ABOUT MEDITATION, LEARN TO MEDITATE

What is meditation

Meditation is a group of mental training techniques. You can use meditation to improve mental health and capacities, and also to help improve the physical health. Some of these techniques are very simple, so you can learn them from a book or an article; others require guidance by a qualified meditation teacher.


Most techniques called meditation include these components:

1. You sit or lie in a relaxed position.

2. You breathe regularly. You breathe in deep enough to get enough oxygen. When you breathe out, you relax your muscles so that your lungs are well emptied, but without straining.

3. You stop thinking about everyday problems and matters.

4. You concentrate your thoughts upon some sound, some word you repeat, some image, some abstract concept or some feeling. Your whole attention should be pointed at the object you have chosen to concentrate upon.

5. If some foreign thoughts creep in, you just stop this foreign thought, and go back to the object of meditation.

The different meditation techniques differ according to the degree of concentration, and how foreign thoughts are handled. By some techniques, the objective is to concentrate so intensely that no foreign thoughts occur at all.

In other techniques, the concentration is more relaxed so that foreign thoughts easily pop up. When these foreign thoughts are discovered, one stops these and goes back to the pure meditation in a relaxed manner. Thoughts coming up, will often be about things you have forgotten or suppressed, and allow you to rediscover hidden memory material. This rediscovery will have a psychotherapeutic effect.


THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HYPNOSIS AND MEDITATION

Hypnosis can be used for relaxation, motivation and behaviour modification, but the effects you get is very dependent upon the exact way hypnosis is performed. When there is a need for some specific effect, an approriate hypnosis techique can be the right choise.

Meditation give a broader range of mentally relaxing, physically relaxing and physically adjusting effects, and by regular meditation ofer time these effects are deeper than the effects of hypnosis.

You can use hypnosis to get some spesific psychoterepeutic effects, for example to remember better events experienced in childhood and to modify the effect these happenings have had on the mental state. Meditation give a broader and deeper range of psychoterapeutic effects, but these occur gradually over a longer time.

When you meditate you are also in full control yourself; by hypnosis you let some other person or some mechanical device control you. Also hypnosis will not have a training effect upon the ability to concentrate.

Some techiques called hypnosis are however very close to meditation, and can be used as a form of meditation.


A SIMPLE FORM OF MEDITATION

Here is a simple form of meditation:

1. Sit in a good chair in a comfortable position.

2. Relax all your muscles as well as you can.

3. Stop thinking about anything, or at least try not to think about anything.

4. Breath out, relaxing all the muscles in your breathing apparatus.

5. Repeat the following in 10 - 20 minutes:

- Breath in so deep that you feel you get enough oxygen.

- Breath out, relaxing your chest and diaphragm completely.

- Every time you breathe out, think the word "one" or another simple word inside yourself. You should think the word in a prolonged and relaxed manner, and so that you hear it inside you, but you should try to avoid using your mouth or voice.

6. If foreign thoughts come in, just stop these thoughts in a relaxed manner, and keep on concentrating upon the breathing and the word you repeat.

As you proceed through this meditation, you should feel steadily more relaxed in your mind and body, feel that you breathe steadily more effectively, and that the blood circulation throughout your body gets more efficient. You may also feel an increasing mental pleasure throughout the meditation.


How to Do Mantra-Meditation

The meditation technique described here is much the same as those techniques called Transcendental Meditation or Acem- meditation. But there are certain differences that might give you more benefits than those rigorous methods and suite better for you personally and your personal goals.

Mantra-meditation is called so because an important ingredient in the method is repition of a word or combination of words, called a mantra.

A recommended techique

The mantra-medition recommended here is done like the following:

You place yourself in a comfortable position. Generally one advices to sit comfortably in a good chair. But you can also lie confortably on your back or sides if you feel that is best, and if you know this probably will not make you fall asleep instead of meditating.

You close your eyes, tries to relax as well as possible, and tries to breath regularly. Try to breath deep enough, and breath totally out for each time, but without force the breath so that it feels exhausting.

You will probably not be able to relax and breath perfectly, but this is allright, The important thing is that you try without any hard effort.

Then you repeat the mantra with a medium speed, only by thinking it in an easy fashion, without exhausting yourself in any way. Pause just as much between each repetition that you feel natural and easy. Sometimes during meditation you will feel that a faster or slower speed will work better, and then adjust the speed.

Try to repeat it exactly. You shall not speak it, or move your lips or other speach organs. But again, do not exhaust yourself to do it correctly. Do it the best you can without forcing yourself.

It is generally adviced to meditate 15-30 minutes twice a day, but you can variate how long, when or how often according to your own need. But you should do some meditation each day to give effective results over time.

When you repeat the mantra, you will experience that a lot of thoughts or feelings begin to appear in your mind. Many of these will be good or interesting. Sometimes however you will begin thinking about unpleasant things. As long as these experiences are not very disturbing, they are a sign that the meditation is working. Often you will suddenly remember things that happened to you at some time, often in your childhood, or tings you learned a long time ago, but thought you had forgotten.

You may experience that these thoughts make you stop repeating the mantra, or that you actually keep repeating the mantra even though you experience material popping up and think about it.

The right thing in most cases is to gently stop each thoughts as it pops up, and anew keep repeating the pure mantra.

But sometimes a thought popping up is so important that you should let the thinking go on for a while, either by continue the thinking while still repeating the mantra, or continue thinking a while when the mantra repitition is paused.

Examples of this are when you discover some important material from your childhood during meditation, or when you begin finding a solution to an important problem when you are meditating.

