Meditation: mantra, visualisation, breath
When I had not yet become a regular meditator, I used to enjoy my yoga teacher’s guided meditations. Sitting or lying down and listening to a calm and gentle voice guide me into relaxing different body parts, breathing, visualising a ray of light entering through the top of my skull and travelling down my body, penetrating every cell and filling me with bright, life-giving light or imagining a beach or a forest, where I feel calm and completely at one with nature and the universe.
However, I did find that at times I struggled to visualise the image being suggested to me and would see a word rather than an image or scene.
Since I started practising meditation with a mantra, I love the freedom that it gives me. Meditating by repeating a mantra (word), means that my mind is free to wander and occupy itself with whatever it needs to process. Some meditations are filled with thoughts, some are calmer and more relaxed. In some, I feel myself reach that almost thought-free place, where I am just being. For me, meditation time is a time to slow down and just be.
If you are not yet a regular meditator, contemplate how to become one. Do you want to be guided on your journey or would you just like to have the tools to meditate on your own, wherever you happen to be, in whichever circumstances you find yourself? Do you like focusing on the breath and just sitting in the stillness? If like me, you are more verbal, you may relate better to mantra meditation, i.e., repeating a word, if you think in pictures or patterns, you may want to be guided into seeing amazing, conscious-changing images in your mind. If neither appeal, maybe just breath focused meditation is the one for you.
Whichever meditation technique works for you, give it a try. As Pedram Shojai says, meditation is like an operating system; even if you take five to ten deep breaths a few times during a busy day, you will be able to step into stillness, get better clarity and improve your life and performance. Like everything else in life, meditation is a matter of practice, start small and turn it into an indispensable habit.
