Meditation is the high energy upsurge that fills life with love. Life is beautiful, very beautiful, but if you don’t feel so then meditate and open up your senses to feel the vibrancy of life. When we are talking about meditation then the most vital question that comes to mind is how to meditate? Initially one has to learn to meditate until it becomes a natural phenomenon; as natural as chirping of the birds, rising of the sun, twinkling of the stars, blossoming of the flowers and so on.

There are myriad of meditation techniques which have been designed for the modern man, however they have their foundation in the ancient techniques as propounded by the rishis. But with the change in time the need has been felt to adapt these meditation techniques accordingly, so that they can keep pace with the man. Now with the dawn of a new era, meditation techniques are available in the form of cd’s which contain these guided meditation techniques i.e. they are coupled with guided instructions to help the seeker tread on this path. And interestingly, these meditation techniques are coupled with the spiritually uplifting music to hold the wandering thoughts of the doer.

Meditation not only cleanses the mind of the prolonged conditionings by the society, but also gives the freedom to enjoy life to the fullest. When one persistently practices a particular guided meditation technique, it leads to great transformation in the way of living withal the way of thinking. But by reading through these words cannot produce even an iota of what miracle meditation can bring to your life. So don’t think, delve within and then choose your course.

The enlightened woman mystic, Anandmurti Gurumaa, is using a lot of ancient meditation techniques and moulding them artistically for today’s minds. http://www.gurumaa.com Gurumaa’s guided meditation techniques are working wonders for people from all the corners of the world. Do visit the gurumaa site and explore it yourself!

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A guided meditation is an excellent way of meditating. Typically, you sit back and play a CD or MP3 track and follow the instructions on it. Most people find this an easier way to meditate than the traditional methods of clearing the mind and focusing on just one thing.

Guided meditations for healing fall into two categories: specific healing meditations, focussed on healing just one thing, and general healing meditations which help your body to stay in good health.

If you have a specific issue that needs dealing with, for instance if you are experiencing a great deal of pain somewhere in your body, then you should choose a guided meditation that will help you with that particular problem. Search Amazon or your favorite search engine and you will almost certainly find something to help you.

General healing meditations focus on going through your whole body. Oftentimes you will be guided to release the tension that you are experiencing in different parts of your body. The guided meditation will often then go on to ask you to gradually fill your body with a healing white light, maybe even spreading that light outside your body to form a protective shield that will stay with you after the guided meditation has ended.

I’ve found that when I have had cause to use a guided meditation for healing that I finish the meditation feeling much more relaxed than when I started. This alone should help the healing process. A guided healing meditation will help your body to repair itself.

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So, you want to have a look on Guided Meditation techniques. They involve somebody guiding you through the meditation process. That is they literally talk you through the whole meditation process. There are some advantages and disadvantages to this technique. One of the reasons you may consider guided meditation is to help expand your understanding of the various meditation techniques. The experience of meditation may at first be boring. Often your ideas will continue racing through your head, producing the same pattern of thinking you are already sick of. But be patient. With practice, the space between the thoughts lengthens. You may become more aware of a still, quiet space that has always been within you, undiscovered. You may even reach a point in your meditation where the thoughts subside completely for a while.

Keep practicing meditation with patience. Know that if you are following the meditation directions, you are doing it right. Your meditation will never be wrong. It will always be precisely what you need at that time. In that sense, it is always perfect.

The Guided Meditation technique can be presented in a number of ways. You may do a guided meditation session in a small group with a meditation practitioner or you might do a guided meditation session using a meditation cd or meditation dvd. Allow the focus of your meditation to permit you to glide into a deeper and deeper place. If you reach that place, you will know it. That is the state of meditation. In that state, you may let your focus point go and experience meditation. People with a serious habit of high body activity may wish to use Tai Chi, an ancient oriental art of moving meditation, to begin their meditation practice. There are many Tai Chi instructors in the United States.

If you are first starting out, the Guided Meditation sessions is a good way to learn meditation as the meditation practitioner will talk you through the experience and to help you identify what you should be feeling and how to effectively move you into the state that your meditation technique is trying to get you in. All stress and no relaxation  makes Jack a dead guy.’ Yes it’s true that stress can sometimes lead to life-threatening consequences. But the brutal truth is that in today’s competitive world, stress has become unavoidable. So, guided meditation is a good way to start with. Talking about stress always reminds me of my friend Sona. She has a tendency to get worried and anxious about every little thing. Once that happens, her mind works overtime thinking of every possible disaster that could happen. Her thoughts range from “I have to complete this work today … or else my boss will get mad at me … and if I loose my job it will be awful … I wonder if my marriage would survive tough times.  Times are bad … & so on.”

