Tips for a Simple and Successful Meditation Practice

How to Make Meditation Part of Your Busy Life!

Meditation is good for you! The benefits are physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Meditation increases the strength of your immune system and can even help to reduce blood cholesterol levels. You feel a greater sense of self-control and a heightened ability to "go with the flow" when you make meditation part of your daily routine.

Meditation helps you control your thoughts. Instead of being hostage to the random thoughts that run through your brain continually, you learn to choose what you want to think about. As a result, you gain greater peace of mind. Spiritually, you may feel more "connected" to your Higher Power as you understand it. You develop a sense of purpose that injects new meaning into even the most mundane daily tasks.

If you've always wanted to learn to meditate, but thought it sounded too complicated or time-consuming, the following simple tips will ensure your meditation practice is successful.

1. Choose A Quiet Place
Anywhere that you can be alone will work. Inspiring music played softly in the background and/or burning incense will set the mood and help you relax. Instrumental musical selections are best.

2. Start Small
Begin your meditation practice with just 5 minutes, twice a day. Mornings and before bedtime are ideal, but make plans according to your own schedule. As you gain expertise, increase your time to 10 minutes, then 15, and so on. Depending on the amount of time you have available, you may want to work up to 30 minutes a session.

3. Read
If time allows, read a few pages in an inspirational book before you begin to meditate. It helps to clear your mind and prepares you for silence. You may also have a favorite affirmation or short verse that you enjoy reading.

4. Be Comfortable
Sit upright in a chair or on a bed. Wear comfortable clothing. Keep your feet flat on the floor and your legs uncrossed. Let your hands lie in your lap, palms turned up. Consciously relax as much as possible.

5. Keep It Simple
Start by paying attention to your breathing. Focus on your abdomen and chest expanding as you inhale and contracting as you exhale. While you continue to pay attention to your breathing, your thoughts will naturally slow down. Visualizing a pristine space or imagining that you're turning a switch to the Off position may help.

6. Be creative with your own visualizations!

Keep breathing slowly and deeply. If thoughts enter your mind, just acknowledge them and let them go. Your aim is to build up the amount of time that you can be silent, with no thoughts intruding. You can also use repetition of an inspiring word or phrase to help keep your mind clear.

7. Be Consistent

Set aside time every day for your meditation. According to mental health practitioners, it takes 21 days to form a habit, so set a goal to keep your meditation appointments with yourself for 30 days. You'll be well on your way to having an established, successful meditation practice!

8. Remember Your Sessions
During the day, think back to your morning meditation session. Reconnect with the sense of relaxation and peace that you felt. This will give you a renewed feeling of calmness and direction, even in the most stressful of circumstances.

 

7 Tips For Meditation

Through meditation we can bring about greater peace of mind and powers of concentration. The length of time we meditate is not as important as the focus we give during our meditation. If we can meditate with a silent mind for 5 minutes we can bring to the fore our own divine qualities of inner peace and inner happiness. This is an inner joy independent of any outer success or outer prosperity.

 

When offering meditation classes for the Sri Chinmoy Centre. I offer these 7 tips which will help us to meditate more successfully.

1. Quite The Mind

The Goal of meditation is to go beyond the mind. Meditation cannot be done by thinking. All the different paths of meditation share this common feature of cultivating a silent mind. When our mind is silent we can start to enter a new consciousness, a consciousness not limited by the intellectual mind. With a quiet mind we will experience peace
"I meditate
So that I can inundate
My entire being
With the omnipotent
Power of peace."
- Sri Chinmoy 

2. Concentration

In whatever we do,we will be more successful if we can concentrate fully on the task in hand. This means being single pointed. When we meditate we need to switch off from everything else and put all our attention onto the meditation.

3. Place to Meditate

It is very helpful to find a Quiet Place to meditate every day. I have a small corner of my room specially set aside for meditation. You can use a picture of a saint or Teacher who inspires you. Or just use flowers and a candle. If you meditate in the same place every day it builds up a meditative atmosphere.

4. Aspiration

Aspiration to meditate. If we are hungry then we are eat. It is the same with meditation if we are not satisfied with what we have and would like to discover the inner peace within ourselves then we will be motivated to meditate every day. This aspiration or inner cry is perhaps more important than learning many techniques.

