People like me cannot stop singing about how meditation has helped them in all spheres of life. They live their whole lives around the concept of meditation.

On the other hand, others just accept the fact that they cannot meditate and live with it. Some are skeptical and shut themselves out from the spiritual world completely.

If you’re facing these troubles as well, you’re at the right place. In this article, we sit down and peel the concept of meditation layer by layer to make it easily understandable from multiple aspects.

What Is Meditation?

Here is the Wikipedia answer: Meditation is a practice where an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness or focusing their mind on a particular object, thought or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.

This is the most basic you can get about it. But when you finish reading this article, you will have much more clarity.

• Origins Of Meditation Practice:

Meditation is one of the eight limbs of Yoga. Whenever we think about Yoga, a picture of a slender body bending literally into human origami comes to our mind. But Yoga is not just about the asanas. Yoga is a whole lifestyle. It involves living, breathing, eating, working, worshipping, learning and studying consciously.

As the concept of Yoga got carried to different parts of the world, the original eight “limbs” got divided and people started practicing them as separate concepts. Most of us cannot commit to a Yoga lifestyle. Thus, we borrow the parts that we can perform in our daily life and that’s completely fine. But one should be aware of the whole concept and what all it involves because one cannot achieve results by being a rude boss in the day and meditating in the evening.

• Goals Of Meditation:

It depends on what you want as a result.

• Psychological wellness

• Relax the body and mind

• Get rid of everyday stress

• Prepare the mind for another day

• Emotional stability

• Help heal medical conditions.

• Spiritual evolution

• To move past our “conscious self” and identify our innate real nature, which is nothing but love, happiness, and a state of pure bliss where nothing is good or bad. It just is.

Ideally speaking, you won’t want to stick to any goals. Move with the flow and let go of attachments to goals and milestones.

• Requirements Of Meditation:

Ideally, you don’t require anything but yourself. You can practice meditation anywhere you like, even while traveling on the bus, for example. But most of us struggle to start with meditation and carry on with it for the lack of motivation, discipline or guidance. Involving a meditation room or a ritual helps to discipline and bring our focus into the “zone”.

• Who Can Meditate?

Anyone and everyone! You just need a brain that can comprehend what we are doing. Get your family including children along. Group meditation has benefits multiplied! On the other hand, if you’re only comfortable alone, that’s good too.

• Meditation Positions:

To be honest, the position doesn’t matter until you’re comfortable and your posture is not harming you. Whenever possible, make sure your spine is straight, whichever position you choose. You can lie down, sit on a chair, sit on the ground cross-legged or in the Padma asana.

Falling asleep during meditation sometimes is okay. But if it’s happening every time, you might want to look at the reason you’re falling asleep or change your position or the time you meditate.

• What Time To Meditate?

You should be able to do it any time of the day or night. I do it whenever I remember during the day. But if you’re following a strict discipline, you will want to fix a time. This way, your brain gets trained to automatically tune into the meditative states just when the time comes.

Most people sync their meditation time with the Buddhist monks in India or Nepal i.e. 4:00 – 6:00 am IST. They believe that they can tune in to their energies in this way. To each their own. Fix any time you can manage.

• Where To Meditate?

You should be able to do it anywhere. Even on a bus or while going about your routine activities.

Here’s how: For an ideal setting, you would require a dedicated meditation room or space. A dedicated space has benefits of convergence of positive energies at that particular space. If you worship a particular higher being, you can expect them or similar energies to wait for you in your meditation space around the time when you start. Sounds exciting? Here’s how to design your own meditation room.

• Types Of Meditation:

To be honest, this article cannot cover all types of meditations in the world. For simple purposes, you don’t need to go into so many details about kundalini and all those things in the beginning. Some of the practices can even be dangerous if not practiced under the guidance of a guru.

Please trust your intuition and do thorough research before you spend your time and money on something. You will know when you find your true path.

Try different types of meditations until one fits you and continue until you feel the need to change. Many people jump from one modality to others until they find the right one that just seems to fit. No modality is better than the other. It’s just about preference.

Learn about Mindfulness Meditation here.

In the beginning, it can get too difficult for some. If that’s the case, I would suggest using guided meditations. After you develop certain stability you can let go of these for not having to depend on something for meditating. You can find many useful tracks on the internet, both free and paid. There are various apps such as Insight timer and Headspace, available to guide you, with or without music.

I suggest finding the track that suits you the best and then sticking with it. This way, your brain gets trained to it and it knows what to do and when. For me, sometimes the track keeps playing in the back of my head even when I’m not meditating.

You can achieve all your goals by starting with any of the simple meditations. Because you will be getting in touch with your higher self, it will always guide you to the right master, right people, right courses, right apps, and right thoughts. Patience and persistence is the key.

• Benefits And Harms Of Meditation:

Find a detailed list here.

This is all I can think of for the time being. In a nutshell, I would say that meditation can be practiced anytime, anywhere and in any manner, you want as long as you’re open to it. One should develop the habit of reading (if you’re reading this, you’re good!).

It’s only beneficial to at least be aware of all the pros and cons of meditation and its types. Follow the path which feels right for you and please refrain from straying from the actual goal of meditation.

Take-Home Sentence:

Cultivate stillness in everything you do.

Lastly, all of us are on a different journey and differences in opinion are bound to occur. Please feel free to contact me with your views and suggestions.