Literally hundreds of scientific studies now reveal the multitude of benefits of meditation, which range from reduced blood pressure, improved sleep, the production of anti-depressant brain chemicals, and anti-aging effects!
Most profound are the mental, emotional and spiritual benefits of meditation, and it is these that I believe filter down resulting in physically observed health shifts.
Meditation creates the space to open to more of your truer self – the magnificent spiritual being that you are beyond your personality self.
It can also serve as a gateway between worlds (your conscious, subconscious, and higher conscious minds and spiritual realms, for example), and creates the opportunity for insights beyond the limits of your everyday awareness to be received.
“Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit” – Jeremy Taylor
Meditation and deep relaxation also enable a natural clearing and aligning of your energy. Stressful thoughts and emotions and lower frequency energies dissipate and are washed away as higher vibrations have the opportunity to imbue your being, which equate to positive states.
Meditating daily, even for just 5 or 10 minutes in the morning or evening can make a big difference to you day and help you maintain a greater peace, clarity, compassion and a centred empowered state.
How do you meditate?…
There are lots of different ways to meditate and types of meditations you can explore. I will be covering a range of these in my meditation blog post series.
These might be considered more relaxation techniques, and in this sense, if you already have a preferred meditative practice, you can explore these as precursors for that purpose, or if you are new to meditation, try them out as starting points.
Each will help to relax and calm you, and bring your focus within.
As said, these are very simple meditative techniques. I will be sharing a number of others in future posts, but thought it better to introduce them in digestible amounts.
I have already shared a ‘How to connect with your Higher Self’ meditation at the end of the blog bost “Who You REALLY Are!”… at this link, which is a guided meditation laid out step-by-step.
There is also the ‘World Healing Meditation‘ at this link you can use for sending your love and light to a person, place or situation for healing and resolution – your own self even. It is a vibration raising meditation in itself.
In future issues I will be moving on to explore breathing meditations, manifesting meditations, intuition enhancing meditations, guided journeys, chanting/mantras, mindfulness meditation, and more!
Enjoy these initial techniques below for now.
Note: Before doing any type of relaxation technique or meditation, it is best to be in a quiet space where you know you will not be distracted or interrupted so you can completely relax.
You can explore these relaxation techniques below seated or lying down. If seated, sit with your spine straight and feet on the floor (unless you are sitting cross-legged). Turn off your phone and make sure you are comfortable and not wearing tight clothing or anything that would inhibit full relaxation.
Given the nature of the below 4 meditation/relaxation techniques, you might like to choose a relaxing piece of music to listen to, but only if it would help to calm you, allow your body to get quiet and still, and not be distracting or too emotive in that sense.
1. Breathing Exercises
The below breathing techniques are perhaps the most simple and more for relaxation, but can be used as a meditative practice in themselves, or combined with another practise to assist in stilling the mind, and become calm and centered.
a) Deep Breathing
Deep breathing involves not only the lungs but also the abdomen and diaphragm and is used in many relaxation practices including yoga, meditation, and visualization.
Most of us rarely breathe from our diaphragm and instead take short shallow breaths from our upper chest. When we’re stressed, our breath becomes even shallower, though we often don’t notice. Shallow breathing limits oxygen up-take and prevents the relaxation of the solar plexus area (which holds stress) since we are not using our diaphragm muscles.
When you breathe from your abdomen, you inhale about a lot more oxygen. What’s more, where chest breathing correlates with shorter, more restless brain waves, abdominal breathing induces longer, slower brain waves associated with relaxation and meditation.
You can test this out first by placing one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. When ‘breathing from your belly’ (using your diaphragm muscles), your stomach should rise yet the hand on your chest should move very little.
You can then relax your arms and just focus on this slow continued deep breathing as a practice. To further develop this, try moving on to the “counting breaths” exercise below, or explore a Pranayama breathing practise, of which there are several from the yoga tradition.
b) Counting Breaths
Counting breaths encourages deep breathing and can be a quick and simple way to cool your mind, release stress, and dissipate distracting or hectic thoughts.
With structured counting you use a specific time structure for the in-breath, hold, out-breath and hold.
Below is an example:
Relax and breathe deeply from your abdomen. Now follow the below sequence of counts for in, out and held breaths:
a. Breathe in to the count of four
b. Hold for the count of four
c. Breathe out to the count of four
d. Hold for the count of four
Then continue by repeating the cycle
This pattern is 4-4-4-4.
You can try another pattern that feels more comfortable, as long as it is systematic and repeated to retain a set rhythm of some kind, whether that’s 4-6-4-6, for example, or 4-4-8-4. You could also try it without step (d), hence going straight to an in-breath after an eight-counted out-breath to a counting pattern of 4-4-8.
