The joy of being still

Meditation is the art of making the impossible possible. It has been proved that where medicine fails, meditation succeeds. It keeps you fit and helps you live longer and better.

Meditation is the art of making the impossible possible. It has been proved that where medicine fails, meditation succeeds. It keeps you fit and helps you live longer and better.

HT Image

This is what Sant Rajinder Singh too says in his book Silken Thread of the Divine. He quotes a saying that the loss of health results in four things: the first is getting ill, the second is pill; the third is bill and the forth, in some cases, is the loss of will.

To this, the Sant adds a fifth one — 'still'. 'Still' refers to meditation that can help one bid good-bye to ill, pill and bill but regain one's lost will. The point here is that there is a mind-body connection. Stress and depression lead to sudden drop in body immunity, paving the way for various kinds of ailments.

A study by the famous Canadian psychiatrist, Dr John L Craven, says, "controlled studies have found consistent reduction in anxiety in meditators. Improvements were found during clinical trials of meditation in cases of hypertension, insomnia, asthma, chronic pain, deep cardiac problems and phobic anxiety."

Another psychiatrist, Dr Ilan Kutz, has this to say: "As the ability to meditate develops, a hierarchy of sensation develops, ranging from deep relaxation to marked emotional and cognitive alterations…"

You may ask how does it work? The answer: Meditation helps one get absorbed within and one can divert one's attention from the pain of being ill. In near-death experiences, people who underwent excruciatingly painful accidents were immune to pain when they left their bodies. With their return to their bodies, they had this to report: that their pain ended when they entered a "world of light there". A telling message: One can rise above physical pain and problems by connecting with the power within.

However, one must believe that there is a healing power of the Divine that we can tap into when we shift our consciousness from the physical body to the spiritual side. Only then pain gets converted into gain and life becomes zestful.