Recently the popular media in the West has begun to talk about meditation in similar terms to the way it prescribes exercise. Exercise is spoken of in all-inclusive terms: Exercise is good for everyone, it is good for your mental and physical health and more is better than less. In addition, top athletes, professional and amateur, are revered and admired by all. Now meditation also enjoys a similar blanket commendation – it is equally good for your mental and physical health, and more is better than less. Similarly, ‘top meditators’ are revered. For the general population, both exercise and meditation are thought to be beneficial for all people, and the two together are said to cure most of what ails the average person, and are especially effective against the modern affliction, stress. There are only a few general health ‘shoulds’ in our culture, one should drink enough water, one should eat a balanced diet, one should exercise, and now, one also should meditate.

We would agree that meditation can be compared to exercise, though not exercise in general, but more like a specific exercise, in this case the exercise of gymnastics.

Most likely no one would attempt the gymnastic exercises of balance beam, rings, uneven parallel bars, pommel horse, or the vault, without first undergoing an extensive period training the required physical qualities of strength, flexibility, and balance, in order to increase their chances of staying safe and free from injury. This is because in gymnastics there is a right and a wrong way. Get it wrong and you risk injury, anyone can see that, and it is one of the aspects to the practice that is most riveting to the observer.

It would be extremely reckless to walk into a gymnastics studio, point at a piece of apparatus, and say, ‘I want to do that right away’. But say you did that though, what then are the chances the teacher would reply, ‘O.K., give it a try…and you won’t need a spotter.’ Yet that is basically similar to what happens with meditation as it is often practiced today in the West. People are told to ‘try it’, close their eyes, quiet their thinking, watch their breath…and away we go, to a calmer, less stressed, more compassionate future.

Unfortunately, and we would say especially, for those with a Western upbringing, the meditative path can contain very real dangers that are either glossed over, or worse, unknown to the average meditation teacher. Like the practice of gymnastics in the external physical world, there are both right and wrong ways to proceed in the internal world of meditation, and those of the Western mindset should approach meditative practice like they would a piece of gymnastic apparatus…is your mind, strong, flexible, and balanced? And especially, with your eyes closed? If the answer is, not as much as it could, or should be, then find a way to build those qualities first. If your answer is, I don’t know, then use our Meditation Self-Assessment Questionaire to rate yourself before proceeding down the meditative path.