Search Results for: meditation

September 16, 2022 By Pradnya Shinde 4 Comments

5 Powerful Ways Of Meditation

We know that meditation is very very good for health, especially mental health. But sometimes, we get confused about what exactly to do. So here’s a guide to help you begin. Try these powerful ways of meditation to improve your health and wellbeing!

Powerful Ways Of Meditation

1. Concentrative Meditation
As the word suggests, you are supposed to concentrate on one point so you won’t think about other things. When thoughts are scattered, it creates no impact, but sharp attention is a powerful tool. One way to do it is to focus on your own breathing cycle. See how you inhale through the nose, how you feel inside the body and how you exhale. Another way is to focus on sounds like any word or phrase or the sound of a bell. You can also focus on a candle’s flame. Sit in front of the candle, look at the flame and close your eyes. Behold the picture of the flame in front of your mind. When the picture fades, open your eyes and repeat the process.

2. Contemplative Meditation
Instead of trying to stop thinking, contemplative meditation includes focusing on a single thought. Instead of too many different thoughts, it’s thinking about one subject and one thought with complete awareness of the thought. For this, you can contemplate any sentence from a religious scripture or contemplate objects like a flower or a tree. Think about the shape of a particular flower.

Another way is asking a question to yourself, believing in your inner instinct and waiting for an answer to come up. The questions can be:

What am I looking for?
What is it I am resisting?
Knowing I will die, how should I live?
What is my greatest mission?
What do I love?
What do I have fear of?
Who am I?

3. Witness Meditation
Watch your thoughts as if it’s a movie. Let the thoughts come, simply observe them, but do not react or try to reject. Be neutral. This is called being the witness of your thoughts. What does it do? It reduces your attachment from your thoughts. You no longer feel pain with those repetitive thoughts. This is a great technique to let go of resentment from the past.

4. Chanting Mantra
Chanting mantras repeatedly is one way of meditation. Mantra is a sanskrit word. Man means mind and Tra means release. Mantra is supposed to be a set of words which releases your mind from all it’s anxieties. It has been said that chanting mantras provides spiritual growth. But make sure you are paying attention, because that is all what we want. You can chant OM or Gayatri Mantra.

5. Movement Meditation
If you think you can’t sit at one place and focus, practice meditation through body movements. Self defense practices like Tai chi and Qigong are used as a form of meditation for a very long time. Yoga is one excellent example of movement meditation. Yoga involves being fully aware of your breathing and understanding the basic nature of self. But not only this, we can also practice meditation through simply walking or dancing. Just be attentive, pay close attention to your steps, body movements and surroundings.

Next time, when you sit to meditate, you can try something new. Keep it mind, sometimes we might get a little restless but be patient. Don’t get frustrated. Slowly get back to your point of concentration.

We hope these 5 powerful ways of meditation help you! Do leave your thoughts and experiences in the comments below. For more on meditation and yoga, check out Healthy Reads or join live, interactive sessions held by our yoga and meditation experts on GOQii Pro within the GOQii App.

#BeTheForce

July 8, 2021 By Urvi Gohil 2 Comments

Meditation: Why It Is Necessary Today!

Many of us are worried about the impact of the ongoing pandemic on our elderly and physically vulnerable relatives. To top it off, the economic impact it has had around the world, right down to individuals being unable to work and ineligible for sick pay is huge. All this coupled with shortages in shops, cancellation of planned holidays and events have all caused some level of anxiety and distress. As these mental and emotional issues pile up, there’s a good chance that one might go over the edge. To avoid that, something must be done. During these trying times, there is something you can do to improve your mental and emotional wellbeing. That something is meditation!

How Does Meditation Help?

Taking out time to meditate can also help in so many ways:

Improves Mental Health: At a time when people may be self-isolating, worrying about finances, socially distancing from loved ones, and feeling concerned about contracting the virus, meditation can help improve emotional health and can help manage depression which is exacerbated by stress.
Boost Immunity: COVID-19 is highly infectious and boosting your immunity will help you fight against this pandemic. Several research studies suggest that meditation helps in positively impacting the genes involved in the infectious cycle and increases the immunity. Using regular self-hypnosis as a relaxation technique has had positive effects on Lymphocytes—a type of white blood cell which helps produce antibodies and destroy cells which could cause damage.
Reduce Anxiety: Meditation involves staying in the present moment without dwelling on the past or the future and accepting your feelings and emotions as perfectly valid. This will help in reducing stress levels and thus, potentially manage the increased level of anxiety which comes from being in the middle of a pandemic like coronavirus.

How Can You Start?

