Shereen Ali

Ever felt anx­ious, stressed out, or like life is tak­ing you on a nev­er-end­ing roller-coast­er ride with no ap­par­ent rest point? Or have you found it in­ex­plic­a­bly dif­fi­cult to fo­cus your en­er­gies and get the job done? Or per­haps you've sim­ply felt pulled in so many di­rec­tions that you don't feel at peace with your­self.

Maybe all you need is a lit­tle med­i­ta­tion.

This Wednes­day at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, a glob­al group called Peace Rev­o­lu­tion is hold­ing a free med­i­ta­tion ses­sion in the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah at 5 pm. Every­one is in­vit­ed.

Peace Rev­o­lu­tion is a world­wide peace net­work that was born in 2008 in Thai­land. They pro­mote a cul­ture of peace through per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion us­ing med­i­ta­tion as the main tool. They are cur­rent­ly in the mid­dle of a tour around Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. They are in T&T from March 17-19, giv­ing a se­ries of med­i­ta­tion work­shops.

Med­i­ta­tion isn't re­served for Hin­du yo­gis or Bud­dhist monks. Any­one can do it and ben­e­fit from the stress-bust­ing ef­fects. Med­i­ta­tion can help you the next time your co-work­er acts like an id­iot. It can help con­trol an­gry im­puls­es, and is a use­ful tech­nique for dis­tanc­ing your­self from your bur­dens for a while, to gain a lit­tle respite and per­spec­tive, say prac­ti­tion­ers.

As per­son­al train­er Daniel Wallen shares in his blog, "A mo­ment of si­lence can serve you in so many ways that it would be sil­ly not to do it."

The Peace Rev­o­lu­tion aims to help peo­ple on an in­ward quest, to dis­cov­er and cul­ti­vate a last­ing, self-sus­tain­ing hap­pi­ness. Through per­son­al change, they be­lieve we can all be­come "hu­mane change agents," af­fect­ing life out­side us in a pos­i­tive way.

"If you would like to start rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing your­self, we would like to chal­lenge you to prac­tice at least 30 min­utes of In­ner Peace Time per day," Peace Rev­o­lu­tion agents say:

"Many of you who have nev­er med­i­tat­ed be­fore will won­der what you are do­ing, why you are do­ing it, or what is the val­ue of med­i­tat­ing. Please be open-mind­ed and trust your­self! There is no right or wrong an­swer on this scale and med­i­ta­tion is, as they say, a win-win sit­u­a­tion."

When we med­i­tate, we recharge the mind and body so that we have more en­er­gy to do good things for our­selves and for oth­ers, say Peace Rev­o­lu­tion prac­ti­tion­ers. The group teach­es peo­ple one of the sim­plest forms of med­i­ta­tion: Dham­makaya med­i­ta­tion, fo­cussing the mind at the cen­tre of the body, stop­ping the mind and bring­ing every­thing to a point of still­ness with­in.

Med­i­ta­tion has been shown to have many ef­fects. Phys­i­cal­ly, it in­creas­es blood flow and slows the heart; it's good for peo­ple with high blood pres­sure; it de­creas­es mus­cle ten­sion; it helps PMS; it en­hances the im­mune sys­tem; it re­lax­es our ner­vous sys­tems and har­monis­es our en­docrine sys­tems.

Psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, med­i­ta­tion in­creas­es sero­tonin lev­els; helps re­solve fears; in­creas­es cre­ativ­i­ty; helps learn­ing abil­i­ty and mem­o­ry; helps us ig­nore the pet­ty is­sues; and can help us make more ac­cu­rate judge­ments. It helps reg­u­late emo­tions, calms us down, and with prac­tice, can help us be hon­est with our­selves. And spir­i­tu­al­ly, the Peace Rev­o­lu­tion says med­i­ta­tion helps us keep things in per­spec­tive; helps us dis­cov­er our pur­pose; and helps us to learn for­give­ness and love.