It goes back to when Siddhartha Gautama, better known as the Buddha, after a long meditation saw the light and announced that suffering is subjective, and can be reduced through self-awareness.

Happiness is a state of mind, therefore the real source of happiness lies in the mind, not in external circumstances.

Today, over 2500 years later, a large and growing number of American scientists, doctors and healthcare specialists are talking to patients about how to apply the practice of regular meditation to their lives.

The practice of regular meditation is on the rise. Just do a bit of Googling and you’ll find that it is in the news more frequently. With growing scientific evidence from hundreds of studies, it’s no surprise that a lot more people are now paying more attention. More of us are getting back to this practice or learning to do it for the first time in our lives.

I tried meditation when I was 18. I used to practice yoga 2-3 times per week with a friend while living in a dorm when I was attending art school. Unfortunately it didn’t stick with me and I only got back to it about 10 years ago. I bought some guided mediation CDs and that helped me to get going.

Later I discovered Bill Harris and his company Centerpointe Research Institute. They created a technology they call Holosync. Holosync is a complex form of neuro-audio technology allowing the listener to effortlessly enter various desirable states, and creating many desirable mental, emotional, and spiritual changes, through entrainment of electrical patterns in the brain. The audio tones are distributed to the nervous system using a low carrier frequency stimulus, masked by pleasurable music and environmental sounds, which drives the nervous system to progressively higher levels of functioning. It works great. Here is much more info: www.centerpointe.com/v2/faq

Meditation is being offered around the world in hospitals and health care centres as not only a stress reduction method, but also as a physical pain reduction practice.

Here are a few definitions of meditation as well as resources.

  1. Wikipedia: Meditation is a practice in which an individual trains the mind or induces a mode of consciousness, either to realize some benefit or for the mind to simply acknowledge its content without becoming identified with that content, or as an end in itself. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation
  2. Health and Yoga: An ordinary person may consider meditation as a worship or prayer. But it is not so. Meditation means awareness. Whatever you do with awareness is meditation. “Watching your breath” is meditation; listening to the birds is meditation. As long as these activities are free from any other distraction to the mind, it is effective meditation. www.healthandyoga.com/html/meditation.aspx
  3. Meditate.org: When only consciousness remains without an object, that state is called meditation. I am using the word meditation in this sense.If you light a lamp and remove all the objects surrounding it, the lamp will still go on giving light. In the same way, if you remove all objects from your consciousness, all thoughts, all imagination, what will happen? – only consciousness will remain.” www.meditate.org/

Want to learn how to meditate?

If you would like to learn how to meditate, you could consider Willpower Institute. Currently, they are offering a free Meditation Course that is suitable for novice and experienced meditators. The course is offered for both personal development and in-depth study. If you are interested in personal development, there are no attendance requirements. www.willpowerinstitute.com/courses