Meditation is extremely important for physical, mental, & spiritual health. Meditation reduces stress and anxiety, promotes emotional health, enhances self awareness, improves focus, improves memory, improves cardiovascular health and enhances your immune system, reduces physical and emotional pain, can help you reach enlightenment, and so much more. Personally, I use meditation to cleanse my energy, to manifest, to heal myself, to relax, to ground & center myself, to align specific chakras, - and of course all of the reasons listed above. Meditation was a struggle for me in the beginning, but I was determined to master meditation and make it a part of my daily routine because I knew that it was a necessity. I'm going to share some tips with you all that made meditation easier for me:
-Find a comfortable position. Some people like to meditate sitting "criss cross", some people like to meditate laying down. Find whatever is comfortable for you and you can even alternate different positions.
-Pace yourself. It's ideal to get to a place where you're meditating for at least 20 minutes, 5x a week. What helped me, was starting off doing 10 minute meditations & over time I was able to comfortably increase the length of my meditations.
-Meditate around the same time everyday. This helps you get in the habit of meditating on a regular basis. & an extra tip - try to meditate within the first 30 minutes of your day. This makes your meditation better because you're less distracted & your mind is less cluttered.
-GUIDED MEDITATIONS. I cannot stress how important guided meditations are for those who are new to meditation. A guided meditation is a meditation that is usually 10-20 minutes long, where someone is guiding you through it. Telling you how to breathe, what to envision, what to focus on, etc. It gives you the direction that you need, in order to have a successful meditation. You can find these on YouTube.
-Focus on your breathing. This is going to be the easiest way to get into that deep relaxation mode & have a really good meditation. One of my favorite tips is to take a deep breath on the inhale, hold it for two seconds, & exhale, hold it for two seconds, & repeat.
-Set intentions. There's three parts to a meditation: relaxation, intention, & return. Always set intentions before meditating. Ask yourself "what do I want to get out of today's session?", & when you're ending the meditation, take your time & make sure you're grounded before going about your day.
-When your mind starts to wonder off? Focus on breathing. Inhale, exhale. Deep breaths. Your mind is going to wonder off, its normal. Don't try to block out the thoughts, just become more aware of your breathing.
-Getting more thoughts than normal when you try to slip into meditation? This is actually a good sign. It means that you've become more aware of your thoughts & you're becoming one with them. When you're getting more thoughts than normal, you've already drowned out the excess noise which means that you're on the track to meditating the correct way, just go back to focusing on that breathing.
Remember that meditation is something that can take a while to get the hang of. It took me about 2 years of practicing before I got to a space where I was able to meditate effortlessly. Have patience with yourself and don't forget that each meditation will bring you a different experience - no meditation is the same. Hopefully some of these tips were helpful and you can use them to become a master at meditation.