Meditation is the simple—yet sometimes surprisingly complex—practice of finding stillness; becoming present in the moment as a way to unite mind, body, and spirit. Meditation educator Bob Roth describes the process as embracing the choppiness of the waves atop the ocean’s surface and then submerging deeper to access the calm waters beneath., An ancient practice with a simple concept, the documented benefits of meditation include reduced stress, anxiety relief, improved focus, emotional well-being, better sleep, and improved memory.
Meditation’s roots date back thousands of years. The first documented practice was part of the Vedic Hindu tradition in India around 1500 BCE. Between 600-500 BCE, its influence spread to Buddhist India and Taoist China, serving as a common thread in spiritual journeys across these cultures in the search for contemplation, knowledge, and liberation from the suffering of mortal existence.
By 400-100 BCE, meditation became an integral element of the developing yoga tradition, a focus of both Pantajali’s Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu scripture that provided philosophical foundations for yogic discipline. in the latter, the Lord Krishna expounds upon the duty of living an ethical life and reveals, “Concentration is better than mere practice, and meditation is better than concentration; but higher than meditation is surrender in love of the fruit of one’s own actions, for on surrender follows peace.”
A few hundred years later monks in Japan, influenced while traveling through China, began to incorporate meditation into Zen rituals. The sacred practice migrated west along the Silk Road—a 4,000-mile trade route connecting the Asian and European continents through economic, cultural, political, and religious interactivity. By 300 AD meditation was incorporated into some Jewish and Christian practices.
Connecting all of these traditions was the view that meditation was a way to unite mind, body, and spirit for a transcendent experience of holistic health; an opportunity to consider, reflect, contemplate, and plan. It was a starting point for understanding one’s relationship to their own existence and to those around them, and their position in relation to the spiritual universe.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, meditation became a fixture in Western popular culture. In 1893, Swami Vivekananda addressed the Parliament the of World’s Religions at the Chicago World’s Fair, bringing the teachings of the Gita to a mass audience in the United States for the first time. About 30 years later, Paramahansa Yogananda brought his practice to the United States, holding mass meditations and sharing spiritual teachings in Los Angeles. His Autobiography of a Yogi, published in 1946, exposed an entire generation to meditation and yoga, helping to sow the seeds of the countercultural revolution of the 1950s and 60s. Contemporary novels like Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums (1958), and pop revolutionaries like Baba Ram Dass and Southern California’s Nature Boys helped popularize meditation in the search for an inner peace that was characteristically at odds with mid-20th century capitalism.
It wasn’t until the late 1970s that health professionals and scientists started seriously studying the benefits of meditation for holistic wellness. In 1979, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn founded the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program to help patients better manage stress. The therapeutic technique in which an instructor guided participants through meditation and yoga practices was soon adopted to treat anxiety, depression, skin diseases, chronic pain, immune disorders, hypertension, diabetes, and other disorders associated with physical, psychosomatic, and psychiatric suffering. It was discovered that mindfulness meditation generates better cognition, reduces brain atrophy, and generates physical health by boosting immunity and improving cardiovascular health, improving overall emotional well-being through increased self-control and willpower, and developing better social relations through the generation of greater empathy and compassion.
There are two main forms of mindfulness meditation at the base of these therapies, which can be practiced on a daily basis. Informal mindfulness meditation is achieved by training the mind to stay in the present moment by becoming aware of the minute details of the space around you to achieve a focused state of mind, rather than habitually focusing on the past or future. More formal mindfulness meditation—the one that most of us picture when we think of meditation— involves intentionally sitting in quiet contemplation, letting thoughts pass without judgment or undue attention, and staying present in the moment.
Meditation connects practitioners to themselves, encouraging the mind to realize that thoughts do not define a thinker’s identity. By doing so, the practitioner develops empathy for themselves and for others, new neural pathways and a greater connection to the world around them. ***
