How to Choose the Best Meditation for You

If meditation is so good for us, why can it feel so hard to get started?

You’ve most likely seen reports listing many benefits from meditation, recently have been scientifically proven to produce long-lasting improvements in mental cognition, problem-solving, and even increases in brain cell growth after just a few weeks of meditating for 20 minutes a day. Scientific interest in this topic has been steadily growing with no slow-down in sight; Google scholar lists over 5,000 studies citing benefits of meditation that have been published in the first seven months of 2015.

Some of the advantages of meditation include: reduction of stress which in turn boosts the immune system, energy levels, and sense of wellbeing and equanimity; growth of grey cells in the brain and the hippocampus, contributing to better cognitive functioning and problem solving; lengthened telomeres, contributing to greater longevity and overall health.

In addition to these and hundreds of more proven benefits of meditation, people who meditate also find themselves surrounded with happy coincidences and delightful synchronicity. Things just seem to go their way.

So how can we get started meditating, when it’s something we’ve never done before?

 

Overcome Inner Resistance

As in all matters of health and wellbeing, we can be our own best friends and supporters on a path to improvement, or we can be self-saboteurs. Since meditation is turning out to be as important to good health as sleep, diet, and exercise, it’s important to find ways to ensure we make time for it in our daily lives. And just like choosing diet and exercise programs that work best for you, a meditation program will be most rewarding and effective when it’s well-suited to your individual strengths, style, and preferences. And when it’s fun!

I’ve found that one of the best ways for me to stick with my commitment to daily meditation is to practice the types of meditation I most enjoy. There are so many types of meditation to choose from–yet I know I’ll actually do the ones that feel just right for me, because I feel like they’re actually fun! This tactic is a bit like “whistling while you work,” but it’s actually even better than that, because when I choose types of meditation I like to do, meditation isn’t a bit like work!

 

Create Your Favorite Meditations

Here’s a quick way to zero in on finding the best meditation technique for you. First, choose a favorite physically relaxing activity, and then select a favorite mental focus. When you combine these two, you’ll have a customized meditation technique that is just right for you! To get started, honestly complete two sentences:  (1) One of my favorite ways to relax is _________________ and (2) I most enjoy focusing my attention on ___________________.

It’s helpful to take a look at examples of some different ways people might answer these questions, to give you an idea of how to construct personalized meditations, starting with the idea of taking a look at your favorite way to relax. And yes, simply doing whatever activity you find most relaxing can count as a form of meditation!

(1) One of my favorite ways to relax is to:

Listen to music
Work in the garden
Close my eyes and breathe deeply
Watch clouds go by
Take a hot bath
Go for a walk

People who enjoy walking can develop their own form of walking meditation. Some people count their breaths as they walk, others simply let go of their worries with each deep breath, and still others observe their thoughts go by without pursuing them. What sort of mental focus appeals to you?

Cynthia Sue Larson using two wire coat hangers to dowse energy fields

(2) I most enjoy focusing my attention on:

Letting go of all thoughts
Breathing
Observing the patterns of thoughts
Feeling energy flowing through my body

Whatever mental focus most appeals to you is the one to try. Some people prefer to mull over various thoughts of the day, while others find a sense of nirvana in getting to a place of inner harmonious peace in which thoughts and feelings are cleared away as they show up. Some people feel relaxed by paying attention to bringing awareness to physical activities such as breathing, and take care to breathe more slowly and deeply to the lower abdomen. If you don’t know what you prefer, then try out various ways to focus your attention until you find one that feels best to you. 

This is really all there is to it… just combine one of your most relaxing activities with one of your most relaxing mental focuses, and you are meditating! You can even come up with a few favorite meditations, such as one that works best when first awakening, another one to do while showering or brushing your teeth, and yet another to do while taking a walk. 

If you try one meditation and find you don’t like it, then try another one. You can find something you like, so don’t give up!

