Meditation is enjoying the inner world without the distractions of the outer world. Meditation is just like sports, there are lots of different types of 'games' that may help will connect with your inner world and energize you to face the 'busy' world. Meditation will lead you to the greater purpose of your life so that you don't feel worthless anytime.
Meditation is not about getting good at Meditation. Meditaion is getting good at LIFE.
- Emily Fletcher
Different Types of Meditation
Just like sports, there are lots of different types of meditation. It mainly classified into two broad parts — 1. Hermetic Meditation & 2. Modern Meditation
Hermetic Meditation
From the name, it is understandable that this the ancient type of meditation that is done by hermits or yogis, or monks in mainly India and China. In this type of meditation, there are lots of different practices, like —
Mindfulness Meditation: Mindfulness means being present at the moment. In our thoughts we just spent 40% of our time in the present, rest in past or future thoughts. Mindfulness practice will help to be present at every moment of time. In mindfulness practice, just flow with your environment. When any thought comes just watch it and let it go. Your thoughts are like a thief in an empty house, when it seems there is nothing to steal, it just goes away. Just notice your thoughts are passing by just like cars on a road where is no traffic jam. Mindfulness practice will help you to enjoy every moment being present at the time.
Focus Meditation: In this type of meditation, you need to focus on something just like your breath or flickering flame or a sound of a bell, or any sensation in your body. Whatever thing you choose, you just have to focus on that. If you choose breath then notice how the cold air getting through your nose then into your body, how it feels when your lungs expand, and then how it come back through your nose or mouth. If you are focusing on any sound just try to see the sound in your mind's eye. This type of meditation will help you increase your focusing skill.
- Mindfulness Breathing: This is just a combination of mindfulness meditation and focus mediation and this is also called open awareness meditation. Here you just focus on your breathing, the sensations in breathing, and whenever your mind wanders just softly shift your focus to breathing again. Just be present with your breath. It will help to overcome negative thinking and overthinking.
Transcendental Meditation: This a higher-level meditation practice. In this meditation, a 'mantra' is chanted while doing this and the mantra is given by his/ her guru or master. Mantra is just some series of words (sometimes one word) that usually has no meaning. In this meditation, your mind goes into a deep delta state where there are no thoughts and this state is 4 times deeper than sleep. In this mediation sometimes the mind goes into gamma state where a burst of new ideas comes in.
- Moving Meditation: It is one type of mindfulness meditation but while you are working. Here you just be present whatever work (mainly habitual works which don't need any conscious attention) you are doing. If you are walking just feel the ground under your feet. While taking bath just feel the flow of water around your body. While brushing teeth, just feel the brush in your mouth. Just be present in every moment when your conscious brain is not giving attention to. It is the easiest exercise to do but most of the time we forget about it because during this type of work we are usually thinking something else.
Modern Meditation
This type of meditation is for our modern-day life where we do not have 6-8 hours for meditation. The following types of meditation help us to set clear goals, show the way to achieve that, and helps us to make decisions more preciously.
- Creative Visualization: This type of mediation is also known as Silva Ultra-mind Technique. Here you first go into a relaxed meditative state of mind or an alpha state. Then you have to create 3 mental screens — in the first one you will visualize the problem that you are facing in your life - you have to see it, feel it. In the second screen you have to visualize what will happen if you solve the problem - how much happy you will be, what effects will be in your life- just enjoy the moment. Then in the last screen try to visualize the possible ways how you can solve the problem - what are things that may go wrong - how can you overcome it. This type of exercise will help to solve many complex problems in your life.
- Intuitive Meditation: This type of meditation is also known as Thinkitation (this name is given by Tom Bilyeu). Even it is similar to scatter focus (problem crunching mode) from the book Hyper Focus by Chris Bailey. Here you just free your mind to think about a specific problem for long enough. You are connecting the dots that you have collected for your problem. When you get into the alpha state and do such type of deep thinking, it will help you solve the problem more easily.
Forgiveness Practice: In this, you try to forgive someone or maybe yourself from some bad past experiences. First, get into a relaxed state, then just see the person you want to forgive. Then just think about that event - feel the incident for few minutes. Then try to think from the other person's point of view — why he/she had done this, there may be some reason or maybe they are forced to do so — think about it for few minutes. Then say in your mind that the other person saying "I'm sorry" and you are saying "I forgive you." and send love to him/her and give a great smile to him/her. This type of exercise will help to get relief from past bad feelings and in this way, you also can forgive yourself for any mistakes that you have made in your life.
Connection Meditation: This is also known as loving-kindness meditation. Here you feel love and compassion not only for you and your close one for everyone you have come contact to. Send love to every living thing in the universe. This type of exercise helps to be happy because when you send love you also receive it from the other way.
- Directive Healing: In this type of meditation, you go into delta state of mind where the natural healing process takes place and you direct your mind consciously to heal itself from its own. It is not that much easy as it sounds, sometimes it is done by professionals who will guide you to such a state of mind and helps you to heal.
- Reprogramming: This is also similar to the previous one. First, you get into delta state of mind (mostly it is done by hypnosis by some professionals) then you clear your old belief systems that are stopping you from moving forward and create new programming or new believe for your mind by which you can achieve almost everything whatever you can dream of.
These are the all different types of mediation that I know. I hope you may find it helpful.
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