2023-06-17 06:11:01
The most widespread excuse for not start meditating we don’t have time. For the Alicante psychologist Belén Colomina that is not an obstacle. For those who think that to meditate It is useless or they do not know where to start, the expert has just published The healing power of silence (Ed. Grijalbo, 2023), a book that invites us to do precisely that: to transform our mind and reaches the welfare through the meditation. “We have normalized very high levels of stresslive with anxietywith demands, with self-criticismcon irritabilitywith accumulated tasks, with sleep bad… when one of the most important things we have to do in our day-to-day life is meet our needs, desires. It seems we have forgotten that our welfare It depends on us, that we cultivate and train it. Learn to alleviate that suffering is one of the goals of the meditation“. Because, as she tells us in this interview, “the meditation is nothing other than familiarizing your mind with the silence and the calmwith what heals her”.
Training the mind in calm is a daily task
Is there any way to become aware of the amount of mental noise that lives in us and how it makes us suffer?
We have signs every day. If we look at our daily habits, they tell us if we are living harmoniously or accumulating suffering. If at the end of the day what you say is “what a horrible day!” and you are left alone with the worries and the negative, you are living badly; If when reviewing your day you stay with the positive things that have happened to you despite the difficulties, you live. In the second case, your mind has been receptive to observe and attend instead of negative thoughts that, in the end, they will generate a monster that is bigger and bigger and more complex to see. On many occasions, people only wake up when suffers a crisisand panic attacka diseasea death, something that stops us before life. Then there is an awareness and the question arises: What Am I doing with my life? That is why I have written this book, so that we can be aware of the mental suffering in which we live without the need to suffer a serious symptom or a major imbalance that stops us.
Do you have to train the mind every day?
It’s the only way to get the Healthy habits what do you need. We are accustomed to to reset our computers to update them, however, we do not do the same with our mind. we don’t stop to cleanse it, to detoxify it… It is an educational problem for the whole of society: we have not learned to realize that living in noise o multistimulus it is not healthy.
Mental noise is a factory of suffering
Fast life, multitasking, ect… does not benefit our mind. We need to slow down the rush and the noise.
Where does the noise come from? Does it come from outside or is it produced by our mind?
It is on both sides but the one that creates the most suffering is the interior: worries, ruminations, catastrophic fantasies, fears, demands, self-criticism… It is our way of managing the different moments of life that really generates noise or calm and regulation. The greatest cause of internal suffering is our speaking mind and the one that our greatest ally is the experiential mind: return to the senses, to more organic cycles. We have the great power to generate suffering for our mind or, on the contrary, to restore calm, to alleviate it. But for that we need listen internally. if my level internal noise is very loud I will not be able to hear my need to stop, to share, to increase my social life, to laugh… I will live in the constant dissatisfaction.
We have taken away that knowledge and experience from current childhood and adolescence by putting a mobile phone in their hand…
Statistics show the results of this reality: an increase in cases of depression, anxiety, suicide attempts in teenagers. It is a worrying fact that we should take care of as adults. We are responsible for the world that we are presenting to you. They are not the future, they are a present. Technology, computers, virtual reality has grown at such a speed that we have not been able to regulate it and attend to it at an educational level. Children and young people have not had time to develop internal skills of contact with themselves, of honesty and self esteem.
What is mental noise like in a child or adolescent?
His world is the comparisonsthe external face, the how show out. In addition, social media validates a lot the criticism, not answering… things that we would not validate in person because we would consider it a lack of respect or education. They are exposed to a aggressiveness growing without realizing it. He bullyngFor example, before he stuck to the class or around the school, now even his rooms at home have ceased to be safe places because contempt, emptiness, disrespect, criticism of your physique carry them in your pocket. If that harms an adult, a teenager who is forming his identity worse, because it is much more vulnerable. We are not protecting them enough or educating them in safe limits within the technology. The solution is not to take away the technology but to set safe and nurturing boundaries. Faced with so much stimulation, children and young people need to train genuine contact with themselves through internal silence, harmonizing your mind and calming it. Your mind needs to be a safe place in which to choose where to deposit time, trust in relationships, company.
The mind is our refuge to connect with ourselves
Meditation helps us calm down and reset the mind. We can practice it in motion.
We can be tempted to calm mental noise with technology, addictions… And the whiting bites its tail.
When we seek to alleviate a emptya dissatisfaction o one internal noisea talking mind… with external noise and I start a flight forward in technologies, for example, what will happen is that my anxiety because it is a avoidance to regulate and heal what really occupies my mind. We need to not be afraid of our mind, moreover, we need to understand it, to know it. The meditation is an invitation to explore it, to create a internal observatory of all my mental movements without aversion and learn to discern what is noise, what is of no use to me or what is straw, from what is important to my life. Just a 30 per cent What occupies our mind is relevant to us. Most of the noise is there every day, distorting and generating mental load. We have an average of 20,000 thoughts and 70% we repeat them, it is noise. We are very heavy with ourselves.
Does meditation help?
To meditate helps us learn to use the potential of our mind effectively, getting to know it, inquiring into our internal processes from the calmfrom self-respect to discern and choose, not increase our suffering or make a forward avoidance with yourtechnologies, addictions, compulsive relationships… that increase our dissatisfaction.
A practical example of meditation
If meditation still inspires us with respect, can we initiate it through action?
That would be meditation informal and non-formal, which is the one in which we set aside time a day. But all are valid, the important thing is the intention to initiate you. Informal meditation offers us opportunities 24 hours. It does not take special time but to change the quality of your time, to change how do you live your time and your activities. Most of the journeys we make per day are made in autopilotFor example, when we go to work we do not know anything about what is happening around us. We eat without paying attention, looking at the mobile; we shower thinking about the meeting we have. We live in a state of wandering mind and wandering that jumps from one thought to another, generating a large amount of noise, worries, fears, pending tasks… We need to ground it, rest it, detoxify it, reset it, oxygenate it and from there establish positive qualities such as learning to focus on the good things in the world. day or an activity. We will alleviate much of the suffering and mental load that we accumulate The meditation It is nothing other than cultivating and familiarizing your mind with virtuous states, not in noise and dissatisfaction, but in what heals it.
Can you give us an example?
Naps walkingtake a walk, contemplate the landscape, activate your sensesListen to the birds, the breeze of the wind on your skin, the changes in light, feel your body as you walk, your breath. Activate your experiential mind. if you can do it 5 minutes a day you will have made a great meditation.
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