How To Improve Your Life With Easy Meditation Techniques
Meditation has the power to help reduce stress and anxiety, boost productivity, improve physical health, and even make you smarter. But it can also be confusing to figure out how to meditate. With easy meditation techniques from this post, you’ll find that no matter what your goals are in life there is a simple technique that will benefit you.
A recent blog post published on Elite Daily went viral, which was titled “How To Meditate Like A Pro: 5 Easy Tips To Mindfulness In Your Everyday Life.” The author, Caitlin Yeo, says her goal was to help others to become more mindful, but admits that she did not know how to meditate when she first started. However, through a series of Google searches and Youtube videos with simple guided meditations, she learned how to achieve mindfulness in her life.
Meditation is not a new topic. According to the Mayo Clinic (1), mindfulness meditation has been practiced for thousands of years by eastern cultures. Recently, mindfulness training has experienced a rebirth in the west as a technique for stress relief, deep relaxation, and even mood stabilization.
Mindfulness can be defined as “paying attention in the present moment and being aware of your thoughts, feelings and actions” (2). You can be mindful in your day to day life by paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, and actions. But mindfulness meditation is not just about those basic minded actions. It is much more than that.
In a previous blog post, I wrote about how you can improve your marriage by learning how to meditate. In that post, I focused on how to meditate as a couple. In this post I’ll focus on how to meditate as an individual.
Most people consider meditation to be a bunch of complicated breathing exercises or repetitive exercises designed to relax. But meditation is much more than that, and there is an easy technique that anyone can use to help them achieve their goals in life instantly.
If you are interested in learning how to meditate to reduce stress and anxiety or to improve productivity, I recommend starting with the Headspace app. The Headspace app offers 10-minute guided meditations that you can listen to at home or on the go. It also offers 30-day courses that can help you transform your life through meditation. If you are looking for a FREE app, The Chopra Center has an app that offers a series of simple meditation techniques called “5 Minute Meditations.”
In this article, I will share 6 easy meditation techniques you can use to achieve your goals in life. You don’t have to learn complicated breathing exercises or repetitive mind-body exercises to get the benefits of meditation. You can have the same results immediately, by following the simple instructions below:
Simple Meditation Technique #1 – Counting Your Breaths
Most people think of mindfulness as just a series of deep, calming breaths in and out. This is not true. Mindful awareness is much more than that. It is about living in the moment and paying attention to every detail of your life.
A good way for anyone to start a meditation practice is by counting your breaths. There are hundreds of breathing exercises that you can use as part of a meditation practice, but for beginners it is better to keep things simple and focus on the breath.
In order to count your breaths, you will need to learn how many breaths per minute you normally breathe. This can be done easily by using the talk test . Simply record the length of time it takes you to say “I am grateful for” three times. This should be around 15 seconds. Then multiply the number of seconds by 4 and that is how many breaths you are taking per minute. For example, if it takes you 15 seconds to say “I am grateful for” three times, multiply 15 by 4 to get 60. 60 breaths per minute is considered a normal resting breath rate.
Next you need to find a quiet place and sit comfortably in your chair. You can keep your eyes open or closed while counting your breaths. The goal is to focus on counting but also to notice everything else going on around you at the same time. Here are the steps:
Start by taking a few deep breaths (inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds). Then begin counting silently as you take each breath (inhale: 1, hold: 1, exhale: 1). When you reach the end of your breath, start back at zero. Keep doing this until you get to 10, then start back at one. Do this until you feel like the counting distracts your focus on the natural flow of your breath. When you feel ready, stop counting and just do a few more deep breaths (inhale 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds).
Tip: If it helps you stay focused on counting your breaths, use a timer.
Conclusion: Counting your breaths has a lot of benefits. It can help you achieve mindfulness in your day to day life. You can use this technique to focus on the moment and notice all of the different things that you are experiencing.
Simple Meditation Technique #2 – Listening To Your Body
Are you familiar with the concept of your “body image”? It refers to how you evaluate the way that your body looks or feels.