Meditations: The Use Of Sacred Phrases In Your Daily Meditations
Posted by on Dec 17, 2010
There are many reasons for meditating, such as meditating for relaxation, stress relief or dealing with an issue. Sometimes you may even meditate for the fun of it because of the high you get coming off a meditation session. However, sometimes you may want to meditate for a purpose or to help reinforce something you want to achieve.
If you are an elite athlete you may meditate each day to help you in your mental preparation by meditating on what you will do to win your race or if you are a basketball player you may meditate on shooting a 3 point shot. You can achieve these outcomes by using phrases during your meditation session.
The objective of these phrases during a meditation session is to help reprogram your mind to achieve your objectives when your mind is in its most malleable state. The mind is most open to suggestion or reprogramming during a meditation session.
The Buddhist Monk uses sacred meditation phrases during a meditation session to help them in overcoming their transgressions and ill thoughts they have during the day. They are provided these sacred phrases from the teachings of Buddha, their teachers and the Dalai Lama. Each Sacred Phrase contains an important lesson that is to be learnt.
A sample sacred phrase by Buddha goes as -
Speak the truth, do not become angered and give when asked, even be it a little. By these three conditions one goes to the presence of the gods.
Another sacred phrase that is useful in daily life -
The wise who control body, speech and mind are indeed the consummately controlled.
The Buddhist religion and community are not the only religion that has sacred phrases that can be used during a meditation session. Some meditators who come from the Christian faith will use sacred phrases from the bible such as the Psalms or the Lords Prayer.
Virtually every religion has sacred phrases you can use through your meditation sessions and most of these phrases are about trying to help you become a better person and to respect your fellow man.
Many people ask me how I incorporate these sacred phrases into my meditation. Well I first begin by identifying the sacred phrase I want to start with. I will read it aloud and once I have decided what I want to get from the meditation session then that is when I will start.
For example, I may want to meditate on how to deal with a person who is causing me grief or always seems to get me angry. I will find a sacred phrase that I can reflect on and use that phrase during my meditation.
I start off by simply beginning my meditation session with simple breathing exercises that help clear my mind and to get me to a state in which I can begin using the sacred meditation phrases. During a 20 minute meditation session, I find that it generally takes about 5 to 8 minutes to get to the point that I am ready for the next stage in the meditation cycle of using the sacred phrase.
Now that I am ready to begin the next stage, I start by reciting the sacred phrase in my mind. During the first recitation I will simply recite the sacred phrase without any reflection. On the second recitation of the sacred phrase I will begin paying close attention to the words in the sacred phrase and the meanings of the words. Over the next few recitations of those phrases I will begin to look at how I apply the meanings of the phrases to my everyday life.
I continue this process till I am ready to finish off my meditation. The last stage of my meditation cycle involves making a conscious commitment to improving my life and to take on board the values and meanings of the sacred phrase.
The core objective of using sacred phrases during your meditation sessions is to help you improve, you, as a person and the role that you will play on this earth. If we do not contemplate and reflect on these sacred phrases in this way then the phrases will be nothing more than pretty words and will not serve the purpose they were intended for.
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Author: Chris Le Roy
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Meditations – Meditating Before Going To Bed
Posted by on Dec 13, 2010
The world to me seems to be speeding up everyday. We are working longer hours, we are busier than we have ever been before, the traffic is snarling more and more and our stress levels are going through the roof. The consequence to this is that more and more people are suffering insomnia and this can become dangerous and affect your ability to function effectively. One of the best tools to help you with both insomnia and stress is meditation and in particular, meditating before going to bed.
I want to make a clear disclaimer at this point, if you are suffering severe insomnia or stress, please ensure that you get medical help because long term stress and insomnia can cause serious medical issues. However, I would encourage you to use Meditation in conjunction with the therapies a medical practitioner might prescribe as effective meditation will help.
One of the core mistakes that people make with meditation and sleep is that they try to use meditation to actually go to sleep and this never works and in fact it can actually make it harder to get to sleep. The role of meditation before sleep is to slow your body and your mind down so that it gets to a point where it is easier for it to fall naturally asleep.
There are many techniques that you can use to meditate including a seated meditation or a lying down meditation. I recommend people use the sitting method over the lying method because using the lying method so close to going to sleep you may tend to go to sleep rather than actually meditating. There is a clear difference between sleep and meditation.
