Mindfulness, Meditation, & Deep Relaxation
Funny how sitting still and doing nothing can actually be one of the most difficult things to do.
We often think that we can’t wait to ‘switch off’ but then when it comes down to it, what we actually do is distract ourselves instead — TV, laptop, phones, whatever it is to keep away from the dreaded ‘inner dialogue,’ streams of consciousness, or loops of thoughts that pass through the mind.
Modern Pressures
A busy lifestyle in a modern urban or technological environment can be a nightmare for the subtle physiology of the body, and thus in turn, your mind.
Highly stressed environments take their toll. Whether fast-paced and over-adrenalising or relatively sedentary and desk-oriented, the circumstances combine to stress the body particularly when combined with long hours in front of a screen (which irritates the hypothalamus of the brain).
This strain is further amplified by a 24/7 communication culture, with texts, emails, and calls arriving at all times making it easy to lose perspective of a healthy work-life balance and to lose connection with natural rhythms of activity and rest.
Effect on your Mind
All this activity lends itself to an over-busy mind, often still processing information long after work has finished, a sense of inner frustration and feeling of being locked into a Mental Hamster wheel that it’s very difficult to climb out of.
You know what happens when you are in your mind? You lose track of all the good bits of life that are actually going on around you, which, of course, you need to experience through your senses.
Get a Grip by Letting Go!
This class is all about getting some kind of a grip (or indeed a ‘letting go’) of the hold that the mind can have on us.
The exercises in this session help to calm down the overstressed and over-stimulated nervous system calming the body which simultaneously calms the mind, thus turning down the ‘volume’ of the inner chatterbox.
It returns a balance to what is essentially the left and right brain function of the brain. When you are over-busy in your mind this associates to excessive left brain function (where you lose body-consciousness and drift consistently in thought) and body centred meditation practices help to stimulate right brain function – as right brain function associates to our senses. So essentially, the exercises in this class help you to come back to your senses, and pull yourself out of relating to yourself as just a stream of thoughts!
Mindfulness v/s Meditation
Although there is ample debate as to the distinction between the two, we work with a general perspective that mindfulness practices are the observation of ‘what is’ – hence you can be mindful whilst driving down a motorway or making your dinner for example, whereas Meditation is more aligned to a transcended state of mind where the senses are more withdrawn – hence driving or making dinner aren’t conducive to this!
However, mindfulness itself is a precursor, and in many a form of meditation so exploring it is very useful as personal growth tool.
Development
The exercises you learn in this class are relatively simple to integrate into a regular routine or practice, outside of the class.
When you start to build an understanding of the root causes of stress learning techniques to manage it become an essential part of your life.
These sessions are often combined with Meditation and Body-mind connection workshops that give further insight into the functions of the mind, so as well as working with the overall state of your mind, you also begin to understand the patterns and layers within it.