The Meditation Exercise Reflection
The “Loving Kindness” exercise is a four part meditation of sending love out to your loved ones, enemies, yourself and then out to everyone in the world by that of using "the breath" to inhale pain and to exhale love. The "Subtle Mind" exercise is a three part meditation of the witnessing, calm-abiding and unifying the conscious mind.
These meditations had the similarities of “witnessing your thoughts”, versus just grasping and clinging to them (this can give you room to create new ideas and to throw out negative patterns.) These meditations were different in that the Loving Kindness exercise was about sending out “love” and the Subtle Mind exercise was about "stilling the mind, and witnessing your thoughts, so that you can connect to a unity consciousness state" (this allows you to calm the mind, so that can you can replace activity with intention, and feel connected to all of life.)
It took me a three times to be able to do the Subtle Mind meditation. In addition, like the Loving Kindness meditation, I felt that a lot of energy had been lifted off of my shoulders, and that I had a much calmer mind, after I finished.
The Connection of the Spiritual Wellness to Mental and Physical Wellness
This connection can be explained by when we are able to eliminate the thoughts of negativity, such as hate, anger and jealousy with that of positive thoughts. This calmer state of mind helps the physical body function better. For example, this can be done with the biofeedback techniques of breathing and visualization to decrease sensitivity to pain, diminishes circulatory problems, and gastrointestinal disturbances.
This is all manifested in my personal life, when I spend time with meditation, prayer and affirmation therapy.
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I have also experienced relief of physical symptoms after quieting my mind. My husband always tells me to "calm down," he is right- I need to calm my mind so my stress response also decreases. I also believe our stomach tells us when we are upset, even if we dont realize it. I had gastrointestinal issues for over a year and the doctors could never find anything wrong with me. Then I realized I was overstressed and overwhelmed, I began to slow down, stop putting so much pressure on myself, and I got off some medication- I feel so much better. Its amazing!
ReplyDeleteMari,
ReplyDeleteYou are definitely right that the connection between spiritual wellness, to mental wellness, and physcal wellness can be seen through our ability to eliminate negative thoughts, feelings, and images...that's one proof of this connection.
i am glad these has made a difference in your personal life because I think that training the mind is just as important as training your body. I will be sure to practice this with my personal training. I had a problem with my cd but I caught onto the point of the exercise so I think I will just put on some calming music and practice it :-).
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