Meditation Blog

Body's internal pharmacy effective against heart disease

Regular meditation practice does not only work on the mental and emotional level, it can also be very effective in reducing your chance of dying of a heart attack or a stroke, science found.¹

While there are many reasons to practice meditation, one of the main reasons that I have found to practice meditation is to be less distracted and more present, to be more aware of what is going on within my mind and to be more aware of those around me. With an increased awareness of what goes on in my environment, there’s also the potential to become more aware of what is happening to those around me and to attend to those who need my help or assistance. This “compassionate impulse” is a benefit that is not always found in discussions on meditation.

At its heart, a primary reason to practice meditation is to become more of who we inherently are; compassionate, present and aware. The state of non-distraction, which we gradually achieve as we progress in our meditation practice, brings us a mind that is aware of our moment-to-moment life, that in turn brings about a natural state of compassion, recognizing others as being equally as distracted and in need of awareness within their mind.

Sogyal Rinpoche inspires us to begin the day by integrating our practice, even at the breakfast table!

I just got back to France after giving a couple of talks in NYC and then attending The Wisdom of Awareness retreat in Garrison.

The retreat was led by Sogyal Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche and had guest speakers: Patrick Gaffney, Dan Goleman, Tara Bennett-Goleman and Sharon Salzberg.

Do you sometimes feel in a stranglehold of overwhelm? So pressed for time that meditation feels like an unwarranted diversion from the important affairs of life?

The very thought of meditation may begin to spark annoyance. And the actual act may feel excruciatingly painful.  When all the demands of life start pressing in, meditation can appear like an enemy on the battleground of life.

You came to meditation for a reason. You know that meditation is "good" for you, yet you resent the time it takes away from your real-world obligations.

How do you get through this?

While these aspects of meditation can provide us with the support necessary to achieve a stable meditation practice, and while a formal meditation practice is the only way to become familiar with our mind, the primary reason to meditate is to become familiar with our true nature within our ordinary daily life.

Check out this cool video album on how to meditate (you need to have the flash player plugin installed in your browser).

Enjoy lots of interesting videos on our 'Sound & Vision' page and the What Meditation Really Is vimeo channel.

I spent last week at the Mind & Life Summer Research Institute, a very special place where scientists and contemplatives get together for 6 days to practise, discuss and think about how we can study contemplative practice scientifically. For people like me, who are both scientists and practitioners, those are an amazing opportunity. It does not happen often that you get a chance to engage in science with people and practise meditation and yoga with them as well. 

Two middle-aged women met on the street. "How are you?" asked one of them.

"Fine, thanks," replied the other.

"How's your son doing? Is he still unemployed?"

"Yes. But he's meditating now."

"Meditating? What's that?"

"I don't know," answered the woman with a shrug. "But at least it's better than sitting around and doing nothing!"

Ongoing research continues to affirm what seasoned meditators have been claiming for centuries, if not millennia. How we experience our world, including our perceptions of our internal world, can be dramatically changed, mediated, through meditation.

In the most recent work done at the Departments of Neurobiology, Anatomy and Biomedical Engineering at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the Psychology Department at Marquette University, and published in the Journal of Neuroscience, 2011 Apr 6;31(14):5540-8, researchers found the data to indicated that, “…meditation engages multiple brain mechanisms that alter the construction of the subjectively available pain experience from afferent information.”