While many of you may already know quite a few things about mindfulness meditation which is usually also referred to as breath meditation or breath awareness meditation, there is a method of meditation called the heartfulness meditation that many of you may not have heard of before. I also haven’t heard of this term until recently. Like many of you, I am very curious about what it is so I did my research. At the time being, there isn’t many organized articles about this topic. Therefore, to make things easy for you, I will tell you in this blog post everything that I have found out about heartfulness meditation from my research.
Where Does the Word “Heartfulness” Come From
The method of heartfulness meditation has been around since 1800’s. But the name “heartfulness meditation” only was used recently. The name is used because of two reasons. One, due to the now popular word “mindfulness”, the word “heartfulness” makes it easier to understand that this method of meditation focuses on the heart whether than the mind. Two, a catchy name is used because the head of the organization wants to spread the method more effectively, likely as an attempt to help more people.
A Quick Reminder of What Meditation Is
To call something or some action a meditation method, there is one main criteria that the action must satisfy. First, there has to be something you assign to the mind that is very easy to do in an attempt to slow down the activity of the mind. For example, with breath meditation, you would ask your brain to focus on the breathing in and breathing out action of yourself to relax your mind. For mantra meditation, you would repeatedly read a meaningless mantra in your mind to achieve the same effect. The big idea is to do something easy to stop your mind from thinking very intensely and randomly. That’s as close as letting your mind rest totally. After you finish your meditation, you should be able to have a very clear mind and able to think more rationally and clearly.
The Method of Heartfulness Meditation
For heartfulness meditation, one would have to imagine that light is spreading across his heart. That is supposed to be some easy task that allows your mind from doing intense thinking. Therefore, it does match with the big idea of meditation and it should be considered a valid form of meditation.
Is There a Different Between Mind and Heart
You can easily argue whether the mind and the heart are the same thing. In many countries, people consider that the mind is for thinking and the heart is for feeling. Although that may seem very clear in writing but I don’t really think it is as clear in reality. To make things even more complex, do you know the difference between the mind, the heart and the brain. I am one of those people that believe that the mind, the brain and the heart is the same thing when it comes to meditation.
Why You May Want to Try Heartfulness Meditation
Remember that the big idea of meditation is to make your mind do some easy task in an attempt to rest your mind. That’s nothing more and nothing less. But why do we have all sorts of methods such as breath meditation, mantra meditation and guided meditation? It is because that one of these methods would match you better and more effectively put your mind at rest. While many people find breath meditation the best, I, along with a huge group of people, find mantra meditation work best for us. Therefore, there is always a chance that heartfulness meditation may work better for you than other meditation methods.
It is Better to Be Too Safe
I am a little bit on the conservative side in almost all aspects of life. I find it almost always better to be a little too safe than to be a little too risky. For example, I don’t think it is good to take additional risk in order to earn money that I don’t need for now. I would rather play safe and let the opportunity go. I use the same approach for meditation. If one method already work very well or well enough for me, I won’t switch. Since mantra meditation can help me clear my mind pretty effectively, I really don’t want to find another method that may further improve the quality of meditation. That’s especially true for the case of heartfulness meditation. Since there is way too little information about heartfulness meditation compared to mantra meditation or breath meditation, I would only tried once or twice out of curiosity but I would stick to what works for me.
For Those of You Looking For Alternative Ways to Meditate
If you have reached this blog post, there is a good chance that you are looking for methods that you can easy use for meditation. If breath meditation or mantra meditation isn’t for you, I would highly recommend you an informal but super effective way to meditate. This method is to take a 45-minute-plus long walk. Trust me, you don’t really have to sit still and have your eyes closed to clear your mind. By move your feet back and forth repeatedly and walking a far distance, your mind can be effectively relaxed. And the bonus point is that you body is also relaxed. In fact, when it is not raining, I would prefer to take a long walk than having my mantra meditation, though I would actually look to both. Most importantly, taking a long walk is easier and no learning curves is involved.
In conclusion, heartfulness meditation is just another method of meditation. From how it is described, it seems like another valid way to meditate. It is consistent with the big idea of meditation: assigning to your mind something easy to do in order to rest the mind. However, since I am too conservative a person, I would still only highly recommend you to use of the following three methods: breath meditation, mantra meditation and taking long walks.