Yoga and meditation

Yoga and meditation are excellent ways to reduce stress. They facilitate both the unlocking and the processing (discharging) of the stress. Many people in the western world look with a suspicious eye at these methods, that came to us from the far east. Yet yoga and meditation have been subject to countless research here in the west. Many western doctors and researchers confirmed the beneficial effects.

Yoga

There are two distinguished forms of yoga. There is physical and mental yoga. We will discuss the in the article below about meditation. In physical yoga, by taking various physical postures, one tries to bring the mind to profound rest. These postures also support the neural pathways. These are the connecting paths that lie between the nerve cells and nerve centers in our nervous system. Through this rest and stimulation of the neural pathways, the de-stressing mechanism starts. This facilitates the discharge of the stress.

Yoga is a good method to reduce stress. However one must be careful with some of the breathing exercises of yoga, especially if one suffers from chronic hyperventilation. This mainly concerns breathing exercises with fast in- and exhaling. We advise you not to do these exercises if you suffer from chronic hyperventilation.

Meditation

Meditation is a mental form of yoga. There are many types of meditation. One tries to get the highest possible level of mental rest in the nervous system in various ways. The extremely high rest level during meditation activates the release mechanism of the nervous system to a great extent. After the meditation, the stress that is released is processed during the daily activities. And of course also during sleep in the form of dreams.

Transcendental meditation

Transcendental meditation deserves special attention, due to a number of reasons:

1. During this meditation form, the level of mental rest is unprecedented. This has a great positive effect on the natural stress release mechanism of the nervous system.
2. This form of meditation teaches the practitioner to adopt an unsuspecting attitude towards the stress that is released from the subconscious mind. This is key to discharge the stress properly.
3. Transcendental meditation opens new neural pathways to the subconscious mind. This also releases the deep-seated stress. 

Transcendental meditation works with a mantra (a sound without meaning). This sound is repeated in thought quietly and unconstrained. If you do this in the right way – and you can only learn from a real meditation teacher – then the mind will transcend. What happens is that the mind opens new neural pathways to the subconscious. The consciousness widens through this. The subconscious mind becomes smaller.

The newly opened neural pathways release the stress that is stored in the subconscious. Because the transcendental meditation is dosed (2 x 20 minutes per day), the amount of stress released by this process is manageable. Because the transcending opens up the subconscious, it can also release older and deeper rooted stress in the nervous system.

You do not need to adopt special physical attitudes for this type of meditation. You can do this, sitting on a regular chair or sofa.

Haze of mysticism

Unfortunately, there is a haze of mysticism about transcendental meditation. The reason for this is, that this technique can to the west from the old India., brought by the Indian yogi (= teacher) Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Because of this mystical decoration many people in the west turn away. And that is a shame because the meditation technique works. It is an express train for reducing stress. For that matter, a lot of scientific research has been done into this form of meditation. In research – above all – the high level of rest is evident.

If you want more information about Transcendental Meditation (TM), please visit the website at www.tm.org. We advise you to learn the TM technique and take the mystical haze around it for granted.

---