5. Perseverance and Patience

In the beginning we cannot expect results overnight, each time we meditate we are adding to our capacity's even if we don't have great experiences then we need to persevere. If we practise sincerely we will progress.

6. Use the Qualities of the Spiritual Heart

The heart is the location of the soul. If we focus on the heart, immediately our thoughts have less power. By concentrating on our heart we can enter into the vastness of meditation.

7. Cultivate Happiness

It is important to bear in mind the goal of meditation is to uplift our consciousness and have a more positive outlook about life and about ourselves. When we meditate well we will have a positive outlook on life.

Meditation for Beginners

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Goals In class 1 you will: - Learn how to meditate! - Establish a regular, daily meditation practice - Practice the basics of concentration and meditative breathing techniques

How meditation works

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. - Oliver  Wendell Holmes

Meditation is an extremely simple process. It follows three distinct steps

1. We start with a superficial, scattered mind – (This is the level with which we often carry out our day-to-day chores, ‘bring in the newspaper’, ‘cook the meal’ - it is often characterized by lots of thoughts, positive and negative, with very little control or knowledge of how they got there) If we are often in this state of mind, we will find that we are easily distracted, have difficulty concentrating, probably worry about unimportant things and have little understanding of the real 'us'.
2. We then progress by virtue of our heart’s concentration - to deeper, analytical thinking. When our mind is focused completely on one thing, we are the most efficient and purposeful in our thinking. (This is the basis of the rules of ‘time-management’ -> to be focused absolutely on one task at a time) This analytical level reveals the deepest we can go with thought. We can use a number of meditation techniques to achieve this, and they will be explored in further classes.
3. From this very deep thinking we enter into intuitive states, revelations, "I know this is right" feelings or extremely vivid goals or intense creativity or spiritual dreams. When thinking stops and intuitive experience takes over, this is meditation. We call these moments, 'Aah' moments. These moments are where the deepest moments of revelation and intuition are born, and where we reveal our real self.

The task of meditation is to enter the very focused thinking of the analytical mind and from there the shift to the intuitive mind or heart takes place automatically.

The highest experience in any endeavor is a meditation experience. Every endeavor goes through similar processes to eventually arrive at meditation experiences.

 If, for example, we want to become a pianist, we first have to train the body and the mind to have the correct finger technique etc. For a footballer, the right kicking style; for a rock-climber, the right moves; so we concentrate past the superficial to the analytical mind and learn and practice as efficiently as possible.
At each endeavor's upper echelon, however, there are moments where our consciousness is transported past the analytical to the intuitive or higher mind or what we may call the heart. Examples of these intuitive or ‘meditative’ moments are typically where a team works as one, a runner experiences the ‘runner’s high’, a bushwalker ceases to be an observer and merges into the feeling of the forest and becomes a participant, a sports person hits a ‘zone’.

As we know already these moments are usually;
Memorable - when we look back on our lives these are the moments that we recall.
Fulfilling - they are the reason we spend hours at our endeavors so we can get a few moments of ‘meditation’.
Accidental - imagine how much better our lives would be if we could meditate at any time we chose.

The seven keys to meditation

There are several key things you can do that will significantly enhance your meditation. They may seem subtle at first, but remember, meditation itself is all about cultivating the higher, subtler parts of your being. Take it from experience - together these seven keys will make a big difference. So please give them a try!
 
Key#1: Find a Special Place
Set aside a special place that is used only for meditation. If you have a spare room, great, but it’s fine to set aside a corner of your bedroom. This will be your sacred space for self-discovery, so you’ll want to make it as inspiring as possible.

You might like to:
· Cover a low table with a clean, light cloth
· Place a candle on a table, and a vase with fresh flowers if possible.
· You may also want to light some incense. Together, these items will help create a meditative atmosphere.

Key#2: Prepare Physically
Your spiritual journey takes place in and through your physical body. Here’s how you can help prepare it for meditation:

· Take a shower before meditating. If it isn’t possible to take a shower, wash your face and hands.
· Wear clean, light, loose fitting clothes.
· Take your shoes off before meditating. Your feet deserve a break too!

Key#3: Sit Relaxed, Sit Straight
There’s no need to sit in a special yogic posture to meditate. If you can sit comfortably on a cushion on the floor, this is best. Otherwise a meditation stool or chair is fine. The important thing is to be still and relaxed, to have your back erect, and to have the flower and candle close to eye level. People often ask if it’s okay to meditate while lying down. We don’t recommend it; the most likely outcome is you’ll fall asleep. Always remember to begin your meditation with six or seven ‘power-breaths’ – long, slow deep breaths that release the myriad of thoughts and focus your attention within.

