Secular Meditation – BionicOldGuy

Meditation is a scientifically verified approach for decreasing stress, bettering well being, and making constructive adjustments within the mind. However it’s usually related to faith, or has a “new-age” air (like sitting in an unique place and burning incense). There may be actually nothing flawed with religious-based or unique methods, which work nice for many individuals. However some are turned off by it or it makes them skeptical of meditation. For the latter group, Rick Heller has written Secular Meditation, a helpful down-to-earth information.

Rick is related to the humanist group at Harvard College, the place he teaches meditation. I loved the guide and would extremely advocate it for anybody who has beforehand been skeptical of meditation. Rick admits that some persons are important of making an attempt to give you a secularized model that extracts it from non secular roots. That’s the reason he makes use of the extra generic time period secular meditation as an alternative of one thing like secularized Buddhism. I feel the vital query is whether or not the secularized model continues to be useful. It’s potential to lose some worth in the event you decide and select solely what you need. For instance, one may follow mindfulness and calming the thoughts diligently however nonetheless not be a really good individual. However I imagine that is prevented in the event you preserve a minimal important set of elements like meditation, mindfulness, and cultivation of loving-kindness, as I mentioned right here. Loving-kindness or equal compassion trainings are an vital facet that’s generally omitted.

So I used to be comfortable that Rick’s information begins with loving-kindness practices. He describes these and different useful practices intimately within the guide. It was additionally good to see him cowl a secularized model of mantra meditation. Whereas many individuals discover breath-based methods to work effectively for meditation, I personally have had extra success with mantra meditation.