This month I have handed the article writing to my college Wendy. Wendy recently relocated to the Spalding area and joined the team
at Essential Well-Being to run meditation workshops and classes on Monday evenings at our clinic, Essential Well-being, 9 London Road Spalding Lincs.
Wendy is passionate about Meditation and Mindfulness and believes we can all benefit from taking a bit of time out to relax the brain. She is a qualified teacher with the British School of Meditation, so over to Wendy:
My interest in meditation started at a young age but harsh life lessons firmly placed me on its path and since then I have been passionate about meditation and how essential it is to my well-being. This has led me to want to share it and make it as accessible as possible to people.
So why meditate? Well there are so many benefits to meditation. However, people come to meditation for many different reasons, examples include; to reduce their stress, to increase their creativity, to improve self-awareness, to feel calmer, to help them sleep, to combat anxiety, to name just a few.
There are many forms of meditation from different traditions. These can include working with the breath, the body, sounds, movement, visualisations or repeating phrases.
Each of these can have a different effect and bring with it a different benefit. Many of these benefits are now supported by scientific evidence. What we do know is that the human brain is not hardwired; neuroplasticity means the brain has the ability to change.
Since the brain is pivotal in all we think and do then by harnessing this neuroplasticity we can improve ourselves; how we react to what life throws at us, how we treat others, how we want to be treated and how we feel.
Meditation offers us the opportunity to work with our thoughts and emotions. It is a tool and life skill that we can tap in to any time. One size does not fit all when you start meditating, you may love one kind of meditation and emphatically dislike another. You can also change your likes and dislikes as you learn different techniques. So even if you have tried to meditate before, do try again. Sometimes the issue is the technique, the teacher, the environment or simply you were not ready last time.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Sharon Salzberg, a pioneer in the field of meditation in the West:
‘We don’t meditate to get better at meditating – we meditate to get better at life’
For more information contact Essential Well-being on 01775 249425