How to Start Meditating for Beginners
How to Start Meditating is a pertinent question for every beginners ? Meditation is a practice of transforming the mind to stop thinking and thereby enter into a state of deep peace. It is a divine process of calming down. It is an act of concentration which leads into the form of awareness. Concentrating to listen to the heart beats, feeling the rhythm of breaths, concentrating to listen the chirping of birds etc are various acts of meditation. The word Meditation has been derived from two different words. The Latin word ‘meditari’ which means to think, to exercise the mind or to dwell upon and the Sanskrit word ‘medha’ which means wisdom. By practicing Meditation therefore one exercise his/ her mind to attain wisdom.
Now let us deal with the question How to Start Meditating in detail ?
Few things should be always considered when you start meditation. These things are of paramount importance specially to the beginners who are learning to meditate. In the following paras, I am going to deliberate upon few points step by step which one should always consider in meditation.
1. Place of Meditation
For a beginner the place of meditation and the environment around is of utmost importance. One should ensure that the place for meditation is pollution free, peaceful and there is abundance of fresh air. Undesired sound and disturbance hinder the process of meditation. Therefore they should be avoided.
2. Meditation Cushion to sit on
Once an appropriate and the right place for meditation has been choosen there is an invariable requirement of something to sit on for meditation. The meditation cusion which is popularly known as “zafu” has been extensively used in meditation because it provides an upright sitting posture which is considered good for meditation. However once you have attained certain degree of competency in meditation, you can use meditation chair or bench to meditate if you feel to use it.
3. Sitting posture for Meditation
While learning How to Start Meditating, in meditation sitting posture is yet an another area of importance. Right from the period of ancient India, our Rishis, Maharshis and Yogis have been preferring ‘Padmasana’ posture as the best sitting position to meditate. One should always remember that while meditating you should keep your back straight. If you are not comfortable in ‘Padmasana’ posture, you can just seat crossed legged by keeping your hands freely resting.
4. Use of Timer
It is always recommended to use some timer devices to alert the practitioner when the specified time has reached or completed for beginners. Usually at the beginning one should start meditating for a minimum period of 10 minutes and slowly slowly the timings can be increased after attaining some degrees competency levels.
5. Act of Concentration
Concentrating is Meditating. When you learn How to Start Meditating you may face or find several problems. You can focus upon the following aspects of meditation to achieve proficiency.
– Close Your Eyes
It is often recommended to close the eyes while practicing meditation because it helps you to isolate from the environment and the surroundings. However it is not compulsory and one can even meditate with open eyes if he is able to do so.
– Watch Your Breath
When one start practicing meditation, it is very difficult to attain the state of thoughtlessness. There are various prescribed ways to practice concentration on subjects. Since mind is very volatile and very easily wander, one should start from learning to concentrate on its own breath. Often the in-breath is very pronounced and easy to concentrate but during out-breath, the mind tends to wander or swayed. Therefore by continuous practice alone one can achieve the state of quietness. Another prescribed ways professes to start counting the breaths or start feeling the heart beats etc.
– Watch Your Emotions
Mind is volatile and mind tends to sway. There are many thoughts which starts flowing and it becomes difficult to hold them back. Controlling once emotions during the process of meditation is yet another milestone that one should attempt to achieve.
– Attain State of Thoughtlessness
Concentration over the breaths and control over emotions slowly helps to achieve emptiness or thoughtlessness of mind. If you are able to achieve a minimum if 10 minutes of such state it is sufficient to get rid of anxiety for the whole day. If initially you are able achieve thoughtless awareness few times it is a great achievement.
– Calm Down to Attain Peace
Attaining the state of thoughtlessness leads into calming down the mind and attain the universal peace. This is a progressive step in meditation.
– Punctuality
Punctuality in meditation is most important. One can not do it once or twice a week and achieve the similar result. Meditation should be practiced daily possible during at the same time and periods. Regular practice only gives the desired results.
– Slowly Channelize towards Divinity
When you have got a good hold on meditation practices, slowly now you can learn to channelize your energy towards divinity and awakening. These are the advanced state of meditation and we will deal with it in some other article.
Hope this article on “How to Start Meditating” must have provided some real insight of starting meditation. Wish you all the best and Happy Meditating !!!
