Why Meditate in my Native Tongue?

In the last few years, meditation has become so popular that more and more people practice it. In parallel, multiple resources, such as meditation videos and podcasts, have become within our reach.

As we know, the Internet connects the world and erases the borders between nations. This is why the meditation resources that we may find in the places that we regularly search -Spotify or YouTube- are not always in our native tongue or dialect.

Benefits of Meditation

We have already expressed many of the benefits and advantages of meditation in other articles, and we recommend that you read them to understand how rich this practice is. One of the most important aspects of meditation is that anyone, regardless of their age, nationality, or belief system, can meditate.

There are more and more clinical and scientific studies that endorse meditation as a means for people to relax their minds and find a state of calm. However, these are not the only benefits of meditating. Below, we go over some of the other benefits of this practice:

Physiological Effects of Meditation:

The physiological effects of practicing meditation, which more and more studies prove each day, are concrete.

For example, there is a meditation technique called Kirtan Kriya that seeks to anchor thoughts by combining chanting mantras with repetitive finger poses (mudras). This practice helps to increase attention, mental agility, and memory. It is usually recommended to slow down the natural deterioration of memory as we age and helps to partially improve memory in patients showing the first signs of dementia.

Meditation also contributes to reducing heart tension. This happens because meditation relaxes the nervous impulses that regulate cardiac function, the tension in our blood vessels, and the natural reaction of our organism to stress. This way, blood pressure drops. Meditation helps to prevent heart disease.

Psychological Effects of Meditation:

According to scientific studies, meditation can help to reduce some symptoms of depression. Although meditation doesn't "cure" mental illnesses, it can be a very useful complement to other treatments because meditation reduces the liberation of proinflammatory cytokines, cytokines that stimulate adrenocorticotropic release, and cortisol.

That is to say, besides controlling stress, it can also contribute to reducing the presence of hormones that put the body in a constant state of alert, which can cause more severe pathologies. Furthermore, it has been proven that meditation helps to improve the image that we have of ourselves, and that it contributes to a more positive outlook on life.

Some forms of meditation aim at acknowledging negative or self-destructive thoughts so that we can become aware of thought habits and then work on controlling and directing them towards more constructive thought patterns. Additionally, the more we meditate, the easier it is to generate more creative solutions.

Cost:

One of the great advantages of meditation is that anyone can practice it and that it has no cost. Most of these meditation techniques don't require a specialized team or too much space.

All you need to practice meditation is to invest a few minutes each day. That's it. Although you can incorporate music, and incense, or use a mat, none of these accessories are necessary.

Why you Should Meditate in your Native Tongue

We already learned about many of the benefits of meditating. By now, you are probably asking yourself about the title of this article and why it's so important to meditate in your native tongue.

Many education, neuroscience, and meditation experts recommend meditating in your native tongue, the first language that you learned. The main reason that specialists have for this is that this is the language -and dialect- that we tend to use in order to think and communicate.

If we take into consideration that each language is associated with a culture and with a different way of seeing reality, and that the mother tongue forms part of the identity of each person, then we will understand the neurolinguistic and subjective importance of carrying out such a personal practice in our native tongue.

That is to say, if your mother tongue is Spanish, then you should meditate in Spanish, if it's English, then if this is your language of origin. This way,the brain will focus on the meaning of what is being said rather than on decoding the sentences of an unfamiliar language, which would bring about the famous Monkey Mind.

What is Monkey Mind?

During the day, around 50 thousand thoughts cross our minds. Some are completely arbitrary, others are a chain of thoughts that center on the same topic. Buddhism illustrates these thoughts as tree branches, and our mind, which swings and jumps from one to the next, as a monkey. That's where the term "Monkey Mind" comes from.

Monkey mind is used to describe a mental state full of ruminating thoughts that distract us from the present. It is a state that stops us from reaching a state of full focus, which is essential to performing any task.

Furthermore, the sequence of uncontrollable jumping from topic to topic in our minds often takes the form of conversations with ourselves. These conversations sometimes take the mind through an unraveling spiral that is not always happy and is full of negative thoughts and emotions that anguish and pressure us.

The term was popularized by the Tibetan monk, Mingyur Rinpoche, who explains that the monkey mind can be tamed through daily meditation practice by approaching the famous state of mindfulness However, it is not necessary to go through grueling training to achieve this.

The way of "fighting" against monkey mind is by finding moments in the day, of at least 10 minutes per session, where we can practice any task at hand with no distractions and a quiet mind. When carrying this out, you should not check your cell phones, or read or receive any stimulus that is not related to the task you are carrying out.

A good way to train to achieve concentration in these sessions is to practice meditation. Meditating invites us to be present, without judging or rejecting thoughts but observing and releasing them.

In Hakuna, we believe that we can always learn more about this path. That's why we invite you to download our app on PlayStore and AppStore to learn a lot more about meditation and what it has to offer you. Benefit from over 1000 sessions that you can access for free.