In simple words to explain the term meditation, it is a mental exercise that revolves around relaxation, focus, and awareness. Meditation is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is not about becoming a new person but it’s about training your awareness to get a good sense of perspective. In this practice, you are not trying to stop your thoughts or feelings. You’re learning to perceive them without judgment. And ultimately, you may start to better understand them as well. Keep on reading to know what is meditation and how to do it?
What is Meditation?
Normally, meditation starts by sitting in a quiet place, closing the eyes, soothing the mind, and concentrating on the breath. But there’s more to meditating than sitting calmly and breathing. When we meditate, we are actually growing awareness and empathy; we are instructing the mind to stop being easily rattled and instead be more focused on the contemporary moment. Using the breath as our support at the moment, we only sit and continuously learn to let thoughts and feelings come and go.
Modes of Meditation
There are three main modes of meditation that include focus, observation, and awareness and this is what they are:
Focus: centering attention on a particular object, internal or external (focused attention meditation)
Observation: paying attention to whatever is prevalent in your practice in the present moment, without allowing the thought to get stuck on any particular thing (open-monitoring meditation)
Awareness: allowing awareness to remain present, attentive and not engaged with either focusing or observing
How to Start Meditation?
Learning how to do meditation is not difficult at all. All you need is mindfulness and determination. You will see much ease in the practice if you manage to follow these steps:
Step 1: Choose the perfect time and place
Research shows that it is easy to build a new habit when we do it at the “same time, same place” regularly. Just don’t overthink it: The most suitable time to meditate is actually whenever you can properly manage it. And the best place to meditate is wherever you can be easy and comfortable and less distracted.
Step 2: Set the amount of time for meditation
Especially for beginners, starting with a small-time period say 5 to 10 minutes is ideal. But you must be completely concentrated on your practice because it will help you to find your stable spot. The most significant thing is to determine the amount of time that is useful, but also seems feasible so you proceed to show up day after day.
Step3: Sit comfortably
Sit with your legs and arms uncrossed, feet level on the floor, and hands relaxing on your lap or by your side. Keep your spine upright, but not too tight. If you necessitate it, a small pillow or rolled-up towel can help keep your back erect.
How to do meditation?
Doing meditation is the process of synchronizing your mind and the body by performing scans from the top of your head to the end of your toes.
Here are the things practiced in meditation:
- With your eyes closed, start at the peak of the head and thoughtfully scan down your body.
- As you scan, note which parts feel relaxed or stiff, comfortable or tired, light or heavy.
- Execute the scan again and again (each scan should take about 20 seconds) and apply these measurements to create a mental picture of how your body feels right now, in the present moment.
- When thoughts appear, just return to the area of the body where you last left off.
- Once you’ve followed this procedure and start feeling relaxed with it, try this more in-depth body scan meditation.
Tips for meditation
There are certain things to keep in mind while doing meditation to get the desired results. So given below are the general tips for meditation:
- Posture: you can meditate seated on a cushion or a chair. The basic thing about posture is that the back is perfectly straight, from the lower back to the neck, and ideally not leaning on anything.
- Time: it can be whatever befits your schedule properly. But meditating first thing in the morning is highly recommended, so you make certain it gets done, and the influence on your day is more effective.
- Place: all you require is a place where you will not have interfered. Ideally, this place would be calm, neat and tidy, to get a greater impact on the mind.
- Length: you can start with as little as 5 minutes, and increase 1 or 2 minutes per week until you reach 20 minutes sessions and beyond.
Benefits of Meditation
There is no doubt that meditation is a beneficial practice and many studies confirm this narrative through the experience of millions of practitioners: meditation will maintain both your physical and mental health, help prevent various conditions, make you emotionally strong, and enhance your performance in primarily any task, physical or mental.
Most importantly, these are the best advantages of meditation and the cause of why people drive towards it:
- Particular benefit: improving your health, well-being, performance, concentration, memory, creativity, self-control, etc.
- Growth: personal growth, emotional healing, self-knowledge, self-discipline, self-consciousness.
- Spirituality: uniting with God, transforming the ego, gaining peace, and other spiritual purposes.
Conclusion
It takes time to achieve the desired results and get peace of mind so be patient. There might be difficulties along the way but that’s the part meditation. Now here, you might have heard different techniques and types of meditation that somehow are different in the way we practice them. But the soul of meditation is the same and that is peace.
Learn more at: Meditation 101: How To Sit Still And Like It!
