A personal account by Christine Langlois of BestHealthMag.ca concerning the benefits she and her husband achieved by learning Mindfulness Meditation. If you are interested in joining a Mindfulness Meditation group contact Goose Creek Coaching.
The health benefits of meditation
Science shows meditation offers many health benefits, including making you healthier and happier. Here’s how meditation helped one couple cope.
Last year, my husband Christopher and I were at a low point. We had recently taken a gamble by purchasing a small business. The tension built until we were both showing signs of stress: We weren’t sleeping well, our concentration was shot and our tempers flared. After a particularly dismal weekend, Chris wondered aloud one Sunday night whether we should take that meditation course I’d mentioned.
The course on “mindfulness-based stress reduction” was offered by my family physician, Dr. Miroslava Lhotsky, and psychologist Judy Turner, both of whom practise in Toronto. Lhotsky had mentioned it in passing at my last checkup, telling me about new research on the ancient practice. Several of her meditating patients were lowering their blood pressure, she said pointedly, knowing that my numbers had been creeping up. On my way out, I picked up the brochure on the eight-week program.
Our first meditation class
Monday morning, I signed us up. Which is how we found ourselves on a frigid January evening, yoga mats in hand, heading to our first 2-1/2 hour class. But by this point, neither of us wanted to go. We both had vaguely positive views about meditation (and Chris had even tried it years ago as a student), but we had no idea what would happen that night. Would there be hours of lecturing? Or maybe some touchy-feely group discussion about our stress?
The answers were no and no. That first class, of about 20 men and women of all ages, started with a little explanation from Lhotsky and Turner. Mindfulness means being attentive to the present moment, “neither fretting about the past, nor anticipating the future,” Turner explained. We would cultivate mindfulness through meditation, which involves focusing on the breath and observing the body’s sensations and one’s thoughts and feelings.
