How to Prepare for Mediation

You can mediate almost anywhere and anytime, but it’s always a good idea to have a routine for your mediation practice. There are several reasons for this, including getting your mind and body ready to get quiet, getting your family to recognize that time and place as your quiet space and to ensure your mediation practice is consistent. Try these ways to prepare for mediation.

Choose the time and place—You want to decide on a time and place that will be quiet, with as few distractions as possible, for meditation. Turn off your phone, shut out the lights, tell your loved ones you are unavailable. It doesn’t matter if you choose to mediate in your bedroom or in your office. The time of day is also totally up to you. Maybe when the kids are in bed or first thing in the morning is better. Just choose a time when you can have solitude and are alert enough to concentrate. The space can be big or small. The most important thing is consistency.

Light scented candles or incense—This isn’t something that everyone might want to do, but it’s a great way to set the tone for mediation. Our sense of smell is the best for recalling memories, so when you smell that familiar smell, your mind and body will start to prepare automatically for mediation.

Play background music—Some people prefer silence, and that’s fine too. But beginning mediators find that total silence can be a bit too overwhelming at first. That might sound strange, but think of all the noise we are used to. No matter where you go, you hear TV’s or music piped in. If you want to play some music while meditating, find something soothing with no lyrics. Our minds tend to “grab” the words the singer is singing and wants us to sing along. Best to avoid that. Play the music softly so that it doesn’t end up becoming a distraction.

Wear comfortable clothes—There may be times when you are in a suit and want to mediate. That’s good too. But most people find it easier to sit for a while if they are as comfortable as possible. This means comfortable clothes. But if you get the urge to meditate in your suit or dress and heels, go for it!

Get your body read—Since we hope to reduce the amount of distraction, it’s always a good idea to go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, blow your nose, put on a sweater, etc. before you sit. It’s hard to concentrate when your throat is dry and you keep coughing.

Yoga stretches—It’s always a good idea to do some stretches before sitting, especially if you plan to sit for an extended period (whatever that means to you). While certainly not mandatory, doing a few simple standing yoga postures before sitting can prepare both your body and mind for sitting. Some that are good for this include Cat Pose, Sun Salutation, Standing Forward Bend, Chair Pose and Downward Dog pose.

4 Ways to Relieve Stress Through Meditation

If you have been dealing with a lot of stress, and other remedies aren’t working to relieve it, it might be time to try meditation. This allows you to center yourself, clear your mind, and focus on nothing while letting your brain and body relax. Here are some tips for using meditation to relieve emotional stress.

Try a Simple Meditation Session

When you are using meditation as a way of relieving stress, it doesn’t need to be complicated or complex. If you are just starting out with meditation, simply give yourself a few minutes a day to yourself. Make sure it is completely quiet, or that you just have some light meditation music playing. Relax your body, close your eyes, and let your mind go blank as much as possible. Don’t think about the things causing you stress, but take these few minutes to find a silent peace.

Practice Your Breathing

Breathing exercises can also help you to find peace and relaxation while you are meditating. Instead of focusing on the thoughts causing you stress, you want to focus on your breathing. When working on your breathing, inhale through the nose, and out through the mouth. Feel every breath as you take in oxygen and it enters your body. When exhaling, focus on letting out all your negative energy to get it out of your head. You can lower your blood pressure with this simple task every day.

Use a Mantra

When you are meditating, it also helps to have some mantras memorized. These mantras will bring more focus to clearing your mind and easing stress, which helps when you have difficulty letting go of all that stress and anxiety. A popular mantra is simply “Om”, which is the sound of the universe. It represents birth, death, and re-birth. There is also an ancient mantra called “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu” which means you want all beings to be happy and free. You can use these types of ancient mantras or create your own.

Focus on Parts of Your Body

Another easy method for learning to meditate is to focus on parts of your bod instead of your thoughts. For example, if you notice your mind wandering while meditating, start focusing on specific parts of the body and feeling sensations. You might focus on your heart and feel the steady heartbeat, feel the tingling in your feet, or the warmth in your hands.

Meditation takes practice, so don’t be discouraged if it is difficult in the beginning. Keep practicing, focus on your breathing, and find distractions.

Try this Simple Trick to Lower Your Blood Sugar—Meditate!

