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The Benefits Go Beyond a Calmer State Of Mind
Meditation is usually recommended as a health-boosting practice for many good reasons.
It has great benefits, like reducing stress, relieving headaches, and even boosting our immunity to illness.
It’s easy to see why many people adopt meditation to support conventional medicine. It’s free, you don’t need to spend a lot of time doing it, and the health benefits are excellent.
Basic Concepts of Meditation
Although there are different ways of practising it, a couple of similar threads run through all meditation techniques:
Focuses Mind:
Many people have the misconception that when you’re meditating, your mind becomes” quiet.” Actually, your mind is always thinking.
Your thoughts may not run as fast, but it is perfectly normal for your mind to be active during meditation.
The key is to admit this with compassion while channeling the focus back into breathing whenever you can.
Being Present:
Instead of brooding over the past or future, all meditative practices involve focusing on the present.
You experience each moment, let it go, and then move on to the next. This takes careful practice because lots of us live most of our lives thinking about the future or chewing over the past.
Altered State of Consciousness:
With time, keeping a quiet mind and focusing on the present can lead you to an altered level of consciousness. You will not be asleep, but it isn’t quite your normal wakeful state either.
Meditation boosts brain activity in the parts linked with happiness and positive thoughts. Constant practice brings prolonged positive changes in these areas.
Meditation Techniques
Concentrative and non-concentrative are the two different categories of meditation techniques commonly used by researchers.
The concentrative techniques involve zeroing in on one object that’s usually around you, for instance, the sound of an instrument, a mantra, or a candle flame. In comparison, the non-concentrative meditation can involve a more extensive focus on things like the sounds around you, how you feel inside, and even your own breathing pace.
These two techniques are work hand-in-hand because mediation can be both concentrative and non-concentrative. You can meditate in different ways. Think of the following kinds of meditation techniques as a way to get into the practice and how they vary from some of the main options, rather than as a full list.
Basic Meditation
This technique requires sitting in a comfortable spot and focusing on your breathing. If your mind wanders or you find yourself getting distracted by other thoughts, gently redirect your focus toward your breaths.
Focused Meditation
Here, you purposely focus on something without thinking about it. You can target something visual, like a statue; soothing sounds, like a recording of beach waves; something steady, like your own breathing; or a simple idea, like “unconditional kindness.”
Some people notice it is easier than focusing on nothing, but the plan is the same.
You stay in the present moment, mute all the running thoughts on your conscious mind, and let yourself slip into an altered state of consciousness.
Activity-Oriented Meditation
This technique combines your current or new hobbies that help you focus on the present with meditation.
With this type of meditation, you repeat that activity until you can get “in the zone” and experience “flow.” The key idea is to quiet the mind and allows your brain to switch.
Mindfulness Meditation
Mindfulness, like activity-oriented meditation, doesn’t really feel like meditation. It basically involves you staying in the now instead of thinking about the past or the future.
Again, this can be a bit tricky. You may zoom in on the sensations you feel in your body or on emotions and where you feel them. You do this not checking why you feel them, but just experiencing them as sensations.
Spiritual Meditation
Meditation can be a spiritual exercise even though it isn’t unique to any one religion. You can meditate to clear your mind and allow anything that comes that day or meditate on a particular question until an answer comes to you.
The Bottom Line
No matter which method you pick, bear in mind that a regular practice—even if it’s just for five minutes daily—is more helpful than sessions that few and far between.
Finally, the best meditation technique and the most beneficial one is one you can practice persistently.
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