To put effort into any activity in life we need an incentive, some payoff for us. Loads of us have thought about meditation but either just dabbled in it or not really bothered. However, a regular (daily) meditation practice, even just a few minutes, is a goal worth putting the effort in for.

Apart from being very relaxing, meditation can also give us huge payoffs in our mental health, by giving us techniques we can actually apply in our day-to-day lives. We can become a happier, calmer, and more positive person because we are making our mind work for us, rather than feeling it’s working against us half the time!

We tend to think that we have very little control over how we respond to things – if it is bad, we will be unhappy; if it’s good, we will be happy. On reflection, it’s no wonder we feel anxious much of the time because we feel very much under the influence of things outside our control. 

The benefits of meditation are actually really simple, it’s a way of training our mind to respond the way we want it to, a way of changing our habitual responses. It gives us freedom because it puts us in control.

Put simply, it allows us to choose how we react to stuff.

It’s not a quick training, and only a very experienced meditator will be able to keep calm and positive in very difficult circumstances. But even beginners can see a difference, perhaps not getting frustrated in situations that usually get us going, being stuck in traffic perhaps, or having to share a space with someone we normally find annoying.

So, let’s look at how meditation can help answer some common questions:

Can meditation make me less anxious?
A good question because most of us have experienced much higher levels of anxiety than usual over the past couple of years. The answer is yes – but it takes time and practice. Meditation techniques help us realise when we are focussing on something in an unhelpful way and detach from that. This means we can function better and stay more calm. Meditation also helps us live more in the ‘present’ so we can better deal with the here and now rather than worrying about the future. In truth, lots of things we worry about never actually happen, and if they did, we would have to deal with them anyway, so why waste emotional energy worrying about things? Better instead to put that energy into keeping a calm mind so we are better equipped to deal with whatever life throws at us.

Can meditation stop me from being frustrated/cross/angry?

Oh yes, it’s very easy to get frustrated! And frustration is like a spark in our mind which can easily light the fire of full-blown anger. When we get angry we are basically out of control and we often do or say things we regret. Meditation is a way to watch our mind really carefully and get to know it and the habits we have (and the things that normally annoy us!). Once we become really familiar with the way we feel and react we can actually start to catch ourselves at an early point and we can put that spark out by taking our focus elsewhere. Putting out a spark is easier than putting out a fire, and it’s a skill we can learn. When we practice this meditation we change our habitual reaction to things that normally frustrate us, and as we get better at it we can react faster and with ‘bigger’ things.   Then rather than getting annoyed, we can just deal with stuff!

Can meditation help me win the lottery?

No, well not in the literal sense. But what meditation can do is help us feel contentment, a feeling of being happy with what we have. We might want a newer car, a bigger house, etc, but if we cannot get these things easily our life can feel like one big struggle, and we can’t enjoy what we have already.
If we practise contentment then we can still work towards our goal. We need goals because we don’t live in a cave and we do have to function in society, but we can have them without feeling the grasping, uncomfortable feeling which comes with a lack of contentment. We all know that even the richest people in the world are often discontent with what they have and are looking for something else.
If we are contented with life, it feels like we have won the lottery.

Can meditation help me to be more organised?

For sure! This is because a big part of meditation is mindfulness. Mindfulness is simply having an awareness of the here and now, living in the moment rather than in the past or the future. 
Many of the mistakes we make on a daily basis are because we are distracted, we might be rehashing something in our mind that we did yesterday or worrying about tomorrow. Apparently, we can only properly concentrate on one thing at a time, but how often do we really do this? We stretch ourselves too thin by trying to multitask. Training in mindfulness meditation gives us the ability to stay in the present moment, and feel fully engaged with it. Concentration naturally improves with meditation, and this helps us stay focused in daily life.

Can meditation make me happy?

The Big Question…
Happiness can only come from inside ourselves, no one can give us happiness as a gift, however hard they try. One thing that becomes apparent when we start to meditate is that we are responsible for our own happiness. It’s quite normal to have mixed feelings about this because we often like to blame other people for how we feel! However, it is actually empowering because we know that we have control. We just need the tools to learn to control our mind, and meditation gives us these tools. As beginners, we will start to see the difference on a more subtle level, but experienced meditators can deal with really big things with a calm mind, definitely something to aspire to.

Fancy giving meditation a try? If so, just remember not to expect too much too soon. To use a Buddhist analogy, it’s better to be like a wide, deep flowing river than a waterfall, slow and steady is the right way for lasting results and a more peaceful mind. You’ll need to practice regularly and be prepared for a long journey where sometimes you feel you’re doing brilliantly, and other times feel like it’s not working, but stick at it and the payoff is definitely worth it.

