Meditation - 禪 (3 minutes read)

It‘s weekend and for most of us it‘s the time to relax and forget the stress of the week. What is it what we do to relieve our stress and relax body and mind? Normally our relaxation consists of distraction, for example watching movies. But how about changing our mind at the root and get better in managing the daily stress so we don‘t need all that distraction that seems to be just a short time cure till all the stress starts again?

There are existing so many mediation styles and for the start you really don‘t know where and how to begin because every practise is different. And we need to get rid of prejudices like mediation is only for monks. Or that you need to be flexible in order to do the full lotus posture. It‘s definitely not like that!

Meditation is for everyone and I think it gets more and more important in our world of so much digital input every day. We just need to learn how to relax our mind so our body can also relax.

The simple form of mediation which the monks taught me at the Shaolin temple was that at first you need to do your exercises. You can do whatever you want,like jogging, swimming, playing football etc. But your body needs to be kind of exhausted so it‘s easier to relax while you meditate. For the beginning it really helps because like that you won‘t be so distracted every time and you can focus better.

The posture of mediation isn‘t relevant but you should choose a posture which is somehow balanced －not too comfortable or you will fall asleep but also not too difficult so you can‘t proceed your practise. The Shaolin monks use the Full Lotus posture, called 雙盤 (Shuangpan, double plate) or 金盤 (Jinpan, golden plate) but it‘s absolutely not necessary to do that at the beginning. Everything should be easy enough so it will be easier to start a daily routine.
The mind - the most important part - only needs to focus on inhaling and exhaling – nothing more.

Do that every day for just a couple of minutes and you will realise that it‘s really hard not to get distracted by other thoughts while practising. The important thing is to develop your focus. If you manage to focus only on your breath for a long period of time your stress will be less. If you are a student (which apparently everyone of us is) you will get better at learning, if you work, you get better in what you are doing and more effective just because of focus.

The Chinese word for Meditation is禪 (Chan), which comes from the Sanskrit word Dhyanna which is also linguistically connected to „A focused state of mind“. The Japanese call the character 禪 Zen.

Have a nice weekend and see you the next time :)