Use GOQii’s guided meditation feature: Click on the “+” and go to meditation. A good way to kick start if you are new to this.
At first, it will take effort: Do regular, short bursts and gradually build up the amount of time you spend during any one meditation session. So start slow and short.
Set a regular time of day: Meditation is a habit and you’re much more likely to implement it if you set a specific time of day and incorporate it into your routine.
Get very comfortable: Maybe light a candle or some relaxing music.
Have patience: It is okay. Your mind will wander and you will have all types of thoughts at first but do not stop practicing this.
Do it regularly: Make a habit which will stay with you always!

We hope this article helps you! For more articles on meditation, check out Healthy Reads or tune in to our yoga and meditation experts on GOQii Play. To get these tips directly from your GOQii Coach, subscribe to personalized coaching now: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

Stay home, stay safe, meditate and #BeTheForce

December 17, 2017 By Parwage Alam 11 Comments

Myths and Health Benefits of Meditation

Stress can be dangerous. Here is a link to a blog on Stress

http://goqii.com/blog/avoid-stress-lead-a-healthy-and-happy-life/

In this blog, I am going to talk about meditation and its health benefits in detail. Most foreigners are it the Americans or the Europeans aren’t raised to sit and say “Om.” But, today whether it is outside of India or within our country at every nook and corner you can find a yoga and meditation centre. Meditation has gained millions of converts, helping them ease chronic pain, anxiety, stress, improve heart health, boost mood and immunity, and resolve a lot of medical issues even pregnancy problems.

According to doctors, any condition that’s caused or worsened by stress can be alleviated through meditation. Peace is something we all seek for or let’s say satisfaction is something we all long for. Satisfaction could be different for different people. For some satisfaction could mean happiness, for some it could be an achievement. The influence of external factors in our life largely decides our state of mind to be happy, sad or angry.

We often seek for happiness or peace in the outside world. People have their own ways of finding peace or relaxing their mind. Most common practice is going out of town or getting away from our usual routine. It’s very necessary to find peace within us as not everyone can afford to go out of station often. So here is what we can do and also save some money in the process to reach our goal of happiness and peace- MEDITATE.

Meditation you can transform the mind. Meditation doesn’t mean that you have to sit in a particular posture and focus on any single point on the wall or certain point. The definition of meditation is different for different people. If you ask me, meditation is the art of focusing our attention (100%) in one area. We all believe that our mind gets maximum rest while sleeping; however, the fact is that our mind gets to rest and relief while meditating.

Doctors who recommend meditation say that the relaxation response [from meditation] helps decrease metabolism, lowers blood pressure and improves heart rate, breathing, and brain waves. Tension and tightness seep from muscles as the body receives a quiet message to relax.

Articles in medical journals on Meditation indicate there is scientific evidence that shows how meditation works. In people who are meditating, brain scans called MRI have shown an increase in activity in areas that control metabolism and heart rate. Other studies on Buddhist monks have shown that meditation produces long-lasting changes in the brain activity in areas involved in attention, working memory, learning, and conscious perception.

There are some dangerous myths about meditation like:

1. Meditation is a religion: Meditation is not related to any religion. However, meditation brings all religion together.

2. Just relaxation: Meditation is not about just relaxation like sitting on your sofa or lying on your resting chair, meditation helps to produce specific chemical changes in the brain. For example, Transcendental meditation is known to cause the brain to release a soothing hormone known as prolactin.

3. Sit in the lotus posture to meditate: There is a myth that meditating you should always sit in a lotus posture. However, while meditating it is more important to be comfortable and steady. You can sit cross-legged, on a chair, in a sofa – it is fine, but it is mandatory that you have to maintain the same position till you finish meditating.

4. Meditation is for old people: Most of the people believe that meditation is only for people who have reached a certain age or for old people. That is so untrue. Meditation is universal and anyone can do it. It adds value to lives of people of all age groups. A study in the American Journal of Hypertension showed that teenagers who meditated for 15 minutes twice a day for four months were able to lower their blood pressure a few points.10 minutes of meditation in the morning clean your mind, it gives zeal and enthusiasm.

5. Meditation is like hypnotizing yourself: Most of the people believe that Meditation is hypnotising you. But, that’s again false. In hypnotism no one is aware what he or she is going through, however, in meditation, you are always aware of each and every moment.

If you are feeling tense, tired, depressed or anxious or stressed, the one simple word I can suggest or recommend is ‘Meditation’. Five to 10 minutes of meditation will help you relax and get over your stress and restore your calm and inner peace.

Anyone can start meditating with a small practice. It’s really very simple and does not require you to visit therapists or a practitioner of meditation. It also does not require any equipment. You can practice meditation whenever and wherever you are – in office, home, on the bus or train, or waiting at the doctor’s clinic or even in the middle of a difficult business meeting.

Meditation works as a medicine of mind and body and produces a deep state of relaxation. During meditation, we centralize our attention and get rid of the unwanted stress-causing thoughts. This process results in enhanced physical and emotional well-being.

