By Volunteer | Posted: April 23, 2020
“In meditation, healing can happen. When the mind is calm, alert and totally content, then it is like a laser beam – it is very powerful and healing can happen.”
- Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Turbulent times call for adaptability. If you are feeling more than your usual stress loads, meditation is the answer to surviving and even blossoming. Just like how only a healthy bud can blossom, only when we are truly healthy, truly peaceful, can we blossom to our full potential. To attain an ideal state of health and manage crises, one has to be mentally calm, steady, and emotionally stable. ‘Swasthya’ means health, and it also means being in one's self. Swasthya, or health, is not just confined to the body and the mind, but is also connected with consciousness. The clearer one’s consciousness, the more one’s sense of well-being increases.
Listed below are 5 ways how meditation has the power to heal.
1. Meditation increases prana (life energy)
Prana (life energy) is the basis of health and well-being for both the body and mind. You can gain prana through meditation. When your body is alive with more prana, you feel alert, energetic, and full of life. Lack of prana results in lethargy, dullness, and low enthusiasm levels.
2. Meditation heals illness
Meditation increases your immunity and helps you release accumulated stress. It helps improve health, ups the happiness quotient, and sustains a positive state of mind, all essential ingredients for our mind-body connection and physical health.
Meditation, simply put, is like the servicing of the body-mind complex.It is said the root of an illness is in the mind/consciousness. So, by attending to the mind, clearing it of any disturbances, recovery can speed up. In traditional Ayurvedic thought, illnesses can develop from:
A violation of natural balances: for example, overeating
Viral and contagious disease: for example, common cold, or an epidemic
A spiritual release of past impressions or karma
Nature itself provides a cure for these illnesses. Health and illness are a part of our physical nature. The practice of meditation helps to let go of stress, worries, and anxieties, which results in a positive state of mind, which in turn has a positive impact on the physical body, brain, and nervous system. Consequently, illness decreases.
When you worry about illness, you give more power to it. You must remember that you are a combination of health and illness. When you know this and have a positive state of mind, then illnesses gradually disappear.
3. Meditation clears emotional problems
The words that you hear from people around you affect your state of mind. They either give you peace and joy or create negative emotions, such as jealousy, anger, frustration or sadness. You are affected because the mind is not centered. Meditation is a key to clear away the emotional issues. To experience firsthand a little of what meditation can do for you, join this free master class to learn simple tools to transform your life.
4. Meditation helps you blossom from within
Meditation can bring about a spiritual transformation. As you learn more about life, the mystery of the whole of creation unfolds. The questions that arise in the mind are - what is the meaning of life, what is its purpose, what is this world, what is love, what is knowledge?
Once these questions arise in you, know that you are fortunate. These questions need to be understood inherently: you cannot find the answers in books. You have to live through them and witness the transformation. When you are transformed from within, you’re on your way to better health.
5. Meditation helps you heal the world
Meditation purifies the environment. Meditation has transformed aggression and violence to compassion, love, and care in many populations. When you enter a place where someone is angry, the energy of that place is not pleasing. Similarly, when there is a harmonious or a happy activity, then that place has a different vibe. Feelings are not isolated in one's body: they are all around. If there is a fire somewhere, the heat is not just in the fire--it is also radiating through its environment. Similarly, if you are unhappy or depressed, you are not the only one who is feeling it, you are also spreading it through your surroundings.
In the current global situation of conflicts and disease, it's important to meditate for a short while every day. Through meditation, you can nullify the negative vibrations in the environment, thereby creating a more harmonious environment for all to enjoy.
The Sudarshan Kriya
The cornerstone of Art of Living programs is the healing breath known as the Sudarshan Kriya. This unique breathing practice is a potent energizer, with the following benefits:
every cell becomes fully oxygenated and flooded with new life
flushes out negative emotions from the body
releases tensions, frustrations and anger
clears anxiety, depression, and lethargy
gives relief to both the mind and body
takes you to the door of meditation
With regular practice, one becomes calm and centered with a clearer mind. A sense of joy in the moment prevails, and one is able to smile from the heart. The benefits of meditation are innumerable, and each and every human must tap into their inner being for a more enriched living.
Take this opportunity to enjoy a Free Online Master Class on how to calm the mind and change your life.
This article first appeared on the Art of Living India blog.
