Author: Kayla Venuti

In my final weeks practicing meditation for my personal project, I decided to explore Chinese Qigong meditation. Qigong means “life energy cultivation” in Chinese. This kind of meditation is an exercise for both your body and mind, and is typically used for health, meditation, and martial arts training. It involves slow body movement, inner focus, and regulatory breathing. Qigong breathing methods can come in many forms. Different breathing techniques are specific to what the person wants to achieve; whether it be martial arts training, health, or meditation and spiritual cultivation.  I decided for my purposes it would be best to practice breathing to achieve meditation and spiritual cultivation.

The way to practice Qigong meditation is to start out by sitting in a comfortable position, making sure your body is centered . Relax all muscles, nerves, and inner organs when in your position of choice. Next, regulate the breath, making sure to be taking long and deep inhales, and soft exhales. While focusing on breathing, calm the mind so all thoughts are on the breath. After this is achieved, place all your attention to your lower dantian. Dantian is a word used in Daoist meditation referring to the energy centers and focal points for meditation exercises. In my exercise, I focused on the lower dantian, which is the area of the stomach below the bellybutton. The two other focal points are the middle dantian  which is at the level of the heart associated with strong spirit and health of internal organs. The second focal point is the upper dantian which is located at the forehead in between the eyebrows (the third eye), and is associated with refining the spirit into emptiness. The lower dantian, which is my focal point, is the center of gravity for the body. Focusing on this point will help build and solidify he qi. Qi is the vital energy, where my mind and energy is. By focusing my qi on the lower dantian, I am allowing my qi to flow through my body by gathering my energy in a natural reservoir.

I was intimidated by this kind of meditation because at first read it seems slightly intense and more advanced. It took me a couple days to really put these steps into effective action. Once I did, I felt more in tough with myself, and was able to center myself when stressed and increase my focus.

For the past two weeks I have been trying out a new form of mediation called Metta meditation. Metta meditation is a type of meditation that focuses on compassion and love. Metta is a Pali word meaning kindness, good will, and benevolence. This kind of meditation comes from traditions in the Buddhist religion, specifically the Tibetan and Theravada lineages.  To do this, one sits down cross legged on the floor with closed eyes, making sure that the spine remains upright. To begin one generates feelings of kindness and benevolence towards yourself, and then to others. A popular progression is co concentrate on feeling kindness and compassion towards yourself, a good friend, a neutral person on your life, a difficult person in your life, all four of these people equally, and then gradually send these thoughts to the universe. This progression makes sending these feelings to people you may dislike easier by starting with yourself and loved ones. In conclusion to this meditation, you should have developed a feeling of wishing happiness to everyone in the world. Another easy trick to send these good thoughts is to visualize the suffering of others and send them love, or imagining someone and wish them happiness.

To be honest, I was a little skeptical of this type of meditation, it sounds a little cheesy to me. Nonetheless, in the spirit of Thanksgiving and the holiday season I decided to give it a shot and try Metta meditation once a day for about 15 minutes. To my surprise, I felt really good after completing the meditation each day. Wishing happiness to others, especially people I do not know personally, is something I do not do very often.  But when I started to routinely remind myself of my love for myself, family, friends, and people in the world, I found I had a more accepting attitude about my self image, and that I was getting angry less. Especially during the holidays when my huge extended family stays with my immediate family and I in our small house, tensions start to arise because we are all sharing a small space. However, I found myself getting angry or annoyed less during these tensions, because I was able to have more compassion due to my Metta meditation.

I believe Metta meditation can contribute to the greater scope of nonviolent practices because the core of this meditation is unconditional forgiveness, love, and kindness towards all kinds of people. The thought process of self love and love of others helps to humanize the enemy, and increase your compassion towards others. Additionally, the core concepts of nonviolence is to recognize the human in all people and to use kindness during disagreements or violence. Metta meditation could help many people develop compassion for themselves, friends, and family in their everyday lives which can improve relationships, as well as develop compassion for people in the media who may anger them which leads to a happier lifestyle.

For the past two weeks or so I have been practicing a type of meditation called Vipassana Meditation. This type of meditation is similar to mindfulness, except it utilizes a key concept and strategy called “mental labeling”. “Vipassana” is a Pali word meaning “clear-seeing” or “insight”. This practice focuses mainly on attaining a clear sight on your physical and mental being, without holding on or concentrating on one thought or feeling.

One way to practice Vipassana is to sit on a cushion on the floor, or on a chair, sitting with a straight spine. To develop concentration, one must focus on their breath and chest movements. This specific exercise is called samatha practice. While focusing on the breath, other perceptions and thoughts can creep in, such as sounds, physical feelings, thoughts, emotions, etc. Vipassana focuses on accepting those sensations, and then returning to the breath. The attention is kept on the breath, and everything else continues in the background.

To aid in concentration, one can use the “noting” method. This method requires one to focus on the main object, called the primary object (the breath). A secondary object is anything else that may pop into our minds. If a secondary object pops into your concentration, the labeling method suggests you label the thought or feeling with a mental note, such as “noise” or “memory” or “feeling”. This helps your mind to move on quickly and not focus on the thought. This concept and practice of focusing on your  main object, while being aware without attachment on secondary objects is called mental labeling.

Vipassana meditation was definitely a first for me. I had never used the labeling method and was a little skeptical on if it would be effective. I found it to be really helpful during my meditation. Putting a quick and easy label on something made it easier to move on from the thought and go back to my primary object of concentration. Overall, Vipassana helped me better connect with how my body was feeling and working, as well as my mind. I found my mind to be busy with thought about schoolwork, assignments, and scheduling. Once I was able to label those thoughts and release them, I was able to focus on lightening my mind and helping me focus and go into different obstacles with a clear and focused mind. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who would like to try meditation!

During this past week, I    have been practicing a form of Buddhist meditation called Zazen or Zen meditation. Zazen means “seated meditation’ in Japanese. There are two different ways to practice this form of meditation, however both require a seated position (on the ground or a chair), and the back must remain straight. Your gaze is low and focusing on the ground two or three feet in front of you. The form of practice is called Shikantaza, which means ‘just sitting’. When doing this, the meditator does not focus on a specific subject, the goal is to remain in the present moment as much as possible. It consists of being aware of what passes through your mind, without focusing on one specific thought. The second way to practice Zen meditation, which is the form I  practiced, is called focusing on breath. During this exercise, as you breathe in you count one number, starting with ten and counting backwards. When you get to one, start counting over again. If you get distracted or lose count, start over at 10.

This form of meditation was extremely helpful with making me feel more centered and grounded. I    tend to think and worry about the future a lot of the time, and practicing this exercise helped bring me back to the moment and focus on what needs to be done that day. I    had an especially crazy and emotional week, and concentrating on my breath gave me a form of distraction and I    was able to channel my energy into something productive, which lowered feelings of anxiety.