Natural Way Meditation, also known as TAO or Taoist meditation, emphasizes a return to simplicity, self-regulation and avoidance of extremes. Its breathing techniques resemble that of young children, which naturally breathe from their bellies. One of the primary goals of Natural Way meditation is to reduce complicated thinking and to regain the innocent qualities of a newborn infant; this in turn helps the body become lighter, less burdened and more vital.
Meditation has been shown to be very effective in reducing stress, lowering hypertension, high blood pressure and slowing down the aging process. And, more and more, progressively minded primary care and mental health professionals are recommending meditation practice to their patients to prevent heart attacks and stroke, and to help recover from a broken heart and or other psychological trauma. It has also been successfully used to boost performance and maintain balance in many other fields of life such as: education, music, business, sports, family and personal relationships; by using the same simple breathing skills to remain relaxed under pressure. All of the above benefits of meditation practice are truly excellent, but are only positive side affects in comparison to its more noble purpose: to deepen one's spiritual understanding of oneself and others, in order to live more harmoniously in this world.
For thousands of years the meditation skills of the ancient Taoist (men and women who lived close to Nature and functioned as part mystic and part scientist) were used to explore the inner landscapes of the human mind. These spiritual explorers managed to accumulate vast amounts of knowledge into how the mind-body-spirit relationship works, thus helping to make many important discoveries in medicine and science. Through their patient observation of Nature and quiet contemplation and self-introspection practices, they were able to highly develop their intuition. And, in combination with their refined spiritual skills, they further discovered and mapped-out the energy channels within the human body and helped to create the advanced energy science known as Qigong, which further evolved into the extremely comprehensive healing arts of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine.
Taoist recognized long ago that everything boils down to the quality of one's "Chi" or "Qi" (breath power / bioelectric energy / life-force) for true health and spiritual attainment. If an individual does not gather and maintain healthy amounts of energy on a regular basis, he or she may greatly increase their chance for illness and misfortune. Being tiered and fatigued often, or being hyper and anxious on a regular basis, will break down one’s immune system and weaken the body. And, if left uncorrected for too long, this state of imbalance will greatly cloud the mind and further compromise one’s spiritual resolve. Thus, making one even more susceptible to psychic disturbances, spiritual troubles and or physical addictions of all kinds.
A poor diet combined with excessive living and unnatural habits are an obvious prescription for problems, but perhaps the biggest culprits that harm the body and causes it to lose precious amounts of life force, is the abuse of one's emotions and too much thinking. Too much or too little of anything, whether it be happiness and laughter or sadness, worry, anger, fear, jealousy, envy, greed, etc, will result in a major drop of power in the body. Genuine spiritual training requires large amount of clean energy, so the first prerequisite for safe spiritual cultivation is that the body should first and foremost be healthy and balanced. People who prematurely play with or experiment with the subtle spiritual forces present in the natural world, just for entertainment or greed for quick power, will suffer greatly and possibly irreversible damage to their bodies.
For all the above reasons, Taoist meditation techniques focus on simplicity, naturalness, evenness, patience and emotional balance first and foremost. These time-tested methods for spiritual self-cultivation avoid extremes or bizarre practices that may involve complicated and abstract thinking, and or rigid beliefs systems that may lead to separation rather than integration and unification.
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