Meditation 101!

Meditation, how to get started?

Meditation is a practice that is often misunderstood as being complex and difficult to do without guidance but it is completely the opposite of it. Anybody can meditate and everybody should meditate. Meditation is very easy to do which goes against what most people think about it. The lot of us has the misconception that meditation involves a lot of complex preparation but it is nothing but preparation of the mind so that it can speak to itself.  

What really is meditation?

Meditation is simply the act of speaking to the depths of your own mind with an attempt to calm it down and quiet it down. There are hundreds of thousands of thoughts that we entertain every day and everything is in its little bits and pieces, meditation is simply an attempt to culminate it all so that it becomes a collective calm in the mind as well as the body.

In today’s world we hardly get enough time to reflect and speak to ourselves. We are constantly in conversation with people but we hardly talk to ourselves, we hardly have the time to hear what the mind really has to say. This simple process of listening to your own body and mind and listening to your own thoughts without any other distraction involved can be defined as meditation. It is often said that there are many different ways to meditate, but I believe that there is only the mind.

With that in mind, here are some really simple steps to get you started out with meditation. I am no expert but I do manage to speak to my mind occasionally and I am sharing these simple steps only to get you started out.

• ·         Make time: Significant numbers of people often say that they aren’t able to make time to meditate on the pretext that they are too busy. Start out by investing at least ten minutes of your time to meditate, ten minutes is usually wasted in meaningless conversation, instead keep this time aside daily and meditate.
• ·         Find a suitable place: Find a quiet and relaxing place, make sure that you are comfortable in that space. Don’t go out of your way to find a completely quiet place, you can even start out in the comfort of your own bedroom. Make sure that you switch off the Tele and that there are no conversations going on as your mind will be drawn to those conversations. Environmental sounds do not really make all that much of a difference to meditation.
• ·         Relax yourself: The first and the most important tricks to any meditation are to relax the body as well as the mind. If there is any body part that is sending you a signal that it is not comfortable, take your time to find a comfortable enough position.
• ·         Pay attention to your breathing: Any meditative process begins only after you have gained enough awareness and control over your breathing. Sometimes reciting a word also helps, ohm is a word that has a great significance in any meditative process, and its universality is accepted by people all around the world.
• ·         Calm your mind: Once you have your breathing down to a science, then you can move on to calm your mind. The mind is a wonderful thing and it is also full of chaos. Be patient with your mind and channelize your thoughts towards calm, do it consistently and you will reach a state where the mind is always calm and always in control.