On the National Day vacation a few years ago, I no longer wanted to experience the crowds of people traveling to various scenic spots, so I discovered a meditation course held by Qixia Temple on National Day. Originally, I thought I could be in a quiet place with beautiful mountains and clear waters, and be away from the crowded crowds and stations. Unexpectedly, this meditation trip was not as wonderful as I imagined before going.

When meditation breaks away from religion, it loses its mysterious cloak. It becomes more operational, and the benefits of cultivating a good state of mind become more obvious.

Because the practice of meditation needs to get rid of the thoughts that are constantly flashing in the mind, as well as the inner worries. Achieve a state of meditation through continuous practice. At this time, your brain has been cleared of all the distracting thoughts that have been entangled with you all the time. Just like a supercomputer running many programs, but many programs are suddenly shut down, the CPU's computing speed will inevitably increase while the CPU takes a breather. Because emptying out also allows the brain to get sufficient rest, it can not only become more focused, but also improve work efficiency.

When you practice meditation regularly, your awareness will be enhanced, and there will also be times when inspiration suddenly comes to your mind. Because the brain has entered a different state than usual, it will look at the known and familiar things in a new way, freeing thinking and perception from the original patterns.

When I was practicing meditation, I met two girls who left a deep impression on me. They were colleagues. They were engaged in high-intensity work every day and stayed up late almost every day. I saw that they had thick dark circles under their eyes and were always looking at them. It's listlessness. Originally, they wanted to participate in meditation to relax, but they did not expect that their subsequent experience would be their first zazen starting at 4:30 a.m. every day, in addition to breakfast and lunch. They are all serious practice patterns of sitting in meditation for one hour, resting for one hour, and then continuing to sit in meditation. But as the zazen progressed, they went from being completely unable to sit still to trying to sit for an hour. Then something magical happened, and they themselves said they felt inexplicably sleepy. But seeing that everyone was sitting in meditation but too embarrassed to sleep, the master who led us in meditation noticed this and encouraged those who felt sleepy to sleep. This happens because they usually lack too much sleep. Then, an interesting scene happened. Soon several people actually lay down to sleep, and the two girls also slept peacefully. This supplement lasted three days. After three days, it can be clearly felt that they are becoming more and more energetic. This kind of energy cannot be achieved by sleeping at home for three days. It is a state in which anxiety is relieved and the brain is relaxed and rested.

Many well-known companies now also train their employees in mindfulness meditation courses, which is a more specific training course derived from meditation.

At that time, I had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to sit in meditation. Looking at the still dark sky, I almost walked to the meditation dojo with my eyes closed. After one hour of sitting meditation, you will become clear-headed.

For people who are not in an environment conducive to meditation, although morning is the least disturbed time of the day, it is painful to meditate an hour in advance. But setting the alarm clock 5 to 10 minutes earlier and engaging in a brief meditation will still make your brain wake up.

If you really don’t have time to meditate, you can use the time in the car during your commute. Meditating in the car on the way to work can improve your productivity throughout the day, and meditating on the car after get off work can relieve the stress of the day.

During lunch break, sometimes if you go out to eat, you may not have much time to sleep. Using this time to meditate can give your brain a chance to relax, relieve the morning's work stress, and potentially inspire new ideas.

Meditation can relax the brain, improve concentration and creativity, and relieve stress. When you feel dizzy or your anxiety cannot be relieved. You can do a simple meditation process to help yourself return to a better state.

There are many meditation methods derived from meditation, yoga, qigong, etc. Here are two meditation methods. The following methods are all performed in a comfortable position, with your eyes closed, or sitting or lying down.

This is a relatively simple and widely used method. Focus on your breathing, relax yourself as much as possible, and then silently start counting the number of breaths you take. Count from 1 to 10 or more. If you forget to count, it doesn't matter. You can count again from the beginning until you reach a state of inner peace and just feel that you are breathing naturally.

If you find it difficult to count numbers, you can follow your own breathing and silently say inhale and exhale to achieve a state of inner peace. Of course, this kind of meditation practice cannot be successful once, and it needs to be practiced again and again to achieve a state of inner peace.

If you feel that during meditation, although you are counting numbers, various thoughts are still flying in your mind. Then you can try to focus on the position under your nose, feel your breath passing through it, and count silently while feeling the breath.

Counting silently is not a continuous state. You can stop when you reach inner peace.

Then you can immerse yourself in this peaceful state. If you come out of this state, don't be anxious. Just count silently again to enter a state of inner peace.

There must be things in life that you find beautiful, whether it is the sweet fragrance of flowers or joyful laughter. You can put yourself into a positive state by recalling the feeling at that time in your mind.

For example: Think back to the time when you really felt happy and supported, and then through meditation, let yourself slowly enter the feeling of being supported at that time, and let that feeling of being supported , the feeling of being appreciated and trusted returns to you.

Recall the feeling of being with the person you love, and continue to expand this love to include many people and give blessings.

Let these sweet and positive images and feelings continue to fill your mind until you are immersed in them.

Meditation is not some magical power or superpower. Each of us can improve our brain’s awareness and relax our brain through meditation.

Meditation can make the neocortex (related to some higher functions such as perception, motor command generation, spatial reasoning, consciousness and human language) fall asleep deeply, and the old cortex (related to instinctive behaviors such as eating and sex, emotions, etc.) ) function to enhance the power of our subconscious mind.

Meditation can calm down our left brain and allow our consciousness to listen to the voice of the right brain, so that our brain waves will naturally transform into alpha waves. When the brain waves appear as alpha brain waves (especially the intermediate alpha brain waves), imagination, creativity and inspiration will flow out continuously. In addition, the judgment and understanding of things will be greatly improved, and at the same time, the body and mind will appear A feeling of stability, joy, and relaxation.

To put it simply, let your left brain rest for a while and listen to the voice of the right brain.

Finally, the Zen master said that as long as you can live in the present moment, whether you are drinking water or eating is a kind of meditation. Then, when you live in the present, think about work when you work, and think about sleep when you sleep, it is also a meditation method.

Bibliography: "Five minutes of meditation is equal to one hour of deep sleep" Rick Hansen, Richard Monteith