The Awareness Project by Dylan Vorster - HTML preview

Meditation

Now we will take you through the journey of meditation, show you its importance and take you through a step by step guide on how to make this simple process apart of your day to day life.

Have you ever wondered why there has been such a hype about meditation whether it’s on the television, the internet, or in a magazine? This is because it has now been proven to have great benefits to one’s personal development.

Whether it is spiritual, emotional, mental or physical growth.

Meditation unlocks the door to the subconscious mind!

Meditation has been discovered to help all three aspects of one’s being which is the body, mind and spirit. Meditation has also been proven to create the highest and most powerful form of positivity and happiness as you are simply being, isn’t that really cool?

Whenever someone asks me what the importance of meditation is, the first thing that always tends to pop up in my mind is that it simply makes you feel great, but there are many other important reasons to meditate as I will discuss with you below. These are just a few benefits that can happen when practicing meditation try to keep an open mind towards what I am about to share with you.

Why Meditate?

The first benefit meditation has that I would like to discuss with you is:

Stress Relief:

Meditation reduces stress better than anything else I know of. Not only does the practice of meditation give you some “down time” to rest physically and mentally, it also has a very direct effect on your entire nervous system by reducing your body’s production of stress related chemicals like cortisol, and increasing the production of mood enhancing chemicals like serotonin.

Improved Health:

Meditation will improve your health by strengthening your immune system, reducing your blood pressure and lowering cholesterol levels.

Meditation is often of particular interest to people who are diagnosed with a chronic or potentially life threatening illness. People with serious medical conditions like cancer will sometimes turn to meditation as a means to enhance the process of healing and recovery. While meditation should never be used as a substitute for proper medical care, in some cases it can lead to medical breakthroughs and even healing, when traditional medical treatments have been unsuccessful.

Of course, you do not have to be terminally ill to benefit from the healing effects of meditation! Even if you have just come down with a case of the flu, meditation will enhance the function of your immune system and help you to rest more deeply, leading to a speedier recovery. Meditation also happens to be a wonderful way to alleviate headaches and to prevent them from recurring.

Improved sleep:

Sleep is a totally natural human function, and it’s something we need every day. But if you have a busy mind or if you are stressed then you may find that your sleep is not as restorative as it should be. Meditation dramatically improves the quality of your sleep and it is one of the most powerful natural treatments for insomnia. This is already a great reason to meditate.

Slowed Aging:

Studies into the effects of meditation have shown that the regular practice of meditation can slow the aging process. The biological age of long term meditators is generally less than those of people who have never meditated. It is believed that the physiological cause of this is due to the fact that meditation helps to reduce the body’s production of free radicals. Free radicals are organic molecules that are responsible for aging, tissue damage, and possibly some diseases.

Emotional stability and Positive thinking:

Meditation is a very powerful natural prescription for people who suffer from anxiety and/or depression, and it is also taught to people who have difficulty controlling their anger. However, you do not need to have a serious psychological condition for meditation to be of benefit to you! People who meditate regularly tend to have better days and a much more positive view on things.

Law of attraction:

The Law of Attraction is often and commonly known to be included into meditation and is ideally the correct time and place to put it into use. The use of LOA in meditation usually allows for the strongest vibrations that are released as meditation is the process of clearing your mind from excessive thoughts which helps you to release resistance from the thoughts that are holding you back from creating your desires.

A study by the University of Sydney surveyed 350 people who had meditated for more than two years, and compared those results with existing government surveys on the population's mental and physical health.

They found that, on average, meditators had 10 % better mental health than non-meditators, and were significantly better off in most health and wellbeing categories.

How to meditate:

See the misconception that people have about meditation is that it is very time consuming and takes long periods of time to perfect which is highly mistaken, meditation is easy to get into, so to start you can even put as little as 15 minutes of your day aside. You will find that the longer you practice meditation, you will reach the deeper levels and experience a more powerful meditation session, and there will be less resistance that will be felt when going through these deep phases of meditation.

To start with the process of meditation is really quite simple, for those who have never done meditation and would like to start this practice, I would advice using the countdown method as this is what worked best for me. This will get you into the lightest phase of meditation and really just prepares you for the later phases.

You will find a step by step guide below:

• First thing is first, find a quite place where you won’t be disturbed for the next 10 to 15 minutes. This can be out on your balcony with the wind blowing between your hair or it can be in a closed room with tranquil music, it is really dependant on you and where you are most comfortable.

• Next you can either sit up right with your hands facing down onto your legs, you can sit in a cross-legged position, or you can even lie down, just make sure that you are not tired if choosing the last one technique as you will most likely end up falling asleep ;)

• Once you have found a comfortable position that keeps your chest fairly open, we can begin with the methods to get you into a light meditation phase.

• First as you gaze upon the horizon or as far as the eye can see, take five deep breaths and feel the air moving in and out of your lungs, let your eyes close on the fifth exhalation.

• Once your eyes are closed feel almost a wave of relaxation slowly washing over your body, i.e. first feel your eyes relax, down to your face, through to the neck, your shoulders, arms and slowly through your chest, feel your back muscles relaxing, then to your stomach, feel where your body meets with other surfaces, feel your legs relax and then your feet, feel where they meet the floor.

• Once you have completed an internal scan you can begin with the process of counting down from 100, i.e. 100,99,98,97.....3,2,1 then once you reach one, count again from 30 back down to one just to ensure that you stay in this light meditative state.

• Once this has been completed you can sit and enjoy the silence you have created for yourself, notice what thoughts arise and calmly put them to the side, it is natural for thoughts to arise, just calmly pass them to the side.

• You can then begin an external scan, focus what is happening around you, the wind that is blowing etc.

• You can now do another internal scan, take five deep breaths and open your eyes on the fifth exhalation.

You have now gone through a step by step process that will get you into the light phases of meditation. This mainly applies for beginners and is very important as it gets you mentally, spiritually and emotionally prepared for reaching deeper phases of meditation.

For those of you who have been practicing meditation on a regular basis or those of you who are interested in reaching deep meditation can have a look at these links:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaRu14P9H84

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX-VPzRxoQM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWIwPBhbimA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vx8iUvfyCY

If you have any further interest and would like to take your research to further steps you can find more at the following links:

http://www.the-guided-meditation-site.com/reasons-to-meditate.html

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVSD66ZkF4g

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6pYAiRqhio

http://www.the-guided-meditation-site.com/deep-meditation.html

http://www.energymuse.com/blog/meditating-crystals/

http://www.wikihow.com/Meditate-Deeply