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A short intro to why meditation makes us happy can be found here:

This is the third blog of our series, and this one has tips and methods on how to best learn to meditate, and why!

Before you start to meditate, try to answer these questions first:

What do you want to get out of meditation?

How much time have you got?

When is the best time for you – morning or evening?

You can meditate anywhere with practice, but if you are starting off, give yourself a fighting chance of keeping it up! Try to find a dedicated quiet space and a good time of day for you where you are least likely to be distracted (or fall asleep!), in order to learn the basics.

If you simply want to relax, unwind and recharge, simple breathing meditation ticks all the boxes. You can become very proficient in breathing meditation, although it is a ‘beginners’ meditation, because of its simplicity, you can take it to a level where you can profoundly change your daily life.

How to do it

• Find a quiet space
• Find a comfortable position
  • (whatever position suits you, but be warned, it’s very difficult to stay awake if you lie down!)
• Take a few moments to become aware of the breath and let thoughts subside
• Watch the breath, simply focus awareness on your breathing
• Allow thoughts to come and go but don’t hold on to them or follow them
• Every time you find yourself following thoughts, come back to the breath

It is normal to find the distractions constant, and to find you have completely followed a train of thought, perhaps planned next week’s diary in your head, before realising and bringing the focus back to the breath! It just takes repetition and practice, but the good news is that it doesn’t take long to start to feel more relaxed. 
Try to keep your meditations short, about ten minutes, until you feel you can extend them.

The result of breathing meditation is that it creates space in the mind, we can create some distance from things we are focussing on or problems we want to solve, so we can deal with them with a clarity of mind.

Breathing meditation is in itself a good way to relax and unwind and many people choose to make this their practice, but if you want to delve deeper into the mind, we can just use breathing meditation as a starting point. We can also use meditation to get a different perspective or focus on responding better to some situations. Meditation is amazing because it can help us focus on both the bigger picture and also zoom in on the smallest, subtlest parts of our mind. 

See the bigger picture

Meditation helps us gain a sense of perspective, a valuable tool when we have got ourselves in a rut obsessing over something. The old saying “you can’t see the wood for the trees” is so true here. Meditation can help us take the step back that we need to see a situation with clarity and make some proper decisions. If you have ever been in the situation where you’ve explained a problem you have to someone and they have been able to see a solution that you hadn’t thought of, that’s often because they are far enough away from the problem to see it with clarity, making finding answers so much easier. The meditation where we focus on the breath, as explained above, is brilliant for this because focusing on the breath makes us calm down, and stop grasping on to problems, then we can start to contemplate what we are trying to work out without that grasping feeling which makes us too close to the situation. We are not turning away from problems or difficulties, just learning a method to deal with them with a calm mind.

See the smaller details

Not only does mediation help us see the bigger picture, but it can also show us the smaller one too. Through meditation, we can expose subtle workings of the mind which are normally hidden. The Buddhist analogy of the sky works really well here, we usually can’t see past the clouds, especially when there is a storm. But, as we see when we go up in a plane, beyond the clouds is always an expanse of clear blue. Our mind is very much like this – we have the day-to-day “stuff” going on all the time – an incessant chatter. We (understandably) become focused on this and our experience of life reflects the state of our mind – we feel that our emotional state is tied to this constant state of experiencing, making decisions, reacting, planning, etc. No wonder we feel so tired!

Through practising beautiful meditations such as the blue sky mind meditation, where after focusing on the breath, we imagine we are watching the sky, which we think of as our mind, and imagine the clouds are our thoughts. Rather than identifying with the clouds, as we normally do, we try to let them pass without holding onto them, and become aware of our real, peaceful mind being the blue sky beyond the clouds, still, peaceful, expansive. When we get used to this feeling we can start to access our ‘blue sky mind’ even out of meditation and then we can start to see the smaller details of how our mind works, the subtle ways in which we tend to focus on things which aren’t helpful, the way we react to experiences we have. We can start to see how we can change our habits by being in tune with our own mind so we aren’t caught out by unwanted “knee-jerk” reactions. Meaning we are less likely to have uncontrolled outbursts, say or do things we regret.

We all want to live in a more peaceful place, it’s good to know that there is a peaceful place all the time there in our own mind, and meditation is the skill that helps us access it.

