It is widely known that practicing regular meditation has proven benefits as outlined by HealthLine. The benefits are:
- Stress Reduction
- Eliminate Anxiety
- Reduce/or Eliminate Depression
- Increase Self Awareness
- Increase Focus
- Improves Your Memory
- Increase Your Compassion
- Overcome Addictions
- Better Sleep
- Reduces Pain
- Decrease Blood Pressure
Many people who start meditating have problems concentrating in a quiet place to meditate. They sit down with their legs folded then their minds start racing with thoughts about what to cook for dinner, what bills they need to pay, how long they have until they pick up their kids from school etc. This is common to the untrained mind since we live in a busy society facing a lot of demands from our professional and personal lives. There are solutions for beginners to get started, we will discuss them below.
SOLUTIONS ON HOW TO START MEDIATATING EASILY
Take a Hot Bath
How to Prep Your Bath to Achieve Full Relaxation?
- Add a Bath Bomb
There are many benefits for your mind and body when you emerge your body into warm water, especially when you add bath salts, bath bombs, and bath tea to your bath water. When your body is fully submerged into warm water, your tense muscles caused from stress will ease. Warm water has been found to improve your mood. When your body is at ease you relax therefore you can easily quiet your mind, close your eyes, focus on your breath to meditate. Of course, adding products to your bath ritual greatly increases your feelings of tranquility. Adding a Bath bomb creates an ambience of luxury because once you drop one into your tub, it fizzes and releases delightful scents to soothe you into further relaxation. Bath bombs are fantastic balls of wonder that turn an ordinary bath into a wonderful experience that is spa like. Bath Bombs Have Healing Properties. Almost all bath bombs contain sodium bicarbonate and citric acid. These two ingredients combine to create a fizzing sensation bath bombs create in the water. Most importantly, they clean, deodorize, repair skin, and strengthen blood vessels. These two main ingredients leave you with healthier and younger-looking skin. You’ll love the rejuvenating enzymes and the healthy, glowing skin you’ll have after your bath.
A bath bomb using natural oils adds emollients and softeners to your bath's water that moisturize and indulge your skin causing further relaxation. No matter what your skin type, the beneficial ingredients in bath bombs leave it soft, supple, and silky. Yes, it'll cleanse your skin, but the ingredients inside will also pamper and soothe it.
- Use a Bath Pillow
Bath pillows are waterproof cushions designed to improve your bathing experience by adding comfort and luxury. Having a relaxing bath, particularly with the aid of a bath pillow, has benefits for your body and mind. Using a bath pillow reduces muscle pains. Bath pillows help relieve the pressure that has built up in your joints and muscles, helping to get rid of pain or discomfort that you may be feeling in these areas. It also prevents back pain. If you struggle with back pain in particular, then laying out in the bath may not always be as comfortable as you would hope. A bath pillow can be used to support your back and neck. Use a bath pillow to ensure that you can stay in the water for as long as you wish. Laying in the wrong posture while enjoying your bath can cause long term back problems. Using a pillow to reduce the stress on your spine and ensure your body is in the correct posture will help you avoid a sore back. Therefore, using a bath pillow will ensure you are fully relaxed to meditate during your bath.
- Add Bath Salt with Essential Oils
Adding bath salt to your bath water ensures your body is fully relaxed and detoxed. This also allows you to easily get into a meditative state. Bath salts relieve muscle tension and stress, as well as increase magnesium absorption. Bath salt helps with insomnia, reduces muscle aches, moisturizes the skin, decreasing inflammation, relieves internal swelling and many other healing properties.
- Lighting Natural Scented Candles
For those who really struggling with meditating staring at a candle flame for a long period of time puts you into a trance, looking at the flame is hypnotic it will help put your mind at rest and clear your thoughts. Plus, the delightful scents delightfully stimulate your brain into a relaxing, positive mood. The smell of scented candles stimulates our limbic system, the part of the brain that is home to our memory and emotions. An accredited clinical integrative psychotherapist and cognitive behavioral therapist, Chryssa Chalkia has stated, "It is scientifically proven that scented candles can play an essential role in the physiological effects of mood, stress, working capacity, and overall mental health,". Ms. Chalkia wrote an article on the effect scented candles have on reducing anxiety.
You can place candles on your bathroom vanity, around your bath tub and some people also place a burning candle on top of their toilet hood. Placing multiple natural scented candles around your space creates a cozy atmosphere. The warm glow, the flickering light and the delicious aromas are divine.
