Meditation for beginners: A how-to help guide

Jeremy Taylor rightly said, “Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit.”

Meditation, for beginners, can be seen as a form of unflinching focus on one’s own self to calm our minds, retrospect on our personalities and tap into our well of endless potential. With multitasking being the apparent way of life these days, meditation helps us collect our scattered thoughts and focus our energy to open our mind and increase our productivity, while also decreasing our stress. While experienced meditators might have already reached a state of poise and serenity, beginners can view meditation as a way of soothing one’s mind and body together, simply to take a break from our hectic daily lives.

Even though mediation involves a lot of ‘letting go’, it is an active process and requires one’s concentration and effort. However, once the art is learned, it comes quite naturally and becomes a very restful experience.

Beginners can practice meditation using the following tips. They aren’t hard and fast rules that must be followed, as there are no rules to meditate as such, but these tips will help you achieve the desired result faster and will make your meditating experience quite fruitful.

1. Choose a conducive environment where you feel comfortable and at ease. It should be a place that you are calm in. Also, try and look for some quiet, it will be easier to gather your thoughts without noise around.
2. Sit up straight, you do not have to fall asleep, but make sure that your body is at ease and is relaxed. Any kind of stress on the back, neck or spine, or any physical discomfort can hamper your mental peace and distract you while you try to focus. Butt maintain the natural curve of your back and never slouch.
3. Try and sit cross-legged with your hands on your lap. Face the palms upwards, this is an open posture and allows you to gather more positive energy from the surroundings. However, you can sit on a chair also, don’t force yourself into a lotus position, or fold your legs if it isn’t comfortable.
4. Breathe slowly at first and try and take deeper breaths. But don’t force your breathing and let it happen as naturally as possible. Focus your mind and concentrate on the breathing, the air that you take in with every breath. Fill up your lungs with fresh oxygen and exhale out your impurities. Just be aware of your breathing.
5. If you feel that your mind is wandering or your attention is swaying, gently bring it back to focus on your breaths. Try and make them deeper and deeper with every breath. Your first few inhalations might be shallow, but try and fill up your lungs as much as you can with subsequent breaths. You can also exhale slowly through your mouth.
6. Try and make your exhalations as long as, if not longer than your inhalations. Expel out the used air so you can make way for more fresh air. If you feel like your exhalations are smaller, pull in your stomach and contract your abdomen muscles to exhale longer.
7. Don’t end your session abruptly or interrupt your calm with any jarring noise. Once you feel like you have focussed your energies, get up slowly and keep this calm with you while doing your other jobs as well. This will help your mind be more open and productive.

Breathing however, is only a basic meditating technique. You can use other more advanced techniques once you have mastered this. Soothing music can also help you focus.

The advantages of meditation are numerous and it can prove to be very helpful to students and working professionals alike, giving us a way to channelize our energy, use it effectively and reduce the negativity to achieve a higher output with lesser stress.