The core difference is that during meditation your mind needs to be clear but focused where as during sleep, you do not want to be focused you want nothing to be focused in your mind and you want your body and mind to get to that point where you shutdown.
What I recommend is that if you are going to meditate prior to going to sleep then you need to use a basic meditation plan. The plan goes like this …
1. Your meditation session should take no more than 20 minutes
2. Your meditation session should start 40 minutes prior to going to bed
3. Your meditation technique during the session should use either the deep breathing Technique or basic number counting.
4. Do not drink alcohol, coffee, tea or any other caffeinated drink prior to sleep or you will affect the effectiveness of the meditation session.
Two meditation techniques you should avoid 60 minutes prior to going to bed is the reflective meditation technique or the affirmation meditation technique. I have found from my own experience that if you use these techniques so close to going to bed you can start your mind focusing on either the affirmations or reflections post your meditation session.
This means with only 20 minutes between when you finish your session and when you go to sleep, sometimes you will find that your thoughts continue on after the session and consequently can disrupt your sleep which is what you actually trying to avoid.
One of the reasons I have recommended that you do not meditate and then goto bed, is that sometimes I find that the meditation will bring out various chemicals and stir up feelings in your body which could disrupt your ability to sleep and be leaving the period of 20 minutes between meditating and sleep free is enough to settle you down to get a good nights sleep.
I should note that my colleagues and I use this technique because our jobs are often highly stressful and using this process at night after a heavy day so that we can get a quality nights sleep.
When used effectively, meditation can make a huge difference in the effectiveness of your sleep and the quality of your life. However, meditation is like a sport, the more practice you do, the more effective you become.
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Author: Chris Le Roy
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Meditate for Health and Happiness
Posted by on Dec 10, 2010
Relaxing your body and mind by meditating for just a few minutes each day can make a huge difference in your life.
You can feel happier, healthier, and more peaceful, confident, energized, creative, mentally alert, and spiritually aware just by sitting quietly. This may sound too good to be true – but there is actual scientific evidence to support these claims.
Meditation has been practiced by human beings for thousands of years. It has been speculated that ancient peoples discovered meditation by staring into their campfires at night. They noticed that after gazing at the fire for a period of time, they experienced an altered state of consciousness, and they liked the effects of this altered state.
Meditation was practiced in the Eastern part of the world for thousands of years before it was introduced into the Western part of the world.
Since the 1960′s and 1970′s, meditation has been practiced and studied in our part of the world.
Today, meditation is an accepted practice. Researchers have found that there are many benefits of meditation — psychologically and physically.
In 2003, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, conducted a study to determine the effects of meditating. They studied stressed-out employees at a high-tech firm. The subjects were split randomly into two groups: 25 people were asked to learn meditation and the remaining 16 people were left alone as a control group.
The participants had their brain waves scanned three times during the study: at the beginning of the experiment, after eight weeks of meditation lessons were completed, and four months after that. Researchers found that the meditators showed a pronounced shift in brain wave activity from the stress-prone right frontal cortex to the calmer left frontal lobe. They found the meditators were calmer and happier than before.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School used MRI technology on participants to monitor brain activity while they meditated. They found that while meditating, it activated the sections of the brain in charge of the autonomic nervous system, which controls the functions of our bodies that we can’t control, such as digestion and blood pressure. These are also the functions that are compromised by stress. It makes sense that meditating would help to ward off stress-related conditions such as heart disease and digestive problems.
A fall 2005 study found that the brains of people who meditate were about 5 percent thicker in the areas that deal with focus and memory than the brains of non-meditators. The more time someone had spent meditating in the past, the thicker their brains were in those spots. So it seems that meditating can even make you smarter!
Scientists are still exploring exactly how and why meditation works, but we already know it has both physiological and psychological benefits. Many therapists and doctors today consider meditation a valid complement to more traditional therapies.
Physiological benefits include:
* lower heart rate and reduced work load of the heart;
* lowered levels of cortisol and lactate – two chemicals associated with stress;
* leads to a deeper level of relaxation;
* reduction of free radicals – which are unstable oxygen molecules that can cause tissue damage;
* decrease in high blood pressure;
* drop in cholesterol levels – high cholesterol is associated with cardiovascular disease;
* decreases the respiratory rate and leads to improved flow of air to the lungs resulting in easier breathing – this has been very helpful to asthma patients;
* decrease in the aging process;
* enhances the immune system.
