Easy Guide to Meditation for Beginners

We have been able to modernize this practice without losing all the great benefits on a physical, mental, and emotional level. 

Today in The Woman Post we share a step-by-step guide to incorporate meditation into your life and thereby achieve greater calm, better attention, stress reduction, and a sustained feeling of well-being.

Step 1: Before

Find a space in which you feel calm and comfortable, you do not need to have a special zafu to do it. If you are calm for ten minutes without interruptions you can start meditating on your sofa, in the middle of nature, or on a cushion.

Step 2: During

-Make sure you do not have external distractions and feel comfortable having a blanket if it is cold or a window with air if it is hot is convenient so that the weather does not distract you.

-Set a timer so you're not distracted wondering if time is up.

–You can choose if you are going to meditate with an audio guide or in silence, you can try both and not just do one.

-Sit up straight and if you need to, place a cushion on which to support your back (studies show that you will have the same benefit being in a traditional meditation position as simply sitting). You decide if you cross your legs or place them flat on the floor.

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-Close your eyes or look down to block stimuli from the environment.

-Take a slow breath through the nose counting to four and exhale even slower counting to six in our day to day we breathe at a very fast rate of about 15 cycles per minute that is 15 inhalations and 15 exhales having such accelerated breathing activates our fight and flight system in our body, increases the heart rate and increases blood pressure if we stay in stress mode for too long periods we deteriorate our body.

The practice of meditation teaches us to breathe slowly and thus activate the relaxation response of the parasympathetic mode, using the diaphragm and filling the abdomen with air, oxygen consumption is reduced so that your blood becomes less acidic and you quickly go out from fight or flight mode and activate a relaxation response in your nervous system.

-Keep your attention on your breathing feeling how the air enters and leaves your body. If you get distracted, breathe again and focus again. Do not bother to distract yourself, it is completely natural when you start to meditate.

-Check your body: Scan if you are tensioning any part unnecessarily and with the next exhalation relax.

-Free your mind: Let it go where it wants and return it lovingly with the breath over and over again that is what meditation is all about.

Step 3: After

-Once you decide to finish your meditation, do not run away, enjoy the pleasant sensations, slowly open your eyes and keep your presence in the here and now.

–If in the course of your day you feel agitated, breathe slowly and resume activity, thus training your mind to be calm.

Meditating more than a fad is a brain gymnastics exercise that helps you expand your ability to live in the here and now, enjoy this practice one step at a time until it becomes part of you.