Meditation: Foregoing Thought for the Real You
By Brian Sodoma
There is no dearth of unique exercise programs promising the best results, and a wealth of self-help media is readily available in the click of a mouse. With all the tools and information for physical and mental well-being at the world’s collective fingertips, one could certainly make the argument that there is an individual pathway to health and happiness for everyone.
But in a world full of answers and fixes, more and more people are discovering the true pathway to health and happiness lies within—more precisely, in the very breaths we take.
Meditation is one of the most intense exercises. It involves not only focusing on breathing, but also using this focus to strip the human psyche from incessant thinking and information gathering. Sevak Khalsa, who teaches yoga and meditation at Yoga Phoenix at Ninth Street and Oak in Phoenix, said that proper breathing is frequently overlooked when it comes to people seeking out optimal health. According to Khalsa, most people don’t realize they are breathing incorrectly. He emphasized the importance of breathing from the belly and not the chest.
“Athletes, singers, artists all know to breathe from the stomach,” he says. “Fifty percent of the world is breathing backwards….Once a person creates a habit of healthy breathing their deep subconscious gets clear. With all of the stuff in our minds, as humans, when we can release that, it allows us to get perspective; become grateful; become healthy, happy and whole.”
In one 2004 study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology , researchers at the University Children’s Hospital in Bern, Switzerland monitored breathing patterns, focusing on the deep sighing breaths of twenty-five babies. They concluded that the deep sighs were necessary for the baby’s body to “reset regular breathing patterns.” Is there, then, an opportunity to learn how to breathe properly from those beings most dependent on us for life?
Proper breathing through meditation, Khalsa emphasized, is the gateway to mindfulness, a serene state of mind that separates us from judgments and analysis, and replaces these acts with a recognition of the moment and an eventual deeper understanding of self. Ultimately, mindfulness helps people create the life they want, instead of reacting to the world in which they live, says Keith Jones, a personal coach and trainer in Scottsdale who incorporates subtle meditation techniques with his clients. Jones meditates daily for two 30-minute sessions. This practice began years ago, when he saw a profound shift in his career as a financial planner. He had befriended a colleague who always seemed to have an indifferent reaction to stock-market swings, a contrast to Jones’ impatient, emotional responses. This colleague introduced Jones to meditation, which he said is in part what led him to a life of choice instead of reaction, and ultimately to a different career.
“Before you leave the house or enter that meeting, I tell people to take a moment to clear their mind and their thinking,” Jones says. “It’s so subtle. You don’t even know it’s happening. There’s no hidden agenda. You can call it spirit, connecting to God, yourself—I don’t try to direct that in any way.”
Starting out
When beginning a meditation practice for the first time, Khalsa recommends doing it for eleven minutes a day while following these steps:
1. Find a comfortable space. In the morning, before your day begins, it’s relatively easy to find a quiet, comfortable spot. But during the day, if a stress trigger arises, the bathroom stall can be a great sanctuary.
2. Get comfortable. Sit up straight. Flex the shoulders, roll the neck, and squish the face. Take a deep breath and let everything relax.
3. Put feet on the floor, sitting solid and straight, then close the eyes. Take a long, deep breath in through the nose, then let it out. More importantly, sigh it out (remember, the babies do it for a reason). Do this three times.
4. Take a long, deep breath through the mouth and let it out. Do this three times. Then, breathe long, slow, deep breaths for three minutes.
“At this point, after six or seven minutes the noise in your mind will be quieted and you will feel a real shift,” Khalsa says. “Once you hit eleven minutes of daily practice, you may start to feel so good that you may want to do it later in the day, too, or go longer.”