How meditation can transform your life

Detox Your Mind

A personal perspective on how meditating helped me overcome depression and make me even stronger.

We don’t come with a handbook. We are born into this world without any explanation of why we are here. Many of us feel dissatisfied with ourselves and we spend our lives searching for ways to fill this space. We do absolutely anything we can to make ourselves happy. We tend to find any distraction possible to help us maintain the illusion that we create within our own minds.

Alcohol, drugs, sex, retail therapy, computer games; any kind of attachment to a thing or person seems to help to alleviate us from the feeling that somehow we are not whole. But the more we seek distractions and go through the process over and over again we start to become aware of their transience. Eventually their effects wear off and the inner turmoil we tried to cover up returns again. 

When I was experiencing severe anxiety, the single most important thing that I did was to start meditating.

At night, when I couldn’t shut my mind off or when I woke up stupidly early, I made a conscious decision not to allow indiscriminate thoughts run riot in my head. Deep down I knew that these thoughts could only hurt me if I allowed them to.   I would drag myself out of bed and sit on my cushion or practice a Yoga Nidra in bed and make a concerted effort to still my mind by following my breath and observing the sensations in my body. When thoughts came up, which they invariably did, I reminded myself to not emotionally attach myself to them and observe as they floated on by like clouds against a clear blue sky.  

After practising for some time I realised that my mind had way more power than I gave it credit for.  Not only did I start to feel a lot more comfortable in my own skin, I also felt more in control of my life, more organised, even more intelligent. 

It became clear that by meditating I was not only calming my whole body I was also creating space inside my head for positive thoughts and actions. I was no longer giving energy to negative thought patterns and I now had the chance for a fresh start where I was in control. 

Buddha taught that  ‘We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts’.  Modern science has since confirmed the merits of meditation and its impact on the brain and the body. We now know that neuro-plasticity is when the brain has the capacity to change itself; by repeating the same action or thought pattern over and over again we can change how neurons talk to each other. 

Studies* have also proven that people that meditate have more grey matter than non-meditators, one of these areas in particular called the prefrontal cortex - the area in charge of key decision making, actually helps us not to react to base impulses that arise form the more instinctive regions of the brain and instead help us be more aware of ourselves and our actions. The prefrontal cortex is also responsible for lateral thinking and managing conflicting thoughts .

Various other studies have proven a multitude of other positive ways that that the brain is affected by meditation, Kamini Desai in her seminal book The Art of Transformational Sleep outlines the proven scientific benefits of meditation, including a bigger hippocampus which grows when serotonin is released into the brain enabling us to ‘…cultivate positive emotions, retain emotional stability and engage in more neutral, responsive stance to daily life events.’ 

Emily Fletcher in her Mindvalley Talk on Youtube talks about how meditation thickens the Corpus Collsum - a thick band of nerve fibres that divides the cerebralcortex lobes into left and right hemispheres allowing for communication between both sides of the brain. She suggests that in our daily lives one hemisphere of our brain is more dominant than the other however in order to function at our most optimum level we need to draw upon both sides simultaneously and meditation can help us do this. Fletcher also discusses the added merits of layering manifesting into a mediation practice and how cultivating consistent intention onto a meditation can transform your life.

There are different types of meditations that will resonate for different people and usually you need to be instructed by a certified teacher as I did when I signed up for Vipassana,  a monastic type of mindfulness meditation that requires you to attend a silent retreat  for 10 days. I have now completed the course twice and while it completely changed my life and showed me how to meditate, the idea of an immersive course can be pretty daunting for someone that hasn’t meditated before. If you are interested Vispassana is open to everyone, they even have courses for children and teenagers, it’s FREE to attend and you can find more details of it here.

If you have never meditated before or struggle to maintain a consistent practice then Yoga Nidra could be for you.

Yoga Nidra is a special technique that uses a series of body, breath and awareness techniques designed to disconnect from the thinking mind, reconnect with the feeling body and enter into the state of being known as the hypnagogic state. 

In this deeply relaxed state the body is able to deeply restore itself, balance excess stress, change relationship to pain, stressful situations and habits. Yoga Nidra combines the benefits of meditation, relaxation and intention. You can’t do it incorrectly and the hardest thing is not to fall asleep! (Even if the practitioner does fall asleep they will still receive some benefits!). 

Yoga Nidra drops the practitioner into slower brainwave states which floods the body with happy hormones. Low alpha/high theta is when REM or dream sleep occurs. It is associated with super learning and creativity and synchronisation of the left and right side of the brain.

Psychologically, a profound shift of energetic resistances at all levels can occur. Incomplete experiences held in the body/mind complex may be energetically resolved and released to return to a natural state of completion, emotional integration and physical balance.

In this space the individual is able to release the identification with their sense of self - the ego-mind with all its memories, anticipations and labels. Instead they get to rest beyond the mind and body and become integrated. It helps to gain perspective on life, help manage emotions and resilience.

Generally practised lying down, Yoga Nidra is accessible to almost everyone. It can be adapted for toddlers, children, pre-teens and adults of all ages, socioeconomic backgrounds and physically impaired. It can also be targeted to specific conditions e.g. ADHD, Grief, Trauma. 

If you would like to try Yoga Nidra you can attend one of my classes or try from the comfort of your own home by listening to one of my Yoga Nidra recordings.

People say that they don’t have time to meditate but I think that meditating saves you time. The more clutter we remove from our heads, the more space we create; helping us stay focused, less inclined to reach for instant gratification and a sense of totality, thus inducing an overwhelming sense of peace, serenity and of course, happiness.

References

Kamini Desai The Art of Transformational Sleep

*Study by Sara Lazar from Harvard University.