The Benefits of Meditation Sunday, 28 March 2010 17:08 Written by Julia Taylor

Meditation is one of those things that we hear about all the time in different circles and someone always knows someone who does it and talks about how it is something that changed their life for the better.

My personal journey with meditation probably started over ten years ago when I kept hearing about it from different sources and thought it was something that I should try.  So knowing nothing about it, except the fact that you are supposed to sit in a cross-legged position and maybe say OM a few times while having your hands on your knees I sat down and attempted to meditate.  As you can imagine this did not work!  I was one of those people who kept telling people that it is impossible for me to meditate.  I would say things like “I just can’t do it, my mind is too crazy and is incapable of thinking about anything, but mundane things like what I need to get at the grocery store or “I wish that cute guy in the office would just ask me out on a date already, because it is obvious that we are sole mates”.

Over the past ten years I did attempt meditation on numerous occasions, but always failed, because I lacked the tools I needed to have a successful meditation practice.  I had never actually been told how to meditate!  Obviously there is more to it then just sitting with your eyes closed and thinking about nothing.  I think another factor that stopped me was that I thought everyone who was capable of meditating just sat down on there butt and started and it was so easy for them.  This, I am here to tell you, is a complete urban myth.  It would be like saying that tomorrow I think I might run a marathon with no training at all!  Running a marathon with not training is impossible; meditating with no practice or some kind of instructions is also completely impossible.

There are so many benefits from cultivating a good meditation practice that it is actually hard to find a reason no to do it.  Some of the things that will occur when you start meditating on a regular basis is a huge sense of bliss.  It can be blissful when you are in meditation, but then after come out you can still have this large sense of happiness wash over you.  It is great for concentration, because what you are doing while you are sitting there is trying to concentrate on a single point of focus, whether it is your breath, or the thing you are analyzing, or even the person you are meditating on.  The concentration you gain from doing meditation leaks out into your daily life and you will find it easier to do any kind of task, like learning a language or that tricky project in the office.  You will also need less sleep when you are doing meditation, because you are not as tired by spending time concentrating your mind.

The concentration you feel in deep meditation could be equated to when you are reading an amazing book and the world around you just seems to disappear.  I am pretty sure that everyone has experienced that at some stage in their lives, which means that yes it is possible for you to meditate.

A few steps if you want to try to meditate:

First find a space that is not in your bedroom.  The reason for not meditating in your bedroom is that your body equates that room with sleep, so you may end up falling asleep when you are trying to start to meditate.

When you find the space you want to use set yourself up with a cushion on the floor, or if you find it really uncomfortable to sit on the floor you could do this in chair.  The ultimate goal is to be comfortable, which will lead to less distractions for your mind.

Ok now you need to find a comfortable sitting position.  If you are on the floor with your legs crossed then you will need to have your bottom raised up to help your back stay straight.  Again the goal is to be sitting straight up and be comfortable.  At first this may feel weird, but the more you do it the more you will get used to it.  You can either rest your hands on your knees or sit them in your lap, whatever feels the best for you.

Now to the fun part!  Close your eyes and try to focus your attention to the spot in between your eyes and then concentrate on your breath.  You want to try and count your breath up to ten breaths.  To do this you start with the out-breath (always start with out, because this is the stale air leaving your body) and then the in-breath, so one out and in breath equals one whole breath.  It may sound easy to count ten breaths while totally concentrating on only this, but believe me it is not.  If your mind wanders then you need to start at one again.   Keep doing this for a few minutes and by the end of the few minutes you may still only be up to breath number two, but that is ok.

After you have counted your breath for a few minutes then you should be calm enough to move onto the actual meditation.  There are so many different types of meditation that you can do, but for now I will just talk about doing an analytical meditation.  This means that you are using meditation to work out a problem that you may be having.  For this type of meditation you could picture two of yourself; one sitting on either side of you debating each other.  This is a great way to solve problems, because you are exploring both sides of the problem.

If you wanted to try and get into a regular meditation practice then you should try to set aside the same time each day for this.  Your mind will start to get used to meditating at this time, which will make it easier.  You could think of it like eating or sleeping, what I mean by this is that at lunch time each day your body knows that food is coming so you are hungry, at night time your body knows that sleep is coming so it starts to shut down.  If you meditate at the same time each day your mind will be ready for it.

You should just start with 15 minutes of meditation, which at the beginning will feel like a lifetime, but trust me it goes very fast.  If you are worried about not knowing how long you have been sitting there, then you can set your alarm to go off at the end of the 15 minutes.  Eventually your body and mind will just know how long it has been.

Happy meditating!

If anybody is interested in learning other types of meditations, please let me know and I will be more than happy to teach you some that I know.