Meditation is often associated with mystical or religious connotations due to its religious heritage. However, it has nothing to do with belief, nor does it require outside authority. Simply put, it can be an everyday practice or a form of psychotherapy. Meditation puts the brain into a unique state of consciousness, similar to hypnosis or an altered state of consciousness, which is a different mode of cognitive operation.

Meditation is an umbrella term encompassing various approaches and practices, with mindfulness meditation being one of the most common methods. Mindfulness is to observe thoughts and feelings as they come and go without judgment or criticism.

Meditation is mind-watching, and while the process is very straightforward, it takes practice to stay concentrated and dive into a deeper state of consciousness. It is simply to close your eyes, quiet down, and pay close attention to subtle thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. As taking a step back and observing yourself from a third-person point of view. Through this process, you gain a better understanding of your mind’s working patterns and develop skills in self-awareness and perception. Meditation is often accompanied by breathing techniques to help relax the mind and body.

Here are some of the unique features of meditation:

Healthy Brain, Healthy Emotions

As a healing tool, meditation offers numerous benefits, enhancing self-awareness and relaxing the mind and body. Its healing effects have been proven in clinical settings to modulate emotions, alleviate symptoms of trauma or PTSD, facilitate deeper relaxation, relieve stress, depression, and anxiety, improve sleep quality, ease chronic pain, and reduce compulsive and addictive conditions.

For those with severe depression, especially when medication is ineffective or unsuitable (e.g., pregnant women or those experiencing side effects), mindfulness can be an excellent alternative. Many clinical studies have found that mindfulness courses practiced daily for eight weeks can increase emotional stability and concentration. Of course, the degree of improvement varies from person to person.

The effects are reflected on both psychological and physiological levels. Training the brain is like training muscles. Studies have found that a few weeks of mindfulness practice improves the brain regions responsible for emotional regulation. Scientists use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe changes in brain structure.

Minimizing Emotional Impact

Typically, recalling a terrible experience or memory when you’re wide awake can be overwhelming, whether terror, sorrow, or rage. These intense emotions can suffocate your ability to think clearly. However, meditation changes the brain's mode of operation. 

In a meditative state, you are neither fully awake nor asleep but slightly dazed. In this state, emotions are slightly detached or disassociated, making them less reactive. If you recall an awful memory or a terrible situation (why would anyone do that? Because to heal is to untangle the feelings and thoughts), having the same feelings yet emotional responses is significantly less impactful and less harmful. It's like stepping back from a blazing hot bonfire—you can still feel the heat but not get burned. However, sometimes, meditation might release suppressed feelings and cause overwhelming emotions during meditation.

This effect also applies to physical pain, which is why many people leverage meditation for pain control by slightly disassociating from the pain. Similarly, hypnosis provides comparable or even more effective results.

Awareness

Through meditation, you become mindful of the activities occurring in your mind and learn to pay attention to the details of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and bodily sensations. Through practice, as your senses become more sensitive, your awareness starts to expand, allowing you to notice an array of subtle things that you haven’t noticed before. You start to notice more colors of shades or feelings that “weren’t” there before.

While you observe your own feelings, note that there are no right or wrong feelings or thoughts—whether impotent, angry, frustrated, jealous, or even hateful. We often avoid having "bad" feelings because they seem to make us "bad" people. However, masking or suppressing feelings doesn't make you a "good" person any more than sweeping dust under the rug makes a house cleaner, or does it? The underlying problem is not the feelings or emotions themselves; they are merely symptoms or results of unresolved issues waiting to be uncovered and addressed.

Also, while awareness doesn't necessarily make us less emotional, it makes us more alert and conscious of our emotions and thoughts, helping us avoid reacting unconsciously.

Perceiving and Sensing

We are confined by our brains and limited by pre-defined thinking patterns, much like a computer. However, meditation can alter the brain's mechanics. The mind temporarily escapes its loopy circuitry, allowing you to perceive things outside of old patterns. This state changes your perception by loosening your thinking patterns, leading to greater mental flexibility.

In other words, past experiences, childhood upbringing, cultural norms, memories, or beliefs can create a rigid framework that hinders our ability to perceive things in their true nature. We judge based on our moral code or personal values, viewing things through a colored lens (aka bias) and hearing our brain's interpretation rather than seeing the true nature of things.

The good news is that a deep meditative state or altered state of consciousness can make this framework less opaque, allowing us to peek into an unobstructed view of reality, which sparks insights. This is one of the reasons that Buddhist teaching heavily emphasizes meditation, as it brings wisdom. 

Discovering Unconscious Feelings and Thoughts

Perhaps you're anxious or feeling down but don't know exactly what's bothering you. A dark cloud hovers over you, yet you don't always understand why or how to dispel it.

In a meditative state, unconscious thoughts or feelings can reveal themselves. Thus, in terms of meditation practice, we focus more on an intentional or goal-oriented approach and less emphasis on mindfulness. By “intentional,” we leverage meditation to dive deeper into the state of consciousness, exploring the sea of unconsciousness to uncover hidden feelings and thoughts that are less obvious or hidden during the waking state of consciousness.

While in the meditative state, focus on a specific physical symptom, emotion, feeling, or event, then start mind-watching and let insights come to you. It's like fishing in the sea of unconsciousness—you cast a bait, perhaps an unsettling feeling, emotion, or physical pain, and wait for responses. 

Pay attention to feelings or thoughts; they might present themselves as insights that suddenly click and form connections. For example, "I thought I had let go and forgiven, yet I didn’t realize that pain has dwelled in my body and never truly went away," or "I thought I was strong, rational, independent, and doesn’t need nobody, but now I realize how much I want to love and be loved."

Combined with healing methods, this approach goes beyond just mind-watching but mind-healing.