Here’s a very interesting post by Dr. Kellyann Petrucci, author of NYTimes besteller “Dr. Kellyann’s Bone Broth Diet” I recommend you read right away:

My life is crazy these days—but no matter how busy I am, I schedule a few minutes every day to meditate. That’s because I learned a long time ago that meditating makes me feel happier, calmer, and more focused. In addition, research shows that it lowers stress and inflammation.
And guess what: There’s another big plus to meditating! According to a new study, the mindfulness you achieve by meditating can actually lower your blood glucose.
Why is that such a big deal? Because rising blood glucose levels can lead to obesity and metabolic syndrome, and eventually can result in diabetes. And high levels of blood glucose damage every part of your body, from your eyes to your heart to your brain.
The best way to reduce your blood glucose, of course, is to cut high-carbohydrate, low-nutrition foods like sugar and grains out of your diet and replace them with foods like pastured meats, eggs, vegetables, and healthy fats. You can also lower your blood sugar by exercising and by fasting. But here’s why adding mindful meditation to your arsenal is also a good idea.
In the new study I mentioned, researchers evaluated nearly 400 people using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). After adjusting their data for a number of factors, they found that people with a high MAAS score were 35 percent more likely to have healthy blood glucose levels than those with low MAAS scores. One reason, they speculate, is that mindfulness gives people a greater sense of control over their lives, leading to healthier habits.
So cultivate your own mindfulness through daily meditation. It may take time to get the hang of it—but when you do, you’ll love the results.

Read on

Click here for link to Amazon Dr. Kellyann’s Bone Broth Diet: Lose Up to 15 Pounds, 4 Inches–and Your Wrinkles!–in Just 21 Days

Chakras and Meditation

Meditation is a mental exercise in which a person tries to access a higher consciousness, gain wisdom, or both. Meditation is a vital tool for anyone who wishes to grow spiritually. It is particularly useful for balancing and focusing the energy in each of our seven chakras.

For those who ignore meditation, they tend to suffer from chronic dis-ease. Notice the origin of that word. Dis-ease and disease are the same thing, though one is mental and the other physical. Meditation can improve your overall health and well-being, plus make your mind more peaceful. You can reduce stress and gain a greater sense of contentment through skillful meditation on each of your chakras.

Meditation done every day for a short time a couple of times a day has been showing to change the brain and make it easier to perform complicated tasks. It is also used as a means of transcending ordinary thought and existence in an effort to achieve enlightenment, a heightened mental state.

Meditating by repeating the mantra for each chakra, either on its own or in a series, can move your chakra energy. If you can’t remember every mantra, just think or chant Om or Aum (which should sound like 3 syllables (ah-oo-mm) and you will vibrate the energies needed to balance and heal.

One very powerful chakra meditation is to picture each chakra one by one, starting with the root chakra and working your way up. As you picture each one, feel it spinning and spreading its energy through every pore in your body. Once you get to the crown chakra, picture yourself radiating love and blessings outwards to every living being in the universe.

Then work your way back down from the crown. Picture yourself receiving all sorts of blessings from the universe so that they fill your body with a glowing white light. Then have that white light split up in to the colors of the spectrum, violet, indigo and so on, as you work your way back down all the chakras to the root chakra.

You can do with meditation on its own, sitting or lying down. You can also do it lying down and placing your chakra stones. If you wish, you can also use your essential oils. Sit up in this case and be sure that your oils are lined up in a row correctly so you do not need to fumble for them and break your concentration.

Meditation is a great way to focus the mind. Use it for chakra work as well and see what a difference it can make to body, mind and spirit.

How Meditation can relieve irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease

As you may know meditation is credited with all sorts of benefits including the improvement of energy levels, reduction of stress levels, increase in creativity etc, which you will agree, would be sufficient to  seriously consider having a closer look but now there’s a study that also shows meditation may actually relieve IBS and IBD as well, see below:
Meditation may relieve IBS and IBD
Researchers found the relaxation response showed improvements in the two gastrointestinal disorders

A pilot study has found that participating in a nine-week training program including elicitation of the relaxation response had a significant impact on clinical symptoms of the gastrointestinal disorders irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and on the expression of genes related to inflammation and the body’s response to stress.

The report from investigators at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), both Harvard affiliates, is the first to study the use of the relaxation response in these disorders and the first to investigate the genomic effects of the relaxation response in individuals with any disorder. The report was published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

“Our results suggest exciting possibilities for further developing and implementing this treatment in a wider group of patients with gastrointestinal illness,” said Braden Kuo of the gastrointestinal unit in the MGH Department of Medicine, co-lead author of the report.

“Several studies have found that stress management techniques and other psychological interventions can help patients with IBS, at least in the short term; and while the evidence for IBD is less apparent, some studies have suggested potential benefits. What is novel about our study is demonstration of the impact of a mind/body intervention on the genes controlling inflammatory factors that are known to play a major role in IBD and possibly in IBS,” said Kuo, who is also a Harvard Medical School assistant professor of medicine..

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