What is Meditation

Mediation is a relaxing activity that can help you de-stress and collect your thoughts any time of day. Many world religions use forms of meditation for prayer and ritual, but even if you are non-religious, you can enjoy the many spiritual and physical benefits of the practice. Meditation is an easy activity for all to learn to enjoy, whether you wish to devote lots of time to the practice or you can only spare a few minutes every day.

On any given day, at any given moment, our minds are concerned with a number of things. Does the boy I like, like me back? Are the kids being polite at a friend’s house? What is my wife making for dinner? Do I have enough money for bills this week? What am I going to do this weekend?

It isn’t hard to see why we often forget things, and why many people need tools like day planners to stay organized. Meditation can help you clear away all of these fears, questions, doubts, and complexities, giving you a calmer outlook on life in general and a happier state of being.

If you are religious, you can use this time as a time to reflect and concentrate on a divine being. Otherwise, you may wish to concentrate on another idea, such as love. The many benefits to mediation include:

* Increased ability to control your temper
* Spiritual religious connections
* Higher sensory perception
* Surfacing of memories
* Better physical health

Mediation has been practiced since ancient times, and has more recently become popular with the Westernization of the Hindu practice of Yoga, which combines mediation with exercise techniques.

Mediation can be done in a variety of positions, such as sitting on a chair, sitting cross-legged on a mat, lying down, or kneeling. While some extremely religious or health conscious people may order their lives around meditation and is varied techniques, most people chose to make meditation a very small part of their daily routine. However, even if you can only meditate for a short time, the results, over time, become evident. Regular practice is more important than length of time spent each day doing it.

The goal of meditation is to turn the mind to itself, rather than thinking of outside things. Essentially, it is to not think about anything at all. This is extremely difficult to do, even for a few minutes. Those who learn to meditate do not resist outside thoughts violently, but rather slowly push them away. Inner quietness comes from meditation, it cannot be forced. With regular practice, you should find less and less outside thoughts invading your mind during your periods of meditation. Because of this, meditation has become a great way to reduce the amount of pain you feel, both mentally and physically, and doctors have also begun to note the great benefits of meditation.

If you think meditation is right for you, your first port of call could be your doctor. He or she should be able to talk to you about the advantages and disadvantages of meditation, and may be able to direct your further questions to an instructor. Meditation is a private practice, but many find classes a useful way to get started. Remember to consider meditation if you are looking for a way in which to decrease the amount of stress in your life.

Mike Garrett has an interest in Speed Meditation. For further information on Speed Meditation please visit Speed Meditation or Speed Meditation Tips .

Power of Silence in Meditation

Modern life with all its distractions and features seems particularly unsuited to silence. Even if we have actual outer silence our mind is rarely silent. If we analyse our thoughts there seem to be a never ending stream of worries, anxieties, and regrets.

In meditation we try to do a very difficult thing - silence our thoughts completely. It is difficult only because we are so unused to this idea. The mind is so used to thinking that it is easy to think our existence is defined by our thoughts and this must be our only existence. To quote the famous saying of Descartes “I think therefore I am” However meditation teaches that what we are is unencumbered by thoughts. The real “I” is our self which is beyond thought.

There is an interesting exercise to prove this. Whenever a thought arises in the mind, ask yourself where is the origination of this thought? This leads you to part of yourself which is beyond thought. Also be aware of the fact that you can choose which thought to accept and which to reject. This again shows us that what we are, is not our thoughts. There is some inner self which can decide whether to pursue thoughts or not. It is when we are able to stop thoughts entering our mind that we will start to experience real silence. This technique of meditation on the question “Who am I?” was particularly recommended by Spiritual Master Ramana Maharshi.

Silence of Meditation

The silence of meditation is not just quietness. It embodies a dynamic and vast consciousness far beyond our usual experience of everyday life. It is in this mental silence that we can access our own hidden consciousness. By silence we really mean the silence of the mind.

“Silence is not silent. Silence speaks. It speaks most eloquently. Silence is not still. Silence leads. It leads most perfectly.”

- Sri Chinmoy

Difficulties in achieving Silence

A difficulty we face in experiencing silence in the mind is that part of us is uncertain what will happen. It is like stepping into the unknown, this fear of the unknown keeps us from diving deep into our meditation. To experience the silence of meditation it is necessary to give up worries about the future, regrets about the past. It is also necessary to give up our own notions of what we are. We have to feel the need for giving up these negative qualities and suspending the judgement of the mind. If we can experience the silence of meditation it is liberating because unencumbered by our own thoughts we can make ourselves receptive to the inner peace of our own soul.

“Silence tells the seeker in us to love, to love himself. It tells us it is wrong to hate ourselves because of our imperfections.”

