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Today, we always seem to be on the go. There is always something that needs to be done.

We place so much importance on activity, achievements and results and therefore it is not surprising that more of us are attempting to find or indeed, require a time for silence. A time to find inner peace, and experience a moment of reflection. A time to relax, reflect and rejuvenate.

Not only does the practice of meditation offer this wonderful quiet time, it also has many psychological, physiological and spiritual benefits for our overall wellbeing.

One of the five principles of yoga, meditation is an important tool to achieve mental clarity, and just some of the benefits are listed below.

Psychological Benefits of Meditation

Increases creativity
Decreases stress and anxiety
Reduces symptoms of depression
Increases brain wave coherence
Reduces irritability
Improves memory and learning capacity
Increases self actualisation
Increases feelings of vitality
Increases happiness
Increases emotional stability
Reduces thoughts of negativity

Physiological Benefits of Meditation

Creates a state of deep rest due to decreased metabolic rate, lower heart rate and reduced the workload of the heart
Reduces stress by lowering levels of the chemicals cortisol and lactate
Reduces levels of free radicals known as unstable oxygen molecules that cause damage to body tissues
Improves the blood pressure levels
Increases skin resistance (lower skin resistance is correlated with higher levels of anxiety
Reduces cholesterol levels (higher levels are associated with cardiovascular disease)
Easier breathing as the flow of air to the lungs improves
Slows down the ageing process

Spiritual Benefits of Meditation

As we meditate, we are taken to the source of happiness which in fact is our own peace of mind. Without such peace, we are constantly assaulted by negative thoughts and pressures from the outside world. Allowing the body and mind to relax during this time rejuvenates our flow of energy enabling us to more effectively face the responsibilities of our demanding life.

As harmony becomes a bigger part of our life and we develop the latent powers of the mind, we gain a greater perspective of life and discover our true purpose of life. We will shift our efforts toward both personal and spiritual growth as we find the answer to ‘Who am i?’. Listening to the mind and ignoring our egoistic perspective we can begin to realise that our true and natural potential is far greater than what we currently believe which then allows us to discover our true creativity and potential.

There are many types of meditation, but if you are a beginner, you may prefer the practice of guided meditation. The calming voice of your leader will guide you through each step of the meditation process. Have a look at the video in this blog to be guided through a meditation.

Meditation involving visualisation will assist in changing your outlook on life, indeed discovering that there is so much more to learn.

“The most imortant lesson meditation teaches us is that our home - our beautiful universe - is changeable (impermanent) by its very nature. You will begin to understand, appreciate and make peace with the passing show of this world.” - Anatole

Don’t you think it’s time that you allowed yourself to relax, reflect and rejuvenate with meditation?

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There are thousands of different meditation traditions across the world. There are likely hundreds of thousands of meditation techniques. For the purposes of this article though, we will over-simplify and break these techniques down into two general categories: energy and insight.

Insight meditation teaches students to train their awareness, direct it skillfully, and to learn to accept an experience as it is… to allow whatever thoughts or feelings arise to flow naturally without interference. The primary skills of insight meditation are awareness and acceptance.

Insight meditation often trains to students to pick a single focus for a given meditation. When the focus begins to drift, the student gently brings it back to the focus of meditation. Accepting whatever arises in consciousness (or in life) develops deep peacefulness. Growing more and more aware of the specifics of our experience allows us to deeply change the nature of our understanding (insight), and we can begin to be more selective about what we bring into our lives!

Energy meditation teaches students to notice and circulate energy in the body, to notice how experience and perception changes with the location of the energy. Some of the most popular systems of energy meditation are the meridian system of qigong and the chakra system of Yoga.

With energy meditations, a student will often use a breathing method that is outside of their normal pattern of breath. Then the student will pay attention to whatever feelings arise in the body. Once an awareness of the feelings develops, the can then be directed as the practitioner sees fit. This energy can be directed into chakras, or through the meridians, into the aura, etc. Many powerful effects grow from developing control over the energy fields in and around the body.

