Gokunama
Meditation has been proven to actually help people feel more positive emotions. There are a few different meditations, and I'm curious as to which ones other people use. These are my understanding of some of the meditations.
Single Point Meditation -- this one is probably the most common one. It helps the brain learn how o focus on one thing, as well as makes people calmer.
Open Awareness Meditation -- simply "observing" the thoughts, desires, and emotions, without chaining thoughts, or focusing on any one though, desire, or emotion. This helps people realize that the thoughts, desires, and emotions aren't truely connected to them, and that an emotion doesn't have as much power over them as they felt at first.
Gratitude Meditation -- feeling gratitude for all that one's teacher has taught one. This I feel doesn't have to be about the teacher, but about anything. Gratitude is a form of happiness.
Compassion Meditation -- trying to suffer with those who are suffering, while wishing to alleviate their pain, and understanding that everyone wants to be liberated from suffering. This seems like a "darker" meditation, but it activates the same left part of the brain that is activated while people report feeling happy emotions.
There are other meditations, but I'm not so familiar with them. In the Mind and Life meetings, the results of medical tests, brain scans, MRIs, etc, were shown, and the advanced meditators were able to do things that hadn't been done before. They were able to completely suppress the surprise reflex at the sound of a gunshot, something that even police marksmen weren't able to do, and they were able to recognize more microexpressions (the flickers of emotion that give away what a person truely feeling despite any masks a person may be trying to wear) than any other group of highly trained individuals. The most promising though was that their brain activity during meditation more strongly activated the part of the brain that was a locus for the happy emotions than any other person.
Meditation is simply training the brain to feel calmness, compassion, self-awareness, and gratitude. It's much like a part of a violinist's brain gets larger and easier to access as a direct result of practice.
I hope to take a 10 day course (retreat) in Vipassana meditation in Kyoto, Japan. That's a four hour drive from the cuty I live in. That will have to wait till after my family takes a couple of trips to Canada (expensive).
So to reiterate my earlier question, what kind of meditation does everyone do?
Single Point Meditation -- this one is probably the most common one. It helps the brain learn how o focus on one thing, as well as makes people calmer.
Open Awareness Meditation -- simply "observing" the thoughts, desires, and emotions, without chaining thoughts, or focusing on any one though, desire, or emotion. This helps people realize that the thoughts, desires, and emotions aren't truely connected to them, and that an emotion doesn't have as much power over them as they felt at first.
Gratitude Meditation -- feeling gratitude for all that one's teacher has taught one. This I feel doesn't have to be about the teacher, but about anything. Gratitude is a form of happiness.
Compassion Meditation -- trying to suffer with those who are suffering, while wishing to alleviate their pain, and understanding that everyone wants to be liberated from suffering. This seems like a "darker" meditation, but it activates the same left part of the brain that is activated while people report feeling happy emotions.
There are other meditations, but I'm not so familiar with them. In the Mind and Life meetings, the results of medical tests, brain scans, MRIs, etc, were shown, and the advanced meditators were able to do things that hadn't been done before. They were able to completely suppress the surprise reflex at the sound of a gunshot, something that even police marksmen weren't able to do, and they were able to recognize more microexpressions (the flickers of emotion that give away what a person truely feeling despite any masks a person may be trying to wear) than any other group of highly trained individuals. The most promising though was that their brain activity during meditation more strongly activated the part of the brain that was a locus for the happy emotions than any other person.
Meditation is simply training the brain to feel calmness, compassion, self-awareness, and gratitude. It's much like a part of a violinist's brain gets larger and easier to access as a direct result of practice.
I hope to take a 10 day course (retreat) in Vipassana meditation in Kyoto, Japan. That's a four hour drive from the cuty I live in. That will have to wait till after my family takes a couple of trips to Canada (expensive).
So to reiterate my earlier question, what kind of meditation does everyone do?