Key#4: Slow and Steady Wins the Race 
In the beginning, five minutes of meditation a day is enough. Meditation is like an inner muscle that you are slowly but surely making stronger. If you overwork a muscle, it becomes sore; if you meditate for more than five minutes and feel tension in your head or get a headache, you know you’ve gone beyond your capacity. Try not to be concerned with expectations of what your meditation is going to do for you or what your meditation experience ‘should’ be. Just steadily, soulfully and sincerely practice and make yourself alert to the messages that will begin to arise from within.

Key#5: Choose the right time
Make an appointment with yourself and practice at the same time each day. Just as you feed your physical body several times a day at certain times, meditation nourishes your inner life so set at least one special time each day for your meditation exercises.

The best time to meditate is early in the morning, before you enter into your daily activities. This way, the peace you get from your meditation will permeate the rest of your day.

If by giving up small pleasures, great happiness is to be found, the wise should give up small pleasures, seeing the prospect of great happiness - THE BUDDHA.

Many people also like to meditate when they get home from work, to help wash away the stress of the day. You might also want to meditate just before going to bed. This will help you to sleep more soundly.

We don’t suggest meditating right after a big meal. Like a bird, your inner being will be trying to fly higher, but your body will be weighing it down. So wait an hour or two before meditating.

Key#6: The Power of Music
Music is often referred to as the language of the soul. Peaceful music of the heart will create a meditative atmosphere and tremendously enhance the quality of your meditation. Play it softly during your exercises; merely listening to and absorbing the music will help you to feel the deep inner stillness of meditation.

Key#7: You
In the end, the most important ingredient in this whole process is you. It is you, who experiences, you, who is discovered, you, who is the student, you, who is the real teacher and you, finally, who is revealed.

Remind yourself of this often because this is the greatest gift of meditation: faith in oneself.

Highly recommended
A meditation journal is the best aid I have included to my meditation over the years. Verbalizing what you are going through and/or what you are currently focusing on by writing down these self-revelations formalizes and crystallizes the most crucial process of listening to oneself.

How to do Meditation at Home?

Ever since the discovery of meditation as a resolution to several disturbances in the human mind as well as body, it has become widely accepted and appreciated. Meditation at home has overweight its traditional approach of being taught by a yoga expert. Meditation at home is the best resort for people who cannot afford or who do not wish to go to a yoga expert for learning the techniques of meditation.

How to do Meditation Without an Instructor at Home?

There are several kinds of meditation techniques that have their own set of instructions to provide an effective solution to its practitioners. However, you can decide the one that best suits the need of the hour. The duration of the meditation also depends on the kind that is chosen. For the most basic level of meditation at home, follow the following steps:

Step One

To start with meditation at home, you should look for a place that is peaceful and serene. Absence of noise and pollution is very important while you sit for meditation.

Step Two

Try to sit upright and keep your spine straight for as long as you are comfortable, without exerting pressure on your body. You can either choose to sit on the bed or on a carpeted floor or even on a chair. The usual position for meditation is crossing the leg but if that is uncomfortable, you can choose to sit with your legs stretched or in a position that gives you utmost comfort and relaxation. The effectiveness of the meditation technique highly depends upon the level of comfort in which it is pursued.

Step Three

Start visualizing a specific object in your mind and try to consider the object as yourself. Try to visualize yourself to be the way the object is in terms of shape, color, and texture. In doing so, you will begin to feel relaxed and calm. If the visualization does not come naturally, do not push yourself into thinking what your mind is not comfortable with. You can begin with plain concentration on something around you and gradually build into visualizing the object to be you.

Step Four

It is likely that while concentrating on an object, you may fluctuate between other issues concerning everyday situations. In such a situation, you should draw your attention to the pattern of your breathing. Try taking deep breaths and exhale completely. Ensure that you develop your concentration on your breathing pattern and gradually revert to visualizing yourself as an object.

Step Five

Try to increase the speed of your breathing pattern and observe your stomach compressing and expanding. This will help you ensure that your mind is at one place. No matter what kind of meditation technique you opt for, practicing the above mentioned basic steps can help you figure out the complex ones with ease.