Managing My Studies
I started meditating when I was 20 while I was in the last year of my University studies. By that time I have read about 3,000 books (estimated) and was full of all kind of useful and useless knowledge.| I suddenly felt that my head was just filled with stuff and yet all I really wanted to do was to relax my mind and enjoy. Yet, I still had one more year of studies to go! Somewhere along the line I decided to try and apply the same techniques that I used for mediation for my studies, just to see what would happen. With a little bit of practice, I learned how to read while constantly keeping my attention on the top of my head. Amazingly this made me grasp and remember concepts much faster and easier than normal! One of my main problems while studying was the ability to remember loads of useless facts but never being able to have a comprehensive understanding of the subjects in question. By using my attention as described above, as well as clearing my head, I started seeing the bigger picture behind every subject. It was awesome! But, by far, the best thing I experienced was the impact of meditation on my stress levels during exams. You’ve been there; 4 AM, 500 more pages to read, and your exam is in 3 hours. So much stress that you can’t focus for one second, all you can think of is your impending failure and future as a homeless person. |
But with meditation, this changed. I mean, the 4 AM bit was still true, but believe it or not… no stress! I didn’t waste any time thinking about how I was going to do on the exam, or about all the time I wasted on Facebook this morning. Pure focus - my attention was on the top of my head and I was flying through my notes, memorizing everything and anything worth remembering. Needless to say, I did amazingly well on my exam, and all the ones after that too. It even works during your test, if you freeze up on a question or feel panic, just remember to check if you are cool on top of your head (if people are around you can do it as if checking your hairstyle), and as soon as you feel your self enter that state of meditation your brain will relax and without any strain you will remember the answer to that question. Some other simple tricks that helped me to keep my head cool and sharp were: an ice-pack on liver, footsoaking, and a short mediation after studying some material. |
