Meditation – What Is It? Benefits Of Meditation
Our mind is a storage that can store any amount of information. It is never stable. It has immense power to think in all directions. Once we are awake, the conscious part of our mind works that helps us to think about what’s happening around us.
The conscious mind is responsible for our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. The way our mind thinks and reacts to the situation affects our lives and relationships a lot. How to control our minds? How to make it stable and focused on the goals of our lives?
The answer to these questions is meditation.
What is meditation?
It is a kind of mental training practice that’s
performed for relaxation, focus, concentration, awareness, and peace of mind.
Like some physical workout is required to our body to keep it healthy and
active, in the same way, meditation is the workout of mind to keep it healthy
and active. It’s the state of consciousness where our body is completely awake
and alert, but the mind is going to be in rest and will not focus on the events
happening around us.
Types of meditation
- Spiritual meditation: It’s almost like doing a prayer. It can be practiced in a home or place of worship to seek connection with God or universal power.
- Focused meditation: It involves concentrating either on your internal breath or external things like staring on the candle flame, or counting of mala beads.
- Movement meditation: It includes yoga, where all body parts are involved in some yoga poses and the mind has to concentrate on breathing.
- Mantra meditation: This type of meditation includes the repetition of certain words or mantras like ‘OM’.
How to start meditation?
You can choose any kind of meditation, to begin with.
Meditation should be done in a quiet and airy place, where you can focus. There shouldn’t be any disturbances around you. Sit with crossed legs. Your head, neck, back should be straight and eyes should be close. Slowly allow all the muscles of the body to relax. Try to keep all the thoughts away from your mind. Stay in the state for a couple of moments.
When your mind and body get relaxed bring your consciousness to your breath. Observe your inhaling and exhaling process of breathing. Don’t control your breath, go with its flow. Your breath can be irregular in the start but slowly it will become smooth. Many thoughts will come to distract the process of meditation. Every time they come let them go and again focus on your breath.
In the beginning, you will not sit for longer. Keep practicing every day and your sitting time will increase gradually as your mind start to get more focused and will not get distracted when it enters the meditation process.
Benefits of meditation
- Reduces stress
- Control on anger and reduces tension
- Control on some kind of addiction like excessive drinking or smoking
- Control blood pressure and blood sugar level
- Boost immune system
- Helps in better sleep
- Improves brain functioning
- Helps to appreciate yourself and life
- Increases energy within the body and keep you charged up for the entire day
Mediation is a slow process, but it’s very effective. You will need to fix the daily 20 minutes to do the meditation process then only you will get the result. You will have to be patient.
Keep working on your mind to control it. Don’t let it distract you with the thoughts. Keep practicing then only you will see the benefits of meditation. Slowly it will become part of your daily life and you will experience a more healthy and worry-free life.