Find greater clarity in your life with meditation
– Quick Overview –
How you can benefit from more clarity in your life
What is the difference between these two situations?
Scenario 1
You hear leaves rustling behind you. Whipping your head around, you see a mighty bear slowly, but surely approaching in the the distance.
In a split second, you decide you can’t possibly take on a bear’s attack and start running for your life towards safety.
Scenario 2
Your teenage daughter gets back home two hours later than agreed.
You ask her why she didn’t answer your calls and texts, and she gives you a brassy response.
Afterwards, you can’t remember exactly what either of you said, but you do recall a lot of yelling and some creative name calling before she stormed off to her room.
Even though these two scenarios seem to have hardly anything in common, your brain reacts to them in the same way.
The way our brain responds to frustrations and stress hasn’t changed much since prehistoric times.
From our ancestors we inherited the fight or flight response, a well-orchestrated and near-instantaneous sequence of hormonal changes and physiological responses of the nervous system that puts us in a state of alertness and vigilance when faced with an attack or threat.
In the scenario of the approaching bear, the fight-or-flight response will ensure your survival.
But when we apply the same response to modern-day frustrations, be it the brassy daughter, somebody cutting you off in traffic, or a colleague putting you on the spot, we are setting ourselves up for painful failure.
During the stress response our body gets flooded with stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which diminish our capability for judgment, critical thinking, problem-solving and also our ability to communicate effectively.
So in situations, in which we need a clear head and good communication skills the most, these qualities are inhibited by the fear response.
The fight-or-flight impulse is reflexive and automatic. Be the first one to strike, lash out – and feel the burn of regret later.
In addition, the amygdala, that part of brain that sets in motion the flood of stress hormones during a fear response, can increases in size through repeated activation.
The more active the amygdala, the more previous emotional responses determine our behaviour.
We react habitually instead of assessing the situation with a clear head and consciously choosing the best way to respond.
Meditation and clarity
Daily Meditation can not only pacify our overstimulated nervous system, but also has the capability to reverse the damage caused by constant activation of the stress response.
Studies have shown the amygdala is physically smaller in the brains of long-time meditators, than in non-meditators.
But of course there is no 100% certainty, so we at Daily Meditation Berlin encourage our students to keep an open mind, take the leap and find out for themselves what meditation can do for them.
Our students are repeatedly amazed how just a few weeks of meditation can have a positive effect on their habitual and anxious thought patterns, giving them the freedom to perceive more clearly and expansively.
As a result, clarity and calm can begin to ingrain in our lives and become our main mode of operating, allowing us to first perceive more expansively and then react in a relevant and creative way to the challenges of life.