MEDITATION – A path to happiness

It was 2013 when I had my first meditation and it profoundly changed my live in a very positive way. Although I had so many good experiences with meditation it still happens to me that I neglect my meditation practice in everyday life. In these phases I fortunately realize again how much better I feel when I integrate regular meditation into my life. Without daily meditation everything usually splashes along like this. It works, but in many everyday situations I simply react instead of acting consciously and in a controlled way and keeping my inner peace. It only takes a few minutes a day to live more consciously, more relaxed and clearer.

External happiness

In our society there are a lot of people who make their happiness mainly dependent on external factors. This means that everything has to be perfect in their surroundings in order to be happy and satisfied. If this is not the case, external factors are also used to compensate.

Of course it can make you happy to spend time with friends, read a nice book or have a glass of wine. And it can be wonderful to rebuild yourself in a stressful phase with things like a massage or a great restaurant visit. A short moment of happiness will certainly result out of it. Nevertheless, it is important not to be dependent on it and also to have the ability to generate happiness from within without external factors.

Most people are seldom just satisfied because they feel it in themselves and are happy about it.

Internal happiness

You can create inner contentment and happiness with a very simple means: meditation. Meditation is basically just an exercise that trains your mind to regulate itself. It is the ability to concentrate continuously on only one thing, for example breathing. The so called Mantra. If you practice and stay with it permanently, you connect to yourself and create more peace and balance in your mind. Meditation also helps you to find out what you really want and what is really important to you.

Maybe now you're thinking, "I've always wanted to meditate, but it's so hard and I don't know how to get in." It's true. It is not easy to control our Monkey Mind, which jumps from thought to thought. But it's worth it! Neuroscientists have shown that meditation changes eight different brain regions and that you will benefit sustainably from taking time every day to reduce your chaos of thought.

Please don’t expect that the first meditation will change your whole live from ground up entirely. It can. But it is unlikely.

It's more like going through a jungle with a machete from one place to another. The first time will be tough. The second time it will be easier, but there are still some leaves to cut. The third time gets even easier and so on. After you have walked the path several times, you have a nice clean path through the jungle. And so it is with meditation. The more you meditate, the deeper you can go. When you stop meditating regularly, it's as if the jungle is overrunning the path with leaves.

The benefits of a regular meditation are tremendous. You get a better stress management. More creativity, mental fitness, mindfulness, compassion, emotional stability, better physical perception. Strengthening of intuition. So forth and so on. And therefore an increased feeling of happiness!

Keep it simple

Developing a meditation practice does not have to mean organizing an elaborate ceremony every day. You don't have to wrap yourself in incense sticks of smoke, nor stick to the meditation pillow for several hours in the perfect lotus position. I personally don't like to commit myself to a certain kind of meditation in the long run, but simply try to go with the flow and find something that strengthens and nourishes me. So I can stay flexible within my meditation commitment and observe what is really good for me and what is not.

Even a conscious meditation break from time to time can sometimes do no harm. However, your meditation practice should be indispensable in stressful times. Even if it may seem like an "extra" item on your to-do list, you'll probably be much more relaxed and productive if you give yourself time to meditate. That is why I personally am also an absolute fan of short and simple meditations, for which no great effort or external factors are required.

How to get started

A small start goes like this. Set an alarm clock for a minute or more if you prefer. Close your eyes. Take three deep conscious breaths. After that you keep on breathing and you start to tell yourself with your inner voice while you are breathing out: “I am happy”. Do that three times. And maybe you start to smile a little bit too. Now you can keep on focusing on your breathing until the time is up. Or if you want to repeat to tell yourself: “I am happy” while meditating, don’t hesitate to do so. On the next day increase the timer for one minute and start your meditation. These are only guidelines. Develop your own style.  

This is how you can tap into meditation right now. 

We will cover more meditation techniques on this blog. Stay tuned! 

Let us know how, when and where you like to meditate :-) 

Namaste 

-Jonas-