Meditation Practices

Welcome to Meditation Practices

You have come to the right place if you want to reduce stress, anxiety, restlessness, indecision, impatience and other common ailments of modern society. You will find that meditation practices bring you back to your true home, which is a feeling of peace and well-being that is your human birthright! Meditation practices help you keep in touch with the wonders of life that are in you and around you in the present moment.

Monks in Formal Robes Bowing in Meditation | Photo Jerome Freedman, 2000

Meditation

When I think of the word, meditation, I think of sitting quietly, calming my mind and relaxing my body. Meditation is the process of withdrawing yourself into your self and paying attention to what is going on for you in the present moment. You purposely become aware of your breathing or some other object of meditation.

You become aware of no other spaces than this space. You become aware of no other times than this time. You are here! You are now! You are here, now!

Objects of Meditation

There are many objects of meditation. The easiest and most common object of meditation practices is your breath. You may fell your breath in your abdomen, your chest or your nostrils. Beginning meditation practices generally use the breath as the object of meditation.

Other objects of meditation  include words or phrases, also know as mantras. We will introduce you to some mantras we have used and very popular mantras later in the blog.

Another object of meditation is a geometric or other figure that you focus on in your mind as you meditate. This is a visualization meditation practice that can be generalized to what is commonly known as imagery. This form of meditation practice is useful for visualizing your goals and helpful for solving problems. Again, we will have a lot more to say about visualization and imagery in later posts. Be sure to follow this thread for more information.

You will also find out that using a candle. flower, the sunset, the sky or what have you as objects of meditation is quite common. In addition to these objects of meditation practice, people have used many other items to concentrate upon to achieve a meditative state of mind. We will keep track of this form of meditation practice as well.

Listening to the sounds all around you as well as chanting are very popular forms of meditation. This meditation practice will be discussed in future posts as well.

Meditation Practices

There are as many types of meditation practices as there are people practicing. As you progress on the path to your true home – that place inside of you where you are at peace, comfortable, and happy with your life just as it is – you will discover your own meditation practice. For example, should you begin to feel a bit stressed out, you will find a way to reduce your stress, while at the same time, experiencing life in the present moment. Over time, we will be introducing meditation practices for many life conditions which are challenging. Come back often and send in your comments about what you think and what you would like to see.

Remember, meditation is not a magic bullet! Just think about someone you admire in entertainment, sports or business. For example, let’s take Rafael Nadal, the number two tennis player in the world. Do you think that he became what he is in the tennis world by just coming on center court at Wimbledon and playing his best? No. In fact, he has more than 10,000 hours of practice under his racket.

The same is true of meditation. You can not expect results if you don’t practice. It may take months or years to even begin to see significant progress. I promise you that if you practice at least nine minutes a day (more is recommended), you will progress just like Rafa did in his tennis game.

Meditation practices consist of mindfulness, concentration and insight. We will be going into how each of these are related to meditation practices. We will discover how they are all interconnected in a profound way.