 

Listen to Recorded Meditations

Could you use a little extra help getting started with meditation? Or perhaps you could benefit from meditation assistance on days that are more challenging. Some people find it’s easiest and most enjoyable to meditate with assistance from recorded meditations. My Aura Healing Meditations are available as an autographed CD through the RealityShifters website, as MP3 audio files, and tracks on iTunes and Amazon, and can be played to create a positive healing environment any time you wish to reduce stress, enhance your energy field, improve your health, and increase your effectiveness.

 

You can watch the video edition of this post on YouTube at: http://youtu.be/idpVLQuQnBk

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Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics on numerous shows including the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, the BBC and One World with Deepak Chopra. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters®

Get into “The Zone” Where Doing Less is Much, Much More

There is a saying I’ve often heard in martial arts classes that, “If you’re putting lots of muscle into a certain escape or technique, you’re doing it wrong.” While this may at first seem counter-intuitive, since one might assume that greater forcefulness is always good in self defense, ancient wisdom teaches that minimal effort is required when using proper technique. In fact, so little effort is needed when correctly applying technique, that sometimes it can feel to the person doing the technique that nothing is being done at all. Yet with remarkably little muscle power, by applying just the right force and momentum to the right place at the right time, a very small person can defend themselves against a much larger opponent.

I recently read a WeWork blog post that reminded me of the importance of doing less with more, Save Time and Do Less, that got me thinking about applying this concept in daily life. The basic concepts presented in this article suggest you can ask seven simple questions to help optimize various aspects of your life, which can help ensure that you aren’t inadvertently wasting time. These tips include such important concepts as remembering to: say “no,” delegate tasks, and eliminate non-essentials. These questions are an excellent start to ensuring you gain more time to do what you love most by doing less of what matters least. I love all these tips, and as a writer and author, I’d add making sure you have times when you aren’t jumping to immediately reply to every phone call, email, chat, text, facebook post and tweet.

In addition to these wonderful suggestions, I’ve found there exists a level beyond these basic tips available to me if and when I get into “The Zone” of meditative awareness. From such a state of awareness, I realize that who I think I am–the “Me” who is watching and observing the world–is also the awareness watching and observing my thoughts and feelings. From such a state of elevated awareness, I am more fully present in each moment, and thus much more genuinely responsive to doing and saying exactly the best thing at the right time.

Getting into “The Zone” with Meditation

Meditation is not as hard as you might think. Any time you enjoy the space between your thoughts, such as when gazing out off into the distance at leaves rustling in the breeze, or clouds floating by in the sky, you are in a meditative state of mind. Enjoying such moments brings tremendous value from accessing a kind of expanded awareness that members of the Seattle Seahawks recently utilized in winning the Super Bowl this year. Offensive tackle Russell Okung was quoted by ESPN as saying,

 “Meditation is as important as lifting weights and being out there on the field for practice. It’s about quieting your mind and getting into certain states where everything outside of you doesn’t matter in that moment. There are so many things telling you that you can’t do something, but you take those thoughts captive, take power over them, and change them.”

The Seattle Seahawks were coached to include meditation each and every day, and as a result, found that they moved together much more cohesively, much more effortlessly, with responses to unpredictable developments in the game happening with an extraordinary level of coordination and finesse.

What Makes the Difference of Success and Failure in Your Life?

When you look back at past successes and failures, would you tend to attribute results more to physical events, or mental frame of mind? If you answered, “Mental,” you’re recognizing the importance of benefiting from staying on task without interference from intrusive distracting thoughts.

When I meditate, I experience a sense of moving in synchronization with what I’m doing and who I’m working with. There’s a possible explanation for this from quantum physics, which is called coherence. You can observe coherence in Nature when you see a flock of starlings or a school of fish changing direction simultaneously. There is a sense of shared consciousness happening, which may just be due to these animals getting into “The Zone” in a state of meditative awareness of being awareness–of being aware. This is a way of finding you are now doing exactly the right thing at the right time, saying the best possible thing to the most appropriate person, and feeling inspired to pursue those tasks and activities that most benefit you and others.

And best of all, it only takes a few minutes every day to get into “The Zone” and start experiencing the joys of synchronicity!