Meditation Practice
The practice of meditation can bring many life-changing benefits to you. And incorporate the awareness of your full potential in your experience of life. How profound the effects of these benefits are going to affect your daily life depends on the intensity and/or regularity of the meditation practice.
Benefits of Meditation – Scientific Findings
It has been scientifically proven that the practice of meditation can provide practitioners with the following benefits:
- Enhance self-esteem and self-awareness by “increasing the ability to examine one’s thoughts and feelings without judgment, which ends up improving self-esteem.” According to researchers at Standford University.
- Improvement in focus and concentration. According to a Harvard Medical School on Mindfulness Meditation
- Anxiety reduction by the constant repetition of mantras
- Ease depression and anxiety. According to a study published by JAMA Internal Medicine
- Break down negative personal habits and create new ones. This by the formation of new synapsis of existing neurons, and the creation of new neurons. According to a study by researchers in the US.
- Prevent future relapses for people with substance consumption disorders. According to a study published by Substance Abuse Rehabilitation.
Meditation Techniques and Types
All meditation techniques differentiate one from the other on what their aims and approaches are.
Remember that you don’t have to follow a strict approach or align your and with the traditional ones. You can feel free to adapt any of the techniques according to what feels more natural and beneficial to you.
In the following list, I mention and describe some meditation techniques with high adoption across the world. These meditation techniques are easy to learn for you to start to practice, or to experience and decide to try another one:
Breath Awareness Meditation
Goals and Benefits: Reduce stress levels in your body, reduce the possibility of burnout for caregivers, regulate better your body’s reaction to fatigue and stress, better manage struggling situations like pain, helping to overcome depression — among others.
Approach: Mindful breathing by focusing only on your breathing performance and ignoring other thoughts that can distract your disconnection from ‘reality.’
Zen Meditation
Goals and Benefits: Improve focus, increase creativity, improve memory, restore energy, acceptance and empathy building, ability to prioritize and plan, better manage struggling situations like pain, helping to overcome depression, and to foster a positive work attitude — among others.
Approach: Focusing on your breathing performance, and mindfully observing your thoughts — all without judgment.
Transcendental Meditation
Goals and Benefits: Boost mindfulness and rise above the person’s current state of being.
Approach: Breath slowly while repeating selected powerful mantras, chosen by the teacher or by the practitioner. Sometimes you can repeat a word or even a sound, to maintain concentration on the practice.
Body Scan Meditation
Goals and Benefits: Feeling of calmness, release body tension, and sometimes pain.
Approach: Mentally scan your body for areas of tension to be released.
Kundalini Yoga
Goals and Benefits: The practice of Kundalini Yoga energizes your brain, give you the feeling of bliss, give you the feeling of awareness of a eternal cosmic power, and you become a more conscious person.
Approach: It blends yoga movements with deep breathing and repetition or chanting of powerful mantras. These mantras can be given by the teacher or can be personal ones, as well.
Mindfulness Meditation
Goals and Benefits: The practice of Mindfulness Meditation can improve your power of focus, your memory capabilities, a better managing of your thoughts and emotions, a better managing of reactions and to lessen impulsive behaviors.
Approach: Awareness of your present moment and your surroundings without any judgmental thoughts.
How to do meditation: FAQ about meditation
How often and for how long to do meditation?
It depends on how badly you need to disconnect from the world. To determine the frequency of meditation practice and how long it is needed to last each time depend directly on how much your mind feels it needs it.
Take into account that the more you practice meditation the better you will know what is best for you and the more natural its practice becomes for your body and mind.
Recommendation about how often: Once or twice a day. There was some moment in my life when I had to meditate 5 times a day (while working in offices).
Recommendation about how long each time: about the time you start to feel you are connecting enough with your unconscious and connecting more naturally with the rest of the universe or other high energy concepts you choose to connect with. It can go from 5 minutes(or less) to as long as you feel comfortable and have the time to practice it.
You will feel and recognize which technique and which ways are working better for you, as well as the time and intensity.
The changes in your mind processes and the feeling of a better connection with yourself, the others and what you want in life will be obvious enough for you to notice, and the situations that caused you anxiety before are going to have less power over your feelings and attention.
What do I have to see or feel to know I’m doing meditation right?
There is no need to carry expectations to the meditation practice. The experience you will have can be very unique, different from the others’, also different from time to time you practice it.
This diversity of experiences is one of the fascinating characteristics of the meditation practice.
Do I have to sit to do meditation?
You don’t have to follow strictly any position. There are no strict rules for it. For example, practicing meditation with kundalini yoga or another kind of yoga you don’t need to sit. You can lie on your back or put yourself in any position, as long as you feel comfortable enough, so your mind doesn’t distract from trying to be in the ‘right’ position.
How do I know if I am doing meditation right?
When the true goal is to connect with higher levels of energy, there’s is no space for the classification of right or wrong. Judgemental views are not compatible with the meditation practice when your goal is to achieve spiritual growth.
As long as you feel meditation provides you with positive effects in your daily life, and you feel you are practicing meditation enough and with an intensity that makes you feel good; everything is amazing, you can be grateful, enjoy it all.