Elevated Existence’s contributing editor Mehgan Belanger shares her experience with meditation and what she learned from a biofeedback machine at a Science Center!
For roughly a year, I’ve known the physical and emotional effects practicing meditation can have on a person, but it wasn’t until recently that I witnessed its power firsthand through a makeshift biofeedback session, and came to realize the intangible benefits of meditation.
I first began meditating when I found myself in a stressful period of my life and needed to find a way to cope with the frustration and emotions I was feeling. I didn’t turn to meditation immediately, though, and first tried journaling my experiences and exercising. Although these were good ways to “blow off some steam,” the effects were temporary, and I wasn’t feeling the relief I knew my body and mind craved.
After repeatedly hearing and reading about meditation’s benefits, I finally decided to experiment for myself. I downloaded a few guided meditation podcasts to my iPod, among them episodes from The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, Chill Meditation and Mediation Oasis.
The first few times I meditated, it was as if a veil was lifted from my eyes and mind. My senses felt attuned to the world around me. The beauty in the mundane was revealed and shouted out to be noticed. It was as if I was a modern Dorothy who had stumbled upon an undiscovered Oz lying hidden my previously black-and-white existence.
I also relished in the feeling of a silent — or at least quieted — mind. And I found that on my way to work and before I fell asleep at night, my mind no longer ran a repetitive marathon through my checklist of “to-dos” and “don’t forgets.”
Months later, I found myself more calm and less emotionally driven than previously. Of course there was still stress in my life, but the feeling that I was drowning (and frantically flailing to keep my head above the water of projects in my personal and professional life) had abated.
And while this was more than enough proof for me that meditation has a substantial impact on my consciousness, an unexpected experience with biofeedback revealed to me even more evidence of the power of meditation.
I recently visited the newly opened Connecticut Science Center with some companions, and among the many exhibits there was an interactive biofeedback display called “Mind Ball.” There, two people could don headbands that measured alpha and theta brain waves, which were displayed on screens above the subjects. In the middle of the two participants, there was a yellow table with a clear tube that stretched from one person to the other, and inside the tunnel was a little beige ball placed in the center. Based on the participant’s state of relaxation, the ball would move away from a person who was more relaxed and towards a person whose brain was more active.
After watching a few other visitors try their relaxation skills with varied results, I strapped on the headband along with one of my companions. As the experiment began, I silently repeated a mantra from one of The Chopra Center’s podcasts –- thinking “So” when inhaling, and “Hum” when exhaling.
Almost instantaneously the little ball in the tube began a steady and quick path away from me. The ball picked up speed as I repeated my mantra, and only once did it slow its course when another one of my companions made a joke about what was happening, and my mantra was broken as I laughed.
Looking at the brainwaves displayed on the screen after we had finished the experiment was the truly amazing part of the entire experience. Whereas the previous participants and my companion had erratic spikes and dips in their measured brainwaves, mine started off at a high level and rapidly plummeted to a level lower than any of the other subjects we had seen. My brainwaves continued a fairly even course at the bottom of the screen until the moment I had laughed, where there was a spike back to its original level, and again fell as I regained my mantra.
Visualizing how my brain responds during meditation was an enlightening experience, one that helped reinforce my decision to pick up the practice, and one that I will share with others in my recommendation of it.
For more on meditation, click here for Elevated Existence’s FREE preview article on "Finding the Right Meditation for You."
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