Even these two very generalized varieties of meditation cross over quite a bit. In order to pay attention to energy in the body, the meditator has to develop a somewhat skillful level of awareness. Before the energy can be effectively circulated, it must be accepted and allowed to flow. On the other hand, the insight meditator is bound to have experiences of energy flow in the body, whether this is the object of meditation or not. The very awareness and acceptance the insight meditator is developing will allow energy to flow more freely.

In the long run, the reported benefits of these two styles of meditation are very similar. Meditators who open all the chakras usually report an experience of transcendence, oneness, and/or the inter-connectedness of all things. Long term insight meditators typically report similar experiences.

With either method, powerful meditative experiences can translate into transcendent day-to-day experiences. This is not hard to do with either method of meditation. When you are completing a session, allow the meditative state to linger as you get up and begin to go about other activities. Once you are proficient with them, you can also practice some of your meditation techniques with open eyes while you are doing other activities during the day (please use common sense: don’t do this while driving or operating heavy equipment).

Ultimately, there is little if any qualitative difference between these two approaches. The most important thing to do is practice. Get started today! If you already meditate, choose to take it a little bit further today. Whether you prefer insight or energy meditation, there are powerful benefits to come for those who keep up the practice!

Benjamin Langley has been studying and training in meditation, yoga, and other sciences of the mind for over 10 years. He regularly writes and shares powerful insights on his own blog. Come take a look: http://peacefulprosperity.com/blog

Some masters meditate for hours. They just sit still in one spot, holding their focus for hours on end. In some rare cases, they sit in the same place for days! It is amazing to consider the things we can do with some practice.

But what about those us who have other things to do than just sit and meditate? Some of us have jobs, a spouse, kids, car payments, etc. Do we try to retire early so there is still time for enlightenment, or do we swear off all ‘worldly’ things and find a cave to sit in?

I would suggest that neither of these is an ideal solution. In fact, I doubt anyone would listen to me if I recommended either of those choices, anyway. Ideally, we want to find some way to begin to integrate meditation into our daily life. The best way to do this is to begin very simply. Setting aside several hours is difficult, extreme, and likely to fail. Setting aside a few minutes is easy, relaxing, and will help you begin to create momentum in your practice.

All you need to begin meditation is one minute of silence. Find a place where you can close your eyes, relax, and enjoy the silence for just sixty seconds.

You will also want to select a single focus for your session of meditation. It can be virtually anything. It could be the feeling of your feet against the floor. It can be whatever internal sounds come up (or the internal silence). The most common focus is the breath. If you like, pick one element of the breath to focus on: the feeling of the air passing through the nostrils, the movement of the chest as you breathe, or the expansion and contraction of the belly as you breathe.

Sit silently for 1 minute and hold your focus. When your attention drifts, bring it back. It is perfectly normal and acceptable for your attention to drift during meditation. This is part of the meditation! If it happens, just continue to relax, and gently return your awareness to the object of meditation. If you find drifting awareness to be particularly frustrating, you can also add in a smile anytime you notice your focus beginning to wander: relax, smile, and gently return.

You can use this mindfulness as the beginning of any meditation practice, or you can choose to make this your entire practice of meditation. It is very handy to have a watch or some unobtrusive alarm that will alert you when 1 minute has elapsed. At first a minute might seem to last forever, but after practice, you might be surprised at how fast a minute can go.

When your focus begins to build and you feel good about your 1 minute meditation, you can extend it to 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 30 minutes, etc. Keep in mind that an hour is just 60 individual 1 minute periods. On the other hand, you may choose to do several 1 minute meditations during the day. No matter how you begin to evolve your practice after mastering the 1 minute meditation, you will find more and more surprising insight and peace can be found in the space of 60 seconds!

