Coping With Stress Through Meditation - A Quick, Easy Guide
When learning to manage stress, meditation is a wonderful technique that can help one achieve a peaceful, uncluttered state of mind.
Have you ever noticed that when life gets complicated, it's often more difficult to concentrate - which in turn can cause its own troubles? Meditation helps rebuild that concentration without the use of medication or expensive equipment.
All you need is your mind! It's important to remember that effective meditation takes practice, and time.
If it's your first time trying it, don't be frustrated if you're not feeling the effects after a few minutes.
The key is to practice meditating until it feels natural and automatic.
Here are a few steps for beginners that will help you on your journey: Step 1: Find Your Own Quiet Space Particularly for beginners, it's important to have a calm, quiet place to sit and meditate.
Distractions will only impede your efforts, particularly auditory distractions (as your eyes will be closed).
If you can, shut out as much external noise as possible and let others know in your home that you'll be needing some quiet time alone.
Step 2: Get Comfortable (But Not Too Comfortable...
) When first practicing meditation, it's a good idea not avoid a reclining (lying down) position, as your mind may drift off to sleep as it relaxes.
To prevent this, you can either sit on a chair or in the lotus position, with your back straight and your hands resting on your lap or armrest.
Step 3: Practice Correct Breathing Try to begin your meditation session by making sure you are breathing properly.
Make sure that each time you take a breath you inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth, focusing on the rhythm of your breathing.
This focus and the fresh oxygen in your body will help you relax.
As with the posture, it may take some practice before this comes automatically.
Step 4: Focus Your Mind, Not Your Attention As you continue your meditation, you will begin to notice images from your subconscious start to crop up - what happened that day, plans for tomorrow, concerns and anxieties, etc.
Don't worry about these thoughts or try to ignore them; just try to note their presence without giving them your attention.
This may sound counter-intuitive, but think about it this way: you can look around and see what the room you're sitting in looks like without really focusing on it.
If you focus, you may think of the color of the walls, the texture of the furniture, how you feel about the decorations, and so on.
In this way, you need to see the "room" of your mind without focusing - or passing judgment - on the details.
In time and with practice, you can achieve the desired meditative state, where these subconscious images will fade away and you will find an empty, open space in your mind.
In this calm, detached state, you can more objectively focus on a given problem and find positive solutions.
When you have reached this point, you will be able to successfully manage more stress in the future with your basic meditation techniques.
Have you ever noticed that when life gets complicated, it's often more difficult to concentrate - which in turn can cause its own troubles? Meditation helps rebuild that concentration without the use of medication or expensive equipment.
All you need is your mind! It's important to remember that effective meditation takes practice, and time.
If it's your first time trying it, don't be frustrated if you're not feeling the effects after a few minutes.
The key is to practice meditating until it feels natural and automatic.
Here are a few steps for beginners that will help you on your journey: Step 1: Find Your Own Quiet Space Particularly for beginners, it's important to have a calm, quiet place to sit and meditate.
Distractions will only impede your efforts, particularly auditory distractions (as your eyes will be closed).
If you can, shut out as much external noise as possible and let others know in your home that you'll be needing some quiet time alone.
Step 2: Get Comfortable (But Not Too Comfortable...
) When first practicing meditation, it's a good idea not avoid a reclining (lying down) position, as your mind may drift off to sleep as it relaxes.
To prevent this, you can either sit on a chair or in the lotus position, with your back straight and your hands resting on your lap or armrest.
Step 3: Practice Correct Breathing Try to begin your meditation session by making sure you are breathing properly.
Make sure that each time you take a breath you inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth, focusing on the rhythm of your breathing.
This focus and the fresh oxygen in your body will help you relax.
As with the posture, it may take some practice before this comes automatically.
Step 4: Focus Your Mind, Not Your Attention As you continue your meditation, you will begin to notice images from your subconscious start to crop up - what happened that day, plans for tomorrow, concerns and anxieties, etc.
Don't worry about these thoughts or try to ignore them; just try to note their presence without giving them your attention.
This may sound counter-intuitive, but think about it this way: you can look around and see what the room you're sitting in looks like without really focusing on it.
If you focus, you may think of the color of the walls, the texture of the furniture, how you feel about the decorations, and so on.
In this way, you need to see the "room" of your mind without focusing - or passing judgment - on the details.
In time and with practice, you can achieve the desired meditative state, where these subconscious images will fade away and you will find an empty, open space in your mind.
In this calm, detached state, you can more objectively focus on a given problem and find positive solutions.
When you have reached this point, you will be able to successfully manage more stress in the future with your basic meditation techniques.
