Is prayer meditation? Where prayer and meditation meet.

I just read a beautiful and thought-provoking quote from Ramesh Balsekar's Net of Jewels.

"True prayer means not solicitation but communion. Prayer is communion in the same sense as that in true meditation there is neither a meditator nor anything meditated upon."

When I read it, I felt a "yes!" inside. It was one of those "that-feels-so-true-but-I-can't-say-why" moments. It seems to describe a state of oneness that could be seen as both the goal and means of both meditation and prayer. What the quote conveys to me is beyond words, and yet usually I associate prayer with words. Perhaps the deepest form of prayer is indeed beyond words. 

What do you feel? What do the words "prayer" and "meditation" mean to you? Is prayer the same as meditation?

Meditations for Stress

I recently had an email from someone under a great deal of stress asking which meditations to use to keep stress from making him sick and out of balance. Although anything that's relaxing will help relieve stress, I recommended the following podcast episodes in particular:

• Mini Relaxation Break
• Breath Awareness
• Simply Being
• Effortless Meditation
• Deep Rest
• Letting Go

I recommended these particular meditations because they don't have a specific focus or ask you to be active in any way. My sense is that they would allow for the deepest rest and therefore the most release of tension. When we are deeply relaxed, our body chemistry and muscles switch gears from the flight or fight response into a more relaxed style of functioning. The energy of the body can then go to work to release tension and recuperate.

Ultimately, though, I encourage you to try the various episodes for yourself. Try the ones whose titles and descriptions appeal most to you. That way you can see the effects of the various meditations. It just might be that a focused meditation would be most helpful with some specific types of stress. If you are grieving, for example, the Grief Meditation might be most useful.

(You can listen to our podcast on iTunes or on this page.)

Intuitive Visualization in Meditation

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We just had a comment from someone who has a hard time with visualizations in meditation. So do I! Actually, I almost never enjoy a meditation that tells you to see this and see that. The more specific the instructions are for exactly what to visualize, the worse it is for me. As I'm working to construct the tree or light or animal or whatever it is I am to see, the guide is already on to the next image. I can never catch up and I'm so busy working on coming up with the visualization that I can't really relax and get whatever it is I am supposed to get by seeing the image.

Though most of my meditations don't involve visualization, I know that it can be very powerful. I do use a form of visualization in a few of the guided meditations (Intuitive Healing and Inner Child meditations are examples). I like to call what I do "intuitive visualization". It's what I do on my own sometimes for myself. It's something we all do spontaneously when we daydream. I just suggest that you let something appear, such as a helper, and allow it to appear in whatever way it comes. It can be clear or vague. It may not even come as a image -- it could be something felt or heard. It could come through any of the senses -- touch, taste, sight, hearing, smell. Or it could just be a feeling sense. A helper, for example, could just be an energetic "presence". This way of visualizing, which perhaps would be better called "intuiting", works best for me and I like it in general because it allows you to draw on your own inner, creative resources to come up with just the perfect thing for you.

I know the other kind of visualization meditation, or imagery as its often called, works well for some people. What about you? What works best for you?

Intuitive Self-Healing Meditation

Our bodies are marvelous self-healing mechanisms. They are constantly busy with self-repair and working to move towards greater balance. The same is true, I feel, for our psyches. This latest podcast is designed take advantage of this by helping you tap into your intuition to promote healing. We start, as always, by relaxing into the flow of what is happening. Then we bring our attention to an area needing healing. Allowing something to be in our awareness is helpful in and of itself. Our attention is like a beam of energy and intelligence and when we direct it somewhere energy for healing is provided. The inner intelligence of the body puts that energy to good use. That's the basis of the Relaxing into Healing guided meditation. This new meditation takes things one step further. We are more proactive, as it were, learning to direct our energy in more specific ways. We drop into our inner knowing to find just the right "flavor" of energy for the situation. Visualization is a tool that is often used for healing. Sometimes very specific visualizations are recommended for specific problems. My experience is that it's most effective when we allow the visualization to arise spontaneously from within. I personally find it difficult to follow guided imagery where you are supposed to follow a very particular image. I prefer to first let what needs healing to be fully in my awareness, and then see what "wants" to come, just naturally, to help the situation. I think it's always more powerful to connect with ones own inner knowing.

As you listen to this meditation, be very easy about it. As with all our meditations, the words are just gentle suggestions for you to use as a springboard for your own experience. You don't need to follow (or even hear) all the words. Your mind will pick up on the phrases you need for your process. As you are prompted to bring in energy, let that take whatever form comes easily. Some people may have very clear visualizations. For others, it may be something very subtle. Most importantly, it doesn't have to be visual. You may have just a vague sense of some energy or movement. The energy may seem more auditory, like a hum, or kinesthetic, like a feeling of some texture or touch. Or you may just want to relax into the feeling of the meditation. Whatever comes easily for you is just right!

I'd love to hear what you experienced with this. This meditation was done with my local group. Everyone shared their experiences afterwards and each had a very different kind of experience.

Knitting as Meditation

It's so easy to enter a meditative state while knitting. Something about the rhythmic movement back and forth between the right and left hands, something about the soothing repetition of movements. Something about it... I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to write about knitting as a meditative art. People have tried to understand it in right brain/left brain terms. It has been compared to EMDR with its right and left eye movements. There have been lots of attempts to explain why it works, as if people need to prove its therapeutic benefits. I don't really care why it works, it's enough for me that it does.

I picked up knitting at a particularly stressful time in my life, not realizing that it had become a craze. Having learned it when I was young, my mind-body must have remembered the feeling of it and signaled my intuition that it was time to start knitting again. I find knitting to be so comforting and relaxing. I've known that it produces a meditative state, but it was just a couple days ago that I fully appreciated its power. When I was thinking about the similarity between meditation and knitting, I realized that you can't worry and knit at the same time! 

When you worry, the mind gets involved in a train of thought -- a story about what might happen, what could happen, what might have happened and so on. Worrying engages the emotions in a way that creates anxiety.  The use of your hands and the sight of the stitches being formed breaks that pattern. I challenge you to see if you can worry while you knit! To test this out, I knit a few rows actually trying to worry. I couldn't do it. I could come up with worry thoughts like "what if that pain is a horrible disease" and "what if I can't pay the bills next month", but no matter what thought I conjured up, there was no emotional juice that came with it.

So many of the phrases I use while leading guided meditations aim to do this same thing -- to disentangle the thoughts from the emotions, to allow the mind to break free of its usual patterns so that one enjoys a simple, open state of awareness. When I say things like "not minding the stories of the mind" or "let thoughts be a meaningless activity in the mind", I am encouraging the mind to do what it does while we knit -- disengage.

If you decide to knit to meditate, I think you'll find the effect is the most powerful when you do a simple knit stitch over and over. In knitting, it's called "garter stitch". You just knit and knit and knit and don't try to follow a complex pattern. It's easy to learn, and you may find you also love handling beautifully colored yarns with various yummy textures. You might even end up with some great scarves in the process!

OK, so you're behind the curve on the knitting craze. For all I know it's over. Who cares? Knitting makes a great meditation. And, if you are hesitant because you are of the male gender, please know that, to borrow a book title, "real men knit". Russell Crowe does it. Brad Pitt does it. The big, talk Ghi McBride character on Pushing Daisies does it. Just do it!