If you are interested in learning meditation there are numerous resources available, it will be a case of trying out a few techniques and teaching methods until you find the one for you and which will fit with your lifestyle and beliefs. Here at the Hub some of us use Kadampa Buddhist meditations which are available in person at Centres around the world (www.kadampa.org) or online in the form of podcasts and live-streamed classes, along with accompanying Buddhist teachings and chanted prayers.

If you want to check it out you can find a basic breathing meditation led by a friend of ours here:

So why not give meditation a try and see how it works for you?

What??!

How can we be connected when we’ve probably never even met? It all sounds a bit weird, but in reality, it’s true.

Whether we like it or not, we are connected. Have you watched “Don’t Look Up” yet? Even if you haven’t, you probably have heard it’s about two scientists who discover a huge comet due to hit the earth in six months causing an extinction-level catastrophe. All life on the planet is likely to be destroyed, but the overwhelming response from most people is that it’s not their problem, they are too caught up in their own day-to-day stuff.

The real message of the film – which is brilliant by the way – is to relay the real-life experience that many climate change scientists face when they try to tell us about the climate disasters our world is facing: a huge sense of apathy and disconnect.

We can feel very insular and small when contemplating worldwide issues and it’s easy to lose the link between what is going on in our lives and the bigger picture. But the connection is there, we have just not opened our eyes to it. If we could, two things would happen which would make our lives, and everyone else’s, better.

Firstly we would appreciate things much more

So, we get up in the morning, wash, get dressed, eat breakfast, clean our teeth, blah blah… without giving it much thought, at all.

It’s only when something is not available to us (remember the great toilet roll shortage of 2020?) that we really notice it. I remember sleeping in a bed after six weeks camping and really appreciating my bed in a way I never really did before! When we appreciate what we have, we live a happier life. Why? Because we see value in things. A toothbrush, when you look at it, is the product of many people’s hard work, from the design team to the manufacturing process and the production of the materials, to the shipping and retail. All that work means we can look after our teeth. Thank goodness, because left to my own devices to make my own toothbrush I would probably be using a twig. When we start to think about it, we are connected to many, many people through the way we live.

We can make a conscious effort to have an awareness of this and we then naturally appreciate things more. This makes us feel warmer towards our fellow human beings. It also means we take care of things better, create less waste, and become more thoughtful with our consumerism, making sure we buy ethically.

Secondly we would make better decisions

We can learn to have an awareness of how our decisions affect others. During the height of the pandemic we all saw people acting selfishly and people acting selflessly. What’s behind the motivation to act selflessly? Essentially it is a sense of valuing others, seeing how we are all connected, and a having wish to make decisions that help others.

We can choose to put our own interests first, but we cannot guarantee that will even work, because whether we like it or not we are all connected. Remember when there was a petrol shortage last year? If in times like these, a proportion of people take more than they really need, others will lose out and they may be key workers who are then unable to provide essential services – to the people who bought up the petrol.

It’s easy to make decisions that put our own interests before others, but in reality, it’s not a realistic way to live. Because unless we live in a cave and never interact with anyone or anything, the truth is every decision we make does affect others, and the decisions others make affect us. The way forward as human beings and citizens of the world has to be to make decisions with the understanding of how they affect others, then make the best decision possible, the one we would like others to make for us.

How can we do this?

Going back to the beginning – we are all connected. This truth, if we can stay aware of it, will underpin our actions and choices and help us keep that feeling of connection with others, not only other people but animals too, and the natural world. It isn’t possible to make perfect choices but if we aim to make every choice with the best intention then we are going a long way towards feeling calm, peaceful, and connected.

Meditation gets results

Meditation is a mental exercise where we retrain our mind. We can pick anything to focus on, it could be an item we use on a daily basis, such as a computer, and we can mentally break it down and imagine how that computer came into existence, how many people have been involved in its creation and how our lives have improved by having access to it (most of the time haha!). We can think about food, and people who grew crops, for example, harvested them, processed and packaged them, and sold them. We can think about trees we sit under, flowers we enjoy, insects and animals. We soon start to see that without others, our lives would be very different.

It is hard to think of anything we use, do, or enjoy which has not in some way involved other living beings. The fact that people have been paid to produce things doesn’t take away from the fact that we get the benefit from them, in fact, it can give us the incentive to make sure we pay a fair price for the things they produce.

If we sit quietly a few minutes a day and just think about connection, we will start to see it in our daily lives without trying, and naturally, our actions will follow the same course.

Feb 17th this year is Random Acts of Kindness Day, and it has grown in popularity each year. Why not have a look online if you want to know more about it at www.randomactsofkindness.org. There are some fantastic ideas, and with the added understanding of global connectedness, it means even more.

