MEDITATION FOR BETTER SLEEP? In recent years, meditation has established itself as an valuable technique to practice for anyone who wants to restore their peace of mind. It promises to open the doors to the world of dreams for us in one step. Should we adventure there?
FULL CONSCIOUSNESS
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (see text on p. 16) uses what is there in the moment - body, breath, sound - to come out of thoughts and become grounded in the present. We can begin by taking a course, usually given over eight weeks, during which we meditate 45 minutes a day. "It may seem like a lot, but we believe that it takes some time to adopt a new habit," said Guillaume
All meditators, no matter what practice they choose to follow, from Zen to transcendental meditation, will tell you that regu- lar practice promises that you can achieve the desired outcome. That quietening the mind is the best way for you to spend fewer nights wrestling with thoughts that cause sleepless nights. Unfortunately, some never achieve this goal. So what good can it do to meditate? When starting this practice, one should first aim to just enjoy being present and in the moment. For most, this task is difficult enough to devote ourselves and our time entirely to it, without any purpose. Indeed, when one tries to free one's
cendental meditation in Epalinges, in the heights of Lausanne. "When you start to meditate, lots of thoughts spring up," he says. "We tend to want to fight them or to say to ourselves that we are wrong because we often imagine that to meditate is to enter a state where we have no more thoughts. It is not true; in fact, it is quite the opposite. We should be happy to have these thoughts because it means that our mind is eliminating stress. "he concludes. There is no need to fight against everything that comes into the mind. Meditation can help the body and mind relax. Fardel, a trainer in Valais. He has developed a course that takes place over only six weeks.
Each type of meditation has its unique approach to mindfulness and recommends not being carried away by these thoughts but watching them pass as a cow watches a passing train. In Zen, when the mind is agitated, you just come back to focus on the breath and your posture - that of the Buddha in the statue, the famous lotus position. This brings us back to the original source of these practices, inti- mately linked to spirituality in the Orient and now very popular in the West. In the Indian Patanjali sutras, the foun- ding text of yoga, meditation is cited as the seventh and final step that leads to the awakening of consciousness. It wasn't until the 1970s that the practice landed in the West, in the suitcases of a New York doctor, Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn. Passing this spiritual practice to the mill of Western science, he made it secular and transformed it
mind from all the constraints and lists of "Urgent Things to Do" which monopolize our minds daily, instead of remaining as peaceful as a lake beside a quiet mountain on a beautiful windless day, we can become restless. When thoughts assail us, we try to control our minds and to push back, but alas, they come back even stronger... At this stage, the budding medita- tor can become annoyed and revolts. After expecting to find a quiet space for well-being, calm and zen, the mind instead begins to embark on a maelstrom of thoughts, which may not be pleasant at all. What's going on? What is he doing wrong? This process is normal, reassures Guénaël Boucher, a trainer in trans-
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