17 Jun Meditating to Change Physiological Function
I meditated for years and developed a great technique to get a break from my life. I then realized that I would prefer to use meditation to better my life. Fortunately, I began studying neuroscience.
I learned that our understandings, perceptions, and thoughts are all coming from our histories based on how our nervous system perceives and stores our history. For me, this caused a lot of round and round thinking and an extraordinary amount of thinking regarding what might happen to me which I may not like or want. I also learned that because of neuroplasticity I could change those ineffective thinking patterns.
So, I shifted my journey to learn how to tap into the homo sapiens process of neuroplasticity to make meaningful change in how I feel and function.
To do this, I began to practice visualizing functioning the way I wanted to during my meditations. Once again, this worked for the moment I was in, however, it was not helping me in the actual areas of my feeling and functioning that I wanted to change. Then one day, I realized that my body wants to do for me whatever I want it to do (obviously within its power).
Accordingly, I began to alter my meditations to visualize functioning the way I wanted and feeling how good it “felt” to function that way and then to imagine feeling and functioning the way I was in that moment as a permanent part of my functioning. I would then imagine actually changing my wiring with “magic ethereal gloves”.
Often in this process, resistance would come up. I learned to coach myself in my meditations. So, when the resistance comes up, I gently coach myself with “I want to release what no longer serves me”.
The crucial part of meditating to change physiological function is to focus on how my body feels when I get into the mental state I am working on, for example living from love instead of fear, and then imagine and direct myself to “feel” that way all the time.
G. Cole
Founder, Pathwaves

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