What Is Meditation?

Un altro breve saggio in English, stile Definition Essay, il voto migliora, stavolta b+, .

      Is meditation a new way to be healthy and maintain well-being? Maybe, but really, what is it exactly? And, how does this very old human activity work? Meditation, according to Wikipedia, is a practice, or a family of human practices focused on your mind and in relationship with the body. Through these practices, people try to relax and gain a new state of consciousness. Meditation can help you in order to highlight your life goals, or increase your skills to contemplate the universe, or to be calm and more concentrated on your activity.

       Several religions are working with different practices of meditation. One way to meditate is by singing particular songs or mantra. The mantra is a refrain repeated continuously, that makes a sound capable to create spiritual transformation. In some oriental way, in India, Tibet or South East Asia, mantra could be just a vowel sound or a syllabic sound. In other religions, it is a prayed repeated many times, often singing, like in a Catholic monastery. The Catholic pray for the Virgin Mary, and the Rosary, is in fact, a kind of mantra. The Muslims have a spiritual meditation called Sufism. Also in this case there is a repetition of the name of God, or an emblematic dance, very famous all around the word. The dance of the whirling Dervish is a hypnotic and fascinating performance. Dervish is another name for the practitioner in the old Sufism. In this dance, for hours are whirling the Dervishes by themselves, finding some kind of spiritual trance.

       A Buddhism Zen is another interesting way to meditate. They called the meditation zazen (literally seated meditation). In this Buddhist way, the practitioner is sitting down on a cushion with his legs crossed in a full-lotus position, or half-lotus. They remain, this way for hours, motionless in this position, and they alternate this meditation with time of walking meditation.

      The oriental meditations are different from the western meditation for the different goals assigned by the master. In western countries the goal is to concentrate your attention on some specific topics or thing. In oriental meditations the goal is frequently the absence of thought. In the zazen way, the master could say, “Meditate is not something new to do. You just need to learn how do nothing”. So, to meditate in this way, you don't need to learn something new, rather, you must forget everything you learned and forget also the same instructions to do this.

       Meditation is an activity that came to the past and now it is practicing in a new way and with different goals. In the last century, meditation helped people to be more calm, less stressed, relaxed, and to find better life. Some scientist have investigated different elements about the effect of meditate. For example, some kinds of meditation are increasing the production of well-being hormones in the body. Scientist have also demonstrated that meditation increases the production of endorphin in the brain. Endorphin is a hormone that could play a big role in maintaining your well-being.

      Finally meditation is re-discovering in the last years to reduce stress, increase happiness and emotional stability. Now meditattion is turning into a modern healthy activity. Many spa, and beauty center are now proposing different kind of meditations experiences.

      People who listen talking about meditation, are thinking in some strange or complicated activity. If my audience is composed by young people, maybe they could be more stunned or hesitant. For this kind of people, it is good to remind then, several human activities have the same characteristic of meditation, but we don't call them by the same name. For example, some people are very passionate in drawing, so when they are very concentrated in their activity a strange effect could happened. Sometime people lose the perception of the time, they forget every task or appointment. Otherwise for hours, in some discotheque, people are listening to house music mixed to stroboscopic light. The result is a kind of collective trance. Yet, some athletes or actors, before their performances are using different way to be concentrate and focusing in their goals. All of these people appear exactly like a Tibetan monk in mediation. For that, meditation is an excellent way to gain goals and bring you a more healthy life, what more do you expect?