A Simple Guide to Meditation: Where to Start
Written by Rayanne Morris
More and more people are choosing meditation for a variety of benefits. This ancient practice can help anyone regardless of age, health, gender, and other demographics. If you are interested in exploring meditation as a beginner, use this as a guide to learn more about where to start.
What Is Meditation?
Meditation is a practice that allows you to get in touch with your body, mind, and spirit at the moment. It teaches you to relax and breathe to clear your head and reduce stress. There are many reasons why people choose to meditate, but everyone can get benefits from doing so.
As an ancient practice dating back thousands of years, meditation has been researched heavily to understand why it’s so popular and how it helps people. There are different types of meditation, some religious and some non-religious, but most people start with the basics.
How to Meditate
Meditation is all about mindfulness and relaxation, but it can be done just about anywhere that you can focus. Choose a quiet place where you will not be distracted or disturbed. You may want to mute your cell phone or activate Do Not Disturb mode to ensure you don’t get a call or text message during your meditation session. If you’re indoors, you should be in a quiet room away from others. If you’re outdoors, it’s more challenging to avoid distractions, but you should also find a place where you can be alone. As a beginner, you might want to start small if you meditate outside, such as in your yard.’
Find a comfortable place to sit. This can be on a chair, the floor, a couch, or a bed. You can even sit on a cushion. The point is to ensure that whatever you choose allows you to feel relaxed. This is tantamount to the practice of meditation. Sit upright while avoiding tensing up your body too much; the point is to relax so that you can let the energy flow through you during your session.
Choose appropriate music for your meditation sessions. Anything in the new age genre should suffice, but you can even play classical music if it helps you focus. However, music during meditation is optional; you can avoid using it if you prefer silence or natural sounds around your environment.
The state of your breathing is a big focus of meditation. Your breaths should be deep and regular while you pay attention to each inhalation and exhalation. Breathwork therapy can help with your meditation and in many other ways. It allows you to relax and refresh while taking in essential oxygen and positivity and exhaling carbon dioxide as well as any negative thoughts. You should focus on your breathing and notice where in your body you breathe the most: your nose, throat, chest, or stomach. Concentrate on how your breathing makes you feel both physically and emotionally.
Distractions are a given, even for the most seasoned meditation practitioners. If and when you become distracted, come back to your breath by focusing on your breathing and letting your mind soften. The more you practice, the better you manage distractions during meditation sessions.
As a beginner, meditating for 10 minutes per day is fine. Once you have gotten used to it, you can gradually increase your sessions to 20 or even 30 minutes if you feel comfortable. Creating a meditation habit can help you so that it becomes second nature, and you’ll automatically begin at the same time each day.
What Are the Benefits of Meditation?
Meditation offers numerous benefits. It allows you to relax and stay centered while helping to ease anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and negative thoughts and emotions. It helps to lower your blood pressure and heart rate while increasing your self-awareness.
In addition to helping manage symptoms of mental health conditions, meditation is believed to help other medical conditions. People with asthma can find a better balance in their breathing. Tension headaches and sleep disorders may be alleviated as well. Meditation can even benefit those who suffer from chronic pain and improve circulation.
Conclusion
Meditation offers something for everyone, and there are many benefits that can be gained from starting. This guide can help you get started and make meditation part of your everyday routine to get centered and focused.