What are the Types of Meditation?
There are several techniques of meditation, most of which fall into one of two basic approaches: concentrative and mindfulness.
Concentrative Meditation
Mindful Meditation
Concentrative meditation focuses on bringing about a calm and tranquil mind by solely concentrating on one's breathing, a single sound or an object. One common technique used involves the following simple steps:
- Lie or sit in a quiet place
- With eyes closed and attention focused on the rhythm of your breathing, inhale slowly and deeply through your nose for a count of 3 seconds and exhale slowly through your mouth for a count of 5 seconds.
- Do this repeatedly throughout the amount of time that you want to meditate.
Mindfulness Meditation
This type of meditation helps you to gain a more calm, clear, and non-reactive state of mind. Mindfulness requires you sit quietly and simply allow various sensations and feelings including images, anxiety symptoms, worries, sounds, thoughts, smell -- to go through your mind and not react to or become involved with them.
Transcendental Meditation
Transcendental meditation is one of the types of meditation techniques that have gained popularity in recent years. It involves bringing about a state of relaxation in which the body is totally at rest, but the mind is alert. It is believed to be helpful in reducing blood pressure, controlling anxiety, and boosting immune system.
Guided Imagery
Guided imagery is one of the types of meditation that takes patients on a journey through their own inner self. The idea behind it is for patient to seek out the cancer (or whatever illness they have) and destroy it or discover where the pain is and stop it.
This is one type of meditation that scientists have even studied. This technique is used often in patients with cancer or that have chronic pain and many clinics that deal with cancer patients offer guided meditation to their clients.
Lamaze and Yoga
Meditation is incorporated in the Lamaze technique used by many women during childbirth. The idea is for a woman to control pain using a conditioned response to labor contractions and using various techniques of controlled breathing.Meditation is also used when doing Yoga, a mind-body exercise. Yoga incorporates controlled breathing and a narrowing of the mind's focus that leads to a higher level of relaxation and control.
By using meditation, many find that they are more relaxed, they have health benefits including lowered blood pressure and that they have reduced stress in their lives.
The different types of meditation have the common factor of involving a meditative state induced by controlled breathing and relaxation that then has side benefits to improve a person's physical as well as emotional well being.
Popular Searches
Please Note
All the Information within this site is for reference only with no guarantee of accuracy; it is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any diseases. Statements about the products efficacy have not been evaluated by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.
It is important to emphasize that you should not reject mainstream medical attention and guidance and the use of recommended products, treatments, and remedies for individual disorder should be approved and monitored by your health care provider. See disclaimer for more!
