"How to Meditate for Beginners" "Meditation guide for everyday living. Learn how to reduce stress and anxiety, while increasing your peace and relaxation."

By Nathan Allen

 

"How to Meditate for Beginners" "Meditation guide for everyday living. Learn how to reduce stress and anxiety, while increasing your peace and relaxation."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nathan Allen
• Release date: Dec 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201367107

Book preview

TABLE OF CONTENT:

INTRODUCTION TO MEDITATION

MY EXPERIENCES WITH MEDITATION

THE TOOL FOR REDUCING STRESS CHANGING YOUR PERCEPTION

THE BEST ENVIRONMENT TO PRACTICE MEDITATION

THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF MEDITATION

THE BENEFITS OF PRACTICING MEDITATION

BEGINNERS GUIDE FOR STARTING MEDITATION

OVERCOMING DEPRESSION THROUGH MEDITATION

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION TO MEDITATION

Meditation has adept me with the ability to enjoy more constant states of calmness, joy, well-being and peace, tolerance, distinct ability to navigate troubled waters by responding rather than reacting has been awesome and life-changing. I’m also grateful for the gift of fostering and nourishing a greater sense of empathy, kindness, compassion, tolerance, patience and acceptance towards myself and every other individual I come across. Without intention, my intuition had also been super-charged positively by meditation (which was pretty high voltage, to begin with) and enriched an attitude of gratitude.

The human inner world is made up of the mind, body, soul. The creative benefits of these elements are immeasurable. Most of all I am extremely grateful that I have been able to connect more passionately with my inner world through the use of meditation and this has made me to be more evidently understand the nature of mind.

It is with a deep sense of acknowledgement and with some time, knowledge and experience with meditation to share, I’m on a mission to make meditation more attainable to a wider audience with a secular and easy to implement into daily life practice that pretty much anyone  can do almost anywhere and anytime.

I had my first memory of any experience with meditation in my teenage age. I had been trying to meditate for what felt like a century. Although in reality, it had only been 9 months, but my sense of time could get lapped by a snail when something feels too difficult, and this makes meditating very very hard. Instead of relieving it, it causes me stress.

I keenly knew that when it comes to mediating, all I have to do whenever I am distracted is to focus on the here and now and bring myself back to the centre. But when the timer would ding, I’d be miles down the path without ever having turned around.

No matter what I did, it just seem to be like a waste of time. Although I wasn't aware, I was ruminating and just winding my thoughts tighter and tighter. And I was seriously questioning whether I was constitutionally incapable of practising one of the most popular and scientifically proven ways to re-wire your brain. I tried seeking solution, I searched through apps, the cushy mats, the ideal time of day etc.

I bought and tried them all, looking for a solution outside of myself. Which hey, that right there is probably the main reason I need to meditate, but without detaching from our thoughts, we usually can’t see the forest through the trees.

It finally clicked when a friend in recovery introduced me to the concept of metaphorically sitting on a bench at the bus station during my meditation time. She likened my character to that of the Inexperienced People Watcher

I had so much desire to sit back, sip a nice dark roast, and watch the world go by was apparently. But unknowingly to me, I had fallen into a deeply worn out of going to a bus station only to get outta town.

I had gotten pulled into the call for the bus to St. Louis and followed the rest of the station goers as they got on. I only realized I had actually wanted to stay put on the bench once the iconic arch was in view. So I travelled the whole way back, hoping to grab a seat on my beloved bench before the station closed for the night.

Next up on the never-ending supply of distractions, the call for the bus to the Big Apple. Hell yeah, I’m getting on that bus, I’d think. Everyone else is.

I took the bait and got on — again. It’s NYC, after all. About halfway there, I realized the world was zipping by outside the window, and I’d lost my peaceful seat on the bench. I hopped off and travelled back to the station. Since it hadn’t taken as long to redirect my course on this trip, I had more time to get back and watch the curious flurry of the travellers.

That’s progress, she said.

It took me time and practice to not only stay on the bench but also understand the most important lesson: the practice of coming and going is itself the heart of mediation, not the failure of it.

Sitting on the bench day after day, it slowly but surely sank in that whether I boarded the bus or not, it would still take off and go down the road. Other people would get on, but I didn’t need to join them. I could enjoy their travel without moving from right where I needed, and wanted, to be. If (and when), I did find myself zipping down the road, the bench will still be there.

We all need different anchors. We all need different explanations and visuals in life to get that light bulb to turn on. Sometimes it feels like I missed the obvious when sitting on my fancy meditation mat, but I’ve learned that life isn’t about succeeding or failing — it’s about doing, learning, and growing. I am allowed to relax on the bench and buy a return ticket when needed,

As a young teenager, I also suffered from serious and frequent migraines. Unfortunately, or fortunately for me as fate would have it, I ended up in the hospital and met a highly esteemed and renowned neurologist who taught me progressive muscle relaxation. This is a method of meditation that involves imaging your special peaceful place and relaxing the entire body from the toes up. I practised daily on a regular basis and it made an important difference in reducing the intensity and diminishing the frequency of the migraines in those preceding years of my life.

Those early teenage years with meditation was perhaps the portal that led me further into my investigation with meditation and Eastern Philosophies. My teenage years were allured with spiritual paths and meditation. My shrine of inspiration was very high from my knowledge of Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.

During my late teens and early twenties, I spent endless hours at the Theosophical Society bookshop reading up on Hermetic Law and other mind-bending tomes because of my quest for a meaningful life. I read a lot of books on Hinduism, I read the entire Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu equivalent of the Bible. My copy of the classic, "The Roots of Consciousness by Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD could often be found in the hands of my fellow seekers and I also explored Hindu-based meditations including mantra