Stress and Meditation: A New View

When stress is examined closely, we find that it's almost always caused by the initial reaction of anxiety to a situation, real or imagined. To reduce stress, we must quell anxiety - that simple. Deal with the source not the symptom.

But of course, quelling anxiety is not that simple - or is it?

I've been looking into this universal stress/anxiety dilemma for several decades now, from a number of therapeutic angles, and here's what I've found:  

• Stress can only be successfully managed and reduced, when we successfully manage and calm our minds. 

Self Medication versus Meditation

Most people regularly self-medicate their minds to reduce worries and tensions, using doses of alcohol, marijuana, prescription drugs, and also non-drug habits and addictions such as computer games, television, sex and so forth. 

• Sometimes this works, temporarily - but it's like applying a hammer to the head for curing insomnia. There are better ways.

For years now, the press has been covering scientific discoveries showing that meditation does cure stress and anxiety, by successfully dealing with the core of the problem. And millions of people have gone in search of a meditation tradition or program in order to benefit from the 'meditation effect'. 

• But most of those millions of seekers have ultimately failed to establish a daily meditation practice that they can stick to and make work for them.
  

Some thirty years ago, I was working under a NIH grant studying the psychological underpinnings of meditation. We came across a discovery that we didn't at the time recognize as important, and passed over without further discussion. About ten years ago, I remembered that discovery, and have been applying it ever since to new 'psychological technologies' for making meditation easy and predictably effective.

Here's what we found:

1:  Meditation primarily aims to quiet the flow of disturbing thoughts through the mind. 

• When our thoughts become temporarily quiet, inner calm and positive feelings emerge quite naturally, along with relaxation and stress-reduction, clarity of mind, increased creativity and so forth.
  

2:  When a person focuses on two or more sensory events happening at the same time, all thoughts temporarily stop.

•  That's why listening to the Beatles singing harmony (or Bach for that matter), or watching a multiple-sensation sunset, or making love, or playing sports, makes us feel better - we're tuned into numerous sensory events at the same time, and therefore quiet in our minds.
  

3:  Almost all meditation techniques from all the various ancient traditions, are actually employing this 'more than one sensory event' to stimulate a shift into present-moment awareness and quiet-mind consciousness.

• But unfortunately, most people's minds are so addicted to thinking, that they have a difficult time focusing on sensory events (usually breathing and whole-body presence etc) and so they pop back into thinking mode over and over again, thwarting the benefits of meditation.

Technology To The Rescue ...

I happen to have a film background from long ago, and recently I've begun employing new video technologies for inducing the meditative experience without the usual struggle of traditional meditation methods. 

• The success has been quite remarkable - a short 3-minute video that purposefully induces a 'two or more sensory events at the same time' experience, combined with nature visuals, special music and focus phrases, can shift almost anyone effortlessly and quickly into a more relaxed, quiet-mind state of awareness.
  

Having discovered this meditative use of video technology, I've recently focused most of my time on producing a number of these special short video programs, 'video meditations' if you like, so that this tool can be used by everyone, to quickly reduce stress and induce a meditative quality of consciousness - without really any discipline at all.

Yes, I do find it a bit strange to be using television to induce a meditative state - but hey, if it works, let's do it. I also believe strongly in meeting people 'where they are' - and that's often in front of the TV or computer screen.

Of course, using a video-meditation program to quiet the mind and encourage good relaxed feelings isn't the same as spending ten years at the ashram learning meditation from a traditional master. But who these days has time for the ashram approach to meditation? 

• For most of us, whatever gets the stress-reduction job done fast, inexpensively and effectively, is of high value.
  

We're also discovering that when we include special 'focus phrases' in the stress-reduction video experience, we can aim the meditative process in specific directions to improve a number of different life situations - this is a wide-open new area of possibility currently being explored.

As of the date of this posting, my web development team is about 3 weeks from launching the iUplift.com site that will deliver these new stress-reduction video meditations to whatever video-player system (from iPod to widescreen) you prefer. Coming soon ... really.

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