Meditation is a word that has come to be used loosely and inaccurately in the modern world. That is why there is so much confusion about how to practice it. Some people use the word meditate when they mean thinking or contemplating; others use it to refer to daydreaming or fantasizing. However, meditation is not any of these.
Meditation is a precise technique for resting the mind and attaining a state of consciousness that is totally different from the normal waking state. When you meditate, you are fully awake and alert, but your mind is not focused on the external world or on the events taking place around you.
I’m excited to welcome David Magone and the director of Pranavayu School in Boston to take you on a brand new five-day meditation teacher training in Dubai on June 2-6, 2017
Click – here – for complete details on the course structure
This 40-hour training will help you deepen your own meditation practice with a combination of restorative yoga, short lectures and setup excellent guided meditation practices using the Shamatha, Nidra and Guided Walking meditation techniques.
David has shared a beautiful introduction on Meditation [below] and how the heart healthy benefits applies to everyone along with what you will be walking away with out of his 5 day training. Please note that this training is open for ALL levels and all backgrounds onboard. You will be empowered with the major tools and techniques to begin offering your own meditation classes, private sessions, retreats and simply to your own personal practice. You can treat this training as a great 5 day retreat as well.
The sky’s the limit and the benefits are endless!
“When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time in the Rocky Mountains camping and hiking. The trails were beautiful and the scenery was stunning. I loved being surrounded by beautiful mountain peaks, lakes, streams and an abundance of wildlife, and so spent a lot of my downtime in the forests with my family and friends. Most of the trips that we took were very peaceful.
However, the areas that we traveled through were also populated by the North American grizzly bear – a creature known for its ferocity and occasional aggression toward hikers. Because we knew of the risk that the bears posed, we were always very careful to pay close attention to our surroundings.
Usually, the hikes were completed without incident. However, not all of the hikes were peaceful! Every now and then my friends and I would hear rustling in the forest, and sure that it was a bear, we would run away as fast as we could. To this day, I can still recall the changes that occurred in my body as I ran – they were really quite remarkable. As I ran, my pulse would quicken and my blood pressure would rise. I would also develop tunnel vision and my logical thinking would go out the door! Moments later when I found out that my mind had been playing tricks on me and it wasn’t a bear at all, it would usually take around ten or fifteen minutes before my heartbeat would slow and I would begin to feel normal again.
Though I didn’t understand it at the time, the symptoms that I felt as I ran were classic symptoms of the fight or flight response. The fight or flight response is a nervous system response that occurs when the body feels threatened. Under threat, the nervous system floods the body with a chemical cocktail of stress hormones that prepares whoever experiences it to either fight or run away! Classic symptoms are elevated blood pressure, nausea, erratic behaviour, tunnel vision and quicker breathing patterns. The fight or flight response is governed by one branch of the nervous system – the sympathetic. Another branch of the nervous system, (the parasympathetic) acts as more of a dampening system. This branch is designed to bring the body back to normal once the perceived threat has passed. As this occurs, the parasympathetic system kicks in and normalizes blood pressure, breath rate and all of the other deviations from the norm caused when the body perceives a threat. These two systems work to balance one another and both play an important role in our survival.
However, they both operate at different speeds. When the body is threatened, the fight or flight response kicks in immediately. The parasympathetic damper takes time more time to bring the body back down though – in most cases, it take at least 10 or fifteen minutes for it to work it’s magic! When a threat only happens occasionally, the fight or flight response isn’t really harmful. As long as the body has time to calm down, everything continues to work as it should. In fact, some exposure to stress can actually make the body and the mind stronger!
However, most of us experience more stress than the body is designed to cope with. As a result, we can wind up triggering the fight or fight response many times per day! When this happens, the parasympathetic nervous system doesn’t have time to do it’s job, and the body remains in constant overdrive. Over time, this exerts wear and tear on the body and can lead to a whole host of problems such as greater susceptibility to colds and flu, increased risk of heart attack, and faster than normal biological aging.
The good news is though, that these negative effects are preventable. Learning to induce the parasympathetic nervous system response, (also called the relaxation response) can help you prevent many of the health related risks of chronic stress and can even assist in healing damage done in the past. All of this can be accomplished through meditation.” – David Magone, www.pranavyau.com
In this 5 day training, we’ll be covering 3 primary techniques that can be used
to induce the relaxation response:
Yoga Nidra which is a state of consciousness between waking and sleeping, is a profoundly relaxing practice that teaches you how to induce the relaxation response at will. The practice primarily consists of conscious body scanning practices and visualization exercises that can be done pretty much anywhere. Yoga Nidra is very useful for insomnia, anxiety and whole host of other ailments as well. Because it focuses on inducing relaxation through awareness of physical sensation, it’s also the perfect meditation for beginners to start with.
Shamatha Meditation is a traditional concentration practice that can be used to calm the emotions and slow down mental chatter. This particular meditation is typically done by practicing single-pointed meditation on an external object or a focal point such as the breath. When done regularly, this practice can strengthen concentration, balance the emotions, even make you more resilient to daily stressors.
Guided Walking Meditation is an excellent companion to a seated meditation practice. It’s a traditional practice that can be used to maintain mindfulness and loosen up stiff body parts between practice sessions. It provides an excellent way to ground your body and involves a very deliberating concentration on the motions of walking that we normally take for granted. Done with mindfulness, the simple act of walking can be used to induce the relaxation response and to develop a deeper appreciation for your body and the world around you.
Yogalates Bliss in Dubai Blog 