Most importantly, I compare the person I feel I am today with the person I was yesterday. I truly feel my body and mind, and, thus, I see the full picture and evaluate the result.
Stay healthy!
February. Meditation
Everybody heard this word. However, does anyone understand the importance and benefits of this regular practice? Meditation is a free tool that you can use anytime, anywhere, and can lengthen your life. A true miracle, isn’t it?
People have used meditation in their lives for thousands of years, with their soul and body benefiting from it, even though they could not justify it scientifically. When I started studying this topic about five years ago, I was also skeptical, to be honest. As I am a woman of action, and I thought that meditation was just sitting around and doing nothing, I did not need it, and that it was only fiction.
Today, however, I have changed my attitude toward meditation radically. Even now, I find meditation difficult, since I still lack enough discipline for it and it is challenging for me to concentrate. After hundreds of failed attempts, I came up with my own meditation formula. More on this is below.
Do today what others do not want,
and tomorrow you will live like others cannot.
Jared Leto
How does meditation slow down the aging process of our body?
Elizabeth Blackburn answered this question when in 2009, at the age of 61, received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of telomeres and the telomerase process.
According to the study, there is a certain «counter», which measures the life of a cell. It is called a telomere and it is a protective formation at the ends of chromosomes, which are shortened with each cell division. In simple words, the longer the telomeres in cells, the greater the potential for health and longevity.
You may find a detailed article on this discovery on the BBC website.
Since then, dozens of scientific studies have been conducted on this topic in the United States, and you can view them on the NCCIH website.
I love listening to motivational videos on YouTube, especially TED. I think you do, too. You can notice most speakers use meditation one way or another in their lives.
There are many types of meditation for all tastes.
For example, concentration, open attention, presence of light, Zen meditation, vipassana, mindfulness meditation, mantra meditation, transcendental meditation, yogic meditation, chakra meditation, trataka, kundalini meditation, kriya yoga, sound meditation (nada yoga), tantra, pranayama, «I» meditation, Taoist meditations, qigong, contemplative prayer, orthodox prayer on a rosary, dynamic meditation.
This is the way to approach meditation.
How do I do it?
First, I get up early, while everyone is asleep, to enjoy the silence and so that no one distracts me from my morning rituals, one of which is meditation. If the weather allows, and it is warm outside, I ride a bike to a park or forest. Nature is always beneficial for the emotional state. I stop in a beautiful place that I like, sit on grass or a tree, and just fall into a trance, looking at one point.
A lake or sea is also perfect when sunlight reflects on small waves. They are like precious stones falling continuously on water, and I can look at it endlessly.
In the evening or before bed, a candle is soothing. Turn off the light, light a candle, and just stare at the fire. Strange, but it is hypnotic. Thoughts may appear, but mostly they are about how beautiful fire is. Eventually, you will remember the phrase «There are three things you can watch forever: fire, water, and other people working…»
You know, I once took a dance class. I learned to dance salsa and tango. While dancing it is impossible to think about anything rather than dancing, and this is phenomenal! It does not matter at all whether you like your partner as a man or not, here the point is that concentration on your movements reaches the maximum level. An hour or two passes unnoticed, like in a dream. It is very close to dynamic meditation. The role of a woman in pair dances is to surrender to the flow, trust the man, and follow his impulses, not reason or logic.
I am sure that everyone has their own method: someone is comfortable sitting in the lotus position, someone is lying down, someone is chanting mantras. The point of the last one is in SINGING itself! Those who sing professionally or just love to sing in karaoke know how everything around disappears and the soul sings during the time a song lasts.
They say the hardest part is rather simple. The same applies to meditation. On the one hand, all you need is to relax. On the other, how can you relax when so many thoughts occupy your mind?
The most common meditation technique is to feel your breath. It’s as easy as ABC and it works. I also use this method to fall asleep when I have insomnia. It works flawlessly. Let’s take a comfortable position, relax, scan our sensations in the body with our inner gaze. Then we should continue to breathe in our own rhythm, directing all our attention to the breath. Here begins the most difficult part of meditation, the moment we should observe our thoughts. It is important to be just an observer here. You should only think about breathing. As soon as a thought appears in your head, you note it absolutely without judgment, and then direct your attention back to the breath. Thus, you train the attention and mindfulness that will be useful to you in your daily life.
I am pretty sure that we will have a meditation boom in the coming years. After all, we are following the same development path as Western society; only we are a couple of decades late. Meditation will become a mass hobby here, all the newspapers will write about the benefits of meditation, scientists will make one discovery after another, and politicians, celebrities, and athletes will admit on TV that their day does not start without morning meditation. So why don’t we start to benefit from the practice that millions of people around the planet are committed to now?
Drawing a picture is another fine option to relax. Once in Odessa, my friends and I went to a drawing master class in an art workshop. At first, I could not understand how we, not being artists, could draw a real picture in 2—3 hours. We were given canvases, paints, brushes, and we collectively chose one subject for all. The instructor told us what to do step by step, how to mix colors, how to apply an image… You know, when we finished, I felt like those three hours passed in a parallel universe. They seemed to be 10 minutes as this process captures the attention completely, giving full concentration and immersion in the process!
Try it too and I assure you will not regret it.
If you want to use meditation anywhere, anytime, then take the training in transcendental meditation. Its secret is that in any place – for example, in transport, a cafe, on the street, at home, in any conditions, it does not matter whether it is noisy or not – a person can relax and practice meditation.
March. Life-Reconstruction Plan
I was born in March, and this is my favorite month, the beginning of spring, the time of love and fresh starts. Therefore, in this chapter, I will talk about the experience that divided my life into «before» and «after».
In 2015, I underwent personal three-month coaching with Ekaterina Gromakovskaya,
