The digital age has created conditions that have given rise to new reasons for stress. Previously, humanity did not know what information overload, sedentary lifestyles, Internet addiction, and a focus on success. The psyche has not yet developed mechanisms to adapt to these stressors. For example, the brain has only recently learned to “ignore” advertising.
If my grandmother instantly fell asleep after physically hard work, and a sound sleep was the only way to recover, today insomnia is a constant companion of city dwellers. If our ancestors’ motivation for activity was based on the word “must”, now it is difficult to pull ourselves out of the clinging clutches of the telephone. And the simple understanding that we are killing our most valuable, irreplaceable resource – time or health – does not affect our behavior. Habits turn out to be stronger than awareness and will, and tension itself generates insomnia.
Tension can only be compensated by relaxation
Sleep and natural trance (“suspension” in thoughtlessness) are universal relaxation mechanisms. At all times in cultures other ways of relaxation have appeared. From health- and personality-destroying ones like alcohol and drugs, to inspiring ones like music or yoga! And all of these cultural phenomena rely on the need for relaxation, and their diversity depends on the emergence of new social difficulties.
No wonder yoga was pulled from the archives of culture, dressed up in fancy clothes and became a great tool for solving modern problems. There was a demand. Asanas compensate for hypodynamia, and relaxation techniques compensate for tension. Meditation practices support the “crumbling” will and attention, and ideology creates mental strongholds.
But the market has mixed up all the concepts
Meditation is now called anything!
A pleasant and not so pleasant voice in headphones suggests flying into space – meditation!
To wash your face with a cash flow – meditation!
To lie in yoga nidra – meditation!
Sing mantras – meditation!
To sleep under the Tibetan bowls – meditation!
Breathe through one nostril – meditation!
The teachers of authentic yoga are not yet giving up on their struggle for truth. But the army of consumers eating up all the products under the trend of “meditation” is frustrated by the mismatch of expectation and reality, wondering why “it doesn’t work.”
I will leave the teaching of authentic meditation and the clarification of the higher meanings of this process to Yoga Gurus (not instructors). In turn, as a hypnologist, I will clarify why what is presented on the Internet as meditation is not meditation.
Meditation
Meditation is a self-contained practice whose utilitarian purpose is the development of volitional attention management skills such as concentration, retention, switchability, and control. There’s already a tension in that definition, isn’t there? As a result of such regular practice, attention becomes more and more easily subjected to your self, perception becomes clear, crisp, precise.
A simple meditation algorithm:
- Find a comfortable sitting position.
- Remove tension in the body.
- Choose 1 object to focus attention on: the sensation of air in the nostrils, the movement of the abdomen, the movement of the chest, an external object (a candle, or a point on the wall).
- Hold attention on the object. If you find your attention slipping into thinking, feeling, or emotion, bring it back to the object with cold persistence.
- Come out of meditation.
Developing this skill up to 30 minutes is a good result. And then it is worth increasing the difficulty of the objects, which is well demonstrated in Yoga and Buddhism.
People who practice meditation become more conscious and reflective. In fact, once the object of meditation becomes emotional experiences and deep cognitions, which sometimes leads to psychic self-healing and quick results in psychotherapy.
Meditation is also necessary, for example, if you find that you have become increasingly distracted by social media, habits are getting deeper and deeper, and willpower resources are insufficient. But the practice of meditation itself is a complex process that consumes a lot of mental energy in the brain. I have to say that there is never a lot of this energy. Metaphorically speaking, its volume is limited and given out for 1 day of life, and its generation occurs at night during quality sleep. Perhaps your distractions and procrastination are related to emotional burnout, apathy, poor motivation, lack of sleep, chronic stress, neurosis. And if you do the REAL meditation, then your brain will not let you siphon out the last drops of energy and will sabotage the process, simply drowning you in a half-dream.
Therefore, only a person in a resource can do REAL meditation. A depleted psyche will not support your initiative. Hence the failure of practitioners. And, by the way, if this process is accompanied by a voice, then it is already a guided meditation, the task of which is to learn the algorithm in order to further implement the meditation on your own.
Relaxation
What do you do when you’re “not in a resource”? Restore it!
Relax!
Yoga has a huge arsenal of practices for relaxation: Yoga Nidra and its many forms, Classic Shavasana, Shavasana with visualizations. By the way, what the market offers is “Shavasana with visualization”. In hypnotherapy, such practices with vocal accompaniment are called “resource trances. Their purpose is to relax easily and change the emotional background with the help of imagination.
These practices will not help to work through the underlying problems of insecurity, failure, and ineffectiveness. You need heavy suits and immersive psychotherapy.
Unlike Resource trances, deep mental relaxation practices, Yoga Nidra and Classical Shavasana work differently. They have a positive effect on the neurophysiological processes of the brain, and are therapeutic for depression, neurosis, insomnia, panic attacks, and chronic stress.
So if you practice what’s called “meditation,” know this:
- If you are lying down, you feel good, you are half asleep, and your voice is controlling dynamic images, perhaps music is playing – this is relaxation.
- If you are sitting and your attention is controlled by the voice, it is either guided meditation, an imagination exercise, or relaxation for the purpose of resting and shifting attention.
- If you sit, make a strong willed effort, and do everything yourself, it is REAL meditation.