Meditation
Sutter Center for Integrative Holistic Health
Meditation is an ancient practice that helps to calm the mind while enhancing mental clarity and physical well-being. Meditation teaches us to become the observer of our thoughts and emotions instead of being habitually and negatively impacted by distressing mental activity. This in turn helps us to cultivate a peaceful mind and to take more wise and effective action in our lives. Meditation can also be useful in the treatment of a host of medical conditions including but not limited to chronic pain, chronic stress, anxiety, PTSD, depression and depression relapse, insomnia, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. While there are many different forms of meditation, including Transcendental Meditation, Zen, and Mindfulness Meditation (Vipassana), they all have in common the calming of the mind.
The meditation programs supported by Sutter focus on the development of three sets of skills:
- First, learning how to focus our attention in a concentrated and sustained way. This results in our mind becoming calm, stable and peaceful.
- Second, consciously cultivating generosity, kindness, compassion, equanimity and patience towards our experience, ourselves and others. From this, we learn to respond to our experiences, especially difficult experiences, in a less judgmental and more spacious and flexible way.
- Third, experientially investigating the process of how and why we struggle and suffer in life, including our habits of mind that lead to repeated emotional reactivity. This results in a less personalized view of experience and a more relaxed and wise approach to living, relationship and problem solving.
Practitioners
Denise Dempsey, C.M.T, RMT
Miles Roberts, L.Ac.
Stephen B. Walker LMFT
Dennis Warren, J.D.
