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.
Optimistic or pessimistic thoughts and feelings, noises, the things you see – everything around you, may it be a distraction or not should be received as you do mindfulness meditation.
You are not to exclude anything with this type of meditation.
All you need to do is sit down in peace and perceive any past or present events and feel any emotions you might encounter in the course of meditating.
Posture is important in mindfulness meditation so that energy will flow better.
A comfortable seating position should be selected; it does not matter whether it is lotus, Burmese or Seiza positions.
Let your hands rest on top of your thighs. The palms of your hand should be on a downward position.
The Meditation Process
Once you have assumed a comfortable seating position, you are now ready to undertake the mindfulness meditation wherein you need to become aware of the current moment.
You should experience what is happening right now at this very moment where you would welcome yet slowly dissolve the fear, rage, qualms, and reservations in life.
Mindfulness meditation teaches you to be conscious of what is happening in your life as well as your environment.
It lets you witness the good and the bad events. Most importantly, it lets you respond in a positive way to the matters you have become aware of.
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:
In the first stage, we have to concentrate on our breathing. The important thing on 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 afterward 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.
You have noticed in the first stage that, we were counting one after completion of one breathing cycle. During the 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.
In this stage, we will stop counting while taking a breath. The 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.
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 the 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 the huge workload at your workplace.
A Simple Mindfulness Meditation Exercise
Creating a mindfulness meditation is a gentle but powerful exercise.
As with any meditation session, you need to get into a relaxed and comfortable position, eyes closed, and then commence with deep nasal breathing, focusing your thoughts on the breathing to ease yourself into a meditative state.
Once you feel that you are calmed by your breathing and that your breath is under your rhythmic control, then you can move on to focusing on your own body, a part at a time.
Concentrate first of all on the left foot, focusing on it from a position above ourselves. Then move up the body slowly, left ankle, knee, thigh and so on.
When reaching your head, you then do the same in reverse on the other side of the body: right shoulder, right elbow, right hand and so on.
Once you have completed your tour of your own body, as if you were someone else examining it, then it is time to open your eyes and increase your mindfulness of your surroundings.
To do this, focus on any object in the room. It does not have to be anything special: a cup on the coffee table, a vase, a plastic flower, anything.
Try to maintain that focus for half a minute, and then move on to any other object.
You can repeat this several times, always maintaining a focus on your own body and your own breathing, creating a triple harmony with each object on which you focus.
By using this simple mindfulness meditation you are increasing awareness both of yourself and your surroundings, in a very gentle and easy way.
It can serve as a prelude to some mental task, as well as being part of an ongoing mindfulness campaign to strengthen and expand the use of your own mind.