do you meditate

There cannot be enough said about the importance of meditation to a person's quality of life. Meditating on a daily basis allows you to clear away the stress and tension that occurs each and every day of our lives. Recently there has been research which shows that meditation can help people who are suffering from hypertension. The medical community recognizes that untreated hypertension puts people at a much higher risk for heart disease, and strokes. By meditating, people are able to reduce the tension in their lives and this has been shown to help reduce their blood pressure. There are a number of benefits you can receive from meditation. Meditation helps you to achieve a deeper communication with your inner spiritual self by allowing you to achieve a state of mind where it is possible to deeply reflect on issues, and gain a new insight into your own personality. Meditation also allows you to release the daily negative influences by trying to rationalize other people's beliefs and applying them to yourself. Meditation can also allow you to develop your intuition. There are no magic tricks, or silver bullets when it comes to meditating. It is a very natural process of allowing ourselves to flow into another state of consciousness. It is sort of like day dreaming, for a brief moment our mind goes into an altered state of consciousness and we are unaware of what is going around us. It's almost like our mind has taken a brief break to recharge itself. Mediation can give you a sense of recharging, because there is a wonderful feeling of wellbeing that comes along with the practice of meditation. There are probably a lot of misconceptions about meditation. I'm sure many people think of meditation with the stereotypical image of the 60's hippie in a lotus position surrounded by clouds of incense with sitar music blaring away in the background, or they think that it is some complex process practiced by Tibetan monks which will take years for an ordinary person to master. In reality, meditation is a very easy and comfortable mind altering exercise. If practiced on a daily basis, it can easily become something that one looks forward to at the end of a long and tiring day. There are no special tools required for meditating, just a CD or cassette with some quite gentle classical or new age music. I have taught meditation to thousands of people over the past thirty years and find that soft gentle music helps. It's best to use the same music each time you meditate. That way it becomes part of the meditation space. Also you will need to find a nice comfortable place to relax. You should plan on spending at least twenty minutes meditating, so tell people not to disturb you for at least twenty minutes, and if you cannot find a room without a telephone, turn off the ringer while you are meditating. Once you have found your place to relax, lie down, or sit in a very comfortable chair, loosen any tight clothing, and put on your CD, or cassette. You are now ready to proceed with your meditation. First, you must take deep breaths. Inhale through the nose deeply, and then exhale through the mouth slowly. While exhaling, put your lips together as if you were going to whistle. Repeat this breathing five or six times, then let your breathing become normal. This is the correct way of breathing, but most of us are not used to breathing this way. Next, we have to give our conscious minds a little exercise to allow us get to a subconscious level. Here is one exercise that I use, but you can make up your own if you like. Imagine with your minds eye that you are on a green hillside and in front of you is a small brook flowing past you and down the hillside over a rock outcropping and cascading into a calm, clear pond in a beautiful garden. Imagine this pond surrounded with beautiful flowers, filled with colorful fish, and with a pair of swans with their little babies swimming behind them. This is your subconscious paradise, and since everyone's paradise is different and unique you can imagine it to appear any way you want. Let your mind flow like this brook deep into your subconscious, deep into your garden. Now count 1, 2, 3, and enter your garden, and let your mind wander to where it needs to be. Let this garden become a place where you are free of all stress, tension, and negative thoughts, where you can be completely relaxed, totally calm, and free of all the day's overwhelming issues. When you feel you have achieved what you need to do, you can count 3, 2, 1, and open your eyes. You should now feel completely calm, relaxed, and refreshed. Don't worry if you fall asleep while meditating. Meditation puts you into a very relaxed state, so falling asleep doesn't mean you have done something wrong. If you perform this exercise on a daily basis, you should see a remarkable change in the amount of tension, and stress that affects your life. When I taught this meditation technique to a large senior's group, they reported having better control of their blood pressure, as well as less pain from their arthritis. While meditation may not be a cure to all your medical problems, and definitely should not take the place of medication, it can certainly help in controlling stress. Hopefully this article gives you an awareness of what meditation is about, how easy it is to do, and how good it can be for your health. So now it's time for you to open yourself up to a whole new way of living your life with less stress, and to open yourself up on a more intuitive, spiritual level as well. Meditation can be one technique to help you to begin to finally learn to feel complete, and whole, and to become the person who you were intended to be!

Yes, I do meditate.I practice raja yoga. Basically raja yoga teaches someone to know one self and God. In this way one will be able to have a happier life. You may visit www.bkwsu.org to know more this kind of meditation.

WEll i used to go for Yoga classes where i had to meditate.. but i think couldnt do it properly, i used to feel weak after each mediatation classes but i would revive again soon. Maybe i coudlnt concentrate well! Yoga was not my favorite class you see. ^_^