Simple Meditation Basics
For Beginners
How To Find Inner Peace And Happiness, Increase Focus, Reduce Anxiety And Depression, Improve your life.
Manikya Trivedi
Copyright 2020 Manikya Trivedi
All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Meditation can be an exercise where one uses a personal approach such as concentration and focuses on a specific object, idea, or activity to bring attention and awareness and to be mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable.
Scholars have found it elusive to define meditation, as traditions differ both within various societies. Meditation is practiced in many religious traditions. Early records of meditation (Dhyana) are found within the Vedas, and meditation plays a pivotal role in Hindu and Buddhism's meditative routines.
Since the 19th century, Asian meditative techniques have spread to other cultures. They have also found application in non-spiritual contexts such as business and health.
Meditation can reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and pain and increase peace, perception, self-concept, and well-being. Research is ongoing to understand the consequences of meditation on health (psychological, neuroscience, and cardiovascular) and other fields. Meditation has proved challenging to define as it covers a good range of different practices in many traditions.
In widespread usage, the term "meditation" and the phrase "meditation practice" are often used imperceptibly to designate curriculums found in many cultures. These can include almost anything claimed to teach the mind's eye or show calm or kindness. There is no definition of necessary and sufficient criteria for meditation that have gained universal or widespread acceptance within the fashionable scientific community.
In 1971, Claudio Naranjo noted that the term "meditation" is used to denote words that are different enough from each other to make it challenging to figure out what meditation is. The persistent lack of consensus within the literature seems to be the impossibility of defining awareness.
Directions
Get comfortable and prepare to take a seat and remain still for a few minutes. When you stop reading it, you begin to concentrate on just your natural breathing and exhalation.
Pay attention to your breathing. Where do you feel your breaths the most? In your stomach? In your nose? Try to keep your focus on your breath and breathing.
Stick to your breathing for 2 minutes. Take a deep breath, expand your abdomen, then exhale slowly, exhaling your breath as your stomach contracts.
If you experienced these types of deflections (and we all do), then you made an important discovery: Simply put, this is another ideology. Once we go to sleep in our head, on automatic pilot, it does not let our thoughts go here and there, say, long or past, and essentially, we exist within the moment. But this is where most people live - and very uncomfortably if we are honest, okay? But it does not have to be this way.
We "practice" mindfulness, so we can figure out how to accept it when our brains do their standard everyday acrobatics, and perhaps make a stop for a touch from it, so we can choose what we want to do. In short, meditation helps us build a healthy relationship with ourselves.
It is estimated that 95% of our behavior runs on autopilot. This is because neural networks reduce all our habits, turning many of our sensory inputs into manageable shortcuts per second to act during this crazy world. These default brain signals are so efficient that they often remind us before we get into old behaviors what we need to try instead.
Mindfulness is precisely the opposite of those default processes. It is executive control rather than autopilot and enables deliberate action, willpower, and decision making. But it takes practice. The more we intentionally activate the brain, the stronger it is. Whenever we do something consciously and new, we stimulate neuroplasticity, activating our dark matter, which is filled with new sprouting neurons that have not yet been prepared for an "autopilot" brain.
But the problem here is this: while our conscious mind knows what is best for us, our subconscious mind causes us to make our way through life. How can we trigger ourselves when we need it most?
This is often where the notion of "behavioral design" comes into play. This is how to keep your conscious mind within the driver's seat. There are two ways of doing this - first, slowing down the subconscious mind by placing obstacles in its path. Second, removing the barriers of intentional brain passage so it can regain control.
Shifting the balance to provide more power to your conscious mind takes some work, however. Here are some ways.
Put a meditation reminder near you. If you try to do some yoga or meditation, put your yoga mat or your meditation pillow in the middle of your floor so you cannot miss it as you walk by.
Refresh your reminders regularly. Say you choose to use sticky notes to remind yourself of a replacement intention. This can work for a few weeks; on the other hand, your autopilot takes over the brain and old habits appear once again. Try to write yourself new notes; Add variety or make them fun. That way, they can stay with you for a long time.
Create new patterns. You can try a series of "if so, that" messages to create easy reminders to intentionally transfer to the brain. As an example, you could possibly come up with, "If the office door opens, then take a deep breath," keep in mind that you are nearing the start of your workday. Or "If the phone rings, take a breath before answering." Every deliberate action to shift to mindfulness can strengthen your conscious mind.
Once you have figured out an essential sitting meditation practice, you might want to think about other meditation types, including walking and lying down. While previous meditations used the breath as meditation for training, these below meditators specialize in different body parts.
Try this: Immediately put your feet down. With or without your shoes, it does not matter. Then track or scan all over your body, gradually all the way to the top of your head. The purpose of this exercise is to see it together with your whole body: fingertips to shoulder, butt to the great toe.
The only rules are no decisions, no thinking, no worries (all activities that make you want to think); Just sign up with the physical feeling of being in your body. Aches and pain are subtle. You do not need to do anything here. You are just watching.
Start focusing your attention on different parts of your body. You can spot a particular area or go through a sequence like this: legs, feet, sole, heel, above the feet), through the legs, pelvis, abdomen, lower back, upper back, chest shoulders, fingers, just below the arms, shoulders, neck, various parts of the face, and head. For every aspect of the body, swing for a moment or two, and observe the multiple sensations.
The moment you notice that your mind has gone astray, return your attention to the part of the body that you remember for the last time.
If you shake your head during this body-scan exercise, that is fine. Once you realize you are shutting down, take a deep breath to help you and perhaps reorganize your body (which can also help wake it up). When you are ready put your attention to the part of the body you remember the last time.
You cannot tie yourself to unique feelings towards yourself or anyone else. Instead, you can practice reminding yourself that you only deserve happiness and ease, which is the same for your child, family, friends, neighbors, and everyone else in the world.
This love-loving practice involves quietly repeating phrases that give good qualities to oneself and others.