Some great Benefits of Meditation:

Psychological Benefits: Reduces stress and anxiety, increases creativity and intelligence. Reduces depression, increases learning ability, reasoning and memory power, reduces irritability and moodiness, Feelings of vitality and rejuvenation, increase emotional control, self-esteem, alertness, Improves relationships and also concentration

Physiological Benefits: May help lower blood pressure, Prevents or relives any pain, boosts immune system- with meditation higher levels of antibodies are produced against the flu virus, according to the study in Psychosomatic Medicine, lowers blood cholesterol levels, improves airflow through the respiratory system, especially in those with asthma, Youngers your biological age.

Women can also benefit from meditation. Quoting a study from an article in WebMD, the article says that PMS symptoms subsided by 58% when women meditated. certain other issues such as anxiety, depression, and fatigue can also be reduced by a regular meditation program.

December 9, 2015 By Aaishwarya Haldule 2 Comments

Meditation and it’s healing powers

Meditation as we all know is one of the most ancient stress relieving and healing techniques used in India and now even in the Western world. It however has its roots buried in the centuries old science of medicine in India. Now one may think, meditation is only to sit with eyes closed and breathe, to be practiced by saints and yogis.

MEDITATION- the true meaning is to make peace with oneself mentally and physically.But, this is not easy as one may think and needs practice or even training for some period.

The term meditation refers to a variety of practices, such as techniques designed to promote relaxation and build internal energy or life force which is also PRANA in Sanskrit. This enables the individuals to develop love, compassion, patience, effortless single pointed concentration, thus enabling the person to enjoy the well being while engaging in any life activity.

In the recent times meditation is often suggested as a treatment to ease health concerns such as hypertension/ blood pressure, depression, anxiety, insomnia, fear and phobias, control emotions such as anger or hatred. Meditation has a calming effect on the body as well as mind. It directs awareness inward until pure awareness is achieved which is rightly described as “Being awake inside without being aware of anything except awareness itself”

Now one may ask how to achieve the state of awareness and peace? Here is how you can.

Sit comfortably wearing comfortable clothes.
Starting with your head working downwards feel the vibrations in your body.
Focus on your breath; follow the sensation of inhaling and exhaling. With each inhalation the tummy will blow out and with each exhalation the tummy will go back in.
Once you achieve this state, you will face thoughts, the key here is to not hold on to any thought. Instead make it a slide show, let all the thoughts come and go as if it is a photo gallery.
Once you are able to achieve this, you can begin with mantra repetition such as OM for 5- 6 times.

It has been proven that practicing meditation; has numerous benefits and accelerates the process of healing of many health conditions, as well as delay the ageing.

To highlight a few prominent benefits, let’s look further.

Increase immunity:

Relaxation appears to boost the immunity in recovering cancer patients. Progressive muscular relaxation when practiced daily has shown to reduce the risk of breast cancer and its recurrence. A study at Ohio state university has shown that practicing meditation and relaxation for a month boosted the immunity cells in the elderly giving them more resistance to viruses.

Emotional Balance:

As we discussed earlier, meditation helps to achieve control over emotions such as anger, hatred.

Emotional balance means to be free of ego. Though this is very difficult to achieve fully, meditation does help to lessen the outbursts due to ego. As the consciousness is cleansed of emotions and memories, one not only achieves a full freedom but also great balance in actions and words.

Increases fertility:

It has been found that women are more likely to conceive when emotionally balanced and stress free. Being stress free also helps improve male fertility in many ways.

Relieves Digestive ailments:

People who suffer anxiety related acidity, or other digestive complaints get great relief with regular meditation and breathing exercises.

Hence, it is widely recommended as an effective treatment.

Lowers blood pressure:

Similar to exercise meditation also helps to secrete “happiness hormones such as endorphins”, making the body less responsive to stress hormones. These effects are also seen with regular cardio exercise and blood pressure lowering medications as well.

Inflammation:

Stress; of all kinds’ leads to inflammation, which is widely related to heart disease, arthritis, asthma and many skin conditions. Practicing regular meditation can prevent and help in treating these conditions by reducing the stress response.

Calmness and sleep:

The simple difference between the people who meditate and those who do not, is that for a meditative mind the thought occurs is witnessed, while for an ordinary mind, the thought occurs and is governed by ego. In case in both minds, an upsetting thought occurs, but for those who meditate it is just another thought which is seen, allowed to blossom, and let go, while in a non meditating mind, such thoughts can instigates a storm which rages on and on. This can lead to sleep disturbances. Hence meditation helps to improve sleep.

In short, Meditation is a way to celebrate being at peace with oneself and celebrating it with silence.

Happy Meditating!