Yoga Meditation Nation

I have to admit, I can identify with the author of this article. I much prefer yoga meditation alone as opposed to doing it in a group. I guess that's b/c I'm not an extrovert. Then again, there are many who enjoy doing things that we don't necessarily like to do ourselves. Here, author Anna David relates her own experiences with group meditation in her recent article on the Huffington Post.

Yoga Meditation Nation

Yoga meditation group. Photo by Comstock c/o Photos.Com.

Until this year, the words "meditation" and "retreat" did not go together in my world, in any capacity. Truthfully, the word "retreat" never entered my vocabulary much at all, unless it somehow involved a spa treatment. But suddenly, in 2012, it seemed as if people were retreating. People were becoming retreat-ers. It was time for me to join the fray.

Especially because the retreat I'd decided to sign up for was being led by Thom Knoles, the man who'd taught me meditation nearly a decade ago. The form of meditation he teaches, Vedic meditation, is a derivative of the Transcendental Meditation technique taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and I've been practicing it for roughly 20 minutes every morning and 20 minutes every afternoon most days since I learned

Still, meditation, for me, has always been a solitary act: Something I do, in a cool, quiet room--preferably my bedroom--with the windows closed. During Thom's visits to Los Angeles over the years, I've occasionally joined in the group meditations he's led, where I've encountered hordes of people who have told me how much they love meditating in a group setting. I've nodded and then contemplated murder as I tried meditating next to them but found myself horribly distracted by their coughing or rustling around or loud breathing

Get the entire article here at huffingtonpost.com:

So there you have it. Yoga meditation doesn't necessarily make you any less irritable if you find yourself in the wrong environment. Then again, you can learn to perceive your surroundings in a different light and appreciate the better aspects of what has been there all along. After all, the better aspects of those around us have been there the whole time, we just never saw them before.

Maybe we could all start to better appreciate the more positive aspects of those people and situations around us. We might one day discover our world can become a much nicer and more tolerant place in which all of us can live.

What do you think? Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

Our raga/dveshas make us prisoners to the mental lenses through which we view the world. No matter what actually appears before us, our vision is always skewed, and as a result we suffer.
                                                                           --   Leonard Perlmutter