Describe your experience. Did you find it beneficial?
Difficult? Why or why not? Would you recommend this to others? Why or why not?
I would describe this experience to be peaceful and calming,
although I meditated before I did this exercise so I think that helped. I liked
the sound of the ocean in the background which was a peaceful sound to me. I
think that this exercise was no more beneficial than meditating and focusing on
my body relaxing. This exercise was geared more towards “inner love” and
feelings that are associated with love and those feelings that are associated
with discomfort. I don’t know if I would recommend this exercise over some of
the others that we have done. I like the relaxation techniques that are more
focused on breathing rather than thought. I find this to be more peaceful to my
mind.
What is the concept of "mental workout"? What does
the research indicate are the proven benefits of a mental workout? How can you
implement mental workouts to foster your psychological health?
The concept of “mental work” is that we focus time out of every
day to evolve our minds towards human flourishing. This means that we take time
to meditate and focus on our mind, body, and spirit and open our minds to
loving kindness and the subtle mind. We can focus our thoughts to help tame our
minds to allow us to cultivate wisdom and inner peace. We also need to feel
love towards ourselves in order to fully love others which is a part of mental
workout and attaining a goal of loving kindness. Our minds can be trained just
like our bodies, in the era we are more focused on training our bodies for the
physical appearance and forget to train our minds as well. Dacher talks about
how mental workouts should not just be for relaxation but to expand our
consciousness and become more in tune with our minds healing capacities. A way
that we can implement mental workouts to contribute to our health would be to
not only focus on our relaxation and breathing but to focus on certain parts of
our bodies that may need help. An example would be if someone had high blood
pressure. Focus on breathing techniques and mental workouts to try and calm the
mind and body.
Hi Chelsey,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that society in America is more focused on the physical appearance aspect of exercising rather than for physical health. We need to retrain our brains to think of our health or else our nice looking bodies on the outside won't make it past the age of 40 (if even that) because of the damage done on the inside.
I also agree with you that we need to focus on different parts of our body. The previous exercise that had us focus on sending more blood flow to a certain part of the body could be implemented for the calming and stress relief of a body part. You made some good points in your post!
I like this meditation because it trains your mind to love yourself first. This one would be a great one to teach young children. Like you said with so much emphasis on the external appearance we tend to forget who we are and to love who we are. If a child can picture someone that they think of in terms of love and start to see that in themselves, they can learn to love themself as they see the person.
ReplyDeleteHi Chelsey, I'm glad that your experience with the Loving-kindness exercise was peaceful and calm. I like your point on how we can "focus our thoughts to help tame our minds to allow us to cultivate wisdom and inner peace. We also need to feel love towards ourselves in order to fully love others which is a part of mental workout and attaining a goal of loving kindness." I must admit participating in the loving-kindness exercise gave me inner peace and help slow down my thought process, which allowed me to see myself in a different way. Your insight on this week's blog topic was very informative and I gained a lot from reading your thoughts, keep of the good work.
ReplyDeleteRizk
I like that you mention you prefer breathing meditations. I don't have a preference of what type of meditation, however, I do enjoy some visualization meditations. I also enjoy meditations to music and chanting.
ReplyDelete