Meditation is valuable!

Renee Lehman

(11/2018) This summer, 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, were rescued after being trapped in the flooded Tham Luang cave. The press covered every moment of their rescue by a team of Thai navy SEALS and other international divers. Rightly so, this rescue was celebrated around the world. What we did not hear much about was the state of the boys when they were first discovered by a pair of British divers nine days after they went missing.

The 11 to 16-year-old boys were not crying or screaming. They and their 25-year-old coach were sitting quietly in the dark, meditating. Yes, they were meditating. Chanthawong, a former Buddhist monk, meditates daily. He taught and guided the boys in meditation to keep the boys calmly breathing and emotionally balanced during this endeavor. The meditation was also credited in helping the boys conserve their energy while they were in the cave.

While in the cave, Chanthawong taught the boys the basic principles of meditation, specifically, how to keep themselves calm. He did not keep them calm. He taught the boys how they each could keep themselves calm. This is an important distinction to be made. Chanthawong taught each boy how to connect with their own peacefulness and inner stillness.

This Needs To Be Celebrated!

Meditation needs to be celebrated! The idea that meditation would be useful in extremely stressful situation, like being trapped in a cave, is no surprise. Buddhist meditation has been around for over 2,000 years to decrease suffering and achieve inner peace. Today, meditation is used by many people to decrease stress on the mind and body, and for general health and well-being.

Meditation Research:

In a 2012 study by Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, meditation was found to help us cope with stressful situations. More recently, he has found that people who meditated were able to savor positive emotions.

A 2014 study by Johns Hopkins researchers for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found that meditation, and mindfulness, can have a role in treating depression, anxiety, and pain in adults — as much as medications but with no side effects. Meditation can also, to a lesser degree, reduce the toll of psychological distress, the review found.

Finally, evidence has been increasing that people with chronic diseases (including heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and arthritis) can gain benefit from using meditation. Currently, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is investigating the effects of meditation on post-traumatic stress disorder, on pain regulation, high blood pressure, stress reduction for urban youth, and depression (clinicaltrials.gov).

Forms of Meditation:

Basically, there are 2 categories of meditation. One category is classified as concentrative and the other is non-concentrative. Concentrative forms have the meditator focus attention on a single stimulus (for example, a sound, their breath, thought, or word) for a specific time. Non-concentrative forms have the meditator paying attention (or observing), in a nonjudgmental way to his/her thoughts (for example, observing a fear that comes up and not reacting to it, instead, just watching it). Keep in mind that all forms of meditation have the common objective of calming the activity of the mind (monkey mind) so that your focus can be turned inward. This will then bring stillness, and you will experience peace and contentment that lies within you. See the table below for examples of these two forms of meditation.

Concentrative Forms:

Transcendental Meditation (TM) - was brought to the United States from India in the mid-1960s by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It is relatively simple and involves the continuous chanting of a mantra (a word or sound) while sitting in a comfortable position. You can either repeat it aloud or in your head. The purpose of repeating the mantra is to prevent your mind from wandering. If other thoughts do enter your mind, be passive, and don’t fight them. Let them come in and out of your mind and return to your mantra.

Breathing Meditation - is about watching and being aware of your breath during meditating. Start by staying in a comfortable position and close your eyes and pay attention to your breathing. Take long, slow breaths through your nose to work your diaphragm and allow oxygen to the bottom of your lungs. Pause for a few seconds and then exhale slower than your inhale. As your mind wanders, re-focus on the air going in and out of your nose and throughout your body.

Walking Meditation - involves meditating while walking or even during a run. As your mind starts to wander, concentrate on the movement of body parts and your breathing. Pay attention to the feeling of your feet as it touches the ground.

Non-Concentrative Forms:

Mindfulness Meditation originates from the Buddhist tradition. It is about focusing on what is happening around you and being aware of your thoughts and feelings during the process of meditating. There should be no judging of your thoughts. Rather, your thoughts should be observed intentionally and nonjudgmentally, moment by moment. You can start by watching your breath, then move your attention to the thoughts in your mind and even the sounds and sights surrounding you.

We can all learn an important lesson from Chanthawong and the 12 boys. If meditation helped to save their lives (which I believe it did), it can help to save your life, too. When will you try meditation? Start right now. Put down the paper for a few minutes and just focus on your breath. What have you got to lose?

"Half an hour's meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy.
Then a full hour is needed." - Saint Francis de Sales

"Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work." - Thich Nhat Hanh

Renee Lehman is a licensed acupuncturist and physical therapist with over 30 years of health care experience. Her office is located at 249B York Street in Gettysburg,. She can be reached at 717-752-5728.