MEDITATION: Exactly What Is It And How It's Done

Spending even a few minutes in meditation can restore your calm and inner peace. Anyone can practice meditation. It's simple and inexpensive, and it doesn't require any special equipment.

If stress has you anxious, tense and worried, consider trying meditation. And you can practice meditation wherever you are — whether you're out for a walk, riding the bus, waiting at the doctor's office or even in the middle of a difficult business meeting.

The word meditation carries different meanings in different contexts. Meditation has been practiced since antiquity as a component of numerous religious traditions and beliefs. Meditation often involves an internal effort to self-regulate the mind in some way.

Meditation is often used to clear the mind and ease many health concerns, such as high blood pressure, depression, and anxiety.

Prayer beads or other ritual objects are commonly used during meditation in order to keep track of or remind the practitioner about some aspect of that training.

Understanding meditation

Meditation is considered a type of mind-body complementary medicine.

Meditation produces a deep state of relaxation and a tranquil mind.

During meditation, you focus your attention and eliminate the stream of jumbled thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing stress.

This process may result in enhanced physical and emotional well-being.

It’s extremely difficult for a beginner to sit for hours and think of nothing or have an “empty mind.” But in general, the easiest way to begin meditating is by focusing on the breath — an example of one of the most common approaches to meditation: concentration.

Benefits of meditation

Meditation can give you a sense of calm, peace and balance that benefits both your emotional well-being and your overall health.

And these benefits don't end when your meditation session ends. Meditation can help carry you more calmly through your day and may improve certain medical conditions.

Meditation and emotional well-being

When you meditate, you clear away the information overload that builds up every day and contributes to your stress.

The emotional benefits of meditation can include:

  • Gaining a new perspective on stressful situations
  • Building skills to manage your stress
  • Increasing self-awareness
  • Focusing on the present
  • Reducing negative emotions
Types of Meditation

The different types of meditation help keep your body and mind healthy. 

Use meditation with specific purposes such as to:
  • Lower blood pressure
  • Reduce inflammation associated with chronic disease
  • Enhance immune function
  • Lessen fatigue, especially in people with immune-ravaging disorders like cancer and HIV
  • Help reduce pain and/or eliminate it
  • Improve mood 
  • Lessen stress and anxiety
  • Help eliminate depression
  • Resolve sleep difficulties
  • Boost self-esteem
  • It can strengthen memory
  • Problem solving skills
  • Sharpen concentration
  • Improve decision making
  • Slow the deterioration of cognitive abilities that comes with age
Meditation is one of the doors that open the path to your inner self or awareness. It helps in relaxing the body and mind, and when practiced regularly, it can make you feel happy and content

Meditation is an activity that can be practiced by people of all ages, from children to adults. It does not require any hard physical activity and at the same time is easy to practice.

Here are the top 7 tips for easy meditation !
  1. Find a quiet place: The first tip is to find a place that is bereft of external noise and other sounds or simply a place where you feel well. The more peaceful your immediate environment is, the easier it will be to meditate. Lack of noise of sound will also assist you in building concentration on an object or empty space during meditation.
  2. Focus on posture: Posture is an important aspect, and if your posture is incorrect, then it may lead to physical issues as well as unsatisfying meditation activity. It is important to sit straight and comfortably, so don't oblige yourself to sit cross legged. You can sit on a high chair keeping your feet on the floor, or on a meditation seat and keep your knees on the floor. 
  3. Declare your intention: Before you start meditating, you need to identify your purpose. For example: if your purpose is to understand your inner self, then that should also be the core intention of focus to initiate meditation.
  4. Focus on your body: The next step is to shift your focus toward feeling your body. You can start by focusing on your feet and then rise up to the stomach, the chest, the shoulders, the neck, and finally the head. This will not only help in relaxing, but also increase your awareness toward your own physical body.
  5. Focus on Breathing: Breathing meditation is the most recommended practice for beginners. The art lies in slowly breathing in (inhaling) and breathing out (exhaling). There are times when your mind would wander away from focusing on breathing, but you need to push your mind back into it and concentrate again.
  6. Be neutral toward the content: Sometimes it can be quite challenging to try because focusing brings up many feelings, sensations, images, memories and the mind has the tendency to start thought elaboration. Stay focused on the object and let thoughts come and go. Feel them but engage with them as less as possible.
  7. Short-time duration: You need to begin your easy meditation activity with short-time duration, such as 5 minutes or 10 minutes. As you learn to focus, you can increase your time duration gradually by multiples of 5 minutes to 15, 20, 25, and 30 minutes. The best time to practice meditation is in the early morning but you can also practice it in the early evening or prior to twilight.
Remember, there's no right way or wrong way to meditate. What matters is that meditation helps you reduce your stress and feel better overall.

Meditation, if practiced regularly, has long-term benefits both physically and mentally. Today is a good day to begin your easy meditation practice !

You might like:

How to Meditate: A Practical Guide
What is meditation? Why practice it? 
Which techniques are best? How do I do it? 
The answers to these often-asked questions 
are contained in this down-to-earth book, 
making it of enormous value for anyone who 
wishes to begin and maintain a meditation practice. 
Prayer Beads Bracelet
Buddhist prayer beads or "malas" are a traditional tool used to count the number of times a mantra is recited and/or breaths taken while meditating,