Meditation takes practice but it may be just what you need

That nagging pain in your neck, the back pain that won't go away, the gritty strain of being under constant stress—each can be a condition for a medical doctor to assess. But what if, thankfully, all appears well, except for your suspicion that those symptoms would go away if you could just change something about your life?

Meditation could be the answer. But it's important to understand what meditation isn't, says Heidi Ash, a St. Joseph-Benton Harbor, Michigan, stress management expert who helps guide people towards more healthy, less stress-filled lives. Meditation isn't dogma nor religion. It isn't psychotherapy. Nor is it feeling blissful all the time; "That's a misconception," Ash says. "It's being conscious of the self on a deeper level, a different way of looking deeper into how you view life and how that can affect your health."

Why? "We think that we are our thoughts," Ash says. "You're having a great day, then someone says something negative, and you're down; something good happens and you're up again. We allow that to yank us around. So thoughts are nothing to hang on to, because they're always changing. Once you understand that, by meditating, you live your life in a more quiet place."

Bryan Manuele, a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine at Namaste Center in LaPorte, explains, "Meditation is a daily way for people to kind of reset themselves, to stop the kind of forward-driving thinking and activity that lead to daily stress," because daily stress can take a physical toll.

And, Ash says, "You have to sit with yourself for a while so you can realize how much noise we have in our lives," leaving less time to destress, be healthier, and be in less pain.

Ash will sometimes explore a question about someone on spiritual, social, emotional and physical levels. "If someone has back pain, shoulder pain, I will ask how long has it been there, did it start suddenly, or over time, etc., very basic questions, but also I will ask them to describe the pain like this: 'What color is it to you? Is it hot, or cold?' Then I guide them through changing that picture of their pain. Sometimes changing the picture can actually change or soften the pain."

Learning meditation for longer-term wholeness of mind, body and spirit can be challenging. Boredom and self-judging progress are common.

"Take a class, find a teacher," Manuele says. "Mostly we don't know what it is we should be accessing. A teacher helps us find that place within us that is always quiet."

Meditation is a skill and takes practice. "You start slowly, work at it daily, and have a little compassion for your shortcomings," Manuele says. "If you've been stressed out for twenty years, you need to spend more than one day learning to transcend that way of life."