Psychological benefits include:
* decreased depression;
* decreased anxiety;
* decreased irritability and moodiness;
* greater creativity;
* improved memory;
* increased feelings of vitality and rejuvenation;
* increased happiness;
* increased emotional stability;
* builds self-confidence.
Meditation has spiritual benefits as well. Many people who meditate regularly have reported feeling closer to God, and have experienced personal and spiritual growth.
If you’ve never tried meditating and would like to try it, there are many books on how to meditate and there is a lot of information on the Internet about how to meditate. There are many techniques for meditating. You might need to try several techniques before finding one that feels right.
The simplest way to meditate is find a quiet place, sit in a comfortable position, either close your eyes or concentrate on an object, and just sit quietly and concentrate on quieting the mind. This is the hardest part, is learning to still the mind.
Remember that meditation requires practice; none of us can control our mind unless we train ourselves to do it.
Meditation has many benefits and it is well worth the effort to participate in this ancient art. Try it! By practicing meditation regularly you can experience the benefits of better health, mental clarity, and a sense of peace.
For more information about meditation and healing arts, visit the website, www.livehealthyandlong.com
Ruth Hendrickson has a masters in counseling psychology and writes articles concerning health and psychology for www.livehealthyandlong.com and other websites.
Author: Ruth Hendrickson
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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7 Tips For Meditation
Posted by on Dec 7, 2010
Through meditation we can bring about greater peace of mind and powers of concentration. The length of time we meditate is not as important as the focus we give during our meditation. If we can meditate with a silent mind for 5 minutes we can bring to the fore our own divine qualities of inner peace and inner happiness. This is an inner joy independent of any outer success or outer prosperity.
When offering meditation classes for the Sri Chinmoy Centre. I offer these 7 tips which will help us to meditate more successfully.
1. Quite The Mind
The Goal of meditation is to go beyond the mind. Meditation cannot be done by thinking. All the different paths of meditation share this common feature of cultivating a silent mind. When our mind is silent we can start to enter a new consciousness, a consciousness not limited by the intellectual mind. With a quiet mind we will experience peace
“I meditate
So that I can inundate
My entire being
With the omnipotent
Power of peace.”
- Sri Chinmoy
2. Concentration
In whatever we do,we will be more successful if we can concentrate fully on the task in hand. This means being single pointed. When we meditate we need to switch off from everything else and put all our attention onto the meditation.
3. Place to Meditate
It is very helpful to find a Quiet Place to meditate every day. I have a small corner of my room specially set aside for meditation. You can use a picture of a saint or Teacher who inspires you. Or just use flowers and a candle. If you meditate in the same place every day it builds up a meditative atmosphere.
4. Aspiration
Aspiration to meditate. If we are hungry then we are eat. It is the same with meditation if we are not satisfied with what we have and would like to discover the inner peace within ourselves then we will be motivated to meditate every day. This aspiration or inner cry is perhaps more important than learning many techniques.
5. Perseverance and Patience
In the beginning we cannot expect results overnight, each time we meditate we are adding to our capacity’s even if we don’t have great experiences then we need to persevere. If we practise sincerely we will progress.
6. Use the Qualities of the Spiritual Heart
The heart is the location of the soul. If we focus on the heart, immediately our thoughts have less power. By concentrating on our heart we can enter into the vastness of meditation.
7. Cultivate Happiness
It is important to bear in mind the goal of meditation is to uplift our consciousness and have a more positive outlook about life and about ourselves. When we meditate well we will have a positive outlook on life.
Read More Essential tips for Meditation
Tejvan is a meditation student of Sri Chinmoy and gives meditation classes in his home town of Oxford. He has been practising meditation for 10 years. Tejvan meditates twice a day.
Author: Tejvan Pettinger
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Tips on Meditation – How to Meditate
Posted by on Dec 4, 2010
Do you need tips on meditation-how to meditate? If you are new to the practice of meditation, then this article is perfect for you. It was designed specifically with beginners to meditation in mind.
In response to many questions sent to me from people who are curious as to meditation how to meditate, how to begin meditating and in regards to tips that I can give them to get started. To respond to all these questions, I’ve created this list. I hope you find it helpful.
