...is the practice of quieting your mind and coming to center, bringing inner peace and connectedness. Making time to meditate will do wonders for your mind body and soul. There are many ways people choose to meditate, and many reasons for that matter. Some will use music, some prefer to be in nature, some listen to guided meditations and some people don't. If you're a beginner, or just find it difficult to hush your mind (everyone struggles with this for a bit), I urge you to test various methods to find which works best for you. I personally have a blend that I use, chosen intuitively depending on my "reason". For example, if I'm meditating for stress or anxiety relief, I may chose a guided meditation to give my "over thinking" mind a voice to focus on. When I begin to lose focus, my ears can "find" the voice to refocus. However, if I'm meditating to heal/open my heart chakra, I may simply play some "fairyesk" type Celtic music because it brings me to a light wispy place and the music opens my heart to the connectedness of the universe and unconditional love for all. So, your style is really all you and there are so many practices you can incorporate into your meditation that we'll get deeper into later!
Breathing!
I want to point out, the breathing exercise is one of the most, if not the absolute most important aspect of the whole process. This is when your mind rests and your energy calms. Now maybe this next piece of advice will sound obvious to you, but it took me years to honestly grasp the concept, so for those people, I want to explain that focusing on your breathing not only gives you the benefits already mentioned, but actually teaches you to sense your own body. yes, silly right. I mean really feel it. We all live inside these bodies, we feel what we touch, hold, sit on, yes. But your sensory is designed to feel what "you" (perception my dears) are touching, tasting, smelling etc. It takes focus to realize the sensations of your body...touching. Realizing yourself. How the inside of the nostril "feels" when air enters, what it smells like, what your chest "feels" like when it rises and falls. Learning to focus on these sensories bring you "in-tune" with your body. |
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience"
-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. What a brilliant statement and very real. Our connection to our own physical being is mostly ignored or taken for granted. Breathing exercises bring us essentially "into" ourselves, leaving us feeling more balanced or "grounded" , more secure and clear. Now, what happens once you've reached that "meditative" state, that's between you, your higher self and the Divine! But I can assure you, the benefits of meditation are enough to chose to make time. |