Meditation

(Picture sitting and meditating)

Meditation will make you more productive. It might sound strange that sitting still and doing nothing for some time will make you more productive, but it’s true. Before diving into what to do, it’s worth going over why you should meditate in the first place.

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Meditation has excellent calming effects. Research has shown that EEG activity decreases during meditation. Meditation also helps you to recharge, so you have more energy throughout the day.

The practise increases the blood flow in your brain, and according to one neurophysiologist, “rewires the circuitry in your brain”. 

Meditation makes your brain age slower and increases the amount of grey matter in your brain. 3 Grey matter is responsible for muscle control, seeing, hearing, memory, emotions, and speech.

Meditation makes it much easier to focus and achieve flow, that feeling of being completely immersed and energized by something. It also allows you to procrastinate less, and get more done in the same amount of time.

Meditation helps your mind defragment your thoughts so you can make better sense of them, and step away from them to gain perspective.

There are a ton of benefits to adopting a regular meditation practice, but these are just a few of them.

How to Meditate 

In general, the easiest way to begin meditating is by focusing on the breath — an example of one of the most common approaches to meditation: concentration.

CONCENTRATION MEDITATION

Concentration meditation involves focusing on a single point. This could entail following the breath, repeating a single word or mantra, staring at a candle flame, listening to a repetitive gong, or counting beads on a mala. Since focusing the mind is challenging, a beginner might meditate for only a few minutes and then work up to longer durations.

In this form of meditation, you refocus your awareness on the chosen object of attention each time you notice your mind wandering. Rather than pursuing random thoughts, you simply let them go. Through this process, your ability to concentrate improves.

MINDFULNESS MEDITATION

Mindfulness meditation encourages the practitioner to observe wandering thoughts as they drift through the mind. The intention is not to get involved with the thoughts or to judge them, but to be aware of each mental note as it arises.

Through mindfulness meditation, you can see how your thoughts and feelings tend to move in particular patterns.

Over time, you can become aware of the human tendency to quickly judge an experience as good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant. With practice, an inner balance develops.

In some schools of meditation, students practise a combination of concentration and mindfulness. Many disciplines call for stillness — to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the teacher.

OTHER MEDITATION TECHNIQUES

There are various other meditation techniques. For example, daily meditation practises among Buddhist monks focuses directly on the cultivation of compassion. This involves envisioning adverse events and recasting them in a positive light by transforming them through compassion. There are also moving meditation techniques, such as tai chi, qigong, and walking meditation.