Some helpful definitions

Some time ago I bought a copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Zen Living by Gary McClain and Eve Adamson. I've thumbed through it before, I guess, but basically it's been sitting on a bookshelf for years - untouched. For some reason I picked it up today and have enjoyed reading odds and ends throughout the book. I came across a helpful set of definitions in the chapter entitled "Learning to Meditate". Here they are:

* Meditation is a conscious process wherein the meditator makes an effort to be fully aware without attaching to thoughts and feelings. Eventually, mental clamor settles down and awareness becomes more acute ...
* Mindfulness is what we practice during mediation, but can also be practiced during daily activity. It is the process of being fully aware of our external and internal environments.
* Concentration is an effort to focus on one particular thing rather than on general awareness. It is often a technique for easing into meditation, and it trains the mind so that the more it is practiced, the better the mind becomes at focusing for longer periods of time.
* Relaxation is a physical and/or mental process of leaving effort behind - relaxing muscles or thoughts - without a specific focus on awakened awareness. Relaxation is great for stress reduction and helps to unclutter the mind, making mindfulness and concentration easier. One relaxation technique is visualization.
* Visualization is a technique wherein you imagine certain scenarios for relaxation (walking on a beach at sunset, sitting in a field of flowers, wading in a mountain stream) or for personal development (you succeeding in your job, in love, in school, and so on). It is more a tool for personal transformation than it is meditation, although some people like to use visualization for relaxation alone.

Actually, there are other forms of visualization in the mindtraining system in addition to the one mentioned above but these definitions are a good start for distinguishing the different techniques for working skillfully with the mind. Just yesterday, a friend of mine reported some health difficulties due to stress. I urged this person to learn to meditate and then to practice regularly. Each one of the methods listed above will help in stress reduction. We all need to be pro-active and not passive about dealing with the stress in our lives if we want to avoid really negative consequences.