Now they talk a lot about meditation, its beneficial effects on the body and on the ability to concentrate. If you want to experience its effect on yourself, it's time to move from theory to practice. And here is where the biggest snag lurks. Where to start meditation for beginners? After all, I want to do everything correctly in order to achieve a 100% effect from the exercises. In this article we will help you deal with all the subtleties in the practice of meditation.
Believe me: for this you do not need to go to a special room, have a lot of free time or be a super flexible gymnast. After all, meditation is far from yoga. Although this practice, if it becomes part of everyday life, will help you control your mind and body. She will not make a superman out of you, but helping to become a calm, balanced personality. And what else is needed in our age of constant stress?
The benefits of meditation
A lot of wise words have been written about the beneficial effects of Eastern practices on the body. But meditation helps not only improve blood circulation, relieve muscle tension and normalize metabolism. First of all, it affects the human mind. Through this practice, we will be able to:
- eliminate the effects of stress;
- relieve mental stress;
- achieve relaxedness;
- increase overall tone;
- abandon worries;
- increase efficiency;
- feel the joy of life;
- get rid of insomnia, bouts of unmotivated anxiety;
- open hidden creative potential;
- increase self-esteem;
- hear the inner voice.
And if you do not know where to start the first meditation, first answer honestly to yourself the question: why do you want to practice it. It doesn't matter what your motivation is. The main thing is that you yourself understand it well enough. This awareness of the ultimate goal will help you make Eastern practice a part of your daily life.
Step one. Positive attitude
Our vain brain always fills the heart with anxiety. We are afraid that we are doing something wrong. That, in the end, no positive effect will occur. And when the result appears - how do we know about it? Do we have enough time to practice meditation? Where to do it? Are we young enough to meditate? All these and similar questions are constantly drilled in our brains.
But the beginning of meditation lies in the fact that we must abandon anxious thoughts. Otherwise, nothing will work. This will not be meditation, but a session of psychoanalysis with elements of self-criticism. So, we need to be completely positive. Even if you are saddened by something or anxiety eats you, leave all negative thoughts “for later”. If you are a believer, then it will not be superfluous to pray. After all, turning to God already brings the soul to the right state. However, you must understand that meditation is not an isolated exercise. It should be your daily practice.
Step Two A matter of time and space
There is morning and evening meditation. How to start practicing if time is running out? When is the best time to start exercising if you are a night owl? Yes, it is true that at dawn, with the rising of the sun, our physical and psychic powers are manifested especially fully. But you should not redraw yourself for the sake of theory.
Meditation is a practice, and each person has it individually. It does not take much time for classes. If you are in a hurry to work, set an alarm five minutes earlier than usual. Time for evening meditation is even easier to find. Practice it in the bathroom or lying in bed. The place for meditation should be quiet, calm.
People with experience can engage in the fresh air, in parks, on the beach, but for beginners, an enclosed space is more suitable, where nothing distracts from the exercise. Turning the light on or dimming it is up to you. Someone cannot relax in the heat, the other in the cold. The temperature in the room is also at your discretion.
How to start meditation at home from scratch
Suppose you do not know anything about oriental practices. It is for the better. Focus on results only harms the whole thing. Here you just need to enjoy the process itself. You have already understood why you are doing meditation? Now try to get the most out of it.
Comfortable temperature in the room, sunlight or, conversely, the muffled flickering of candles, silence or pleasant calm music - all this should help you relax. You can still light incense to your taste. Turn off your mobile phone so that an unexpected call does not interfere with meditation.
How to start practicing, how much time to devote to the first exercise? Five minutes in the morning and evening is enough. Beginners often ask the question: how can you focus on one thing if you don’t know how much time has passed? There is an alarm clock for this! However, try to make sure that its sound is not very sharp.
Morning meditation. What pose to choose
There are many schools of meditation. But they all teach that exercises help achieve two goals:
- Concentration, energizing and invigorating, increasing overall tone.
- Complete relaxation, relieving stress, dumping the burden of worries and anxieties, cleansing the mind.
Needless to say, which practice is suitable for the morning and which is suitable for the evening. If you want to be energized in a day that is full of work and testing, then the posture should be special. Do not be afraid that you are not in that physical form to immediately sit in the Lotus asana. This is not required from a beginner. You should be comfortable above all. Otherwise, the thought of numb legs will nullify all the benefits of the exercise.
Sit on the mat, and if necessary, then on the pillow. Straighten your back, pull back the shoulder blades. The neck, spine and tailbone should be on the same line. If it’s hard for you to stay in that position, lean against the wall. First, just cross your legs in Turkish. If this is difficult for you, and after a minute your knees begin to ache, change your position.
