Meditation for Beginners
There’s a lot you can gain from the act of non-doing. In these silent moments you can improve your mental clarity, make better decisions, gain new insights, find balance, and become more mindful.
Quieting the mind will allow you to connect to your higher-self, which is the true source of inspiration and insights.
You’ll learn to control your thoughts, emotions and handle stress in a positive and productive way.
WHAT HAPPENS during meditation?
There’s something known as the “monkey mind,” keeping your mind running on autopilot.
The benefit of meditation is bringing you back into the present moment so you can enjoy what’s happening now in your moment-to-moment experience.
When you learn to slow down, you become more mindful towards the things that go unnoticed in life.
Life is shaped by your thoughts, so take the time to reflect on your daily experiences and learn to reflect on your thoughts, feelings and messages.
Regular meditation allows your mind to enter a calm and receptive state much quicker each time you meditate.
If you meditate long enough, you’ll gain access into different brainwave states:
Beta is the state of waking consciousness
Alpha is a state of wakeful relaxation
Theta is a very deep state of relaxation where intuitive insights, creativity, and daydreaming is explored
Gamma is the state of intense focus and brain-wave synchronization achieved by long-term meditators such as Buddhist monks. The gamma state enables rapid learning, greater access into your intuition, improve working memory and attentional skills. Numerous electroencephalograph (EEG) studies have shown that humanity's greatest philosophers, thinkers, inventors, and artists use both brain hemispheres together, in unison.
MEDITATION TECHNIQUES FOR BEGINNERS
There are many ways to meditate. The key is finding a flow that works best for you.
Here are some techniques to get you started:
Simple MEDITATION
Set a time frame: start anywhere from 1-15 minutes, then gradually increase your time. Build consistency and discipline. Follow the 21/90 rule: 21 days to build a habit, 90 days to build a lifestyle.
Posture: sit upright for alertness (ideal), or lie down. You can use props to support you. Place your hands on your knees if sitting. Palms facing up with the index and thumb gently touching, if you’d like to receive energy and palms down if you need grounding.
Breathing exercise: 1:2 is a simple ratio for the count of inhalations and exhalations. For example, inhale through the nose for the count of 4 and exhale for the count of 8. Focus on slow and controlled exhales. The long, slow exhales brings you into a state of relaxation. With practice, you’ll improve your diaphragmatic breathing.
Thoughts: allow yourself to become the observer of your thoughts. It’s nearly impossible to quiet your minds completely when you’re just starting out. As you become more advanced, you’ll be able to let go of these distractions. When you tune out the distractions, that’s when you’re in a state of meditation.
guided meditation apps
Meditation apps provide thousands of guided meditations from topics such as visualization, body scans, coping with anxiety, depression, sleep, energy healing, affirmations, mantras, topics on spirituality, gratitude, letting go, acceptance, and the list continues on. Here are some of my favourite meditation apps:
Headspace is a guided meditation training and mindfulness app that has a free 10 Day Beginner’s Course that guides you through the essentials of meditation and mindfulness.
Insight Timer provides an online community and a library full of guided meditations with some of the world’s best meditation teachers. It includes talks, interviews, and ideas covering a range of topics and concepts. It also features locations where people are meditating in real-time—talk about community!
Calm is another app that focuses on sleep, meditation, and relaxation. It provides video lessons, masterclasses, and ambient music, perfect for working and studying.
Wim Hoffman focuses on scientific breathing exercises to control the sympathetic nervous system and boost immunity. You may know him from the guinness world record as the man who climbed Mount Everest with nothing but shorts and open-toed sandals. His teachings are simple and focuses on commitment to deep breathing.
CANDLE GAZING
Candle gazing also known as Trataka in Ayurveda is a technique that works by bringing your attention to an external fixed point such as a flame. This technique is known to improve focus, clear the mind, heighten clairvoyance and open the third eye.
Start by setting a candle flame about 2 meters in front of you at eye level and softly gaze at the tip of the flame without straining the eyes. You’ll start to notice how easy it is to filter out your surroundings and fall into a meditative state quickly.
MINDLESS TASK
A mindless task could be as simple as walking, exercising, folding, or any sort of repetitive task. Turn your mundane tasks into a form of meditation.
Perform your tasks in silence or with ambient music to access a theta brainwave state that promotes daydreaming, imagination and creativity. Music without lyrics also gives your inner voice a chance for expression.
DEALING WITH DISTRACTIONS
Thoughts
Suppressed thoughts naturally surface the moment you start meditating. This could range from dark thoughts, traumas, unresolved pain, or current issues that need healing. In this case, there are two ways to deal with unpleasant thoughts:
Engage in that thought and work through it. It’s unlikely the average person will achieve zen status at the beginning stage of meditation, so try engaging in your thoughts and notice what comes up. You can explore different outcomes of an issue or discover the spiritual message behind the thought and what it’s trying to teach you.
Observe without judgment. Start by observing your thoughts from a third-person point of view and let them go without judgement until the next thought appears. Almost like watching clouds. Eventually, the space between thoughts will become larger and in this process you’ll learn to tame the monkey mind. The moment you tune out your thoughts is when you enter a deep state of meditation.
Emotions
“If we don’t express emotions, give it energy or work through it, it becomes a disease that manifests.”
Daily meditation helps you deal with unhealthy emotions rather than over-analyzing and hold on them.
By holding on to emotions it takes you away from living in the present moment.
The documentary E-motion states that if you hold on to the same emotion, it becomes a temperament, and after years it becomes a personality trait.
If you want to change your emotional state, you must become aware of the many types of emotions you’re feeling. The emotional scale will help you understand the vibrational frequency of each emotion. For instance, fear and guilt resonate at the lowest frequency, whereas joy resonates at the highest vibrational frequency. You want to at least be above courage.
It makes us human to experience all emotions. Event the negative emotions are a sacred opportunity for soul's growth.
The universe won’t bring anything into your life that you can’t handle. Meditation is simply a skill to help you navigate forward with more ease and grace.
