Ever experienced your mind veering off while you’re speaking, trying to think or making a decision? If your answer is in the affirmative then this is for you and you don’t have to worry because you are not alone— it happens to even the best of us. However, there are effective tips for meditation that you can adopt.
With meditation, you can declutter your mind thereby allowing your mind to reclaim focus for a period of time, either in silence or with the aid of chanting for religious, spiritual, or personal purposes.
The clear-minded effect that meditation achieves brings about stimulation of one’s creative juices and creates clear images in the mind. Creativity is a product of meditation.
Before I let you in on the tips for meditation, I’ll tell you what meditation is not. Meditation is not just sitting under a tree or any other place of solitude and staring blankly. Meditation is methodical and requires lots and lots of practice to be able to harness it as a tool to find solutions to problems, reduce stress, be creative, and be in touch with one’s spiritual side.
If you have ever learned about “The Laws of Attraction”, you’d realize that meditation is an attraction of force that is used to attract desires.
20 Result-Oriented And Powerful Tips For Meditation:
Sit for two minutes
Sitting for two minutes is one of our tips for meditation. You can start and grow on your meditation journey. Spend two minutes per day in a week to ponder on a subject matter before increasing time by an extra two minutes the second month. You can progressively increase the timing but the best way is to start small before you adapt to the routine.
Do it first thing each morning
Habits, good or bad are usually formed. Instead of meditating at any time of the day, why not pick a specific time to meditate? You can even set a reminder until you get used to it.
Start and don’t question the process
The question of how is one that discourages people who set out to meditate. Regardless of the posture, you intend to take, you may just start for two minutes with the said act until you become used to the routine. You could sit up, lie on your back, close your eyes, open your eyes – whichever posture, just start.
Check-in with how you’re feeling
You should use the act of mediation to do a general diagnosis of yourself. Check if you feel good or bad, check if your mood is right, check your mental alertness and even check your body temperature before starting to meditate.
Count your breaths
Among the tips for meditation is to count your breath. After settling in, pay rapt attention to your breath. From how you inhale oxygen through your nostrils to how it gets to your lungs, you should count.
Count one and two as you inhale and exhale respectively. You may want to repeat this for 10 counts and restart again.
Come back when you wander
If you are just starting out, your mind has the tendency of wandering about a few moments following the start. No fuss about this, when you notice wandering, return your thought and start the counting process. This process might be frustrating but the onus is on your not to give up and you’d feel really good after getting used to the routine.
Develop a loving attitude
Thoughts and feelings are about to arise during meditation, you ought to look at them with a friendly gauge instead of seeing them as intruders. Thoughts and feelings are part of every human and so, you must not be hard on them or yourself.
Do not focus on the wrong
One of the most trusted tips for meditation is not to focus on the negatives. Doing it wrong is part of the process. Do not beat yourself up about doing it wrong because we all do. Find happiness doing it anyway.
Don’t worry about clearing the mind
The misconception about meditation is the fact that a lot of people think you clear your mind while meditating or even erase an event but that’s not the aim of meditation albeit it can work for that.
It is quite impossible to shut down the brain because of the enormous thought coming from there. During practice, you’d learn to adequately dissipate your thought instead of erasing them.
Stay with whatever arises
Instead of shutting down thoughts that come to mind, it is recommended that you stay with the thought. You’d be wondering why I said you go back to counting your breath but after your first month, you are encouraged to face your thought. Oftentimes, we want to run away from the feeling and thought of anxiety, fear, frustration, disappointment, or even resentment. However, stay on it and be curious to learn from it.
Get to know yourself
The act of meditation is not for the purpose of pondering alone, you can use it to act to discover your thought process and pattern. You tend to understand your triggers and know how to better react to what goes into your mind. It helps you to understand yourself better.
Become friends with yourself
Instead of seeking refuge elsewhere, you can first love yourself and be your own friend. Instead of always criticizing yourself, be considerate and always part yourself on the back.
Do a body scan
Tips for meditation include scanning the body. You should learn to scan your body to further enhance your knowledge about yourself. After learning and being better at following your breath, check all your body parts starting from the sole of your feet, to your toes and then upward your other body parts.
Notice the light, sounds, energy
Following the completion of your breath control practice, you may now learn to focus your attention on the light around you. Your focus should be on a particular spot, particularly on the light, and then you shift your focus to the sounds the next day before checking out for energy.
Really commit yourself
Committing yourself is not just saying you’d meditate, it involves consistency in what you do and the resolve to not give up regardless of the challenges you face in the process.
You can do it anywhere
The good thing about meditation is the fact that it can be done anywhere. On the plane, on the train, in the swimming pool and so on, there is no restriction as to where meditation can be done.
Follow guided meditation
It is relatively easier to meditate when you follow a particular routine like Tara Brach’s guided meditation. Those that have used the aforementioned guided meditation find it very useful.
Check-in with friends
If you have a partner whom you meditate with, they’d encourage you when you do not feel like it. Friends or partners can remind you to do a routine in the instance where you forgot, so it makes everything easier for you.
Find a community
If a friend can encourage and spur you to meditate, imagine what a community can do to you. Zen or Tibetan communities are neighbourhood places where you can check in and meditate with a group of people. You can also be a source of encouragement and support for others, that’s the essence of the community group.
Smile when you’re done
A cheerful look makes you appear younger. When you are done with your two minutes routine, you should smile at yourself for a good job. This is a way of parting yourself at the back keeping to commitment and committing to growth as well.
