How Meditation Exercises Can Improve Your Body and Your Mind
Sometimes it seems the idea of meditation exercises are the work it takes to get into the lotus position and moreover, how to get out of it. But as you research various meditation approaches to find the one that is just right for you, you will find a variety of meditation exercises that combine the good of a physical discipline with the value that meditation can bring to your mind and spirit.
We now know that the mind and the body do not function independently from one another. That is why the heart of any good meditation exercise program is a good discipline of breath control. If you pay attention to athletes when they work out, you see them using breath control very effectively with they are striving for their goals as well. So we can combine a discipline of physical and meditation exercises to come away from our “work out” refreshed in more than one way.
Putting Yourself in the Right Frame of Mind.
Any exercise program, even a program of meditation exercises starts with mental preparation. The race, they say, is won in the mind. So as you prepare for your routine of meditation exercises, a short period of contemplation to look ahead at the work you are about to put your mind and body through is in order. It is during this time that you will do your initial breathing regimen that will put your body and your mind into a state of calm that you can draw from if your meditation exercise program is rigorous.
But more than that, you are starting the meditation part of the meditation exercise program which you are going to sustain throughout the physical element of the work out. At no time does it stop being meditation or stop being exercise. The combination of the two disciplines cleans your soul and body at the same time, which is tremendously invigorating and healthy.
Working Your Program
Once you have entered into a meditative state, you can begin the physical portion of your meditation exercise. You should select your physical exercises for both their physical value and for how they contribute to your contemplative state as well. As your exertion continues, you want your meditation exercise to remain unbroken and only helped by the physical stress you are putting yourself through. In ancient days, monks would stay in a state of meditation exercise for days because their duties were solitary and demanding and they could rise above them via their meditative disciplines which worked to both tune the mind and the body at the same time.
Solitary meditation exercises where you can continue your internal contemplations work better than social programs that not only would require you to focus on the interaction but could become disturbing to your sense of peace. As such basketball, while a fine sport in it’s own right, is not a good choice for a meditation exercise whereas long distance running or swimming is just right.
Endurance and Determination
With both meditation and exercise, when done separately, there is a level of determination that you are going to finish the standard that you set each day. You don’t start out meditating for an hour a day. It takes practice and the building of the mental “muscle” to have that kind of stamina to endure a meditation exercise of that length.
This is true of a physical endurance program as well. So when combining the two to design a meditation exercise program, you will use that preparation time to set the standard that you will reach and then reach it because there is a part of you deep down that is not going to accept less. That “toughness” both makes your meditation exercise program stronger, it is a direct outcome of the work you are doing to refine your sense of self, as is often the positive outcome of any meditation regimen.
Winning the Race
When you were first learning how to use the discipline of meditation, the focus was on learning how to enter, sustain and then finalize your contemplative state. But a silent “tension” of your purely contemplative part of meditation exercise is that you set a goal for each session. And meeting that goal gives you that sense of accomplishment and self worth that is part of the reward of the program.
This sensation of “winning the race” continues as you expand your program to include meditation exercise. Since physical exertion is even more measurable, you can set a goal a bit higher with each session or week and reach that goal giving you that short-term completion satisfaction that helps keep your program going.
But don’t forget that your sense of winning now is a combination of the joy of success at the physical level and the sustaining of your contemplative program throughout your exercise.
When one goes on without the other, the win is not complete. And like any program, continued patience, endurance, unwillingness to give up and determination will eventually give you the reward from both meditation and exercise and especially from the rewards that doing both will give you both in the short and long term.
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