Benjamin Langley has been studying and training in meditation, yoga, and other sciences of the mind for over 10 years. He regularly writes and shares powerful insights on his own blog. Come take a look: http://peacefulprosperity.com/blog

It is very easy, particularly for students of meditation to get lost in austerity and ascetic practice. There is something to be said for learning to accept and transmute discomfort and pain, but it will drastically increase the momentum of your practice if you learn to reward yourself.

Ultimately, no learning will take place without the subconscious mind getting involved. The subconscious mind handles long term memory. Typically, the conscious mind tends to bounce around day-to-day rather whimsically. Naturally, the subconscious mind doesn’t take much of this scattered thought seriously. What the subconscious mind does take seriously is repetition and emotional content. Most of us have heard the saying “Repetition is the mother of skill.” But how many of us know that we have to get emotionally involved (passionate, joyous, etc.) in order to develop a skill quickly? One of the easiest ways to do this is with ‘feel good’ rewards.

We tend to be very good at rewarding children, but not ourselves (or other adults for that matter). The subconscious mind still responds very favorably to this, though, no matter how old you are. When you are doing well, it is important to acknowledge to yourself that you are doing well; this reinforces the drive to learn the new skill. Appropriately rewarding yourself will get the subconscious mind involved with learning the new skill quicker and more completely.

The most important time to reward yourself is immediately after practice or a successful performance. When there is time, it is good to go back and review the specifics of what went well, and also look at what needs to be improved. You can test different rewards to see what seems to work best for you. The easiest thing to do immediately after practice is to feel good about yourself and the skill. Associating good feelings with the practice and application of the skill will bring your entire mind into the learning process.

This is the same with meditation. You will have to get the subconscious mind ‘onboard’ in order to maintain the practice and experience the really powerful states. Particularly in the beginning, you will want to at least mentally pat yourself on the back every time you remember to practice. You can just smile into yourself and say “Nice Job!” Whenever you reach milestones, a larger reward is appropriate. Every time you meditate for a significantly longer period of time (you will have to decide what constitutes ’significantly longer’), you will want to do something special for yourself to acknowledge your accomplishment.

You don’t want to take the rewarding too far. Rewarding yourself with 30 minutes of personal time to do whatever you like is good, but if you aren’t cautious and somewhat disciplined, this can easily turn into the rest of the evening. Be certain to maintain some level of control with the reward.

When you really develop the habit of rewarding yourself in meditation and other areas of your life, growth and success will become much more natural for you. When you feel good about it, your entire mind will be supporting the new skill. And the more you enjoy the experience, the longer you will stick with it!

Benjamin Langley has been studying and training in meditation, yoga, and other sciences of the mind for over 10 years. He regularly writes and shares powerful insights on his own blog. Come take a look: http://peacefulprosperity.com/blog

Learning to meditate can be somewhat challenging. If you really want to develop these skills, it isn’t terribly difficult, but it will take some time and effort. Using traditional methods, it can take years to make significant headway. Students are often left to meditate with very little guidance. Some just sit in place for hours wondering if and when anything will happen for them. Eventually, this will yield results, but few of us have the patience for such methods. This is the 21st century… we want our enlightenment by yesterday at the latest. So how do we speed the process? How do we get the benefits of meditation in less time? Brainwave entrainment is the quickest way to gain access to deeper levels of mind.

Many studies confirm that one of the primary differences between long term meditators and us average folks is the brainwaves they emit. Experienced meditators emit primarily alpha waves, while most people emit primarily beta waves. Normal consciousness takes place primarily at the beta brainwave level (15 or more cycles per second). The deeper level of relaxed alertness is alpha (8-14 cycles per second). Most people only enter alpha just before or just as they are going to sleep. Most long-term meditators are primarily in alpha almost all the time.

The next level down is theta. The theta range is from 4-7 cycles per second. This is the range that many researchers (Jose Silva and others) associate with psychic skills. Remote viewing, remote influencing, healing, and other hidden mind skills typically occur at the theta level. Theta is also the level of dreaming during sleep.

