Beginner's guide to meditation

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If you are here then you are convinced on the benefits of meditation and you want to meditate. Appreciate yourself. I am glad you are starting this.
If there is slight doubt, allow me to convince you to get into the practice of meditation , here.

I am certain you might have heard that meditation is helpful and one must do it.
You can easily look up health, psychological, scientific, spiritual benefits of meditation online.
If you are a workaholic, meditation improves attention and cognition. This reason should be enough to get you to do it.
It is the time that you give yourself which enhances your capabilities in every other activity you indulge in the rest of the day.
You can read about my personal experience with meditation here. I have shared why I started it, my earlier experiences and why I practice it daily now.

I am just gonna cut to the chase now.

Meditation can be done in various ways and you can practice any form of meditation. I will share my meditation practice-

1.Visualization:
 Beginners should start with this.In this meditation, you visualize yourself in different places doing various tasks. It involves picturing in your mind the outcome of something that has not happened or something you would want to happen.When you visualize images are formed on the retina of your eye and mind cannot differentiate between this and reality. Visualization is an effective method for manifestation too. It is like picturing, in your mind, yourself on a beach and soaking in images of the sky, white sand, calming water and yourself relaxing on the beach. You could picture yourself in your favorite place and doing what you love.

2. Mantra Chanting:
In this meditation, you bring your awareness to the sound of the mantra and allow it to cleanse your mind. As you focus on your voice chanting the mantra, other thoughts leave your mind. You can chant any mantra , it can be some mantra from your religion. I practice 'AUM' chanting. The vibrations of AUM have a significant impact on our life.

3. Breath-work:
 In this meditation, you focus on your breath. You focus on the subtle changes in your body when you breathe like the rising up of chest, expansion of stomach, air entering through the nose and air leaving through the nose/mouth. You just bring your awareness to your natural organic breathing pattern. I recommend doing this meditation once you are used to meditating.

To begin, we will start with visualization meditation,


You will find 40 guided meditation videos of Jay Shetty. Follow the order mentioned above then you can do in any order. You can find these videos on youtube.

Once you feel comfortable with the practice, you can try 'AUM' chanting meditation.
Find it here for guidance.

You can try the breath-work meditation here. This is guided meditation.
If you are feeling bold, you can meditate without guidance. Sit in a comfortable position,close your eyes to avoid distraction and start focusing on your breath.

These are guided meditations. Once you feel comfortable, you can meditate without guidance.

Meditation can be done at anytime of the day. Effectively, it should be done for a minimum of 20 mins but you can start with 10 mins a day and gradually increase the duration. There is empirical evidence that if you practice meditation before sleep, you get a deeper sleep.
Starting your day with meditation is like winning your morning.

What you need to understand about meditation and I cannot stress this enough, it is normal to have your mind distracted between the meditation. Whenever your mind gets distracted, having the awareness to notice that it is distracted is also an achievement and once you realize it,you must bring your awareness back without feeling guilty or bad about it. You will not always get it right and the practice is not an upward sloping curve. Some days will be better than other days. It is a journey where you keep practicing on getting your complete awareness.

Appreciate yourself after every meditation session. I hope you stick to this enriching practice.
If you want to share your early experiences or mystical meditation experiences, I'd love to hear them in the comments!


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