let nature heal you

 

My hike in the woods this week was more about meditation than getting exercise. It was silent, and still, and peaceful out there. It slowed me down. I paused to meditate for a few minutes every so often. Finally, I just sat down and let everything else go.

"Sometimes you find yourself

in the middle of nowhere,

and sometimes in the middle of nowhere 

you find yourself."

~A Living Rock~

~Circe Sola~

I've been studying, and practicing one form of meditation or another for over fifty years. As far as I know, none of my friends or colleagues practices it, although I do know several women who practice various other forms of energy healing, including accupuncture, therapeutic touch, neurofeedback, hypnosis, and Reiki. Most traditional Western providers shun these techniques out of ignorance, or disdain, or denial. But I've seen them work for others...and they have worked for me, so I have an intuitive attraction to them. 

While there are many other forms of meditation, these are some I practice:  

• Insight meditation involves focusing the attention to let go of the cascade of thoughts that pass constantly through the mind. A basic training involves simply observing one's breath in order to achieve a state of calm, clarity, and detachment, letting go of thoughts as they arise.
• Mindfulness meditation teaches us to maintain moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts and feelings without judgement, in order to see things as they are in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or projecting into the future. 
• Loving-kindness meditation is the practice of sending loving intention to yourself, to the people you love, to people you recognize but don't really know, and finally, to people who have offended you. It usually involves an invocation. Mine goes like this:

May you be happy

May you be healthy.

May you be safe.

May you dwell in peace and loving kindness.

My practice goes on to include all people, especially the suffering, to all animals including pets, to farm animals who die painful deaths so we can eat meat, to animals in the wild, to sea creatures, and from there to the environment. It takes about thirty minutes depending upon how detailed I get.

• Tonglen involves the mental process of taking on the suffering of another person with the in-breath, and sending them peace, comfort, and love on the out-breath, starting with people you love, moving to people who are neutral in your life, and ending with those who are hard for you to love.
• Mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) integrates yoga and mindfulness with science and Western medicine to reduce stress, anxiety, illness, and chronic pain.

"If meditation were a drug,

failure to prescribe it would

constitute medical malpractice."

~Robert Delozier, MD~

• ECO meditation ("energy ecology meditation") uses methods that retrain the brain to avoid defaulting to conditioned or learned patterns of reactivity that reinforce negative emotions such as anger, hatred, and fear. Instead, we learn to reframe our emotional reactions and behaviors to acceptance/tolerance, compassion, and loving-kindness. It utilizes Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) such as tapping accupressure end-points.
•  Guided imagery is another technique that can lead the meditator to a peaceful, loving emotional state.

"Of all the paths you take in life,

make sure a few of them are dirt."

~John Muir~

Meditation is a restorative practice, and mindfulness is its foundation. Among its numerous health benefits are stress reduction and the accompnying decrease in blood pressure and cortisol levels, reduction in measurements of systemic inflammation, and therefore, improvement in the immune system, alleviation of chronic pain, and management of PTSD.

If you are a health care provider, you should explore every option, every path to healing for your patients. If you are in need of healing, in addition to the surgery you need, or the chemotherapy or antidepressant you are taking, consider this:

"Go home to nature

and let nature heal you."

~Thich Nhat Hanh~

jan