It’s more common for a European to sit on a chair. But place the buttocks on its very edge so that the spine does not touch the back. Place your feet straight and fold your palms on your knees. You can sit on your knees. The back should be straight. Put your hands on your hips. But over time, you will want to adopt a Burmese pose for meditation. It looks like a Lotus, but the feet are not laid on the hips of the opposite leg, but on the lower legs.
Poses for evening meditation
This practice is aimed at maximum relaxation. Therefore, the pose should be different. It is best to lie on your back. It may be a bed, but then there is a big risk of falling asleep. If this happens, do not be discouraged: even taking two minutes to meditate, you better get enough sleep and will be more alert when you wake up. But cases of falling asleep during exercise are typical only for beginners.
How to meditate at home and not fall asleep? Spread the blanket on the floor. Discard the pillow. Lie on your back. The head should be straight. It is permissible to slightly tilt it back, but so that the neck is comfortable. Straighten your legs, slightly spread them apart. Hands should rest calmly on the sides of the body. This pose is also suitable for those who are contraindicated to sit with a straightened back (for problems with the spine).
For short relaxation meditations, you can lie on your stomach. This pose is especially suitable for women. How to start meditation at home? Spread a soft rug (or blanket) on the floor. Lie on your stomach while turning your face to the left. Hands should be at head level, palms down. Straighten your right leg, and bend your left leg.
Walking
This exercise is practiced not only in Buddhist, but also in Christian monasteries. The latter even have cloisters (courtyards with a gallery) or “labyrinths” laid out with mosaics on the temple floor. Such a walk is useful to mark the beginning of the practice of meditation - for the purification of consciousness, or its end as a phase of reflection.
With this exercise, the back and head should be straightened. Only legs move, but the body remains motionless. Of course, it is difficult for a beginner to walk without waving his hands to the beat, without shaking his hips, but this habit will appear over time. Stretch your palms and place them on your stomach. With your eyelids half closed, but not tilting your head, focus your eyes on the ground or floor two meters from your feet. Even if you usually stoop, try to keep your back straight while walking. Then all the internal organs will take the right place and will function correctly. It will also improve blood flow and brain function.
Step Three Practice selection
Usually people find themselves a guru, a more sophisticated teacher, who edifies, teaches and controls all phases of meditation. But such a person belongs to a certain school, to the current. And not the fact that this practice is right for you. You have to figure out which meditation to choose. Where to start at home if you decide to focus on the subject? First select it. It may be a burning candle - for beginners the most suitable object, since the bright light in the darkness is in itself attracting attention.
If you chose the meditation of proper breathing, then no additional equipment is needed at all. Just turn your hands with your palms up and close your thumb and forefinger. Although in this case, an audio track will help you in the exercise. It does not have to be relaxing music. There are audio tracks with birdsong, the sound of the surf, the noise of the forest. There is a school of meditation, which is based on the repetition of mantras. When choosing any of the many practices, you must continue to follow it. After all, meditation is to some extent a process of self-improvement. You can’t move in several directions at once.
Step Four Feel the heaviness of our body
All practices, to which schools they would not belong, are unanimous in their opinions on the topic of where to start meditation. The purpose of the exercises is to “refresh the brain”, just as we restart the computer when it is buggy. Therefore, we should temporarily turn off our mental apparatus. But how to drive everything, absolutely all thoughts out of my head? To do this, the brain must concentrate on something very simple. This is an analysis of the state of our body.
We are sitting in a comfortable position for us. Feel how heavy your body is. First relax your face. This, by the way, is a useful exercise for those who want to get rid of not only excessive emotions, but also wrinkles. May the blessed languor descend on your torso. Wait until relaxation reaches the tips of the fingers, and then to the legs and feet.
Step Five All attention is on breathing
At the first stage, thoughts are still bothering. But that should not bother you. Many gurus explain where to start meditation for beginners. In parallel with the relaxation of the body, we should slowly concentrate on breathing. It is not hard. In ordinary life, we breathe unconsciously, although this brain gives the command to the lungs to swell and contract.
But meditation is a process of controlled relaxation. We breathe exclusively in the stomach. We pick up air with a nose. Exhale through the mouth. We focus on how the stomach swells and falls. If this is not your first time meditating, try combining the fourth and fifth steps. Feel your body relaxing with each exhalation. So the irrepressible brain will concentrate on the simplest things, and other thoughts (about work, problems and so on) will simply recede.
