In today’s busy world, we’re beginning to lose touch with the important things in life and two wellness experts have argued that meditation can help us to reconnect. According to Erica Richardson, resident teacher at the Kalpa Bhadra Kadampa Buddhist Center in Harrisburg, ‘Our external life is so very busy and our internal life is just as busy. We put so much time, so much effort into arranging our lives, arranging our world and arranging other people, trying to make it all go our way that we’ve neglected our mind. We’ve forgotten — or never knew — where real happiness comes from.’
Richardson explained, ‘The goal is to find happiness from a different source, instead of trying to manipulate our world to our definition of what we want, we are going to go inside our minds and cultivate inner peace. Meditation is being able to familiarise my mind with a positive state of being.’ She added that the more familiar you become with emotional wellbeing, the easier it is to remain in your calm state of mind, even when you’re not meditating.
Dr Charles Palmer, neonatologist and chief of the division of newborn medicine at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Centre, noted, ‘It’s not just thoughts it’s the state behind thoughts. The quietness, or stillness, between thoughts is what you get to experience in meditation and that’s a new experience for some people.’ He continued, ‘People are not only interested in getting better from a disease, but they are interested in maximizing wellness and health. And that includes diet, exercise, correct nutrition, sleep, and various techniques from positive psychology and also meditation.’
Palmer is a long-time student of meditation who teaches a free monthly meditation class to 30 staff members at Hershey Medical Centre. He commented, ‘It’s like in an orchestra, a violinist needs a tune up before they start playing. When you’ve been practicing meditation at the beginning of the day, it’s like tuning up for the day.’ So how exactly does meditation tune your body for the day?
‘The mind-body connection is well-established now. What you think is as important to your body chemistry as what you eat. Because your thoughts will generate emotions and your emotions will generate chemistry,’ Palmer said. ‘When you practice breathing regularly like this it has an effect on the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve, when stimulated, actually lowers inflammation and inflammation is at the root of many of the diseases that we see today. I think [meditation] is a form of immune regulation.’