Is meditation for me?
Presumably, if you’ve got this far, you’re interested in meditation. But you may be wondering whether you’re “cut out for it”. I hear a lot of people saying things like, “Oh, I could never meditate; I’m too easily distracted”. I’d like to reassure you that anyone can meditate, and that you don’t need any special abilities to follow this path.
In fact, the “I’m too distracted to meditate” attitude really betrays a misunderstanding of what meditation is about. (It’s OK to start out with misunderstandings, incidentally. How could we not start out with misunderstandings of something we know little or nothing about?).
The idea behind meditating is not that we’re seeking to have “perfect meditations”, like an Olympic gymnast going for a perfect 10 in a competition, but that we’re doing some basic work on developing our minds, more like when we go to the gym and do some exercise. When we go to work out, it wouldn’t be a very helpful attitude to think, “Oh, I can’t work out, I’m not strong enough or fit enough”. The whole point of working out, as we know, is to start from where we are and to develop greater levels of strength and fitness.
It’s the same deal with meditation. If we’re very distracted, or very anxious, or we keep getting irritated by sounds in our environment when we’re trying to meditate, that’s just what we’re starting with. That’s our raw material. Meditation helps us to become aware of these habitual tendencies, and also helps us to work with them so that they become less prominent in our lives, so that we become a bit less distracted, less anxious, more accepting.
And just like working out at the gym, where we don’t make some sudden leap to athleticism, in meditation we change gradually. Breath by breath, meditation by meditation, day by day, we work changes within our hearts and minds; changes that accumulate over time. It’s possible to change from being a very anxious person to a very confident person; to move from being habitually in a bad mood to being more laid-back. We just have to do the practice.
Comments
Comment from Sadhu
Time: May 24, 2007, 9:40 am
Beautiful, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Comment from piper
Time: June 5, 2007, 6:16 pm
Thank you ……
Comment from sothea
Time: February 3, 2008, 8:01 am
meditation is very beneficial to me. when I my head seems to be full and difficult to get new information, I try to practise meditation.
As a result, my head and body is very relaxed.
Comment from thecatsmother
Time: March 17, 2008, 11:55 am
I’ve been meditating daily for about a month now and I can’t believe how calm and relaxed I am becoming. I want to spread the word so everyone can feel the same feelings I am experiencing. The world would be a more loving place.
Comment from David
Time: September 2, 2008, 2:17 am
I have been meditating for quite some time now, and I cannot believe how relaxed I am about everything. All of my stress just seems to melt away.
I have one question, and I wasn’t sure where to put this. Whenever I meditate (I’m not sure when this started) I get this tingling feeling first in my hands, and then my whole body. What’s more, I feel pressure, not pleasurable or painful, just pressure, on the middle of my forehead. I this normal, or is it something I should be worried about?
Comment from Sunada
Time: September 2, 2008, 2:23 pm
Dear David,
What you’re describing is a fairly common experience for meditators, and nothing to be concerned about. It could be one of two things. First, it could be that your mind and body are just not used to being with so little stimulation. And so they go off and start making up experiences like this in order to keep themselves occupied! Just like anything else, if you let them be, they will pass.
The other possibility, especially if you’ve been meditating for quite some time, is that you’re becoming more sensitive to the subtle goings-on in your body. Maybe you’ re starting to become aware of different kinds of bodily energy flows. Hands are a common place to feel lively energy — and that tingling you’re feeling could be exactly that.
In any case, I think you’re fine to think of them as just another thing in a parade of passing experiences. Or how about using them as the focus of your concentration and see what happens? Might be an interesting experiment
Best wishes,
Sunada
http://www.mindfulpurpose.com
Comment from Kar
Time: September 6, 2008, 11:23 am
In the past I’ve put off meditation until I felt I was ready for it. I thought I had to be calm and that meditation was useless unless I was perfectly at peace and 100% focused on breathing. Not surprisingly, the pressure I put on myself to meditate “perfectly” made me give up in frustration. Later on I came to this site. This article inspired me to try it again, only this time I won’t be concerned about doing it right. Just do it!
Comment from kurt
Time: October 13, 2008, 7:51 am
I have been depressed for about 20 years and have done a lot of things like taking antidepresive medications, talk therapy, electroshock therapy.
I have tried to meditated but have not been very consistent. Also I am afraid that it can make my depression get worse or that it can make me kind of Psycotic or crazy.
Would you give me some enlightment about.
Thanks in advance, Kurt
Comment from Bodhipaksa
Time: October 14, 2008, 9:46 am
Hi Kurt,
If you don’t already suffer from some kind of psychosis (which I take to mean experiencing hallucinations, delusions, or both) it’s vanishingly unlikely that meditation would push you in that direction. Meditation has convincingly been shown to be helpful in preventing relapse in people who have suffered depression — Google “Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression” for more information.
It is possible that meditating might make your depression worse, although it wouldn’t exactly be the meditation itself that would do that; the tendency of the depressed mind to ruminate in an unhelpful way can be heightened when turning the attention inwards. With appropriate guidance this is much less likely to happen, and I’d suggest you look into finding a professionally-run mindfulness-based program for depression.
Comment from levan
Time: October 19, 2008, 12:48 am
beautiful! I read about stopping seeing noise around you as your enemy. I know it’ll improve my situation too. thank you!
Comment from Shamash
Time: October 28, 2008, 5:37 am
I think meditation is very effective for reducing depression. I have found it has helped many of my clients to help them get out of their head and more attentive to bodily sensations and the outside environment.
I recently worked with a lady that has MS and at first she was very skeptical, but did the course because her daughter encouraged her. She now says she feels much better, and never knew what a positive effect it has, both to relieve her stress and help her to stretch her body in ways she doubted she could do earlier.
Mindfulness meditation is my favorite kind of meditation.
Best wishes,
Shamash
http://www.learnmindfulness.co.uk/
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