The next level is delta. The delta range is from 0.5 to 3.5 cycles per second. This is the range associated with deep dreamless sleep and the rejuvenation of the body (human growth hormone, HGH, is released more commonly at this level than any other). It is also associated with the deepest levels of meditative experience: disappearance of the self, merging with the void, achieving Samadhi, etc.

So obviously, it is good to have these deeper brainwaves… and we all have them, but most of us only experience the deeper brainwaves during sleep. How do we consciously experience these deeper states, and how do we do this without years of training?

Brainwave entrainment is an excellent way to shorten your learning curve in meditation. Listening to these tracks will ‘entrain’ your brain into frequencies usually only experienced consciously by long term meditators. Entrainment actually increases the amount of brainwaves of a given frequency that you emit.

Brainwave CDs or MP3s are readily available and relatively inexpensive. Get a set that has alpha, theta, and delta tracks. Start out meditating with the alpha, and work your way down. It is useful to do one entrainment meditation daily while doing nothing else, and also to play the track once while you are working on day-to-day chores (dishes, laundry, going for a walk, etc.). Do not use them while driving!

When you add brainwave entrainment into your practice of meditation, you will dramatically increase the speed with which you access deeper states of consciousness!

Benjamin Langley has been studying and training in meditation, yoga, and other sciences of the mind for over 10 years. He regularly writes and shares powerful insights on his own blog. Come take a look: http://peacefulprosperity.com/blog

We tend to be very driven. When we are consciously aware of and in control of this quality, it can be very useful. Of course, being aware of and in control of your compulsions, impressions, and experiences might be better described as ‘driving’. For most of us, we are ‘driven’ as opposed to ‘driving’. When this is the case, it is hard to truly learn anything new… we attempt to understand it in terms of what we have already learned.

In order to really absorb new teachings, we have to “empty our cup” as the kung-fu master of old would say. Another way of describing this is creating ‘clear space’ in your mind-body. In addition, it is important to be able to look at your progress and challenges clearly without emotions getting in the way. Developing a place of clarity can be incredibly valuable for this as well.

So how do we create this ‘clear space’? There are many ways, but for the sake of simplicity, we will be discussing just two of them: meditation and intense workouts.

When you meditate, you begin to clear out stagnant patterns in thought and behavior. You create space. This space does not have to be filled when you learn something new. This same space can be leveraged for an unlimited number of new learnings. This is a difficult concept to understand from reading. You will have to practice to truly comprehend.

The most important aspects of meditation for developing clear space are awareness, acceptance, and deep breathing. Pay close attention to the object of meditation. Accept whatever comes up in meditation; allow it to be. It is also very helpful to practice deep breathing during your meditation. If you like, focus on the breath can be the entire meditation.

The second method we will discuss is the intense workout. It is easiest to use whatever your standard workout is. To make it a bit more intense (ideally you want it to be energizing as well), change it up slightly, increase the quantity, or increase the length. For example, if you like to lift weights, you might use a bit more weight than you normally would, increase your reps, or perform some lifts that you usually don’t do. If you practice Yoga, you could use some new asanas, hold your normal asanas longer, or increase the length of the whole session. If you don’t workout at all, just a long walk (45 minutes or more) will do. Be cautious anytime you change your workout. Most importantly, listen to your body. But it is also useful to listen to your doctor and your trainer if you have one.

When you perform your workout, pay as much attention to the sensations in the body as possible. Breathe as deeply as you can while you workout. If your attention wanders, bring it back.

With either of these methods, you will begin to develop a pleasant state of clarity. For some, it will be blissful. For others, it will just be a nice, focused relaxation. The more you practice, the deeper you will develop the state. Eventually, you will be able to bring some of this state into any moment in your life. This is the ideal state to enter when learning something new, when you are reviewing something new you have learned, or when examining a particular performance of your new skill.

Benjamin Langley has been studying and training in meditation, yoga, and other sciences of the mind for over 10 years. He regularly writes and shares powerful insights on his own blog. Come take a look: http://peacefulprosperity.com/blog