Some scented candles that can be used to help reduce anxiety or stress according to a study conducted by Keville and Green (2009) are:
Lavender - relaxes instantly both mind and body.
Clary sage - lifts mood.
Cinnamon - makes you feel refreshed.
Orange - reduces stress.
Lemon - improves mood.
Apple - controls anxiety.
Peppermint - wakes up your mind and enhances focus.
Frankincense - helps battle anxiety and gives great stress relief.
Sandalwood - relaxes and calms body and mind.
- Putting Essential Oils in a Diffuser & Rubbing Essential Oils onto Your Skin
Smelling essential oils such as lavender, clary sage, patchouli among many other oils has calming and healing effect to our mind and body. Smelling essential oils through a diffuser is effective in helping you go into a meditative state. Aromatherapy experts state the best scents for relaxation are lavender (has calming properties), sage (has cleansing abilities), and peppermint (for mental focus). You can use any scent that you prefer those are just some suggestions. In addition, rubbing essential oils mixed with a carrier oil such as jojoba oil onto our skin at the back of our neck, wrists, and behind our ears also helps relax your body along with many other healing properties associated with each different essential oil. Once your body is relaxed then your mind can relax. Also, you can put the essential oil of your choice onto the palm of your hand, cup your hands together to smell before meditating.
- Holding a Crystal in Your Hand & Also Placing Certain Crystals into your Bath Water
Holding a beautiful crystal while mediating has been practiced for thousands of years. They are beautiful to look at. Each crystal emits a certain frequency. Depending on the type of mediation you are doing, select the crystal associated with the energy properties related to your mediation. For example, if you are meditating on receiving an answer to a challenging decision you are trying to make, you may select a clear quartz crystal to hold in one hand, clear quartz amplifies the power of other crystals. On the other hand, hold an amethyst crystal. Amethyst crystal enhances intuition. If you are mediating on manifesting more wealth into your life, hold a citrine crystal for it attracts abundance into your life. Crystals are a tool to open your mind, heart, and spirit to yourself and the innate knowledge within you that's often inaccessible because of the mind chatter of day-to-day distractions. As humans we have on average 60, 000 thoughts a day!
Another technique to meditate with crystals is if your energy levels are low, meditate with pyrite or citrine on your solar plexus chakra to help boost your stamina. You can mediate lying down on your back on your yoga mat or in bed. Bed isn’t ideal as some people may fall asleep. Also, listening to a guided mediation with crystals will help beginners ease into their mediation practice by simply listening to the mediation teacher’s instructions on breathing and what to visualize. If you would like free guided mediation sessions on our Happy Being Well Facebook page, we will have a free guided mediation FB live once a week. Simply like our FB page, join our email newsletter at the bottom of our homepage of our website to receive notifications when we go live on Facebook.
Another tip is when choosing your crystals using your intuition without researching the specific energies of each one, you often choose the right one for you that you need.
Another way to use crystals in your mediation is to place them in a circle around you. You don’t have to hold them or place them on your chakras simply being near them is still effective in using their energy to help you go within, concentrate, and achieve your intention with each of your mediation sessions.
7. Burning Sage or Palo Santo
Burning sage or Palo Santo can enhance your meditation. They smell wonderful and calm your body and mind. Like staring at the flame of a candle, looking at the trails of smoke curl into swirls and float upwards into the air has a hypnotic effect putting you into a meditative state. Enjoy looking at the patterns the trail of smoke moves into. If thoughts come to your mind, bring your attention back to the moving patterns of smoke left from the incense. Just stay in the present moment and enjoy looking at the smoke dance around in the air. Also, if you would like to manifest a certain desire into your life while meditating, you can see the smoke as if they are your wishes floating up to the universe to be delivered to you. Burning sage among spiritual healers has known to increase intuition and heal.
According to Healthline, burning sage has benefits such as: boosting cognition, improving your energy levels, reducing stress, improves the quality of your sleep, improve your mood, it can help remove the energy of your past traumas & other people’s negative energy. The most-used types of sage have antimicrobial properties. This means they keep infectious bacteria, viruses, and fungi away. Sage helps purify the air.
We at happybeingwell.com carry a variety of all the items mentioned above to help you with your ongoing meditation practice. If you know someone struggling with getting into a strong mediation practice, share this article with them. We look forward into seeing you join our free FB live guided mediations on our Facebook page.