Say if your guided meditation session is teaching you how to master the deep-breath meditation technique then the practitioner will talk you through how to relax and release the tension within your body. They will also be able to tell you what you should be thinking and feeling. A good practitioner will also give you some exercises during the session to try at home that will help your experiment with the meditation technique.

The obvious downside to guided meditation is that someone is actually talking to you during the meditation session. Sometimes what people will find is that it is difficult to get to that state they are trying to achieve when someone is talking during the session.

The meditation techniques require time, patience and constant practice. Thoughts don’t go away easily. So as soon as you encounter a difficult thought, interrupt it constantly as this will lead to a gradual decrease in their frequency & eventually they will go away. Initially, select guided meditatio technique that is not too stressful graduate on to the more stressful ones and slowly you will master the technique. Besides thought stopping, you can practice the following steps to control your negative thoughts: Once again though one of the key elements of the unguided sessions is that no-one is allowed to speak during the meditation period. The group leader will generally use a special sound to bring the group meditation session to an end.

Most professional meditation practitioners will recommend that a person who is new to meditation take a guided meditation session so that they can learn how to achieve the state of mind the type of meditation they are trying to get to. . It is also worth considering buying a few different guided meditation cd’s. They will help you in the future if you are unsure of what to do during the meditation session, you can refer to the meditation cd as a reference.

Yoni Mudra

Yoni Mudra is an exercise in Pratyahara or withdrawal of the senses. Blocking off your ears, eyes, nose and mouth you retreat inside yourself like a tortoise drawing its legs under its shell. Only when your senses are brought under control and the mind is no longer pulled constantly outward, can you hope to concentrate.

How to do: Close your ears with your thumbs. Cover your eyes with your index fingers. Close your nostrils with your middle fingers and press your lips together with your remaining fingers. Release the middle fingers gently to inhale and exhale while you meditate.

Category Concentration: When learning to meditate, narrow your field of concentration to a category of objects. In the category concentration exercise, you can choose four flowers as objects of concentration. After concentrating on one, you can move to the next when your mind starts to wander. If you don’t feel at ease concentrating on flowers, choose a different category of objects, such as fruit or trees. It is important that you restrict your mind to a group of objects and that the objects you choose are ones you can regard with detachment. Practising this exercise will hone your focus and teach you single-minded concentration. Once you can stay focused on a category of objects you are ready to concentrate on one single object.

Steady Gazing or Tratak

Tratak is an excellent concentration exercise. It involves alternately gazing at an object or point without blinking, then closing your eyes and visualising the object in your mind’s eye. This steadies the wandering mind and focuses you to pinpoint your attention with accuracy. Though primarily intended to strengthen your powers of concentration and purify the mind, Tratak also improves your eyesight and stimulates the brain via the optic nerve.

Targets of Tratak: Tratak is most commonly performed with a candle but you can use other objects as targets for your gaze. You can mark a black dot on a piece of paper and attach it to the wall or use a chakra or a yantra. Yantras are geometrical diagrams that serve to focus the mind. Like a mantra, each yantra has a specific mystical meaning. Alternatively, you can try gazing at a symbol, such as OM, or at the image of a deity. In the daytime, a flower or a shell can act as a target of attention, while at night you might try fixing your gaze at the moon or a bright star. As long as your object of concentration is fixed and relatively small, focusing on it will produce the desired effect.

Frontal and nasal gazing: Yogis often use the space between their eyebrows and the tip of the nose for Tratak. Gazing between your eyebrows, or at the tip of your nose strengthens your eye muscles, besides improving your concentration. To start with, it is sufficient to gaze for one minute, gradually building it up to 10 minutes. However, if your eyes feel sore or tired, close them at once.

