On the verge of burnout? Want to be more focused at work? Or, deal with your anxiety?
With a huge list of advantages, practising meditation can benefit anyone. However, to ensure you actually stick to it, it’s important to know which meditation technique will help you with your specific needs and fit best into your lifestyle.
Here’s a simple guide on how to find your best meditation practice routine:
It’s all about timing!
The absolute first question you should ask yourself is: How much time do I want to invest in meditation? Is it a short 10-15 minutes in your morning routine? Or one hour after work to let go of the daily stress and pressure? How often do you want to meditate — once or twice a day? Once you’ve decided how long you want to meditate, it’s time for the next question:
Beginner or advanced?
How new are you to meditation? Is it your very first time, or have you dabbled with it in the past? For example, for beginners, it’s best to start simple with 5-10 minutes guided meditation with the help of a meditation app. Meditation practise may seem easy, but focusing on just one thing within distraction requires practice to master. So, a little bit of guidance can go a long way! If you are already a meditation pro, you might want to challenge yourself with silent meditation in a cross-legged position for 30 minutes.
What are your meditation goals?
People meditate for many different reasons. In fact, combining your meditation practice with your personal goals and struggles is a really productive way to make use of your free time.
To help find your best meditation practice, have a think about which purpose most resonates with you:
Connect with your spirituality
For example, are you interested in gaining more knowledge about yourself or the world around you? Then chakra meditations — which often include chanting mantras — might be a good fit for you.
Be more relaxed
Do you just want to relax in your day-to-day life and release stress? A guided meditation with nature sounds, while you lay down, can help you unwind. Calm has some great options.
Be more focused
Meditation can also increase your capacity to concentrate on one task. If that’s your goal, meditations that focus on your breath (which can be guided) will help you train your brain. In addition to breath-focused meditations, I have been recently practising the “Heart of Rose” meditation. I learned this one from the book The monk who sold his Ferrari. To be fair, you are supposed to look at an actual rose for five to 20 minutes but a picture of a rose will do, too!
Improve your mental health
In case you suffer from stress-related anxiety and depression, hypnosis-focused meditation may be helpful. There are plenty of free hypnosis videos on YouTube, ranging from about 40 minutes to an hour.
Improve your sleep
Struggling from insomnia, and feel like nothing is helping? A consistent meditation practice could be just the thing you need to improve your sleep quality. There are a few meditation apps that specialise in improving your sleep. One that helped me (when I actually did it every day) was Balance. Another option is to look for hypnosis videos or sleep sounds on YouTube if you have trouble falling asleep. It always works for me!
This article was written by Lilia Häselbarth and originally published on A Girl In Progress.
