Meditation For the New Year

By Tracy Soltesz, LAc, MAc

Kunlun Mountain Acupuncture, Inc.

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Meditation For the New Year

Incorporating a meditative practice into your life is an important foundation that supports success in all your New Year resolutions.

All forms of meditation fit into one of two categories meditation with seed and meditation without seed. In meditation with seed, the mind focuses on a mantra, flame, or the rhythm of the breath. While this form of meditation may be easier for the beginner, ultimately it doesn't change the brain's thought patterns. Rather, it replaces the negative object being focused upon with a neutral or positive object. During times of great physical or emotional stress, the mind is likely to return its focus to the negative.

Meditation without seed allows one to experience freedom from the mind's constant chatter by letting go of the object completely and focusing on no-thing. By sitting still, relaxing, paying attention, and having no relationship with the content of consciousness, one becomes free from the movements of the conditioned mind. Thoughts still rise and fall, but you do not follow this movement, you simply let it be as it is.

Holding a meditative posture of no relationship to the content of thought, it does not matter whether the meditation session was blissful or it was a struggle. When you walk away from the meditation pillow, you also let go of your judgments of the experience. The practice itself, done with commitment and consistency on a daily basis, is what delivers benefit.

Even if one only meditates 30 minutes each day, one will see benefits. Both meditative forms are shown in studies to reduce blood pressure and inflammation, and promote speedier recovery from injuries. Meditation without seed also allows the practitioner a degree of freedom from health conditions and symptoms that are made worse by our mind's perceptions, such as chronic pain, or troubling thought patterns and emotions that may result in insomnia, depression, mania, and imbalances in body hormones that are regulated by various brain activity centers.

As you develop freedom from your conditioned thought patterns, you can more effectively accomplish your other New Year goals with a degree of greater ease. That little voice that wants to eat the cupcake or just doesn't feel like exercising today will still be there. But with your meditative practice, you are now able to rise above that voice and accomplish your goal despite the temporary inertia and feelings created by such negative thoughts.