Intercultral Experience - Essay Example

A few months ago, I was in the middle of completing a very difficult assignment and I was feeling run-down and even a little depressed. I had felt like this for some time and I really wanted to change it. Whilst doing some research on the web, one of those ‘unwanted’ ads popped in, offering meditation classes on-line. I remember being annoyed but later that night when I though about it, I felt that maybe I should have a look. I went back onto the web and tried to find the ad but of course, now that I was looking for it, I could not find it.

But I remembered, it had ‘Tibet’ in it and ‘meditation’. I googled ‘Tibetan Meditation’ and a rather large list of meditiation classes, books and journals popped up. I decided to check out one of them, which said that 15 minutes per day was all that was required. When I entered the site, there was soft music playing and text slowly scrolled down the page, asking me to read something about this type of meditation. I almost closed the site but then I decided to continue and suddenly, it was 20 minutes later.

I had learned something about Tibetan history, of the destructive power of stress and of the healing power of meditation. When I had finished reading, there was a little questionnaire, asking me about my sleeping habits, the way I breathe and a number of other questions, all related to stress. After I had answered everything, I had to give my first name – which I was ok with – and a little folder popped up with my name on it. When I opened it, it had in it a series of exercises, 10 of them, with repetitions and some buttons to chose music and the pace at which I wanted to do the exercises.

By now I was thoroughly hooked and I did the exercises straight away. The first set just asked me to sit quietly and close my eyes. The next one asked me to rotate my head, first forward, then sideways, backwards and to the other side. There were more exercises on breathing and the last set was about my eyes, asking me to gently massage they area around them. When I finished the exercises, I felt curiously refreshed and that night, for the first time in a long time, I slept without interruption.

When I look back at this experience, I marvel at the fact that I even went on the web in the first place. I had always thought ‘meditation’ a little silly – something that belonged to ‘oriental’ lifestyles rather than to me. As a consequence, I had expected to be confronted by ‘mantras’ and chanting. Instead, I listened to the gentle ripple of water and music and followed a set of sensible exercises that I felt did me good. By the end of the exercises, I had literally forgotten about my study and my stress.

There was a wonderful sense of peace in my room and I was experiencing this incredibly detachment. I had never looked at stress as something that could be erased in such simple ways. I am now a regular visitor to this site and I have even been brave enough to talk to friends about it. Of course, there was the inevitable giggle and ‘what, have you gone ‘alternative’?, but there were also one friend who thought that what I said sounded good and she has since tried it. I am a lot calmer since I have started doing these exercises and I am coping much better.

That is great, of course, but what I am most amazed about is that I even feel proud of my initiative – I would not have thought that possible. And every time I enter the site, there is a little bit of additional information on how to heal my body – ‘balancing the center’ as it is called.