In dhyaan/ mindfulness meditation, you are usually asked to focus on physical sensations in your body (breath, sounds, surfaces in contact, etc) to control random thoughts of your monkey mind.

This has 2 advantages:

1) Focusing as well as maintaining that focus on a real, physical sensation is much easier compared to an abstract idea or imaginary picture/ person.

2) If you're imagining a leaf, next moment you may imagine a goat coming and eating that leaf. Hence, imaginary things have an inherent risk of leading you into other thoughts, the very things you're trying to control. On the other hand, physical sensations are externally stimulated and thus offer almost a dead end to further thoughts (as you can't do much to change it!).

RMPS YBES= Resting Mind through Physical Sensations & Yogic Breathing+ Eyes Shut
(Just giving it a name, for my own convenience of reference😅)

Obviously, the more vivid sensation you choose, the easier it is to focus on it. The more obscure/ abstract, the tougher it is to start there. E.g, if it's raining, choose sound of the raindrops on the window pane. Or maybe sit under a fan to feel the air flowing over your body.
Thus, if the sensation is being actively produced by you, it tkes your active involvement and is hence even easier to focus. That's why mantra recitation is so powerful!

I'm numbering this quote to mark it as a Landmark/ milestone realisation:
Thinking and feeling happen in different parts of the brain. Each time we bring our attention back to physical sensations, we use the feeling part of the brain; which gives the thinking mind a break.

A sudden realisation that hit today! Dhyaan keeps surprising me every now & then!
#dhyaan #meditation #saadhna #focus #work #attention #mind #purpose
© Adarsh Bhardwaj