Transcending past experiences with Transcendental Meditation

There are many mental techniques based on the idea of positive thinking and mental reprogramming. While good in theory the results of these programs widely vary. They seem to work best if you are a positive person to start with but leave people scarred by trauma or sufferers of PTSD struggling to change the way they think.

Every experience we have changes the brain. If we want to learn how to ride a bike, we have to practice it and we find that over time the activity becomes easier. This is because we have hardwired the experience in to the brain. We also hardwire in all our negative experiences. Failure in business, a break up in a relationship, losing our luggage while traveling; all these experiences lay down pathways in the brain so then when we come to a new experience instead of just thinking positive thoughts we feel apprehension, doubt and fear.

Trying to suppress or control our thoughts just creates strain in the mind. In order to move through them, the stress or impression of that particular experience needs to be dissolved.

Every experience creates an impression on the nervous system. We have the mental impression which is the memory and we have the physical impression which is the tension stored in the physiology. For example if we experience an abusive conversation we have the memory of what was said and we also have the feelings of anger, helplessness, fear etc. that we felt at that time. So when we recall the incident, we may find ourselves feeling teary or uptight.

Counselling and mental therapies can help us to understand the effect of such an experience but it doesn’t actually release the stress in the body.

The mind and body are intimately connected, when the body is tired or sick our thoughts are less coherent likewise stress and anxiety can disturb our sleep and digestion.

During Transcendental Meditation we experience less and less thoughts until we transcend or go beyond the process of thinking. In this state the mind is at its quietest and the body achieves a state of rest up to twice as deep as deep sleep. In this profound state of rest so we are able to release the build up of stress and tension both mentally and physically. It takes this very deep state to dissolve deep rooted stress that we may have been carrying around for decades. When the stress has been released we will never experience it again. We may still have the memory of a traumatic situation but when we think about it or speak about it, it is as if it happened to someone else. There is no emotional charge left and therefore no reaction from the body.

The practice of Transcendental Meditation does not require us to relive any traumatic experiences we just release the impressions and start to live our full potential. One of the best aspects about Transcendental Meditation is that it is very easy to learn. Children as young as 10 can learn and even people with ADHD and PTSD have great results.