How to Meditate Properly?

Meditation is an exercise, which effectively helps to relax and concentrate, which clears your mind from the thoughts and worries, calms you down and brings your thinking to order.

Regular meditating exercises improve your mood, teach how to relax properly and do not react on stress, help to fight your bad habits (smoking and drinking alcohol), strengthen your will and character, improve your concentration, memory and intellect.

The most important thing is that when you effectively meditate, you develop healthy critical abilities, skills to look soberly and objectively at the surrounding things and yourself, because you eliminate the veil of illusions from your mind!

So, let’s try to learn how to meditate properly and effectively.

Why do you need to meditate properly?

There is not any magic in meditating.

It’s just a certain exercise, training, and nothing more.

You meditate not in order “to open the third eye” or “to gain absolute”.

The goal of effective meditation is your healthy body and mind, calmness, harmony, mental balance and happiness.

Everything you lack in this hectic time.

Regular meditation practice at home is sure to teach you how to control your mind, get rid of stresses, improve memory and help you gain mindfulness of existence.

How to meditate effectively?

• Perfect time of the day.

  Various traditions offer different time of the day – Chi Kung speaks about the time of equal balance of yin and yang in the afternoon and at midnight, yoga recommends sunrise and sunset.

  All in all, it’s not so important. It’s more important that you could get completely alone and no one distracted you.

  Still, some specialists advise meditating in the morning.

  Every day spare 15 minutes in the morning and you’ll fill yourself with enormous energy and your day will be effective and productive.

• Place.

  Surely, you should better properly meditate at home, in the quiet atmosphere, and nothing must distract you.

  Some people do not advise meditating where you usually sleep. In this case there is a bigger possibility you’ll fall asleep during the session, because your brain got used to sleeping in this room.

  Nevertheless, if you have no other options where to meditate, there is nothing bad about it; you can do it in your bedroom.

  Believe me, it’s not so crucial.

  If, due to some definite reasons, you cannot find the suitable place to meditate effectively, this is not the motive to refuse from the practice.

  Even if you properly meditate in the middle of the noisy crowd, it will definitely have some effect.

  So, do not neglect it, even if there is not a quiet spot, where you could stay alone with yourself.

  Such place is surely preferable, but not so obligatory.

• Position.

  
  Traditionally the best position for meditation is considered to be Padmasana, when both feet look up.

  However, very little people find it comfortable to sit properly in such position.

  You may make “half lotus” or you simply cross your legs in the Turkish fashion.

  Your position must be comfortable and steady.

  However, it’s not obligatory to sit in the lotus position.

  It’s extremely important your back was straight and you feel comfortable, so that you meditated properly and effectively.

  Your spine should not be bent forward or backward.

  The spine must create the right angle with the surface you are sitting on. In other words, it must be perpendicular to your pelvis.

  You also need it to stay conscious, because meditation is not so much the relaxation technique, like most people think.

  It’s also a way to observe your mind, a way to develop your mindfulness.

  Those things require maintaining attention and concentration, and the straight spine assists it.

  If you sit straight, the chance of falling asleep will definitely be lower.

• Time of duration.

  
  You can literally start from the 5-minute meditation, increasing its duration on a couple of minutes every day until you reach an hour, for example.

  The crucial thing here is to feel the taste of the right condition.

  If you catch it, you’ll definitely want to increase its duration.

  Lest you thought only about minutes, you can set the alarm clock and meditate properly and effectively.

• Direction of attention.

  Close your eyes.

  Fixate your attention on the breathing or mantra.

  When you notice you start thinking about something, stay calm and return your attention to the starting point (mantra, breathing).

  Avoid all attempts to interpret the thoughts, emotions, feelings, wishes which appear inside you.

  Accept those things, but do not get involved in them.

  This instruction requires some explanation.

  While you watch your breathing, you cannot properly think about anything at the same moment (try).

  That’s why as long as you return your attention to your breathing, the thoughts will go away.

