Meditation Programme

What is meditation?

Meditation is many things. Ask a Buddhist monk what meditation is, and he might reply that it is a tool to train the mind.  If you ask the same question to a psychiatrist, you may be told that meditation is a method of reducing neuroses, anxiety and depression while fostering an outlook of acceptance. 

The same question asked to a yogi could provoke the response that meditation is a way of opening the heart.

But you need not listen to what a yogi tells you about meditation to know about its benefits.  In the past two decades, there have been hundreds of studies carried out which show that meditation improves attention and resilience to stress, increases compassion, lifts the mood, and changes the way we experience pain, besides many other benefits.

However, you view meditation, and the different techniques that fall under the umbrella of meditation all promote psychological and emotional wellness.

History of meditation

The oldest documented evidence of people practising meditation is wall paintings from 5000 BCE.  These paintings show people practising meditation in seated postures with half-closed eyes.  People have likely been meditating for even longer than this.

Meditation joined a multitude of different Eastern practices and philosophies that came to the West, beginning in the 19th century due to colonialism but only really taking root in the mid-20th century. 

It is practised by more people than ever before and is now more accessible thanks to the number of meditation teachers offering sessions.  In the past decade, there have been apps released that mean you do not have to leave the comfort of your home to learn various meditation techniques.

Of course, it is not required that you have a teacher to learn meditation.  At its simplest, meditation is focusing on one point.  This point is often the breath – allowing the mind to rest into the natural rhythm of the breath can be tremendously therapeutic. Although being guided and taught is recommended.

How can meditation help with overcoming addiction?

It is no surprise that drug treatment centres and sober living houses all over the world offer meditation classes for clients who have an addiction.  Meditation is an incredibly potent tool for addressing addiction and its causes.

The practice of meditation helps us to accept whatever thoughts and feelings arise without judgment and without trying to push away any painful feelings that we don’t like. When an addict uses substances, they are often pushing away painful emotions or feelings they don’t like, and the substances are the escape route.

Buddhism teaches us that it’s the aversion to any pain that is the problem, the attachment to pain and the narrative we create around it that causes the suffering, Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.

Mediation is a process of awakening to the reality of life, that pain is part of life, and we must learn to accept it rather than trying to drown it out with booze or drugs.

With addiction, we are always seeking something outside ourselves to help us change the way that we feel.  Another drink, another line, another pipe.  When we start meditating, we stop looking outside ourselves and begin to look within.  

Often, initial experiences with meditation are brief, and this is fine.  When we have spent years drinking and using it can be challenging to sit down, be still and see what arises.  We may have been inadvertently distracting ourselves from our internal milieu for so long that we forget what it is like to feel in our mind and body.