Recharging Your Commitment to Yourself with Nondirected Meditation

It’s crucial to tend to your spiritual health, which is what you are going to focus on today. So often, we women focus on everyone else’s needs, neglecting our own and being unfaithful, in a sense, to ourselves.

Finding and connecting with your spiritual core is both intensely personal to your beliefs, needs, and outlook as well as deeply necessary for strength and replenishment. Find time every day to stop, detach yourself momentarily from the hectic pace of ticking things off of to-do lists, and take part in a relaxing or meditative activity.

Being meditative isn’t confined to posing in specific positions or chanting a mantra, although a meditation practice can include these things. You may be surprised to learn that you have the power to change the flow of your brain waves with what is called nondirected meditation, which you can do anywhere, anytime. It's a practice you can easily learn, and you will find that this simple, yet very powerful discipline brings lasting benefit and change to your days well beyond the menopausal years.

Stop and Let Your Mind Wander: It's Good for You!

Research demonstrates that simply stopping for a few minutes to let the mind go where it will without trying to monitor or direct any thoughts results in increased theta and alpha waves in the brain. These brain waves indicate a relaxed, wakeful state even though the brain is not at rest.

At the same time, merely taking a few minutes to allow the mind to wander slows down the beta waves in the brain, which occur when the brain is working on tasks such as planning or organizing. This simple process of increasing theta and alpha waves and decreasing beta waves taps in to your power and can result in a sharper attention span, improved memory, greater relaxation, and reduced stress. With nondirected meditation, your mind remains open and aware, but you take a few minutes to shift from the customary churning thoughts to a more peaceful form of consciousness.


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How To Find and Take the Time for Meditative Moments

With phones ringing, work piling up, family and coworkers clamoring for attention, the computer screen blinking, and possibly even pets expectantly waiting for you to serve them, you might think that finding time for meditation will be impossible. Here are the three main things to remember about daily meditative time:

1. It doesn’t have to take hours. You can try nondirected meditation for just three to five minutes at a time.

2. Quiet, meditative time is just as important to your health as good food, rest, and exercise.

3. You can create your own meditative moments, in the style and at the time that pleases and suits you.

Where and when you choose to take this time is up to you. No one else can provide this calming and grounding experience for you, so take the opportunity to identify the forms of meditation that work best for you. Here are some suggestions:

* Before you reach for your car keys to get ready to rush off, close your eyes, rest your palms in your lap, and let your thoughts go for a few minutes. Can’t turn off the chatter in your mind? If a thought or worry threatens to intrude on your few moments of peace, picture yourself placing those thoughts into a box labeled Not Now. You can also do this when you arrive at your destination—after you turn off the engine but before you get out of the car.

* Your meditation doesn’t have to be silent if you don’t want it to. What music helps you connect with the part of your being that is joyful and creative? Your favorite Latin, classical, jazz, country, or rock sound can be a peaceful soundtrack to your meditation. Keep the volume fairly low while you let your mind relax and declutter.

* The connection to the heart’s core has spiritual meaning for many women. You may decide to practice your meditation for a few moments each day with a prayer that expresses your gratitude, hope, inspiration, or forgiveness.

* Think about invigorating your meditative exercise with an activity you do with your hands and enjoy. This might be knitting, embroidering, planting or arranging flowers, kneading bread, weaving, beading jewelry, sculpting with clay, or collaging a scrapbook page or handmade card. The key is to approach these activities not as a task or with a preconceived idea of how they should turn out or how long it should take to do them, but just as something to do mindfully, calmly. Some women even find certain household chores meditative, such as ironing, sifting through a drawer to tidy it up, slicing vegetables or fruit, or grooming a pet. When done thoughtfully and quietly, and with time to let the mind wander where it will, almost anything can be part of a reflective time with meaning and purpose.

