How to Meditate: A Beginner's Guide
(Tools for the Toolbox)
(c) 2004 Laura Turner, revised 11/10/23
If you suffer from anxiety like I do or have ever wondered how people who live to be 100 with an excellent quality of life do it, in his book Aging Well, Harvard researcher George Vaillant, M.D., gives you some secret sauce. Here, he accounts for his discoveries about what centenarians do. They cultivate a sense of peace, well-being and maintain a positive attitude. And here's one of their biggest secrets: meditation [1]. Therefore, in my quest to give you easy, sensible tools for the toolbox for living a long, healthy life, I’ll begin here by showing you why you should make meditation a priority. Next, I'll give you some easy exercises to help get you started from my book: Spiritual Fitness: The 7-Steps to Living Well.
Meditation Defined:
Meditational exercises primarily use the experience of the body and thought to reconnect with the environment and its healing power. Meditation, when practiced frequently, has been proven to promote inner peace and wellness. Meditation is also a mental practice in which the mind is directed to one area, often the breath. It draws its energy from the human connection to nature and creates a sense of unity of one-ness with it.
This unity increases communication with the spirit of the body. It also allows positive thoughts and stimulates positive physiological and psychological effects. Meditation techniques are easy to learn and can be incorporated into any lifestyle. If practiced regularly, meditation will bring balance to your body and mind.
The general benefits of meditation and breathing exercises include:
Deep inner peace
Improved self-esteem
Increased creativity
Physical health/healing
Reduced medical care
Slowing/ reversal of aging
Reversing of heart disease
Stimulation of the body's immune system
Reduced stress
There is no one right way to meditate. Here are some of my favorite meditational exercises to get you started. Remember, there is no wrong path here. Try these, or sit in silence for 20 minutes daily. You'll be glad you did.
Meditative Grounding Exercise:
Sit with your legs crossed in a comfortable (lotus-style) position with your hands relaxed on your lap. Please close your eyes and imagine a beam of light dropping from the base of your spine through the earth and connecting you to its center.
Allow this light beam to expand in width until it is wider than your body and envelops it. This is your personal space.
This exercise places you in your body and reminds you that you are anchored to the earth. Remember, the more grounded you are, the more aware you are. Sense the presence of your higher self: listen for its voice.
Energy Cleaning Exercise:
Now that you are grounded, you must cleanse this personal space. Often, we collect other people's energies and are unaware of it. We do this through interaction with others and basic activities of daily living.
Imagine holding a brush and sweeping away the debris to remove all foreign energies from your space.
Allow the debris to fall to the ground and become washed away. Let the light from the previous exercise envelop your body and spread its healing energy to the edge of your space, forming a protective force field around you.
Cleaning your body's surrounding area will keep you grounded, define your boundaries, and declare your space. Then, choose who and what you wish to enter your space, keeping disease and illness out.
Breathing Exercise:
Follow your breath as you slowly inhale through your nose and exhale through your nose. Count with each exhale until you reach ten, then begin again at one.
If you find yourself past 10, acknowledge this and begin again at one from wherever you are.
Imagine your body's cells replaced with fresh, pure oxygen and positive healing energy from this power source. Picture yourself exhaling old cells, stress, illness, and worries.
Let your thoughts pass through your mind like drifting clouds. Let them in and gently let them pass through. If the mind should harbor a negative thought, refocus on the breath.
Thank any persistent negative thoughts for coming into your mind, and then gently let them go.
Listen only for the positive, pronounced voice of your body.
Retrieve Your Energy Exercise:
Since foreign energy often resides in your space, let's assume you leave energy in other places. After completing the preceding exercises, it is necessary to re-energize and call energy back.
Imagine you have an energy magnet used to attract your energy back to you. Visualize energy flowing back to you, filling your body with light, health, and empowerment.
Allow a few minutes for the process.
And that's all there is to it. Try to give meditation 10 to 20 minutes of your day, and soon, you will become aware of the benefits I described. Take it from someone who suffers from anxiety. It's a healthy tool for the toolbox you won't want to live without.
References:
1. Vaillant, George E., M.D., Aging Well. New York: Little, Brown and Company