For many years something kept telling me that I needed to meditate and I would put it on my goals list, “I have to start meditating.” and I might do it for a little bit a few days or not but ultimately it would not be something I did as a regular practice… until finally in the last few months.
Overall the biggest benefit of meditation is that a quiet the mind and slows everything down. we live at such a fast pace, and we do so much stuff, that it’s often hard to find the time to just be still and be present Without needing to do something else.
Rather than tell you all the benefits which you can read about and countless places, I want to give you a few symptoms which indicate you could benefit from meditation. Here are a few of those symptoms:
- When you go to bed, it feels like you can’t stop thinking about everything.
- Sometimes you just feel like what is the point of all of it when you have so much to do and have been doing so much.
- You have health issues or are worried about your health.
- You worried about this that and the other. You’re a worry wart.
- You have trouble focusing on one task.
- You are forgetting lots of stuff.
- You feel burnt out and hopeless in some ways.
- Odd things keep happening around you and you don’t know why.
- You feel exhausted a lot of the time and can’t seem to get out of it.
There are countless symptoms that indicate what is really a disconnect between the body and the mind. And there are a variety of things you can do to start to integrate the two again. Meditation is one of those and it has many many benefits especially as you increase your mastery of doing it.
In this article I know would like to share with you three types of meditations to give you an overview of these levels. I know when I was trying to find a way to get into meditating in a way that work for me consistently it took a while for me to find my groove. it really helped me as I began to understand that there are different levels of meditation all of which can be beneficial.
As you do it more and more, you may be drawn to do some of the deeper versions. But even if you’re not that’s okay too. if you take on meditating regularly, you will definitely start to get the benefit I’ve been more centered and focused and peaceful in your life.
You may have problems to solve that need a lot more than being centered, focused, and peaceful, but if you get yourself into that space, it’s much easier than to make decisions, to find clarity, and to execute your Solutions gracefully.
Here are the three types of meditation to understand.
Guided Meditation
This is when you listen to a YouTube video or could be an audio recording, where someone who knows how to do a guided meditation will speak about general images for you to bring your imagination to to go to a peaceful place. sometimes the meditations are for a specific things such as finding an answer to something, getting in touch with your inner self, getting rid of anxiety, or simply being at peace and being able to relax. all of these are good and fine. Typically there anywhere from 10 minutes to 45 minutes. if you practice doing them for a while the time can start to go very fast even though it first it might be a bit challenging. this is a great kind of meditation to start with.
Focusing on One Object
Ultimately the point of meditation is to try to just completely have nothing stick in your mind. First step to getting there that’s more advanced than a guided meditation is to focus on just one thing the entire time you’re meditating. You could choose to focus on a candle oh, your own breath, music with no words, something that makes white noise like a pool filter — which I love the sound of!
Some people will focus on an Mandala, which is a geometric image. or you could even hold an image in your hand and focus on the energy of it.
The idea is to do something so that your mind is not running wild like it usually is, but to give it some focus on where you want it to have its attention.
Deep Still Meditation
This is the highest level of the three which is when you meditate with no assistance. The idea for this is that you get to the point where you have a strong enough relationship to your mind that you can stop it from going crazy. Or even better said, you no longer identify with your mind and follow where it leads, but instead your intention is to clear your mind and think of nothing. If a thought does pop into your mind, you just let it float by and you don’t go down the path that it leads.
You could think of it like this. Imagine that your body likes to exercise and move. But website it likes to move so much an exercise so much that it just never stops moving. And then when you go to bed your body can’t relax either. That’s a little bit like the mind.
In our very busy culture with hundreds of thousands of stimulations and distractions a day, our minds never get to rest unless we make it a point of doing so. Where we have to consciously make the choice to tell our mind and to direct our mind to shut down.
You can try to do it when you’re going to bed, but if you’re not good at quieting your mind already, it’s hard to do it cold turkey and just say, “Okay mind be quiet!” Well actually, it’s easy to say but it’s not easy to do!
And that’s where meditation comes in. It’s the conscious practice of to stop going crazy and to have it move in the direction of a single Focus or just be completely still.
If you want to learn to meditate, and you feel that there is a very good benefit but you haven’t quite been able to do it or somehow you find yourself resisting like I was, I highly recommend that you do the guided meditations.
You can find lots of guided meditations on a variety of topics on YouTube. You can find plenty of them on websites like gaia.com or hayhouse.com, and I’m sure there are many other places that you can find guided meditations. It’s perfectly fine to start with the free ones on YouTube.
And there you have it. The basic types of meditation. I honestly would encourage everyone to start meditating for at least a small amount of time everyday. You might have to push yourself a little bit for the first week or two but then you’ll have a break through and find it gets easier and easier.
Start with a guided meditation to guide you through something you’re interested in, and once you are able to really feel great after completing those for a while, then you might take it to the next level.
The most important lesson I learned is to not feel that you have to do the advanced kind of meditation right at the beginning where you’re just being quiet and trying to have nothing in your mind. You can build your muscle for meditating up little by little, if you want to get to the advanced type, but you don’t even have to move up at all!
Whether you’re a beginner or intermediate or even an advanced meditator who needs to get back to the basics, I wish you well on quieting your mind and getting into a very centered and settled peaceful space.