What is meditation and why should you do it? In this article we'll take a look at the phenomenon of meditation, which is now more popular and mainstream than ever.
Meditation basically involves a deeply focused, calm state of mind, although there are many different meditation methods. Some of these involve giving intense, focused attention to something, such as a candle flame, a mantra or the breath. Other forms involve maintaining a detached state of awareness in which thoughts are allowed to pass through the mind, but without pursuing them. In most cases, the end result is that the chatter of the mind slows down or stops, and it becomes possible to access a deep sense of inner peace, your own internal guidance, and possibly altered states of awareness too.
Meditation plays a key role in many Eastern philosophies and religions, but in recent decades has become increasingly popular in the West as well. People have various motives for wanting to learn to meditate: these include releasing stress, mental relaxation, personal development, improved health and even the development of extra sensory abilities and the exploration of altered states of consciousness.
With so many meditation methods available, it can be difficult to know where to start. Probably the simplest way to begin is to just watch your breath. This involves sitting or lying down in a quiet place, closing your eyes and just putting your focus on your breath as it moves in an out of your nostrils. And that's it! There's no need to sit in the lotus position or purchase special meditation accessories or anything else like that. Simply sit, breathe and focus. It also helps to breathe deeply, as this further relaxes your mind and body.
With practice, you'll find that your mind begins to relax deeply, as your breath becomes the centre of your awareness and your conscious thoughts slow down. This simple process can be more challenging than it seems however, as keeping the focus on the breath can be surprisingly difficult if you've never meditated before. You'll almost certainly find your attention wandering, so don't beat yourself up when this happens. Just gently return your focus to your breathing, no matter how many times you have to do this. A 10 minute session should be enough to begin with, although with practice you might want to build up to 20 minutes or more each day.
You might also want to listen to the meditation recording that uses binaural beats or another brainwave entrainment technology such as monaural beats or isochronic tones. Listening to a recording like this while doing your breathing meditation can help to quieten your mind much more easily. Such recordings contain sounds of specific frequencies which have been shown to aid in achieving a deeply relaxed mental state.
If you decide to use brainwave entrainment for improving your meditation sessions, I suggest checking out the excellent 'Meditation' recordings from The Unexplainable Store. These are very popular, and are fully guaranteed. You can also get some free samples to download, so for more information just go to http://www.brain-sync.com.
Loren Mann is an experienced 'explorer of consciousness' who enjoys writing about self-development topics and sharing helpful, high quality resources, and may receive compensation as a result of making these recommendations.
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