Mindfulness/Meditation

Many people have learned to block out feelings, or never learned how to be aware of some, which means they often don't recognize an emotion in themselves until it's become extreme. This does not mean that one lacks emotional responses to things that happen, just that one's emotions are mostly operating out of awareness and on "autopilot." This can be particularly true for people who have numbed themselves to their emotions with addictive relationships to alcohol, drugs, food, pornography and other "fixes."

If one doesn't notice or pay attention to one's emotions and they run on autopilot, many opportunities for observing and working with emotional chain reactions are lost. But that's how our minds and emotions tend to work: Based on past conditioning, current situations and stimuli – both external and internal – trigger emotional associations and reactions. Such triggering happens automatically, without our having any say in the matter.

Mindfulness helps people to notice these associations and triggerings as they occur, or at least before a chain of them results in overwhelming emotions or impulsive actions. That is, mindfulness can help you see and make connections between perceptions, thoughts, memories, emotions and impulses – connections that have always been there, but operating outside of your relatively limited awareness – in a way that prevents your mind and body from going out of control without you knowing why. In short, while you have no say over the initial conditioned responses that you have, once you're aware of them and not judging them, you can have a lot of influence over what happens next.

Important: If you have any of the following problems at times, then practicing mindfulness before you are ready will tend to make them worse or create new problems:

Tendencies to become overwhelmed and "flooded" by painful feelings and memories, due to underdeveloped self-regulation and coping skills. For people with histories of traumatic child abuse, this is common and normal during the "first stage" of recovery, when learning such skills and establishing safety and stability in one's life are the main tasks. (To learn more about the "stages of recovery" from child abuse, see the About Therapy and Recovery section of my Child Abuse page and Judith Herman's book, Trauma and Recovery – links open as new pages.)

Tendencies to "dissociate" – that is, blank out, space out, leave one's body, etc. – in stressful or upsetting situations. These are not uncommon experiences among those with histories of severe child abuse, and can become automatic and habitual. Originally self-protective in otherwise inescapable situations, dissociation can later cause many problems. For beginning meditators with abuse histories, dissociative states are sometimes confused with mindfulness. Learning "grounding techniques" and other emotion-regulation skills will probably be necessary first steps toward cultivating mindfulness.

Tendencies to get "lost in your own world" and withdraw from relating to others, or to not even bother trying to connect with others. In this case, mindfulness practices could possibly be "co-opted" by strong habits of self-absorption and disconnection from others.

Tendencies to hear voices in one's head that sound like those of real other people, or to become convinced of ideas that are extremely unlikely or clearly untrue to other people. (As this can be a delicate topic for people with such experiences, and difficult to address in writing rather than thoughtful and respectful conversation, I will not write anything more.)

Isn't dissociating sort of like meditation? Can it be harmful to a system?

Tendencies to get "lost in your own world" and withdraw from relating to others, or to not even bother trying to connect with others. In this case, mindfulness practices could possibly be "co-opted" by strong habits of self-absorption and disconnection from others.

Third eye meditation has alerted the interest of many people these days more so teenagers and a couple of college students. Third eye meditation is simple and easy to understand. Just above your nose and in between your eyes, and beneath your forehead is a spot that is normally referred to as the “third eye”. The third eye corresponds to Ajna chakra in both yoga and tantra terms. In third eye meditation, one concentrates on that spot with a concentrated-visualization. With time, it opens up and you start seeing supernatural things that are usually black and white. The third eye meditation helps you to attain that meditative state instantly and automatically. It also helps to stimulate your intuitive and psychological-power by inducing powerful mental-images that are unperceived by other senses such as sight or smell.

The visualization performed on the spot is normally a picture of a silver flame, a white moon, a shining star, or an auspicious silver-figure. It can also be a letter of the Jewish-alphabet, but whatever the auspicious is, it will surely serve as a stable-concentration! If someone tries to concentrate on a single item and then focus their thoughts on a specific place without any form of disturbance, then they can reach a stopping stage, this is the basis of the entrance to samadhi! With this in mind, how then can you do the third eye meditation? The following is a step by step guide on how to go about doing the practice correctly.

First, sit down with your legs crossed or the lotus position while keeping your back straight. You can learn more meditation postures so as to find the perfect posture to sit upright. Then close your eyes, breath in deeply to fill your lungs with cool fresh air. Next, pause for a few seconds and breath out slowly, do this process three times.

Secondly, shift your focus completely towards the third eye or the Ajna Chakra. Then keep eyes closed , draw your closed eyes closer to the center of your forehead, this is simply trying to look up with your eyes closed.

Maintain focus on the Ajna Chakra and then start counting backward from say 100 to 0. Throughout the third eye mediation, your eyes should be closed and centered towards the Ajna Chakra.