7 Types of Meditation: Which is Best for You?
- Griff
Many types of meditation exist, but the most common and often used are:
- Spiritual meditation
- Mindfulness meditation
- Focused awareness
- Chakra meditation
- Mantra meditation
- Loving-kindness meditation
- Body scan meditation.
All these meditations vary in their techniques, procedures, and benefits.
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Spiritual Meditation
This type of meditation is practised by eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Daoism, but also in the Christian faith. It is comparable to a prayer wherein you simply reflect in a quiet place around you and look for a more profound association with your God or the Universe.
To heighten the spiritual experience, you can incorporate essential oils such as frankincense, myrrh, sage, cedar, sandalwood, and palo santo.
Spiritual meditation can be done in your home or any place of worship. If you are seeking spiritual growth, this type of meditation is right for you.
Mindfulness Meditation
Mindfulness meditation is the most popular meditation technique in the western world, but it originated from Buddhism.
Through this meditation, you will focus on your thoughts as they pass through your mind. The aim is to simply observe your thoughts whilst avoiding getting involved in them or judging them. This meditation combines awareness with concentration.
Since it is a straight forward practice, it’s perfect for people who do not have a teacher to guide them.
Focused awareness
Focused awareness meditation uses any of the five senses to bring about focus and concentration.
For instance, you can focus internally, like on your breath, or you can focus on external things like sounds or objects making contact with your body. You can also try counting mala beads, staring at a candle flame, or listening to a gong.
This may appear simple in theory, but it can be challenging for beginners to hold focus for any longer than a few minutes. You need to come back to the process and refocus your mind if it wanders.
This meditation is helpful for those people who want to find more focus in their lives.
Chakra meditation
The chakras are part of an intimately connected system, with every chakra requiring a different focus.
To bring the entire system into balance, it is necessary to meditate on all of the chakras.
You will better detect individual imbalances and direct your meditation to focus on particular chakras with time and experience.
What you will be able to do is visualize each chakra in turn, from the root to the crown.
You ought to picture the vitality streaming into and through that chakra.
Utilize the colour affiliations of each chakra given over amid your reflection.
You need to be patient with each chakra and focus until you can feel the vibrant energy passing through it.
Each chakra takes several minutes for itself. You should have a clear mental image of positive energy flowing through your body by the time you reach the crown chakra.
Mantra meditation
Mantra meditation is popular in many traditional teachings, including Buddhism and Hinduism.
A repetitive sound is used to clear the mind and create focus. This may it be a phrase, a word, or a sound.
A popular mantra is “Om”. It is not important whether your mantra is spoken quietly, loudly or repeated mentally.
People report becoming more alert and in tune with their environment after chanting your mantra for 5- 15 minutes.
Mantra meditation also creates more profound awareness within one’s self.
Loving-kindness meditation
Loving-kindness meditation is also known as ‘metta meditation’ and is popular among Buddhists.
The word “metta” means positive energy and kindness generated toward others. The word ‘Metta’ originates from a language that is closely related to Sanskrit, which is spoken in Northern India.
Loving-kindness meditation is utilized to fortify sentiments of sympathy, benevolence, and acknowledgement toward oneself and others.
It regularly includes making the intention to send love to others. This is followed by sending an arrangement of good wishes to loved ones, companions, associates, and all living creatures.
This meditation aims to produce love and happiness rather than the feelings of focus or relaxation.
Body Scan Meditation
Body scan meditation involves mindfully scanning your body for sensations of pain, tension, or anything that can be observed. It can help you feel more connected to your physical self and gain greater insight into potential causes of unwanted feelings.
Through these insights from our body and mind, we can move towards improving our overall sense of wellbeing.
Body scans can also lessen the pressure within our bodies and can be extremely relaxing.
Often, this type of meditation includes gradually fixing and unwinding one muscle bunch at a time throughout the body. This method is regularly utilized to calm and loosen up before bed.
Conclusion
It is a real challenge to find peace and calm in the chaos of life, especially when you are attempting to balance, personal life, social obligation, work, and your family.
Meditation is an easy way to find peace, calm, and focus in life.
With just a few minutes in a day, you can develop a meditation practice that is suited for your schedule and will allow you to relax both your body and mind.
It takes time to master any form of meditation, just like all skills.
However, if you are consistent and willing to experiment with different methods, you will almost certainly discover a meditation style that is suited for you.
Key Facts
- Spiritual meditation is comparable to prayer and connects oneself to a higher power.
- Mindfulness meditation is the practice of observing thoughts and feeling free from judgement.
- Focused awareness uses an internal or external stimulus to focus the mind.
- Chakra meditation aims at opening all 7 chakras to create harmony within the body.
- Mantra meditation is a form of focused awareness meditation that uses a mantra either repeated out loud or internally to create focus.
- Loving Kindness meditation uses a set of phrases to generate feeling love, kindness, empathy and happiness toward one’s self and others.
- Body scan meditation uses the sensations to create a greater connection to the body.
Griff Williams
MindEasy founder & meditation teacher
Griff Williams is an accredited meditation teacher and founder of MindEasy. He spent 12 years working as a London firefighter before changing paths to pursue building MindEasy. He received his diploma in meditation teaching from The British School of Meditation.
