Meditation Training
Meditation CD
Listen to Dr. Dave's gentle voice guiding you in a loving approach to meditation. This is a fabulous tool for reducing stress and creating more centeredness and balance in your life. It is useful for beginners and advanced meditators alike.
You will find multiple methods to fit different needs. There is a Guided Meditation, especially helpful for beginning to learn the practice, an Open Meditation when you prefer less guidance, and a Brief Meditation for when you need centering and have less time available. In addition there are tracks that have beautiful, non-invasive Native American flute music and then versions without music when one prefers silence. There's something here for everyone!
This is a great CD for anyone who has tried meditation and feels that they just "can't do it". Meditation is not a battle with the mind, and its goal is not to make the mind "be quiet". Meditation, in essence, is about gently being with self and all that arises inside. Many who try meditation become quickly frustrated by the activity of the mind, its constant "chatter", and feel then that they've failed. Meditation isn't an accomplishment or a doing, it's a being with, and that includes the chattering mind. In the words of Dr. Dave's longtime meditation teacher, "Meditation comes from the heart. Meditation is not what you can do, but what you can accept." Slowly over time we learn how to re-center, focus and get out of the battle of trying to make the mind do (or not do) anything in particular. Often in meditation, problems arise specifically because we are trying to use the mind to quiet the mind! Quite an impossibility. Holding self-forgiving, safe, loving space is the most powerful way, including holding loving forgiveness for all the times when we can't seem to find any loving forgiveness!
In addition to its benefits for mental and emotional well-being, meditation has been shown in study after study to have tremendously beneficial effects on the body and its various ailments. Meditation calms blood pressure, reduces stress chemicals and their negative effects, and even changes our brainwave patterns! It also serves to stimulate and enhance our spiritual growth, opening us up to our deeper inner wisdom and allowing the loving guidance of our inner Divine connection to move more consciously and powerfully in our lives.
$11.95 + $3 S&H or $9.95 for MP3 download
Meditation is an age-old technique for quieting the mind and helping us to know and understand ourselves. From a spiritual standpoint, it is a way of allowing the inner self to grow, of getting in touch with our spiritual essence, and spending time with the real us. We do indeed often find relaxation with meditation, but it more importantly a tool to help us look at ourselves and help us grow spiritually. In this process, it can and does help us heal ourselves.
The benefits of meditation are many and have been validated scientifically. By calming and strengthening the mind and body, it enhances our psychological and emotional health. Meditation helps reduce anxiety and stress and also helps us release certain blocks or stresses in our system. Also, many people experience improvements in their physical health and in the prevention and treatment of specific illnesses.
There are many different techniques of meditation. Most of them basically involve relaxing and “letting go”. Some methods use easily focusing the attention somewhere such as on a word or sound (mantra) or simply “following the breath”. The process I teach is a simple meditation process that involves relaxing and at times using the breath or specific body areas as focal points. It is very free-flowing without a lot of rules or regulations on what it looks like. The point is not some state of perpetual bliss or quest for enlightenment, but rather to simply be with what “is”. We practice allowing internal guidance of the process, cultivating trust in our inner spiritual selves to lead us toward healing. This connection with our inner self is then our pathway to connecting to the larger guidance of what is outside of us.
Meditation is a simple practice which anyone can learn. Sometimes we can get frustrated with attempts at meditation, finding that our minds are very active and have difficulty quieting. This is completely normal. Our brains are born to chatter, they will continue to do so. We need not wrestle with ourselves trying to stop it. By gently returning our attention over and over to something other than the mind, we become quieter inside and less affected by the chattering of the brain.
Benefits of Meditation (in brief)
Or 7 good reasons to make meditation part of every day
Compiled by Daniel P. Marshall, MD
- Decreased baseline stress level – meditation triggers a response in the body the exact opposite of the stress response.
- More sense of rest and rejuvenation.
- Helps us develop our natural insight and intuition.
- Many documented health benefits ranging from better sleep, improved immune functioning and lower blood pressure, plus scores of other studies indicating lower disease risk and better health in many areas.
- Helps us have a feeling of more centeredness or inner connectedness in our hectic and demanding modern lifestyles and routines.
- Allows us to get in touch with our natural feelings, emotions and healing processes that we often override due to our busy lifestyles.
- Promotes faster, deeper and more complete healing and well-being.
J. David Forbes, MD
drdave@nashvilleintegratedmedicine.com
615-385-7001