The quick answer is that we try to meditate to feel more relaxed and happy, to give ourselves some calm time and connect with a feeling of peace.
We all know that meditation relaxes us, but this blog addresses the question: in our time-poor lives, if we manage to make a space in our schedule for some ‘me time’, then why choose meditation? There are loads of really nice ways to relax; spa days, relaxation apps, massage, to name but a few. We all have our favourites!

It is hard to pitch sitting still on the floor cross-legged against lying in a hot tub with a glass of something fizzy, which sounds VERY relaxing indeed, so what does meditation do to make it worth the effort? At the Harmonious Hub, we are big fans of meditation, so over the next four blogs, we will take a look at why and how it is a great thing to take up.

Meditation is more than relaxation

Feeling relaxed is great, but it wears off quickly. Some of the things we turn to for relaxation are not always available when we want them, or they are too expensive to do regularly. It’s good to look for a longer-term method which we can access anytime. Meditation is a good solution because it can be done anywhere, and classes, courses, and books can be found very reasonably priced, or by donation. You don’t need any expensive equipment either.

Meditation certainly relaxes us, we’ll look at why that is later, but delve deeper into teachings and you will find there’s much more to it than relaxation.
Here’s why: it is a way of getting to know your own mind in a deeper sense, which means you get an understanding of how your mind works and how it responds to the different experiences we have every day.

By gaining an understanding of how the mind works we can start to make choices about how we react rather than it being a reflex response. How many times have you wished you had thought first before reacting? It is something we can train ourselves to do, it takes effort but even small results can be seen quickly, and this training is meditation.

Seeds of change

Meditation is a tool to change your mind. If there are ever situations you would like to feel differently about or see in a different light (for most of us there are plenty!) then meditation can actually help to do this. It gives us a mind skill-set where we have better control over the way we react to things.

Normally it feels like we are at the mercy of our mind, for example, we don’t want to get upset/frustrated/anxious but we feel like we have no choice but to respond to a situation in that way. However, meditation is like a training, where we can train ourselves to react in a different way, not repressing but genuinely reacting in a more helpful, positive way. Life is full of minor frustrations, disappointments, and difficulties, but we can limit the effect these have on us by learning to respond in a more useful way. This is what mediation can teach us. Eventually, we can learn to deal with bigger and more difficult things.

Understand the mind

Meditation is a way to shine a light on thought processes and emotional reactions because it gives opportunities to focus on our own mind in a way we can’t do normally, simply because we are too busy dealing with life! As much as we might want to feel calm and composed, unless we actually make time to train in this, we will find that we are entirely dependent on what’s going on ‘outside’, if it’s going well we will feel good, if not we will feel deflated/angry/anxious. Meditation to some extent helps break that connection, so if things aren’t going our way, we can still feel calm and peaceful. That doesn’t mean we can’t engage with and deal with things, on the contrary, it gives us the ability to deal with difficulties with a clear mind, so we are less likely to do or say something we regret.

The cool thing about mediation is that it gives us the time and space to look at our own mind, something we rarely do in any other circumstance. We regularly make changes in our lives to try to improve things, we might re-decorate our homes, buy new clothes, change our hair, but we don’t think to try to improve our thought processes or mental habits.

We are creatures of habit, and just like repetitive exercise will train certain muscle groups, meditation can change long-standing unwanted habits to become habits we do want. If we habitually react with irritation to having a fly buzzing around our room, for example, there are meditation techniques to help us change that reaction to one of tolerance, even sympathy for the trapped fly, and this feels a whole lot better (including much better for the fly, who is less likely to get swatted!).

The benefits are real

Inner peace, calm, the ability to deal with things life throws at us are reasons why people learn to meditate. By learning about how our mind responds to things and working with that we learn to find a really peaceful place in our mind where there is just a feeling of calm. There is a lovely Buddhist analogy where we imagine our mind like the sea, it can be turbulent on the surface with waves or even storms, but underneath even the stormiest sea there is a calm place where the water is very still. Normally we focus on the top of the sea – what’s going on here and now and we react and respond like a reflex. If we can give ourselves the time and space to start to focus on what is going on underneath we give ourselves the break we really need – and that IS true relaxation.

There are many different forms of meditation being taught, some will take you on a longer and deeper journey than others. You can find a form of meditation and a teacher who resonates with you.

Oh, and you don’t need to sit still, crossed-legged on the floor, you can sit on a chair, or try walking meditation. Just try to avoid lying down… it’s just too tempting to fall asleep!