Learning To Sit Still For Meditation
Be Still for Meditation
When talking about the practice of sitting still during meditation, one of the great meditation teachers, the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, used to say that the best way to show a snake its true nature is to put it in a hollow stick of bamboo. Take a moment and give this unusual metaphor some thought. What could he have possibly meant by it? What does it have to do with meditation?
Well, imagine that you’re a snake in bamboo. What does it feel like? Every time you try to slither, which is after all what snakes like to do, you bump against the walls of your straight as-an-arrow home. If you pay attention, you start to notice how slippery you actually are. Read More…
How Get In Tune With Your Senses During Meditation
Enhance Your Senses During Meditation
Smell: You can enhance your sense of smell during meditation by exploring the particular nuances of your favorite scent, a flower, or fruit, and the sensations of breathing it in. Then, as if appreciating an intoxicating fragrance, inhale slowly and savor the breath. Even if there is nothing actually in the air to be smelled, putting your attention in your nose as you breathe awakens the sense of smell.
Motion: During meditation be aware of the movement of your breath as it enters through your nostrils, down your throat, and expands your lungs, diaphragm, and belly. Notice the pause at the end of the in breath, where it turns somehow to flow out, and then pay attention to the feelings that go with the exhalation. Observe what happens at the end of the out breath: you are empty of air, and then the whole cycle begins again. Feel your natural breathing rhythm. Then play with the tempo, speeding up or stretching out the inhalation, then exhaling more slowly or more quickly. Read More…
Getting To Know Your Breath
Meditation on the Breath
Breathing is a classic focus for meditation, for several reasons. For one thing, breathing is sensuous, rhythmic, and always with us, as long as we are alive. Also, breath is a gift to us from the larger universe; it comes inside our body, into our lungs, into our blood, then into every cell. Breath is an intimate exchange with the entire cosmos in which we live and move and have our being and is a wonderful subject for meditation. Read More…
Meditation on Getting To Know Your Aura
Meditation on Your Aura
While seated comfortably, rest your hands in your lap and turn your palms to face each other. Take a few easy breaths as you would normally begin any meditation, and then gently become curious about the sensations in your palms. Explore moving your palms up and down, toward each other and away, in toward the body and away from it. Let your hands be very relaxed and loose, and still facing each other. You may have tiny sensations in your hands, pleasant feelings of warmth or tingling. Explore in this way for two or three minutes of meditation while you examine these feelings. Read More…
Creating Your Own Meditation Chant or Mantra
Meditation Chant
It’s simple to create your own meditation chant – start by singing or humming the vowels in any way that occurs to you, at any volume, speed, or pitch. Just be playful as you try to create your meditation chant. Feel free to change the order after a while (u-e-a, for example). Change the pronunciation however you like, for each sound has a dozen or so different ways of being said. Your preferences are important and may change with the time of day, according to how tired or energetic you are, and according to whether the sound is external and audible or purely internal and audible only to the mind’s ear.
Select two vowel sounds, a-u, e-o, or any combination you prefer as it’s your meditation chant. Say that sound over and over softly, in a kind of chant. Let the sound become quieter over the course of several minutes and simply enjoy the rhythm of the sound, the vibrations in your head and throat, the subtle movements of your tongue, and the flow of the breath. Your eyes can be open or closed, and you can go back and forth between open and closed. At some point in the next several minutes let the softly audible chant become an internal chant. Let this transition happen in its own time and gradually internalise your meditation chant. Read More…
Concentration Through The Christ Center
The Christ Center or Third Eye
There is a great significance in concentrating at the point between the eyebrows. This point is known as the Christ center. It is here that the meditator, when deeply concentrated, beholds the spiritual eye or third eye, a phenomenon that has been known since ancient times.
Legends thousands of years old describe this third eye as being situated in the center of the forehead. Artists have depicted it as a half moon. Modern scholars dismiss the entire concept as fanciful, or as merely symbolic. But then, few scholars know much about meditative practices; the understanding they admire is intellectual. Read More…
Benefits Of Meditation At Work Or At Play
More Benefits of Meditation
Meditation teaches you how to cultivate qualities and skills that naturally contribute to making you better at your favorite endeavor, whether it’s sports or business, gardening or studying, or simply washing the dishes or sweeping the floor.
1. Flow experience. In sports they call it “the zone”: moments or extended periods when you feel totally in sync with your body and your surroundings. Time seems to slow down, feelings of well-being and enjoyment increase, you see everything clearly as (or even before) it transpires, and you know exactly what you need to do next. By cultivating your powers of concentration in meditation, you develop the ability to enter the flow more easily in every situation.
2. The ability to see things multi-dimensionally. In meditation, you practice witnessing or observing your experience without getting lost in the details. This more expanded, global awareness naturally allows you to step back and see the whole picture, which can be extraordinarily useful when you’re trying to solve a problem or scope out the opposing team (in sports or business) or just evaluate and improve your performance. Read More…
Mindfulness Meditation For Everyday Activities
Mindfulness Meditation
Anything you do or experience can provide you with an opportunity to practice mindfulness meditation. But you may want to begin with some of your usual activities – the ones you may be doing now on automatic pilot while you daydream, space out, or obsess. The truth is, even the most routine tasks can prove enjoyable when you do them with wholehearted care and attention. Here’s a list of common activities with a few suggestions for infusing them with mindfulness meditation:
Washing the dishes: If you set aside your judgments, which may insist you should be doing something more meaningful or constructive with your time, and instead simply wash the dishes – or sweep the floor or scrub the tub – you may find that you actually enjoy the activity. Feel the contours of the plates and bowls as you clean them. Notice the smell and the slipperiness of the soap, the sounds of the utensils, the satisfying feeling of removing the old food and leaving the dishes clean and ready for use. Read More…
5 Benefits Of Meditation
Benefits of Meditation
For many of the same reasons that meditation helps to facilitate healing, it also enhances performance. Meditation relaxes your body and reduces stress and anxiety, which allows you to function more effectively. It promotes positive mind-states, such as love, joy, and well-being, and encourages the flow of life-energy through the body, which in turn promotes self-confidence and a sense of power and effectiveness.
Below are 5 additional benefits that meditation can bring to your life:
1. Meditation will bring increased focus and concentration. As you become adept at staying on task as you follow your breaths or recite your mantra, you can easily transfer this skill to working at your computer or playing ball with friends. Read More…
Mindfulness And Meditation
A Simple Mindfulness Meditation
In our every day lives, we are all guilty of neglecting our minds, allowing our brains to be lulled into a lazy, neglected, and unaware state. It is as if we are allowing ourselves to be sculpted by bland and repetitive consumerism, our individuality being chiselled away by a tedium we cannot even be bothered to challenge with any will.
Life need not be like that.
We are each blessed with a powerful mind; but normally people have forgotten or, most likely, never even knew how, to use it. It is such a waste of our own greatest resource.
One way to start to extricate ourselves from the mindless quicksand is to gently exercise our minds, using mindfulness and meditation as a way of bringing ourselves more emphatically into the real world, and start the process of exercising control over our minds and our lives.
Creating a mindfulness meditation is a gentle but powerful exercise. But how do you go about it? Read More…
