MEDITATION

 This meditation comes with the benefits of improving your emotional flexibility, reducing anxiety, and helping you focus better. It can be practiced by people of all ages and just requires you to focus on your breathing. Just sit in a quiet room and focus your senses on your breathing. Feel your abdomen and chest rising and falling with every breath. Breath awareness meditation also helps in calming down your mind. 

 Popular in Hinduism and Christianity, spiritual meditation makes you reflect on the silence around you to form a deeper connection with your God. All you need to do for this meditation is sit in silence and focus on your breath. Each and every thought of yours should focus on your inhale and exhale of breaths. You can focus your attention on your God and not let your mind waver off. This meditation helps in boosting memory along with improving concentration. 

 Mantra meditation has been an important part of both, Hindu and Buddhist traditions. It requires the practitioner to chant a ‘mantra’ or a specific word while practicing it. The repetitive sound of mantra is said to clear the mind and calm it down. Chanting will help you become more alert and take you to deeper levels of awareness. This meditation is meant for people who do not like complete silence while meditating. 

 As the name suggests, the goal of transcendental meditation is to rise above your current state of being. It is the most popular type of meditation and can be customized with spiritual and mantra meditation. You can choose a mantra for yourself and sit in silence for about 20 minutes while reciting it. Transcendental meditation is said to lower blood pressure, improve sleep and decrease anxiety in people who regularly practice it. 

Progressive relaxation, sometimes called body scan meditation, is the meditation that encourages people to scan their bodies for areas of tension. The goal is to notice tension and to allow it to release.

During a progressive relaxation session, practitioners start at one end of their body, usually their feet, and work through the whole.

Progressive relaxation can help to promote generalized feelings of calmness and relaxation. It may also help with chronic pain. Because it slowly and steadily relaxes the body, some people use this form of meditation to help them sleep.

The loving-kindness meditation goal is to cultivate an attitude of love and kindness toward everything, even a person’s enemies and sources of stress.

While breathing deeply, practitioners open their minds to receiving loving kindness. They then send messages of loving kindness to the world, to specific people, or to their loved ones.

Loving-kindness meditation is designed to promote feelings of compassion & love. It can help those affected by:

• anger
• frustration
• resentment
• interpersonal conflict

This type of meditation may increase positive emotions and has been linked to reduced depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress or PTSD.

Mindfulness is a form of meditation that urges practitioners to remain aware and present at the moment.

Rather than dwelling on the past or dreading the future, mindfulness encourages awareness of a person’s existing surroundings. Mindfulness meditation is something people can do almost anywhere. While waiting in line at the grocery store, for example, a person might calmly notice their surroundings, including the sights, sounds, and smells they experience.

A form of mindfulness is involved in most kinds of meditation. Breath awareness encourages practitioners to be aware of their breathing, while progressive relaxation draws attention to areas of tension in the body.

Research found that mindfulness can:

• reduce fixation on negative emotions
• improve focus
• improve memory
• lessen impulsive, emotional reactions
• improve relationship satisfaction

Visualization meditation is a technique focused on enhancing feelings of relaxation, peace, and calmness by visualizing positive scenes or images.

With this practice, it’s important to imagine the scene vividly and use all five senses to add as much detail as possible.

Another form of visualization meditation involves imagining yourself succeeding at specific goals, which is intended to increase focus and motivation.

Many people use visualization meditation to boost their mood, reduce stress levels, and promote inner peace.

Focused meditation involves concentration using any of the five senses.

For example, you can focus on something internal, like your breath, or you can bring in external influences to help focus your attention.

Try counting beads, listening to a gong, or staring at a candle flame.

This practice may be simple in theory, but it can be difficult for beginners to hold their focus for longer than a few minutes at first.

If your mind does wander, it’s important to come back to the practice and refocus.