Meditation is not relaxation
A number of my yoga students came to me after class to say how much they enjoyed the meditation part because it made them relax. Because I was too tired to go into a full-length discussion about meditation versus relaxation, I just said that they must therefore continue to enjoy and practice their own meditations at home when they are stressed or tired.
Now, that was not a very responsible answer I gave them. For someone who has been practicing meditation for a number of years, I felt I had to explain the difference further. In the mind of the public, meditation and relaxation are closely related. To some, meditation is “just relaxation.” While meditation does put the mind and body in a relaxed state, they are not the same. Meditation does achieve many of the health benefits obtained through relaxation such as decreased blood pressure, reduced stress and helps treat insomnia. Relaxation is an important part of taking good care of ourselves. It’s a common enough word, yet very few of us have had much experience with real relaxation. By “real relaxation” I mean a focused, intentional period of time during which one consciously releases tension and stress (both physical and mental).
There is one main fundamental difference between meditation and relaxation and it is this: Meditation has a dynamic component of AWAKENING that is not found in relaxation. Meditation is about going beyond the noisy “monkey” mind, the patterned thought forms that create our fixed mental attitudes. Meditation is about overcoming all mental limitations and discovering the potent energy inside — an energy that is about raising the voltage of consciousness.
Consciousness is our awareness that is unusually acute and clear, thoroughly focused, rooted in the here and now. In everyone’s life there are special moments when, perhaps under the pressure of external circumstances, we get to this point of sharp awareness. For example, this has been reported by people who, during intense moments of life-threatening danger, all senses become sharp and precise. They all drew from deep inner resources within themselves, to be able to move and survive. These acute moments can also come during heightened experiences of pain, tragedy, excitement and thrill even, when, in this silent knowing of self, you draw from inner resources that are normally out of reach. Suddenly, life has meaning. You ARE. YOU ARE BEING TOTALLY IN THE NOW.
Meditation is the inward, disciplined path that connects our physical, emotional and mental process to the spiritual part of us. The constant practice of meditation leads to awakening from the inside. For those who have intensely practiced meditation as a spiritual discipline, they have found a continuum of peace that is beyond what the ordinary mind can hope to understand.
Wikipedia defines Meditation as one or more of the following:
• a state of relaxed concentration on the reality of the present moment;
• a state that is experienced when the mind dissolves and is free of all thoughts;
• concentration in which the attention has been liberated from restlessness and is focused on God;
• focusing the mind on a single object (such as a religious statue, or one’s breath, or a mantra); and
• a mental “opening up” to the divine, invoking the guidance of a Higher power.
Relaxation is something we must learn to do daily so as to keep our physical body and mental states in steady conditioning. It is a prerequisite for a whole and healthy life. Meditation, on the other hand, is a spiritual discipline that helps us awaken to our true nature within.
Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, says, “The gift of learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this life. For it is only through meditation that you can undertake the journey to discover your true nature, and so find the stability and confidence you will need to live, and die, well. Meditation is the road to enlightenment.”
(Learn a variety of relaxation techniques and other wholistic health practices such as Pilates, Yoga, Taichi, Gyrokinesis, Conscious Breathing, Chi-Kung, Ayurveda and Reiki in the first East Meets West, First Mind-Body Conference, two whole days, Aug. 24 and 25 at the Richmond Hotel,