Mantras

Mantras are Sanskrit syllables, words or phrases which, when repeated in meditation, will bring you to a higher state of consciousness. They are sounds or energies that have always existed in the universe and can neither be created nor destroyed. There are certain qualities common to any true mantra. Repeating a mantra or japa not only provides you with a tangible point on which to focus your mind - it also releases the energy encased in that sound. The energy literally manifests itself, creating a specific thought pattern in the mind. Correct pronunciation of the mantra is therefore very important. With sincere practice, repetition of a mantra leads to pure thought where the sound vibration merges with the thought vibration. In this way the mantra will lead you to true meditation, to a state of oneness, of non-duality. It is believed that mental japa is the most effective, though at the beginning you can start by voicing the mantra, then whispering it, before turning to mental repetition. Whichever form of japa you use, it is helpful to co-ordinate the mantra with your breathing. In addition to a japa, there are three other techniques to aid your concentration:

1. Using a mala: You can use a string of beads repeating your mantra as you count along the beads. A mala has 108 beads plus a larger meru bead. Holding it in the right hand, start at the meru and roll the beads along one by one between your thumb and third fingers while repeating your mantra. When you reach the meru, roll the mala in the opposite direction. Don’t cross over the meru bead.
2. Finger-line counting : You can use the thumb of your right hand as a pointer to count along the lines between your finger joints. Place your right thumb on the top line of your little finger and move it on each time you repeat the mantra — first to the middle line, then the lowest line, then on to the lines of the fourth finger, and so on.
3. Writing down the mantra (Likhita Japa):You can write the mantra down at the same time as repeating it mentally. Set aside a special notebook for the purpose. Before you start, decide how many times you will repeat the mantra or for how long. The aim is not to write as quickly as possible, but to give due consideration to every single repetition. You can either use Sanskrit or the translated version to write your chosen mantra. Instead of just working from left to right, try making patterns with your mantra writing too.

OM

To a yogi, no symbol is more powerful than the syllable OM. It is described as the “eternal word: what was, what is and what shall be”. In Sanskrit, the long lower curve represents the dream state, the upper curve stands for the waking state and the curve originating from the centre symbolises a deep, dreamless sleep. The crescent shape stands for “maya “, the veil of illusion and the dot for the transcendental state.

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Think meditation, and the picture that comes into your mind is that of an old saint sitting under a Peepul tree, with his eyes closed, oblivious to his surroundings. Yes, this is what meditation was a few hundred years ago. Today, however, it is a way of life and is seen as a technique that rids the mind from disturbing thoughts.

What meditation is not:
Meditation is not religion. Nor is it concentration or hypnosis. Meditation does not become better by taking drugs. You do not have to be a particular age to be able to meditate. Everyone can do it and you can get better at it with a little bit of practice.

Guided Meditation involves somebody guiding you through the meditation process. That is they literally talk you through the whole meditation process. There are some advantages and disadvantages to this technique. One of the reasons you may consider guided meditation is to help expand your understanding of the various meditation techniques. The Guided Meditation technique can be presented in a number of ways. You may do a guided meditation session in a small group with a meditation practitioner or you might do a guided meditation session using a meditation cd or meditation dvd.

Meditation is a process that leads one to inner peace and tranquility. It allows you to be in touch with yourself, completely relaxing you by taking you away from the humdrum of daily activity. It allows you to put things in perspective and makes you stress free. There are various forms of meditation. Some of the popular techniques are Vipasana, Transcendental Meditation and the Art of living. These techniques have been scientifically validated and have been proven to change the habits as well as attitudes of people. Though these techniques follow different procedures, they have some common benefits which include:

* A lower, more stable heart rate
* Lower blood pressure.
* Less chances of developing heart diseases.
* Better circulation of blood, which directly improves your work performance
* Slower, more stable respiratory rate
* Fewer psychosomatic symptoms
* Lower levels of anxiety
* Better concentration at work
* Better capacity for adjustment in society
* Better family and personal relationships
* Improved general health
* Make you a happier person
* Gives you more energy
* Helps you think positively

Meditation is a safe, easy-to-learn and a practical method of stress management, which can be practiced at home once it has been learnt under supervision.

Constructive guided relaxation: A hobby or interest that relaxes you can be a constructive way of relieving stress, provided it is not too time-consuming or taxing, that it becomes a source of stress in itself. If you are stressed, choose an activity that relaxes rather than stimulates you. Relaxation is a skill, and like other skills it can be learnt. It can induce feelings of calm and well being, while allowing you to remain in control. There are a wide variety of relaxation techniques which can provide the stressful mind with a number of benefits:.

* It is simple and easy to do
* Increases self-awareness of the effects of stress on the body and mind.
* Reduces fatigue by increasing awareness of excess muscle tension.
* Increases confidence in ability to deal with feelings of anxiety, stress and panic.
* Can improve personal relationships.
* Promotes sleep
* Provides an alternative to drugs (prescribed and non-prescribed).