Tips on meditation- How to meditate
- Don’t change your breathing patterns. By this I mean that you should not breathe in and out too slowly to too quickly. You should maintain your breathing patterns as you would normally inhale and exhale. If you breathe in and out too slowly, it will feel like a chore. If you breathe in and out too quickly, you will lose focus and will not meditate effectively.
- Close your eyes. Do not meditate with your eyes open. By closing your eyes, you close your mind to distractions that you would otherwise be open and exposed to with your eyes open.
- Sit on a meditation cushion or pillow. Meditating while sitting on a meditation cushion or pillow will help align your vertebra. This will help keep you from getting distracted because of pains and aches in your back caused from the bad posture during your meditation exercise.
- Use a guided meditation CD. You should try out different guided meditation CDs to have different experiences meditating. This will also help you to be able to meditate for a longer period of time. Try out different guided meditations until you find your favorite ones.
- Don’t meditate on an empty stomach or after having just eaten. If you meditate when you are hungry, you will obviously be distracted by your hunger pangs. If you meditate right after eating, you will feel very sleepy while you meditate and will likely fall asleep.
Following the free guided meditation videos in The Big List of Free Online Guided Meditation Videos is one of the easiest ways to begin a meditation practice that will be consistent and will show you benefits within days. If you are new to meditation and are interested in getting started, make sure to get your Free 5 Day Meditation Program today! You can also read more about the benefits of meditation before getting started.
Sonia Gallagher is a recovering attorney who now publishes information on meditation in an easy to understand, plain English manner. After practicing in one of the most stressful professions in the US, she now shares her experience with everyone looking to find relaxation and tranquility through meditation. Make sure to sign up for the Garden Newsletter at her website My Meditation Garden.
Author: Sonia Gallagher
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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How to Meditate – Learn How to Meditate to Enjoy It’s Great Benefits!
Posted by on Oct 17, 2010
Deciding that you want to know how to meditate may seem like a daunting task. There is so much information to choose from and so many different meditation techniques on how to meditate. Perhaps a good place to start would be to decide if you would like to learn on your own or if a guided meditation session would be more appealing. It is often recommended that one should start off in a group session with an experienced instructor to help familiarize oneself with the process of meditation. It is quite possible, though, to find out how to meditate on your own and there are also many wonderful meditation classes that one could attend. It all depends on your personality.
Anybody can learn how to meditate! Perhaps you thought that only certain people have the ability to successfully meditate. Truth is, if a person understands what meditation is and what it requires, then meditation will be possible. One will also get to know how to meditate easily and quickly. Your true self is already inside you, only realization that it exists is required. In our everyday lives, we feel stressed and overtired trying to deal with children, work, families and other responsibilities. As meditation becomes familiar, you will find that it will actually help you to find more time in the day because no valuable time is wasted feeling stressed and frustrated. Therefore, although it may be difficult in the beginning, it is worth allocating some of your precious time for meditation. When we know how to meditate we are able to change our minds from being negative to positive and ultimately to a more peaceful and happy state. Having a peaceful mind also has a positive effect on our health.
Be careful of meditation if you are feeling extremely depressed. If in preparing to meditate you cannot rid your mind of negative thoughts, it is often better to go and do something else. Continuing to meditate in this state could cause focus of powerful concentration on your negative thoughts and even more depression will be experienced. If you are depressed, you may not feel like meditating, but it is important to try and focus on silencing your mind as meditation will assist with overcoming of the depression.
There are a few things that should be sorted out before beginning your meditation. A person will need to find a peaceful place where there are no disturbances. Do not try to meditate when you are overtired. In the early morning is often a good time. Make sure you are comfortable. Make can use of a cushion to sit on and make sure the room temperature is suitable. Wear clothing that is loose and comfortable.
As you become to know how to meditate many wonderful things will be experienced. Meditators are able to carefully observe their thoughts and mind. The meditator will be able to evaluate his emotions, using the helpful ones and discarding the hindering ones. You will develop an acute awareness of your own mind and be able to witness without any judgments or comments.
If you found this article helpful, please visit our meditation article archive [http://www.how-to-meditate-now.com], or our Yoga Article Archive for more great tips.
Author: Sandra Adler
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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