Dana Gatto
MEDITATION TO QUIET THE MIND
Meditation is such a powerful process. Of all the processes I teach, it has to be the most beneficial. Why is it so powerful? Because when you meditate you quiet your mind, and when you quiet your mind you allow yourself to receive all that you have been asking for.
BENEFITS OF MEDITATION
If relaxation is not the goal of meditation, it is often a result. In the 1970s, Herbert Benson, MD, a researcher at Harvard University Medical School, coined the term “relaxation response” after conducting research on people who practiced transcendental meditation. The relaxation response, in Benson’s words, is “an opposite, involuntary response that causes a reduction in the activity of the sympathetic nervous system.”
Since then, studies on the relaxation response that follows meditation have documented the following short-term benefits to the nervous system:
- Lower blood pressure
- Improved blood circulation
- Lower heart rate
- Less perspiration
- Slower respiratory rate
- Less anxiety
- Lower blood cortisol levels
- More feelings of well-being
- Less stress
- Deeper relaxation
Contemporary researchers are now finding that meditation practice yields long-term benefits, and noting positive effects on brain and immune function. Yet it’s worth repeating that the purpose of meditation is not to achieve benefits. The goal of meditation is no goal. It’s simply to be present.
HOW TO MEDITATE: SIMPLE MEDITATION FOR BEGINNERS
This meditation exercise is an excellent introduction to meditation techniques.
- Sit or lie comfortably in a place you won’t be interrupted.
- Close your eyes. Try to shut down your physical sense. Close the curtains, go where it is quiet. You may choose to play sound during meditation if it doesn’t stimulate thought. Many people enjoy nature sounds or a dripping faucet, something like that.
- Breathe in and out, with full inhales and exhales.
- Focus your attention on the breath and on how the body moves with each inhalation and exhalation. Notice the movement of your body as you breathe. Observe your chest, shoulders, rib cage, and belly. Simply focus your attention on your breath without controlling its pace or intensity. If your mind wanders, return your focus back to your breath. Let it be your fullest responsibility. Not fixing breakfast, not wondering how someone is doing, not thinking about yesterday, not worrying about tomorrow, not focusing on anything in this moment except air in, and air out.
Maintain this meditation practice for 10-15 minutes per day.
WHAT TO EXPECT AFTER CONSISTENT MEDITATION
The following is an excerpt from Abraham-
Within 2 or 3 days of meditation, you’re going to begin to feel a detachment from your physical experience. A very common thing that you will feel is a sort of numbing sensation. Some describe that they cannot tell their toe from their nose. Some, if their eyes are closed, may begin to see movement of light around under their eyelids, or even flashes of color.
There is no right or wrong in this process of meditation. There is nothing that you should be reaching for. This is a state of allowing. This is a state where, for just a few moments, you stop running the show. You stop trying to make anything happen. This is your time of allowing. This is your time when you are saying unto your maker, unto your Source Energy, unto your Inner Being, unto your God… whatever you’re wanting to call it, this is your time of saying, “Here I be, in a state of allowing.” And what am I allowing? I’m allowing Source Energy to flow purely through me.
15 minutes a day of that effort will change your life. Because it will put you in the state of allowing the Energy that is natural to you to flow. You’ll feel better in the moment. You’ll feel more energized when you come out of it.
You may spend 14 minutes before you achieve any state of detachment. You might not ever be consciously aware that you’ve achieved any state of detachment. It doesn’t matter, you are making enormous progress as you allow yourself to be.
A big benefit that you’ll notice, right away, is that things that you’ve been wanting will begin showing up. “Now, why is this? Abraham, I didn’t sit and intend. I didn’t sit and set goals. I didn’t sit and clarify what I want. I didn’t tell the Universe what I wanted. How come 15 minutes of just being will set those kinds of things in motion?” Because it has always been, ask and it is given. It has never been “ask and do something right and it is given”. It has never been “ask and get worthy”. It is ask and allow. Ask and allow.
And so, every day, you’ve been asking. You’ve been launching all kinds of intentions. You cannot live in your physical body, you cannot be part of this physical environment without endless desires being born within you. And as these desires are being born within you, the Universe is answering them. And now, because of your 15 minutes of allowing, whether you were petting the cat, or practicing your breathing, whether you were listening to a waterfall or listening to happy music, or whether you were on a rampage of appreciation… what happened, for that time of allowing, is, you set up within your vibrational auric field a vibration that, for the time, was not in the state of resisting the things that you’ve been asking for. And progress is made in that time.”
Have fun with this!
XO,
Dana