Archive for the 'MEDITATION' Category

Over sixty million of the Western population is affected by Insomnia; America has more citizens affected by lack of sleep than any other nation.

There are many medicinal solutions on offer both chemically based and herbal, also there are an endless amount of techniques that are recommended for people to try.

When you are trying to go to sleep there are certain processes that your brain is working on. These often exasperate the problem, and then the cycle of sleeplessness starts all over again, which is then hard to break.

Firstly clock watching, which just makes everything seem worse so change the way that your alarm faces so you can not see it from your bed.

Negative thinking is another unhelpful path that can spiral, it is easy to think this way but it is not going to help in any form. Finally the mind wants to over analyze everything, with a series of why, when and how’s, another destructive way to make you sit up instead of drifting off.

Using candle meditation means that you can change your mind to allow for improved sleep patterns. It is drug free using only essential oils known for centuries as having soothing properties and encouraging sleepiness.

There are many benefits of performing meditation. If you practice meditation in proper way, it certainly helps you to boost your body’s ability to shed extra pounds of your body.

Meditation mainly enables you to pay attention on what you are doing and the consequences that you can face later in your life.

When you force yourself to relax and divert your focus on one peaceful object or mantra for long period of time, it relieves you from stress that you experience in your day.

As a result, it reduces the cortisol, a chemical byproduct of stress that tends to help your body to use excess glucose for fat production.

This chemical byproduct also increases your desire for consuming high-fat foods that you want to avoid to shed extra pounds of your body.

Controlling the production of this byproduct can certainly help you to reduce extra pounds of your body. Practicing meditation can greatly help you to reduce stress and its contribution to weight loss.

If you don’t have any idea about how to meditate, here are certain ways to practice meditation in your routine.

Using the stairs at work instead of taking elevators could be a life saver.

A small Swiss study released on Monday showed that walking up and down stairs for three months, without recourse to the lift, increased levels of fitness dramatically.

In fact, the improvement in aerobic capacity was equivalent to a 15 percent fall in the risk of dying prematurely from any cause.

Subjects also saw marked reduction in waist size, body fat, blood pressure and cholesterol — all of which are known risk factors for heart disease.

Philippe Meyer of the University Hospital in Geneva studied 69 employees of the university with a sedentary lifestyle, defined as less than two hours of exercise a week and fewer than 10 flights of stairs climbed a day.

After not using elevators for 12 weeks, they increased their use of stairs to an average of 23 stories ascended or descended a day from five before, with a resulting sharp increase in fitness levels.

“This suggests that stair climbing at work may have major public health implications,” Meyer told the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology. “However, the results of the pilot study need to be confirmed in a larger randomized controlled trial.”

Every parent desires to see their children as happy and confident as possible.

Child meditation is one of the best ways to fulfill that desire. Child meditation is very effective.

With child meditation, children can gain positive mind-set, self-esteem, perfect health, better relationships with others and sharp grasping power.

However, most of the parents wonder about a child’s ability to meditate.

Surprisingly, children love to meditate. Child meditation basically involves the techniques to connect with one’s inner-self (the mind with the body).

Child meditation can be done in several ways. Simple and easy way of meditation is ‘mantras’. A mantra is a word or phrase that can be uttered silently or aloud.

A good mantra to practice child meditation is “hamsa.” It is a natural mantra that one makes while breathing: “ham” (h-ah-m) on inhalation and “sa” on exhalation.

For the hamsa meditation, sit comfortably in a quiet place and close your eyes. Breathe naturally. Sit calmly for about one minute prior to the beginning of your meditation using mantra. This allows your heart and breathing to slow.

Meditation will bring a sense of completion and fullness. It is the only permanent source of tranquility available with in you.

Meditation is also defined as the adventure of self discovery.

You can attain various self realization techniques with meditation by making your mind peace.

Meditation techniques will differ from one culture to another although meditation is same.

Different meditation techniques will get suited to different personality types.

Some techniques are concentrative that involve bringing focus into one’s thought, where as some techniques are expansive and allows for free flow of thoughts and their observation.

You should choose your meditation technique according to your personality and your way of thinking.

The most important meditation techniques:

Mantra meditation techniques:

• This mantra meditation technique involves the conscious repetition of certain sounds or mantras that appeal to the mind in order to achieve the meditative state.
• The word mantra means revealed sound. It can also be defined as the combination of sound that develops spontaneously.
• You should not get confused of your mantra with religious chants.
• You can choose proper mantra by your own or you can take mantra from your guru.

Zen meditation is the form of Buddhist meditation developed Korea, Japan, Vietnam and china.

Zen meditation allows the mind and body to relax and experience insight into nature of existence.