* Bring humor and playfulness to your meditative time by connecting with children. Stop by the children’s room on your next visit to the public library, pause for a moment at the park playground, or look and listen the next time you are walking or driving by a schoolyard. Without babysitting or being responsible, you can observe the intensity and earnestness that children bring to playing. Sometimes just watching exuberance and joy can be infectious.

* Walking is a way to practice a form of moving meditation, not only a means to keep your heart and bones strong. This can be your regular stroll in the neighborhood or park, but treat yourself to the occasional moving meditation in a place where the colors, light, and sounds around you please the eye and the spirit. Stroll through a museum, tour the landscaped grounds or gardens at a historical site, visit a restored mansion, or amble along a placid lakefront. As you walk, let your thoughts go and allow your senses to take in what you hear, see, and smell. This style of promenade is an entirely different variety of power walk, focused more on awakening your calming and soothing brain waves.

Taking Absolute Time for Yourself Can Seem Scary

Women often say flat out, “I can’t do this.” Or they say that they can’t shut off the noise in their minds or that this kind of quiet time makes them feel anxious or even sad. It may seem a bit scary at first, to take this absolute time for yourself, brief as it may be, to listen to the language of the spirit. Remember that there are no shoulds when it comes to experiencing a meditative time—simply making the decision to stop for a few minutes every day is healthy and restorative.

If you find yourself wrestling with feelings of sorrow or nervousness during a more quiet time, practice taking some deep breaths. Observe what you are feeling without trying to judge the emotion or make it go away. Think of these moments as an opportunity to learn something about yourself each time you let your mind enter into this state of relaxed awareness. If you are the type of woman who keeps very busy, so much so that a few unscheduled moments become unsettling, you may want to take this as your cue that you need more, not less, of this kind of uninterrupted, tranquil interlude.

Recharging Your Commitment to Yourself, Your Health, Your Spirit

Meditative time recharges your commitment to your health and renews your focus on the spirit. As a daily habit, meditation allows a reflective, thoughtful, or even prayer-full time—whichever is most comfortable and familiar to you—that subtly shifts you from rushing around to a more deliberate way of thinking about what you are doing and why. When you meditate, you replenish the well that allows you to flourish in the fullness of all your experiences, both the positive and the not so great.

Menopause marks a new phase of your life, in which your needs differ from earlier desires or requirements. Remember that your symptoms are not permanent, and know that life brings new freedom and energy when you emerge on the other side of this passage. But paying attention to your health and well-being isn’t a short-term task. Being mindful of what you eat and how you relax, spending time with optimistic and fun people, going outside, making sure that your rest is a priority— all these ways of nurturing yourself carry individual weight, yet their cumulative power can serve you well into your next decade and more.

The benefits of caring for yourself spill over into your alertness and memory, your enjoyment of intimacy, and your sheer joy and gratitude to be here. Claim this time as one of creativity, purpose, and power.

©2013 by Stephanie Bender and Treacy Colbert. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Conari Press,
an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. www.redwheelweiser.com.

Article Source:

End Your Menopause Misery: The 10-Day Self-Care Plan by Stephanie Bender and Treacy Colbert.End Your Menopause Misery: The 10-Day Self-Care Plan
by Stephanie Bender and Treacy Colbert.

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About the Authors

Stephanie Bender, author of: End Your Menopause MiseryStephanie Bender is the founder of Full Circle Women's Health, a women's health clinic in Boulder, CO. She has conducted pioneering research into women's hormonal health, and is a nationally recognized speaker on women's health issues. She is the author of The Power of Perimenopause. (Photo by Green Earth Photography)

Watch a video: Good News About Aging (with Stephanie Bender)

Treacy Colbert, author of: End Your Menopause MiseryTreacy Colbert is a medical writer who has written for Health, Clinical Advisor, Women's Health Access, International Journal of Integrative Medicine, and Nutrition in Complementary Care. She also writes a blog, "The Green Side of the Grass," which deals with all manner of things, including marriage, death, and 3-in-1 Oil.