They look good and appear ready to take on anything the world puts in their way. However they aren’t prepared as they think they are. They get stressed, anxious, worried, and spend most their time trying to solve all the worries they have.

Many of us are nourished on the outside, but empty within.

When we come into the world our mind is very clear and clean. We have no wisdom. As we grow up through our actions and experience we learn and develop our emotions. All our experiences and emotions influence how we think, our likes and dislikes, prejudices, and biases. We become busy in our lives where emotion drives our actions, without the time to think. We can use meditation to clear all these emotions and biases, so we can see things without their influence. Meditation also takes away the stress of our busy lives, enabling us to step back and see what is from a detached and balanced perspective.

Meditation also helps in our self development. Through meditation we can see the influence of our ego and learn to manage it through the development of humility and compassion through empathy we develop with both people and the environment in our lives. Many problems through meditation can be put into their proper perspective, even to the point where they cease to be problems.

Meditation is our bridge to the unconscious side of ourselves where most ideas and solutions to problems come from. You are going to hear a lot more about this in the coming years as educators and management gurus realize that the unconscious is actually the source of our creativity.

Meditation helps us create a much more relaxed disposition with the world and is the key to developing personal mastery or wisdom. Consequently our intuition in everyday life will be greatly enhanced if we practice meditation regularly.

Mediation is about bringing peace to your body. It can develop a sense of serenity that reduces our stress and engagement with the causes of stress around us. To say that meditation brings happiness is probably a bit of a myth – or rather something is lost in translation. It is probably more correct to say that meditation brings a state contentment in life that triggers off the biochemistry within our body bring many health as well as emotional benefits as well. Medical evidence has shown that mediation can lower blood pressure, reduce stress and the production of “bad” chemicals in our body, and help us greatly in pain management.

Regular meditation also can help prevent sickness and ailments and has been shown to greatly reduce the incidence of heart attack, strokes, and even cancers. This is something that the medical profession just starting to discover.

Meditation creates a source of inner beauty, lined with self confidence, free of anxiety.
You may see an aura or radiance from people who meditate regularly – a true source of natural beauty based upon serenity. Meditation can reverse aging in ways researchers are just starting to learn about.

Every-day, we eat food for substance for our body, but we never take on food for our heart. As a result we have strong bodies but weak hearts where we are all easily frustrated, angered, and anxious, etc. in today’s society. We are unbalanced, the heart needs food just as much as the body does. Our hungry heart seeks to fulfill its desires as a consequence of not being nourished, where one becomes greedy, and possessive, and even sick in the long run. One of the great tragedies is that many people go through life without ever knowing that their heart is hungry.

Meditation is not something that one needs to prepare for, sit in a pose or chant. Meditation can be done at any time in any place, without any fanfare. The only thing you may need some assistance with to start to learn some breathing techniques. Breathing is important, as it is the source of life and our connection with the environment.

The air we breathe is the only true friend we have along our life path. Only the air that enters and leaves the body is our true companion. The art of breathing is a master key to our control and self discipline, something I will talk about another time.

Meditation brings a sense of wholeness within us and protects us from arising fears, anxieties, stresses, and emotions that unbalance us. It helps us handle crises better.

Some will say that through meditation one can reach a deep sense of spirituality, and that is indeed a bonus, but not my message. Meditation first and foremost for me is about health, wellness and balance. But we all like bonuses.

Meditation is the best medicine for health and wellbeing I know, and it’s free.

Originally published in the Science of Beauty 2012

KITTIRAT YOTNANGRONG or Akoi as she is known, is one of the very few people who have been a Buddhist nun and a runner-up in the Miss Southern Thailand Beauty Quest as a “mature” contestant. She is a ‘practical’ vegetarian who believes in herbs, healthy living, and meditation. An avid yoga fanatic, Kittirat is also an organic farmer. She regularly speaks to community groups in Malaysia and Thailand on empowerment, health through herbs, and spirituality.

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