meditation

Meditation is both a mind and body practice that focuses on the interaction between the brain, mind, body, and behavior. While there are numerous types of meditation, the common thread amongst them all tends to be an enhanced focus that trains attention and awareness.

Most types of meditation also have the following aspects in common: A quiet spot with limited distractions; a comfortable posture (i.e. sitting, lying down, etc.); a focus of attention (i.e. sensations of breathing, a set of words, etc.); and an open mind that allows distractions to come and go without judgment (National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, 2016).

The practice of mediation has been shown to increase calm, enhance relaxation, improve psychological balance, and enhance overall health and well-being.

10 Types of Meditation

Reflection: Reflection involves asking yourself questions as a means of developing greater awareness of feelings. Questions asked should be asked in the second person (you) as a means of discouraging the intellectual mind from trying to develop a rational answer for it. The goal is to become more aware of how the question makes you feel as opposed to the thoughts that arise when the question is focused on.

Transcendental Meditation: This practice of meditation is taught by instructors who are trained and licensed by the Maharishi Foundation. Transcendental meditation involves sitting with eyes closed for 20 minutes twice daily and participating in the practice as instructed. These twice-daily sessions are generally practiced as morning meditation and a mid-afternoon or early evening session.

Visualization: Visualization involves picturing a person or a thing in your mind. The focus on the particular object or person replaces the traditional focus in meditation on breathing or elements of breath. It is via the process of visualization that one is able to observe the mind and focus on physical sensations simultaneously.

Body Scanning: The practice of body scanning is performed by doing a mental scan from the top of the head to the bottom of the toes. Attention is brought to any tension, discomfort, or aches/pains that may be present. This technique helps to sync the mind and the body.

Mantra Meditation: Somewhat similar to focused attention meditation, mantra meditation involved focusing on a mantra (a word, phrase, or syllable) as opposed to focusing on the breath as a means to quiet the mind. The objective being that repeating a mantra can influence positive change via the subtle vibrations connected to repeating the mantra.

Resting Awareness: This is the practice of letting the mind rest instead of a focus on breath or visualization. When practicing resting awareness thoughts can enter the mind but are also able to drift freely away without causing a distraction.

Yoga Meditation: Yoga meditation tends to blend Kundalini yoga with Savasana. Kundalini yoga is aimed at strengthening the nervous system as a means of better coping with daily stress and problems. Shavasana, known as the corpse or relaxation pose, is used to help the body achieve relaxation and tension release. Via the implementation of various poses and intense focus on those poses, one is able to connect the mind and body for the better.

Noting: The technique of noting involves paying close attention to what is causing a distraction to the mind. It’s about “noting” particular thoughts or emotions that we are so caught up in that we’ve lost awareness of the object we are supposed to be focusing on. Noting the distraction helps us to restore awareness, create space from the distraction, release the distraction, and gain insight into our thought patterns, tendencies, and conditioning.

Zen Meditation: Zen meditation is an ancient Buddhist tradition that involves sitting upright and tracking breath. Special attention is given to how that breath moves in and out of the belly, as well as allowing the mind to simply be. The aim of Zen meditation is to develop a sense of presence and alertness.

Loving-kindness: Loving-kindness is about directing positive energy and goodwill to ourselves and then to others as a sort of ripple effect. This helps us to release unhappy feelings we might be holding onto.

Practicing meditation in any of its various forms can be beneficial to us- mind and body. Meditating well is about finding the practice that works best for you and helps you accomplish your particular goals.

If you are stuck in a cycle of negative thinking, it can feel impossible to overcome it. Stress, worry, and anxiety can have massive impacts on mental health by disrupting thought patterns and interfering with our lives.

If you are looking for a method to reprogram your negative thinking, guided meditation is an excellent tool to help reverse your habits. Through guided meditation, people can seek inner peace and gain better control over their negative thinking for relaxation, stress relief, and peace of mind. As a bonus, guided meditation is a great way for beginners to explore meditation as it involves leadership from a teacher to perform

Begin any guided meditation session by setting your intentions.

Before you even turn on your guided meditation app or walk into your teacher’s meditation studio, determine what you want to achieve from your guided meditation session before it begins.