When you have done the mediation in the planned amount of minutes, you should keep yourself relaxed with closed eyes a minute or so, and then gradually open your eyes and getting up from your position.

How to choose your mantras

You must find a mantra or a set of mantras that suit you. The best is to have a set of mantras you alternate between, because different mantras will give somewhat different benefits. You should try one mantra after another and write down those you like.

You can make up mantras yourself or easily search for some at the Internet. Your mantras should sound melodious, and be easy for you to repeat. They should be of 1, 2 or 3 syllables. The mantras should not have any spesific meaning to you. It is impossible to make up a mantra that do not mean anything in a particular languages or for a particular person. You must just find some that do not bear any specific meaning for you.

Still the sound combination in any mantra can give associations to several things in your mind. This is alright, since that make you more easily detect hidden memories during medition. By using just not one mantra, but swich several, you wil be able to track a lot more hidden things in your mind, than when you use only one mantra, and the meditation will benefit your more.

Organizations teaching mantra-meditation will usually give you one mantra that the teacher say is the right for you. This will seldome be the case, and the meditation will give you effects decided by the organization, not the effects you aim at yourself, and which benefit you the most.

Here are some examples of one-syllabic combinations that you can use as matras: an, en, in, on, un, na, ne, ni, no, ing, ang, ong, yang, yong, yung, wing, wang, wong, sing, sang, song, sin, san, sun, son, sen, shim, sham, shom, shem, shing, shang, shong, aing, aim, ain, aim, aum, aun, lam, lan, lang, long, sham, shan, wen, win, wan, won, ring, rong, rang, way, woy, wey, wel, wil, wal, wol, yel, yal, yol

Some two-syllabic mantras: inga, winga, shinga, shanga, ringa, linga, ranga, ronga, sirin, shirin, salim, shalim, salem, shalem, balam, salam, shalam, shalom, shilem, noni, nuni, moni, muni, waya, weya, woya, wala, wila, walang, wilang, wilong, parong, porang, yala, yela, yola

Some tri-syllabic mantras: winomi, sinomi, shinomi, wasana, washana, ringala, rongala, rengala, wakana, takana, sakana, yakana, wanaya, pasimo, pashimo, yolana, walana

Some of the mantras mention above will mean something specific to you. Avoid these. Other are not likeable for you. Avoid also these. You can then try out the rest one by one, and chose a set that feels god for you. or you can just make up your own combinations.


THE EFFECTS OF MEDITATION

Meditation has the following effects:

1. Meditation will give you rest and recreation.

2. You learn to relax.

3. You learn to concentrate better on problem solving.

4. Meditation often has a good effect upon the blood pressure.

5. Meditation has beneficial effects upon inner body processes, like circulation, respiration and digestion.

6. Regular meditation will have a psychotherapeutically effect.

7. Regular meditation will facilitate the immune system.

8. Meditation is usually pleacent.


THE EFFECTS OF MEDITATION UPON DISEASES

As any kind of training, meditation may be exaggerated so that you get tired and worn out. Therefore you should not meditate so long or so concentrated that you feel tired or mentally emptied.

Meditation may sometimes give problems for people suffering from mental diseases, epilepsy, serious heart problems or neurological diseases. On the other hand, meditation may be of help in the treatment of these and other conditions.

People suffering from such conditions should check out what effects the different kinds of meditation have on their own kind of health problems, before beginning to practise meditation, and be cautious if they choose to begin to meditate. It may be wise to learn meditation from an experienced teacher, psychologist or health worker that use meditation as a treatment module for the actual disease.


SPECIAL EFFECTS OF MEDITATION

Some people report that long practice of meditation awaken clairovoyant abilities, that is abilities to see, hear or feel things on distance, back in time or foreward in time. Some people also report that they get abilities to read other peoples thoughts, send thoughts to other people or influence other peoples desicions through telepathy.

Most people cannot however expect such results.

What you however can expect is a stronger intuition, that is abilities to assess and feel instantly the truth of a situation, based on everything you sense through your ordinaty senses.

You can also expect to gradually get better social skills.


THE HISTORY OF MEDITATION

Many cultures have discovered meditation techniques and the effects of meditation. Most probably they discovered it during activities that have many of the same properties as meditation and then invented more pure meditation methods on base of their discoveries. Activities that lead to such discoveries are preyer, music, song and dance. Then meditation got to be systematically used for special purposes in specific religious and cultural settings.

One common purpose is to make a spiritual connection with the whole universe, including spiritual realms, and use this connection to get information about the deeper connections, reasons and meanings of the world and of life. A purpose is also to develop mental and spiritual qualities that make one able to understand the deeper connections and hidden processes of the universe and life, especially those spiritual.

One common traditional purpose is to develop spiritual capabilities that makes it easier to fulfill the goals of one's own religion. Another is to induce mental states that makes it possible to communicate with the godness or with spirits in another realm in order to make religious progress.

But meditation has also been systematically used to cure mental and physical illness. A traditional shaman will for example use meditative techiques to set himself in a mental state that makes him able to influence directly the health of his patient. Then he uses meditative or hypnotic techniques to set the patient in a mental state that makes him open for the treatment.

Meditation has an especially great place in Indian Hinduistic or Buddistic religions and in offsprings of these religions in other Asian countries. During the 1900es several Indian meditation teachers, usually called gurus, came to Europe and America to teach their own meditation techniques, with variously strong connection to the proper Indian religion. Best known of these is the Guru maharishi Mahesh Yogi that founded a worldwide organization to teach his technique, Transcendental meditation. This type of meditation has got a lot of followers and has gained a wide inflence in the western world. Maharishis organization is teaching the techique without demending from the followers that they shall adhere to any specific religious tradition.