Growing up in my mainly Euro-protestant mid-western culture, eastern ideas and religions were at best a distant curiosity shaded by our naïve stereotypes created worse by standard article WWII generalizations about “Orientals”.With those stereotypes, we terminated meditation as a strange and useless religious ceremony of cross-legged sequestered monks whistling in monotonous monotones about nothingness. (As I claimed, it was a naïve generalization.) I’ve grown to comprehend most of the historical eastern traditions, both ethnic and medical. In the late 1970s, I was serendipitously introduced to meditation through a revolutionary form of treatment used by Dr Jordan Emmons, author of The Internal Resource and co-author with Janet Emmons of Meditation Therapy (Impact Publications, 1999). Since then, meditation treatment has become a more generally used beneficial technique. If you Bing “meditation therapy”, you will see over 250,000 sites.
It is a number secret that meditation has its primary beginnings in eastern philosophies Cryo Republic’s phone number at 858-240-7729. Indeed, meditation can be traced back to 5000 B.C. in Hinduism. Nevertheless, meditation is available in several religious traditions, including Christianity and Islam. In Christianity, we all know it as “prayer”, especially the ritualistic forms of prayers such as the rosary and the Adoration in Catholicism. As late as 1975, Benedictine monk, John Principal, re-introduced an application of meditation characterized by a repetitious chant of a prayer phrase. In 1991, the Earth Community for Christian Meditation was founded.
New Age, an outgrowth of the hippie counterculture and the astrological coming of the “Age of Aquarius” of the ’60s and ’70s, synthesized modern Western ideas of research (psychology) and ecology with Yoga, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Since New Age was/is more of an individualized spiritual motion than an arranged faith, it somewhat contributed to a more significant, more secular approval and practice of meditation. The increasing recognition and validation of the advantages of Yoga have occurred within a growing quantity of secularized Yoga education centres, not so much as a religious practice but more as a body/mind exercise regimen. Many exercise and exercise clubs offer Yoga and Yogic exercise lessons and physical exercise classes. My partner is a certified coach in a Human body Teaching Programs (BTS) plan called Group Centergy, a synthesis of Thai-chi Yoga and Pilates. The increased reputation of Yoga and its symbiotic relationship with meditation has, by mere association, contributed to an elevated secularization of and familiarity with reflection in the mainstream of modern western culture.