There’s no wrong or right way of doing this, so just explore to find a count rhythm that works and feels comfortable for you.
Counting your breath is a powerful and simple way to regulate and deepen your breathing, and relax and alter your state of consciousness.
Note: Pranayama is a practise in the yoga tradition that involves meditative breathing exercises (“Prana” is vital energy, received through the breath, and “ayama” means control). These ancient practises can be very transformational, clearing and balancing and are worth exploring if this area interests you. Search online for resources in this field, or from an expert and trained yoga instructor.
2. Energy Flow Relaxation
In this technique you intend and imagine an energy of, say, peace, relaxation, or love, for example, entering in from either your feet or the top of your head, and slowly filling your body, flowing and relaxing body parts gracefully as it moves through them.
Just ask and affirm this energy to enter you. You might like to accompany this with a colour if so inspired – in which case I recommend choosing a colour in the higher spectrum from blue-violet, or silver or white possible, as these can be calming and clearing.
As this energy passes through your body, saturating every cell, it will relax you not only physically, but mentally and emotionally also. Rest and bathe in the energy as it transforms your state of consciousness.
This is a simple, elegant and powerful technique for relaxation and you may want to follow it up with a meditation technique.
3. Relaxing Scene
Visualizing yourself in a beautiful, tranquil place in nature, such as a meadow, beach, hill top, forest grove, riverside or waterfall, can greatly enhance relaxation.
Imagine as much detail as possible and really engage your inner senses – feel the wind on your face, the scent of the breeze, feel the ground beneath your feet and the call of birds or rustle of leaves. Reach out and touch something and make it real.
I will be exploring how you can use a technique like this as a platform for numerous possibilities, from receiving intuitive insights to connecting with your Higher Self and healing guided journeys.
For now, just flex your imagination allow the harmony, peace and beauty of nature in to calm and nourish you.
Focussing your mind through this exercise also takes your attention inwards and away from everyday conscious thoughts, current issues and outer world distractions.
4. Colour Imagery
Visualizing colour can help to shift your energy state. Colour is vibration, as are you. Everything is energy. Pure colour vibrations can help to balance and align your energy system and integrate the frequencies that may most serve you at any one time.
Below is a simple exercise you can use to harness the healing power of colour as a meditative practise.
Imagine the colours of the rainbow one by one in your mind, from red to violet. After these seven, you may like to visualize some additional colours that are not in the rainbow spectrum, such as peach, gold, pastel shades, silver, etc.– any you particularly like or that come to mind.
As you do this exercise and visualise each colour, notice which colour (or perhaps there’s more than one) feels most appealing to you – that you enjoy the most and perhaps wish to linger on for longer, for example.
Choose this colour as your focus colour for the meditation. If there was more than one, you can repeat the below process for each of the colours that were most compelling to you in the above visualization process.
Once you have chosen your colour, imagine it filling your body from your feet upwards or from your head downwards, which ever feels most comfortable and natural to you. Let this colour fill your entire body, and saturate every organ, cell, and limb. Imagine it fully absorbing this frequency. Allow yourself to bathe in the light of this colour and receive its vibrational properties.
The colour you choose may vary each time you do this exercise, or there may be one, two or several that you particularly enjoy and tend to work with.
Always go with the colour you are drawn to at the time of the exercise, as there are many reasons your energy system may want to integrate a particular colour frequency at any given time. Be intuitive with the process.
This exercise can help to nourish and balance your energy. It will also flex and develop your visualization and focus skills which are conducive to most other types of meditation.
Let any stress, troubles and discordance melt away and be released as this colour fills you, perhaps imagining breathing out stresses and strains with each out-breath, and inhaling the colour you are working with on each in-breath.
In general, blues and purples are more sedative, cooling and calming in nature, as opposed to reds, oranges and yellow, which are more stimulating. Green, the colour of the heart centre, is a more neutral equilibrating colour containing both blue and yellow.
You can explore this exercise with more than one colour – perhaps several are particularly appealing that you wish to bask in.
Feel free to also try it with each colour of the seven colours of the rainbow to assist in balancing and renewing your chakra system.
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In continuing parts to this “How to Meditate” series, I will be sharing a range of techniques, from more basic ones as these, to guided journeys with specific transformational focuses, manifesting meditations, intuition meditations, chanting/mantras, future self meditations, and more!
I will also be sharing more of the huge array of benefits of meditation, including some of the astonishing findings of science is now revealing!