- Sri Chinmoy

Silence is experienced in the Heart.

When we meditate we can try focus our sense of awareness in the heart. When we talk about the heart in meditation we are actually referring to the spiritual heart. This is a Chakra or energy centre. We have seven of these charkas and they are explained in Hindu, Buddhist and other scriptures. If we concentrate on the spiritual heart, which is located in the centre of the chest near the physical heart, then over time we will feel a physical sensation like a rotating disc. This is a good sign. It is in the heart that it is easiest to silence the mind. The heart has a power of its own. The nature of the heart is not to judge, think or criticise. The qualities of the heart embody vastness, oneness and love. It is here that we can experience silence most effectively.

Richard is a meditation student of Sri Chinmoy and a member of the Sri Chinmoy Centre. He lives in Oxford and gives free meditation classes based on the teachings of Sri Chinmoy. He writes a blog about spirituality, inspiration and meditation at Write Spirit.net

Single Breath Meditation

In less than a minute you can complete a single breath meditation session. Start to finish, it will take you about 30 seconds.

Infinite Nows

There are as many instants of now in a minute as there are in an hour. The now is infinite no matter how long you linger there. Sometimes, when we sit to meditate for 20 minutes or longer, big segments of that time slot lose their immediacy. We drift into default thinking and ride the shallow turbulence of our mental activity. We miss the depth of the moment completely.

By narrowing the time of your meditation session to one breath, you send a message to your consciousness. "This is your only chance. Pay attention now or you'll miss it!" In the beginning, you may be amazed at how much your mind can wander even in the space of one breath. Don't worry about that. It's natural.

How can one breath provide any kind of practice at all? For now, we want to go short and deep rather than long and shallow. We want to be awake and aware for the simple matter of seconds it takes to complete one single cycle of breathing. When you think about it, it seems manageable. You may feel a surge of confidence. "This is something I might actually be able to do!" When you realize that each breath holds the hologram for all your breathing, you may begin to honor the power of one pure breath. When you sense that each now is nested within all nows, you realize that an instant of pure consciousness will take you further than a marathon of habit driven practice.

Who is Breathing?

In preparation for your brief session of meditation, consider this question: Who is breathing? Then release the question completely into the nonverbal realm. Accept no answers that come in words. Let this question hover in the silence of your one breath.

No Effort

Let your one, single, on-stage, in-the-spotlight breath be completely natural. Let it move at its own pace and achieve only the depth it seeks on its own. Don't force. Don't push. Don't direct it. Simply follow it. It is the only breath you will be attending to in this way so give it all your attention. There's not enough time to get bored. This is as easy as it gets.

Punctuation

When you are ready to begin, close your eyes. Once you have completed one cycle of in and out (or out and in), open your eyes. You're done.

Using the opening and closing of your eyes to punctuate your session accomplishes two things. It funnels your attention inward as your eyes close for your very brief chance at sensing this unique breath which will never occur again in all of creation. It also makes distinct your session. It tells your conscious mind that you have started something and you have completed it.

Unraveling

Distortions in our thinking create physical and emotional pain. This single breath meditation is so simple and unintimidating that it does not create anxiety or inspire much resistance. It does, however, begin the unraveling of deep patterns of distortion. In a soft and gentle way, it loosens the ties that hold resistant thought-forms in place. It creates little regions of space in your consciousness each time you do it. In this way it begins to undo those templates that keep replicating your challenges. It introduces tiny hints of freedom into physical and emotional areas of constriction. Ultimately, this subtle sense of liberation filters down to your relationships, your health, your work, and more. It brings space, light, and openness. It gives you some room to be yourself.

Cookies

These single breaths become like cookies. They taste sweet, and once you have one you want another. They are small and individual and you can have one as a treat or you can sit down with the whole box and meditate for an hour.

Copyright (c) 2006 Rebbie Straubing

To find out more about how to begin or deepen a meditation practice, read Dr. Rebbie Straubing's book “Rooted in the Infinite: The Yoga of Alignment: YOFA™ Training for Spiritual Awareness, Healing, and Joyful Manifestation. ”You can get an instant FREE download of the first 29 pages of the book at http://rootedintheinfinite.com/ . Rebbie is a workshop leader, Abraham Coach, and spiritual writer. Her free e-course "7 Secrets for Manifesting Your Heart’s Desire" is available at http://www.yofa.net/

Using Yoga and Meditation To Discover Your Hidden Talents

Do you feel as though there is something missing from your life?

How about the nagging feeling that you have been just floating through life so far, yet to make the sort of difference you envisioned as a child?

It's common to have the "gut" feeling that we are capable of much greater things in our lives, but to lack clarity on how we can realize such accomplishments.