Visualization : Visualization is an effective technique that can be used for treating many stress-related and physical illnesses , headaches, muscle spasms, chronic pain and many times even general and situational specific anxiety. For instance, if you are in pain, and try and think of something pleasant, most often it works.

Consciously visualizing may take some time to learn. You may even experience that the images are discouraging and uncooperative. This means that your images will be flickering on and off, moving around or disappearing altogether. A lot of time they may even be interrupted by another image. All you need is some practice. Remember that practice makes perfect, so try to practice the technique of visualization at least thrice a day. Do not get discouraged initially. With continued practice and determination, you can master any technique.

A typical Vipassana meditation program would be something like:-

The 5 Precepts

During the course there is a strict code of conduct that involves complete abstinence. The main five precepts are:
1. Abstain from killing any living creature
2. Abstain from stealing
3. Abstain from sexual activity
4. Abstain from telling lies
5. Abstain from all intoxicants

The Course Time Table

Here is what your routine would be like:

4.00 a.m    Morning wake up bell
4.30 - 6.30 a.m    Self Meditation
6.30 - 8.00 a.m     Breakfast
8.00 - 9.00 a.m     Group Meditation in the hall
9.00 - 11.00 a.m     Self Meditation
11.00 - 12.00 noon    Lunch break
12.00 noon - 1.00 p.m    Rest and interviews with the teacher
1.00 - 2.30 p.m     Self Meditation
2.30 - 3.30 p.m     Group Meditation in the hall
3.30 - 5.00 p.m     Self Meditation
5.00 - 6.00 p.m     Tea break
6.00 - 7.00 p.m     Group Meditation in the hall
7.00 - 8.15 p.m     Teacher’s discourse
8.15 - 9.00 p.m     Group Meditation in the hall
9.00 - 9.30 p.m     Question time
9.30 p.m    End of day

How is Vipassana Meditation Practiced?

Vipassana emphasizes concentration on the breath to help keep the mind focused. To learn this technique it is necessary to attend a session conducted by the Vipassana ashrams spread throughout the world. However, the Vipassana technique has two general divisions:

1. Awareness of breath: According to Buddha the one thing that is available to all of us at all time is our breath. Thus become aware of it and be conscious of its rhythm. For as long as possible fix attention on the breathing - whether it is long or short, even or uneven, heavy or light. An easier way of doing this is by breathing intentionally. You can breathe slightly hard so that it is easy for you to fix your attention. Then slowly let your breathing come to its natural rhythm and keep your attention on the flow.

2. Concentration on breathing: The next step is to keep your attention focused on breathing and not let it stray. As you carry on you start feeling happy, relaxed and full of energy. In fact your breathing becomes so slow that you feel as if you have stopped breathing.

The key thing in learning this technique is to practice it daily. It is not something that you can master in one week. You need to practice hard since there is no end to this technique. It is a continuous process of evolution and awareness about your own self.

It has been believed for over centuries that meditation is the panacea for all problems. It calms the mind, provides sustenance to the soul and cleanses the mind of all negative thoughts and emotions. This is true especially in today’s fast-paced life that makes all kinds of demands on an individual’s time and attention, causing immense stress. One such school of thought is Vipassana.
What is Vipassana?

Vipassana stresses upon meditation as a remedy for all tensions, problems and stress, be it physical or mental. Vipassana means ‘insight’ and advocates mental purification. According to Vipassana the cause of all suffering is three-fold and lies in craving, aversion and ignorance. Vipassana helps eliminate these and thus cleanses the mind, body and soul.

Vipassana was rediscovered by Gautam Buddha and brought to India by Myanmar-based Indian industrialist S.N. Goenka. Remember that you cannot learn Vipassana on your own. There are special meditation workshops where Vipassana meditation can be learnt.
The program

There is a 10-day initiation program where the Vipassana technique is taught. It is believed that during this period of meditative calm, the mind comprehends the universal truths and it is a realisation of these truths through personal experience that results in self-purification.

The foundation course “Sila” (moral conduct) is the starting pojnt for the development of “Samadhi” (mental concentration), and finally purification is achieved through “Panna” (the wisdom of strength).
The 5 Precepts

During the course there is a strict code of conduct that involves complete abstinence. The main five precepts are:
1. Abstain from killing any living creature
2. Abstain from stealing
3. Abstain from sexual activity
4. Abstain from telling lies
5. Abstain from all intoxicants