The Beginner’s Guide to Meditation

With the stress and hectic lifestyles people have nowadays, it is important to maintain the health of your body, mind, and soul. There are numerous dietary and workout plans that can help you maintain your physique, but what about your mental health? If you have explored yet, this beginner’s guide to meditation will help.

Meditation is a way to train your mind and keep it fit. This beginner’s guide to meditation will teach you techniques that can help you train your mind to form habits that will keep stress away. Buddhist tradition considers meditation as a form of sports. It is a group of activities. Did you know that different mental skills are required for different types of meditation? If not, read on to find a lot more in this beginner’s guide to meditation.

What are the benefits of a beginner’s guide to mediation?

If you are an expert, then you will know how to use it for your benefit. But for a novice there are a lot of approaches and research required. If you do not want to sit with an empty head and want to get started with meditation quickly, then our beginner’s guide to meditation will surely help. You can try out a brain-sensing headband or a beginner’s meditation DVD as well. The basic approach to meditation is to concentrate i.e. focus on your breath. 

Basic meditation techniques for beginners 

1. Concentration meditation: Here, you focus on a single point such as your breath, single word, a candle flame, or repetitive sound. Start by meditating for a few minutes and then increase the time duration. This helps to improve concentration.
2. Mindfulness meditation: In mindfulness meditation, the idea is to observe your wandering thoughts while meditating. The idea is not to judge or get involved in the thoughts, just be aware of them. This helps to analyse your thought patterns and improves the judgment of human behaviour. It helps to create an inner balance. 
3. Other techniques: Some meditation techniques help to build up compassion. This is done by visioning your negative events and then positively framing them. Tai chi, walking meditation, and qigong are forms of moving meditation. 

Benefits of meditation

• Relaxation of the mind
• Lower blood pressure
• Less perspiration
• Eases feelings of anxiety
• Lessens stress
• Generates feeling of well-being

Relaxation of the mind is a primary benefit of meditation. Meditation also leads to lower blood pressure, less perspiration and anxiety, less stress, feeling of well being, lower heart and respiratory rate, improved blood circulation, low levels of blood cortisol, and a lot more. It has an overall positive effect on the nervous system and immunity. It leads to the liberation of your mind from negative emotions and circumstances that it cannot control. This leads to a positive and calm mind with inner harmony.

How to meditate before bed?

Meditation before bed can help you get better sleep by calming your mind. It can help remove the stress of your day and fights insomnia. Let us find out how to meditate in bed:

1. Sit or lie down on your bed comfortably. You can find a meditation cushion or chair on amazon.in too. 
2. Close your eyes. Using a restorative eye pillow or mask may also help. Look out for the top 5 meditation tools online. 
3. Breathe naturally. 
4. Focus on your breath and try to figure out how your body moves with each exhalation and inhalation. 

Start with a few minutes and increase the time as your progress until around 15-20 minutes daily. What meditation techniques do you follow? Share your thoughts on this beginner’s guide to meditation in the comments section.