Last week we learned about diaphragmatic breathing. I also informed the reader on how runners use belly breathing for efficient maximum oxygen capacity. I wanted to correct a minor grammatical error just in case there was any confusion. It should have read: “three foot-strikes” and “two foot-strikes.” Having cleared that up what it fundamentally means is that life requires balance in every aspect of it. My personal belief is that the 12th and last precept of balance is the most fundamental to health and well-being. It is the efficiency of maintaining alpha and theta brain wavelengths and reducing frenetic beta brain waves. Belly breathing quickly gets you there.

Meditation is the practice of maintaining and or shifting to alpha and theta brain wavelengths ultimately causing transformative body and mind processes that translate to health but ultimately to collective relational transformation. If that sounds farfetched it isn't. If we do not transform our collective neural networks we will go extinct. We have been in an unsustainable socio-economic model for multiple millennia. We exist on a finite planet. Sustainability is necessary for a future. Meditation is an exercise to shift us to a new era of balance.
Scientifically, meditation is about creating new neural networks and overriding the millennia-old brain networks containing the unsustainable neuroses social model. Antecedents have perpetually dumped unworkable futures into subsequent generations as if they are robotic repositories.

Meditation does not require sitting and closing your eyes, although if you become a practitioner then you'll adopt the core practice of quieting the mind and body with eyes closed and body comfortably relaxed. The practice does not require external quietness.

Anywhere and anytime, standing, walking, driving, cycling, running, shopping - all day and night until sleep - on and off - with eyes open focus on your natural nasal breathing process -preferably diaphragmatically, comfortably swelling your belly. The act of focusing on your breathing process temporarily suspends the thought process. During meditation thoughts will push their way into your quietness because your brain is untrained, undisciplined and atrophied. Meditation requires constantly returning to your breathing with no judgment about the interruption due to thought invasion.

All that is required to have personal and social transformation is to want it. Meditation is not about thinking about transformation. It is about wanting a new you and a new humanity by creating new neural networks while resting in the space between thoughts. Think of the space as a clearing in a thicket of weeds.

After you have read this article take the next 30 seconds or 5 minutes and practice. On and off all day and into the night create a new you and a balanced workable future for our children and the unborn.

Paul Benavidez, MFA