When you enter your session with a clear picture of what you want, you’ll be able to focus on it as the instructor leads you into a state of relaxation. You don’t need to have a big, complicated goal for the session–you can keep it as simple as “I want to steady my breathing” or “I want to feel a little calmer than I do now.” Baby steps turn into the foundation for reprogramming your mind toward more positive, relaxed thinking.

Use your guided meditation time to really get in touch with your emotions.

Emotions are complicated. Often, when we think we feel one way about a situation, we end up actually having multiple emotions swirling together to make one confusing mix of feelings. This can really mess with our minds. Instead of taking a moment to really process and understand emotions, we allow them to overcome us, which often leads to negative thinking cycles. Or, as Psychology Today points out, some people do the exact opposite and repress their emotions rather than experience them. Either method can lead to serious upset and damage to our minds.

During your guided meditation, you begin to relax your body and open your mind, sit with your emotions, and break them down into specific parts. Often, big emotions such as anger or sadness are often accompanied by others, such as grief, jealousy, or frustration. When you can identify separate emotions and truly get in tune with your mind and body, you can begin to accept and learn to work with how they affect your mind.

Use guided meditation to help you determine what you really want for yourself.

When you think about what you want for yourself in the future, you might have a hard time really visualizing what you truly desire for yourself. Whether you have a negative self-image or a hard time determining which pathway you want to take, getting your mind to focus on yourself can be a challenge.

Group Meditation

Depending on the situation you are facing in your personal life, you may want to consider group-guided meditation. This is very similar to the guided meditation mentioned above, in which a guide walks you through the meditation process, however, group guided meditation is generally completed in a room with other people around. This may seem a bit weird at first, but you will find that some of these people are going through similar situations that you are in your own life.

And having a social group surrounding you as you meditate can help you feel supported and loved—which may be especially important if you are dealing with something like the loss of a loved one.

Final Thoughts

Guided meditation can help you reach a comfortable balance between your mind and body to allow yourself that opportunity to explore potential pathways in a safe environment. Guided meditation is often used in tandem with other practices, such as visualization.

By using guided meditation to relax your thoughts and your body, you can open a great space for your mind to explore different pathways you envision yourself taking. In reality, trying to imagine yourself accomplishing a huge goal can seem fuzzy and impossible to imagine, but during guided meditation, the fog is lifted.

Your mind is free to wander down different pathways to allow yourself a chance to see yourself as the person you really want to become.

A large number of thinkers and scientists have been mesmerized by the health benefits of meditation. Because of this, a number of studies and tests have been conducted to measure the impact of meditation on a person. These studies have identified that meditation causes a number of benefits for both your body and mind.

Reduces stress

Nowadays, many people experience chronic or severe stress, which is very negative to our overall well-being and health. Stress is our body’s natural response to tense or dangerous situations. When you end up in these situations, your body releases hormones that prepare your natural flight or fight mentality.

Stress could be a good or bad thing, depending on the length of time that stress is experienced. Stress is good in short bursts because it can motivate us to accomplish our goals or finish tasks by their assigned deadlines. Long-term stress, though, is bad for our health because it can cause physical damage to our mind and bodies.

According to a number of studies, meditation is a very good way to manage stress because it activates our body’s relaxation response. This means that meditation restores the body to a calm state and reverses the effects of stress. Because of this, meditation will enable you to manage your stress levels effectively and healthily.

Decreases symptoms of illness

According to the Mayo Clinic, meditation can be helpful if you are living with a medical condition. Anxiety, asthma, cancer, chronic pain, depression, heart disease, high blood pressure, IBS, sleep problems, and tension headaches are just a few of the illnesses that benefit from meditation.

Some researchers believe that meditation really helps illnesses because they are exacerbated by stress. If stress is decreased, the symptoms of the illness can possibly be reduced too. Since meditation increases relaxation, it decreases the symptoms of the illness.

Improves heart health

One of the best impacts of meditation on the body is that it improves heart health. According to the American Heart Association, patients who meditated saw a reduction in the thickness of their arterial walls. In contrast, patients who did not meditate experienced any change to their arterial walls.

