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Meditation Tips: How To Improve Your Life

Meditation Tips: How To Improve Your Life

Many people start their day with a simple meditation session. Hats off to those who are enhancing their daily life with meditation practice! Whether using a meditation app or a non-tech approach, you’re doing the right thing! 

For those who don’t know about this activity, I’ll cover everything you must know about meditation and why it’s important. First thing’s first, it’s not only something Buddhist monks do to gain a deeper understanding of the universe. Trust me, we all could use a way to relax in these turbulent times. The best part, meditation is also backed by science!

Just like yoga is for everyone, meditation is also a practice anyone can take up without deep knowledge, special tools, or aids. Before diving into the specifics of which conditions meditation can help with, we must cover the basics i.e. what is meditation and the history of it all.

What Is Meditation?

Meditation is a practice that’s literally thousands of years old. Imagined and practiced as a way to widen the mystical aspect of life, it also has the positive side-effect of promoting relaxation, helping relieve stress, and calming the body and mind.

It’s considered complementary mind-body medicine, and it can provide a deep state of relaxation and tranquility. During meditation, the mind clears and sharpens, allowing a person to better command their body and mind. Sounds strange, I get it, but it works and this article proves just that. 

How Does One Meditate?

The act of meditating is pretty straightforward. There’s no need for any tools, aids, or special places. To begin meditating, long-term practitioners suggest sitting in a quiet place and focusing attention on one thing only, like breathing. Count the breaths as you inhale, hold them, and count while exhaling.

The goal of meditation is to focus your attention on the one thing you’ve chosen to focus on. Individuals practicing regularly suggest that people who are looking to start should attempt to meditate every day (daily practice is key) at the same time for about five minutes.

A few minutes of meditation, focusing on one thing, eliminating all the other things that may be stressing you out, and jumbling your thoughts will enhance our everyday lives – no doubt. This simple practice will provide you with a sense of calmness, peace, and balance, and these things undoubtedly improve your health and well-being. 

Types of Meditation

Meditation is a general term that explains a relaxed state of being. The word comes from the Latin term meditare – to think, contemplate, devise, and ponder. As you can see, it refers to the practice of deep thinking, and many cultures and religions have some practice or meditative technique.

Most techniques like mindfulness or transcendental meditation include how people learn to focus their attention. However, we’ve developed several types of meditation and relaxation techniques over the years. Still, all share the common goal of achieving inner peace and a deeper state of focus and awareness. Here are the most common types of meditation:

  • Guided Meditation – This technique is also called visualization, as the practitioner should form mental images of relaxing places and situations, involving as many senses as possible. It is usually done with a guide/teacher.
  • Mindfulness Meditation – This type of meditation focuses on being mindful and having an increased awareness of living in the present moment. The practice includes broadening your conscious awareness and focusing on one thing, like the flow of the breaths. You will experience thoughts and emotions, but you need to let them pass without focusing on them or casting judgment.
  • Mantra Meditation – During mantra meditation, you focus on repeating a calming word or phrase that will help you prevent distracting thoughts. It is closest to prayer, and the mantra can be silent or said aloud.
  • Transcendental Meditation – This is a natural technique where you silently repeat a personally assigned mantra, a word, a phrase, or a sound in a specific way. It allows your body to settle in profound rest and relax your mind, aiding it in achieving a state of inner peace.
  • Tai Chi – A form of gentle Chinese martial arts where the practitioner performs a self-paced series of movements and postures in a slow, graceful manner, performing deep breathing and focus.
  • Qi Gong –This is a part of traditional Chinese medicine and is a practice where meditation, relaxation, physical movement, and breathing are combined to restore the body’s balance.
  • Yoga – this is a practice that involves postures, movements, and controlled breathing that promote flexibility of body and calmness of the mind. 

What Does Meditation Entail?

As you can see from the list above, there are different meditation practices that people have perfected. All of them include several common elements:

Focused Attention

Focusing your attention is the critical element of meditation and is what helps you free your mind from distractions that would cause you to worry and stress. When you focus on a single thing, you let the other things pass.

Relaxed Breathing

When you practice relaxed, deep breathing, you take in more oxygen in your lungs, expand your chest, and reduce stress. You also help your shoulders, neck, and upper muscles relax, and you can breathe more efficiently.

An Open Mind

When starting with meditation, you need to keep an open mind. It means that you should let the thoughts pass your mind without judgment, where you learn to let go of the negative things and focus on the important ones.

A Quiet Place and Comfortable Position

Beginners should start meditating in a quiet setting with limited distractions to learn to focus their attention. After becoming more experienced, people can meditate whenever they need the relaxation, focus, and balance meditation provides.

Meditation should be practiced in a position where your body is comfortable, and this can be sitting, lying down, standing up, or even walking. It is vital to retain good posture during meditation for maximum effect.

The Benefits of Meditating

As shown above, meditation promotes relaxation and profound tranquility. But there are many other benefits of meditation, and surprisingly most of these are scientifically proven. Here is a rundown on all the health benefits that one can get by regularly practicing meditation. 

