Mindful Meditation

In the 21^st century there is all this talk about our unprecedented fast paced world in which everyone is too busy to notice things and even busier to stop and care about what is going on around us until and unless it affects our lives and our paychecks. In recent years people have started to realise this accelerated lifestyle is detrimental to our mental health and we see that more than three fourths of the world population now suffers from all sorts of psychiatric disorders especially anxiety.

Anxiety is not a human being’s natural disposition or the result of a chemical imbalance on the contrary it is a byproduct of our stressful consumer lifestyles. Yoga and meditation seem to be gaining great momentum in both the West and the East as a new and more moderate way to counter stress as opposed to the wide array of anti depressants and nerve relaxants used in previous years.

Being an active member of society who is also prone to excessive stress and a severe lack of time to pursue other interests, I also decided to tap into the meditation fad. Once I began to try sitting quietly in a room concentrating on nothing but my breath while simultaneously trying to rid my mind of thoughts, I realised why people said it was no easy task although it seems that doing nothing is probably the easiest thing to do or not do. So I went down the path of “guided meditation”.

This is essentially a guided audio guide that tells you how to relax your mind and unwind while eliminating all stressful thoughts revolving around the new pair of shoes that are too expensive to buy and the party that requires too much time to get ready for. It tells you to think about your soul and your chakras and see your body as more than a vessel to live day to day and learn to value it as a prized possession. These guided meditations are available on Youtube and you can do test runs of various meditation gurus till you find one that best suits you. The reason that it is important to take out at least 15 to 20 minutes to meditate every day is so that we can give our minds that much needed break from our fast paced stressful lives and our overburdened minds that are exposed to endless streams of information every second of everyday thanks to social media apps like Instagram and Facebook.

When you sit in silence and relieve your mind for even 15 minutes you learn to relax your mind and body and finally catch a momentary break to sustain that sanity that is constantly under threat in the 21^st century.