An Exploration of the Lived Experience of a Modern, Heart-Focused Meditation Practice.

The benefits of meditation have been effectively documented. Neural correlates demonstrating different areas of the brain affected by meditation practice have contributed to our understanding of its multifarious effects. What is lacking are theories of meditation that help elucidate and map the effects of meditation on consciousness. This article seeks to contribute to this research employing phenomenological enquiry into the lived experience of thirteen Heartfulness meditation practitioners who have been meditating from four to forty-four years. Heartfulness is a spiritual practice originating from the teachings of Ram Chandra seeking to bring balance between the inner field of the heart and the outer world of relationships and work. Interviews with participants from Europe, the USA, and India focused on the question, 'How does Heartfulness meditation practice affect or permeate your daily life? Following a hermeneutically informed phenomenological approach, attention was given to the existential dimensions of lived relationality, space, time and embodiment. Phenomenological accounts of emergent meaning and experience are offered, which illuminate some of the changes participants find from their meditation practice in everyday life. These findings suggest that further qualitative enquiry may shed light on what one participant described as 'living at the cusp of two opposite things and you are living at a slightly higher plane, and the more I plunge into this deep silence, into this not knowing, there is this consciousness that expands". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]