The thickness of your arterial walls is very imperative. Thick arterial walls can cause a number of negative health issues including high blood pressure, obesity, and other heart-related illnesses. If your arterial walls get too thick, they can impact the amount of blood that pumps from the heart, causing a heart attack or stroke.

With meditation, the thickness of the arterial wall decreases, which will allow your heart to pump blood more fluidly and decrease the chances of having a stroke or heart attack.

Decreases muscle tension

Another impact that meditation has on the body is lowering muscle tension. Muscle tension is when the muscles are not relaxed properly, which often causes sharp pain and difficulty in moving. You may experience muscle tension if you work out intensely, experience severe stress, or take certain medications.

Since meditation typically consists of controlled breathing and calming the mind, it helps your muscles to relax at the same time. There is even a meditative technique, called Progressive Muscle Relaxation, that is targeted towards muscle relaxation. More so, meditation reduces stress, which is a leading reason for muscle tension.

If you lower stress levels, you will also lower its side effect of severe muscle tension. Increases metabolism Meditation also increases metabolism. Although meditation will not cause you to lose a ton of weight, it will help your body to burn off more calories while resting.

The reason for this is that meditation causes an increase of activity in the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that is responsible for controlling your metabolism. If this area is more active, then your body will naturally have a higher metabolism.

Slows the brain aging process

One way that meditation impacts the mind is that it better preserves the brain’s aging process.

The brain aging process is measured by the amount of grey matter volume in the brain. The more grey matter, the better shape your brain is in terms of aging. A study conducted by UCLA found that long-term meditators had more grey matter volume than those who do not meditate.

Younger meditators had more grey matter than older meditators, but older meditators had more grey matter than non-meditators of the same age. This study suggests that meditating slows the brain aging process. Slowing the brain aging process is a great benefit of meditation.

The longer the grey matter is preserved, the better your brain functions for muscle control, sensory perception, emotions, and self-control. So, meditation will allow us to use a well-functioning brain and mind for a longer part of our life.

Improves psychological well-being

Another way that meditation impacts the mind is that it changes the structure of the brain so that you experience an improvement in your psychological well-being. Brain structure is measured by the thickness of the cortical or the brain cell volume.

In a study conducted by Harvard University, researchers found that eight weeks of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction increases cortical thickness in the hippocampus and in areas that control emotion regulation and self-referential processing. At the same time, it decreases thickness in the amygdala, which controls fear, anxiety, and stress.

As a result, patients in the experiment reported an improvement in psychological well-being and happiness. In fact, patients reported that they felt less stressed and generally felt better about themselves and their lives.

In other words, meditation affects the mind by resulting in increased happiness and contentment. Additionally, meditation improves self-image and outlook. Studies have found that mindfulness meditation decreased depression in over 4,600 adults. One possible reason for this is that stress releases inflammatory chemicals called cytokines.

Cytokines can affect mood and lead to depression. Since meditation manages stress, fewer cytokines are released, leading to a decrease in depression. Some studies have even measured electrical activity in the brains of meditators.

The study found that those who meditate have more activity in the regions of the brain that are associated with positive thinking and optimism, further showing how meditation improves one’s psychological well-being.

Improves concentration

Meditation also improves one’s concentration and ability to focus. In fact, some studies suggest that even a couple of weeks of meditation increases focus and memory. In a study that measured the concentration benefits of meditation, those who meditated for a few weeks before the GRE experienced a 16-point increase in the overall score.

This point increase is attributed to the increased ability to focus on the questions and test.

So, meditation increases one’s ability to concentrate and focus. This increase affects the mind greatly because it increases its performance when tested and put under pressure.

Assists addicts in recovery

Addiction is a brutal disease that is difficult to regulate, control, and maintain. One way that some addicts have learned to control their addiction is through meditation. It is believed that meditation’s effect on the self-control regions of the brain allows people to better control their addictions and impulses.

In one study, it was found that smokers who meditate were many times more likely to quit smoking than those who did not meditate. This study suggests that meditation helps addicts because it allows them to ride out the craving until it passes.

Other studies have looked at Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention and found that meditation is effective at treating other forms of addiction as well.