Fragrant Heart Blog

Elisabeth's reflections on the benefits of meditation

One person’s meditation experience over 45 years

Posted: 30 Mar 2008

Recently I talked with a man who has been meditating since he was eighteen. I wanted to find out what had led him to this practice. Before I write this interview I’d just like to say that people meditate for all sorts of reasons from wanting greater peace in their lives, to wanting to manifest what they desire. Meditation is a very personal experience and no two people will travel the same course in their meditation practice even if they are doing the same meditation technique.

I began meditation because I wanted to feel less anxious and not so confused about myself. Certainly over the years of meditating I have become a lot more peaceful and have let go a lot of conditioning and beliefs that kept me contracted in fear and misery.

You will have your own reasons for starting a meditation practice and this little interview is to simply give you an insight into someone else’s experience and what that has been like for them.

INTERVIEW

Q: Freddie, I understand that you started meditating when you were eighteen. What drew you to a meditation practice?
F: I discovered Paramahansa Yogananda in 1963. He wrote Autobiography of a Yogi and I was enthralled with his teachings. I became inspired with other great gurus of that lineage and I wanted to also experience the serenity and blissfulness that was so often described in the book. Yogananda said, “Meditation is the key to cosmic awareness.”

Q: Your meditation practice covers forty five years, so what have you found from your practice to be of benefit in your life?
F: I feel a greater sense of place in the world as a spiritual being having a human existence. I feel a greater sense of equanimity and closeness to God, to the Divine. Meditation helped me to be optimistic and loving especially at a time in my life when I lost my family and my career. Meditation has helped me to realize that I am not a separate consciousness cut off from the rest of the universe.

Q: Freddie, can I ask you what technique you use in your practice?
F: Yes, of course. When I first began I joined the Self Realization Centre based on Yogananda’s teachings. Then in my thirties I tried Transcendental Meditation and practiced with a mantra for some time. In more recent years I am doing a form of meditation that seems to be right for this time in my life.

Q: Could you please describe that?
F: I usually meditate for an hour to an hour and a half each morning. I first centre myself with some breathing and then I focus on what I want to manifest in my life for about twenty minutes. I visualize what I want to bring into my life. As I do this I am conscious of what can best be described as moments of being aware of the bliss pushing through. There are no thoughts. My body feels very high and although thoughts want to intrude I follow my bliss by just being in the body, which seems to affirm without words peacefulness and serenity.

Q: Thanks for sharing that Freddie. What advice would you give to someone new to meditation?
F: Meditating in a group or with a partner where there is focused energy can help someone new to meditation. It can also be a distraction so find out what suits your temperament. Accept and allow what is and know that there is no right or wrong way to meditate.

Q: For anyone who doesn’t go to a meditation group using the guided meditations on Fragrant Heart can be a way of meditating with someone else. What do you think?
F: Yes, I agree. Also in a wider sense there is someone in the world meditating at any given moment and that is reassuring in that anyone can sit and know that others too are joined with them in peace and love.

New meditation for March - Yoga Nidra

Posted: 16 Mar 2008

Yoga Nidra comes from the Eastern traditions and is a very powerful form of deep physical and mental relaxation. It soothes the body and helps to release the mind’s over stimulation of thoughts. Practised regularly Yoga Nidra can help resolve mental issues and reduce physical pain.

We hope you will take the time to experience this rejuvenating practice of mind, body and spirit.

Listen to the Yoga Nidra Meditation

How meditation can change your emotional and physical health

Posted: 8 Mar 2008

There has been a lot of scientific research that now confirms the benefits of meditation on all levels of health; physical, mental and emotional. In this blog I’d like to talk about the emotional side of good health.

Why we avoid unpleasant emotions.

When we have a strong emotion that we don’t like, for example, anger, rage, or fear our tendency is to try to avoid it. We don’t want to feel the sensations in our body. They are painful. Children are so often taught to numb down their emotions. They are told, “Don’t cry.” “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” and so on. Growing up children can come to look upon emotions as bad and to shut them down so as not to lose love or approval.

What happens when we suppress emotions.

What research shows is that suppressed emotions don’t go away. They are locked into the cellular tissues as cellular memory in our bodies. Physiologically what happens is that signals are sent through the body from chemical reactions taking place when, for example there is anger. These reactions cause contraction in the organs and a reduction in blood supply and nutrients to the cells. Emotionally we feel ill at ease and over time this can lead to disease.

What to do when emotions arise in your meditation practice.

In meditation emotions will arise sooner or later. They can present in all sorts of ways from memory flashbacks to physical changes in the body with accompanying feelings of agitation or discomfort. I have experienced extreme panic as fear came up during a meditation session.

What to do when emotion arises in your meditation practice? Some people will just get up and walk away as they become overwhelmed. However, the emotions haven’t gone away and can come back even more strongly at another sitting. Often at this point people will give up their practice altogether.

Here are some suggestions that may help when there is an emotional response that you’d rather not have in your meditation. First of all accept what is happening, even welcome it because your body is ready to integrate this emotion otherwise it would not be there. Become fully engaged in it. Observe all the sensations around it, from the strongest to the subtlest. Get as much out of it as you can, love it, embrace it and surrender to it. Even if the sensations become more intense I can assure you that you will not fall apart or go insane. That could well be what the mind is telling you will happen. Keep on relaxing into the emotion by using your breath to breath in and out of the strongest sensations wherever they may be in your body. At some point in the very essence of what seems to be an “unbearable” emotion resides peace. You can come to that essence of peace in your very worst emotions. When you experience this you will have the courage to befriend all your emotions that you may have dismissed as unacceptable. They are not bad as you may have been taught. They are the portal into freedom and fully living the expression of life in happiness that is your true nature.