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Overview
By looking around yourself, you will find that people are becoming busier with every passing day. Stress has become a compulsory part of life in this era. People have become so habitual of stress that, even they do not realize that stress is troubling their lives. By starting mindfulness meditation, it actually brings many positive effects in an individual’s life. Mindfulness meditation is one of the simplest techniques, which a person can practice in a short period of time at any place.
Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation
Mindfulness Meditation is the simple technique of concentration on one’s breathing. This is not the surface level concentration, one need to develop deep concentration on breathing cycle and full absorption during that process. This technique is suitable for persons who have difficulty in extracting extra time for meditation from their jam packed routine. Sometimes, people find it difficult to concentrate on breathing. In this way, experts have broken down this breathing technique into different stages. The basic purpose of dividing this whole technique into different stages is to make perfect every step and getting absorb in the process.
Stages of Mindfulness Meditation
We have seen that the purpose of breaking mindfulness meditation is to make every stage easier. Now, I will describe different stages of mindfulness meditation. There are four stages. It is not necessary to follow these stages, as it is. One can use his own creativity to bring peace of mind for himself. These stages are as follow:
First Stage:
In first stage, we have to concentrate on our breathing. The important thing in this stage is to get awareness with your breathing process. In order to bring this awareness, we will count our breaths. You will count one after inhaling and exhaling the breath. In this way, you will count till ten, and then afterwards you will start counting from one. There will be many things during this process, which will divert your attention from your breathing process. Once distracted, you will have to start counting from one. If you are able to maintain your attention while counting from one to ten, you can move successfully to the second stage of the technique.
Second Stage:
You have noticed in first stage that, we were counting one after completion of one breathing cycle. During second stage, we concentrate n the start of the breathing. It means that, you will say “one” and then take a breath. You have to practice this sequence until, you become habitual of this sequence. After this, we will move toward the third stage.
Third Stage:
In this stage, we will stop counting while taking breath. Purpose of the breathing was to bring attention towards the breathing process, and absorb attention into breathing system. Now, one has to sit quietly and concentrate on his breaths, without counting them. In his stage, one has to attend the other parts which are involved in breathing system. Such as, one has to attend the movements of ribs and abdomen.
Fourth Stage:
When we will reach the fourth stage, we will have a sound experience of maintaining the focus and our attention, so that we will not be distracted by surrounding things. In this stage, we have to concentrate on a single part of our respiratory system, which is involved in inhaling and exhaling of breaths. This is a subjective experience. For example, I think that this particular part is nose while, anyone else consider throat as a basic point for inhaling and exhaling the breaths. In this way, you need to concentrate on a single point.
In this way, we will complete our meditation session. The basic thing to remember is to take five minutes break before starting your routine chores. The reason for this is that, mind is in a quiet state and it will be shocked, if you take it to hustle and bustle of the world at once.
This is the easiest form of meditation, which you can practice whenever you are feeling hectic due to huge work load at your workplace.