Step Five Mantra-Based Meditation for Practitioners
If you choose this school, then you will be even more concerned about the question: “Where to start meditation for beginners, especially if you study at home and alone.” It will be more effective if you tape the mantras. Repeat the words behind the player. Out loud, in a whisper or in general to yourself - it's up to you. There is no need to memorize the text - this overexerts the memory and interferes with relaxation.
But repeated repetition leads to the automatic adoption of words. They are made organic to your consciousness. Later, the need for a player will disappear by itself. Mantras will become part of the processes of relaxation and concentration. But when phrases are learned to automatism, a certain complexity may arise. The irrepressible brain will give you thoughts in parallel with the pronunciation of the mantras. He will delve into the past, analyze past events, or head towards the future, building various plans. Take it calmly. Just return to the awareness of the meaning of the mantra, focus your attention on breathing and relaxing the body.
Step Six Become an outside observer
If we compare meditation with the process of restarting the computer (in our case, the brain), then all of the above practices were just closing programs. By concentrating on the subject, breathing, relaxing the body, we simply turned off our mind. These are preliminary steps. The goal of the practice itself is to achieve a degree of complete detachment from thoughts. They can appear, but sweep past, like light clouds driven by the wind.
It is not easy for beginners to go to the astral plane. How to meditate at home can be described in detail. But how to get out of yourself and become an outside observer? Modern man lives in an age of intense information flow. Many of what you hear and see you simply have no time to "digest". Therefore, it is not surprising that the brain begins to do this when you are relaxed. So it happens in those minutes when a person falls asleep. But unlike sleep, you are in complete control of your mind. Let thoughts flow. The main thing is not to delve into them.
We maintain a balance between concentration and relaxation
A novice during the exercise may be tormented by different questions. How to start meditation? Does it work for me, or did something go wrong? Did I get rid of thoughts the way I should? How long have I been meditating? Did I manage to concentrate? Am I saying the mantras correctly? But these doubts are precisely the thoughts that interfere with meditation.
Compare this with the process of immersion in sleep. If we persistently, with effort, tell ourselves that we should sleep, nothing will come of us. But you should be distracted - and you will quickly plunge into a nap. However, meditation is still not a dream. You must keep a “finger on the pulse” of your breath, body. You can not let consciousness drift. But you need to observe a fine line between effort and lack of will. And in the question of how to meditate at home, for beginners this problem is the most difficult.
Visualization technique
You can just watch the sunset. If you manage to devote all your attention to this spectacle within 30 seconds, consider that you have already meditated. But another thing is when you are in a room where objects are known to you and are not so interesting anymore. Try to imagine different images. It can be a multi-colored fire, a kaleidoscope or something abstract.
The School of Healing Qigong invites you to imagine yourself in a place where you felt good, calm, and safe to begin meditation. It can be a park, a forest, a beach, a mountain peak, a church and even a cozy cafe where you like to be. The main thing is that this is a suitable place in which peace and tranquility descend on you. To enhance the effect of presence, you can enable audio recordings with the sounds of the forest, surf, murmuring stream and so on.
Meditation time
It is better to do exercises in the morning and in the evening. Gradually increase the time from five minutes to 15–20. Where to start meditation in the morning? This is not physical exercise, where you need to jump out of bed and immediately do the tilt and lift the dumbbells. You must completely get rid of the traces of night sleep. Wash your bed. But do not eat breakfast. If you are too hungry, then eat something light. In the process of meditation you should not be distracted by thoughts about food and rumbling in your stomach. But it is also impossible to eat especially densely. After all, you already know where to start meditation? Right, with relaxation. But this will affect not only the arms and legs, but also the internal organs. The stomach will also slow down its work, and if it is full of food, it will negatively affect your well-being. In the evening, meditation should be done two hours after dinner.
A few practical tips for last.
Now you know where to start meditation. It remains to give some general recommendations.
- First and most important: do not give up because of failures. They happen to everyone. Perhaps on a certain day you are too inflated to achieve relaxation and departure to the astral plane. This is not a reason to quit practicing meditation.
- Do not expect instant results. The first effect appears 1-2 weeks after regular practice.
- Yes, classes should be daily. It is better to devote five minutes to meditation every morning than once a month for two hours.
- It is important not only the beginning of the exercise, but also the end of it.
- After meditation, do not rush to jump from the mat. Your "computer" (that is, the brain) turned off during the reboot. Now you need to wait until it starts working again. Sit a bit with your eyes closed. Recognize yourself here and now. Say that you are the master of your consciousness and are capable of creating your own life.