about taking a break from your daily routine to sit
in quiet contemplation.
Meditation helps you sort through all the mental
jargon and minutia that your mind comes up with.
The typical meditative session results in greater
relaxation, inner peacefulness and, occasionally,
an enjoyable shift in consciousness.
In the second century AD, the Roman emperor
Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditations: “Men
seek retreats for themselves in country places, on beaches
and mountains, and you yourself are wont to long for
such retreats, but that is altogether unenlightened when
it is possible at any hour you please to find a retreat
within yourself. For nowhere can a man withdraw to a
more untroubled quietude than in his own soul.”
Researchers have discovered that sitting with your
eyes closed and repeating a mantra twice a day can
cut your risk of serious disease by half.
At some point in your life you have probably said
something that was hurtful to someone. You also
likely know the experience of using your words to
uplift someone, to make them feel better. Less
recognized, however, is the lasting effect that other
people’s words have upon us, especially when
they come from our primary relationships. So in
your own way, you can use this practice to rekindle
your inner peace on a daily basis. I’m not saying
you should go and take a TM course. Just think of a
mantra and take the time ‘20 minutes’.
As SHING XIONG put it:
“In the end, it’s not going to matter how many breaths
you took, but how many moments took your breath
away.”
It fuels countless disorders, including anxiety,
insomnia and depression. It also promotes
cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes and
digestive disorders. Exercising and eating better
can help counteract this. But meditation helps
practitioners develop mental resilience as well.
The benefits are well documented.
TM has been shown to help ‘normal’ people reach
their full potential and live in “greater harmony
with one another.”
Transcendental Meditation is not a religion. No
one who practices it is asked to accept any belief
system. The technique goes back thousands of
years and was brought to the United States by
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, an Indian teacher who
extracted the meditative technique from its Vedic
origins and distilled it to its essence. Today, it is
practiced by people of all religions, and no
religion.
How does it work?
TM is not learned from a book or video. It is
taught by a certified instructor and experienced
meditator. The process has seven steps: two
lectures, a personal interview with the teacher,
then four teaching sessions on four consecutive
days.
Essentially, the student is taught to sit with hands
folded in an upright chair in a quiet place. After a
brief ceremony of gratitude, the instructor gives
him his own mantra (a two-syllable wordless
sound) to think about as he sits in quiet relaxation
for 20 minutes twice a day. Ideally, this would be
first thing in the morning and again in the late
afternoon or early evening. (The mantra is simply
a mental “vehicle” to let the mind settle down).
You may wonder how you would possibly find
time to fit two 20-minute sessions into days
already crammed with work, traveling,
exercising, socializing and spending time with
family. But since no new skill can be learned
without practice, one must make time.
First off, there’s something inherently pleasurable
B.H.
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