Meditation Myths
3 Misconceptions About Meditation – And How It Really Is
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People who meditate regularly can turn off any thought at the push of a button and never get upset about anything? Nonsense. We clear up this and other meditation myths.
Meditation has a positive effect on health physically and mentally, it makes you more relaxed, more resilient and happier – to have that various studies proven.
But as many benefits meditation has, it can be just as challenging, especially for beginners: inside. Many people find it difficult to stay in the here and now and not blindly follow their fluttering thoughts. And then they often have completely wrong expectations and ideas about meditation. Time to shed some light on the darkness.
3 misconceptions about meditation
1. When meditating, the goal is not to think about anything
Many people believe that in meditation one learns to control one’s thoughts or to turn them off completely. But our brain just thinks – that’s his job, and we don’t even want to train him off. What we practice while meditating, however, is not to identify with the thoughts and not to let them carry us away. Instead, we want to learn to simply perceive them as neutral observers – without evaluating them and entering the carousel of thought.
The problem: We often judge ourselves far too harshly when we meditate supposedly “wrongly” and fail to think of anything. But this is counterproductive because we constantly judge and condemn ourselves and the quality of our meditation. And it is precisely from this mode of judgment that we want to come out of mindfulness. Performance thoughts have no place here.
2. If I meditate now and then, that’s enough – it’s better than nothing
Meditating is similar to brushing your teeth: Of course it is better to brush your teeth once a week than never – it is still not enough to have healthy teeth. And meditation also lives from routine. And it’s not about duration at all. Going into silence for five minutes every day is much more effective than just meditating once a week for an hour. Our brain needs the daily repetition in order to save the mindfulness practice as a habit. Then it will firstly be easier for you and secondly you will feel the positive effects of meditation faster and more clearly.
3. Those who meditate are always deeply relaxed and never get upset
Many beginners have very high expectations of meditation and believe that after a few weeks of practice, like a Buddhist monk, they can calmly accept everything in their life and never get angry about anything or – anyone (spoiler: even monks find time what stupid). Well, that would of course be a dream – and the world would certainly be a much more pleasant place if we all meditated for a few minutes every day.
Meditation is about developing a stronger mindfulness – for ourselves, our feelings and for our sensations. We want to deal with what we feel – and not just push it away. This is the difference between wanting to get rid of negative feelings and letting go of them. In meditation all feelings and thoughts are allowed to be there, even the unpleasant ones. We perceive them and then let them go.
In the long term, this definitely means that most people become more relaxed and can deal with the adversities of everyday life in a more relaxed manner. But it shouldn’t be the expectation when meditating that we will never have negative feelings again if someone snatches the parking lot from us or if our friend puts us off. But hopefully we can deal with these feelings differently.
Source used: yogaeasy.de