What good is meditation?

"I have a busy life, I don't have time to just sit and do nothing." "How is sitting on my bum going to help me get the report done on time?" "I can't think of 'nothing,' there's always something that pops into my head!"

These are questions I still deal with frequently, and I have been actively practicing meditation for over twenty years. (And yes, I still have a "day job" as a programmer in a high-pressure research-and-development firm with some even higher-pressure clients.)

Whatever I do, I tend to pour my whole heart into doing it. When I am composing and performing music, I become the music. When I am with close friends or my sled dogs, I am fully present with them. And when I am programming, I focus so much of myself into the problem-solving that I feel a lot like I become more like a program than a human being.

If I am going to be able to do any of the things I do, well, I am going to need to be able to recharge my batteries after giving my all to a particular part of my life.

Taking just 10 minutes to "cleanse my pallette," re-center myself, allows me to come back to "being human" again. 10 minutes of even the simplest of meditation helps me to shed the thought, feeling, and energy patterns that come into being whenever I do one thing for an extended period of time. It helps me to think and respond more flexibly and appropriately, (for example, to speak more from the mind when talking with others, rather than from the wordless heart-centers from which my music flows).


On a more serious note, meditation saved my life when I was struggling through the worst periods in the years after my divorce.

I had PTSD from the events surrounding the divorce and lived in terror. My instincts had been singed so badly that I felt I had to always be tensed for the next horrible thing to happen.

After the initial shock, I would meditate when I felt at my worst... and I would begin to feel better, so I would stop. And strangely enough, I began to feel worse again within a few days.

The cycle worried me -- had I become bipolar?

I tried an experiment; I meditated every day whether I felt like I needed it or not.

I began to feel better... and I remained feeling better.

It was then that the saying that, "Meditation is exercise for your mind," finally made sense to me.

The traumas I had suffered had left my mind/heart weakened, just as a physical trauma can leave a body weakened. Physical therapy helps a person build strength in their weakened body until they can once again do all that they had been able to do before.

Meditation seems to have this same kind of healing effect on a mind/heart that is recovering from traumas that leave no clear mark on the body.


"...Traumas that leave no clear mark upon the body."

Did a parent or a teacher ever say to you when you were growing up, "If you keep making that face, it might stay like that"?

It has been well known for a very long time that our subconscious will make what we are thinking and feeling read clear-as-day on our faces, unless we work hard to stop that from happening.

But from what I've seen, and from what I've experienced personally, I wonder if the effect may be a lot more profound than just a "nonverbal give-away."

Pretty much every thing that goes on within our bodies is regulated to some extent by our brains. Cells devide, our bodies grow in one direction or another, the way we carry ourselves over the years settles our bodies into physical alterations. Work and other burdens can show so clearly upon another's face and figure that we can often guess that a person may be a laborer, a scientist, an artist, or etc.

If guided meditations and medical hypnosis can cause spontaneous regressions of inoperable diseases, or allow surgeries to be performed without chemical anesthetics, the influence of the mind within the body seems to be far-reaching.

What might be the long-term effects of holding chosen, targeted, specific Thought-Feelings within the mind and heart?

The effects would probably not be "instant." Since our bodies take time to change over time, (weights are shifted, muscles are conditioned, etc.) the thoughts and feelings would likely need to be held for brief periods throught a day for many months, perhaps years before our bodies were able to shift enough cells around at our "executive request" to measure a marked change.

At the very least, our subconscious would have gotten the message to affect our cravings, desires, and even our values, to enact changes to posture, preference, diet and lifestyle.

But in the same way that identical twins often after life-experience and personal choices are no longer visually identical... I wonder about the extent of the direction our minds give to the construction of our bodies. And I really wonder about the effect a continual, cohesive stream of mental/emotional "managerial-level" requests on a daily basis, sustained over years, can produce.


I am healing. And part of that healing has found me to discover joy of being within this body of mine. With my consciousness as the manager that guides this pretty miraculous system, I've begun to take a more active, more nurturing role in being a part of this body/mind/spirit union.

I have found it easier over the months and year(s) to project love to this body, and to voice requests in the form of feelings and images, that I would like the cellular workers to focus their own precious work towards.


Constancy... consistency... patience.

(If you continue to "move confidently in the direction of one's dreams..." eventually you shall see progress.)



These experiences, thoughts and questions on medtiation are the core reasons for the private and semi-public Guided Meditations I've created over the years. I am currently working with a speech pathologist in Colorado to help a significant subset of her clientele with Guided Meditations that help to focus direction and go beyond where practice alone can reach.

It is my intent to produce more than just music albums; we shall see what the Universe brings.

Namasté!
Amadhia