Energy’s Ebb and Flow in Meditation

Meditation masters often teach about energy in the body.   Energy in the body carries messages.  It can be electric, as transmitted through the nervous system (“Chakras”) or messages carried by organic chemicals in the blood stream.

Energy always carries information with it, but comes in different forms.  Einstein taught that matter is just a more dense form of energy.  Similarly, water can be liquid, solid (ice), gas (vapor) or Chemical (separated into hydrogen and oxygen at the atomic level).  Chemical or electric, matter or energy, it’s all information.

ENERGY = INFORMATION

DNA is a material form of energy that carries a huge amount of information, the entire blueprint of the physical body.  Within the body, information is communicated via both electricity and chemicals.  This is important for meditation, because meditation is the body’s means of communicating information between the  conscious mind and the subconscious mind (autonomic nervous system) where our habitual thoughts, feelings and actions live.  And meditation is all about energy.

“Where we put our ATTENTION is where we put our life ENERGY.”

ENERGY WAVES

Energy is often expressed as waves.  Radio waves carry information, conducted through space.  Faint messages transmitted from distant satellites are converted to material messages as radio or TV sound and images or even translated into print as newspapers and books.

Our brain waves, like radio, sound or light waves, vary in frequency.  The quality and type of information carried by energy waves varies with frequency.  In meditation or hypnosis, we change the frequency of brain waves from beta to alpha.  Even deeper, to Theta.  Deeper still, to Gamma.  The deepest frequency levels are the domain of miracles, healing and more, where matter is transmuted by energy.

The meta-physical nature of energy is important in the practice of meditation.

RIDE THE WAVES

As a young man, I was blessed to experience wave energy in my body.

I surfed the North Shore of Oahu where I went to college.

Surfing the famous “pipeline” was an experience of high energy, both physical force and chemical (endorphins and adrenaline).

There were also longer stretches of time between brief moments of exhilarating rides, sitting outside of where the waves break over the reef, rising and falling with gentle, unbroken swells.  Feelings of calm in the gentle swirling of water around my feet.  The sight and sound of seagulls riding air currents and clouds floating on the horizon.  Feeling the gentle sea breeze on my wet skin.  The smell of salt air and the taste of salty ocean in my mouth. Feelings, even feelings of calm, are energy that contains information.

Feelings are the language of the body.  Meditation is how the brain communicates information to the body in the form of feeling.  The conscious brain is flooded with stressful thoughts.  Feelings of peace are achieved by remembering peaceful experiences and their accompanying feelings from the body using altered states of consciousness (high vibration brain waves).

SURF YOUR FEELINGS

Recently, in my morning meditation session, I evoked the memory of feelings of calmness and peace I experienced long ago while surfing.  In meditation, as noted above, it is important to allow feelings to replace thoughts. By combining breath-work with the sensation of rising and falling on those gentle swells, the thoughts of my mind become still and the feelings of peace in my body rise. I imagine the influx of energy into my body with my inhale, sitting on my surfboard, rising as the swell lifts me to its peak.  There is a pause at the top of the wave. I transition to exhale and gradually fall into the trough of the swell where there is another long pause. Over and over, I repeat that feeling, rising and falling. With my breath, the energy in my body rises and falls, increasing during the inhalation phase and falling as I exhale.  This is the natural rhythm of life energy, called “prana” in yogic traditions. In meditation, one learns to surrender to natural rhythms. There is peace to be found in nature.

YOU ARE UNIQUE - SO IS YOUR MEDITATION PRACTICE

You probably aren’t a surfer.  Each of us has our own personal journey through this life. Your experiences and feelings are as unique to you as your finger prints or your DNA.  Relatively few have enjoyed the feelings of peacefully rising and falling with the swells on a surfboard.  It is important to use whatever experiences of peace you have had in your life’s journey.  Consider the feelings of peace derived from your experiences that convey metaphysical messages within your body.  Incorporate them into your breath-work and your symbolic mantras.  It is in that personal adaptation of experiences and thoughts into feelings in the body that I have found success in stilling the mind so I can hear the still small voice.

“Be Still and Know that I am God.”

Psalm 46:10