Zen meditation postures:

1. Full lotus posture
2. Half lotus posture
3. Burmese posture
4. Sitting on a chair
5. Seiza posture

Full lotus posture: Sit straight on the floor and place each foot on the opposite thigh. By sitting cross legged on the floor increases your stability and efficiency. This is perfectly symmetrical.

Half lotus posture: Sit straight on the floor and place left foot up on to the right thigh. Place your right thigh under the left foot. This is slightly unsymmetrical. Sometimes your body needs to compensate in order to keep it straight.

Burmese posture: Sit straight on the floor. Keep your legs crossed and feet should rest flat on the floor. Knees should also rest on the floor. Sometimes you may feel difficult to make the legs touch the floor. After sometime, the muscles will loosen and the knees begin to drop.

Sitting on a chair: Sit on the chair with feet touching the floor. Keep your spine straight with lower part of the back curved.

Transcendental meditation is a technique of deep relaxation by which our mind was taken to the source of thought.

Your power of mind increases and you can use a great potential of mind.

It is unique, simple and effective for improving all areas of life simultaneously.

With Transcendental meditation, the physiological effects of stress are minimized by a deep relaxation of the body during meditation [Benefits of meditation].

You can learn this technique within few days and can experience the result immediately.

The word transcendental means to go beyond or to go above the norm. Achieving this state takes lot of time and dedication but if have done it, then there is no feeling greater than this state of being.

In order to go beyond meditation, you have to leave all the conscious thoughts. You have to reach the deepest possible state. During this state, you lose all sensations with the body.

This may be frightening because you may not hear any sounds including your own heartbeat. It is not dangerous but it is basically like relaxing until the absolute deepest state of relaxation is achieved.

Meditation involves concentrating the mind on subject of thought without any distractions [Meditation and concentration].

The methods used in the practice of Buddhism are called Buddhist meditation.

Buddhists identify meditation with mental growth. In meditation, one uses object to concentrate and direct their attention.

The object may be breathing sensations, physical sensations of the body, visual images or sounds.

The core of Buddhist meditation is practicing eight fold noble path.

The eight fold noble path are right thought, right view, right speech, right effort, right concentration, right livelihood, right action and right mindfulness.

Three types of Buddhist meditation are mostly used in United States.

Three types of Buddhist meditation:

1. Insight meditation: This is also referred as mindfulness or vipassana. This meditation comes from Thailand and Burma. This method involves observing body sensations and thoughts which come and go. If your attention drifts, you return to the observation. Observing and watching yourself can lead to deep insights about your real identity.
2. Zen meditation: This meditation comes from Japan and Korea. You should perform meditation without thoughts. Second way of performing zen meditation is watching your sensations and thoughts as they come and disappear. Third way of performing zen meditation is teacher asks the student to solve a puzzle.

Insight meditation is also known as vipassana meditation.

The aim of insight meditation is to understand one’s nature, whether mental, spiritual or physical.

One way to practice this type of meditation is observing our physical and mental movements.

Insight meditation is self transformation through self-observation. With attention to the physical sensations that form the life of the body, the focus on the interconnection between mind and body can be experienced.

Insight meditation helps to develop perception, reduces fear and tension. It helps in diminishing greed, cravings, and ignorance. Due to the observation of their own behavior, they can cultivate awareness and mindfulness.

Everyone can benefit from insight meditation, as it teaches how to meditate beyond the conscious mind. It helps to look ourselves with great clarity and change ourselves.

Practicing insight meditation:

• If you see, smell, taste, think, or touch, everything should be observed and you will be aware of what is happening. To start insight meditation, sit in a calm and quiet place on a chair or on the floor.

• Breathe through your nose and observe your breathings. Be aware of your abdomen rising and falling when you breathe in and breathe out. Feel it through your senses and concentrate on the sound of breathing.

While meditation is associated with sitting posture, you can practice meditation while walking.

It is nothing but meditation in action. In walking meditation, our focus will be on walking.

There is a difference between walking meditation and doing meditation while sitting [Learn how to meditate].

When we do meditation with sitting, we close our eyes, but in walking meditation, we keep our eyes open.

While performing meditation while sitting, we don’t concentrate on surroundings.

In walking meditation, we have to concentrate on outside world and surroundings as you will be distracted by many things.

Sitting and performing meditation may make you calm and dull while walking meditation make you energize in a skillful way.

When you are doing walking meditation, you may get interruptions with people on the road and vehicles moving on the road. In walking meditation, we should be aware of many things than in sitting meditation. You have to concentrate on weather such as sun, rain, wind, and sounds [Meditation and concentration].

It is easier for many of them to be aware of their bodies and to be more intense while performing walking meditation. You can make walking meditation intense and it is easier to be aware of your body when it is in motion than sitting.