Meditation is an extremely effective defense against stress and all of its side effects. The single minded focus techniques used in guided meditation help to train your mind to be able to control and reduce all the chatter that goes on incessantly between your ears when stress is high.
When stressed out it's difficult to sit and quiet our minds. There is so much going on inside our heads. Unless you’ve practiced meditation for a long time and are able to quiet your mind by simply sitting, you’ll find meditation to be frustrating and will most likely give up quickly. It takes practice to be able to quiet all that chatter. And stress increases the chatter. The more stressed out we are the more chatter there is and the more difficult it is to stop it.
That's what stress does - it winds our minds up so tight that it's almost impossible to just sit and be quiet. When we do sit and attempt to quiet our minds, all of the stuff we’re worried about comes up. The more stress we have, the more stuff that comes up and the more quickly it comes – one thing after another, an incessant stream of thoughts that we obsess on – over and over again. Stress reminds me of a tightly wrapped rubber band – all wound up inside my head and body. Some activities can alleviate it temporarily by distracting our minds but to get rid of it we have to get control of our minds. Exercise is a great way of getting stress out of our bodies and don’t get me wrong, it is essential to remove stress from our bodies, but unless you’re willing to exercise all the time, it will come back soon after you stop. Exercise takes care of the effects of stress but not the cause. Only by taking control of our minds will we be able to remove the cause of stress. Meditation serves to diminish and eventually remove the incessant chatter. And it is the chatter that stresses us out. If we didn’t worry about all of the stuff in our life, it would all happen anyway and we’d just get through it. Worrying doesn’t solve or remove any of it – it just makes life more difficult because we’re always thinking about it.
Guided meditations help because instead of having to try to stop the chatter by ourselves, we have a voice guiding us into a state of calmness. The process of listening to another’s voice tends to put the chatter of our own minds in the background for just long enough so that we can get to that state of calmness. Listening is an active process that requires focus. While we’re focusing on the voice guiding the meditation, the chatter takes a back seat and loses some of its power and control over our minds. Continued practice takes more and more control away from the chatter until eventually it loses its power and we are able to simply brush it aside when it appears.
We have a free guided meditation that you can download on our website that you may find helpful. If you find that when closing your eyes it is still too difficult to stay focused, try the video version – you can then watch and listen to the meditation at the same time. Both versions are free – so give them a try. Here is the link to both audio and video versions of our free guided meditations:
Heart Centering Free Guided Meditation |