Meditation and Mental Wellness

Meditation has a primary goal to help relieve stress and help center your thoughts and balance your mind. It can help clear your mind from the data overload you face every day, adversely affecting your ability to think clearly and causing stress. Here are the benefits meditation has on mental and emotional wellness:

  • Gaining a new perspective on stressful situations – Meditation can be a valuable tool in gaining new perspectives on stressful situations and help us accept the things we cannot change. It has a positive effect on the quality of life.
  • Building skills to manage stress – Meditation is excellent when you need to shed stress, as the deep breathing, focus, and reflection techniques teach you how to manage everyday stresses. 
  • Increasing self-awareness – Meditation is a basic technique that Buddhist and Hinduist monks practice to achieve a higher state of awareness. What works for them works for everyone who meditates daily.
  • Focusing on the present – The focus, attention, and awareness meditation requires – brings us to center our thoughts on the present to handle problems better and be prepared to take on everyday challenges.
  • Reducing negative emotions – Meditation helps people handle negative or irrational thinking and promotes general well-being.
  • Increasing imagination and creativity – During meditation, our mind rediscovers the natural state of awareness and a calmer state of mind. It leads to clear thinking, resulting in more creativity and better imagination.
  • Increasing patience and tolerance – When we meditate, our brains build a higher tolerance for stress and frustration, making us more patient and more tolerant of other people.

Meditation and Physical Wellness

Meditation is helpful not only for the mental state but also for the body’s physical state. It’s helpful when daily conditions promote stress. This activity will definitely help reduce the symptoms of many physical illnesses as well. While researchers have yet to truly understand the exact link between meditation and reducing physical symptoms, many have agreed that it indeed can deliver plenty of health benefits.

Here are some illnesses meditation has been shown to have a positive effect on:

  • Anxiety – Deep breathing and focusing your mind on one thing at the moment helps reduce anxiety and get a better perspective on the things that cause you anxiety in the first place.
  • Asthma – Deep focused breathing can help focus attention, which helps reduce the perceived stress, and it shows that meditation is beneficial for improving the quality of life in asthma patients.
  • Chronic Pain – Meditation and mindfulness techniques help patients learn how to react to pain, better deal with it, and not rely on drugs that cloud the mind and can even cause addiction.
  • Cancer – Meditation has been linked to reducing stress and toxicity caused by cancer, and it has a strong effect on the improvement of the quality of life of cancer patients. Meditation has been shown to help improve cancer patients’ mental and physical state and is proposed as an adjuvant to conventional cancer treatment.
  • Depression – People suffering from depression can benefit from meditation. This practice changes how the brain responds to stress and anxiety and helps focus the brain and shed negative thoughts and emotions that make you depressed.
  • Sleep Problems – People who have insomnia can benefit from meditation, as meditation helps reduce stress and anxiety and improves the relaxation response
  • Heart Disease – Those who practice meditation, have a lower risk of heart attack or stroke, as the deep breathing technique and the focused thoughts help lower heart rate and reduce stress and anxiety, improving heart health.
  • High Blood Pressure – Just as meditation helps reduce heart disease, lowering stress and anxiety helps lower blood pressure and reduce stress hormones, balancing your cardiovascular system.
  • Irritable Bowel Syndrome – Meditation practices help strengthen the mind-gut connection, positively affecting the digestive system, reducing inflammation, and helping IBS.

Mindfulness Apps To Help Meditate

There are countless apps out there, at least one for everything you can imagine, including apps on meditation and mindfulness. I’ve checked the meditation and mindfulness apps that promise to help you release stress, achieve better balance, sleep better, and much more, and I bring you the top five free apps that can help.

Smiling Mind

  • Initial price: free; Yearly plan: free
  • Availability: Android, iOS, web

Smiling Mind is a not-for-profit app offering plenty of guided meditations, and you can select Sleep, Digital Detox, Mindful Foundations, and Stress Management. It also has specialized programs for families, children, teens, and people employed in various fields like healthcare and education.

UCLA Mindful

  • Initial price: free; Yearly plan: free
  • Availability: Android, iOS

Developed by the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA, the UCLA Mindful features several guided meditations in English and Spanish. They have a Getting Started session with introductory information and knowledge, advice on how to start, and more. The app also has longer guided sessions, talks with experts, and silent practice time.

Healthy Minds Program

  • Initial price: free; Yearly plan: free
  • Availability: Android, iOS

Healthy Minds Program is an app to help people strengthen their mental focus, reduce stress, and improve resilience, compassion, and immune health. The app offers a four-pillar framework for wellness and has meditation courses with Micro Practices – one-minute sessions when you need an instant boost. Unlike the other apps I’ve listed, this one focuses on deep thinking instead of the more traditional guided meditations.

Insight Timer

  • Initial price: free; Yearly plan: $60
  • Availability: Android, iOS, web

Insight Timer has over 80,000 free guided meditations on various topics, and it shows a world map of the collective meditators that use the app. After you finish your meditation, you can see who meditated with you. The app offers free talks with meditation teachers, life advice, inspiration, etc.

MyLife Meditation

  • Initial price: free; Yearly plan: $75
  • Availability: Android, iOS

MyLife Meditation provides free guided meditations focused on different aspects. The app has plenty of knowledge to help you start meditating. Before you start, you answer questions based on your current state, and the app provides suggestions for guided meditation. The premium plan has more extensive guided meditations and customizable meditation options.

Today Is the Day to Start Meditating

As you’ve seen above, meditation is an excellent way to boost your health, regain balance, battle stress, and improve your overall mental and physical well-being. It takes time to perfect meditation, and you can experiment and see what works best for you. You can also use one of our proposed apps to help you start meditating today.

If your thoughts start to wander during meditation, don’t get angry or disappointed, but slowly return to your focus, and you’ll soon reap all the benefits this fantastic practice brings. Please remember that there is no right or wrong way to meditate, as long as you achieve the end goal to reduce stress and improve your overall wellness.

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