Now is the time to change all of that by using yoga and meditation to become directed by inner strength and passion rather that external influences.

Face it, the vast majority of decisions in our lives are directed by others. You would be correct in arguing that we don't have someone else telling us what to do every single hour of each and every day, but through leaving our lives to chance and by following a short-term, tactically driven lifestyle, we really control very little about the direction of our life.

No wonder that as each year passes we seem to drift further and further away from the key characteristics of someone in control of their life: happiness, health, meaningful relationships and a fulfillment that can only be achieved through alignment with your inner passions.

LOOKING WITHIN TO FIND OUR GREATNESS

As we move through life we become better and better at "tactical living". We get better at making short-term decisions related to short-term goals, fooling ourselves into thinking we are making giant leaps of progress when in fact, we are moving further away from inner-directed greatness.

We chase job after job, business after business with the hope of gaining more money - but for what?

We deal with health problems with an ever-growing list of substances from alcohol and drugs to painkillers and sleeping pills, yet we fail to recognize the underlying cause of such ailments.

Relationship seeking becomes an essential part of our life, each subsequent relationship is designed to overcome the limitations of the first and satisfy our ego giving us that short-term fix that eventually leads to the very thing we hope to prevent - loneliness, unhappiness and unfulfilling relationships.

Through all of this "tactical living", we become lost, adopting outward beliefs, impressions and values to help make the many decisions we must make each day.

What if we could harness the power of strength, passion and inner spirit that exists today, deep inside of us?

With yoga and meditation you can open up your inner resources to work in your favor, overcome the conflict that often exists between your decisions and your inner values.

I first started yoga and meditation to relax, to simply re-capture a portion of the day for myself and I have to admit, the insight gained into my own strengths and passions is a powerful effect I had not earlier planned.

After just a few months of practicing yoga and meditation, two important things happened:

1. It became easier to relax and let my sub-conscious thoughts make their way to the surface. We all have a powerful sub-conscious that is capable of directing your life, the key is to understand what the messages are.

2. Through the process, many people soon begin to experience new feelings of self-respect, a like for themselves achieved through greater understanding and self-awareness. Quite simply, you can't like someone you don't know, and most of us go through life not really knowing who we really are. In fact, this lack of knowing what is deep inside us scares us enough to cover it up entirely.

Success in relationships, health, social situations, career, finances are all embedded within us, by choosing to understand and leverage our internal strengths and talents, we can live the lives and impact society as we secretly know is possible.

Adopting just 15-20-minutes of yoga and meditation each day will open your conscious mind to your sub-conscious strengths and talents making you virtually unstoppable.

Join The World's Top Achievers Reach Inner Strength, Happiness, Fulfillment and Live Their True Potential by Discovering The Secrets of Yoga and Meditation.

Meditation - Your Route To Peace

A few years ago if someone had asked me whether or not I would consider using meditation as part of my daily routine I would have laughed. Who was I to need meditation? After all I had TV Programmes to watch, Playstations to play, Music to listen to, Magazines to read, Friends to chatter with and everything else under the sun. I didn't need meditation. Or so I thought. At that time I looked upon meditation as something cranky, something that perhaps took place at a commune or some other barren location. No, I live in the modern world with loads of gagdets and gizmos, why on earth would I even consider trying something as ludicrous as closing my eyes and just relaxing. Well, that was my previous viewpoint and one that I held until I reached a point when things weren't going to well in my life and I needed a solution.

At this point in time I had begun to ask some serious questions about my life. I had entered the phase that I now like to call " The Searching Phase". I started to read some Personal Development books and listened to a couple of tapes. These showed me techniques and solutions that I could implement in my life to get it going in the direction that I wanted it to. However, there was still an absense of peace. It was not until my mum gave me a Meditation CD that I began to feel a sense of peace and happiness about my life.

I can still remember my first meditation. I started listening to the soothing music and imagined the glorious white light filling my body and radiating peace and healing. I felt a numbness, a sort of immunity to any bad feelings and a magical tingling feel all over my skin. I was no longer attached to the material world and its limitations and felt at one with my spirit. I experienced more relaxation, sense of belonging and peace in my soul than in any other time in my life.

If for any reason at all you are experiencing stress, anxiety, worry, fear, over-whelment you must meditate. This is the cure, the path, the way to peace. When you start your life will change in ways beyond what you could possibly have imagined.

Kenny Lindsay is an expert in the field of personal development. In the past few years he has read hundreds of books and listened to dozens of tapes on the subject. He is passionate about self-growth and runs his own self-development website which has lots of great free information and tips. It can be found at nomountaintoohigh.blogspot.com