Meditation

We live in an age of anxious haste and mindless grabbiness. We have to hurry to finish our education and get a job; we have to hurry to find a husband or a wife or we won’t be ‘marketable’ any longer. We have to hurry to make money fast because there may be a new slump coming tomorrow. Our brains will not be so sharp next year, we will have lost our looks and our health, and everything that we want in life will be made of polyester and cost double.” This quote taken from Joan Marble’s book (Notes from an Italian Garden) gives us a good description of the kind of hectic lives many of us live, always striving and once we have reached our goal, we start all over again striving towards a new goal. In addition, our society is becoming more obsessed with work and we are living increasingly on autopilot, reacting blindly and automatically to emails, tweets and SMSs without taking the time to think about what is really important. We know all too well how to do, but not always how to just be.

We become stressed as a result of the push and pull factors in our lives that lead to constant internal conflict. Meditation can help us find balance in our lives and ultimately peace of mind. In meditation there is no language, no narrative to recount, merely stillness, silence and the breath. Meditation is a technique for resting and revitalising the mind; through meditation we develop calm and peaceful awareness, concentration and insight; we come to see the environment as less threatening, and thus our stress response is moderated.

Meditation is thus not a form of daydreaming, wishful thinking, or trying to control one’s thoughts, but rather a form of sustained attention. In the yoga classes, and on the retreats, you will learn some techniques of meditation, which include the preparation of the mind for meditation.