Although relaxation and sleeping can have a calming effect upon your mind, they differ from meditation. Meditation is a discipline. The purpose of meditation is to create more peace and joy in your life by training your mind and learning to detaching from your thoughts. This allows us to live our life more purposefully than just being controlled by whatever shows up in our head. Through meditation, we discover that we are not our thoughts and that we can change, modify, or release repetitive thoughts or old mental programming not supporting us.
I find that sometimes while relaxing that my mind is very active or I may even have trouble sleeping because I can’t turn off my thoughts. In fact, when we fall asleep our minds can still be quite active.
One of the best ways to consciously calm the mind is through a meditation practice. As we “purposefully” slow down thoughts, our brain waves actually soften. Brain imaging also shows different parts of the brain changing size and color as a person meditates.
Also, a consistent meditation practice has many benefits that you won’t get from just sleeping or relaxing.
Interested in learning more about meditation, visit: Christian Meditation- What Do You Need to Heal? – The Christian Meditator
If interested, I invite you to join my Christian’s Who Meditate Facebook Group!
