Most people know what meditation is, or have some
idea of what it is. Many of us practice it
regularly. You may not know, however, that there
are many different types of meditation.
There are two
main types of meditation:
"concentration" and "mindfulness". In this
article we will talk about concentration
meditation. Mindfulness meditation will be
covered in a later article.
Concentration meditation (say that quickly 3
times) is the type of meditation most of us think
of when we hear the word meditation, and implies
relaxing the body, concentrating on your
thoughts, and shutting out the rest of the world.
The goal is to
not be aware of
your body sensations, your surroundings, or
worries: and instead to replace these thoughts
with carefully chosen thoughts instead. By
occupying your mind with these chosen thoughts,
you can temporarily shut out both the outside
world and the inner dialog that many of us have.
There are many techniques for concentration
meditation. They include:
1) Visualization. Using mental
images or pictures. This can be a pleasant place
(real or imaginary), a special memory, or a
process, such as visualizing the chakras or the
white light.
2) Creative Visualization.
Thinking of a future event that you would like to
make into reality. Also can be used to solve
problems.
3) Yantra. This is a
visualization of a sacred geometric pattern.
4) Mantra. Repeating a word or
phrase such as "OM". While any word or phrase can
be used, primordial sounds such as Sansrit have
the most power if we know how to use them.
5) Prayer. This should be
selfless prayer, asking for guidance and
listening for the answer, or praying for a person
or cause.
6) Worship, Devotion and Praise for the
Divine. This, of course, would depend on
your definition of the Divine.
7) Reflection. Meditating on a
situation or a concept. For example, reflecting
on "infinite space".
8) Breathing. Concentrating on
slow regular breathing. Sometimes you count the
the number of breaths, or breath in and out for a
specific count. For example: IN...1...2...3...4,
OUT...1...2...3...4.
9) Nothingness. This form of
meditation is for the really advanced meditator,
and is the ceasing of all thoughts. For some
people, this is the definition of the word
Nirvana.
These are some of the forms of concentration
meditation. It is not necessary or recommended to
try them all. However, like many things in life,
it is nice to have choices.
There is another form of concentration
meditation, and that would be “guided
meditation”. A guided meditation would simply be
meditating under the supervision of another
person. This is usually done on a recording, but
a guided meditation could also be done in a live
one-on-one or classroom situation.
I didn’t list guided meditation as a separate
technique above, because it would simply be
meditating with one of the above techniques, just
under supervision. The exception would be number
9 above, “nothingness”; which by its very nature
could not be practiced with another voice
speaking, unless the meditator could “shut out”
that voice.
I will also discuss guided meditations at length
in a separate article.
