Over the last few weeks, one word has cropped up time and again as I’ve spoken with participants in my art for wellbeing activities. It’s something they say they’ve found very beneficial, or that they would like to start – but they say demand is high, and they can’t always find local or online groups. The word? Meditation.
Yes, I’ve known for a long time that there’s surging interest in meditation and mindfulness for wellbeing, and I know meditation can be recommended for anxiety and depression, high blood pressure and pain management, to name but a few. But hearing these people share their thoughts and experiences, I’ve started to wonder. Why is meditation so helpful, so positive, so worthwhile? Am I missing out? Why do people instinctively feel drawn to a practice that is unfamiliar to many of us these days? What does it reveal about our innermost needs? And how might it complement creativity and art for wellbeing?
Everyone may interpret meditation in a different way, or come to meditation with different goals. It may be about slowing down, setting aside time to be, to think, to feel. For many, it will be a way of searching for something beyond, something other – for purpose, for hope itself. Meditation can be about being attentive and aware, present in the moment. Thinking deeply, or on the other hand, not thinking at all, but clearing and cleansing the mind. Meditation can be described as a form of prayer. It can be about listening or reflecting or being. Feeling held or feeling open and liberated.
I want to discover more about the diverse forms meditation can take. It may be guided meditation, where a leader talks you through, maybe visualising a scenario and inviting you to make choices as you go or to think through how you would respond. It can be indoors, outdoors, alone or in a group, or using an app. There’s meditative walking, music-making or dance. There’s lectio divina, meditative praying over the Bible. And yes, visual arts can be used within meditation. This might be a simple way to ground yourself, such as drawing a line each time you breathe out, the lines getting longer as you breathe more slowly. Or you could use art to respond to meditation, drawing a motif or symbol to represent something in the leader’s words or in your own mind. I like ideas like these, uniting meditation with action. An active response can help with concentration, which might be a barrier to meditation particularly if anxiety is robbing you of your powers of concentration, or you dread overthinking. And meditation & contemplation are “not only” about reflection, silence, stilling ourselves. Rather, they can become a spur to action, a time to prepare or fuel ourselves so we start back out renewed.
So many of us search: for truth, for purpose, for rest. Meditation can be part of that search, and it can draw on traditions such as the Christian tradition, which shares how meditation can help us rest in God, contemplating God as seen in Jesus, in awe, wonder and mystery. And that’s not all. It can change perspectives, how we see ourselves and the world. Today, initiatives like Contemplative Fire (www.contemplativefire.org) reinterpret these traditions for new generations, questioning and exploring meditation as an embodied spirituality, along with many other ideas. There’s a long tradition of Christian meditation, after all, rooted in Celtic Christianity and in the writings of mystics like Julian of Norwich and the authors of The Dark Night Of The Soul and The Cloud Of Unknowing. Maybe meditation will come more and more to the fore as a distinctive practice for a world that wants to (re)discover truth and faith its own way, to explore and experiment – and a way back in?
As I wonder about using meditation for wellbeing, I think a form of meditation that draws me out of myself would be the most helpful. That’s where I feel Christian meditation adds another layer, making the experience richer and deeper. Knowing yourself, knowing God, knowing what is all around us.
I know so little about meditation that I’ve only scraped the surface. But maybe that makes sense. It’s all too easy to live on the surface of life, to shut out thoughts and content ourselves with the everyday. Meditation is a glimpse of something deeper.
Medley 