Tips on How to Meditate

Meditation is a mental exercise by which one attempts to go beyond the conditioned ‘thinking’ mind into a deeper state of relaxation or awareness. One can meditate in a number of ways.

The basis of meditation is to focus and quiet one’s mind. With time you will find that you can meditate anywhere anytime, reaching the inner peace no matter what is going around you. But first you need to calm your mind.

• Make time to meditate: keep aside enough time in your daily routine for your meditation. Meditation shows results if you do it regularly and consistently rather than sporadically.

• Find or create a soothing quiet environment: It’s essential when you are staring out to avoid any obstacles for attention. Turn off your television sets, radios, phones or any other noisy appliances. If you want to play music, make sure it is calm, repetitive and gentle, so it does not break your attention. Meditating outside maybe conducive but you have to be careful that it is not near the roads or near a source of loud noise.

• Sit on level ground: Sit on a cushion if the ground is uncomfortable. There is absolutely no need to twist your legs in the lotus position or any other unusual postures. The only thing that you need to pay attention is that you need to keep you back straight as this will help in breathing later on.

• You can also sit on a chair and meditate but make sure your back is straight. Your feet need to rest solidly on the ground.

• Any position is permissible as long as your back is straight. You can meditate lying down also, but be careful that you are not so relaxed that you fall asleep. In warm weather try watching the clouds.

• Keep your eyes half closed , if it is too distracting then close your eyes or you can concentrate on an object such as a candle flame.

• Breathe slowly and deeply from you abdomen rather than your chest.

You should feel your stomach rise and fall and your chest should relatively be still. Healthy stress relieving breathing may be done by inhaling to the count of three, exhaling to the count of six. Repeat this over 15 to 20 minutes. This expels the used air and more completely oxygenates and purifies your blood, this helps in lowering the heart rate and blood pressure. Many blood pressure patients have dropped their blood pressure as much as 50 points, allowing them to decrease or do away with the need for medication. This breathing exercise should be done on a regular exercise.

Calm your mind: Once you have trained your mind to focus on one thing at a time the next step is to focus on nothing at all, essentially clearing your mind. This requires tremendous discipline but is the pinnacle of meditation. After focusing on a single thing, you can either cast it away or look at it impartially letting it come and go, without labeling it as good or bad. Do the same thing to any thought that comes to your mind until silence perseveres.