Meditate your way to a better living?

Today I tried something new, MEDITATION.. Well i have meditated before back in India but only when I was a kid and it’s been almost 8 years since that happened. I started having an interesting problem recently, excessive sweating. I am not sure how this happens, but everytime I head out of the house and starting walking towards the MRT station, I start sweating like a pig in less than 3 min. My shirt is drenched and it looks like one of the cards from the ink-blot test. I mean it is ridiculously hot and humid in Singapore but still this had never happened to me before.

I googled “excessive sweating” and the ever-trusting wikipedia chirped out a page on hyperhidrosis. Now this got my attention since I have never heard of this particular phenomenon before. The wikipedia page turned out to be quite unconvincing and I thought maybe it was my heart beating too fast which made me sweat too much. I googled this in turn and stumbled on a page across meditation. It claimed that regular meditation helps to relieve stress, clear your mind, increase productivity and lower your heart rate.

Now, I have always been a skeptic when it comes to meditation, yoga, homeopathy etc.
(Jeez, can you believe I am from India!?) but I was willing to give it a try. I googled meditation (yeah, google is my go-to guy for everything in my life) and again got onto wikihow which guided me on the basic steps. Following them, I sat upright and started regulating my breaths. To clear my mind I focussed only on my breath and counted it. Scattered thoughts crept into my head time and again but i managed to push it out and focus solely on my breath. I counted slowly until 60 (took me about 3 min I think) and opened my eyes to the light.

The effect was almost instantaneous, I had this feeling of paralysis where my mind gave up its control of the body and was blank, yet at the same time so alert to all the sound, light, shadow and movement around keeping me ready to spring into action if required.

I felt like i had achieved Zen, though this was probably nothing compared to what could be obtained from prolonged meditation over many years. My focus on immediate activities after the meditation has also significantly improved which enabled me to finish this blog entry in less than 10 min although facebook distraction snaked through for a few moments there.

I think I really love the whole concept of clearing my mind and letting free of all the annoying thoughts that gnaw in my head. I plan to start meditating 10 min every morning and evening. Would you care to join me???