  Sometimes, when you reach the perfect concentration on breathing (mantra), you will be able to watch your thoughts from the side, how they come and go, because they pass through you like the clouds.

  It’ll seem to you that you are not the participant of the process, that you stay aside.

  However, such things come to you not at once.

  It’ll be the next level of concentration, which you’ll be able to reach as soon as you reach good concentration.

  At the beginning you’ll probably get distracted by the thoughts and it is fine.

  As soon as you notice it, just return your attention to the breathing.

  This is all that is required from you – develop your concentration.

What should you concentrate on in order to meditate effectively?

• Concentrate on the breathing: you are watching your breathing and focusing on your inner sight of this natural aspect of your life activities; you feel how the air comes through your lungs and how it goes out.

  Do not try to control your breathing.Just watch it.It must be natural.

  If you meditate effectively, your breathing can get slower and it’ll seem to you that you are almost not breathing.

  Let it not scare you, it’s perfectly fine.

• Read the mantra in your mind: silently say the repeating words of the prayer in Sanskrit.

  Mantra is not a holy text; these are just the repeating words, which show you how to maintain the attention effectively and how to relax properly.

  It’s not necessary to read the Indian mantra – you can use a prayer in the language you want.

• Visualization techniques.

  You imagine various images: from the abstract ones like the colorful flame (fire meditation) to quite real ones, such as placing yourself in the imaginary atmosphere (therapeutic Chi Kung), inside of which you feel peace and conciliation.

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7 pieces of advice on how to meditate properly

In conclusion, we’d like to share several important pieces of advice with those, who are eager to learn how to meditate properly and effectively.

1. Do not expect the immediate result!

   The meditation’s efficiency is observed not at once.

   No one can become a guru for a couple of sessions.

   Effective meditation requires much patience and habit.

   Try not to miss your practice, even if you cannot do something properly or achieve the expected results.

   Surely, in order to achieve something appreciable you need time.

   Nevertheless, some aspects of meditation will be noticed at once.

2. Do not be disappointed if you do not feel anything at the beginning and continue meditating!

   Practice will not bring high results, if you do not work on yourself.

   Meditation is, to some extent, an instrument, which helps you to effectively work on yourself.

   Do not look at the practice as on the panacea; do not think that the effect will come to you at once as you start meditating.

   Analyze yourself, implement in life the skills you received during the session, save mindfulness, try to understand what the meditation has taught you and the result won’t keep you waiting.

3. During the session do not overstrain or turn yourself inside out in order to stop thinking.

   You should not constantly think how not to think.

   You should not be fixated on things you cannot do.

   Calm down and let everything come to you.

4. You’d better not meditate before sleep.

   Try to meditate not less than an hour before going to bed.

   Meditation brings you vivacity and energy, and you’ll find it difficult to fall asleep after it.

5. Pay attention how much better you feel in days, when you effectively meditate.
   

   Since time, you are sure to notice how your mood improves after meditation.

   It’ll be easy to concentrate and you’ll become more relaxed and self-confident in general.

   Compare it to those days, when you do not meditate properly.

   It’ll come to you with practice and will definitely motivate you to go on practicing.

6. You’d better not fall asleep during the session.

   That’s why you need to keep your spine straight.

   Still, if you fall asleep, there is nothing bad about it.

   According to Swami Veda Bharati, the Himalayan teacher of meditation, even sleep during the session will effectively reflect in you in the context of meditative effect.

7. Do not eat a lot before and after the session.

   The reason for it is that before and after meditation the metabolism is slower and it prevents the food from digestion.

   What’s more, during the session the process of metabolism will prevent you from concentrating.

   If you are hungry, you can eat something light before meditating, so that the thoughts about food did not distract you.

So, it’s important not only to understand how to meditate properly and effectively, but how to practice it regularly.

The most important is that you learn how to listen to yourself and your feelings, how to control your thoughts and how to develop the feeling of balance, adequateness, resolution, love towards yourself and other people, how to achieve harmony with yourself and the  outside world.